‘Now, if it’s not you, you can exchange it. There’s a card in there somewhere.’
Inside the bag was a tissue-wrapped mohair blanket, clear pale green and soft as a cloud. ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t have, but thank you so much.’
‘Look at that: it even goes with your cushions,’ said Saskia, smiling at me as she draped the blanket artistically over the back of the couch and rearranged my green shot-silk cushions against it.
‘You into cushions too, are you?’ Alan asked me, in a voice that suggested a fondness for cushions was somewhere on par with a fondness for the deforestation of the Amazon Basin.
‘What’s wrong with cushions?’ I asked.
‘Here we go,’ Saskia said wearily.
‘You could probably live with one or two on the couch,’ said Alan. ‘But at our place there’s a plague of the little bastards. There are about thirty on the bed, for a start, and they all have to be taken off before you get in. And then they have to be put back when you get up again, all in the right order and at the right angle. Hours of my life that could be spent doing something useful are wasted on bloody cushion arranging.’
‘There are three,’ Saskia said.
We sat around the breakfast bar drinking coffee and eating chocolate slice, and the conversation moved inevitably on to people I didn’t know. By the time you counted up all the men Mark and Alan had played with or against in the last decade, the coaching staff and sports reporters and commentators and Old Boys and Rugby Union executives and wives and girlfriends and goodness only knew who else, the three of them had thousands of mutual acquaintances. Outside, the raindrops coalesced on the living-room windows to form tiny rivers, and from time to time the baby stirred as if it was turning over in its sleep.
‘Tip, did you talk to that young clown?’ Alan asked, taking a banana from the fruit bowl and beginning to peel it.
‘Yeah,’ said Mark. ‘He didn’t listen. Very hard to help someone who knows it all already.’
‘Which young clown?’ Saskia asked.
‘Jesse Gallagher. Made the squad out of high school. Seems to think the only reason he’s not starting every week is that we’re scared he’ll show us all up.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘One of those.’
‘He’s the one with the mullet, isn’t he?’ I asked.
‘That’s the one,’ said Alan. ‘Tip used to have a haircut like that, back in the day.’
‘Really?’
‘Damn straight,’ Mark said. ‘It was awesome.’
‘It was hideous,’ said Saskia. ‘But I think his all-time low was shaving his whole head except for his fringe, and bleaching it a nasty dirty orange colour. I’ll have to find you a picture, Helen.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘What about you, Alan? Did you commit any terrible hair crimes?’
He swallowed the last of the banana, shaking his head. ‘Me? I’ve had the same haircut since I was eight,’ he said.
‘Except that as he gets older his head hair gets thinner and his eyebrow hair gets thicker,’ said Saskia pensively. ‘Sometimes I wonder where it will end.’
‘When these two got married, one of the women’s magazines did a big feature headed Beauty and the Beast,’ Mark told me.
‘Yeah, I’ve always felt that was unfair,’ Alan said. ‘She didn’t look that bad.’
38
THE NEXT FRIDAY NIGHT I STAYED HOME AND WATCHED the Blues–Sharks game from the couch with Murray for company, curled up beneath my new green blanket and chewing my left thumbnail back down to a stub. The game seemed mostly to be a grim arm wrestle between the two forward packs – the commentators talked enthusiastically about old-school physical play and the noble art of scrummaging, but then the commentators had no loved ones at the bottom of those scrums.
It was half past eleven by the time Mark got home, after being stretched and iced and rehydrated. He hobbled off again the next morning to a pool recovery session, returning a couple of hours later to lay himself gingerly down on the couch with his History of the Arab Peoples and a bottle of chocolate milk.
I filled a basin with warm water, sloshed in some Handy Andy and got down on my hands and knees to scrub the kitchen floor. This unprecedented behaviour was due not to any mysterious pregnant urge to nest, but to the warnings of my new midwife, whom I’d met the previous afternoon. She was a tiny Asian woman who looked about the same age as Caitlin, with the delicate beauty of a snowdrop and a manner as cold as the North Sea. After kneading my stomach briskly with icy, sharp-nailed hands she had told me that the baby was facing in entirely the wrong direction, and if I didn’t want an extremely long and painful labour I would do well to spend the next two months on all fours encouraging it to turn.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Mark asked, dropping his book onto his chest.
