The Boy in the Olive Grove (17 page)

‘He wouldn’t believe it. But, yeah, I will tell him. At least it’s an explanation about why I went so mental at the airport when he left.’

It appeared that I hadn’t yet told Clodagh that little gem of info. I filled her in.

She laughed. ‘You never know, if you tell him, he might come running home to sort you out. First you’re married to your stepmother and you burn her to death. Next you’re waiting on a Pacific island for your father to come home. Then you’re saying goodbye to your son. Both of whom are now your brother.’

‘Oh my god. It’s so far fetched! Does Charlotte still think I need drugs?’

‘Fraid so,’ Clo said. ‘Don’t let it bug you. Keep posting nice sane things on Facebook about the business. That always reassures her.’

‘Speaking of which, I’d better get back.’ I reached over the table to hug her. ‘Thanks, Clo. You’re a lifesaver. Again. And I haven’t even asked you about Giles. It’s all been about me, me, me.’

‘You’re excused. Things are great with Giles. That reminds me, I wanted to ask you — would you be okay if I tell him about all this?’

‘Sure. Go ahead. You have to tell me what he says though.’

‘Agreed.’ She linked her arm through mine, and we walked out into the sunshine.

I was halfway home before it struck me that I hadn’t told Clodagh about Mum, or about Gwennie saying I had to learn to accept that she’d never love me. I bloody did not want to accept that. She should love me, she ought to.

Still, right on cue, up popped the memory of that damn statue.

I drove the rest of the way swearing myself hoarse.

STATUE, REMEMBER
she’s a statue,
I told myself as I arrived back at Mum’s house.

Statues, though, don’t get shitty because their daughter didn’t bother ringing to say she’d be in for dinner. I couldn’t help it — I bought right into the fight.

‘Is this a new rule? Maybe you should tell me when the rules change.’

And we were off, spit and counter-spit. I walked out on her, and shut myself in my room.
A whole year of this.
Why couldn’t she be a decent human? All very well of Gwennie to do the statue trick, but a statue couldn’t rip your heart to shreds.

I picked up my phone to text Clodagh for a Skype rant, and put it down again. Same old story: boring, boring, boring. Which brought me back to Gwennie’s advice. Detach myself emotionally. Accept that she’ll never change. Accept that she’ll never love me.

And just how was I meant to do that?

I gave up, put on my trainers and took myself out for a run. An hour later I came back calmed and determined not to let my mother grind me into the dust. How to deal with her, though, remained a mystery. I had a feeling that just understanding that she was incapable of loving me wouldn’t be enough.

I accepted that now? Apparently.

Oh, to hell with her. I logged onto Facebook. Nothing more, of course, from the missing brother. I chatted for half an hour to Anita, Mary Jane and Isabelle, who was in France for the skiing. Jetlag, she said, was playing havoc with her sleeping. Then I gave into temptation and looked to see if Nick had a site. I didn’t really expect to find him — he didn’t strike me as the sort of guy who lived an online existence.

But he was there all right, even if he didn’t appear to update the page much. There were a couple of photos of him with his dad and his four brothers, one of him in a kayak, and a couple of him in rugby gear and covered with mud, a huge grin on his face.

The final one was the most recent. He was with Lulu. Talk about smouldering. I swear I could see the electricity between them. I couldn’t bear to look any longer. Served me right. I knew it would be dangerous to look.

The weekend dragged. I kept out of Mum’s way, left notes when I went to the tennis club and the pool. I told her I wouldn’t be in for dinner on Sunday but would be there for lunch. She said, ‘It isn’t convenient for me to prepare lunch for you today. You can’t expect me to be at your beck and call whenever you deign to come home.’

This time I ran straight to Dad and Iris’s. ‘She’s driving me insane!’ I yelled even before I’d shut the door.

Dad gave me an industrial-strength hug. ‘You can come and live here. Any time, Bess. I want you to know that.’

‘Thanks, Dad. Appreciate it.’ I wouldn’t, though, not unless life got truly unbearable. ‘I’ll hang in there. Don’t worry.’

