The back door of the cottage over the fence bursts open and Nightshade hurtles down the steps, yelling back over her shoulder. Wild words fly out of her mouth, rising and falling as she paces up and down between rows of silverbeet. Delia doesn’t watch her. The old woman’s eyes are fixed on the empty rectangle of the open door, where no one appears.
‘And what are you staring at, you silly old bat?’ yells Nightshade, noticing Delia and striding down to the fence. ‘Piss off, it’s none of your business!’ She reaches down, wrenches a handful of young carrots out of the ground and flings them at Delia. The orange roots, the clods, spatter against the shapeless grey cardigan but could have hit a stone wall for all the impression they make.
Goodness knows what Nightshade might have flung next. She’s out of control, screaming and weeping, her hair uncombed, legs and feet bare on this cold morning, arms frantically tearing at a cabbage. Donny, soundless, head down, clumps out of the house, grabs her by one arm and drags her back inside. The door bangs shut.
Delia stands there.
‘Come in, come in, Delia!’ Aureole’s draped blue silk flutters as she calls. Her bony arms and legs, tramping and waving at all angles, set the soft material aglow in the pale morning sun. But her agitation is to no effect. Delia is as impervious as the Rock of Ages. Aureole turns and clatters inside for reinforcements.
In the cottage over the fence, the shouts and screams continue. Some piece of furniture crashes. The thin wail of a baby’s cry slices through the heavier noise of battle.
Delia lifts heavy, sodden feet and starts wading through long grass towards the fence. She grips the wire with fat old hands, unused to work, and heaves downwards, using the weight of her body to bend the stubborn stuff. When this proves useless, she turns her ponderous attention to the fence-post. The rotten wood gives no resistance. Delia and post collapse to the ground, the wire sagging and snagging around them.
And there she is cast: marooned at the back of the section like a pile of garden rubbish.
‘It is not right,’ says Delia Goodyear to a clump of yarrow. ‘She should be locked up, taken away. The boy is not strong enough, though he is our great-nephew.’ The white flowers of the yarrow bob and nod. ‘It is no laughing matter,’ says Delia severely. ‘Some people do not deserve to have a baby. What will he grow into, listening to anger night and day?’ She lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘I cannot bear it, that little wail, I cannot bear it. And must do my duty, with God’s guidance, if no one else will.’
Roe McAneny, leaning heavily on Aureole’s arm and using her stick to slash at any weed that dares to block her way, arrives on the scene. ‘Delia,’ she says, glaring down, ‘you are talking to yourself!’
Delia looks to the yarrow for support. When none comes, she looks away from her sisters and withdraws from the world.
‘Oh, oh,’ wails Aureole, ‘she’s gone again, Miss Roe. Whatever can we do?’
‘She is perfectly all right,’ says Roe. ‘Stubborn. Stubborn and headstrong. Always was from a small girl.’ The bones in her knees creak, taking the weight as she continues to slash at the weeds with her stick. ‘Get up at once, Delia, your underclothes are damp.’
Delia lies on her back and gazes at the sky.
‘Should I ask our nephew for help?’ Aureole speaks without enthusiasm. She’s afraid to go over there, and Roe couldn’t walk the distance.
Roe lifts her stick again and strikes Delia smartly on her shoulder. ‘You can get up, Delia, if you wish. Or not. Your sister and I are retiring inside. Give me your arm, Aureole.’
Delia shows no sign of noticing her sisters’ creeping journey back to the house, or Aureole’s anxious glances back over her shoulder.
The sun rises higher. Inside the other house, the shouts have subsided. Nightshade’s outbursts are intermittent now, rising to the surface of the morning like water on a slow boil.
Donny appears in the cottage doorway. For a moment he stands, rolling his shoulders like a boxer and frowning against the sun. Or his thoughts, perhaps. He comes down the steps, takes up a spade and strides over to the wild corner of the garden, jabbing with every step. His ferocity, as he attacks the waist-high mounds of old grass, is clearly aimed at someone else. One by one the clumps are toppled until Donny, straightening to drive from another angle, gets a clear view of his great-aunt Delia, lying there. He had taken her for a tree trunk.
