The Boy in the Olive Grove (20 page)

TWO DAYS BEFORE
school broke up for Easter, I talked to Mum about my plans for the holidays. Clodagh had asked me to stay with her for the second week.

She didn’t lift her eyes from her tablet. ‘That won’t be possible. I need you to be here during the holidays.’

My heart sank. ‘But Mum, why? The garden’s perfect. Lily’s a brilliant cleaner. There’s nothing for me to do.’

‘Elizabeth Symes has arranged for you to look after her grandchildren the first week. In the second week Mrs Chapman is entrusting her dogs to you. They need walking twice a day. On Easter Saturday there’s the Horticultural Society dinner. I have put your name down to waitress.’ She still didn’t look at me.

I headed for the door. ‘Please thank your friends for me, but I won’t be able to oblige them.’

She caught me up at my bedroom. ‘You’re as stubborn as your father, but
you
will do as I ask.’

‘You didn’t ask!’
Disengage. She can’t help it. Don’t react.

I counted to ten, then to twenty. ‘Please will you talk to me first before you make plans for me?’

She went off. Total nuclear fission. I tried not to listen, tried not to let her damning words sink in.

‘Holy hell, Mum — give it up will you!’

She kept on and on at me until I couldn’t stand it, couldn’t take any more. I ran out of my room, out of the house as she shouted after me, ‘Don’t you
dare
walk out when I’m speaking to you! Where do you think you’re going? It’s nearly midnight.’

It was nine o’clock, not midnight, and it was raining.

I tore down the road, heading as usual to my haven. Dad opened the door, took one look at me, bellowed for Iris, put his arm around my dripping shoulders and hustled me inside.

‘Your mother?’ he asked.

I just nodded, couldn’t speak.

He said, ‘I’ll make up the spare bed. You’re staying here tonight.’ He patted my shoulder. ‘Any time you want to move in. You know that.’

I tried to smile. Couldn’t. Shivers wracked my whole body.

‘Hmm,’ said Iris. ‘This isn’t good, Bess. But how about we make decisions another time? Let’s get you warm. Jump in the shower, I’ll make you a drink, then you can hop into bed with a hottie.’

It was balm to be fussed over.

I sent Hadleigh a text just before I went to sleep:
Mum excelled self this time. Have taken refuge with Dad & Iris.

His reply came swiftly:
Spare room here all hols. Wanna stay? U can meet girlfriend.

I be there Thurs after school. Off to Auck second week.
Can’t wait 2 meet GF.

The next morning I went home to change into fresh clothes and collect my school gear. Mum turned her back on me. I tried to disengage, tried to remember the statue. Only one more day to get through and I’d be free of her for two whole weeks. Strangely, though, when I got back that afternoon, she had afternoon tea set out on the table — matching china and a clutch of cupcakes.

‘Don’t worry, Mum, I’ll keep out of your way if you’re having friends over.’ No way was I going to play the dutiful daughter, especially not to dog-woman and grandkid-woman.

‘This is for you. Come and sit down.’

She was several degrees above glacial, and I was suspicious as hell. What was she up to?

‘I’ve cancelled the arrangements with Elizabeth and Gloria,’ she said.

The grandkids and the dogs? ‘Thanks, Mum. Appreciate it.’ Not that she deserved thanking, but this was one huge concession.

‘However, you are still needed at the dinner. I can’t reorganise that at this late stage.’

She poured a cup of tea, handed it to me and gestured towards the cupcakes. I don’t like cupcakes. The cake part is disappointing and the icing is always too sweet. I took the plainest one. Pink icing. Gross. I didn’t respond to the waitressing topic.

‘Hadleigh’s asked me to stay with him from
tomorrow
night. For a week.’

‘That’s good of him,’ she said, making it sound as if he’d be babysitting a monster. ‘I will drive you there. I haven’t seen my son for several weeks.’

Apparently we’d done with the chat, because she got up and began clearing away the tea things. ‘He can bring you over to the dinner. I’ll buy him a ticket so that he can take you back with him.’ She sailed from the room, leaving me gaping after her.

