‘Bob McIntosh is coming in,’ she informed me with gloomy relish.
‘Oh, crap,’ I said. Bob was a painfully shy man in his late forties with swimmy eyes, breath that could fell an ox and enormous pores. He made what must have been a precarious living by driving around the countryside peddling dodgy cowshed detergents and stock drenches – Dad used to hide behind a hedge every time his little truck came up the drive. Unfortunately he’d taken one look at me and decided I was a likely-looking lass, possibly wife material. And despite his natural bashfulness, having made this weighty decision he was not to be deterred from his courtship. ‘Couldn’t you have told him we’re booked up?’
‘I did that last time,’ she pointed out.
‘Well then, that I’ve got leprosy or bubonic plague or something, and I can’t see any clients?’
She giggled and shook her head.
I HAD JUST got rid of Bob (shooting pains in his back and tickets to a jazz concert in Hamilton he knew I’d be interested in – how about making a night of it and having dinner at the Cossie Club first?) when Kim ambled in.
‘Hey, Amber,’ she said. ‘Hey, Jo. Got any biscuits? I’m starving.’
Within seconds she’d found a packet of chocolate afghans in the tiny kitchen. She threw herself into the single battered armchair and smiled at me happily. I made the three of us a cup of tea and took Amber’s out to the front desk, where instead of catching up with filing she was giving herself a painstaking French manicure with correction fluid.
‘Do you need a lift home?’ I asked Kim as I handed her a cup. The bus would have left half an hour ago, I knew.
‘Nah,’ she said. ‘Matt’s in town – he said he’d come and get me when he’s finished his errands.’
‘What a nice brother,’ I said.
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Kim, taking another biscuit and examining it suspiciously from every angle. ‘He decided to give me a lecture about safe sex the other day.’
I nearly choked on my biscuit, momentarily overcome by the vision of Matt in this stern older-brotherly role. Taking a hasty sip of tea, I tried to assume a suitably mirth-free expression.
‘I’m not having sex with anyone, anyway,’ she continued. Then, looking at me through her eyelashes, she added provocatively, ‘Yet.’
‘Are you considering it?’ I enquired. Cripes, she was only a baby.
‘Don’t know,’ said Kim. ‘Yeah, maybe. I’m not in love with Aaron or anything, but it’d be good practice. And yes, I know all about contraception.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said mildly. ‘But in my experience – which probably isn’t worth much – having sex with someone you’re not particularly attracted to is a pretty big let-down. It’s just sort of messy and embarrassing, and you end up feeling a bit depressed about the whole thing.’
‘Oh,’ said Kim thoughtfully.
‘Not that you should listen to me, with my brilliant history of relationships,’ I added, smiling at her. ‘At this point it looks like I’m going to have to choose between Bob McIntosh or becoming an eccentric spinster with fourteen cats.’
‘Spinster,’ she said. ‘Definitely spinster.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’
‘Or –’ she raised her voice as we heard the creak of the outside door, and then her brother’s slow voice in counterpoint to Amber’s nasal tones – ‘you could just settle for Matt.’
‘There’s just one insurmountable problem with that,’ I told her.
‘Cilla’s not insurmountable,’ Kim protested audibly as her brother appeared in the kitchen doorway. She smiled at him with great charm. ‘Hey, bro. Biscuit?’
‘No, thanks.’ He glared at her. ‘Are you ready to go? Hi, Jose.’
‘I haven’t finished my cup of tea,’ said Kim. ‘So, Josie, what’s wrong with Matt? Apart from being a complete pain in the arse, of course.’
‘It’s his name,’ I said gravely.
‘Fair enough. Matthew is a bit gay, I suppose.’
‘Matthew I could live with, but just imagine being called Jo King.’
Matt’s lips twitched. ‘You could always keep your own name after we got married,’ he offered. ‘I’m not unreasonable.’
‘Certainly not,’ I said haughtily. ‘I’m very traditional. So you see it’s impossible. And anyway, as you know, I’m only interested in doctors.’
‘Which one are you gunning for?’ he asked, looking at his sister with even more malevolence. ‘Milne or Oliver?’
