Dinner at Rose's (28 page)

‘RIGHT, ’ SAID MATT
, pushing back his chair. ‘I suppose these gutters aren’t going to unblock themselves. Do you want that pig today, Andy? It's hanging up in the meat
house – Kim might show you where it is if you ask her nicely.’

Andy brightened so obviously at this suggestion that Aunty Rose had a lengthy and not very convincing coughing fit. ‘Crumb,’ she murmured. ‘Do excuse me. Matthew, is there any reason Andy shouldn’t go up to the back of the farm for a look, seeing as he’s keen on hunting and the bush?’

‘Not at all.’

With an endearing show of carelessness Kim said, ‘I can take you if you like. But you’ve probably got way better things to do.’

‘I’d love to,’ said Andy. ‘If you’ve got time.’

‘Sure.’ Kim shrugged, the epitome of nonchalance.

‘You can take the ute,’ said Matt. ‘I don’t need it this afternoon.’

‘I wouldn’t mind walking,’ Andy said. ‘You see a lot more, and this is amazing country.’

‘It’s a nice walk,’ said Kim. ‘There’s a lovely view of the ranges from up the back.’

I didn’t look at her, and not the merest hint of a smile crossed my face at this unprecedented enthusiasm for fresh air. I began to pile used plates onto the silver tray that had contained the toasted sandwiches while Matt and Aunty Rose started an innocent conversation on the whereabouts of her ladder, and yet Kim raked all three of us with the sort of glare normally reserved for those found pocketing the cutlery at a restaurant.

YOU’RE A KIND
brother,’ I remarked, coming back across the lawn with an empty basin under one arm. Percy had enjoyed last night’s vegetables if no one else had.

‘Oh well,’ said Matt, jumping lightly down from the roof to the water tank, then the tank to the ground. Aunty Rose’s wooden ladder had been found to be harbouring a thriving community of borers, and so he had ascended the roof via the plum tree outside the bathroom window. ‘He seems like a nice bloke.’

‘He is.’

He wiped his hands on the legs of his jeans. ‘Thank you for unblocking my pipe, by the way.’

I sniggered at that, and he looked briefly puzzled before recognising it as a childish, pulling-the-conversation-down-into-the-gutter snigger. My sense of humour never has developed very far.

He smiled. ‘As in “Hey, baby, want to unblock my pipe?” Somehow I can't see it catching on as a pick-up line.’

‘Anyone you picked up with a line like that, you wouldn’t want,’ I agreed.

‘Do you miss Melbourne?’ he asked abruptly.

I considered this. ‘Sometimes. Seeing Stu reminded me. I miss my job and my friends and living in my own house. And shoe shops.’ I missed being half of a couple, too, and thus not having to feel guilty if I preferred spending Friday night reading in the bath to partying till dawn. I added, ‘But then, in Melbourne I didn’t get to unblock culvert pipes
or
massage Dallas’s feet.’

‘Well, there is that,’ said Matt. ‘Who needs bright city lights when they have Dallas’s feet?’

‘Exactly. Do
you
miss the bright city lights?’

‘Not now,’ he said. ‘I always knew I’d have to come home to the farm or break Dad’s heart – it was just all a bit more sudden than I expected.’

‘It was very hard on you, not getting to say goodbye,’ I said tentatively. Why the King family had thought they were doing Matt a kindness by hiding the severity of his father’s illness from him was a complete mystery to me.

Matt’s mouth twisted in what may have been a smile. ‘It was very hard on everyone else watching him die. And he did write me a letter.’ He smiled again, more convincingly. ‘He said I wasn’t too much of a disappointment, considering, and to look after my sister, and wrote me a list of all the farm jobs that needed doing while the cows were dry.’

I laughed, because if I hadn’t I’d have cried.

‘
ROSIE, DARLING
, I know you would never mean anything by it, but . . .’ Hazel’s voice trailed off, and she put her head on one side and gave a little winsome smile. Had she been six years old it might even have looked cute.

‘Mean anything by what?’ Aunty Rose asked. She pulled up the woollen rug covering her knees, and I left the washing pile and went to feed another log into the wood stove. It was dark outside and raining again but Aunty Rose’s kitchen, with its velvet curtains and cheerful pink walls, was a warm and happy place. I had thought our Melbourne kitchen was the essence of all a kitchen should be, sleek and shiny with a fridge that made its own ice (Graeme’s specification) and a centre island with four stools (mine), but this one was a thousand times nicer. Although that could well have been because this one contained Aunty Rose, with her crimson dressing-gown and green satin cap, her heavy rings and faint scent of Chanel No. 5.

‘Good gracious, Josie,’ said Hazel. ‘The room is like an oven as it is.’ She smiled at me to show there were no hard feelings and added, ‘I do realise it’s very easy to be extravagant with someone else’s firewood.’

‘She split it,’ said Aunty Rose drily. ‘What’s the matter, Hazel?’

‘I’m not at all sure it’s appropriate for my little girl to be showing a scruffy pig hunter over the farm.’

