‘Nice to see them all singing along,’ said Alison. ‘Very patriotic.’ The camera panned slowly along the row of All Blacks, each one with his arms around his neighbours’ shoulders. There was Alan, and Mark a good head taller than little Sione Brown on his right.
‘Mark’s only pretending,’ I said. ‘He’s not allowed to sing out loud.’ Never have I come across anyone with less ability to carry a tune.
‘Same again, girls?’ Sam asked, getting to his feet. It was the evening of the third Friday in October and we were at the Stockman’s Arms, watching the last Tri Nations game between New Zealand and South Africa on the big screen above the bar.
‘No,’ said Alison, bending down and groping purposefully under her stool for her handbag. ‘It’s my round.’
‘No it’s not. What do you want, Hel?’
I brandished my cell phone. ‘On call. But thank you.’
‘Chardonnay, wasn’t it, Alison?’
‘No, please, let me,’ she said.
‘Sit down, woman,’ Sam said sternly and, skirting a table of unwary diners who were just realising that Catch of the Day actually meant defrosted, deep-fried shark in batter, made his way to the bar.
‘Evening, ladies,’ said Hamish, sauntering up to lean on the high table between us. ‘Hi there, Head Nurse.’
Alison smiled wanly but didn’t answer, thus demonstrating the upper limit of her range of nastiness. It was no wonder he persevered.
‘Hi, Hamish,’ I said. ‘How’s that heifer?’
‘It’s alright. It’d want to be, after what you charged me for coming to see it.’
The heifer had been at the back of the farm with a dislocated hip. I hadn’t charged him any of the time taken to reach the patient from the cowshed, the hip had slid neatly back into its socket and the heifer had walked away. Just what, I wondered, would Hamish consider to be value for money?
‘I see it’s another lovely evening in Wellington,’ he continued, looking idly at the screen as the rain and the haka began simultaneously. ‘Looks as windy as hell. It’s going to be a crap game.’ Conversation with Hamish was so seldom an uplifting experience.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Look on the bright side.’ But he had turned away to direct the full force of his charm on my hapless friend, so I went back to the rugby.
By now I had a reasonable grasp of the rules – and I had met a few of the players during weekends at Mark’s place, which made it exponentially more interesting – but I still found eighty minutes of watching my boyfriend try to smash big, hard men who were trying in return to smash him a traumatic way to spend an evening. I was well aware that this was a poor and probably unpatriotic attitude, but I couldn’t help it.
South Africa got a penalty, then we did, and then they attempted a drop goal, which was whisked to the right of the posts by the wind. Alan’s eyebrow, as he addressed his forward pack, rose and fell like a raft on a storm-tossed sea.
Mark won the ball in the lineout and was immediately charged by a South African prop. As he fell he flicked the ball out sideways to Miles Lalu. Miles kicked it up high, which wasn’t very bright considering they were playing in a howling gale, and it dropped back neatly into the arms of South African winger Jacques du Foure (according to Mark one of the funniest men alive), who sprinted nearly the whole length of the field before he was tackled.
There was a major drawback to watching rugby games on TV rather than in the flesh. Instead of focusing on player number four as they should, the cameras had this highly irritating habit of slavishly following the ball. Was Mark up? Was he alright? It was a good twenty seconds before he appeared back in the defensive line and I could breathe again.
At half-time the score was 11–9 to South Africa. The players jogged off the field, and I looked away from the big screen.
‘What are you up to this weekend, Head Nurse?’ Hamish was asking.
‘Oh,’ said Alison weakly, ‘this and that.’
‘There’s drag racing up at Meremere on Sunday,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come along?’
Alison looked like a baby rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. She was appallingly bad at declining invitations – in seventh form she went out with Jason Faber, with whom she had not one single thing in common, for the whole of term two because she couldn’t bear to hurt his feelings. ‘That’s very –’ she started.
I opened my mouth to intervene. A true friend couldn’t let the poor girl spend a day watching cars with Hamish Thompson without at least trying to save her. But Sam was way ahead of me. Straightening from where he had been leaning against the table (Hamish having commandeered his seat), he jerked his chin at Alison and said, ‘Get up, babe.’
