Second Chances (21 page)

I’d thrown off my kimono and dived into a sundress when I heard Pamela’s truck. My hair looked like a bird’s nest, a frizz of wet straw. Pamela, by contrast, had the air of someone for whom the day is half over. She seemed quite human this morning: almost smiley in an efficient, no-frills kind of way. She was wearing a peaked cap and smelled of lanolin and sheep.

‘Been crutching,’ she said, as we strolled around to the verandah.

‘Been what?’

‘Cutting the dags off the sheep’s backsides.’

‘Dags?’

‘Sheepshit.’

‘Oh.’

‘We’d get flystrike, otherwise. Maggots. They eat the stock alive.’ And with this delicate observation she handed me an ice-cream punnet full of ginger crunch.

‘You know the way to my heart!’ I enthused. ‘Coffee?’

‘Lovely.’ She followed me into the kitchen. Christmas carols were playing on the radio. ‘It’s pretty quiet around here.’

‘The boys have a schoolfriend over. They’re all glued to the telly, I’m afraid. Sacha’s staying in town.’

‘Again? She was there last weekend, wasn’t she?’

‘She has orchestra on a Friday—extra late at the moment, because of the Christmas concert—so it’s tempting to stop with one of her friends.’

‘You must be pleased! She’s settled in very well.’

‘You’ve got four boys, haven’t you?’ I was looking for our milk jug, because a plastic bottle was good enough for us but not for minor royalty like Pamela Colbert. I eventually found it at the back of the fridge, harbouring congealed gravy.

‘I have a seven-year-old grandson, too,’ she said, puffing out her chest. I hadn’t expected Pamela to be an adoring grandmother. It seemed too mushy a role for one so no-nonsense.

‘Where are they all?’

‘The eldest, Jules, is in Perth.’

‘Scotland?’

‘Western Australia. He’s a geologist in the mines. He’s single—it’s not a life for a family. But we live in hope.’

I was searching for another jug. Kit had inherited a silver one in the shape of a cow. ‘And the younger three?’

‘Michel is in Wellington. He does something in graphic design, and I have no idea what that is but I’m sure it’s very clever. He’s got a girlfriend called April.’

‘D’you like her?’

‘No.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘April’s imagination is as limited as her chest is copious. But she’s got her feet firmly under the table, so I’d better get used to her.’

Wretched jug wasn’t in the cupboard where it belonged. I stood on tiptoe in the pantry, checking the top shelf among the jam jars. ‘That’s two.’

‘Ah, yes. Philippe was our afterthought. He’s only seventeen.’

‘Really? I thought you and Jean were empty nesters. Let’s sit on the verandah,’ I added, coming out of the pantry and lifting the tray. ‘Sorry about the uncouth plastic bottle. Couldn’t find a jug. Chaos in this house.’

I was startled when she laid a hand on my arm. ‘Martha, cut that out. You never,
ever
have to stand on ceremony for me. I think you imagine I’m some kind of domestic superwoman with polished dustbin lids. I’m not, believe me. I’m very flawed.’

Touched, I led her outside and poured our coffee. ‘Your youngest, Philippe . . . he must still be at boarding school?’

‘Philippe chose to leave school. He’s working on a farm in Canterbury.’ Pamela’s mouth twisted. ‘That boy’s drifted. He isn’t happy in his own skin. His latest ambition is to cycle from the Caribbean coast to Tierra del Fuego.’

‘Good Lord! Through . . . my geography’s shocking, but that’s through places like Brazil. The Amazon. What do
you
think about it?’

‘I think I can’t stop him.’ Pamela held her mug to her cheek. Perhaps the warmth was comforting.

‘So you’ve mentioned three,’ I persisted. ‘The fourth must be the father of your grandson.’

‘Yes, that’s right. Daniel.’

‘And what’s Daniel up to?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh.’ I hesitated, sensing a raw nerve. ‘But isn’t he—’

‘He died.’

I blinked, fighting that unforgiveable, inevitable urge to giggle in horror and embarrassment. ‘Pamela. I am so sorry.’

She chewed on the side of her mouth, looking down the valley. ‘It happened very . . . suddenly.’

‘When?’

‘Ooh . . . over seven years ago now.’

‘That’s no time at all.’

‘No time at all,’ she agreed. ‘Sometimes I feel as though it happened yesterday.’

‘How are you both coping?’

She made a small moue, bless her, and tried to wave the subject away. ‘That’s life. You just have to get on with it.’

‘No. No, Pamela. Don’t pretend it’s just a slight inconvenience.’

