The Party Line (28 page)

One Wednesday, Eugene came home from the cattle sale and, instead of coming inside for lunch, sat in his truck. Joy watched from the kitchen window as he lit a cigarette and flicked ash out his window. Was he watching her? She couldn’t tell.

She felt his presence behind her as she bent to put dinner in the oven.

‘Bit of news,’ he said. ‘Audrey’s selling the farm.’

Joy didn’t turn around.

‘To Ian Baxter. So they were saying at the sale.’

‘Hmmm,’ she said.

The fridge door opened and shut. Joy felt the blast of oven warmth at her front, and the chilled air of the refrigerator at her back.

‘Did you know about this?’ The glug of milk as he swallowed straight from the bottle.

‘I heard something.’

‘When?’

‘Not so long ago … last week, maybe?’

The fridge door clicked shut.

‘Why didn’t you tell me, Joy?’

Joy turned, her face flushed from the heat of the oven. Eugene was staring at her as though he had lost something; couldn’t quite remember where he had put it down.

‘No reason. Just slipped my mind, I suppose.’

She held his stare. Had she never done this before? She believed not. He chewed at his bottom lip, then pulled out his cigarettes from his trouser pocket. He lit one, and she waited for him to hand it to her, but he kept it for himself.

The rugby club meeting was not marked on the big calendar behind the kitchen door. Joy flicked through the pages
April May June
wondering, out loud, whether he’d penned it on the wrong month.

‘It’s an extra one. To sort out the juniors.’ Eugene had showered and shaved and was pulling on a clean shirt. His good jersey was slung over the back of a chair. He grabbed it on his way out of the house.

Joy waited until Nickie was settled in front of the television. She grabbed her coat from the cupboard and took the car keys from the bench. She told Nickie she was going to check on Audrey Gilbert, have a cup of tea. She wouldn’t be long.

Joy thought, at first, that the cars might be parked on the other side of the rugby clubrooms. But as she passed the buildings, it was clear they were empty. Perhaps they were meeting at someone’s house, rather than the cold, draughty rooms? And really, did she care?

She drove to the end of the road and turned left. Audrey, she hoped, would still be up. Not at the clothes line, but sitting in that stark kitchen, perhaps. Swatting flies or brewing tea. She slowed as she passed the Baxter cottage. Someone had made curtains for the bare windows. Joy wondered if it was Gabrielle. The curtains were pulled tight against the cold night.

For a moment, she considered stopping, having a quick word with Ian Baxter. Asking how the farm purchase was coming along — suggesting that he not wait too long to finalise arrangements. Panic fluttered in her chest like a moth under a jar. She understood, now, the reason for her recent anxiety.

Instead, she sped on. Tonight, she wanted to check on Audrey. She would visit Ian the next day.

Joy blinked, stunned, as she slowed down. There were so many vehicles at the Gilbert house that some had to be parked on the side of the road. In the darkness, only reflector lights shone at first, but as she got closer she recognised many of the utes.

Yes, they were all utes, or trucks. This was a gathering of men. Assuming none had picked up passengers, there were at least ten farmers paying a visit to Audrey Gilbert.

Joy thought, at first, that Eugene’s truck wasn’t there. But she hadn’t looked hard enough. It was right up close to the house, next to the fence where the dogs were tethered. Eugene had been first to arrive. He was the leader of the pack.

Marcia. Nickie rolled the name round in her mouth and smiled at how it sounded like
Marsha
but was actually spelled the Italian way. Or Spanish. Marcia wasn’t sure whether her ancestors had come from Italy or Spain, but what amazed Nickie was that it wasn’t New Zealand.

She lay on the floor of the lounge, homework spread wide around her. It was Sunday night and she wished she’d started it sooner. Started it properly, she meant, done the actual work. Rather than doodling
Marcia
and drawings of swimming pools with diving boards. Marcia was her new friend in her class at school. Her father was a bank manager and they had a swimming pool which Nickie had been invited to use practically any time she wanted. Marcia’s pool didn’t actually have a diving board, but Nickie and Marcia had talked about getting one with Marcia’s father and he’d smiled and said
Why not?

A friend with a swimming pool and a potential diving board. A friend who had not just disappeared off the face of the Earth without saying goodbye.

The Baxters had left Fenward early, before the end of the season, due to personal circumstances. That’s what Eugene had told her, when she’d come back from staying with her cousin Heather for Easter.

Nickie had stared at him, not believing what she’d heard. ‘When? When did they leave?’

‘In the weekend.’

‘Where did they go?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why? I thought they were going to buy the farm?’

‘That didn’t work out.’

‘Did Gabrielle come over? To say goodbye?’

‘She phoned while you were away.’

‘Well who’s going to look after the farm now?’

Eugene had looked at Joy then, and Nickie followed his gaze. Joy’s jaw was set hard and she raised her eyebrows at Eugene.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘Tell her. Tell her what you’ve done. You and your
mates
.’

The way her mother spoke frightened Nickie. It wasn’t the words, though they were mean enough, but the way she said them. The way she said
mates
, as though her father was in a gang, like those Hells Angels.