She stared at him in blank amazement.
‘Let me sit down for a bit,’ he said. ‘You can sit on my knee.’
She slid to her feet, and Sam sat down. ‘Thanks, hon,’ he said, patting his knee. Moving with all the speed and agility of a woman wading through knee-deep porridge, Alison clambered onto his lap.
Sam slung a proprietary arm around her waist, picked up his beer mug and turned to Hamish, who was opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish. ‘So, have you shut up much grass for silage?’ he asked.
Good man, my cousin.
14
WHEN MARK ARRIVED ON TUESDAY EVENING I WAS LYING on the lawn under the copper beech with Murray draped across my stomach. I sat up and waved as the car pulled in, earning a reproachful feline stare.
‘Hi,’ said Mark, coming across the grass and sitting down beside me.
I leant over and kissed him. ‘Hi.’
‘How’s things?’ he asked.
‘Very good. Nice shirt.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my shirt,’ he said defensively.
‘Not a thing,’ I agreed. ‘Years of life left in it.’ This evening he was wearing an ancient pair of paint-smeared shorts and a Stratford High School leavers rugby jumper with holes under the arms and the collar ripped off. Whenever he could get away with it Mark went barefoot, in clothes most people would be ashamed to put in a clothing bin.
‘I’m afraid we’ve got the munchkins for the evening,’ I said. ‘Dad and Em are going to a Rotary Club dinner.’
‘Cool,’ he said, tickling Murray between the ears. ‘Did you get tomorrow off?’
‘I did indeed.’ And Keri, noble woman, was going to castrate the three bull calves belonging to a mad lifestyle-blocker with no facilities which had been booked into my column.
‘Good girl.’
‘Thank you.’ I lay back down again, and he lay beside me.
‘Any particular reason we’re lying under a tree?’ he asked.
‘Because it’s beautiful,’ I said, reaching for his hand. The late afternoon light filtered softly down through young red-gold leaves and gave each one its own personal halo. Lying under a copper beech in springtime and looking up gives me the awestruck feeling otherwise achieved by visiting the cathedrals of Europe, but for considerably less exertion and expense.
‘It’s also wet.’
I smiled. ‘Are you worried you’ll spoil your clothes?’
A car turned in off the road, and we both sat up. ‘Helenhelenhelen!’ shouted Bel, flinging open a rear door and leaping out. Murray, who had lived with Dad and Em for the two years I was overseas, now disliked children in general and Annabel in particular, shot across the lawn and vanished under the house. ‘Look at my tattoo!’ She jumped at me from a metre away, landed firmly on my solar plexus and brandished one chubby forearm, around which she had stuck a bracelet of Hello Kitty stickers.
‘Lovely,’ I wheezed.
‘Look!’ she ordered Mark.
‘Beautiful,’ he said solemnly.
‘But I haven’t got enough left to share,’ she said, evidently fearing we might be overcome with cravings for Hello Kitty body art of our own.
‘That’s okay,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘I expect we’ll learn to live with it. Hi, guys.’
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Em, in a very tight skirt and very high heels, leant over to retrieve the girls’ bags from the back seat and then had to lever herself back off the doorframe because she couldn’t bend at the hips. ‘Mark, how lovely to see you again,’ she said. ‘We watched you play on Friday night – you were brilliant. Wasn’t he, Tim?’
‘Hmm?’ said Dad, climbing out from behind the steering wheel. ‘Yes, certainly.’ He nodded to Mark across the car bonnet. ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘You too,’ said Mark, and they reached out and shook hands.
‘We already know him,’ said Caitlin. ‘We met him ages ago.’
‘Aren’t you lucky?’ Dad said. ‘That’s a very smart car you have there.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mark.
‘Don’t let Helen drive it, will you?’ my doting parent added.
‘I backed his car into a post,’ I told Mark. ‘It was about ten years ago, but he’s still not over it.’
‘It was the way she approached it,’ said Dad pensively. ‘Acres of room, and she lined the thing up from about thirty feet and put her foot to the floor. Frightening.’