Waimanu had two male doctors, one pushing sixty and the other a strong contender for the title of Sweatiest Man Alive.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I’m not fussy. Right, Kim, get up. I’ve got someone to see at four.’
Chapter 6
‘I DON’T SUPPOSE,’ said somebody in a voice of immense softness and sweetness – the kind of voice associated with the presenters of educational TV shows for preschoolers – ‘that Josie would be available?’
‘Jo!’ called Amber flatly. Relations between the two us had become somewhat tense today, after I’d suggested that more time doing work and less time bidding on clothes on Trade Me would be desirable.
I put down the catalogue I had been perusing and went out the front. ‘Hello, Mrs King.’
Matt and Kim's mother shuddered delicately. ‘Oh, please don’t call me Mrs King, Josie dear. It makes me feel so stern and old. Hazel, please.’ She held out both hands and clasped mine tenderly. ‘How are you, my dear?’ Hazel was utterly unlike her sister; she was small and slight and indecisive, with a soft voice that tended to trail off at the end of every sentence as if she lacked the strength to complete it.
‘Very well, thank you. How are you?’
‘Getting by,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I’ve been meaning to pop in – my baby never stops talking about you.’
‘How alarming,’ I said.
‘Nothing but the highest praise,’ Hazel assured me. ‘You’re obviously a wonderful influence. But make sure you send that little monkey away if she annoys you, won’t you?’
‘She doesn’t. She’s good fun.’
Kim’s mother looked somewhat doubtful. ‘You’re very sweet,’ she said. ‘Now, Josie, when can you come and have dinner with us?’
‘Whenever you like. My social life is not terribly exciting just at the moment.’
‘Well, after what you’ve been through you need a little time to lick your wounds,’ she said.
I must have looked a little disconcerted at this, because she added, ‘Rose told me about your . . . partner. That’s the right word, isn’t it?’
Personally I would have chosen another word, but wonderful influences probably shouldn’t use that sort of language.
‘How about Friday?’ she said.
ACCORDINGLY, ON FRIDAY night at half past six I left Andy lying on the couch eating chips to fortify his inner man before taking his girlfriend out for tea (with all the kitchen and sitting-room lights on, since Sara had gone away for the weekend), and drove up the valley.
The King house was an unattractive place built of white concrete bricks, with tinted windows and nasty aluminium joinery, surrounded by hot little garden beds. These were currently filled with alternate red and purple petunias and had carefully clipped yellow conifers at the corners.
Rose pulled up just behind me in her elderly Ford Falcon. ‘Hideous, isn’t it?’ she murmured, looking at the garden before passing me a bottle of port and heaving herself out of the car.
‘Yep,’ I agreed. ‘Whose ute is that?’
Rose looked at the great silver double-cab beast in front of the garage. ‘Cilla’s, I believe.’
‘Ah.’
‘Have you met her?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she’s come into work a couple of times with a sore shoulder. She’s pretty, isn’t she?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Rose.
‘Don’t you like her?’ I asked, curious. One of Aunty Rose’s best characteristics had always be
en her refusal to say anything negative about our romantic partners, so this lack of warmth was somewhat unusual.
‘I don’t know anything about the girl,’ she said and, having put me in my place, walked briskly up the path to the back door.
As I followed Rose up the hall, peals of silvery laughter sounded from the kitchen, as if two dainty elfin maidens were sharing a dainty elfin joke. ‘Good evening, Hazel,’ said Aunty Rose, thumping her bottle of port down on the counter. ‘Hello, Cilla.’
‘Rosie and Josie,’ said Hazel gaily. ‘Angels, you shouldn’t have.’ She accepted the brown paper parcel I handed her and dropped a butterfly kiss on my cheek. ‘Ooh, cheeses. Lovely.’
‘Josephine!’ said Aunty Rose.
‘From the supermarket,’ I told her.
‘Thank heaven for that.’
‘Have you two girls met?’ Hazel enquired, looking from me to Cilla.
‘We have,’ I said. ‘Hi, Cilla. How’s the shoulder?’
‘Getting better,’ said Cilla. She was wearing a powder-blue shirt with the collar turned up and a pair of close-fitting moleskin trousers, pearl drops in her ears and a quantity of very shiny lip gloss. Pointedly rural, prettily ‘Hazel, give me a job.’
