I had just retrieved the Times from the middle of a blackberry bush a good ten metres away from the little sign the paper man is supposed to aim for when Hazel’s white car came down the road and turned in beside me. The driver stamped hard on the brakes and stalled a mere foot away from Percy, who was sitting in the middle of the driveway scratching his left ear with his hind foot.
‘Idiot pig!’ said Kim crossly, winding down the driver’s-side window. ‘What’s he doing in the middle of road in the dark?’
Trevor the boxer-cross poked his nose in through the window at her and she patted him gingerly; you never knew what that dog had found to roll in since you last saw him.
‘Sorry,’ I said, climbing out of the blackberry bush. ‘Are you heading up?’
‘I’ll give you a lift.’
‘I might go up the track to the trig station first.’
‘In the dark?’
‘I feel like being outside for a bit, and the dogs need a walk.’ Lately I didn’t seem to have found time to walk any further than the washing line, and I was starting to fear my legs would atrophy from lack of use. Also it seemed a shame to inflict my current bad mood on Aunty Rose, who had more than enough to put up with.
‘Well, okay,’ said Kim doubtfully. Kim feels that the Great Outdoors is all very well in its way, but she much prefers to admire it from the comfort and security of an air-conditioned car. And exercise only counts if you’re wearing a little Nike crop-top and texting as you jog on a treadmill.
It was an eerie, gusty sort of night and the wind blew little mini-tornadoes of leaves across the rutted clay track that led from Rose’s back paddock up through the scrub to the trig station on the top of the hill. Percy gave up halfway and made for home but the dogs stayed with me, trotting ahead and vanishing intermittently into the fern. The air smelt nice – cold and fresh, laced with the sharp scent of crushed bracken and the lovely mushroomy smell of leaf litter. A pheasant chinked in alarm before breaking cover two steps ahead of me to fly up in a breathless flurry of wings, and I yelped in shock. I hate the way they do that, although you have to admire it as an escape strategy; the animal that might have enjoyed a nice pheasant lunch is far too busy trying to restart its heart to think about pursuit.
BONNIE TITOI HAD left when I let myself and the dogs in through the little rusting gate beside the walnut tree three-quarters of an hour later. I could see Kim at the kitchen window, frowning in concentration as she stirred something.
‘Polenta and roasted vegetable stack,’ she said as I opened the door.
I fished the paper out of an enormous pocket in my coat and put it on the table near where Aunty Rose sat peeling wedges of pumpkin. ‘That sounds very fancy.’
‘It will be,’ said Kim.
‘It sounds like the sort of food that should come with a caramelised onion jus,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘Is a jus still the latest in modern dining, Josephine? I cancelled my subscription to Taste magazine last year.’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘That’s so last week. You’ve got to have a pomegranate vinegar reduction if you want people to even begin to take you seriously. Although come to think of it, I’m out of touch – probably by now reductions are out of fashion too.’
‘Hey, Josie?’ Kim asked casually, spooning chicken stock powder into her polenta pot. ‘You haven’t got your friend Andy’s mobile phone number, have you?’
I met Aunty Rose’s eye and she shook her head, amused. ‘About a week was Matthew’s estimate, wasn’t it?’ she murmured. ‘And it’s been – what? Ten days?’
‘It was nice while it lasted,’ I said. ‘Kimmy, he’s way older than you.’
‘I’m not interested in him!’ Kim cried.
‘Methinks she doth protest too much,’ said Aunty Rose to the ceiling.
‘Oh, don’t be stupid,’ said Kim. ‘I just want to say thank you. And I think I was a little bit sick in his car. I thought maybe I should get him some chocolates or something to apologise.’
‘He likes Picnic bars,’ I told her. ‘Should I give her the number, Aunty Rose?’
‘Nice boy, is he?’
‘Reasonably nice.’
‘And unlikely to encourage her to dress like a member of Kiss?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ I said.
‘Or to impregnate her?’
‘We’d have to ask him.’
‘Make a note of it, Josephine, and I shall call him tomorrow.’
‘You guys are not as funny as you think you are,’ Kim said huffily.