Donny rests one hand on the fence and looks down at her, not ready yet to make civilised conversation. Delia returns the stare. In the end, she’s the first to move. The complicated manoeuvre involving hip, elbow and a handful of grass brings her half on to her knees and then, flopping down again, securely if damply seated. Now she can face Donny square on.
‘This won’t do,’ she says. ‘Think of the baby.’
Donny’s dark eyes are even blacker today. His hair is tangled, his shirt and trousers grubby. Donny usually takes good care. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he says.
‘Well,’ says Delia. And waits.
‘There’s nothing I can do, Aunty.’ Donny chips halfheartedly at a clod. After a while he adds, ‘So leave me alone.’
‘Well,’ says Delia again. Waiting is as natural to her as breathing.
Somehow her lack of expectation, her stillness seem to calm the boy. He leaves his spade lying and steps through the tangled wire of the fence. He sits, a little distance from her, looking in another direction, and begins, in stops and starts, to speak.
‘It’s too hard,’ he says. ‘I’m thinking of shooting through.’
‘Oh?’ says Delia.
‘She won’t do anything! Look after the house, or cook, or any stuff.’ Donny pulls at a grass stalk and adds in a low voice, ‘I’m no good with the baby.’
‘Nor is she,’ says Delia with a little spirit.
Donny seems not to hear. ‘She won’t let me near him, that’s why. If I try to change a nap or pick him up, she laughs at me, or shouts, and grabs him away. She says I drink and stuff. I don’t, not really, she’s the one who drinks. She makes like I’m some kind of monster. Always screaming that I’m useless or I don’t care. Then I get mad and have to do my one two three.’ Donny turns to look at his great-aunt. ‘I asked her to leave but she won’t.’
Delia reaches to touch his arm. ‘You must stay.’
Donny pulls away. ‘I could take Manny with me.’ But it’s clear he doesn’t believe this.
‘No, Donny, you must stay.’
‘But what use am I here? Just make it worse.’ His hand closes on a buttercup, slowly obliterating the gold like a tiny cruel sunset. Every line of his tough and beautiful body droops. Even his toes, groping in the red soil, suggest pain or misery. Delia can’t bear to see it.
‘If you go,’ she says slowly, ‘we will lose Manny. Both Manny and you.’
‘Oh,’ shouts Donny, ‘what then? Who can help? You’re too—’
Delia smiles. ‘Yes.’ Then adds, ‘We are not too old to love him, though.’
‘Whoo hoo, Aunty!’ cries Donny. ‘Get off my back, will you?’ His nose reddens and swells with the tears he’s holding back. ‘She might be better without me.’
‘She won’t,’ says Delia.
He turns his head away then, and Delia waits while he hides his crying. The boy pinches his nose; wipes his fingers in the grass. His head shakes from side to side.
Delia tries to gather her thoughts, to say something of importance. She stares at that nodding head of yarrow, then away again. It is only a plant and will not assist. ‘Donny, dear nephew. Go into your house, but go quietly. Bring the baby to me.’
Donny looks at her.
‘No words or shouting, Donny. Bring him to our place for a while. We have bought a bottle and some formula. We can feed him there.’
Apprehension stains Donny’s face. ‘She might …’
‘She needs a rest. And so do you. Go quickly, nephew.’
He stands there, his eyes hollow, unable, it seems, to move. Delia keeps
her voice gentle. It’s like talking to a spooked horse. She smiles. ‘But first help me up or I will be stuck in this mud forever.’
Donny grins at that. At last his mood is broken. He heaves her up easily, proud of his strength. Then hesitates, looking back at his house where there are, for the moment, no sounds of conflict, just a baby’s thin wail.
‘Off you go,’ says Delia.
Mona Kingi leans her beefy arms on Vera’s front railing and waits. Vera raises a hand, then goes on forking in manure. After a bit, when Vera has come to the end of a row, Mona offers a comment.
‘That early snow has melted. Might not be such a good season after all.’ She knows this remark will please Vera more than any hello or how are you.