‘Why don’t you go and help Matthew with the barbecue?’ said Hazel. And as Cilla vanished through the sliding door and around the side of the house she observed, ‘Such a sweet girl. Her parents are charming people – they own that property north of town with the lovely avenue of flowering cherries. I’m so pleased that Matthew has found someone who shares his interests.’
Aunty Rose looked ever so slightly incredulous. ‘War documentaries and eating mince pies?’ she asked.
‘The farm and the cows,’ said Hazel reprovingly. ‘I hardly think mince pies rank as a leisure activity, do you?’
‘He is a bit of a pie connoisseur,’ I said, but on seeing Hazel’s stiffening expression changed the subject. ‘Where’s Kim?’
‘Here,’ said Kim, appearing in the doorway wearing an oversized T-shirt and minuscule shorts.
‘Oh, sweetie, put some clothes on,’ her mother implored.
‘I have,’ said Kim, dangerous patience in her voice.
‘Lucky you’ve got nice legs,’ I told her.
‘Thank you. Where’s little Miss I-can-fix-a-water-leak-with-only-my-nail-file?’
‘Kimmy!’ Hazel wailed. Rose and I glanced at one another and began simultaneously to laugh. ‘You shouldn’t encourage her!’ she said to us.
‘True,’ said Aunty Rose, wiping her eyes. ‘Kim, be nice. You can help me set the table.’
‘THIS LOOKS DELICIOUS,’ said Cilla politely as we took our seats at a table set under the large and beetle-y elm tree on the back lawn.
Kim lounged in her chair, looking as if she was about to say something unpleasant in response to this inoffensive comment. I kicked her under the table.
‘What was that for, Josie?’ she asked sweetly. ‘Did you kick me for any special reason? Were you trying to convey anything in particular?’
‘No,’ I told her. ‘Random muscle spasm. I’m terribly sorry.’
Matt met my eye with fleeting but sincere gratitude across the table. ‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that muscle spasms are a common problem once you get to thirty.’
My birthday had been a week ago – I’d received a book on container-gardening from my mother, an eggshell-blue china jug from Aunty Rose, a phone call from Grandma and emails from various friends. A vague plan to have a combined birthday party with my friend Chrissie had come to nothing seeing as: a) I had left the country, and b) she’d started sleeping with my boyfriend.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It’s all downhill from here. You’d better cherish your last eight months.’
‘Foolish children,’ said Rose. ‘You’ll look back in another ten years and realise you were still mere spring chickens at thirty.’
‘If that’s supposed to cheer me up, it doesn’t,’ I told her.
‘Well, if you’re determined to be miserable, go right ahead.’
‘Thank you. I will.’
‘Now, Josie, you mustn’t worry,’ said Hazel. ‘You’re certainly not too old to find someone really lovely and have a family of your own.’
‘My aunt had her first baby at thirty-eight,’ Cilla added helpfully.
These comforting words nearly had me crawling sobbing under the table – there is nothing more depressing than receiving condolences over something you’ve resolved firmly not to worry about.
Matt grinned, not unsympathetically, and reached across the table to refill my wine glass to the very top.
AFTER DINNER KIM dragged out a selection of old photo albums. ‘I thought you might like to see some pictures of Matt,’ she said, plonking down beside Cilla on the sofa.
Looking somewhat surprised at this apparently unprecedented display of friendliness, Cilla smiled. She really was a very pretty girl. ‘I’d like that,’ she said.
‘It’ll give you some idea of what your children will look like,’ said Kim. ‘Just kidding.’ She flicked rapidly through the pages. ‘Bloody hell, Mum, that’s the most hideous outfit I’ve ever seen!’
I leant over the back of the sofa to look. Said picture was of an extremely pregnant Hazel dressed in a voluminous orange smock, with her hair in a long plait down her back. She looked very young – but then, of course, she had been. She was nineteen when Matt was born.
‘Fashions change,’ Rose said. ‘In twenty years you might even look back at those shorts and wonder what possessed you.’
