She had refused to do any further knitting for the stall too, and money was becoming an even more pressing issue. I needed to do something else for a living. I was clever. I should have gone away to college and made something of myself. I had studied so many books in my younger days, I could have been a scientist or a doctor or an engineer. The reason I didn’t was because I couldn’t leave Lindy. So, I became a gardener, and now we were living on the breadline. I still couldn’t let her go. I held on to the hope that one day she would forgive me.
I signed up for computer classes in the local community centre and got some basic skills. I got a job as an office junior in a real estate agent’s office. They liked that I kept myself to myself and didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t want to go for a beer with them on a Friday after work. After three months, they wanted to promote me. It meant more money, but I would be showing people around houses. I didn’t want the promotion. I knew from TV how normal families worked. I’d never had one and I didn’t want to be confronted with them in somebody else’s domestic setting.
I moved on and got a job working for a cancer charity. It involved cold-calling businesses all over the Bay of Plenty region and asking them to sign up to a monthly donation. I was not good at this. I was so unused to talking to people, and the manager said that I sounded like I didn’t care. I was supposed to tug on these people’s heartstrings. The job was commission only. After the first month, I’d made less than I had with the real estate agent. I kept going back to the recruitment agency.
A job had come up in a bank in town. It was full-time, cataloguing accounts for their new computer system. The interviewers were impressed by my self-education. One of them remembered my father’s death being in the papers; he had contributed to the fund for me. They treated me like a minor celebrity: ‘You’re that kid?’
I admitted I liked to keep to myself, and I’d prefer to work alone. They seemed delighted with that answer. The job I was applying for was one I’d be expected to do on my own after some initial training. I was offered the job a week later, which I was glad to accept in September 1999.
The training on their computer system was a residential course in Wellington. There was no way I could commute there and back. I’d have to leave Lindy on her own. The day before I left, I brought her the usual bag of groceries, but when I tried to talk to her, to tell her that I would be gone for a week, she turned up the radio full blast to drown out my voice.
The course could have been done in a day. Most of the other attendees were younger. They seemed to be slow on the uptake. It was incredibly easy to learn the system. At the end of the week, they gave us booklets that explained the whole process anyway. In the evenings, we went back to the low-grade hotel. The girls went to dinner together. Several of them turned up every morning with hangovers. I got sandwiches and ate them in my room and watched TV. I shunned their requests to join them. One of the course instructors warned me that my social skills could use some improvement. But she praised the speed of my learning.
I was frustrated to be away for so long. Even though I was sure Lindy hated me, my feelings for her had not abated. I often thought of the look of ecstasy on her face when I placed the baby on her chest. She had never looked at me like that. But she had told me she loved me. Until the baby came, that was enough for me. I often thought of setting her free and then disappearing, but where could I go? I didn’t have the money to get on a plane, though I had kept my passport renewed, in case. Originally, I had kept money aside for escape, but I’d had to use that to pay the bills. Lindy knew my real name and my whole history. She would tell. I’d spend the rest of my life in prison. She might truly have loved me once, but she certainly didn’t now. I had changed the locks on the barn door many times in the previous years. I knew she would never be able to get out.
When Friday came and the course was over, I drove the six hours back to Rotorua at top speed. I got home at midnight and went straight to the barn.
She was lying on the bed but sat up immediately. ‘Where were you?’ she asked. Her face was tear-stained and her voice was subdued.
‘I tried to tell you on Sunday night, but you didn’t want to listen.’
She burst into tears. ‘I thought you were dead. It was like the last time when your father died, but I … I missed you.’
I moved towards her and held my arms out to her. She collapsed against my chest.
In the weeks that followed, we talked more than we ever had before, almost as if we were making up for the silences of the past years.
‘I was so angry with you. I accepted that you had taken my freedom. I gave up trying to escape. I fell for you against my will. You were always so kind and so considerate. The opposite of your father. But then, all I wanted was a baby. I didn’t trick you into it, I promise. That’s why, when I did get pregnant, it felt like a miracle. I’d never asked you for anything, not for years. A baby would make us a proper family. Someone to love unconditionally.’
That hurt me and I told her. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘babies get sick all the time. I could never take her to a hospital or a doctor. Would you want your baby to grow up here? Like this?’ I indicated the windowless room.
She looked around, a puzzled expression on her face, and I realized that this barn had been her home for longer than anywhere else. She had lived here for sixteen years, and once Dad was gone, she felt safe here. She was thirty years old. This windowless room, as nice as I had tried to make it, was normal to her. I regretted reminding her of how abnormal her situation was. Her escape attempts had been nothing to do with finding her home, but everything to do with finding her baby. I knew that keeping her captive was wrong, but she was no longer aware of it.