We had spaghetti and meatballs for tea, followed by lemon syrup cake. Then we played gin rummy – which would have been more fun had Bel not picked up and shed cards entirely at random, with complete disregard for the rules.
‘I win,’ she said smugly.
‘You do not!’ said Caitlin. ‘You’ve still got three cards left!’
‘You’ve only got one. So I win.’
‘You’re supposed to get rid of your cards,’ said Caitlin with withering scorn.
‘There,’ said Bel, immediately tossing her three cards onto the pile. ‘Now I win.’
‘He-len!’ cried Caitlin.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘She’s a menace. Come on, it’s bedtime.’
‘I want Mark to brush my teeth,’ Bel announced.
‘Can’t you brush your own?’ he asked.
‘But I’m only a little girl,’ she said, looking up at him with big mournful eyes.
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘you’re a manipulative horror.’
‘Come on, then, horror,’ said Mark. He picked her up and slung her over his shoulder to carry her shrieking with laughter up the hall.
Caitlin looked after them wistfully – it’s tough being a good girl with a smaller, cuter and naughtier sister – but Mark, having deposited Bel in the bathroom, came back and scooped her up in turn.
That section of the female brain that assesses men for good father potential (it just comes standard with two X chromosomes; you can’t help it) noted this and nodded approvingly to itself.
‘I’ve tried and tried to sleep,’ declared Bel, appearing in the doorway of the lounge half an hour later. ‘But I just can’t.’
‘Snuggle up under the covers, then close your eyes and think about nice things,’ I said.
‘What nice things?’
‘Princesses. Fairies. That sort of thing.’
‘What about fairy princesses?’ Bel asked.
‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘Goodnight.’
She pattered off down the hall, and Mark yawned and said, ‘I’d have gone for fast cars and hot women myself.’
‘Whatever floats your boat, I guess.’
‘Mm,’ he said, stretching himself out on the couch and laying his head on my knee. ‘Toulon and Racing Metro have both upped their offers.’
‘To?’ I asked. It would be a lot, I knew; European – particularly French – rugby clubs seemed to have insane amounts of money to spend on player salaries.
‘Racing’s is four million dollars for three years,’ said Mark.
‘Give or take.’ He might have been remarking on the weather – surely that offhand delivery had taken some practice in front of the bathroom mirror. His management team, who worked on commission, must have been beside themselves with delight.
‘I don’t want to think about fairy princesses,’ said Bel, suddenly materialising at my elbow.
‘Then think about something else,’ said Mark.
‘Are – are you going to accept?’ I croaked.
‘What should I think about?’ asked Bel.
‘Racing cars and girls in short skirts,’ Mark told her. ‘Go back to bed.’
‘But I’m scared,’ said Bel, sidling closer and laying a small pink hand on his.
‘Scared of what, sprat?’
Bel cast around hurriedly for something to be scared of.
‘Dragons,’ she said.
‘We don’t have dragons in New Zealand,’ said Mark firmly. ‘Not one.’
‘They could fly here,’ she suggested.
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Too far. They’d never make it all the way over the Pacific. Go back to bed.’
Bel abandoned the dragons. ‘Helen, could you sing me a song?’
‘Annabel Jane, stop making excuses and go to bed.’
‘Just one teensy-weensy song, and I will,’ she said, producing her most winning smile.
Annabel’s most winning smile, along with pink fluffy pyjamas, two stubby pigtails and a missing front tooth, was too much for me. ‘“Inchworm”?’ I asked. I am very fond of the inchworm song, especially when sung by Danny Kaye with a Muppet backing group.
‘No. “Close your eyes and give me your hand”.’
So I sang ‘Eternal Flame’, and leant forward to kiss her on her freckled nose. ‘Bed.’
‘Goodnight, Helen. Goodnight, Mark,’ she said, and trotted off back down the hall.
‘You’ve got a lovely voice, McNeil,’ said Mark.
‘Thank you. Look, are you going to go and play in France?’
