Dinner at Rose's (5 page)

Cheryl had finally produced her baby a fortnight ago. She had been almost entirely sleepless ever since, her mother-in-law had come for a long visit to advise her on correct baby-rearing, and the poor girl was in no state to discuss tricky cases.

‘And your flat?’

I sighed. ‘Oh, it’s alright. But if my furniture ever arrives I think I’ll go and look for something else. Sara follows me round the house switching off lights and making sure I only boil enough water for one cup of tea at a time.’

‘How very environmentally friendly of her,’ said Mum.

‘Last night I left my mobile phone charging in the living room and she turned it off at the wall so it went flat about half an hour after I left home.’

‘Ah, that explains it. Graeme rang us this afternoon asking how to get hold of you. He said your mobile kept going through to voicemail. I gave him your home number – you don’t mind, do you?’

‘No,’ I said sadly, wondering what he wanted. These days my ex-boyfriend only rang me when something expensive happened – the rates were due or the bathroom ceiling had developed an ominous crack. ‘How are the goats?’

‘Oh, they’re doing well,’ said Mum. ‘We had a minor panic yesterday when the tractor broke down, but luckily it was just a split hose.’

‘What are you going to do when it finally blows up?’ I enquired.

‘Goodness only knows. Perhaps I could hire myself out as an escort.’

‘I don’t think I want my mother lurking on street corners in a miniskirt and thigh-high boots. I’ll buy you a new tractor.’

‘We cannot let our only daughter finance us. It’s supposed to be the other way round.’

‘That’s okay,’ I assured her. ‘I am confidently expecting to inherit a farm worth millions in another fifty years.’

‘Well, that’s a thought,’ said Mum. ‘And it may be considerably sooner if your father continues the way he’s going.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He’s been playing the guitar in bed is what’s wrong with him,’ she said grimly. ‘If I hear “Rhinestone Cowboy” one more time I’ll do him a serious injury.’

THAT EVENING I
temporarily escaped the reality-TV shows and the struggle for sufficient light to read by at home and went to have tea with my old schoolfriend Clare. She married a solicitor from Hamilton five years ago, brought him back home and has been producing children steadily ever since.

Brett and Clare live on several acres on the edge of town. They have fancy chickens and ducks, pigs, alpacas and miniature ponies and a malevolent goat called Alfred. The children are all white-blond with huge blue eyes and pink-and-white complexions, and they’re fairly uphill work.

When I arrived the two big boys were rolling together across the lawn, apparently trying to strangle each other. It looked like a reasonably even fight so I didn’t intervene, but I did pause by the back step where two-year-old Lucy was carefully pulling up a whole row of newly planted pansies by the roots. ‘Hey, Luce, that’s probably not the best plan,’ I said. ‘Let’s put them back in.’

Lucy narrowed her beautiful eyes at me and pushed back her curls with a grimy hand. ‘No,’ she said flatly.

‘I think we’d better,’ I told her. ‘If you pull up the plants they won’t grow and have pretty flowers.’

‘Nonononono
no
! Go ’
way
!’

Clare came to the door looking warm and mildly harassed. ‘Lucy,’ she said without any real hope, ‘don’t pull up my flowers. Say hello to Josie.’

Lucy threw herself to the ground and began to beat her head on the path. I took a step forward in alarm but Clare said wearily, ‘Leave her. Apparently we just have to ignore her and she’ll grow out of it.’

‘Okay,’ I said doubtfully, crouching down to poke the baby pansies back into the soil.

‘Oh, leave them,’ said Clare. ‘I don’t know why I bothered. Michael! Charlie! Please stop trying to gouge each other’s eyes out – oh, never mind. Come in, Josie, and tell me all your news.’

Clare’s is a nice house, or at least it looks like it was once. But the floor was four inches deep in crappy plastic toys and someone had made a solid attempt at ripping the paper off the walls up to a height of about three feet. A somewhat wild-eyed kitten observed us from the top of the microwave and the kitchen bench was entirely hidden under piles of dirty dishes.

‘Have a seat,’ said Clare. ‘Not that one! Charlie had a little accident this afternoon. Here . . .’ She lifted a pile of old newspapers and put them on the table, where they slid gently to the floor. ‘Leave it,’ she said. ‘Honestly. Wine?’

‘Yes, please,’ I said, producing a bottle. ‘I hope this stuff ’s okay – I bought it because the label was familiar and then had a horrible feeling it was familiar because we tried it once before and it tasted like turps.’

‘Who cares?’ said Clare. ‘As long as it’s alcoholic. How are you, anyway?’

‘Good.’ I sat at the table and began to clear enough space for two wine glasses. It was a still, golden evening and the bush-clad ranges out the French doors looked close enough to touch. They made a lovely backdrop to the two little boys, who were now digging a hole in the middle of the lawn. We couldn’t see Lucy but she was still howling with impressive stamina. ‘How was the kindergarten picnic?’

‘Oh, it was fine,’ said Clare. ‘Michael threw up in the car and Lucy bit Maureen Stacey’s little boy and got put in the naughty corner, but it was fine. God, this is good wine.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘Are you missing the bright city lights?’

‘Nope,’ I said. ‘When you live in the city you talk lots about the restaurants and plays you could go to, and you still end up picking up takeaways on the way home and watching TV.’