VERY LATE THAT night, as I padded back up the hall from the loo in my double-sock-pyjama-and-woolly-jumper sleeping ensemble, I heard a faint rumbling noise from the kitchen. Flicking on the hall light as I passed the switch I opened the kitchen door.
Old Spud, whose arthritis troubled him on these wintry nights, had been sleeping in front of the wood stove on his Spiderman beanbag for the last week. He wasn’t in his normal spot with his tail wrapped tight around his ears; he was standing stiff-legged in front of the outside door, hackles up and growling deep in his throat. It was an unnerving sound – a low continuous snarl that made the back of my own neck prickle in sympathy.
In horror movies, at this point, the heroine opens the door and quavers, ‘Is anybody there?’ Then she takes three hesitant steps before being startled by a passing cat. She gasps, laughs shakily and bends to stroke puss, and only then does the insane axe murderer/serial killer/mutant spider deliver the fatal blow. I saw more than my share of horror movies during five years with Graeme Sunderland, thriller aficionado, and there was no way I was going outside to see what was bothering the dog.
‘Spud,’ I said softly. ‘Hey, dude, what’s up?’
Spud turned his old head and whined before resuming his fixed stare at the door. I went on tiptoe across the dimly lit kitchen and knelt on the chaise longue, twitching aside the curtain to peer out. This was a total waste of time; it was a moonless night and the darkness was complete. I couldn’t even see the dark outline of the woodshed silhouetted against the sky. Spud padded across the room to lean against my leg and looked at me expectantly.
‘Well, Spud,’ I said aloud, ‘it’s either a prowler or a poltergeist or a possum. I hope you’re impressed by my snazzy use of alliteration there. We could ring Matt to come and scare it off, but he’s not going to be able to do anything if it’s a poltergeist and he’ll be pissed off if I wake him up in calving season for a possum – and then Cilla’s probably with him, and she’ll think I’m trying to seduce him if I go calling him in the middle of the night. Not that I’m dressed for seduction, but still. And nothing has come up the drive, because it would have passed the dog kennels and they’d all be barking. Besides, surely a prowler would pick somewhere a bit easier to prowl than a house ten kilometres out of town up a long steep hill. So we’ll both go back to sleep, okay?’
Spud turned and looked at the door again, and gave a short hoarse bark.
‘I’m not going to go out there,’ I said. ‘Sorry to be such a disappointment. In your bed, mate.’
With a well-I-did-try-to-warn-you look, Spud yawned and went to throw himself down on his beanbag once more. I checked the door just to make sure it was still locked and went back to bed. Possum, I told myself firmly, carefully tucking in the bedclothes to keep out the draughts and the poltergeists. Definitely a possum. I would set a trap under the lemon tree tomorrow.
THE FOLOWING EVENING I looked thoughtfully into my supermarket trolley, trying to remember what else had been on the list I’d left at work. Aunty Rose had decreed that she would prepare a gourmet meal for me and Stu on Saturday night, and had given me strict instructions not to bother coming home unless I brought capers, sundried tomatoes and brazil nuts with me. She had also requested olives, but I was going to lie brazenly and say the supermarket had sold out.
I found the other delicacies and remembered the batteries for the wall clock and the three mouse traps, but I had a niggling feeling that there had been something el
se. Surely it wasn’t something we couldn’t live with until tomorrow? I tossed two loaves of bread into the trolley and turned towards the checkout.
As I passed the end of the snacks and fizzy drinks aisle someone gave a high-pitched, breathless shriek. It was my energy-efficient former flatmate Sara, but she hadn’t seen me – she had her eyes closed as a greasy-looking youth buried his head between her breasts while she leant against the Grain Waves stand. I winced – lovely that she’d found someone, and she was evidently enjoying herself, but how disconcerting for the rest of us hapless shoppers to have to witness their foreplay if we wanted snack food.
Most of Waimanu seemed to be shopping this evening; I met my high school English teacher, Mrs Palmer, beside the frozen vegetables, and Brett in the checkout queue.
‘How’s the wound?’ I asked him.
‘I’ve got some interesting bruises,’ he said. ‘I can show you if you like – meet me in the car park.’
‘Tempting,’ I said. ‘But your wife would eviscerate me.’
