Dinner at Rose's

by Danielle Hawkins

  ‘And if I get too enthusiastic and break them right in half there’s a skip just outside the back door,’ I said.

  Amber giggled at this lame joke, and the sensor above the door buzzed as my next appointment, a delicate little elderly lady dressed all in beige, pushed it open.

  ‘Like a lamb to the slaughter,’ said my father under his breath.

  HE WAS GONE when I had finished with my beige patient and her sciatic nerve. As I emerged, Amber blew her nose on a tissue and said, ‘You look like your mum.’

  ‘Thanks!’ I said. I don’t, particularly – Mum has that classical, timeless beauty that depends on bone structure and so doesn’t diminish with age, and I look like an amateur sort of copy beside her. But at least I got the legs, and according to Chrissie I might not be all that pretty but you didn’t realise it when you were with me (which was such a nice compliment it almost made up for stealing my boyfriend).

  When I got home at three both Hazel’s car and a teeny-weeny silver thing that was doubtless the very cheapest hire car you could get were parked beside the woodshed. I got out of the car and patted each member of the welcoming committee then, turning towards the house, spied my father kneeling on the roof with a hammer in his hand.

  ‘Have you been put to work already?’ I called.

  ‘Hmm?’ he asked distractedly. ‘This is like patching a sieve. Throw me up a handful of those nails there?’

  There was a box of roofing nails on the path. I filled my pockets and went round the side of the house to climb the plum tree. The corrugated-iron roof was blotched with rust, and looking at it I was surprised it kept out as much of the rain as it did. I made my way carefully across to Dad and he held out a hand for the nails.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Better go in and see your mother, hadn’t you?’

  ‘I will in a minute. Why don’t you come? It must be time for a cup of tea.’

  ‘I think I’ll carry on here for a little while,’ said Dad.

  I smiled. ‘Is it all a bit heavy-going inside?’

  ‘Just ever so slightly,’ he admitted, removing his glasses and putting them on top of his head. ‘Rose isn’t looking good, is she?’

  ‘Every time she falls asleep I wonder if she’s still breathing.’

  ‘And you’d almost hope she wasn’t.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Go on in,’ said Dad. ‘Your mother wants to see you. I won’t be long.’

  I climbed back down the plum tree and went around the side of the house to let myself in the kitchen door. Hazel was actually folding washing at the kitchen table and Mum had both hands in the sink. She pulled them out and dried them on the tea towel she had tucked into the waistband of her jeans, then crossed the kitchen to take my face in her hands and inspect me. I laughed at this painstaking scrutiny, and she gave a satisfied nod.

  ‘Hello, love,’ she said.

  I put my arms around her and hugged her tightly – I adore my mother, although I reserve the right to laugh at her a little bit from time to time. ‘Is Aunty Rose asleep?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hazel. ‘Don’t go in and wake her, please, Josie dear.’ She pulled my black lace bra out of the washing basket and looked at it with distaste before folding it in half and laying it on the table. I wondered how she’d react when she came across the matching g-string – perhaps well-bred girls are supposed to wear flesh-coloured cotton knickers.

  ‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘Cup of tea, guys?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Mum, but Hazel shifted her shoulders wearily and shook her head.

  ‘Not for me. I’ve not even looked at my own housework yet.’

  As she backed her white car round, Aunty Rose appeared in the kitchen doorway, steadying herself against the doorframe with one hand. ‘Is she gone?’ she hissed.

  AFTER HER SHOWER that evening Aunty Rose sat on the edge of her bed and tipped her jewellery box out beside her in a glittering heap. Frowning, she picked up a wide and only slightly tarnished silver bangle and slipped it over her left hand. It dangled pathetically from her skeletal wrist. ‘Perhaps not,’ she murmured, taking it off again.

  I knelt at the edge of the bed, passing her the green satin cap. ‘How about the pearls?’

  She nodded, and held out her hand so I could do up the catch of the little bracelet. ‘That’s better,’ she said. Then, very quietly, ‘Josephine?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Is it getting too pitiful, like poor old Barbara Cartland?’

  I took her hand gently – she was so fragile now. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s like a – a warrior chief putting on his war paint.’