‘Still,’ she said, ‘it must be nice to be able to do it if you want to. I never appreciated how free I was before I had children. These days it’s a major mission to go and buy something to wear.’

‘You haven’t resorted to Heather Anne’s, have you?’

‘Not quite,’ said Clare glumly. ‘The Warehouse. And I got a lovely pair of jeans at Farmlands last week.’

Michael appeared in the doorway, breathing heavily. ‘I want a sandwich,’ he announced.

‘It’s nearly tea time,’ said his mother.

‘Want a
sandwich
!’ He kicked the white-painted doorframe with a muddy gumboot. ‘Mum! Sandwich! Mum! Sandwich!
Mum!
’

‘For the love of Christ,’ said Clare savagely, getting to her feet. ‘Alright! You’d better take one to your brother too.’

‘He’s done a poo in his pants,’ Michael informed her gleefully. ‘It’s going down his leg.’

‘Bloody marvellous,’ said Clare.

‘I’ll do the sandwich if you do the poo,’ I offered.

‘Thanks.’

I made Michael a peanut butter sandwich, which he looked at in disgust because I had cut it into squares rather than triangles. I cut the squares diagonally across, and he rejected it again because the triangles were too small. Charlie sat on his mother’s knee and grizzled steadily, holding up a book between Clare and me so we couldn’t see one another. Lucy fell down the steps and grazed her knee – though you’d have thought her leg had been severed – and at bedtime Clare had to go and lie down with each of them in turn until they fell asleep.

‘The joys of parenthood,’ said Brett sourly, slumped on the couch with his eyes closed. Clare had been gone for three-quarters of an hour and I was beginning to wonder if she would come back at all. ‘We haven’t had a conversation for four years.’

‘How on earth did you manage to conceive the last couple?’ I asked.

‘Can’t remember. Must have met in the hall once or twice, I suppose.’ He opened his eyes and grinned at me – he has a particularly nice grin. ‘Ah well, it’ll come right in another fifteen years or so.’

‘And just think – never seeing each other stops things from growing stale. It must really keep the romance and mystery alive.’

‘Much easier than having an affair, I suppose,’ he said, then abruptly sat up. ‘Shit, I’m sorry!’

‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘Honestly, Brett, stop looking so appalled.’

I GOT HOME
at about nine to find Andy in the kitchen making himself a vegemite and honey sandwich. As you do. He raised his chin at me in greeting and muttered, ‘Some bloke rang for you before.’

‘Graeme, he said his name was,’ Sara called helpfully, hoisting herself off the couch (it was the ad break). ‘He wants you to call him back urgently.’

‘Thanks.’ I picked up the kettle to fill it, feeling a need for strong coffee before the fun-filled conversation to come.

‘Are you filling it from the
hot tap
?’ Sara demanded, horrified. ‘That’s such a waste of power!’

Andy met my eyes for a second in silent but eloquent sympathy, then turned and mooched out of the kitchen. Sara pulled the kettle from my nerveless grasp, tipped the hot water it contained down the sink and turned on the cold tap. I briefly considered bashing her to death with the soup ladle before reluctantly deciding that, as satisfying as that would be, it probably wasn’t worth spending the next thirty years in prison. Instead I picked up the phone and went down the hall to my tiny room, vindictively switching on every light as I went.

Chapter 5

‘G
ET OUT OF
it!’ I shouted.

The dogs obeyed but the pig paid no attention whatsoever, instead pushing between my legs and leaning lovingly against the inside of my right knee. I scratched him between the ears and he closed his little piggy eyes, giving soft grunts of pleasure. He really was an animal of immense charm.

‘Aunty Rose?’ I called, putting my head around the open kitchen door.

‘Out here, sweet pea.’

I wandered through the house, swinging a plastic bag from one wrist, and found her lying limply in a deckchair on the veranda. ‘Hello,’ I said, bending to kiss her cheek. ‘I brought you some of Mum’s new batch of cheese.’

‘How lovely. I can’t get up; I’m far too lazy. How about fetching us both a drink to have with it?’

I went to the kitchen and returned with two glasses of riesling, a knife for the cheese and an open packet of crackers unearthed from behind the bread bin. Aunty Rose accepted her wine with a sigh and lay back in her chair. ‘I don’t know how old those crackers are,’ she said.

‘Never mind. If they’re stale Percy will eat them.’ The pig had trotted round the outside of the house and was squatting at the foot of the steps, panting gently in the afternoon sun. ‘How are you?’

‘Shattered,’ said Rose, taking a long appreciative drink from her glass.

‘Why?’

‘No idea,’ she said. ‘Old age, I expect. Look at the late sunlight catching the thistledown – isn’t that lovely?’

I looked over the fence at the silver drift of an acre or so of Californian thistle seed head. ‘It is, but I don’t know if Matt would agree with you. Are you feeling brave enough to try the cheese?’

‘Why not,’ she said.

I cut us each a modest wedge and handed one over. We both sniffed warily – it was fairly pungent stuff – and then took a cautious bite.

‘
Christ!
’ said Aunty Rose, spraying cracker crumbs before hurling the rest of her portion over the veranda railing and gulping a large mouthful of wine, which she swilled around in her mouth. I responded with even less class, leaping to my feet and spitting the lot into a handy flowerbed, where Percy nosed after it with interest.