Dinner at Rose's (27 page)

She smiled. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘you’ll want to come back fairly soon.’

Stu put his arms around her very gently and kissed her cheek. ‘I am constantly disgusted at the unfairness of life,’ he said.

‘I agree,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘However, there is almost no point in complaining about it. Now you drive carefully, young man. It won’t be icy this morning but the road may well be flooded further south.’

After he left I got Aunty Rose’s ancient vacuum cleaner out of its cupboard and drearily started the housework. I hate that vacuum cleaner and it hates me; it’s an old Tel-lus that catches on every doorframe and falls over just to spite you, pulling its cord out of the wall. The house was bleak and chilly and there was a glaring contrast between scrubbing elderly toilet bowls in Waimanu and going to my Sunday morning aerobic dance class before brunching with friends in Melbourne. I had almost forgotten, before Stu’s visit, that I used to shop for nice clothes and drink cappuccinos and work in a progressive hospital with witty, intelligent colleagues.

‘Josephine, don’t use detergent to mop the floor,’ said Aunty Rose, passing the bathroom door on her way up the hall. ‘It leaves streaks. There’s ammonia under the sink beside the washing machine.’

I had washed floors with a little detergent in hot water for at least the last ten years without having streaking issues. It’s hard to go back to being told what to do when you’re used to being a home owner and a grown-up – these days I can only live with my mother for a weekend before it starts to drive me insane. ‘Great,’ I muttered. ‘So the whole house can smell like a urinal.’ I picked up the mop bucket and went to fetch the ammonia.

Aunty Rose came into the kitchen as I tipped my mopping water down the old-fashioned concrete sink beside the washing machine.

‘Sweet pea,’ she said, leaning stiffly against the doorframe. ‘Don’t worry about the floor; it looks fine.’

The tears welled hot behind my eyelids. ‘Aunty Rose, I’m sorry.’

‘I do realise this isn’t easy for you.’

I turned to face her. ‘It’s a hell of a lot easier for me than it is for you, and
you
manage not to act like a sulky teenager.’

She crossed the room and lowered herself slowly onto the chaise longue. ‘Apparently that’s still to come. I am assured that I can expect bitterness, anger and depression before we get to resignation. Won’t that be fun?’

I tried to smile. ‘I can hardly wait.’

‘Why don’t you go out for a walk? Take a stick and whack things – you’ll feel better for it.’

I opened my mouth to say something, realised I wasn’t going to be able to squeeze any voice past the constriction in my throat and nodded instead.

I WENT UP
the steep hill behind the house at a cross between a scramble and a run. It was rough going through the sodden mats of Yorkshire fog and last year’s dead pig fern, and the hillside was all ridged and seamed with sheep tracks. My jeans were saturated to the knee after about four steps and clung to my legs in a clammy and unpleasant sort of way.

I stood on the crest of a ridge in an icy wind that whipped down off the mountains, and looked up the valley. There are at least a thousand different shades of green in those bush-clad folds of hill leading up to the ranges, and as I caught my breath and tried to count them the seething tangle of resentment began to recede. It was indeed
crap
that Aunty Rose was dying and I no longer had the right to call this place home and Matt didn’t want me, but somehow mountains do tend to restore your sense of perspective. They are so enduring and grandiose and indifferent that your fleeting human troubles seem very unimportant in comparison. And away down below was Spud, toiling valiantly up the hill to keep me company. He was far too old for serious hill climbing; I sighed, kicked the top off an unfortunate foxglove and went down to meet him.

Spud was puffing hard, and when I reached him he flopped down across my feet with his tongue hanging out, evidently wishing to put a stop to any more foolish exertion. I bent to pull his ears and looked the other way, down across our old farm and over the white weatherboard house where I grew up (noting in passing that the new conservatory was indeed horrible) to the Kings’ cowshed across the road.

Matt was break-feeding the springer mob through the flatter paddocks in front of the shed. He had given them today’s break hours ago and they should have been sitting down by now, chewing their cuds and contemplating whatever ruminating cows contemplate (not, I suspect, a whole lot). But they weren’t sitting down; they were all standing in one corner, being herded more and more tightly against the fence by one small black pig.

That pig looked like he was having the time of his life, bustling to and fro and forcing any poor cow that tried to break away back into the group. But no matter how much fun he was having you can’t really have bumptious pigs intimidating your heavily pregnant cows, so I pushed Spud off my feet and started to slither and slide back down the hill.

I went down through our old place rather than Aunty Rose’s. It was trespassing, I suppose, but the gully I picked isn’t visible from the house. I opened a wooden gate for Spud – and was obscurely pleased to note it still sagged and had to be lifted with a little jerk in order to unlatch it – and trotted down to jump across the creek at its narrowest point. There was a small group of stubby bearded pungas on the far bank and a smooth, lichen-covered boulder where I used to sit with a book and a hand line, although I never caught the enormous eel that lived there.

Spud didn’t even try to jump but sat down mournfully on the bank and looked at me. ‘Useless animal,’ I said, stepping back into the creek up to my knees and heaving him across. He weighed a good forty kilograms, was soaking wet and smelt like old wet sock. ‘Come on, then.’ And we laboured up the steep bank to the fence that borders the road.