‘Come and help me with lunch,’ Iris said. ‘We’ll talk.’

I shut the kitchen door. ‘I get the feeling Dad’s not a hundred per cent about inviting me to live here. Is he worrying about money still?’

She handed me a bowl of new potatoes to scrub. ‘Mostly not. He feels guilty about you, though. He knows what Clarissa’s like. He’d have you here like a shot, but she’d cut off all financial support for you if you lived with us.’

I’d taken my allowance for granted all my life. I’d never dreamed it could just stop. I brushed the thought aside. It might never happen.

‘Iris, Gwennie said I have to detach from her, but we didn’t have time to go into how to do it. Any ideas?’

My stepmother let loose a witchlike cackle. ‘I imagined her as a miniature train on a skinny little track. I chopped off all the carriages and stood back watching her scuttle around tooting. Some days I put her into a TV sitcom. She was the one-dimensional baddie. I’d visualise a screen around her and I’d watch her scene as if I were the producer.
Hmm, not bad,
I’d say to myself.
An eight out of ten performance today
.’

‘Did that help? Honestly?’

‘Try it,’ she said. ‘It’ll take a while before you can see her as something unrelated to you. The things she says are designed to hurt. She knows how to push on the sore spots, and she’ll push harder for a while when she sees it’s not working any more.’

‘Gee, you’re such a comfort,’ I said.

‘And you,’ said my stepmother, hugging me despite her flour-coated hands, ‘are a good person, a loving and thoughtful daughter, and a strong, competent woman. Don’t let
anyone
tell you different.’

And she was balm to my soul. Gwennie was right. I did have adults in my life who loved me.

 

THAT EVENING I
wrote to Hadleigh.

All right, you’ve asked for it. Here, for what it’s worth, is an explanation for the great airport departure debacle. I went to Gwennie (Iris’s shrink friend) for info on handling Mum but, instead, up you pop. There were a couple of past-life scenes where you disappeared into the distance, but I won’t go into those because you’ll just think it’s crap. The interesting bit was going back to when you went off to live with Dad and left me with the mother. I’d shut that right out of the memory bank — needed to believe that somebody in the world loved me according to G, so I blocked out evidence to the contrary. But here’s the kicker, bro — that was then, this is now. You were bloody brilliant apart from that one thing, so GET OVER IT. Come back (electronically or in person). You’re a big dumb lummox but I miss you.

I sent it. There was nothing else I could do now. Up to him from hereon in.

In the morning I got to the factory early to escape from Mum, but I didn’t try to do anything
constructive
apart from check to see if Hadleigh had written. Same old nothing. I sat at Dad’s desk in a puddle of loneliness. According to Gwennie, this was work I needed to do.
Experience the pain.
Well, pain sucked. Yes, okay — my brother escaped and left me in Alcatraz. Of course I didn’t like it, blah blah blah. That was years ago. I was over it, I’d moved on.

A wave — no, more like a sodding great tsumani — of pain, loneliness and betrayal socked me in the gut.
So much for moving on, Bess Grey.
I sat in Dad’s chair, hands pressed into my stomach while I fought for breath. It was horrible. I could see myself as a
ten-year
-old kid. I could see the expression on my face as I watched him ride away on his bike. I wasn’t crying. I seemed to be in a vacuum of disbelief. I stayed watching the road for him to come back until it was dark, and Mum stormed out, grabbed my arm and dragged me inside.

I put my head down on the desk, working to understand that this had passed, that I didn’t need to carry the pain any longer. By the time the door squealed, I had it together enough to greet a bunch of workers who all seemed blessedly sane, with nice, straightforward psyches. The sight of Clint gave me the usual jolt. I’d never get over pining for Nick while this older version of him was in front of me every day.

I was finishing off the morning’s emails when Bernie came in. ‘Anyone heard from Jason? No? Little sod hasn’t turned up.’