He made a face. ‘I doubt it.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve always felt like getting paid to play rugby’s just a bonus, because I’d do it anyway,’ he said. ‘But if I went and played for a club over there I’d only be doing it for the money. And I can’t get my head around the idea of watching the guys playing on TV instead of being out there myself.’ He picked up my hand and drew circles on the palm with one fingertip. ‘And then I didn’t think I’d be able to talk you into moving to Paris. Not enough dairy cows.’
‘I would,’ I said. ‘Move to Paris, I mean. If you wanted me to.’ I would have moved to the bottom of a hole if Mark had happened to decide that the bottom of a hole was the place to be.
‘Would you?’
I nodded, and he sat up and kissed me at some length.
‘Helen?’ said a voice from about thirty centimetres away. Mark and I jumped simultaneously, smacking our noses together just like characters in a cheesy sitcom.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What now?’
‘Bel won’t let me go to sleep,’ Caitlin informed us. ‘She won’t stay on her side.’ My sisters, when they stayed, shared the double bed in my tiny spare room.
‘Then go and sleep in my bed,’ I said, carefully feeling my nose. It hurt quite a lot.
‘But Bel will be scared all by herself.’
‘Caitlin,’ said Mark, ‘I don’t get to see your big sister very often, and the day after tomorrow I’m going to Europe for six weeks. Please be somewhere else.’
‘Do you want to kiss Helen?’
‘Yes.’
‘And don’t you want me watching?’
‘No.’
‘Oh,’ said Caitlin.
‘Tell your partner in crime that if she doesn’t stay on her side I’ll come and beat her,’ I said. ‘Okay?’
Caitlin giggled. ‘Okay.’
‘Goodnight, McMunchkin.’
‘Goodnight.’ We heard her scurry down the hall, and then the slam of the spare-room door.
Somewhat to our surprise, there were no further forays from the spare bedroom. Murray ventured back in and curled himself into a tight marmalade-coloured ball of fur on the battered cane armchair, and Mark and I went to sleep on the couch. We seemed to spend a significant portion of our time together asleep on either his couch or mine, which I suppose is only to b
e expected if most of your time together follows a day’s work and a two-hour drive.
I was woken by the crunch of car tyres on gravel, and slid out from underneath Mark’s arm to stagger zombie-like out to the kitchen and open the door.
‘Were you asleep, sweetie?’ Em asked.
I rubbed my eyes. ‘Mm. How was your dinner?’
‘Very pleasant. Did the girls behave themselves?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘We had fun. Their bags are just here.’
As Dad and Em came back down the hall with a comatose child apiece, Mark appeared in the kitchen doorway with his hair standing all on end, looking at least three-quarters asleep.
‘You survived the invasion?’ Dad asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Mark, ‘they were great.’
Caitlin lifted her head off Dad’s shoulder and said, ‘We played cards and rugby tackles and circuses. And Bel was kicking and kicking me in bed, but Mark said I had to go away so he could kiss Helen.’
‘Lucky Helen,’ Em murmured, looking Mark up and down appreciatively. ‘Come on, Tim, love, let’s leave these two alone.’
‘Your stepmother is scary,’ said Mark. He yawned and stretched, and the seams of his shirt split another inch or so under the arms. It was lucky Em had gone: the glimpse of bare chest through the holes might well have been too much for her.
I waved at my departing relatives through the kitchen window. ‘Many years ago, when Lance and I had only been going out for a couple of months, I brought him home for the weekend,’ I said. ‘Caitlin was about eighteen months old, and she tipped everything out of his bag and spread it all over the floor. And Em picked up his tube of K-Y jelly and said, “Sonny, if you’re doing it right you don’t need this stuff.”’
‘The poor bugger,’ said Mark, laughing. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed.’
15
‘DOING ANYTHING TONIGHT?’ I ASKED AS ALISON AND I descended Birch Crescent at a jog-trot one warm afternoon in early November. The breeze was fragrant with the scent of rhododendrons, and the soft baby shoots of Mrs Taylor’s wisteria tickled our knees as we passed her fence.
‘Dinner with Mum and Dad. How about you?’
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