How had she done that? All without me yelling, or telling her yet again that no way was I going to be a waitress at her garden do? I shrugged.
Just do it
. It was a small price to pay for getting out of the baby- and dog-sitting.

I packed that night, and texted Hadleigh about the joys awaiting him.

I spent a good portion of the last day of term trying to work out what my mother was up to. Why hadn’t she gone silent on me? Why the concessions? Driving me into Hamilton to Hadleigh’s flat was no puzzle. She wanted to see him — and maybe she was glad to be rid of me for a while as well. Even as I walked home from school I kept mulling over her motives, and (for once) praying she’d be home and ready to go. It’d be just like her to keep me waiting. But no, she was there and keen to hit the road. She even offered a few remarks as we travelled to Hamilton: two weather-related comments, one observation that the town was growing, and two expressions of disdain about the driving habits of other people.

I did my best to respond. ‘Yes, the paddocks are starting to get green again … You’re right, there’s never a cop when you need one.’

Apparently it was enough. She inclined her head graciously at each dumb reply.

 

WE ARRIVED
at Hadleigh’s flat after the longest drive in the universe. I leapt out, rolled my eyes at him and stood back to let him turn on the charm.

‘Great to see you, Mum. Come in, come in. And what do you think of our garden? Pretty good, huh?’

Surely she wouldn’t fall for that? The ‘garden’ was a parsley plant, a scraggly lavender bush and a lemon tree.

She sparkled at him. ‘You have a little way to go, dear.’

He laughed and led the way into the house to serve tea made with teabags in cracked mugs. Mum drank hers without a murmur. She commended Hadleigh on his housekeeping, which wouldn’t have looked so snappy if I hadn’t given him a day’s warning. She inquired about his studies. Interesting, she’d not once asked me about mine, or about how I was settling in at school. She remembered the names of his three flatmates and asked after each one.

Hadleigh got to his feet. ‘Sorry to hurry you, Mum. But I’ve got a meeting with my supervisor in twenty. If I’m late she’ll mark me down. Regular dragon, she is.’

At once, our mother stood up. She kissed her son farewell, nodded to her daughter and tootled off out the door, leaving the Saturday-night waitressing gig unmentioned — until she had one foot in her car.

‘By the way, Hadleigh. You’ll need to bring Bess over on Saturday evening.’ She outlined the treat he was in for.

He bent down to give her a smacker of a kiss. ‘Gee, Mum. That would have been so cool! Why didn’t you let me know earlier?’

Oh god, he was going to bail on me. She’d have to come and get me, and I’d bet a zillion she wouldn’t bring me back again.

‘There’s a problem?’ she asked.

He rubbed his hair, and I wanted to yell
Stop
because he looked so like Dad when he did that. ‘The thing is, I’ve got tickets for me and the infant here for that new play up at uni.’ He looked worried — have to hand it to him, he truly did. ‘I really can’t cancel. I’m helping on the door, and Bess, I hope you don’t mind, but I kind of volunteered you to be an usher.’

I had to look at the ground. ‘Oh, uh … well, I’ve never done anything like that. Is it hard to learn?’

‘You’ll pick it up,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Mum. It’s going to be a huge nuisance for you. Will you be able to sort it, do you think?’

She slid into the car. ‘Please don’t worry about it. I can make other arrangements.’

We stayed frozen until the car vanished around the corner, then I jumped at my brother, hugging him. ‘Gazumped, by heaven! By an expert!’

‘Not bad, eh?’ He unwound my arms. ‘Come on, let’s go and relax, and you, my dear sis, can explain exactly how she finessed you into agreeing to that lark in the first place.’

So I told him the whole sorry saga of the babysitting, the dog-minding and the waitressing. When I’d finished he shook his head at me. ‘You’re an idiot, sister mine. She set the entire thing up because all she wanted was to watch you be a minion. Bring you down a peg or two.’

I let that sink in. ‘You mean, she made up the babysitting and the dogs?’

‘Betcha.’

‘But that is … it’s Machiavellian. Evil.’ I paced around the room, picking things up, putting them back, trying to get my head around the grenade he’d tossed at me. ‘Hads — do you truly, honestly believe she staged that row? If she did, it means she knew all the time what she was saying. And she said horrible things. Mean and nasty and horrible.’

