Dinner at Rose's (18 page)

‘Does the Pope wear a funny hat?’

Hazel sank into a kitchen chair with an air of exhaustion. ‘What a day,’ she murmured. ‘And
now
who’s coming to bother you, Rosie?’

Aunty Rose was lowering herself carefully onto the chaise longue. I heard the familiar splutter of Matt’s decrepit ute through the dogs’ chorus and said, ‘It’s just Matt.’

‘Where is Kimmy, dear?’

‘At home,’ I said. ‘I dropped her off about half an hour ago.’

‘How is our young miscreant?’ enquired Aunty Rose.

‘Bowed by remorse,’ I told her. ‘I hope it wears off in a day or two. It’s pitiful to see.’

‘I hope it doesn’t,’ said the young miscreant’s mother tartly. ‘How she could be so insensitive as to worry us all at a time like this – and think of the repercussions for your health, Rosie dear.’

‘Good God,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘I hope you didn’t say that to Kim.’

‘Well, she needs to know how her thoughtlessness affects others.’

‘Oh, for Pete’s sake,’ Aunty Rose muttered. ‘Josephine, remind me to ring the poor child. Hello, dear boy.’

‘Yeah, g’day,’ said Matt in a low, flat Kiwi drawl specifically designed to provoke his aunt. ‘It’s nice to have you home.’ He came across the kitchen and kissed her cheek, Farmer Barbie at his heels. This evening Cilla was wearing a snow-white top and a delicate primrose cardigan over her jeans. Her hair was loose down her back and she looked, I thought bitterly, like a little porcelain doll.

I was a bit taken aback by the intensity of my resentment, and to make up for it said, ‘Hi, Cilla. You look beautiful,’ far more warmly than was really necessary.

‘
Doesn’t
she just,’ said Hazel. ‘What a lovely little cardigan. And
such
flowers, dear.’

‘Thank you,’ said Cilla demurely. ‘Miss Thornton, it’s so nice to have you home.’ She handed Aunty Rose a bunch of chrysanthemums, yellow and cream – they went delightfully with her cardigan.

‘They’re very nice,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘Thank you.’

‘So thoughtful,’ murmured Hazel. ‘Such a dear girl.’

For Christ’s sake, she got them at the petrol station
, I thought, as sour as a whole vat full of acid.
It’s not like she
grew them from seed
. ‘Anyone else for tea?’

‘No,’ said Hazel. ‘I must head home. I’ve a shattering headache from the driving.’

Cilla looked sympathetic, which made one of us. Matt merely smiled faintly on his way to the peanut jar and I turned away to fetch a vase for the flowers. ‘Aunty Rose,’ I said, ‘can I possibly interest you in a scrambled-egg sandwich?’

‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘You know, Josephine, what I would
really
like is a very soft boiled egg with toast soldiers.’

As I made dinner according to Aunty Rose’s precise instructions – ‘Butter to the very edges of the toast, love,’ and, ‘Leave them in for four minutes and twenty seconds from when the water comes to the boil’ – Matt vanished outside with the empty wood basket and Cilla made extremely polite conversation.

As soon as he reappeared she tucked a hand into his and murmured, ‘Honey, your aunt will want to rest.’

‘I’ll be over tomorrow morning,’ Matt said. He kissed Aunty Rose, smiled at me and went out with Cilla still clinging to his hand.

I blinked hard once or twice, said silently,
Don’t even
think
about it
to the lump in my throat and asked, ‘I don’t suppose you should have a glass of sauvignon blanc with your egg?’

‘Probably not,’ said Aunty Rose, ‘but I can’t think of anything nicer.’ She was silent for a moment as I carefully sliced the tops off our eggs and retrieved the wine from the fridge, and then she said gently, ‘Josie, my love, come here.’

I went, sinking to the floor beside her and leaning my head against her knee. I wasn’t sure whether Mum had told her or if she’d seen it herself, but I was unexpectedly comforted that she knew. She stroked my hair while the griffon stared over our heads in a bored fashion, and at length she said, ‘I suppose it might get us in trouble if we put those flowers straight onto the compost heap.’

I gave a little gulp of laughter, got to my feet and poured us each a glass of pale, crisp wine to go with our eggs. ‘Matt would never notice,’ I said, ‘but his mother would.’

Aunty Rose got slowly and painfully to her feet to take her seat at the table. ‘They’re almost exactly alike,’ she said. ‘Cilla and Hazel, I mean.’

‘Mm,’ I said thoughtfully. They were indeed. Soft and sweet and clingy, just like fragrant pink leeches.

Chapter 17

I
HAVE NO
doubt that mastectomies are painful and unpleasant, but compared to the hideous crippling nausea of the chemo, Aunty Rose said, a mere surgical wound was an absolute doddle. She had a little stash of pain medication and drove herself down to the medical centre in town every afternoon for a change of dressing, but as early as Sunday morning she was better than she had been since the chemotherapy began.

On Monday night after work I met Andy in the supermarket, pushing a trolley containing two boxes of beer, a wide range of frozen pies, hash browns, chips and fish fingers, and a token bunch of bananas.