I don’t wanna be the boss!
Let somebody else handle this.
‘Okay, I’ll ring his house. See what the story is.’ I tried to sound more confident than I felt.

It was Jason’s mother who answered. Her voice clattered in my ear. ‘Oh dear, oh my goodness. Look, I’m sorry but he’s not very well.’

Clint loomed in the doorway, holding out his hand for the phone. ‘Erini? Clint Southey. Young Jason been on the piss, has he?’

I heard her wail of despair from a metre away.

‘Don’t worry,’ Clint said. ‘I’ll deal with him.’ He hung up on another wail. ‘Weekend bender. I’ll go and haul him out of bed. He won’t be much use, though, I’m guessing. Bess, you’ll have to talk to him when he gets in. Dock his pay. Read him the riot act.’

Oh shit. ‘Do I have to?’ He stood there in front of me, arms folded, feet apart, face implacable. ‘Okay! I get it. I do the boss thing.’ But I was laughing — my workers were definitely reclaiming their backbones.

Clint left, and I sat and practised Stern Boss lines.
This is a disappointment, Jason. Ring if you’re not well, Jason. You’ve got a job, Jason, don’t fuck it up.

I groaned. Being a boss sucked.

Half an hour later Clint came in towing a sorry specimen only just recognisable as Jason. He’d showered, or maybe Clint had just held his head under a tap somewhere. The purple stripe in his hair looked far from jaunty.

Clint, face like granite, propelled him in the door of the office. I winced as a flash of fellow feeling caught me.
Show no pity.
On the other hand, I found I couldn’t do the boss growl either. I just said, in as neutral a tone as I could make it, ‘Jason, I’m sorry, but you’ll lose twenty dollars of your pay.’

He cut his eyes at the clock on the wall. ‘Ten. Only an hour late.’

Don’t mess me around, buster.
‘Twenty. Clint had to take time out to go and get you. Don’t push it.’

He didn’t move for ten long seconds, just stood with his head down. God knows what was going on in it, other than a pounding ache. Then he turned himself around — rather gingerly, I noted — and slouched off over to the finishing shed where Bernie would no doubt give him a few useful tips on how to be an employed member of society.

Clint came over and patted my shoulder. ‘You handled him just right, Bess. Young bastard! I was ready to dong him — trying to get the better of you!’ He gave me another pat and got on with his work.

The rest of the day passed peacefully. At lunchtime, Jason’s clothes stank from the evil-smelling stain Bernie had made him work with. At smoko, his clothes were dusty from a hearty bout of sanding. But he didn’t try to go home before the others left. There was no word from Maurice. I checked to see if Hadleigh had responded. He hadn’t. I gave into temptation again and looked at Nick’s Facebook. He’d put up a new photo of Lulu. She appeared to be looking directly at me, and her expression said,
You can’t compete with me.

Unfortunately, she was right.

ALL TUESDAY
I twitched from the effort of not contacting Maurice to ask if he’d got any orders. I hoped he’d get in touch, but he seemed to belong to the Hadleigh school of communication.
Mid-afternoon
I escaped to the tennis courts. A guy with a girth larger than his shoulders was bashing a ball against the practice board.

‘Want a game?’ I asked.

‘Sure.’

His name was Lewis and I could tell he intended to beat me to a pulp. He did beat me, but not by much.

‘You’re a fighter,’ he said.

‘Yep, that’s me.’

‘You Clarissa’s daughter?’

‘Yes,’ I said, unsure if he was an admirer or if she’d pissed him off majorly.

‘You don’t look like her. She’s a real lady, is Clarissa.’

‘And I’m not?’

‘I didn’t mean that! It’s just … she’s, well, she’s kind of regal. Gracious, but not very approachable. Oh shit! Why don’t I just shut up and take the foot out of the mouth!’

He looked so distraught that I took pity on him. ‘Hey, it’s fine. I get what you mean. But how come you know her?’

‘We’re both in the horti society. She organises the garden tours. They’ve become big fundraisers since she took over. She’s pretty sharp, your mum.’