I looked up, cloth in hand. ‘The midwife at National Women’s told me I have to spend as much time as I can on my hands and knees to get the baby to turn the right way. At the moment he’s looking out, and he should be facing my spine.’
‘But he moves around the whole time,’ he said.
‘Yeah, but he does seem to spend most of his time lying sort of sideways. The midwife said that if the baby engages in the pelvis facing backwards you have a much quicker labour, because then the head presses down square on your cervix, and it’s pressure on your cervix that makes it dilate.’
‘Well, there you go,’ he said, picking up his book again.
I continued to work my way across the floor, tile by tile.
After a few minutes he remarked, ‘It’s just not right to lie on the couch while your heavily pregnant girlfriend scrubs the floor on her hands and knees.’
‘I’m quite happy,’ I said. ‘But I’ll stop if it’s spoiling your morning.’
‘I suppose I can put up with it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
I finished another tile and crawled forward to wipe the front of a cupboard.
‘Hey, McNeil?’
‘Mm?’
‘Come here.’
Startled by his tone, I looked up again. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be resting and recuperating?’ I asked.
Mark grinned and tossed his book down beside the couch. ‘It’s amazing how often people forget about the psychological aspect of recovery,’ he said. ‘It’s very important to have strategies in place for relaxing and distancing yourself from the game, or you run the risk of burnout.’
‘I see.’ I got to my feet and crossed the living room towards him. ‘I must say it’s a bit disturbing that you’re turned on by watching me scrub.’
‘It’s not the scrubbing. I could see down your top.’
Just then the portable phone at the end of the kitchen bench began to ring, and I turned to answer it.
‘Leave it,’ said Mark, and I turned back towards him.
The machine clicked on. ‘We’re not home – leave us a message and we’ll get back to you,’ said Mark’s voice.
We. He’d changed it.
‘Tip, if you’re lying on the couch, text me Helen’s number, will you?’ Saskia said.
I changed direction again and lunged for the phone. ‘Saskia? Sorry, I was upstairs.’
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t be up for a shopping trip, would you?’
‘Um, sure,’ I said, surprised and pleased. I thought Saskia was wonderful, and for months it had saddened me that the nicest thing I could do for her would be to go and be pregnant somewhere else. ‘When?’
‘Pick you up in half an hour?’
‘Sounds great,’ I said. ‘See you then.’ Putting down the phone, I started undoing the buttons on my shirt.
‘When’s then?’ Mark asked, wincing as he pushed himself up to sit.
‘She’s picking me up in half an hour to go shopping. Hey, lie still.’
‘I thought we might go to Parnell,’ said Saskia thirty-seven minutes later, executing a neat three-point t
urn in the driveway. ‘My favourite shoe shop’s having a big one-day-only sale. And there’s a really nice cafe by the Domain.’
‘Cool,’ I said, buckling myself into the passenger seat. ‘How’s Alan this morning?’
‘Oh, he’s fine. Doing his little personal match review session.’
‘Does he always do that?’
‘Every game,’ she said. ‘He writes down everything that went well, and all the things he thinks he needs to work on. He’s done it since he was about fourteen.’
‘Impressive,’ I said.
She smiled, and then sighed. ‘Yeah. He’s a bit of a legend, is Al. He knows exactly what he wants, and he works on it until he makes it happen.’
‘Is that what he did with you?’ I asked.
Stopping at a red light, she tilted the rear-vision mirror so she could see her reflection and raked her fingers through her hair. She was wearing jeans, canvas sneakers and a hooded sports jacket, and she looked, as always, just exactly right for the occasion. Saskia is one of those amazing women whose track pants and sweatshirts are as carefully chosen and as flattering as their fancy going-out clothes. ‘I guess he did,’ she said.
‘That’s really nice.’