He strolled over and dropped a brotherly arm across my shoulders. ‘Seriously, I do believe that’s exactly what she did. And seriously, you’re going to have to watch her very, very closely. Don’t take anything at face value. She’s a nutter.’

I stared at him. ‘You’ve never said anything like this before.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but I’ve never had a psych major for a girlfriend before. Get your skates on. We’re going to rescue Su Lin. She’s been hiding out in the library.’

‘Su Lin as in the GF?’ I asked. ‘You’ve got an Asian GF?’

‘Yep.’

I started to laugh. An Asian girlfriend definitely wasn’t in Mum’s plan for her son. She’d have it all sorted for him to marry the daughter of one of her friends whose pedigree she knew backwards.

‘Excellent. Can’t wait to meet her.’

SU LIN WAS A RIOT
. For a start, her dress style was gypsy crossed with fairy. Her hair was long, with the back in skinny braids. She wore round,
academic-style
glasses and her boots were patterned with pictures of high-heeled shoes.

When she saw us, she piled up her books, dumped them in her bag and said, ‘Good. I’m done here.’ She kissed my cheek. ‘You must be Bess. Welcome to the big smoke.’

Hadleigh took her bag. ‘You need a bloody elephant to carry this lot. Haven’t you heard of e-readers? Embrace the twenty-first century, why don’t you?’ He hooked his arm round her waist. He’d never been this much at ease with any of his previous girlfriends.

‘How long have you known each other?’ I asked.

‘A couple of years,’ she said. ‘Did Hadleigh tell you we’re moving in together in a month?’

‘No, and I only discovered he had a girlfriend yesterday.’

‘Can’t tell you all my secrets, sis,’ he said.

‘On the grounds that I might run straight to Mum?’

‘Breaking the news to her is a joy yet to happen.’

Back at Hadleigh’s flat, Su Lin wandered off and returned with yet more books. ‘Hadleigh’s told me about your mum,’ she said to me. ‘I don’t want to be pushy or anything, but I’ve got some books you might find useful. Have a browse through this lot if you’d like to.’

Hadleigh picked one up. ‘Start with this. Most enlightening.’

It was a book about personality disorders. I sat at the kitchen table while they made dinner. Every few minutes I’d give a yelp. ‘Hey, listen to this! This is what she does. All the time.’

Enlightening? Hell, yes. I should have gone back to Gwennie, should have found out more. I could still do it. Next week in fact. But right now, Su Lin’s books were like a light going on.

We ate dinner, laughed a lot, and by the time we’d done the dishes I was certain that my brother and Su Lin were in love.

‘When will you tell Mum?’ I asked.

Hadleigh shrugged. ‘Dunno. We’ve got to get on the right side of Su Lin’s family first.’

‘They’ll come round,’ she said. ‘Give them time. It’s hard for them. I’ll be the first one to marry a
non-Chinese
, even though the family’s been here for over a hundred years.’

‘And nobody’s married an outsider in that whole time? Wow!’

‘No cross-pollination at all,’ Hadleigh said. ‘And they still speak Cantonese at home.’

‘Man, is it ever going to be the clash of the Titans when they meet Mum! How d’you reckon she’ll handle it?’

Hadleigh crossed his eyes at me. ‘I could be out of the will.’

‘She wouldn’t do that. Not to you. But would you mind?

‘Not too much. Besides, she’ll live till she’s a hundred and ten. Long time to wait for an inheritance. The bummer will be if she leaves it to the Association for the Extermination of Cats Who Pee in Her Garden.’

I didn’t want to talk about her any longer. Su Lin and her family were far more interesting.

‘My sister and both brothers are all tidily married to Chinese partners,’ she said.

‘So you’re the youngest?’

She laughed. ‘Yes, and I’m the freak who’s unmarried at the ripe old age of twenty-three.’

So she was older than Hadleigh. Mum wouldn’t like that either. This got more interesting by the minute.