He grinned widely. ‘Of course she wouldn’t. She would understand your interest as a health professional.’
‘Maybe, but it would be hard to explain to passers-by why you were showing some other woman your scrotum. Perhaps you should just email me a picture.’
‘Excuse me, sir, would you like to come into this lane?’ called a woman from behind the neighbouring checkout, and off he went. I was perusing the cover of next week’s TV Guide and hoping I wasn’t actually going to receive a photo of Brett’s vasectomy scars when Farmer Barbie came up behind me holding a magazine and a bottle of water.
I hadn’t seen Cilla since the night of the cheating allegations and didn’t really want to see her now. I’m quite sure she felt the same, but there were only three checkouts open for the evening rush and the other two queues had just been joined by families with months’ worth of groceries.
‘Hi,’ I murmured when the silence became uncomfortable.
‘Hi,’ said Cilla, half turning away and letting her hair fall between us like a curtain.
Motivated not by kindness but by the desire to avoid five minutes of stilted conversation, I said, ‘You go ahead. You’ve only got a couple of things.’
‘Thanks,’ she muttered, and slipped in front of me to lay her purchases on the conveyor. One bottle of mandarin-flavoured sports water (now there’s a marketing scam if ever I saw one) and one Bride and Groom magazine.
Surely not, I thought as I began to unload my trolley. She’s probably going to be someone’s bridesmaid. But my vision went blurry, and for a hideous moment I feared I was actually going to burst into tears at the supermarket checkout.
IT WASN’T A good evening: Aunty Rose’s pain was bad and Hazel popped in to bring her a healing crystal and tell us all about the insensitive behaviour of one of the women at her Pilates class. ‘I simply couldn’t believe she would speak to me like that,’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine what made her so – so hostile.’
‘Mm,’ said Aunty Rose, shifting painfully in her seat. The book at her side slid to the floor and her sister bent to retrieve it.
‘Well, what do you know,’ she said, turning it over between her hands. ‘I couldn’t think where this had gone to. It’s been missing for years.’ And she put it in her handbag.
‘I’m reading that,’ said Aunty Rose mildly.
Hazel gave a little tinkle of laughter. ‘Sorry, Rosie darling. Of course you may read it. It’s just –’ here she paused and looked soulful for a moment, like Percy when he wants your toast crusts – ‘it was Pat’s. His favourite, goodness only knows why. I never could get him to take an interest in any other poetry, poor dear soul.’
‘That’s my copy,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘I bought it at a Rotary book sale several years ago. Thank you.’ She held out a hand for the book, and tucked it firmly down between her hip and the back of the chaise longue.
Just before bed, when I was locking the doors and banking up the fire for the night, I found the book and picked it up. It was a copy of The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke by CJ Dennis – I’d read it before, but not for years. I like it; it’s a charming love story written all in verse in the Cockney slang spoken in the Sydney slums a hundred years ago, about Kid and Doreen (who was a bonzer tart).
It was a tatty old book, with faded orange cloth covers and foxed pages. I flicked through it sleepily, reading a line here and there, and then looked inside the front cover to see just when it was first published. It was Aunty Rose’s copy, but not one she’d bought at a Rotary book sale. In a corner of the title page someone had written ‘For Rosie’ in very careful copperplate with a fountain pen. I knew that handwriting – occasionally when I was small I was allowed to go to town with Matthew and his father on the twentieth of the month to pay bills, so I had seen Pat King write out plenty of cheques. I shut the book up again and tucked it under a cushion.
Chapter 23
‘AAH,’ SAID AUNTY Rose with satisfaction, leaning back in her chair at the breakfast table and cradling her teacup in both hands. ‘This is better. Hurrah for codeine.’
‘It doesn’t make you feel sick?’ I asked. ‘I had some when I had my wisdom teeth out and then spent the next eight hours hanging over the toilet bowl.’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘Of course, there are some annoying side effects. Pass me that piece of paper and I shall make a note to ask Rob Milne for a prescription for laxatives. And then I must get to work on my marinade.’
