Dinner at Rose's (43 page)

I suppose it was only a minute or so before I pushed myself up straight and wiped my nose Amber-like on the back of my hand. I would go to the cowshed. Perhaps Matt was calving a cow. Or – or cleaning the vat. At quarter to four in the morning. And from the shed I’d go next door to his mother’s, and if he wasn’t there – although I realised with a spasm of relief that of
course
he would be; she’d have summoned him to deal with some storm-related crisis – we’d call the police.

THE COWSHED WAS
dark, and silent except for one calf that bawled sleepily back when I shouted. I drove far too fast back down the wet track, my fingers clenched white on the steering wheel. I swerved around the bike and out onto the road, and lost control for a terrifying second as I met a sheet of surface water. Grimly I straightened the car and continued up the road to the King homestead.

The house was dark, and I realised suddenly that if Matt was here he’d surely have come in the ute. Which was still at his place. But I got out, seeing as I was here, and ran up the path to the back door.

I pounded on the door and then grabbed the handle to try it. They’d never hear me over the rain – I’d have to bang on bedroom windows and frighten them out of their skins – but the door opened beneath my hand and pitched me forward into the hall. ‘Hazel!
Hazel!
Kim!
Matt!
’ I groped for a light switch and found that the power was out here too.

Torch in hand I searched the house, carefully opening every door although it was obvious nobody was home. The curtains were drawn and the beds neatly made up, and in Kim’s room a battalion of stuffed animals looked incuriously back at me from the armchair under the window.

With shaking hands I pulled my phone out of my pocket and scrolled through the numbers. Matt’s number rang out, so I tried Hazel. ‘Hello?’ she said tremulously, answering on the second ring, and I nearly dropped the phone in relief.

‘Hazel,’ I said, ‘it’s Jo.’

‘Oh,
Josie
,’ Hazel wailed.

‘Where are you?’ I asked.

‘At the hospital. Waikato.’

‘Where’s Matt?’

Hazel began softly and piteously to cry. I slid down the wall of her hallway – my legs didn’t seem to want to hold me up. ‘Is – is he dead?’ My voice came out as a hoarse croak, which was all I could manage from a throat stiff with horror. His mother continued to sob broken-heartedly into the other end of the phone, and I wondered dully just how on earth I was going to keep breathing without him.

‘
Josie! JOSIE!
’

I started, and picked up my phone from where it had dropped into my lap.

‘
JOSIE!
’ Kim howled into my ear.

‘What?’ I asked numbly.

‘Matt’s been hurt. He’s just come out of surgery.’

Hurt. Not dead. The relief rose up in my throat and nearly choked me.

‘Josie? Are you there?’

‘He’s not dead?’ I gasped.

‘No.
No!
He’s got some broken ribs, and they were worried about internal bleeding or something, but they seem to think it’s stopped. Liver lacerations, the doctor said.’

‘It was Bob,’ I told her.

‘Bob? What was Bob?’

‘Who hurt Matt,’ I said stupidly.

‘It wasn’t Bob,’ said Kim. ‘It was Cilla.’

‘Cilla?’ I repeated blankly. What on earth was Cilla doing lurking in the stormy darkness, bent on murder? I wouldn’t have thought she’d have it in her.

‘She hit him on the drive.’

‘What with?’ Scythe? Spade? Manicure scissors? Nothing in this whole horrible nightmare made any sense whatsoever.

‘Her ute,’ Kim said, in a careful voice. ‘She didn’t see him in time – she ran into the bike. Josie, are you alright?’

‘No!’ I said wildly. ‘I couldn’t find Matt, or you guys, and Aunty Rose is dead, and – and Bob McIntosh was skulking round outside the house, and . . .’ And at that point I lost it completely and burst into tears.

It was an inexcusable thing to do to an eighteen-year-old who was already propping up a hopeless mother. There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, and then Kim murmured very softly, ‘Is she really?’

‘Y-yes,’ I wept. ‘Kim, I’m s-sorry . . .’

‘Oh, thank God,’ whispered Kim, which was unexpected. But then she added, ‘She’d have been so worried.’

From somewhere behind her came Hazel’s voice, shrill with anxiety. ‘Kimmy? What’s wrong?’

‘Hang
on
, Mum,’ said Kim impatiently. ‘Josie, what did you mean about Bob?’

‘It’s okay,’ I said, taking a long shaky breath. ‘I kicked him, and he ran away.’

‘You
what
?’

‘Kicked him. In the balls. I think he’s been hanging around the house at night.’ I shuddered; the idea of having Bob McIntosh observe my love life made me want to take a nice hot bath with caustic soda and a wire brush.

There was another pause as Kim digested this. ‘Where are you now?’ she asked.

‘At your place.’

‘Lock yourself in – Mum, be
quiet
, I’ll tell you in a
minute
– Josie, I’ll call you as soon as we’ve spoken to Matt’s doctor, okay?’

‘Okay,’ I said obediently.

I put down the phone, rested my forehead on my knees and cried. It seemed, just lately, to be my only response to good news. I’ve always felt that dissolving into tears is one of the feebler and less useful ways of dealing with a situation, but sometimes nothing else will do.

At length I picked up the phone again and scrolled to Andy’s number. He answered straight away. ‘Kim just rang,’ he said by way of greeting. ‘Jo, are you okay? Do you want me to take you up to Waikato?’