 

HADLEIGH AND SU LIN
had plans for Easter to visit friends in Taupo. They asked me if I’d like to go with them, but I didn’t want to play gooseberry, and anyway I had a tonne of work to do. When they’d gone it was like being back at St Annie’s — plenty to do and no mother around to yell at me.

I’d put in a good couple of hours on Sunday morning when there was a knock on the door. My first thought was that Mum was on the warpath, but the silhouette through the wavy glass on the door didn’t look like her. Somebody peddling religion then. I went to answer it, a polite but firm response in my head.

It was Nick. All I could do was goggle at him. I couldn’t have said a word to save my life.

‘Sorry, Bess. I should have warned you I was coming.’

I stepped back, motioning for him to come in, terrified he’d vanish. ‘No. It’s fine. I’m just surprised.’
Oh god, get it together girl
. I peered over his shoulder. ‘Where’s Lulu?’

He came inside, shutting the door. ‘I don’t know. We broke up at Christmas.’

‘Oh … I mean, I’m sorry. That must’ve been hard.’

‘It wasn’t fun. In the end it came down to us wanting different sorts of lives.’ He gave me a slight smile. ‘Look, the thing is, I’ve got to fly out at five, but I wanted to talk to you. Can we sit down? Does Hadleigh have a lounge, for example?’

‘Sorry. Yes. Of course.’ I sounded like a complete idiot. Why on earth had he come? ‘Where are you flying off to?’

‘Honolulu. Runway show.’

I bit my tongue on asking if Lulu would be there and led the way into the lounge. Nick sat on the sagging couch. I sank into the nearest armchair.

‘But you and Lulu,’ I said, ‘you’re both models, both jetsetters. How come you want different lives?’ I had to make sure about this, had to press hard on the bruise.

That seemed to surprise him. ‘I’m just doing the modelling to work my way through uni. Not Lulu, though. It’s the only life she wants.’

I could almost feel the cogs readjusting themselves in my brain. ‘I didn’t know that. I thought you were … What are you studying?’

‘Microbiology. Can’t wait to finish, get a real job and ditch the modelling.’ He jumped up. ‘Have you got time for a walk? We could go along the river.’

‘Yes. Of course. But Nick, why are you here? Why have you come?’ I couldn’t have got out of that chair if the house was on fire.

He stopped still for a few seconds and I held my breath. When he turned round to look at me, his face was intent — intense. He knelt down in front of me and reached for my hands. His touch nearly undid me, my heart was so near to choking me. ‘Bess, I had to see you. I wanted to see you. Yes, Lulu and I broke up because we were headed in different directions. But ever since that day — the day of the ice cream—’

The day of the kiss
.

‘—I haven’t been able to get you out of my head. Out of my heart. It makes no sense. I can’t explain it, but I feel like we’re connected. That you’re the other part of me.’

‘Nick …’ It was all I could say. I leaned forward, touching my forehead to his.

His voice shook. ‘I’ve been wanting to kiss you again. Ever since that day. Is that okay with you? You’re so young. Four years younger than me. I don’t want to—’

I put my hand over his mouth. ‘Please, kiss me.’

‘For real? You mean it?’ He looked into my face — at the brimming tears, and the smile I couldn’t quite hold steady. ‘You do? Come here where I can reach you!’

Both of us scrambled up, got tangled together and fell sideways back into my chair. So there I was, stuck in a stupid squashy chair with the guy I loved almost flattening me, and his arms were around me and it was magical. I could feel the beat of his heart, and his warmth flowed into the frozen pieces of my soul.

We stayed like that, heads together, bubbling with laughter until he said, ‘Shall we try that again?’ He pushed himself free of the chair, then tugged me upright and kissed me.

There’s nothing so sweet as a kiss you’ve thought would never come. I swear I melted. There were no bones in my body, no sinews, and the only muscles were in my heart.

The fate of the olive grove lovers, whatever it was, would not beset us this time.

‘I love you.’ He held me away to look into my eyes. ‘It’s crazy. We’ve spent no time together. We don’t know each other. Logically, I can’t love you. But bugger it, Bess, I’ve spent every day trying to convince myself I don’t, and it doesn’t work.’

