Dinner at Rose's

by Danielle Hawkins

  First published in 2012

  Copyright © Danielle Hawkins 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Arena Books, an imprint of

  Allen & Unwin

  Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74237 939 5

  Text design by Ruth Grüner

  Set in 12/15 pt Granjon by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

  Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  I TURNED UP a steep rutted driveway ten kilometres south of town, navigated around a huge pothole and a wheelbarrow full of marrows, and pulled up on the dusty gravel beside the house. Instantly a pack of dogs appeared, barking hysterically.

  Opening the car door a crack I bellowed, ‘Get out of it!’ and they sank to their bellies in a servile and unattractive manner, panting hard. Now that they were stationary I counted four.

  ‘Sweetest of peas!’ cried Aunty Rose, sailing around the corner of the house with a half-grown ginger piglet at her heels. ‘How are you, my love?’

  ‘Very good,’ I said. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’ Aunty Rose was six foot two and built like a tank, and I had to reach up to hug her. I don't have to reach up to hug many people, being almost six foot tall myself, so this made a pleasant change.

  She smiled at me fondly. ‘Likewise,’ she said. Her voice was as rich and plummy as a fruitcake, every vowel beautifully rounded. It made one think of elocution lessons and cucumber sandwiches and tea with the vicar. Come to think of it, it made one use the word ‘one’ in one’s thoughts. Accents are terribly contagious.

  ‘Have you been doing anything exciting?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve been frightfully busy. That incompetent library committee has taken most of my time this week, and the garden is running amok. I shall enlist your services, dear child.’

  ‘No worries,’ I said. ‘You can pay me in marrows.’

  ‘Bloody marrows!’ said Rose. ‘Every year I plant just a couple of tiny, feeble zucchinis, and they spend the first two months trying to die and needing half-hourly watering. And then I go out to buy milk and they transform into triffids.’

  ‘Why keep planting them?’

  ‘It’s a sickness,’ she said gloomily. ‘I probably need counselling.’

  ‘Perhaps you could go to meetings. You know – “Hello, I’m Rose Thornton, it’s been two days since my last courgette.” ’

  ‘A fine idea,’ she said. ‘Come in. It must be time for a G and T by now.’

  WE STRETCHED OUT side by side on the veranda in a pair of ancient deckchairs, drinks in hand. Rose’s house was the original homestead of a station long since split into several smaller farms. Set on the crest of a ridge, it’s an old villa with high ceilings and a steep roof, utterly charming but decayed beyond the point of repair. There is an alarming tilt in the veranda which matches the sag in the kitchen floor, the door in the living room has to be wedged shut with a 1972 copy of the Woman’s Weekly to block the draughts whistling down the hall, and little piles of borer dust accumulate in every cupboard. The paint is peeling, the fretwork is decidedly tatty and there are at least three leaks in the roof. But there is also a huge crimson climbing rose taking over the veranda and the view out over the ranges is spectacular. In the four years since I’d last been here nothing had changed, which gave me a nice warm feeling of security.

  I took a large mouthful of my gin and tonic, and choked. ‘Is there any tonic in here, Aunty Rose?’

  ‘A dribble,’ she said, taking a cautious sip of her own drink. ‘Hmm, perhaps I was a tad heavy on the gin. How are your parents?’

  ‘Mum’s got a quality-control audit tomorrow, so she’s cleaning the milking shed with a toothbrush. Dad’s good.’

  ‘Is he still playing the guitar?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said sadly.

  ‘It could be worse. Imagine if he’d taken up the bagpipes.’

  ‘It’s the singing. He’s completely tone deaf, bless him.’

  ‘Your parents are marvellous people,’ said Rose. ‘Mad, both of them.’

  The piglet climbed up onto the deck and collapsed beside her chair, and she picked up a fork from the table by her elbow and scratched his stomach.

  ‘Do you keep that fork especially for pig-scratching?’ I enquired.

  ‘I do. You don’t need to point out that I’m mad as well. You really should consider becoming an eccentric yourself, young Josephine; it makes life so much more interesting.’

  ‘I will,’ I said, then took another mouthful of neat gin, enjoying the way it evaporated on my tongue before reaching the back of my throat.

  After several drinks I suggested we make tea.

  ‘Dinner, Josephine, please,’ said Rose reprovingly as we made our way, weaving slightly, to the kitchen. (My parents have never given me a satisfactory answer to the question of why they thought ‘Josephine’ was a good name. It’s not; it sounds like a nineteenth-century governess. Nobody else was allowed to use it, but somehow I rather liked it from Aunty Rose.) ‘It’s not tea, it’s dinner.’

  ‘I’m a beastly colonial, Rose, and you’re just going to have to come to terms with it,’ I said.