‘He may well be re-evaluating that decision this morning.’ She spoke lightly, but I thought she sounded tired and flat.
‘You didn’t put another cushion on the bed, did you?’ I asked.
She laughed. ‘Shit, no, it’s not that bad. I’m just cranky. Nothing that new shoes won’t fix.’
‘New shoes fix everything,’ I said.
‘Don’t they just?’ The lights turned green, and the car moved smoothly forward. ‘I’m late,’ she said abruptly.
‘Late for what?’ I asked.
‘Period. Damn it, you’d think I’d have learnt by now not to hope.’
‘How late?’
‘Two days. Totally insignificant.’ She drummed her nails against the steering wheel. ‘I’ll get it any time now, and then I’ll settle down again.’
I opened my mouth to say something uplifting, realised there was nothing even faintly helpful to be said and closed it again.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry, Helen. You’re just such a nice person to vent to; you don’t say bloody stupid things like, “If it’s meant to be, it will be.”’
‘Fingers crossed,’ I said softly.
‘Yeah. And hey, we’ll have another crack at IVF next year. If we win the World Cup, that is; if we don’t, Alan will probably be shot at dawn. Or perhaps lynched.’
I smiled in spite of myself. ‘Sorry. I don’t think it’s funny. I think it’s unbelievably hard on both of you.’
‘Oh, it’s not that bad,’ she said. ‘People have way worse problems.’
‘Yeah, but it’s amazing how much that doesn’t help.’
‘It doesn’t, does it?’ She rested her head back against the seat.
‘Thank God for shoes.’
Saskia’s favourite shoe shop was indeed a wonderful place. Inside, I discovered an absolutely beautiful pair of boots, made of silky-soft tan leather and discounted by fifty percent. They looked good with jeans, and would undoubtedly be fabulous with a dress and tights, if ever I managed to achieve so fashion-forward a look.
We moved from shoes to antiques, and Saskia was temporarily distracted from her troubles by the discovery of a set of Venetian glass bowls that would go perfectly with a jug she already had. When we’d had enough shopping we lunched at a cafe so small and exclusive I would never have found it alone, with artfully mismatched crockery and old-fashioned prints of obese, anatomically incorrect farm animals on the walls, and it was after two when she dropped me back home.
I waved as she drove away, and let myself into the house to hear an unfamiliar male voice talking upstairs.
‘– to watch it, this is only Super Rugby; you want to be peaking in three months’ time, remember. No point in taking stupid risks at this stage, you’ve got nothing to prove to the selectors.’
There was a noncommittal grunt from Mark.
‘Just you remember what happened last time.’
Last time, presumably, was the World Cup semi-final four years ago, in which Mark had played eleven and a half minutes before tearing his right quadriceps muscle and watching the All Blacks lose to South Africa from the bench. How, I thought, frowning as I closed the door, would remembering that make him any less likely to hurt himself in the future?
Upstairs a big, dark, good-looking man in his fifties was leaning against the end of the kitchen bench. He was very like Mark to look at – or, to be accurate, I suppose Mark was like him. The hair at his temples was flecked most attractively with silver and deep lines ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth, but the two of them had the same bone structure, and the same eyes under slightly slanting eyebrows. Movie-star handsome, these Tipenes; square-jawed and broad-shouldered to a man.
A thin-lipped blonde stood riffling through her handbag in the middle of the living room, and Mark, his face carefully expressionless, was making tea.
‘Hi,’ he said, looking up as I reached the top of the stairs. ‘Have fun?’
‘Yeah, it was great.’ I smiled at the visitors. ‘Hi.’
‘Helen, this is my father, Brian,’ said Mark. ‘And this is Jude.’
‘Nice to meet you both,’ I said.
‘Hello,’ said Jude. She was very thin, with wrists like twigs and the leathery skin of the long-term sun-bed devotee.
Mark’s father glanced at me, nodded stiffly and turned back to his son. ‘How’s that shoulder?’ he asked.
