A Roast on Sunday (4 page)

“You know that’s not what I meant. A woman like her deserves to be loved.”

“
Maybe so, but you know she’s not about to start anything. She can’t. Not with the way things are with Willow.”

“You guys
are still pulling that shit? Man that’s crazy. That kid is old enough to know better. You underestimate her. Be straight up, she’ll understand.”

Ray held up his hands in agreement.
“Hey it’s not up to me, it’s her mother’s thing and I’m staying out of it.”

They watched as Maggie appeared around a corner lugging
two suitcases behind her. They could see that her expression was cross even from all the way across the square, and as she passed underneath trees the leaves shuddered and shrivelled away from her wrath.

Ray sighed and got to his feet, his knees
creaking in protest like the branches on the ancient oak above him. “I’d better go help her,” he said. “See you guys tonight.”

Chapter five

With Ray’s help Maggie managed to set her
stand up in preparation for the night ahead in record time. There wasn’t a great deal she could do in advance anyway, as she never put the soaps out until just before the market started. In the heat of the day they would start to soften and melt quickly, but once the sun went behind the big oak they would be ok. So it was simply a matter of setting up the tables. Three tables made up her little area, and she arranged them as usual in a U shape, with one in front of her and another on each side. The front table she covered with a pale lemon coloured cotton table cloth, the one on her right in mint green and the one on her left in rose pink. She loved colour, could never stand plain white anything. In fact, when she married Jon twelve years previously she had worn a dress made from dusky orange silk, with matching baby rose buds woven through her hair. It was quite out of the norm and hadn’t been a popular choice with everyone who’d attended, but she and Jon had loved it and at the end of the day that was all that mattered.

Once the cloths were laid she
opened the suitcases containing her stands. Ray carefully peeled off the layers of newspaper and passed them to her to arrange on the tables. She fingered their cool surfaces lovingly as she placed them where she wanted them.

A few years back she’d grown
tired of using wicker baskets to display her soaps in. The baskets gathered dust in the months between markets, and if it wasn’t dust it was dirt from the garden after Dot ‘borrowed’ her baskets to go fruit or flower picking or to collect the eggs from the chickens. Maggie would have to scrub them clean every time she needed to use them, and over time the wicker had started to fray and fall apart and look messy.

By chance she had ducked into the second-hand shop one day to have a word to Mavis behind the counter about
her goat breaking through the fence wires and raiding their vegetable garden again, and while there she had fallen in love on the spot with a vintage blue glass cake stand. It was gorgeous. Straight away she knew she had found a new way to display her soaps. She bought that stand and another one Mavis had, three tiered, ceramic with delicate flowers and birds and gold around the rim. And then every time she had a chance over the next few months she made trips to other second-hand and antique shops in other towns, and now she had an eclectic collection that was her pride and joy. Single story cake stands made from coloured glass and glazed ceramic, milk glass and even a couple made from Jadeite. She also had a big one made out of shiny tin, which she used to display her silver birch soap. When rubbed into the joints the soap eased arthritis and muscular pain, so was in demand from the town’s elderly and sportspeople.

No two were the same, and that’s what she loved about them
, the mismatch of it all. They displayed her soaps beautifully like they were cupcakes or some other such delectable treat, and few who passed by her stall could resist the temptation.

She had no issue with leaving
her cake stands all set up as other stall owners were always around, as well as Ted, the overweight security guard pushing seventy who the council paid every market to wander around and keep an eye on things. Once she had everything where she wanted it she stepped out from behind the tables and surveyed it from the front, just as her customers would see it.

“Perfect,” she declared. Then she checked her watch. “Just enough time to get home, shower and grab a bite to eat then
be back here before it all kicks off.”

“I’ll see you
at home,” Ray said.

“Ok,” Maggie agreed
, blowing a kiss his way. “Wait, how’d you get into town this morning?”

Her father
mumbled something under his breath, not quite able to meet her eye.