‘There’s never a day goes by when we don’t think of him. He was twenty-three . . . he was my third son. My precious third son.’

‘What happened?’

She sipped absent-mindedly at her coffee. ‘He’d just become a father. The mother’s a lovely girl. Hannah. They met at university in Otago.’

‘Are you still in touch with her?’

‘Hannah is like a daughter to me, so I lost a son and gained . . .’ Pamela took a long breath. ‘Visiting hours came to an end at the hospital, so Daniel went out with a couple of friends to celebrate his new baby.’

She broke off as Kit made a noisy entrance from around the corner of the verandah, brogues drumming cheerfully on the wooden boards. His hands were in his pockets, and he was whistling.

‘Pamela Colbert,’ he declared, throwing himself into the swing seat. His hair was an ebony thatch, blue eyes amused and vital. I wondered for an anxious moment whether he’d been drinking. ‘You are a vision of loveliness.’

She wagged a forefinger at him, as unruffled as though we’d still been discussing the weather. It was an impressive performance, and it put her up several hundred points in my estimation. ‘You’re a shameless Irish flirt, Kit,’ she scolded severely. ‘I may be a vision of something, but it isn’t loveliness. I’m a beanpole in shapeless slacks.’

Kit poured himself some coffee, and Pamela looked out at the hills.

‘Your dam’s getting low.’ She shielded her eyes, skin taut across her cheekbones.

‘Our . . . oh, the pond.’ I squinted down at the patch of water with its sentinel of cabbage trees. The air carried a faint smell of drying mud.

Kit sprawled in the seat, rocking himself with one foot on the ground. He always enjoyed Pamela’s company. ‘Ask me what I’m working on,’ he begged. ‘Go on, ask me.’

Pamela rolled her eyes indulgently. ‘What are you working on?’

‘Glad you asked me that! It’s a trompe l’oeil.’

‘Ah!’ She grasped her hands around one knee. ‘Tell me more.’

‘Well, I got the idea from Sacha—she said she was too old to have a mural on her wall and I thought, what about murals for grown-ups? Imagine a window framed by shutters. Through your window there is a view. Can be any view.
This
paradise could keep me going for a lifetime. But for example,’ he extended both arms towards the valley, ‘
that
view. Those bare hills, drawing the eye down to the sea. In the foreground, purplish light reflects from this glorious bougainvillea.’

‘And emphatically three dimensional, isn’t that the idea? It tricks the eye.’

‘That’s it! But I didn’t want to lose spontaneity; it isn’t photographic. I’ve spent the last ten days working with native bush.’ Kit began to sketch in the air like a conductor with hyperactivity disorder. ‘A vine curls across the sill. You can almost touch it. Tree ferns, vines, trunks of magnificent kauri. Arrows of sunlight—’

‘Enough!’ Pamela smacked her hands onto her knees before standing up. ‘This, I have to see. Lead the way.’

I followed them into the studio. Work had been so all-consuming that I hadn’t found time to sit and watch Kit painting. I missed those companionable evenings.

Pamela glanced up at Sibella’s portrait. ‘Morning, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Now, you
are
a vision of loveliness. Though I wouldn’t like to find myself on the wrong side of you, I think. There’s flint in those eyes.’

No wine bottles in sight, full or empty. I’d seen Kit making a frame for a vast canvas, and there it was against one wall. His work in progress stretched towards the ceiling and was perhaps four feet wide. The three of us walked around to stand in front of it.

We were looking out of an open window—with a sill and a frame— and straight into the dense understorey of a rainforest so real that I could almost smell the lichen; yet the effect was produced by light and colour. I was spellbound. It was somehow more real than reality.

‘How long have you spent on this?’ asked Pamela, examining a mirrored water droplet that glittered on a fern.

‘Eighty, ninety hours so far. Martha and I have been two ships passing in the night.’

The pair of them began to discuss technicalities: working with such a large canvas, getting it safely to Dublin, sourcing wooden shutters to complete the window effect.

‘Might try vineyards next,’ said Kit, pulling out a sketch. ‘Think what you could do with those mathematical patterns!’ He was about to expand on the thought when Finn shot through the doorway, hands gripped around an imaginary steering wheel and Formula 1 noises bubbling through pursed lips.

‘Wanted on the phone, wanted on the phone, Kit McNamara. Will a Mr Kit McNamara please come to the phone? It’s Granny from Ireland.’ Then he made a handbrake turn and accelerated out again. I heard him changing gear on the verandah. Kit waved an apology to Pamela, and trotted off.