Somewhat taken aback, I dropped my bags on the bottom step leading up to the bedroom. I hadn’t expected the man to fold me in his arms and greet me as a daughter, but a hello in passing would have been nice.
‘Fine,’ said Mark. ‘Tea, Helen?’
‘Yes, please.’ I went up to the bench beside him, and he smiled at me fleetingly as he reached for another mug.
‘What does “fine” mean? Back to normal?’
‘Yes.’
His father reached across the bench for his tea. ‘So Ted Fraser’s off to Japan, is he?’ he asked.
‘Yep,’ said Mark, dunking a teabag.
‘He’ll do fairly well out of that, I imagine. You should have a think about it yourself.’
Mark, whose contract with the New Zealand Rugby Union had been renewed back in December for another three years, passed me my tea without replying.
‘Leave it too long and you’ll find you’re past your use-by date,’ his father continued. ‘You’d be a fool not to sign with one of those overseas clubs while they still want you.’
‘We’ll see in a few years,’ said Mark. ‘Jude, your tea’s here.’
Jude approached unwillingly and seated herself on the edge of a bar stool.
‘Have you driven up today?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘It’s a lovely road up through the Awakino Gorge, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so.’
I gave up.
‘What brings you up here?’ Mark asked.
‘Shindig for her brother,’ his father said, jerking his head towards his wife. ‘Sixtieth birthday, isn’t it? We’re staying there the night.’ He looked at me. ‘So you’re a vet, are you? I suppose you like horses.’
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Cows are more my thing.’
‘Right out of luck living here, then, aren’t you?’ And taking a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket, he removed the toothpick and began to attend to his teeth.
Murray got up from his sunny spot in front of the balcony door, stretched and sauntered across the carpet. He rubbed his chin along Jude’s foot, and she nudged him away. Thus encouraged, he gathered himself up and jumped lightly onto her lap. You have to admire the way a cat will unerringly choose the least feline-oriented person in the room to drape himself over; I’m sure they do it on purpose.
‘Brian, get this thing off me,’ she said breathlessl
y as Murray settled himself down, paws folded beneath his chest.
‘Leave it alone. It likes you.’
I went around the end of the bench and lifted Murray off her lap, and she began pointedly to brush away imaginary cat hairs.
‘You should have had that lineout ball at the start of the second half,’ Brian said thickly around his toothpick.
Mark rested both hands on the bench top and said, in the tone of a man whose patience is fast evaporating, ‘Lucky I’ve got nothing to prove to the selectors.’
His father took the toothpick from between two back molars and gave him a flat, unfriendly stare.
The visitors didn’t stay very long, which was, as far as I could see, the only redeeming feature of the whole experience. Mark accompanied them out and came slowly back upstairs, and putting my arms around him I hugged him tightly.
‘Ow,’ he said mildly, hugging me back. ‘Bruised ribs.’
I slackened my grasp. ‘Sorry. I love you.’
‘Thank you. You too.’
‘Is your father always like that?’
‘Yeah, pretty much,’ said Mark. ‘He was a bit pissed off that I didn’t want to buy him his next-door neighbour’s farm.’
‘I can’t think why not.’
‘I’ve already bought him one. Half of one, anyway.’
I looked at him questioningly.
‘He had to pay Mum out when she left,’ he explained.
I mused for a moment on how it must feel to be regarded by your father – and your brother – as a handy source of cash.
‘Your family –’ I started, and stopped.
‘You’ll like Mum,’ he said.
‘What does she think about the baby?’
He looked a bit blank. ‘I’m sure she’ll think it’s very cute when it’s born.’
‘She hasn’t said anything about you having a baby with some girl you just met?’
‘We’ve been going out for a year,’ he said.
‘We’d only been going out for a few months when I got pregnant,’ I pointed out.
‘Don’t think it bothers her,’ he said. ‘Look, my family’s not like yours. We don’t have a whole lot to do with each other. I see Mum every year or two, and she texts me before a Test match to say good luck, and that’s about it.’ He let me go and opened the fridge, selecting, after some thought, a block of cheese.
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