I had replaced Dad’s chain with a soft but strong rope. She sawed her way through it with a bread knife in two days. I kicked myself for not predicting that. She was waiting behind the door instead of at the other end of the room when I entered that evening. She lunged at me with the knife but my reactions were quick, and I turned to the side so she only stabbed me in the thigh instead of the stomach. I wrangled her back to the bed and she screamed like a banshee. She thought I was going to rape her. I was not my dad, but I did have to reinstate the chain. I wrapped the shackle in foam. I also allowed her to move the shackle from one leg to the other every week as she had developed a severe limp from carrying it on one leg for so many years.
Another time, she threw boiling water again, but I was always wary and out of her reach. She tried to poison me, too, by putting bleach or detergent in my food (she cooked for me sometimes), but the taste was obvious. I explained to her how foolish that was. If I died, she would die. Nobody would come looking for her because everyone thought she was already dead. She would die alone of starvation. I tried to protect her from herself. She wasn’t thinking straight.
I had made some adjustments to the barn over the last few years. I added another layer of insulation, sheetrock and corrugated iron on the outside of the building. Three years earlier, I had discovered that Lindy had clawed her way through the interior wall behind the fridge. She had pulled out a number of egg boxes that provided the soundproofing. I caught her in the act. I didn’t punish Lindy. I held her in my arms until her weeping subsided, and then I let go of her. I was not my dad.
No sound would ever escape, and nor would Lindy ever hear the outside world. That was her last escape attempt. She gave up. We settled into a less fraught relationship. She stopped asking why I was keeping her and when I would release her. She stopped fighting me. We had most dinners together in the barn. She sometimes sat beside me on the sofa I had bought, but we didn’t touch. I told her everything, about my childhood in Ireland, my mother, my sister, our escape to New Zealand. She made sympathetic noises and then said, ‘Maybe a burglar will try to break in here?’ I wished I hadn’t told her anything.
I let her outside a lot during the summers, a bit less in the winter, for sunshine and fresh air and exercise. I even brought her down to the hot springs and the lake behind the house. In all the years we’d lived there, I’d never seen another soul. I didn’t dare buy her a swimsuit but she had shorts and vests and T-shirts. She complained that she couldn’t swim with the chain attached, but I held the weight of it so that she could. I tried not to look at her body when she emerged from the water, but it was impossible not to notice her sleek shape, the nipples standing out from her chest. We lay on the rocks afterwards and shared a picnic. Still, I did not touch her.
Then one night, in midwinter 1990, we were watching some horror film on TV, side by side on the sofa, and she buried her head in my shoulder as the axe murderer approached. I instinctively put my arm around her and squeezed gently. She looked up at me and I gazed down into her perfect face. She reached forward and kissed me on the mouth tenderly. I kissed her back. My first kiss. As she leaned forward and positioned herself in front of me, she did not stop me when I ran my hand down her back. She did not stop me holding the back of her neck. She nuzzled her face into my shoulder and kissed my mouth again, her tongue finding mine, and I felt myself stiffen.
She noticed too, and immediately detached from me. ‘We … I can’t …’ she said. ‘Your father –’
‘I’m nothing like him.’
‘I know you’re not. I never kissed him. I mean … he forced me, it wasn’t like … this.’
We kissed again, passionately. Our mouths a perfect match. And then I moved away.
‘Goodnight, Lindy.’
‘But –’
‘I love you,’ I said as I locked the door behind me.
It took six years but by 1996 I was sure she loved me. I was 99 per cent certain of it. By the time we consummated our relationship in 1992, I was twenty-five and she was twenty-four. She had been terribly traumatized by my father, so I let her set the pace and, though it was glacial, she slowly learned that I could not and would not hurt her, and nor could I let her go. She trusted me with her life. I trusted her with mine. I removed the chain when we were indoors. But I still locked the door every time I left. And when we went down to the hot pools, I used a rope rather than a chain. She no longer seemed to mind. Part of me thought that, if I released her, she wouldn’t run away, but I couldn’t be certain.
When I wasn’t working, we spent all our time together. I had almost moved into the barn with her, only going into the house to change my clothes and shower, and occasionally I cooked in there and brought the meal out to Lindy. I thought about the practicalities of bringing her into the house but the risk was too great. I got visits occasionally from the boiler repair guy or a mechanic and from one persistent creditor.
Business was bad. The superette had been replaced by a large supermarket chain that got all their vegetables from a central supplier elsewhere. I’d had to relinquish the lease on the shop. The only retail I did was a weekend market. I had struck a deal with the local hospital to supply all their fruit and vegetable needs, but it wasn’t a big hospital and I’d had to bargain so hard to get the contract that it was hardly worth it. Lindy helped out. She knitted scarves and hats with wool I ordered for her from a catalogue she’d seen advertised in a magazine. She added tassels and triangular ends to the scarves and earflaps to the hats, like the ones I used to wear. I sold them alongside my produce at the stall. In the winter, I made more from her wares than mine.
I had insisted on contraception. Lindy desperately wanted a baby but that would mean so much trouble and I was barely making enough money to pay our bills. We couldn’t afford a kid. And besides, what would I do with it? Bring it up with me in the house like I’d been brought up or leave it in the barn with Lindy? There wouldn’t be room for three of us in there. What if she liked the kid more than she liked me? I insisted on condoms and she eventually conceded. I never forced her or pressured her. I didn’t trick her into taking the pill. I thought about it, but I had no way of getting it and I wanted our relationship to be open and honest.
When she told me she was pregnant four years later, early in 1996, I was taken aback. She had missed two periods. I hadn’t noticed. That was the only time I ever got angry with her. Had she pierced the condom with a pin? Had she saved the used condoms and somehow inseminated herself? She swore she hadn’t. ‘The condom must have burst. It happens. I’ve read about it.’
‘We can’t afford a kid, Lindy, you know that.’
‘I’ll cut back on everything. I can start knitting other stuff. Sweaters, waistcoats. I’ll do it twice as fast. I promise, we can make it work, Stevie, really we can.’ Her begging was futile. The baby was on its way and there was no way I could stop it without hurting her.
I agonized for the following months about how we could cope as I watched Lindy’s belly swell and watched her excitement grow with it. She knew she wasn’t going to a maternity hospital but she used me as her yardstick. ‘Your mother gave birth twice by herself. If she can do it, I can do it.’ I drove to Auckland to buy books on pregnancy and childbirth. We both read them cover to cover. I ordered medical textbooks on obstetrics.