“Oh dad, tell me you didn’t bring the bi
ke? You know what Geoffrey said. Next time he sees you on it he’s going to confiscate it, for good this time too.”

“Honey, I’ve been driving that thing into town since long before Geoffrey’s parents even held hands.”

“Yes dad, I know. But he’s the law and unfortunately what he says, goes. It’s just not safe.”

“Bullshit. I’ve never had an accident. Not once.”

Maggie gave him a stern look.

“Ok once. But
that truck wasn’t looking where he was going. The accident had nothing to do with my driving.”

Maggie sighed and rubbed one temple.
“I don’t have time for this. It’s a farm bike dad, it’s not meant to be on public roads. Drive it home now and then promise me you won’t bring it into town again.”

“Mm.”

“
Promise m
e dad.”

“
Fine,” Ray stalked off. He was upset she knew, but he’d get over it. He valued his independence, always had done. And he was right; he
had
been riding farm bikes into town since before the roads round here were even tar-sealed. At least the one he drove now was a quad bike with four wheels, hence slightly safer than the old two wheeled one he used to own.

“I’ll be back in about an hour,” she called to Robert on the stand next to hers. He sold wooden carvings that he carved himself from fallen trees on his and his
neighbours’ properties. As a self declared tree hugger, he refused to cut any tree down himself, but luckily the area was hit by enough storms and high winds in winter to ensure he had a steady supply of material.

“Sure,” he called back to her. “I’ll keep an eye on your
tables for you.”

“Thanks,” she smiled at him gratefully.
He was a nice guy, and they’d even gone for coffee once or twice but although he’d have loved for something more to happen, Maggie wasn’t interested in things going any further. He wasn’t her type for a start. She preferred her men masculine, not sandal wearing, beard growing hippies, nice as they may be.

She
stewed as she made her way back to her car, remembering the earlier altercation with Jack. The man was a moron. Obviously where he’d come from that sort of behaviour was acceptable, but if he carried on like it here he’d soon find the townsfolk turning against him. His truck was still in the stolen park and she had to resist a childish urge to scratch a door. Instead she settled for kicking a tyre, a move that hurt her more than it did any damage to his truck.

“Dammit,” she swore, hopping on one foot while her toes curled
up in protest.

“Want me to fetch you some ice for that?”

Jack had come up behind her and was now leaning against a lamp post, watching her with obvious amusement. She felt her cheeks redden in embarrassment that he had caught her out in the act of behaving like a teenager, and she let her head drop so her hair covered most of her face.

“
No thanks, I’m fine,” she said.

“You sure?
Looked like a pretty hard kick to me.” His tone was cheeky, and she felt her anger return. She looked up at him and narrowed her eyes.

“
You think you’re pretty funny don’t you.”

He shrugged. “I’ve been told I have a great sense of
humour, yes.”

“
Really? Well laugh at
this,”
and without even thinking about what she was about to do she kicked out her foot again, but this time at the car door, leaving a dent that was definitely going to require the services of a panel beater to remove.

Jack straightened up then.
“What the hell?” he said, “I knew you were stroppy, but causing wilful damage to property?”

She stared in horror at the dent in the door. Why had she done that? She never let her temper get away from her.
Here she was lecturing her father on obeying the law and then she turned around and did something like that? Thank god neither her father nor Willow had been around to see her juvenile behaviour. Gritting her teeth, she turned to Jack to apologise. But then she saw that he was laughing at her.

“You’re an ass, anyone ever
told you that?” she said furiously.

“Sure, every si
ngle one of my ex-girlfriends.”

“Why don’t you just do us all a
favour and hurry up and get out of town. There can’t be anything here that’s possibly of any interest to someone like you.”

He stopped laughing and regarded her, a dimple in his cheek puckered from the smile that still lurked just beneath the surface.

“Oh on the contrary,” he said. “This town has something I’m fast becoming very interested in.”