  ‘Right,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘Very good.’ She twitched the lapel of her dressing-gown straight. ‘And my silver brooch, I think.’ She fastened the brooch, dabbed perfume onto her wrists and held out an imperious hand for her stick. As a lesson in courage it was unsurpassed.

  In the kitchen Kim was mixing mustard powder and water to a paste in the little green china mustard jug. Aunty Rose felt that buying one’s mustard already made up was a slovenly, immoral sort of way to run a kitchen. Dad was setting the table, Mum was on her knees feeding the wood stove and Hazel, looking distinctly put upon, stood at the sink washing dishes.

  Aunty Rose had just lowered herself onto the chaise longue when the phone rang.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ said Mum, standing up and dusting her hands on her jeans. She plucked the portable phone off the kitchen table. ‘Hello?’ Then, ‘Matthew, it’s Edith here. What can we do? Really? Are you sure? Well, then, we’ll see you when we see you.’ She put the phone back down. ‘Matthew’s been held up – he’ll be another forty-five minutes.’

  HE WAS AN hour, and it was past eight when his ute came up the driveway. Kim and I were clearing the table and our elders had retired to the lounge, but as the dogs sped barking to meet him his mother bustled back into the kitchen to retrieve his plate from the oven.

  ‘Stop!’ said Kim as she opened the microwave door, plate in hand. ‘That plate’s got gold edging – it’ll spark.’

  ‘The poor boy can’t work all day and have his dinner lukewarm!’ Hazel protested.

  I held out a plain china plate, freshly dried. ‘You could put it on that.’

  ‘Hi, guys,’ said Matt, opening the door. He met my eyes for just a second with a fleeting, lopsided smile. ‘That looks good.’

  ‘I’ll just heat it up for you, darling,’ said Hazel tenderly.

  ‘Don’t worry – I like it better cold.’ This was true, come to think of it. I’ve never known anyone else who would cheerfully tuck into a bowl of cold porridge.

  ‘Nonsense.’ She took the plate from me and began to transfer potatoes and slices of pot roast with a fork. ‘Now, Matthew, sit down and your sister will bring you a drink.’

  ‘And then she can fan me while I eat,’ he agreed, and Kim, who had looked ever so slightly sour at being pressed into service, grinned.

  Mum came into the kitchen with a smudge on her nose and her hair escaping its bun. ‘Matthew, love,’ she said warmly, reaching up to kiss him. ‘I presume you’re well, under all that hair?’

  ‘I was thinking about shaving today,’ Matt admitted. ‘But thinking’s about as far as I got.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘It’s a big decision. You wouldn’t want to do anything hasty and then regret it later.’

  ‘Besides, the hairier he gets the less of him we can see, which has got to be a good thing,’ said Kim.

  ‘Kimmy!’ said Hazel reprovingly. ‘Don’t listen to them, darling, you have such lovely hair. Now, would you like a cup of tea or a cold drink?’

  ‘Neither,’ he said, taking the still-unheated plate out of her hands. ‘Thanks, Mum.’ He rummaged in the cutlery drawer for a knife and fork and escaped into the lounge with Hazel hard on his heels.

  Mum looked after them thoughtfully, then put her arms around Kim and hugged her. ‘It’s okay,’ said Kim, her voice muffled in the folds of Mum’s jumper. ‘It’s worse for Matt than
me.’

  Mum laughed and let her go. ‘Good girl,’ she said.

  LIKE THE THEATRE nurse at the surgeon’s elbow, I handed a hot-water bottle in a hideous purple crocheted cover to my mother. She slid it deftly beneath the small of Aunty Rose’s back, rearranged a pillow and lowered the patient down with delicate precision.

  ‘Thank you,’ Aunty Rose murmured.

  Hazel and Kim had gone home to watch the Living Channel and phone Andy respectively. With any luck Matt was in bed rather than calving a cow, and Dad was sitting in front of the kitchen stove with a pile of local newspapers beside him and Spud asleep on his feet. The sequins on the bedspread gleamed in the light of Aunty Rose’s bedside lamp and a mouse skittered about in the ceiling.

  Mum sank into the armchair and I sat cross-legged on the edge of Rose's big bed. A companionable sort of silence fell.

  ‘Josephine,’ said Aunty Rose suddenly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Make sure Matthew has a colonoscopy in the next twelve months, will you?’