Gradually, we became close again until finally she let me return to her bed. She didn’t ask about having a baby and, as soon as I could afford it, I had a vasectomy, a relatively painless day procedure. Once again, I took away the chain and she was full of gratitude. I felt like a monster. That’s the word my mother used to refer to my father. I remembered that.
At work, I got through the digital cataloguing of accounts quickly. I wrote to the head office IT department and suggested improvements to the programme they had developed to make it more user-friendly. I taught myself how to use other software programmes, and then after I had turned down the offer of promotion to Assistant Head of IT in the bank’s head office in Wellington, I began to look for other jobs. I went from one to the other – a year in a small stockbroking firm, two years in an insurance company – but never far from Rotorua. In 2004, I became an IT specialist in the Rotorua Rabobank. This time, I had my own office. Things were looking up.
During the crash of 2008, the bank downsized and I took a pay cut but I was needed and kept my job. In 2009, after a massive credit-card fraud was perpetrated in America, I applied for a job in our cyber security department. I was successful. My earnings were now good enough to support Lindy and myself comfortably.
As I gradually rose through the ranks and found myself on interviewing panels, I tried to hire every Maori applicant I could. The casual racism of the past was now rightfully seen as shameful. Maori culture was being embraced by the Pakeha population. Now, the Maori language had been incorporated into our everyday correspondence and every email was signed off with Nga mihi as well as Kind regards. I often thought of Rangi and his potential to take any of the jobs we were advertising. He had been naturally good at mathematics, something he only discovered when he applied himself to it. Times and attitudes had changed for the better.
I’d installed skylights on the roof of the barn so Lindy had natural daylight. I’d lined the walls with bookshelves at the far end of the TV area. I upgraded her bathroom. She didn’t ask for anything but she laughed with delight at every gift or improvement. When we walked to the hot pools in the summer, I didn’t need to use the chain any more. She put her hand in mine and we walked side by side. I applied suntan lotion to her soft skin so that she wouldn’t burn. We made love in the grass. She began to knit again.
It was all building to something, and one night in the spring of 2011, I did not lock the door. Then, for a whole weekend, I did not lock the door.
‘Why aren’t you locking the door?’ she asked me.
‘I trust you. I love you. You can come into the house.’
‘No, it’s okay, I’m happy here.’
Wasn’t she even curious about the house? When we walked towards the lake, we never passed the house. She couldn’t see it from the barn door. I invited her again, the following weekend. I unplugged the phone that never rang and hid it in the car. She tentatively stepped inside the front door and went from room to room. ‘There’s so much space,’ she said, and I guess, compared to the barn, there was. I asked her to stay the night, but she couldn’t get comfortable in my bed and eventually nudged me to tell me she was going back to the barn. I nodded my agreement and pretended to go back to sleep. I watched from the window as she made her way. I followed at a distance until I saw her pull the door of the barn open and disappear inside. She closed it behind her. I stayed up all night, watching the door, waiting for her to sneak out. She didn’t.
The following week, I called the office and told them I was sick. Every morning, I’d drive out on to the dirt road and park the car out of sight. I walked back to the bushy area opposite the house and watched with binoculars to see if she would try to escape. Every evening I’d come ‘home from work’ to find her contentedly watching TV or knitting or preparing dinner. The most she had done was walk around the outside of the house, looking in the windows. She didn’t even try the door, though I’d left it open. She greeted me cheerfully every evening, her gap-toothed smile broad and her blue eyes twinkling.
Eventually, I persuaded her to come into the house for dinner sometimes, but she was always nervous there. ‘It’s the ghost of your father,’ she said, and indeed, some of his belongings were still around the house. I don’t know why I’d held on to his spectacles and his dentist’s bag. I threw them out immediately. I password protected my laptop, not that she had a clue how to use it. I had a mobile phone for work. Lindy had seen them on TV but wouldn’t know how to turn it on. I kept it hidden anyway.
A few months passed. Lindy was free to go anywhere she wanted. She presented me with a handmade quilt for Christmas 2011. We celebrated in the house together for the first time. I’d bought a tree and decorations and she festooned the tree with tinsel and fairy lights. I’d also bought a bottle of wine. Neither of us was used to alcohol and got drunk quickly. It was a pleasant feeling. We sat on the porch in front of the house shaded from the blazing midsummer heat and toasted each other like a real married couple.