And even she wasn’t
naive enough not to catch the loaded innuendo behind the words. The way he looked her up and down when he said them left her in no doubt just what it was he was keen on.

“Not in a million years,” she said, and with her cheeks burning she turned and quickly walked to her car. She half expected to hear footsteps behind her, at the very least asking for compensation for the damage she had caused, but he didn’t follow. To her
immense disappointment, this disappointed her.

All the way home she tried to avoid thinking about Jack. And all the way home, she failed.
It had been a long time since she had verbally sparred with a man, and even though she couldn’t stand
him
, she had enjoyed that part. In the six and a half years since Jon had left, she had focused purely on raising Willow and on her soap business. It had gone from a hobby to something she’d had to get serious about in a hurry in order to pay the bills. She had no mortgage at least, not like others she knew who were struggling in these tough economic times. Her parent’s house may have been in need of a lick of paint and a few new boards, but it was sturdy and it was freehold, and that was a huge relief. 

However
huge old houses like her parents weren’t cheap to run, and then there were the other bills like chicken feed, school fees and new clothes for Willow who seemed to go through a growth spurt every other month. Her parents both drew a pension and they both contributed to household costs like food and electricity. But Maggie was proud and didn’t want them to have to look after her and her daughter, so she had worked hard and over the years she had built her soap business up into a nice little earner. She sold a steady trade from home, to both locals and travellers passing by, thanks to a big sign that Willow and Nick had painted and hung from a large Pohutukawa tree on the main road. It was a simple sign, just wood with large blue letters, ‘Homemade soaps made by Maggie Tanner - For Sale here!’, and an arrow pointing down their road, but it had stall made Maggie cry a little with happiness the first time they showed it to her.

Her own little business of sorts.
It was something she had dreamt of since she had been Willow’s age and first discovered her knack for making soaps with medicinal and emotional benefits. The night markets were her biggest money earner; in one night she could make what sometimes took her a couple of months to earn otherwise.

Pulling up in front of the house she noticed the farm bike parked in the garag
e. Ray had beaten her home, which meant he must have either taken a short cut through Parker’s farm or ignored the speed limit. She sighed. Perhaps her mother could talk some sense into him. Stepping inside the house she could smell something delicious frying; lamb chops if she wasn’t mistaken.

“Mum?” she called out, stopping to strip off her
T-shirt and throw it into the laundry beside the front door. She had worked up a sweat lugging the suitcases and setting up the tables and she only had a brief time in which to eat and freshen up. Wearing a black singlet and jeans she went into the kitchen where her mother was humming as she turned the chops over in the pan.

“Mum,
where’ve you been? You were supposed to help me today, remember?”

Her mother pulled a
n apologetic face. “Sorry love, Hazel called last night all upset and I clean forgot.”

Maggie sighed and opened the cupboard where the plates were kept to start setting the table.
She was used to this sort of behaviour from her mother so couldn’t muster up the energy to be really angry with her. There was no point. It was just how things were.

“She ok?”

“Who?”

“Hazel.”

“Oh yes, she’s fine now. Was just feeling a little upset and needed some time away. You know her husband Harry is in the early stages of dementia right, well yesterday he locked her out of the car at the supermarket and refused to let her back in. He called the police on his cell phone and told them she was trying to car jack him.”

“Oh no, poor Hazel.”

“Took the police two hours to talk him into unlocking the door.”

“I hate to say it, but it sounds like Hazel needs help looking after him.”
Maggie lay out the cutlery and salt and pepper and stood back to see if she had missed anything. Sauce; her father refused to eat anything unless it had tomato sauce on it. She walked over to the fridge.

“She does,
and that’s what she realised yesterday. Her kids called from the city and told her she needs to put him in a specialty home, one where nurses can keep an eye on him properly. She needed to get away from it for awhile so got her brother and his next to useless wife in to babysit and she called me and the others. Mash those potatoes will you?”