  I smiled at this unromantic request, and then sobered. When your aunt and your father have both succumbed to cancer you’d be an idiot not to have yourself checked over every few years. ‘I will. Kim too.’

  ‘Every five years after the age of twenty-five.’

  ‘It shall be done,’ I promised, lying back beside her and looking up at the India-shaped watermark on the ceiling.

  ‘You might persuade him to shave and cut his hair while you’re at it,’ Mum put in. ‘The boy has such a nice face – it’s a shame not to be able to see it.’

  ‘I think there’s a sort of default period before you’re supposed to start trying to change them,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Mum said briskly. ‘Start as you mean to go on.’ Then, ‘I could always give him a bit of a trim myself. You’ve still got those clippers, haven’t you, Rose?’

  ‘No!’ Aunty Rose and I said at the same time.

  Mum laughed.

  ‘I mean it, Edith,’ Aunty Rose continued. ‘I’m not having a nephew who looks like he had his hair cut in prison standing up at my funeral to read my eulogy.’

  Mum’s eyes filled. ‘Alright, alright,’ she said. ‘Keep your hair on.’ And we all three giggled weakly at the utter inappropriateness of the words.

  ‘THAT’S A GORGEOUS piece of clothing,’ Dad remarked, coming into the bathroom behind me half an hour later.

  I spat out my toothpaste and pulled the hood of my onesie up to give him the full effect. ‘Did you notice the tail?’

  He looked at it with a sort of horrified fascination, but words failed him and he merely shook his head.

  ‘You scoff now,’ I said, ‘but we’ll see who’s laughing in the morning when I’m toasty warm and you’ve got frostbite.’

  He shook his head again. ‘I think I’d go for the frostbite.’

  ‘Be nice, or I’ll confiscate your heater,’ I said sternly.

  Dad smiled and reached out for the toothpaste. ‘Sold that house yet?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I think I’ll have to go over and throw my toys for a while.’

  ‘He really is a first-class waste of space, isn’t he?’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. It’s nice when the people you love share your opinions.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Dad said. ‘And the cartwheels would seem to imply that the new model’s a good thing?’

  I looked at him with something close to shock. My father and I have a very satisfactory system in place, based on the unspoken agreement that I won’t tell him about my love life and he won’t ask. All that sort of carry-on is Mum’s department, and she advises Dad on a need-to-know basis. ‘Um, yes,’ I said.

  ‘Very good,’ said Dad and, clearly appalled at having strayed so far into this emotional minefield, he began to brush his teeth with most unnecessary vigour.

  Chapter 33

  AT SIX O’CLOCK on Friday night Kim came up the driveway in her mother’s car and dragged at the handbrake to spin around and shower the lawn in gravel.

  ‘Very cool,’ I remarked, picking up the washing basket and propping it on my hip. Especially if you’re not the one who mows the lawn.

  ‘I know,’ said Kim. ‘Matt taught me. How’s Aunty Rose?’

  ‘Just the same.’ We started back towards the house. ‘Are you staying for dinner?’

  She shook her head. ‘Andy’s cooking for me,’ she said proudly. ‘I’m going to his place.’

  ‘That sounds really nice,’ I said.

  ‘Is he a good cook?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘when I lived with him he alternated between tins of Just Add Mince and Just Add Sausages. But I expect he’ll lift his game a little bit for you.’

  AUNTY ROSE WAS very tired by dinner time, and as she took her seat at the table I saw that her mouth was tight with pain. I dished her up a spoonful of risotto and she looked at it unhappily for a moment before pushing the plate away.

  Matt, cleanshaven this evening although still shaggy as to hair, got up silently and went to the fridge for the vanilla custard. He poured some into a cup and microwaved it for twenty seconds, stirred it with a teaspoon and handed it to his aunt.

  ‘I can’t,’ she whispered.

  ‘Three spoonfuls,’ he said matter-of-factly, taking the cup back and offering spoonful number one.

  ‘Horrible boy,’ Aunty Rose murmured, but she opened her mouth.

  She managed four teaspoonfuls of custard in total, before pushing herself up to stand with an effort that hurt to watch. ‘Don’t fuss, Edith,’ she said between her teeth as Mum got up too.