‘Howdy, stranger,’ I said. ‘That’s a health-giving and nutritious selection you’ve got there.’

‘All the food groups,’ said Andy. ‘Alcohol, fat and protein.’

‘You forgot sugar.’

‘I haven’t got to that aisle yet,’ he explained.

‘I see. Hey, I’m coming home in a day or two.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ he advised. ‘The bush pig has found herself a boyfriend.’

‘Crikey,’ I said in surprise. ‘Who?’

‘Some dickhead who drives for Hayden Judd.’ Hayden ran Waimanu Transport, a small down-at-heel trucking company that operated out of a grotty shed next to the sale yards.

‘Huh. Well, good on her.’

‘Just you wait,’ said Andy. ‘They have long showers together and lie on the couch groping each other and making sucking noises.’

‘I can hardly wait. Long showers, did you say? What about the power bill?’

‘It’s disgusting,’ Andy continued. ‘Having to get in that shower knowing they’ve been having sex all over it. I can’t take it anymore – I’m moving in with Chris.’

‘Gee, thanks,’ I said.

He grinned. ‘You can come and hang out there if you want,’ he offered.

I ENTERED AUNTY
Rose’s kitchen half an hour later hung with bags of groceries like a Christmas tree and found her sitting at the table.

‘It’s a lovely evening,’ I announced. ‘Full moon, and lots of little tattered clouds streaming across the sky – you should go out and look. It would be a perfect night for witches.’

‘Excellent,’ said Aunty Rose in a tight little voice.

I turned and looked at her properly and saw that she was clasping her hands together so firmly that the knuckles were white.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘The hospital called,’ she said. ‘They want me to have another CAT scan tomorrow before they start the next round of chemo.’

Oh, God. ‘Another one? Why?’

She sighed and pushed herself up to stand, palms flat on the table. Her knuckles were far too big for her hands now, and the old-fashioned amethyst ring she wore slid freely between the joints. ‘The margins weren’t clear,’ she said. ‘And they want to find out where else the bloody thing has popped up.’

I was appalled – they’d already taken her right breast and several lymph nodes. It had seemed horribly drastic but Matt and I had told each other that at least they’d be sure to have got the whole rotten thing, and that would be that.

‘Oh,’ I said weakly.

Aunty Rose sighed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I can only think of one thing to do, and that’s to have a glass of wine. Might as well make the most of it while I’m not feeling like total poo.’

Several glasses of wine later, curled in one of the big overstuffed armchairs in the living room, I asked, ‘Would you like me to move back into town for a bit and let you have your house to yourself?’

‘Josephine,’ said Aunty Rose with the slightly pompous solemnity that descended on her when she was tiddly, ‘the reason is almost impossible to fathom, but I would actually miss you if you weren’t around.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then I’m around.’

She looked at me, suddenly serious. ‘My dear, is it too hard for you?’

I wasn’t sure if she meant my housekeeping duties or the proximity to Matt, but I shook my head. ‘Nope. I’m very grateful, to be honest. I ran into my nice flatmate Andy this evening and he told me the dread Sara had found herself a boyfriend and they’ve been lying all over the lounge sucking each other. He can’t take it anymore – he’s moving out.’

‘That does sound fairly dire,’ Aunty Rose agreed.

‘I think I’ll move out too. When you’re better I’ll look for something else.’

The words ‘when you’re better’ hung between us like smoke from a snuffed candle – what if she wasn’t going to get better? Well, she just had to. I got up and divided the remaining dregs of wine in the bottle between our glasses.

IT NEVER RAINS
but it pours – especially when it comes to bad news. The next day I was in the consulting room when Amber called, ‘Jo! Phone!’

I got up with some relief. I had been reviewing notes on acupuncture and just after lunch is not the ideal time for review; I tend to go to sleep on my book.

‘Who is it?’ I mouthed as I took the phone, but Amber merely shrugged and turned back to her computer screen. ‘Hello, Jo speaking.’

‘Jo, my angel,’ said a rather high-pitched and very camp male voice with an upper-crust British accent.

‘Stu!’ I cried delightedly. ‘Hello! How are you?’

‘Not bad at all. Now, I’m planning my little hop across the ditch. If I popped up for a night to see you do you think you could find me a spare floorboard and a crust of bread?’

‘I’m almost sure we could manage that,’ I said. ‘When?’

‘Last weekend in July. This conference goes from Tuesday till Friday – I thought on the Saturday I might hire a car and meander north to this dreary little hamlet you’re frequenting.’

‘Waimanu,’ I said haughtily, ‘is
not
a dreary hamlet. It’s a bustling epicentre of culture and excitement.’ Stu’s manner of speech is catching.

‘Oh good,’ he said. ‘I can hardly wait.’

‘Me neither. Thank you so much, Stu.’

‘How are you doing, angel?’ he asked. ‘You sound a bit flat.’

‘Aunty Rose had her mastectomy last week and the margins weren’t clear,’ I said gloomily. ‘She has to have another round of chemo, and the last lot nearly killed her.’

‘Cancer’s just a total bitch,’ said Stu. ‘I’m sorry, hon. I thought maybe you’d heard Graeme and Chrissie’s news . . .’