‘No, thank you,’ I said, not without regret. ‘Andy, how would you feel about helping me milk two hundred cows?’

Chapter 38

A
NDY’S FLATMATE WADE
came along to help with the milking. His first act was to catch the toe of one gumboot on the half-step leading into the milk room and fall heavily against the hot-water cylinder. ‘Turn on the fucking lights, would you?’ he roared. His voice was barely audible over the rain pelting against the corrugated-iron roof.

‘The power’s out,’ I shouted back, pointing my torch in his direction. ‘There’s a generator in the implement shed.’ Or at least there had been fifteen years ago, when last I’d milked here in a power cut.

Sure enough, the generator was still there, underneath three hessian cow covers and about a thousand electric-fence standards. But it weighed one metric tonne (a conservative estimate) and the implement shed was across the tanker loop from the cowshed. We manoeuvred it painfully through the deluge and hooked it up in a laborious and amateurish sort of way. To my astonished delight it actually started, with a roar like a 747 taking off, and I turned on the lights.

‘Right,’ Andy bawled into my left ear. ‘Where are the cows?’

I had been enjoying a little glow of satisfaction at my own competence. It vanished abruptly. ‘No idea.’ The prospect of searching for them over ninety acres of wet hill in the howling darkness was not particularly attractive. ‘I’ll ring Kim.’

‘She won’t know.’

‘But Matt might be awake by now.’ I looked at my watch – it was just before five.

We had to turn the generator off to hear the phone, which meant we were plunged back into darkness lit by one failing torch battery.

‘Josie?’ said Kim.

I pressed the phone hard to one ear and blocked the other in an attempt to hear over the rain. ‘How is he?’

‘He’s waking up,’ she said. ‘He’s going to be okay.’

‘Could you ask him where the cows are?’

‘Oh!’ she said, clearly surprised at this prosaic question.

‘Are you milking?’

‘We will if we can find the cows,’ I said. ‘Andy and Wade are helping.’

There was a long pause, broken by incoherent voices on the other end of the line, then Kim asked, ‘Did you get that?’

‘Nope. Not a word.’

‘They’re in the Long Swamp – you know, up the hill from the shed and take the race that goes round to the left.’

‘I know the one. Thank you.’

‘And the dry cows are in the second hay barn paddock.’

‘Which hay barn is the second?’ I asked.

‘The old wooden one with the big hedge just behind it,’ said Kim. ‘And Matt says you’ll have to drench them with causmag, and they get two squirts, and you use – how much was it again? Yes, o
kay
, Matt. They get half a bag, and then fill the drum on the drenching unit with water up to two-thirds full. Settle down, you loser! Sorry, Josie, not you. He’s being a nob.’

Well, that was reassuring. You don’t call people nobs
or
losers unless you’re confident they’re going to make a full recovery.

‘Tell him we promise not to milk any antibiotic cows into the vat,’ I said. ‘And – and tell him I love him.’

‘Will do,’ said Kim cheerfully, and hung up.

Wade clasped his hands girlishly together. ‘Tell him I wuv him,’ he repeated in a quavering squeak. ‘Aww. Here, give me that torch and I’ll go get the bike.’

IT WAS ALMOST
nine when I drove back up Aunty Rose’s driveway and climbed wearily out of my car. The dogs stood at the doors of their runs, complaining in a body at this departure from their standard morning routine, and Percy came bustling out of the woodshed to meet me.

I let the three dogs out, patted Percy and walked slowly up the path. It was still raining, although the wind had dropped, and the place looked indescribably sodden and dreary. About half the roof was missing, and a loose sheet of rusting corrugated iron slapped half-heartedly against the timber underneath.

I took off Aunty Rose’s wet oilskin and hung it on a nail by the front door. It had long since given up the struggle to keep the rain out and my poor maltreated onesie was soaked from shoulder to knee. As soon as I opened the door Spud passed me like a medium-sized black and tan lightning streak, two hours overdue for his morning pee.

I padded gingerly across the kitchen floor, bundled the filthy onesie into the washing machine and wrapped myself in a towel from the adjacent cupboard before continuing up the hall. Aunty Rose’s room was cold and dark and silent – of course it was, but it felt unexpected and wrong. I pulled back the heavy velvet curtains to let in what little light there was outside and turned to look at the still face on the pillow.

I had never seen a dead person before. Well, not before the small hours of this morning. Novels had led me to expect an expression of unearthly peace on the face of the deceased, and perhaps the sort of smile that suggests the beholding of a beautiful vision. But Aunty Rose just looked exhausted. Her skin was waxy and her mouth sagged a little, and if I hadn’t seen her in the last three months I would have been hard pressed to recognise her. I made a fierce abrupt resolution to do as she had asked and
not
remember her like this.

‘I’m sorry,’ I told her softly. Her death was a tragedy, and yet for the last few hours it had been just another drama, something that piled still more tasks onto the towering heap of things I had to do before even
thinking
of getting to see Matt.

Hot on the heels of this lowering reflection I remembered I had an appointment with Hannah Dixon’s left supraspinatus muscle right about now, and I hadn’t even rung to say I couldn’t make it. And that I needed to call Dr Milne, and the undertakers, and Mum, and the power board, and someone to come and do something about the roof, and we hadn’t got in today’s calves yet, and I was cold and filthy and dressed only in a small towel, and – Sorry,’ I repeated helplessly. Brushing the still cheek with a fingertip I left the room.