Eugene glared back at Joy. Nickie swallowed the lump that was growing in her throat. She whispered
Stop it, please,
but her mother seemed not to hear.

‘Your father will be looking after the Gilberts’ farm. He’s bought it. Him and his
mates
have gone in together and bought it off Audrey.’

Joy put her arm around Nickie. ‘I know you’re upset. We’ll find out where they’ve gone, you can keep in touch with Gabrielle …’

Nickie wanted to explain, wanted to say it out loud. That she was upset about them fighting, not about Gabrielle. She hadn’t had time to think about Gabrielle yet. That she didn’t actually think a lot about Gabrielle these days. But Eugene stood up, slammed his cup down on the table and stomped towards Joy. Nickie held her breath, held her gaze on his hands. They hung loosely at his side. His fists were clenched, the white of his knucklebones showing through his rough, scarred skin.

Nickie was right back there, outside the Gilberts’ window.

‘Don’t hit her.’

He rubbed his eyes and sat down again. The flicker of a smile passed Joy’s lips as Eugene stared at Nickie as though
she
was the stranger, the one who didn’t belong.

Everyone except Nickie was watching
Country Calendar
, the most boring programme ever made. Who wanted to live their whole life on a farm, which was boring enough already, then have to watch
more
farmers doing boring farm stuff on TV? But her father liked it and said he only watched one bloody television programme a day, being the news, and if a man couldn’t watch the only other decent programme
on offer then what was the world coming to?

The boring music came on and her father said
Shush
even though no one was talking and her mother said
No one’s saying a word, Eugene
, which meant a situation was brewing.

The subject for the programme that night turned out to be sharemilkers. The first of June wasn’t far away, the boring man said, and so this episode would look at New Zealand’s proud tradition of sharemilking and how it had allowed so many young men to achieve their dreams and become farmers.

The programme started off talking about Gypsy Day, and it showed some photos of families on the move from one farm to another.

Her father cleared his throat. Nickie thought
Here we go
but it turned out that’s all it was. She looked at the best doodle of
Marcia
and thought thank God bankers didn’t move on the first of June, too.

‘Can’t believe how quickly the year goes,’ said Joy.

‘Not quick enough,’ said Eugene.

‘Don’t start,’ said Joy.

‘Don’t tell me what I can and can not say, Joy.’

The square root of sixteen. Four.

‘He deserved a chance,’ said Joy.

‘Not in this district.’

Six to the power of three.

Nickie quietly got to her feet and slipped out the door. She brushed her teeth, then left the cold water running and tiptoed back into the hallway to listen at the lounge door.

There was nothing to worry about tonight. Joy and Eugene weren’t fighting. They weren’t even talking. The only sound was the television, the boring man getting excited about herds and new beginnings.

Sunlight shines through the long rectangular window directly above the altar. It flickers across the bowed mourners.

Nicola scans weathered, sun-scarred heads. From the back pew, it’s hard to tell which person is Hans. Then she sees him. He’s in the front row, of course. He was always lean — Jack Sprattish to Josephine’s Rubenesque — but old age has shrunk him to a tiny version of himself. Nicola catches a side glimpse as he shuffles uncomfortably in a shiny blue threadbare suit. His eyes are red-rimmed, his dark eyebrows now grey but still owlish. He doesn’t look her way.

Nicola wonders who else she’ll recognise. Not the priest, who is a young man of earnest piety. It’s possible she won’t know anybody at all. There were few enough familiar faces at her mother’s funeral, years earlier.

The service progresses through its rituals, and Nicola thinks it might have been better, after all, to have sat in Hans’s line of sight. She wonders whether he’ll stand and speak about Josephine, whether he might glance up from the pulpit and see her.

But Hans doesn’t speak. Instead, a slim, elderly woman gets up from the seat directly behind him and makes her way to the altar, to the pulpit. In her hands is a sheet of paper. Nicola knows, before the sparrow-like figure turns around, that it’s Audrey Gilbert.

Audrey clears her throat. Nicola’s holding her breath, though she doesn’t know it until she starts to sway. Audrey looks up, with clear, bright eyes. She smiles that Hepburn smile as her gaze sweeps over Nicola. If she’s recognised her, she doesn’t show it.

A sure, strong voice from the tiny woman.

Audrey speaks about moving away from Fenward after the death of her husband. How, somehow, she ended up back there eventually. She hadn’t known Josephine so well in the early days, but the larger-than-life Dutch woman had welcomed her return as though Audrey was her best friend and had been absent on a day trip.

‘I’ve been asked to speak on behalf of Hans,’ Audrey says. ‘It used to
be the belief of Fenward folk that Hans Janssen couldn’t speak English. It’s true that Josephine talked enough for the both of them. But Hans’s English is — and always was — pretty-much perfect.’

Audrey pauses, looking down at her notes.

‘Hans used to say to Josephine you can learn a lot about people if you don’t talk, just listen. Josephine would laugh and carry on anyway.’ She looks up at Hans. ‘You and Josephine. One talker, one listener. Good, good people. Both of you.’

Outside, afterwards, Hans squints into the sun. Nicola waves and walks to him. He smiles shyly when he realises it’s her.