I manhandled Spud across the boundary fence and started along the road towards the Kings’ tanker entrance. The cloud had come down and it had started to rain again – that gentle persistent drizzle that soaks you to the skin. I was walking fast with my head down, and almost yelped in surprise when Matt called, ‘Pleasant morning for a stroll.’

He was standing on the edge of a medium-sized lake in his front paddock, with his hands in his pockets and a pensive look on his face.

‘Nice water feature,’ I called back.

‘Feel free to go in and unblock the culvert pipe, if you’d like to experience it from closer up.’ He sighed and began to take off his waterproof leggings.

‘I will, if you like. I’m wet already.’

‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘You might get bitten by an eel and sue me for damages.’

I climbed the fence. ‘Never. Tell you what – I’ll unblock the pipe while you roar up the hill and deal with the pig that’s mustering up your springer mob.’

‘Is there one?’ he asked.

‘Well, there was ten minutes ago. I saw him from the top of the hill. He’s not a very big pig, but the cows weren’t looking too happy about the whole thing.’

He turned towards his quad bike, parked just up the hill on the track. ‘I’d better go and see. Don’t worry about the pipe . . .’

I watched him disappear up around the shoulder of the hill before wading into the murky water to find the culvert pipe and remove the armful of slimy, decaying vegetation blocking its end. The things we do for love.

WHEN I OPENED
the kitchen door Kim wrinkled her small nose fastidiously and said, ‘Been communing with nature again, have we?’

‘You should try it sometime,’ I suggested. ‘You might enjoy it.’

‘I have,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t. What would you like on your toasted sandwich?’

‘Pineapple and cheese, please. Where’s Aunty Rose?’

‘Feeding the chooks.’

When I came back into the kitchen ten minutes later, showered and with an armful of wet, muddy clothes, it was full of people. Matt was riffling through the pantry, Aunty Rose was setting the table for lunch and Andy was buttering slices of bread for toasted sandwiches while Kim filled them.

‘Hi, Andy,’ I said, opening the lid of the washing machine and tossing in my clothes. ‘How’s the world of livestock wheeling and dealing?’

‘Not bad at all. Have I buttered enough yet?’

‘For a start,’ said Kim. ‘Aunty Rose, would the chicken in the fridge make a good toastie?’

‘Delicious,’ she said. ‘We
could
have had olive and sundried tomato and cheese, if Josephine had deigned to purchase all the items on the shopping list.’

‘I’d sack her,’ said Matt. ‘You’re out of peanuts, too, which is poor at best.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I knew I wanted something else at the supermarket, but then I ran into Sara getting all frisky with her new boyfriend and my mind went blank. I can see why you moved out, Andy.’

‘It wasn’t just the public displays of affection,’ he said. ‘There are girls that look good in hot pants and singlet tops, and girls that just don’t.’

‘And she just doesn’t?’ Matt asked, replacing the empty peanut jar and taking down a bag of sultanas instead.

‘Nope,’ said Andy.

‘That’s the thing with hot pants,’ Matt said. ‘Most women should be forbidden by law to wear them, and just a few should be forbidden to wear anything else.’

‘Andy dropped in to bring your mail,’ Aunty Rose informed me. Her eyes were bright with amusement under the peroxide-blonde wig. ‘Wasn’t that kind of him?’

‘Very,’ I said. Kim looked sharply from her aunt to me, but we returned the look with matching vacuous smiles. I shuffled through the EziBuy catalogue, the postcard from
Reader’s Digest
informing me I had just won a gift worth thousands and the letter from the bank offering to increase my credit card limit.

‘None of it looked very urgent,’ said Andy, slightly shamefaced, ‘but you never know.’

‘Thank you very much,’ I said, noting with some amusement that the letter from the bank was dated June. Was that pig still there, Matt?’

‘It was. It’s now an ex-pig.’

‘Crikey. That’ll teach it.’

‘I fired a warning shot,’ said Matt defensively. ‘Right between the eyes. You can’t really have a pig with a taste for cattle-rustling wandering around the place. And now I suppose I’ll have to do something with the bloody thing.’

‘How big is it?’ Andy asked.

‘About fifty pounds. It’s not a bad little pig, actually.’

‘If you don’t want the hassle of butchering it,’ said Andy diffidently, ‘I’ve got a mate with a proper walk-in chiller and a sausage maker and all the gear.’

‘Excellent,’ said Matt. ‘It’s all yours.’

‘I’ll bring it back, cut up.’

‘Of course not! I was tempted to heave it into a blackberry bush, but I felt guilty. Good man – I didn’t really want to spend an hour dismembering a pig.’

‘I enjoy it,’ said Andy. ‘I used to hunt at home, but I haven’t got a dog now.’

‘Where is home?’ asked Aunty Rose. She produced a heavy silver platter covered with bunches of wart-like grapes for the toasted sandwiches.

‘Near Gisborne. Dad and my brother have a sheep farm.’

‘And farming’s not your cup of tea?’

Andy shook his head. ‘I’m the lowest in the pecking order, so I spent all my time dagging and grubbing thistles.’

‘I suppose the excitement of grubbing thistles would pall eventually,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘So you decided to make your own way. Wise fellow.’