‘That was a superhuman effort,’ I told him. ‘So how was your conference?’
‘Just the usual,’ he said. ‘Drug reps schmoozing and buying you expensive drinks – that sort of thing.’
‘That’s probably due to your boyish charm,’ Aunty Rose put in.
‘JD, your aunt is a woman of remarkably good taste,’ said Stu. ‘There were a few good lectures – some new techniques for getting into hip joints – and I found a fabulous pub on the waterfront.’
‘Stu always finds a fabulous pub,’ I explained. ‘He’d discover a divine little wine bar in downtown Ruatoria. It’s pretty much his only skill.’
‘Well,’ said Matt, ‘that’s not a bad skill.’
‘You should be nicer to me,’ Stu told me. ‘I’ll have you know I retrieved your iPod and some extremely fetching lacy knickers.’
‘My pink knickers?’ I adore fancy bras and knickers, especially when they come in matching sets. It’s probably due to having spent my whole professional life wearing sensible sports clothes. I’m very fond of sensible sports clothes and even fonder of sports shoes (Graeme felt that my obsession with sparkly sneakers was a reasonably major character flaw), but I do like to compensate with impractical undies. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. Your erstwhile boyfriend –’
‘Good word,’ Aunty Rose put in. ‘Sorry, do continue.’
‘Thank you,’ said Stu. ‘He asked after you – he looked all wistful. I get the feeling that life with the lovely Chrissie’s no bed of roses.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I hope she’s insanely high maintenance and drives him up the wall.’
Stu gave a little snort of laughter. ‘An enormous bunch of flowers arrived at the nurses’ station the other day –’ Chrissie is a theatre nurse; I first met her at one of Graeme’s work functions – ‘and she rang him up and screamed down the phone because they were the wrong colour.’
‘Far out,’ I murmured. ‘I never got flowers. He said they were a big waste of money because they just died.’
‘Once again, Josephine, I ask myself what you were doing with this pillock,’ Aunty Rose said, shaking her head.
‘He’s a doctor,’ Matt reminded her.
I propped my chin in my hands and looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Once, long ago,’ I said, ‘I kicked you square in the balls. I could do it again if you like.’
He grinned at me. ‘Tempting,’ he said, ‘but I’ll pass.’
IT WAS AROUND ten before the party broke up and Stu and I began to tackle an enormous pile of dishes.
‘I don’t know how the woman does it,’ I said. ‘I swear she can dirty every pot in the house just boiling water.’
‘I won’t hear a word against her,’ said Stu severely. ‘She’s pretty fabulous, isn’t she?’
‘Yep,’ I said. ‘You should have seen her six months ago. She had long flowing grey hair and a bust like the prow of a ship.’ I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes to suppress the tears.
‘If I ever get some fatal disease,’ he said, ‘I hope to be able to carry it off with one-tenth her style.’
‘You’d better tell her that. She’ll like it.’
There was a companionable silence while he swilled dinner plates under the hot tap and I dried them, broken only by Spud’s gentle snores from his position in front of the stove. At length I asked, ‘So, are you seeing anyone?’
‘No,’ said Stu glumly. ‘I have taken most unwillingly to celibacy.’
‘Apparently it’s a virtue.’
‘That’s just what people who aren’t getting any tell one another to make themselves feel better.’
‘You may well be right,’ I said. ‘If it’s any consolation, your love life can’t possibly be any worse than mine.’
‘Why on earth aren’t you shagging the divine Matthew?’ Stu demanded. ‘He’s highly shaggable.’
‘Matt?’ I said lightly. ‘That would be almost incest.’
‘You’ve done it before,’ he pointed out. It is very dangerous to tell your close friends your secrets during late-night conversations over a bottle of wine – they remember them.
‘We were young and stupid then. Anyway, he’s got a girlfriend.’
‘Really?’ Stu asked sceptically. ‘If I was her I’d be feeling very insecure.’
‘What do you mean?’ I picked up a plate, examined it and tossed it back into the sink because it seemed to still have about half a chicken stuck to it.