  ‘I’m not fussing,’ said Mum serenely. ‘I’m trying to get out of doing the dishes.’ She handed Rose the stick that had slid under her chair.

  ‘Well, I must be off,’ said Hazel, kissing her sister’s cheek. She had dined with us so as not to miss anything, but she preferred to exit gracefully before the clean-up began. ‘Goodnight, everyone. Sleep well, Rosie. Matthew, my love, why don’t you have an early night seeing as Eric and Edith are here to hold the fort?’

  My mother’s smile tightened with annoyance at this slur on her daughter’s fort-holding abilities. ‘What a good idea!’ she said brightly. ‘Go home, Matthew, and take Jo with you. Do you think you can put up with being nursed by a couple of amateurs for a night, Rose?’

  ‘I expect I shall muddle through,’ said Aunty Rose.

  ‘Very good. Run along, then, kids; we’ll see you tomorrow.’ And having trumped Hazel she smiled in exactly the same way as the picture of the Cheshire cat in my old copy of Alice in Wonderland.

  I looked at Matt in mute apology for my parent and saw that he looked not embarrassed but frankly delighted. ‘Thanks!’ he said. ‘Goodnight, guys. Come on, Jose.’

  I blushed hotly before two amused smiles and one frozen stare (Dad was carefully inspecting the bottom of the pepper grinder so as to avoid meeting anyone’s eye). It was like being a teenager again, and the first time had been bad enough. ‘’Night,’ I muttered, and fled outside without so much as pausing for my toothbrush.

  Matt followed me onto the porch at a more leisurely pace, and bent to put on his boots. A morepork called through the dark from somewhere up the hill and the elderly plumbing gurgled as someone turned on the kitchen taps.

  ‘Smooth,’ he murmured.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ I whispered back, picking up a gumboot and shaking it hard to dislodge potential wetas before putting it on. The other one had mysteriously vanished – after a brief search Matt discovered it under an ancient tweed coat that had fallen off its nail on the wall.

  ‘Never mind, Hazel,’ said Mum, her voice carrying beautifully from inside. ‘They’re big kids now.’ That woman is not above putting the boot in when her opponent is already down.

  ‘That’s all very well,’ replied Hazel bitterly. ‘But when Josie leaves I’m going to be the one picking up the pieces.’

  Her son looked somewhat startled at this prediction, and I giggled as he handed me m
y second gumboot. He made a face at me.

  ‘Why on earth would she leave?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Of course she’ll leave! She’s used to life in a big city – eating in restaurants and going to nightclubs – she’s hardly going to settle down with Matthew on a little dairy farm in Waimanu.’

  ‘Oh yes she will,’ said Aunty Rose, her voice a little slurred with pain and tiredness. ‘She’s pining to.’

  I closed my eyes in silent horror. Day five of the relationship is not the appropriate time for these revelations.

  ‘Are you?’ Matt asked quietly, and I opened my eyes again. He wasn’t looking at me but towards the ragged black outline of the woodshed roof against the sky, and he very nearly pulled off a tone of mere idle curiosity.

  I started to say something light and dismissive, and then abruptly decided not to. If he’d asked, it was because he wanted to know. ‘Yes.’

  He looked at me, then, and smiled crookedly. I would cross boundless wastes and scale cliffs for that smile – on reflection it was probably best that Matt didn’t know it. Although on further reflection I was pretty sure he did. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘God only knows what they’ll say next.’

  We scrunched across the gravel to his ute, ignoring dogs and pig. There was a chainsaw and at least three jumpers in the passenger-side footwell, and an assortment of fencing tools on the seat. ‘Really should empty this stuff out, one day,’ he said. ‘Hang on, I’ll chuck it all on the back.’

  ‘It’d be easier to chuck me on the back,’ I suggested, picking up a set of wire strainers.

  He grinned. ‘Tempting,’ he said. ‘Especially since our mothers’ll be watching out the kitchen window.’

  We drove the short distance between Aunty Rose’s house and his without speaking, got out of the ute and went across the unkempt lawn. A little square of apricot light shone from the tiny washroom window where he had left a light on. We went silently up the back steps; once inside, Matt shut the door behind us and we fitted ourselves neatly together, mouth to mouth and arms tight round each other.