During the following years Lindy attacked me so often that I had to put the shackles back on. She stabbed me with knitting needles, knives and scissors, scarred my arms badly with a solution of sugar and boiled water, attempted to strangle me with a home-made noose. I ended up in the hospital’s A & E twice. The staff there assumed I’d got into fights with my peers. I let them think that. One matron threatened to call the cops, but when she looked at my medical records and saw that I was that Steven Armstrong, who had been orphaned so young, she relented and instead gave me a lecture about mixing with the wrong crowd.
Lindy stayed angry for years. We went back to the old ways. I lived in the house and dropped her groceries inside the door once a week. I still visited every day. I’d make idle conversation about stories in the news. She did not respond. The abandoned baby at St Patrick’s Cathedral made national news and, with radio and TV, I followed the story, up to the point when the baby was adopted six months later. I breathed a sigh of relief. I hoped that Lindy might accept our circumstances now, but without uttering a syllable, she made it clear that our relationship was over.
When I tried to touch her, she violently repelled me. She barely spoke full sentences and, when she finally did, it was to renew her demands to be released. ‘I’m never going to touch you again, Steve, never. You might as well let me go and get my baby, or kill me.’
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.