Vera clumps over to the fence, leans on her fork and nods. ‘Good to see you out and about, Mona. You on your perch again then?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Vera; they say so, but it’s a battle.’ Mona is wearing old dungarees, a tartan shirt and gumboots: a good sign. There have been days when she’s wandered down the road in dressing gown and slippers. ‘They say it’s my time of life and that I’ll get over it, but it’s been two years now.’ She raises a shaky hand to smooth back a strand of hair that has escaped the bun. ‘Anyway, thanks for taking care of Lovey. She says she often came over here for kai.’
Vera grunts. Waves a hand in the direction of her garden. ‘Pity to waste good food.’ She glowers. ‘What that light-fingered Virgin leaves me.’
Mona laughs: an even better sign. ‘That Virgin! She can winkle a carrot out of our field neater than tickling trout. Hardly a footprint. George can’t work out how she does it without waking the dogs. Speaking of which. The other girl with the baby …’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Liddy asked me to pay a visit.’
‘Who?’
‘Matron up at the hospital.’
‘Well, good luck, Mona, you’ll need it.’
‘That bad, is it?’
‘You make up your mind, you’re the expert on babies. What’s it to do with the matron anyway?’
Mona takes out a clean handkerchief, wipes the sweat that is trickling down her neck even on this crisp morning. She sighs. ‘Di Masefield says she’s concerned.’
Vera stabs her fork into the soft soil. ‘Bloody hell! ’Scuse my French, Mona.’ Mona has brought her children up to speak politely, keep themselves clean and display perfect table manners — all foreign territory to Vera, whose behaviour is sometimes stretched when visiting her friend. But mention of Di Masefield shatters any restraint. ‘That bloody woman just can’t let Donny Mac alone.’
‘That’s what it’s about?’
‘Reckon so. Although. You’d better have a dekko. Want some reinforcement?’
Mona nods. ‘Come on then.’
The two of them march down Miro, past the dark row of macrocarpas, past the townies’ house across the corner, and turn into Hohepa. From here the view of the mountain is stunning, but the women have grown up with it; they’re more interested in what the townies have planted or repaired or let go.
The old ladies’ house is visible from this side, so Mona and Vera stop to inspect. On the back porch one of them is sitting in a rocking chair, feeding a bottle to a baby. She’s singing something in a cracked voice and rocking gently back and forth.
‘That’ll be Donny’s boy,’ says Vera.
‘Not the Virgin’s?’
‘No one on earth touches the Virgin’s. Probably not in heaven either.’
The old lady on the porch doesn’t notice them. Her eyes are fixed on the tot in her arms.
‘So much for a neighbourly chat,’ grumbles Vera. ‘I don’t think she’s quite all there. Never heard her speak.’ It’s a good sign, though. The baby seems contented.
They decide to get Pansy Holloway over with first. Then a word with the old lady.
The door to Donny’s is open. Mona gives a yoo-hoo but there’s no reply. Donny will be at work, but Vera says Nightshade must be here somewhere. Drunk most likely. They walk around to the back, and there she is, stretched out on an old mattress on the lawn. Behind her the vege garden has been freshly turned and a couple of rows of something planted. Vera doubts this is Nightshade’s work, but is pleased that Donny seems to be taking things seriously.
They look across at Nightshade. She’s curled up on her side, her hair knotted, a pair of Donny’s pyjamas twisted around her legs, an empty beer bottle lying on the grass by her outstretched hand. Mona coughs.
‘Get the shit out of my property,’ says Nightshade without turning or opening her eyes.
Vera glances angrily at Mona, but her friend walks calmly to the other side of the girl and squats beside her. Vera waits for an explosion.
‘Hello, Pansy,’ says Mona in a neutral kind of way. ‘We just came to see how you are. And the baby. How’s it going?’
Pansy groans; she turns over to her other side, throwing one arm over her eyes against the brightness of the sunlight. ‘Who cares. Go away.’
‘The baby,’ says Mona gently, ‘is he doing okay?’
Pansy sits up and glares at Mona. ‘It’s all about the baby, isn’t it? How’s the baby? How’s the dear little tyke? What about me?’
Mona puts out an arm, touches the girl softly. ‘Well, what about you?’ she asks, quiet and steady. Vera is amazed at her patience.
Pansy jerks violently at the touch. ‘Don’t you touch me, you cow. Leave me alone!’
Mona waits for a moment, looking away as if to steady herself before she speaks again. ‘You’re not too flash, are you, girl?’