I reached up, took his hands from my shoulders and held them tight. ‘I’ve done exactly the same thing. Sore, bruised heart. Head saying get a grip. Keeping busy, trying not to grieve—’

‘You have? Whoa! That’s way too freaky. I might have to kiss you again.’

He gathered me up in his arms, sat himself back in that chair, with me squished in beside him. ‘Comfortable?’

‘Can’t tell. Too blissed out.’

It was ages before we extracted ourselves from the chair. ‘Man, I’m hungry,’ my beloved said. ‘Let’s go find a horse I can eat.’

Me, I didn’t care if I never ate again. Well, not until we were sitting in a restaurant, then the hunger kicked in. Nick ordered steak and I went for the spiced calamari. It’s tricky eating when you can’t stop smiling.

‘This is beyond bizarre,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything about you. For starters, I’m still trying to see you as a uni student and not a model. And anyway, what uni are you at?’

‘Massey. The Palmerston North campus. What about you? You’ll go to uni?’ He grabbed my hand, fork and all. ‘Bess, it’s crazy to be even thinking about this — but I really want us to be together. In the same town, at least. I’ve got another year of my Masters to do, then possibly a PhD. Could you study in Palmy? What do you want to do?’

All my insides leapt into meltdown. ‘I want to be with you. It’s what I’ve been dreaming of.’ My tear ducts went into melt mode too.

Nick mopped my face with the serviette. ‘I still can’t believe it.’ He stroked his thumb across my hand. ‘You are real, aren’t you?’

‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘I’m real if you are.’

Do all people in love say daft things to each other? I didn’t care about others. Nick loved me. My olive grove boy.

‘Nick, listen. There’s something I haven’t told you.’

His eyes sharpened. ‘Might this be another past life you’ve seen, by any chance?’

‘Smart as well as handsome! You should definitely do a PhD instead of modelling.’

‘Yes, well, this is intuition, not smarts. I rather think I want to hear this story. Let’s go for that walk, eat ice cream and talk.’

‘I’ll buy and I’ll choose,’ I said. I got him blackberry ripple, and classic hokey pokey for me.

We walked beside the river and I told him about my olive grove lovers. ‘They’re so happy. I can see that by the way they are together. I saw their wedding. Lots of family, children, flowers, food — the whole caboodle. Happiness just shines out of them.’

‘Well, they’d make a pleasant contrast to burning Iris to death.’ He tucked my arm more securely into his. ‘Did you recognise them? In this life, I mean.’

‘Sorry. Forgot I hadn’t told you that part. The boy is you and I’m the girl.’

‘Ah.’ We walked in silence until he said, ‘You know, I don’t think I’d believe it for a minute if it weren’t for the fact that I love you. Against my better judgement, common sense, reason.’

His better judgement? ‘Don’t you want to love me?’ Love. It did such terrible things to the breathing. My lungs felt squeezed empty.

Immediately, his arms went round me and he was kissing me, in between saying, ‘Never think that! Never. It’s just that you haven’t had time yet to get out into the world, to meet other guys.’

‘I don’t want other guys.’

He held me away from him and I put a finger on his lips to shush him. ‘Please don’t get all … fatherly on me!’

He gave a crack of laughter. ‘I assure you, I feel anything but fatherly.’

‘Good.’ I grinned at him, my lover with his
movie-star
face and his dark, dreamy eyes. ‘You’re taller than you were in that life. And I’m shorter.’

‘We were happy? Got married and lived happily ever after?’

I shivered, and he held me close. ‘That’s the trouble. I don’t know. They seemed to be worried about something. I think it was a sickness in the town, but I haven’t seen any scenes since the wedding.’

‘Well, if they did come to grief that could explain why we’ve got such a weirdly strong connection now.’

But just then the alarm on his phone shrilled. ‘Shit. Time to go. Come with me to the airport,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay for the taxi back again.’

And so I sat with him in the back of a taxi while it took us to the airport. We kissed goodbye while the driver waited to take me back again.

‘Known each other long, have you?’ the man asked, suspicious as hell.

‘Only for several hundred years.’

Strangely, he didn’t talk to me after that.