‘I’m sorry, Hans. So sorry she’s gone.’ A hug is out of the question. It’s the first time they’ve talked directly to each other, ever, without Josephine’s trilled interference. How utterly odd this feels.

‘Thank you, Nicola. I should have spoken in the service, I know. But it was too hard.’

His English is accented but excellent.

They chat on about the farm. The Janssens sold it not long ago and moved into a retirement village in Paeroa. Josephine had died in the garden, feeding birds. She liked to sing with them, mimic them, Hans said. Then, one day, there was only birdsong.

Nicola looks over his shoulder. Audrey is mingling with people Nicola doesn’t recognise. ‘I never realised … You were close with Audrey Gilbert, all that time?’

Hans glances at Audrey, too. ‘No, not at all. Really only after Audrey came back to Fenward. After Jack died.’

Nicola bites her lip. ‘You know,’ she says, finally, ‘you do know that it wasn’t a swimming accident. Jack killed himself. He drowned himself in the river.’

‘I know that, Nicola. People guessed.’

Nicola can’t stop.

‘Hans, it was me. Me and a girl called Gabrielle Baxter … we shamed him into suicide.’

Hans’s rheumy eyes are fixed on Nicola. ‘Are you coming to the house, Nicola?’

‘I can’t. I’ve got to get back. I’m sorry …’

Other mourners are waiting to talk to Hans, express their sorrow at his loss. He puts his hand on Nicola’s shoulder.

‘I’m going to take you over to Audrey. Come on over, girl.’

Hans leads her, like a child.

Nicola Walker and Audrey Gilbert are in the tearooms, which were the tearooms when Nicola was a kid, then for a time became the café with croissants and lattes, and now they are the new vintage tearooms, with designer-wobbly Formica tables and tatty sofas and looping French lounge music. Lampshades hang low over the tables and sweet old-fashioned new-fashioned baking perfumes the air.

Audrey, these days, has very good teeth. They are straight and white and all accounted for. They make perfect lispless words and a gentle smile.

Nicola and Audrey take tea. Yes, she is still Mrs Gilbert, Audrey says, when Nicola stumbles addressing her. ‘But you should try to call me Audrey.’ Nicola nods and thinks this will never be possible.

They have slipped off the edge of something.

Stop staring at her teeth
Nicola tells herself. But the thing is, the bruises and the make-up always took your eyes away from the teeth. The teeth — their absence — was an unremarkable thing back then. These days, Audrey wears her beauty naked. It’s asking to be stared at and admired.

‘It’s nice to see you, Nickie.’

Audrey’s not tumbling. She’s anchored; maybe she’ll steer them through the time-maze, with its dead ends and emergency exits. ‘Hans said to me that you wanted to talk about something?’

When Nicola opens her mouth, sound fails. The space between Audrey’s words and this moment is wide, deep as an abyss.

‘All I wanted to say, to tell you,’ begins Nicola, ‘is that Mr Gilbert’s death was my fault. Mine and Gabrielle Baxter’s.’

Nicola tells her everything. Starting with the night she and Gabrielle sneaked up to the Gilberts’ window and peered inside. She
tells Audrey what she saw, how they tried to do the right thing but no one else thought the right thing was the right thing to do. How Gabrielle called Jack out at Calf Club Day, then moved away, and Nicola got a new friend called Marcia with a swimming pool, and, eventually, a little diving board at the end of it.

‘I’m sorry you saw what you saw,’ says Audrey, after a time. Her gaze is cool, neutral.

Nicola doesn’t know, suddenly, what else she needs to say. Audrey used to be strange. Now she’s a stranger. That’s all.

‘A shame. Really,’ Audrey murmurs.

They sip their tea, which is cooling faster than Nicola expects but slower than she hopes.

‘Let me see,’ says Audrey eventually. ‘The thing is, Nickie, I’m not sure I quite understand … What exactly is it you’re wanting from me, after all this time?’

Nicola shrugs, unable to answer. Joy used to spin the teapot before pouring. Nicola turns the teapot
one two three
and sees, finally, that teapot-spinning is all about the collection of thought.

‘You see, my husband was sick for a long time. Long before 1972. He’d tried to end it all, more than once. It was complicated. So—’ Audrey blinks at Nicola, her bewilderment creasing her brow — ‘don’t be worrying that
you
killed my Jack, you and your friend.’

‘We were trying to help, Gabrielle and I,’ says Nicola. ‘Help you, is what I mean. To us, it felt as though no one wanted to help you.’

‘Oh,’ says Audrey. She bites her top lip, and shakes her head. ‘Your mother, she tried to help. She came to me, one Sunday, you know … when Jack was in Hamilton visiting his mother. Or so I thought. I chased her away, as I remember it. I was very busy that day, household chores and whatnot.’

They finish their tea in silence.

If she turns right outside the tearooms, takes the quickest route back to Auckland — the one she missed this morning — she won’t have to concentrate on the road. This’ll be useful, should Joy reappear. They have much to talk about.

If she turns left instead, and heads back the way she came, any distraction might send her off-course, on to the narrow roads of her childhood memory. She pulls up at the intersection. Her indicator flickers left, then right, then left and right again.