Pansy bursts into a storm of tears. ‘Oh go to hell,’ she howls.
‘Where’s your mother these days, Pansy? Does she know about her little grandson?’
‘She doesn’t want to know. Me or the baby. Kicked me out.’
‘Have you got friends you could stay with for a while?’
Pansy stands. She shifts on her feet. Tears streak a face that looks as if it hasn’t been washed for days. But the belligerence has won against the misery. Vera thinks she’s going to take a swing at Mona, and moves in. Pansy swivels to face her; grabs a handful of Vera’s old cardigan. ‘What’s wrong with staying here?’ she shouts. ‘Oh, I get it, you want me out. Want me to leave your precious Donny alone. Well, fuck off, I’m staying.’
She throws herself back down on the mattress, curls up in a ball and ignores them.
Vera, outraged, goes to walk away, but Mona, watching Nightshade closely, reaches out to stay her friend.
‘I tell you what,’ she says quietly to the girl on the mattress, ‘why don’t you bring the little one down to me this afternoon? I could lend you a pram. You might both enjoy a walk in the sun.’
No response.
‘Think about it. I might have some baby clothes too.’
‘Oh, piss off with your bloody good works!’ screams Nightshade. ‘If you want to make yourself useful, get me another beer from the fridge.’ She clamps her hands over her ears. ‘Or else go away, right now.’
‘I’ll be home anyway this afternoon, Pansy. You’d be welcome.’
Mona stands there for another moment and then sighs. ‘Not good,’ she mutters. ‘We’d better leave her, I think.’
There’s a rusty gate squeezed between two of the big macrocarpas and a concrete path leading to the front door of number 37 Miro, but they opt to walk up the drive and around the back to where they saw the old lady and the baby. There they still are, both asleep in the sun. The back section is choked with tall grass and weeds; one of the veranda posts is on a lean, but the other shows signs of recent repair.
‘Good morning,’ says Mona from a safe distance.
The woman wakes suddenly, almost dropping the baby, who starts crying. But the woman is civil this time and ready to speak.
‘Good morning.’
Mona introduces herself and Vera, and offers a hand.
Delia carefully releases one hand from its grip on the baby and shakes. ‘M
y name is Delia Goodyear.’
‘Well, for goodness sake,’ says Vera. ‘Related to Smiley?’
Delia nods. ‘This is my great-great-nephew, Manny.’
‘You don’t say?’ Vera tries to work it out and fails. Perhaps Delia is not quite right in the head.
Mona is focused on the baby. She asks questions and receives civil, if scanty, answers. Delia or her sister often take care of the baby while Donny is at work. Sometimes Delia sees that other strange girl — not the mother — taking a walk with both babies slung about her body. Pansy is in a bad way. Donny has a hard time of it when he comes home. They hear the mother shouting and screaming at him. Delia frowns. ‘She gives our great-nephew no help, poor boy.’
Mona looks at the baby, who is sleeping again. ‘Would you mind if I had a look at him? I’m a nurse and have been asked to check up.’
Delia holds the bundle tighter. ‘He’s perfectly all right.’
‘No bruises, signs of abuse?’
‘Oh!’ Delia hugs the baby to her. Tears well up. ‘You’re not going to take him away? We thought we were the last of our line, and here we have new life — Donny and the baby.’
The door opens and the youngest of the three sisters stands watching. Vera has seen her striding around Manawa in her distracted, angular way.
‘Aureole,’ cries Delia, ‘they want to take the baby away.’
Aureole takes the few steps to stand behind her sister. She grips Delia’s shoulders and faces the other two. ‘We will resist! This is trespass! Kindly remove yourselves!’
Delia tries to attract her sister’s attention but is hampered by the baby in her arms. ‘Shh, shh, Aureole, you will wake Miss Roe.’
Vera notes the instant effect this has on Aureole, who breathes quickly and flutters her hands about but remains silent.
Mona smiles. ‘Let’s just take a look at the baby together, shall we? Just to make sure?’
Delia pulls back the shawl that wraps the baby. He’s encased in a good new gown, bootees on his feet and a woollen bonnet.
‘We bought him what he needs,’ whispers Aureole, glancing anxiously back inside and then pulling the door to.
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