‘JD, don’t be dense. The man obviously thinks you’re the bee’s knees. Didn’t you see him prick up his ears when I mentioned your knickers?’
I hadn’t, and I very much doubted Stu had either. ‘Ah, but you should see the girlfriend,’ I said. ‘She looks like a little china doll, but she can talk about feed conversion efficiency and calving spreads with the best of them.’
‘I hate her,’ said Stu promptly.
I sighed. ‘Yeah,’ I admitted. ‘Me too. When are Graeme and Chrissie getting married?’
‘Who would know? Chrissie’s still trying to decide between an intimate ceremony on a tropical island and a huge sit-down dinner followed by a masquerade ball.’
I laughed, but it didn’t sound very convincing. Stu put down his dish brush and slung a consoling arm around my shoulders. ‘You didn’t really want to marry him, did you?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘But it’s a bit depressing that after five years he’d go and get engaged to someone else at the drop of a hat.’
‘I doubt very much it was his idea,’ said Stu drily. ‘But I know what you mean – it’s not great for the self-esteem.’
‘It is not,’ I said with feeling.
‘The last bloke I was interested in decided that after all he liked girls,’ said Stu comfortingly. ‘Maybe being squashed flat will give us stronger characters.’
I picked up my tea towel again. ‘Just how strong do our characters need to be?’
Chapter 24
‘HOW DID YOU sleep?’ I asked Stu when he came into the kitchen the next morning. It was still raining, but only in a half-hearted drizzly sort of way, and the wind had dropped. Outside everything looked grey and sodden and miserable.
‘Fair to middling,’ he said, stretching his arms above his head and yawning. ‘Something came and cleared its nasal passages under my window at about two . . .’
‘Percy,’ I explained, passing him a mug of plunger coffee.
‘An elderly local rustic?’
‘Aunty Rose’s pet pig.’
‘You’ve lifted a weight from my mind. And then I ran into an enormous pot when I went for a slash in the middle of the night.’
‘That’s for the leak in the toilet ceiling.’
‘Of course. Good coffee.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And you were right – I did want the gloves as well as the beanie.’
‘Sorry about that,’ I said. ‘I’ve been meaning to buy an oil heater.’
‘No, no,’ said Stu. ‘I’m glad I’ve done it. I feel like that chap who wanders around the mountaintops drinking his own urine.’
‘If you like, you can have urine instead of coffee to complete the whole survival experience,’ I offered.
‘I have to save something for my next visit.’
I smiled at him. ‘Thanks for coming. I’ve missed you.’
Stu smiled back. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said. ‘Want me to tell Graeme you’re having a wild affair with your sexy childhood friend?’
I was a little bit tempted – once, in a moment of extreme sleepiness, I did call Graeme ‘Matt’ in bed, and he brought it up in every argument for about the next three years. But knowing my luck Graeme would then ring Aunty Rose’s to tell me the house had fallen over or exploded or something equally expensive, and Matt would answer the phone, and I would be revealed as a delusional liar. ‘Nah,’ I said. ‘Just tell him that I’m perfectly happy and I look like a goddess.’
STU LEFT FOR the airport mid-morning. �
��Thank you for having me, Rose,’ he said, picking up his overnight bag.
Aunty Rose got to her feet, resplendent in her satin dressing-gown and, today, a peroxide-blonde wig. ‘Dear boy, it was a pleasure.’
‘I’ll see you next time I visit.’
She smiled. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘you’ll want to come back fairly soon.’
Stu put his arms around her very gently and kissed her cheek. ‘I am constantly disgusted at the unfairness of life,’ he said.
‘I agree,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘However, there is almost no point in complaining about it. Now you drive carefully, young man. It won’t be icy this morning but the road may well be flooded further south.’
After he left I got Aunty Rose’s ancient vacuum cleaner out of its cupboard and drearily started the housework. I hate that vacuum cleaner and it hates me; it’s an old Tel-lus that catches on every doorframe and falls over just to spite you, pulling its cord out of the wall. The house was bleak and chilly and there was a glaring contrast between scrubbing elderly toilet bowls in Waimanu and going to my Sunday morning aerobic dance class before brunching with friends in Melbourne. I had almost forgotten, before Stu’s visit, that I used to shop for nice clothes and drink cappuccinos and work in a progressive hospital with witty, intelligent colleagues.