‘Scruffy pig hunter . . .’ Aunty Rose mused, frowning with entirely fake perplexity. ‘Oh! Young Andy Morrison?’

‘I didn't ask his name,’ said Hazel stiffly. ‘But I assume you haven't given your blessing for Kim to chauffeur more than one pig hunter around the place. Really, Rosie, did it not occur to you that the boy’s probably scoping the place out for his gang of thieves, and he’ll be back in the middle of the night to murder us all in our beds?’

If Aunty Rose had still had eyebrows, they would have risen right up to her hairline. If she had still had a hairline. ‘I can’t say that it did,’ she murmured.

‘Andy was my flatmate,’ I put in helpfully. ‘He’s a nice guy – a stock agent for Wrightson’s.’

‘A stock agent?’ Hazel repeated, in the sort of tone she might have used to say ‘A pimp?’ ‘Well, I’m sorry to disparage a friend of yours, Josie, but I made it clear that it really isn’t appropriate for him to be hanging around a young, innocent girl like my daughter. In the nicest possible way, of course.’

‘Ah,’ I said.

‘Andy’s one of the Hawkes Bay Morrisons,’ said Aunty Rose carelessly. ‘Very wealthy family – one of those large stations. Fourth generation, is he, Josephine?’

‘Fifth, I think,’ I said, although for all I knew Andy’s father ran a hundred motley ewes on a patch of scrub and grew dope to supplement his income. If Kim was actually showing an interest in someone decent, for once, surely this was behaviour that should be encouraged.

Chapter 25

‘D
ID YOU HAVE
a good weekend?’ I asked, pushing the chocolate biscuits across the table towards my receptionist.

‘It was okay,’ said Amber, wiping her nose on her sleeve and taking a Tim Tam. She bit off both ends and dunked it in her tea, sucking hard.

‘That was quite a hailstorm on Saturday,’ I remarked.

Having slurped up the liquefied interior of her biscuit, Amber began to lick melted chocolate from its dunked end. ‘Was there?’ she said thickly. ‘Didn’t notice.’

I didn’t feel up to watching her enjoy her afternoon tea for any longer, so I carried my mug of tea back up the hall to drink it in reception. On the floor beside her desk was an atlas-sized cardboard FedEx box with ‘
Jo
’ written across the front in black. I picked it up and looked at it curiously – it had been opened and taped up again, and it was addressed to M. King of Puketutu Valley Road, RD8, Waimanu, New Zealand. It had come, of all places, from Phoenix, Arizona.

Amber wandered down the hall in time to see me unwrap a truly hideous garment, made of mustard-brown polar fleece with a pattern of purple cabbages (or they may have been roses). It had a hood, feet soled with grey suede and a long zip all the way from one foot to the opposite shoulder. ‘What
is
it?’ she asked.

I noticed the decorative teddy-bear ears sewn onto the hood and grinned. ‘It’s a onesie. It’s
awesome
.’

‘Okay,’ said Amber, looking at me doubtfully and wiping her nose on the back of her hand. ‘Whatever.’

There was a note in the bottom of the box, written in Matt’s cramped spidery script on the back of a docket from the Waimanu Bake House (where he had apparently spent eight dollars thirty). It read:
Jose – I couldn’t find one with
a flap at the back
.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON
I opened the door of the consulting room to usher out Mrs MacPherson (chronic back pain coupled with complete refusal to cease picking up chunky four-year-old grandson. ‘Isn’t he big enough to climb up onto your knee himself?’ ‘But he holds up his little arms to me. How can I resist?’ ‘You could kneel down and give him a cuddle.’ But apparently she couldn’t), and Kim shot in as if she’d been fired from a gun.

‘Hello, Kim, dear,’ said Mrs MacPherson kindly.

Kim’s cheeks were hot and her hair dishevelled in a most un-Kim-like fashion. She gave a jerky little nod of greeting.

‘Shall we say the end of the week?’ I asked.

‘Not Thursday,’ said Mrs MacPherson. ‘I’ve got the Lyceum Club luncheon.’ She eyed me sternly, in case I was going to refuse to see her at any time except on Thursday between eleven and one.

‘Friday would be fine,’ I assured her. ‘Amber will find you an appointment.’

Mrs MacPherson nodded to me and addressed Kim once more. ‘Your mother tells me you’re going to university next year,’ she said. ‘What are you hoping to study?’

Kim made a truly heroic effort, and answered fairly evenly, ‘I haven’t decided just yet, Mrs MacPherson.’

‘So you won’t have decided on a university yet, either?’

‘Otago.’

‘Otago? But it’s so far away!’

‘Ex
act
ly,’ said Kim.

Closing the door behind Mrs MacPherson I asked, ‘What on earth’s the matter?’

‘My mother,’ Kim spat, ‘has asked the principal to make sure I get on the bus every afternoon after school. Like – like some
retarded
five-year-old who doesn’t know the way home.’

‘Or like some horny eighteen-year-old who might rush off and have sex with a pig hunter,’ I suggested helpfully.