Yeah, so sharp she cuts me to pieces.

He shook my hand. ‘That was a good game. Much better than I expected, to tell you the truth.’

Once again I was left to ponder the enigma that was my mother. A fine woman, according to Wally Earl. Regal, gracious, unapproachable and sharp, according to Lewis. A real lady, which in my opinion wasn’t the greatest enticement to join the ranks of ladyhood.

Perhaps Hadleigh was the only person in the entire world who could describe her as loving. Except that he wouldn’t. He made use of her willingness to spend money on him, but he kept her at a distance. For the first time, I wondered if he did that because of the way she treated me.

Back at the land of wood shavings, saws and sandpaper, the men wanted to know if I’d heard from Maurice. I shook my head. ‘Had to go and play tennis to stop myself texting him.’

Clint looked gloomy but said, ‘Message for you from Nick. Text him. Says he owes you an ice cream.’

‘Is he home?’ It was all I could think to ask as a sudden flash of excitement and god knows what else crossed my face.

‘Nah,’ said Clint, ‘he’s in Africa. You’d better like melted ice cream.’

He was smiling, so I guessed that was a joke and smiled back.

Nick turned up precisely six minutes after I texted him. I braced myself, preparing for the sight of the ornamental Lulu hanging off his arm, but he was alone.

‘Is this the ice cream you promised me when I was ten years old?’ I asked. ‘The tree ice cream?’

OMG! That smile, those wickedly glinting dark eyes. That feeling of familiarity, of rightness. ‘That’s the one.’

‘So it’s gotta be huge? Lots of interest’s been piling up since I was ten.’

He took my arm. ‘It’ll be whopper. It’ll have all the bells and whistles too.’

‘They’d break my teeth. Can’t I just have chocolate flakes, hundreds and thousands, lollies …’ I turned to Clint. ‘Can you lock up? It’ll take me a week to get through such a huge ice cream.’

He waved us goodbye, Nick ushered me into his mum’s car and we were off. It felt so right, being here beside him. He
must
be the boy from the olive grove. He had to be. To remind myself of the uselessness of that idea, I asked, ‘Where’s Lulu?’

‘Japan. We’re going to her folks for Christmas, which is why I’m home this week.’

‘Where do they live?’ I was proud of how casually interested I sounded.

They lived in Australia. Some little place in Queensland, practically on the beach. I hoped the weather would be foul in the extreme. The image of the gorgeous Lulu cavorting with Nick in glorious blue waves was more than I could cope with.

‘That’ll be nice,’ I said.

He drove to a café at the far end of town. ‘They do the best ice creams. Come in and be amazed. How about you grab a table under one of the trees while I order? I can recommend the raspberry ripple with real fruit. Okay?’

When Nick appeared with the ice creams I had to laugh. My raspberry ripple in a cone had morphed into a long plate with three mountains of ice cream surrounded by a sea of raspberry coulis.

‘Blackberry, peach and butterscotch. Eat and enjoy.’

I did enjoy, but it was his company, just being with him, that made my heart sing. I gave myself up to the moment. This was my afternoon, my one time in the sun with the guy who, just maybe, kept popping up in my head from long ago.

Then, damn it all, I found myself asking, ‘Do you two go over to Aus often?’

‘Nah. I get sick of the travelling actually.’

‘To Australia? Harden up! It’s just a quick hop and you’re there.’

He gave me peculiar look, one that said
Don’t you know what I do?

Come to think of it, I didn’t. ‘Do you travel a lot? For work, I mean.’

He started ticking countries off on his fingers. ‘Thailand, Egypt, South Africa, Rarotonga. All in the last twelve months.’

‘So what do you do? Airline pilot? Spy?’

‘I’m a model.’ He said it totally deadpan.

‘Um, what sort? What do you model?’ The idea was bizarre. Clint’s son — a model? I propped my chin on my hands, all the better to examine him. ‘Yeah, I guess you’re okay to look at.’