‘Josephine, don’t use detergent to mop the floor,’ said Aunty Rose, passing the bathroom door on her way up the hall. ‘It leaves streaks. There’s ammonia under the sink beside the washing machine.’
I had washed floors with a little detergent in hot water for at least the last ten years without having streaking issues. It’s hard to go back to being told what to do when you’re used to being a home owner and a grown-up – these days I can only live with my mother for a weekend before it starts to drive me insane. ‘Great,’ I muttered. ‘So the whole house can smell like a urinal.’ I picked up the mop bucket and went to fetch the ammonia.
Aunty Rose came into the kitchen as I tipped my mopping water down the old-fashioned concrete sink beside the washing machine.
‘Sweet pea,’ she said, leaning stiffly against the doorframe. ‘Don’t worry about the floor; it looks fine.’
The tears welled hot behind my eyelids. ‘Aunty Rose, I’m sorry.’
‘I do realise this isn’t easy for you.’
I turned to face her. ‘It’s a hell of a lot easier for me than it is for you, and you manage not to act like a sulky teenager.’
She crossed the room and lowered herself slowly onto the chaise longue. ‘Apparently that’s still to come. I am assured that I can expect bitterness, anger and depression before we get to resignation. Won’t that be fun?’
I tried to smile. ‘I can hardly wait.’
‘Why don’t you go out for a walk? Take a stick and whack things – you’ll feel better for it.’
I opened my mouth to say something, realised I wasn’t going to be able to squeeze any voice past the constriction in my throat and nodded instead.
I WENT UP the steep hill behind the house at a cross between a scramble and a run. It was rough going through the sodden mats of Yorkshire fog and last year’s dead pig fern, and the hillside was all ridged and seamed with sheep tracks. My jeans were saturated to the knee after about four steps and clung to my legs in a clammy and unpleasant sort of way.
I stood on the crest of a ridge in an icy wind that whipped down off the mountains, and looked up the valley. There are at least a thousand different shades of green in those bush-clad folds of hill leading up to the ranges, and as I caught my breath and tried to count them the seething tangle of resentment began to recede. It was indeed crap that Aunty Rose was dying and I no longer had the right to call this place home and Matt didn’t want me, but somehow mountains do tend to restore your sense of perspective. They are so enduring and grandiose and indifferent that your fleeting human troubles seem very unimportant in comparison. And away down below was Spud, toiling valiantly up the hill to keep me company. He was far too old for serious hill climbing; I sighed, kicked the top off an unfortunate foxglove and went down to meet him.
Spud was puffing hard, and when I reached him he flopped down across my feet with his tongue hanging out, evidently wishing to put a stop to any more foolish exertion. I bent to pull his ears and looked the other way, down across our old farm and over the white weatherboard house where I grew up (noting in passing that the new conservatory was indeed horrible) to the Kings’ cowshed across the road.
Matt was break-feeding the springer mob through the flatter paddocks in front of the shed. He had given them today’s break hours ago and they should have been sitting down by now, chewing their cuds and contemplating whatever ruminating cows contemplate (not, I suspect, a whole lot). But they weren’t sitting down; they were all standing in one corner, being herded more and more tightly against the fence by one small black pig.
That pig looked like he was having the time of his life, bustling to and fro and forcing any poor cow that tried to break away back into the group. But no matter how much fun he was having you can’t really have bumptious pigs intimidating your heavily pregnant cows, so I pushed Spud off my feet and started to slither and slide back down the hill.
I went down through our old place rather than Aunty Rose’s. It was trespassing, I suppose, but the gully I picked isn’t visible from the house. I opened a wooden gate for Spud – and was obscurely pleased to note it still sagged and had to be lifted with a little jerk in order to unlatch it – and trotted down to jump across the creek at its narrowest point. There was a small group of stubby bearded pungas on the far bank and a smooth, lichen-covered boulder where I used to sit with a book and a hand line, although I never caught the enormous eel that lived there.