‘Kit’s mother,’ I explained, as Pamela and I followed at a more dignified pace. ‘She can’t sleep, and then she’s bored. So she phones Kit.’

‘Your man is exceptionally talented,’ said Pamela. ‘Did you realise that? If I had a fraction of his ability I’d be singing from the rooftops.’

‘New Zealand inspires him.’

‘Just wait until the autumn. Oh, such colours!’

We strolled onto the lawn, and I asked Pamela’s advice about some shrivelling of the leaves on our citrus bush. But there was an elephant in the garden. I couldn’t ignore it.

‘I’m so sorry about your son,’ I said.

She patted my arm. ‘I’ll tell you the rest of the story, but another time. People don’t usually want to hear. It spoils their day.’

When we reached the glossy shade of the walnut tree, she leaned across the back of the truck and let her dogs off their chains. ‘You don’t get over it, you know. You never do. But if you’re very lucky, you get through it.’

I watched my neighbour drive down the track in a confident whirlwind of dust. The dead sheep slid around on the flatbed of the truck, and dogs raced alongside with maniacal joie de vivre. She looked the archetypal competent woman. Everything in her world obeyed Pamela Colbert: the husband, the dogs, the sheep, the garden.

Well, no. Not everything. Even she couldn’t control Death.

Sacha arrived home soon after Pamela had left. She’d made her own way up from the road gate, a bottle of Coca-Cola in one hand, and burst in as I was wrestling with a pile of ironing.

‘Don’t panic!’ she crowed, as the door hit the wall with a plaster-shattering crack. ‘I’m back!’

‘I’d have collected you from the road,’ I said, crossing the kitchen to hug her.

‘Mmwah!’ She gave me a noisy kiss on the cheek, dropping her backpack onto the floor. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘Have you been dragged through a hedge backwards? That’s the wildest hairdo I’ve ever seen. It’ll take hours to get the tangles out.’

She touched her head vaguely, then did that intensely annoying teenage thing—wrenched at the fridge door and stood looking at the shelves. I once read a statistic about how many weeks of our lives we spend looking into fridges. It was horrifying.

‘Why are you drinking Coke?’ I asked. ‘You don’t even like it.’

‘Shows what you know about me.’

‘We’ve got leftover lasagne there, on the top shelf.’

‘I haven’t eaten a thing today,’ she said, putting the bowl into the microwave. ‘D’you think the diet’s working yet?’ She turned side-on to me and inhaled sharply. ‘Tabby’s given me some of her clothes.’

‘I think it’s time to forget the diet. You’re overdoing it. Tabby was born a different shape from you.’

‘Oh my God, I forgot to set the microwave going.’ She pressed the start button and stood watching the plate doing its wobbly dance on the turntable. ‘I wonder what it’s like to be in a microwave?’

‘Fatal, unless you’re a plate of lasagne. So you’ve had a good time?’

‘Yep. Ting! That was quick.’

Giving up on the ironing—surely a metaphor for all that is fruitless and sterile in the modern world—I joined her at the table and asked about her evening at Bianka’s house, which seemed to consist of listening to music and talking all night.

‘Any reason why you’re so jolly?’ I wondered whether I really wanted to know. I had a nasty feeling it might be to do with Jani. No parent of a sixteen-year-old girl likes to imagine . . . well, you know.

She shrugged. A burnished strand of her hair fell into the cheese sauce.

I tried again. ‘I hope you didn’t, er, didn’t go too far.’

‘You mean did I screw Jani?’

‘No!’ I was tight-lipped. ‘Um, well . . . I mean, I hope you’re making good choices.’

‘Oh I am,’ she said, laughing uproariously. ‘I
am
. I’m fantastic at making good choices! I’m a legend in my own lifetime. No, Mum, I didn’t sleep with Jani. Chill. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta go and see who’s on Facebook.’

‘You haven’t got to do anything of the kind. You’ve got to finish that lasagne—you’ve hardly eaten any.’

She bent over the table, held her hair back with one hand, and piled the whole lot into her mouth. ‘Happy?’

‘Go on, then,’ I sighed, and the next moment she and her backpack had gone. I strode into the hall, calling after her, ‘Have a shower! You look like a tramp.’

Her head appeared over the banisters. ‘Now, Mum, that’s not PC, as you ought to know. We don’t call them tramps, we call them homeless persons.’

‘Get away with you,’ I said, laughing. ‘Don’t forget to scrub behind your ears.’

The bathroom door slammed shut.

Why d’you think she’s locked herself in there?
I hadn’t heard from my mother in a while; I’d almost missed the old boot.