He roared with laughter. ‘Chicks are usually impressed as hell, or write me off as a bit of fluff.’

‘What does your dad think? Does he introduce you as my son the model?’

‘He’s fine with it. Mainly because I showed him my first pay slip before I told him what I was doing.’

‘But how come I haven’t heard about it? This town being the size it is and all?’

‘Ah, I’ve sworn the family to secrecy and I use a different name.’ He struck a pose. ‘Meet Nico Hamilton, model.’ Before I could ask, he said, ‘It’s just easier. I can be me, then when I’m working I step into Nico’s shoes. I don’t have to carry him round with me, see.’

Oh yes, I did see. He only had two personas, though, not a whole swag of them.

He took a scoop of my ice cream.

‘Hey! Hands off! That’s mine.’ I batted the spoon away.

‘But you’re not eating it. Can’t have it going to waste.’

I got busy again. He was right, it
was
the best ice cream.

‘And speaking of parents,’ Nick said, ‘how’s it going with your mum?’

I shrugged. ‘Let’s not wreck the afternoon.’

‘No Hadleigh to deflect her rage?’ He’d stopped smiling now. ‘Are you okay? You’re going to live with her next year?’

I sighed. ‘Yeah. I’m surviving. Iris helps. She’s great. But there’s so much going on that—’

To my astonishment, I found myself pouring out the entire saga of my drinking binge, the images that had led to it, and the whole Iris/Gwennie past-life regression scenario. I finished up with, ‘Don’t tell anyone. Please. It’s all so bizarre. I feel like a whacko.’

But Nick just burst out laughing again. ‘Sorry, I was just picturing what Dad would say. Betcha you haven’t told your father either.’

I shuddered. ‘Hell, no!’

‘You know, I envy you. Not seeing that particular life, of course. But what an experience! For you here and now, I mean.’

I fear I was gaping at him. ‘You mean, you
believe
it? You don’t think I’ve gone crazy?’

He said, ‘Okay, here’s my whacko story. Ready?’

Nick, son of solid, sensible Clint, with a whacko story? ‘I can’t wait.’

‘When I was fourteen, we stayed at Kawhia for a couple of weeks in the summer. I was being my usual rotten self. Driving the parents insane, being really obnoxious, and the little bros followed where I went and did what I did. One night, just on dark, Dad was so fed up with me that he sent me out to run along the beach for an hour. Well, there I was jogging along at a nice easy trot and, I remember, I was devising a way of getting back at Dad, so I wasn’t looking much where I was going.

‘I almost flattened an old guy out for a stroll. Stopped just in time. I took a breath to yell at him for being old and in my way, but he looked right in my face, and that knocked the wind straight out of me. It felt like he could see inside my heart, soul, whatever. I couldn’t see him too clearly because the light was behind him. Then he said the weirdest thing.’

Nick stopped talking then and got busy spooning ice cream into his mouth.

I grabbed his hand. ‘Keep talking!’ Then I let go, figuring it might be a good policy not to come between a guy and his ice cream.

‘Mmmm, bloody good,’ he said. ‘So, this old guy says to me,
I have known you from afar. You are not worthy of the talents you have been given. I am grievously disappointed in you. Why do you trample the hearts of those who love you? Why do you set the feet of your brothers on the road of ruin? Is it not enough for you to choose destruction for yourself? Let your brothers find their own pathways.
Then he walked off, but I heard him say,
A sorrowful day indeed. Such promise. Such waste.’

‘Holy crap!’ I didn’t quite have the courage to ask what I really wanted to know:
Was he real
?

‘The strange thing was — I didn’t go after him. I just stood there watching him limp away. He had a stick, a carved staff, that he leaned on. It sank into the sand each time he thumped it down. What he’d said kind of banged around inside my whole body, not just my head. I tried to get mad at him, but it didn’t work. All I could think was that some old guy I’d never seen was disappointed in me. It didn’t occur to me till later that he must know my family.

‘I must’ve stayed where I was for well past the hour I was meant to be out, because when it was fully dark Dad came looking for me.’