  ‘You’re as bad as Matthew,’ she said, removing a somewhat limp carrot from the pantry and pointing it at me for emphasis. ‘Years of nagging, and he still says “New Zullind” and “moolk”.’ Matt was Rose’s proper legitimate nephew – Rose being his mother’s elder sister – whereas I was only an honorary niece. Rose came out from England in the seventies as a freshly qualified nurse, taking advantage of a bonding scheme the New Zeal
and government was running to get staff for small rural hospitals. She promptly (and some would say inexplicably) decided Waimanu was the best place in the world and stayed. Her sister came out to visit her a few years later, married a local dairy farmer after a whirlwind courtship lasting about three weeks, and then spent the next twenty-five years lamenting his lack of polish and refinement.

  I grinned. ‘How is Matt?’

  ‘He’s well. Working far too hard, but he seems quite happy. That reminds me, he’s coming for dinner.’

  ‘Very cool,’ I said. Although slightly scary. ‘Now, are you going to cook that carrot or just wave it about?’

  ‘Go away and stop distracting me,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘In fact, why don’t you unpack and freshen up?’

  When I re-entered the kitchen half an hour later Rose was grating cheese with such reckless abandon that I feared she might lose a finger.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘There you are. Now, how about pouring us a glass of that lovely wine you brought with you?’

  ‘A week of this and I’ll develop cirrhosis of the liver,’ I remarked.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘The liver requires exercise, like all muscles.’

  ‘I’m almost certain the liver isn’t a muscle.’

  She waved her hand airily. ‘The principle, Josephine, is the same. I hear a vehicle – that must be Matthew. Why don’t you trot out and say hello?’

  That sounded like a fine idea, and besides I was keen to put off the pouring of any more drinks until tea (or dinner) was served. Aunty Rose was a somewhat erratic cook at the best of times, and when half-cut she was liable to decide that prunes would make a delightful addition to the risotto. I wandered out the kitchen door in time to see Matt climb out of a battered red ute, fend off the dogs with the skill of long practice, and walk across the gravel. The piglet flopped onto its back in front of him and he paused to scratch its stomach with his foot.

  ‘Hey, Matt,’ I said. He hadn’t changed much to look at – he was still tall and lean and brown-haired and slightly scruffy – but four years of farming had made him tougher-looking. The last time I’d seen him was at his father’s funeral, dazed with grief and jet lag and pale from the British winter. Now he was sunburnt and cheerful, and had that classic dairy farmer’s tan: brown legs that turned lily-white below the gumboot line.

  He looked up and grinned at me. ‘Hey, Jo.’ The piglet grunted indignantly as he stopped scratching and he prodded it with his toe. ‘That’s enough now, Percy, bugger off. You look good.’

  I assumed the last sentence was meant for me rather than the pig. ‘So do you. How are things?’

  ‘Good. And you?’

  ‘Fine.’ This was followed by a slightly uncomfortable silence, and I tried hard to think of something witty and casual and friendly to say. ‘How’s the farm?’ I asked at last, coinciding with his, ‘How are your parents?’

  ‘Good,’ we said together, and smiled at one another ruefully.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, and put an arm around me in a friendly hug. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to handle the hustle and bustle of Waimanu?’

  ‘I hope so.’ Three weeks ago I had been living in inner-city Melbourne; Waimanu has a population of four thousand. ‘It was a bit of a shock to see you’ve got a McDonald’s.’

  ‘I know,’ said Matt. ‘We’re practically a metropolis.’

  ‘WHAT WOULD THIS be, Aunty Rose?’ Matt asked, poking at an unidentified wedge of orange stuff on one side of his plate.

  ‘It’s a carrot and apple bake,’ she said, adding quite unnecessarily, ‘My own recipe. How about another drop of wine, Josephine?’

  ‘Better pour me some too, to wash it down,’ Matt said, and I had to disguise a laugh with a cough.

  ‘You used to be such a nice boy,’ said Rose plaintively.

  ‘When?’ I asked, and Matt threw a pea at me, hitting me on the nose.

  ‘Children!’ said Rose. ‘Behave yourselves!’

  ‘Isn’t it nice being called “children”?’ I said dreamily. ‘It makes me feel young again.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you were teetering on the brink of the grave,’ Rose remarked.

  ‘I’m going to be thirty in two months.’

  ‘I’m alright,’ said Matt. ‘I’ve got another whole year. Don’t worry, Jose, you’re not looking all that bad for your age.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and poured the wine.

  ‘HE’S A DEAR boy,’ said Rose, letting herself back in the kitchen door after waving Matt off.

  I was washing the dishes – she appeared to have used every pot in the house in the preparation of this evening’s meal – and as I scrubbed grimly at the roasting dish I agreed, ‘He is. He’s one of my very favourite people.’