‘There’s Matt,’ said Kim, pointing at a plump infant with a disturbingly vacant expression sitting on his father’s knee.
‘You’ve improved,’ Cilla murmured, looking over at Matt with a fetching grin. ‘Is that your dad?’
‘Yep,’ he said. ‘I think his shorts were even shorter than Kim’s.’
‘You’re very like him.’
‘Here we are,’ said Kim. ‘Matt on the tractor, Matt in the bath, Matt in the bath again, Matt with no trousers on . . .’
‘That’s right,’ Rose put in from the armchair across the room. ‘Couldn’t keep clothes on the child. We used to find little pairs of pants all over the farm.’
Kim turned the page. ‘Matt and Josie both in the bath,’ she said.
The picture must have been taken at Rose’s because I recognised the pink tiles on the bathroom wall. My fringe had apparently been cut by my mother with her eyes shut and I was busily wresting a rubber duck from Matt’s fat little hands. His face was purple and his mouth open in a roar of fury.
‘We were the ugliest children in the country,’ said Matt.
‘You were not,’ said his mother. ‘You were beautiful.’
‘She’s your mother; she’s obliged to think that,’ I said.
Rose laughed. ‘Somewhere there should be that picture of Matthew you entered in a baby contest, Hazel. I think he’s lying on a sheepskin.’
‘Here’s one,’ said Kim. ‘With no hair, in a little pair of green dungarees.’
‘That’s it,’ said Rose. ‘He didn’t make it past the first round.’
‘I’m not at all surprised,’ I said. ‘He looks like a fat white grub.’
My childhood friend gave me a really first-class dead arm in response to this comment.
‘Ow-w!’ I made a grab for his ear, but missed.
‘Stop it!’ said Hazel sharply. ‘Not in my living room.’
‘Yes, what will Cilla think?’ said Kim, turning another page. ‘Did you guys ever wear trousers?’ She was looking at two small people dressed only in T-shirts and gumboots bent with rapt interest over something on the lawn, bottoms gleaming in the sun.
‘Apparently not,’ Matt said.
‘Well, it was the eighties,’ I pointed out. ‘No farmer had any money. Dad used to make us eat rabbit and duck once a week to save money.’
‘God, that’s right,’ said Matt. ‘Your mother used to make duck chow mein.’
&nb
sp; ‘It was revolting,’ I said nostalgically.
‘This can’t be very interesting for Cilla,’ Hazel protested.
‘It’s fine,’ said Cilla politely, though her smile looked a little fixed.
‘There’s nothing worse than reminiscences about things you weren’t there for,’ I said. ‘Everyone else is in gales of laughter and you have to sit there and pretend to be interested in some barbecue ten years ago where Uncle Phil undercooked the chicken and gave everyone food poisoning.’
‘True,’ agreed Matt, giving Cilla’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. ‘Right, anyone want a hot drink?’
WE ALL LEFT together. (Matt, despite his mother’s pleading, had declined to move back into the family home on his return from Europe. He lived next door, in the worker’s cottage below the cowshed, and I’m sure that felt quite close enough.) We were accompanied out to our cars by Kim who, in a lightning change of mood, had decided to play the role of Most Charming Hostess.
‘Are you alright to drive?’ Matt asked his girlfriend as she opened the door of her enormous silver ute.
‘Nice try, Matthew,’ she said, climbing in. Crampons would probably have helped her with the ascent. ‘Lovely evening, everyone. Thanks.’
We murmured polite goodbyes, and Matt waved as he got in the passenger seat. ‘Hey, Aunty Rose,’ he said, ‘I’ll come and fix that hole in the fence tomorrow if you’ll give me lunch.’
‘It's a deal,’ his aunt said promptly.
Cilla started the ute with a roar, gunned it twice and sped down the driveway in a little shower of gravel.
‘What,’ said Kim, ‘is he thinking?’
‘I don’t know why you’ve got it in for the poor girl, she’s perfectly nice,’ I said, though to be honest I wasn’t quite convinced that she was.
‘No she’s not,’ said Kim flatly. ‘She only likes him because he’s a farmer. She thinks he makes a – a good accessory.’
Dinner at Rose's Page 4