Spud didn’t even try to jump but sat down mournfully on the bank and looked at me. ‘Useless animal,’ I said, stepping back into the creek up to my knees and heaving him across. He weighed a good forty kilograms, was soaking wet and smelt like old wet sock. ‘Come on, then.’ And we laboured up the steep bank to the fence that borders the road.
I manhandled Spud across the boundary fence and started along the road towards the Kings’ tanker entrance. The cloud had come down and it had started to rain again – that gentle persistent drizzle that soaks you to the skin. I was walking fast with my head down, and almost yelped in surprise when Matt called, ‘Pleasant morning for a stroll.’
He was standing on the edge of a medium-sized lake in his front paddock, with his hands in his pockets and a pensive look on his face.
‘Nice water feature,’ I called back.
‘Feel free to go in and unblock the culvert pipe, if you’d like to experience it from closer up.’ He sighed and began to take off his waterproof leggings.
‘I will, if you like. I’m wet already.’
‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘You might get bitten by an eel and sue me for damages.’
I climbed the fence. ‘Never. Tell you what – I’ll unblock the pipe while you roar up the hill and deal with the pig that’s mustering up your springer mob.’
‘Is there one?’ he asked.
‘Well, there was ten minutes ago. I saw him from the top of the hill. He’s not a very big pig, but the cows weren’t looking too happy about the whole thing.’
He turned towards his quad bike, parked just up the hill on the track. ‘I’d better go and see. Don’t worry about the pipe . . .’
I watched him disappear up around the shoulder of the hill before wading into the murky water to find the culvert pipe and remove the armful of slimy, decaying vegetation blocking its end. The things we do for love.
WHEN I OPENED the kitchen door Kim wrinkled her small nose fastidiously and said, ‘Been communing with nature again, have we?’
‘You should try it sometime,’ I suggested. ‘You might enjoy it.’
‘I have,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t. What would you like on your toasted sandwich?’
‘Pineapple and cheese, please. Where’s Aunty Rose?’
>
‘Feeding the chooks.’
When I came back into the kitchen ten minutes later, showered and with an armful of wet, muddy clothes, it was full of people. Matt was riffling through the pantry, Aunty Rose was setting the table for lunch and Andy was buttering slices of bread for toasted sandwiches while Kim filled them.
‘Hi, Andy,’ I said, opening the lid of the washing machine and tossing in my clothes. ‘How’s the world of livestock wheeling and dealing?’
‘Not bad at all. Have I buttered enough yet?’
‘For a start,’ said Kim. ‘Aunty Rose, would the chicken in the fridge make a good toastie?’
‘Delicious,’ she said. ‘We could have had olive and sundried tomato and cheese, if Josephine had deigned to purchase all the items on the shopping list.’
‘I’d sack her,’ said Matt. ‘You’re out of peanuts, too, which is poor at best.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I knew I wanted something else at the supermarket, but then I ran into Sara getting all frisky with her new boyfriend and my mind went blank. I can see why you moved out, Andy.’
‘It wasn’t just the public displays of affection,’ he said. ‘There are girls that look good in hot pants and singlet tops, and girls that just don’t.’
‘And she just doesn’t?’ Matt asked, replacing the empty peanut jar and taking down a bag of sultanas instead.
‘Nope,’ said Andy.
‘That’s the thing with hot pants,’ Matt said. ‘Most women should be forbidden by law to wear them, and just a few should be forbidden to wear anything else.’
‘Andy dropped in to bring your mail,’ Aunty Rose informed me. Her eyes were bright with amusement under the peroxide-blonde wig. ‘Wasn’t that kind of him?’
‘Very,’ I said. Kim looked sharply from her aunt to me, but we returned the look with matching vacuous smiles. I shuffled through the EziBuy catalogue, the postcard from Reader’s Digest informing me I had just won a gift worth thousands and the letter from the bank offering to increase my credit card limit.
Dinner at Rose's Page 17