There was a southerly blast heading up the country this weekend; it struck at lunchtime with a seriously impressive hailstorm. The hailstones hitting the corrugated-iron roof drowned out the radio (this was a good thing – Aunty Rose insisted on listening to a special broadcast of horrible warbling songs from the forties), piled up on the windowsills and drove Percy and the dogs to take cover on the back porch. I hoped Stu would be alright driving through it; he’s a city boy from the tips of his gelled hair to the soles of his expensive designer sneakers.
‘There’s a new leak,’ I noted, digging through a cupboard to find the preserving pan, which was the biggest pot in the house.
‘Is there?’ Aunty Rose asked absently. ‘Josephine, where did you put the sherry?’
‘It’s only two in the afternoon,’ I protested. ‘And do you think it’ll go well with codeine?’
‘It’s for soaking the gingernuts for dessert,’ she said. ‘Now where’s this new leak?’
‘In the toilet at the end of the hall.’
‘Oh, I know all about that one – it’s been there for years. It will stop as soon as the wind changes direction.’
MATT FELL INTO the kitchen out of the driving rain just before seven, shaking his head like a wet dog.
‘Dear boy!’ Aunty Rose cried. She turned and waved a spatula at him, and drops of orange sauce flew across the kitchen. I sighed internally – the clean-up tonight was going to take me hours. ‘You’re right on time. Does that mean the cows are behaving themselves?’
He smiled, clearly pleased to see her in such fine form. ‘Yep. There’s only one that looks like calving tonight, and they’re in the Pine Tree Paddock so there’s heaps of shelter.’
‘Marvellous.’
‘So,’ he said, ‘you’re cooking tonight.’
‘I am,’ said Aunty Rose.
He looked wary. ‘Ah.’
‘Matthew King, there is no need to take that tone. You’ll frighten Stuart.’
‘Never,’ I said. ‘He’s very brave. Stu – Matt.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ said Matt. He wiped his wet face on his sleeve, put his work boots in the corner beside the wood stove to dry and held out a hand to Stu, who was standing at the kitchen table wrestling with a champagne cork. ‘You must have had a fairly exciting drive up from Wellington.’
‘It was,’ Stu confirmed. He transferred his corkscrew briefly to the same hand as the champagne bottle so as to shake hands. ‘Jo assures me this weather isn’t normal, but I’m not sure I believe
her.’
‘I usually don’t believe her just on principle,’ Matt said, and got the table between us before I could kick him.
‘Aunty Rose,’ I said, ‘are you quite sure Matt is going to be an asset to this dinner party?’
‘No,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Throw him out.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ said Stu, delicately levering out his cork. It hissed gently, and with the precision that I imagine he uses in surgery he began to pour out the champagne. ‘I have been simply pining to meet Jo’s first love.’ He minced across the kitchen to present Aunty Rose with a champagne flute. ‘Gorgeous glasses, Rose. And the champagne will go beautifully with your codeine.’
I looked at Matt and grimaced apologetically.
‘JD, angel, don’t tell me I’ve embarrassed you. I shall never forgive myself,’ said Stu.
There’s no point in getting cross with Stu. He just thinks it’s funny.
‘Yes,’ I said resignedly. ‘I can see you’re crushed by remorse.’
Dinner that evening consisted of a Moroccan chicken dish (delicious), served with mashed potato (not authentic, but also delicious) and a vegetable medley that seemed to be flavoured mostly with vinegar and was utterly inedible.
‘Never mind, Aunty Rose,’ I said consolingly. ‘Two out of three’s pretty good.’
‘I don’t understand what went wrong,’ she said. ‘I followed the recipe to the letter.’
‘You’ve never followed anything to the letter in your life,’ Matt told her, helping himself to more chicken. ‘You’ve been at a conference, haven’t you, Stu?’
‘Indeed,’ said Stu, inserting a heaped forkful of vegetables into his mouth and then becoming temporarily incapable of further speech.
‘My dear boy,’ said Aunty Rose warmly. ‘That is above and beyond the call of duty. The scrap bucket’s under the sink if you’d like to spit it out.’
Eyes watering, Stu shook his natty dark head and swallowed. Then he picked up his wine glass and took a large gulp. ‘N-no,’ he managed. ‘I’m good.’
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