  ‘He’s seeing a girl who sells fertiliser, I believe,’ she said.

  ‘Good on him,’ I said. And though I meant it, a small cold weight settled in the pit of my stomach at this further piece of evidence that everybody in the entire world had somebody – except me. By the time I was thirty, you see, I was supposed to be happily married and thinking about babies. I was not meant to be emerging from the wreckage of the relationship I’d thought would be providing said babies. A poor attitude for a girl who grew up with Rose Thornton as a shining example of making singleness into an art form, but there you go.

  ‘Leave that to soak, sweet pea,’ said Rose. ‘I’ll wash it in the morning.’

  I WOKE UP ridiculously early, mostly due to having spent the night bent like a staple. The bed in the Pink Room was about sixty years old, with a kapok mattress on a wire-woven base. Outside the sky was pale lemon and green, and I could hear a disconcerting snuffling sound that I hoped was being made by the piglet. I got up and went to look – it was, and the mist wreathing up off the bush-clad hills behind the house was so lovely that I threw on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and went out to commune with nature.

  When I came back down the hill, accompanied by a retinue of four dogs and one pig, Aunty Rose was breakfasting on the veranda in a crimson satin dressing-gown with her long grey hair loose down her back. As I came through the little wooden gate under the walnut tree she waved the butter knife at me and called, ‘The toast is hot, sweet pea, and I’ve just refreshed the teapot.’

  ‘This is all very civilised,’ I said, sitting down and reaching for the marmalade.

  ‘I suppose you’ve fallen into the modern habit of breakfasting on black coffee and eating a lettuce leaf for lunch?’

  ‘Do I look as if I live on lettuce leaves and black coffee?’ I asked.

  Aunty Rose looked me up and down. ‘You look very nice,’ she said firmly. ‘You’ve inherited your mother’s legs, lucky girl. When do you start this new job of yours?’

  ‘I’m going into town this morning for Cheryl to take me through the computer system, then starting properly on Monday. Lovely marmalade.’

  ‘The secret is to slice the oranges finely. Some people –’ her tone implied that these were not the type of people she wanted anything to do with – ‘actually use one of those food-processor things.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ I asked.

  Rose sighed. ‘Sometimes, Josephine, I despair of you.’

  I had a leisurely breakfast, followed by an invigorating run around the back lawn after a brace of escaped chickens and a very quick wash under the world’s most pathetic and under-pressured shower. Then I got dressed in a selection of what I hoped were professional yet flattering clothes, left Rose heaving marrows over the back fence and set off into town.

  Chapter 2

  WAIMANU IS IN the middle of the King Country, about halfway down the western side of New Zealand’s North Island. It’s only a little place, run-down and distinctly lacking in cafe culture, but it services a large area of farmland. Consequently, although you can’t buy a pair of shoes any self-respecting woman under a hundred and ten would even consider wearing, it has a base hospital, a decent-sized supermarket, an enormous Farmlands store and
a freezing works.

  I parked about halfway along the main street in front of Heather Anne’s Fashions (where you could find any number of blouses made of peach-coloured polyester but almost nothing else), and opened the door of the physiotherapy clinic next door.

  Behind the counter a girl in her early twenties with very prominent pale-blue eyes and no chin looked up, sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m Jo. You must be Amber.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Amber, with only mild interest. ‘You’re going to work here. Cheryl’s in the loo.’

  After a few minutes there was a gurgle of plumbing and Cheryl appeared in the doorway. She was looking hugely pregnant. A small woman, she looked like a beach ball balanced on a pair of toothpicks.

  ‘Morning, Jo,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I was half expecting you not to show up.’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, not because you’re unreliable; it’s just that I’ve lined up three locums in the last two months and they’ve all got cold feet at the last minute.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Cher, what’s wrong with the place?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said with dignity. ‘Is there, Amber?’

  Amber was staring vacantly into space and winding a strand of limp blonde hair around her right index finger. Hearing her name she started, sniffed and asked, ‘What?’

  Cheryl sighed and turned back to me. ‘Come and look around, Jo.’

  ‘When are you due?’ I asked as I followed her down a beige-carpeted hall.

  ‘Ten days.’ She put her hands to the small of her back and rubbed it tiredly. ‘You’ve come not a moment too soon.’

  ‘So I see. Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you. Right, here’s the consulting room – it’s all computerised. Amber’s in the process of getting all the files onto the computer; I expect it’ll take her about another five years.’ She lowered her voice and added, ‘You’ll have gathered she’s not one of the great minds of our age.’

  I smiled. ‘So she’s mostly ornamental?’

  To my surprise, Cheryl shook her neat auburn head. ‘Nope. I’ve never in my life seen anyone as good at getting money out of people as Amber is. You know they’ve tightened up the ACC laws?’