‘Did you tell him about the old guy?’

‘Yeah, I told him. He wasn’t impressed. Said the whole world probably knew by now what an idiot I was, but he shone the torch around, looking to see if the old guy was still in sight. My footprints were clear and sharp on the sand, and so were Dad’s. But there were none coming towards me where the old guy had walked. There were no holes where he’d thumped his staff into the sand. Dad cuffed me over the head. He wanted to know if I was on drugs, because if I was I could leave and never come back.’ Nick gave me a grin. ‘You realise I haven’t told a living soul about this until now? My cred is in your hands, fair maiden.’

He hadn’t told Lulu, but he’d told me. ‘I won’t tell yours if you won’t tell mine. Did seeing him make you stop being Nick the Nasty?’

He gave a crack of laughter. ‘Yes, it did, and man did that spook the parents! They went around for weeks on tiptoe, waiting for me to bust out in wicked excess. The brothers couldn’t work it out either. They still wanted to walk on the wild side, and they gave me a hard time until we got into sport. Rugby, distance running and competitive woodchopping are good for using up teenage aggression. Tried shearing too, but that didn’t go too well.’

‘For you or the sheep?’

‘Both.’

We sat quiet, listening to the birds and the chatter of the families behind us in the garden. At last, I said, ‘Did you look for him later?’

‘I spent the rest of the holidays trying to find him. I asked everybody I met if they knew of an old man who was skinny, bent over and walked with the aid of a staff. The only other thing I knew about him was he had a deep voice. I went out every night at the same time, hoping he’d come back, but I never saw him again. I don’t know who he was, or where he came from. All I really know is that he didn’t leave footprints in the sand, and he knew me better than I knew myself. And,’ he added, ‘he didn’t think much of me.’

‘I’ll swap you,’ I said. ‘You have my pictures and I’ll have your old man.’

Nick shook his head. ‘No-go. He’d like you. You wouldn’t disappoint him.’

I was pleased he thought that about me. ‘So what you’re telling me is that if I’m a nutcase, then so are you?’

‘That, my friend, is about the size of it. Life’s full of surprises. Who’d have thought ice cream could be so soul-baring.’

‘They’ve probably got a secret recipe. They—’ I broke off because my phone started ringing. ‘It’s Maurice.’

‘Answer it! Quick, woman!’

I crossed every available finger. ‘Maurice? How’s things? Any joy?’

‘Three orders for dining tables. An order for a bookcase and three expressions of cautious interest.’

‘That’s amazing, Maurice — that’s way better than we’d hoped. I’m not at work right now, but have you told the others? Does Dad know?’

‘You tell everyone, Bess. I’m off for a celebratory drink with the missus.’

Success! At last! I jumped to my feet, hauled Nick up and together we danced around the garden, copping looks from disapproving to indulgent from other patrons. Then he grabbed hold of me, swinging me off my feet. And, between one moment and the next, we stopped the wild dancing, our arms still around each other. I dropped mine, aware that my heart was racing, and not from the leaping about, but he pulled me in close.

I looked up at him. ‘Nick?’ A mistake.

We stared into each other’s eyes and I’ve no idea what he saw in mine, but I saw warmth and joy and belonging in his.

‘Bess.’ He bent his head, and I knew he was going to kiss me. I knew I should pull away and remind him it was Lulu he loved. I didn’t. It was a gentle kiss, sweet and undemanding. I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to the small world of the two of us.

Somebody in the garden clapped. Somebody else wolf-whistled.

Nick straightened up, his face rueful. ‘Sorry, Bess. That was out of line.’

I kept my voice as light as I could. ‘It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. We just got a bit carried away.’ I stepped back, collected my bag from the table. ‘But it’s such good news. I’m really feeling hopeful about the factory.’

Nick put his arm around my shoulders in a comradely sort of way as we left the garden, but he didn’t talk then or in the car except to swear at a driver who overtook us on the blind brow of a hill.