‘She assures me she’s feeling better,’ said Mum. ‘I expect she’s lying, but you know Rose.’
Aunty Rose was dressed today, and busying herself around the kitchen. As Mum and I came back in she said, from the depths of the ancient fridge, ‘Josephine, are you planning to stay for dinner?’
‘What is it?’ I asked warily.
‘I’m making a quiche.’
‘Out of what?’
‘Edith, it’s a terrible shame you never managed to instil any manners in your daughter,’ Rose said. She emerged from the fridge holding a block of cheese in one hand and half a cabbage in the other.
‘I’m just remembering the Marmite omelette,’ I defended myself.
IT WAS SUCH a nice meal. We drank ginger ale all round so as not to torment Aunty Rose (alcohol and chemo don’t mix, and she said not having wine in the evening was harder to bear than the nausea), and with profound relief I reverted from the role of anxious caregiver to child allowed to stay up and have tea with the grown-ups. After the quiche, which was happily devoid of Marmite or olives or any of the other peculiar things Aunty Rose is liable to add to her dishes, I washed up while the two of them sat at the kitchen table and gossiped.
Matt arrived just before the coffee stage.
‘Matthew,’ said Mum warmly. ‘I swear you’ve grown another foot. Come here and give me a kiss.’
He obeyed. ‘Thanks for coming up, Aunty Edith.’
‘Most unnecessary,’ said Rose, holding up her face to be kissed in turn. ‘Not that it isn’t nice to see you, Edie.’
‘Unnecessary to you,’ Matt told her, ‘but it makes Jo and me feel better, so you can just put up with it.’ He came over to the sink beside me and picked up a tea towel. ‘Hey, Jose.’
‘Hey, Matt,’ I said. ‘Where’s the toad?’
‘At home, texting some pimply youth.’
‘Ah.’ There’s no mobile phone coverage at Aunty Rose’s. ‘Aaron, or a new pimply youth?’
‘This one’s called Jonno. He works at the mill and has a car with lowered seats. Aaron’s been kicked to the kerb.’
‘A working man with a car,’ said Mum. ‘That sounds ominous.’
‘Doesn’t it just,’ said Matt grimly. Then to me, ‘What are you sniggering about?’
‘Matthew King, stern older brother. How ironic.’
‘Do tell, sweet pea,’ said Aunty Rose. ‘I always suspected that Matthew was not always the fine and upstanding member of society we see before us.’
The fine and upstanding member of society gave me a long, flat stare.
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘He’ll break my arms.’
He grinned. ‘Watch it. I could tell the odd story about you, too.’
‘Please don’t,’ Mum said hastily. ‘I have absolutely no desire to know what you got up to in your misspent youth.’
‘Nothing very bad,’ I told her, setting the last pot on the draining board. ‘I was a geek, remember. Matt, if you sit down I’ll look at your shoulder for you.’
Chapter 12
TWO WEEKS LATER, in a masochistic sort of mood, I logged into Facebook. I used to be a very sporadic page with anxious regularity. Today it told me that Todd was sad because it was raining, Cath’s baby slept nine hours straight last night, Suzie’s had colic and didn’t . . . Ah, here was Chrissie’s daily gem.
How spoilt am I? A weekend away, flowers, long walks on the beach, a romantic candlelit dinner – is he wise to be setting a precedent like this for future anniversaries?
Anniversary? Of what? Just how long did I spend in happy ignorance of the pair of them having sex in cupboards at parties? Something had been going on since September, Graeme had admitted on that last horrible evening. ‘It’s not like we meant for it to happen, Jo. Chrissie feels so awful about it.’ And then his eyes had gone misty at the thought of poor Chrissie’s suffering. I wish, in hindsight, that I’d thrown something at his head, but at the time I was dumb and passive with shock.
She’d changed her profile picture again and was now sitting on his shoulders, with her hair whipping round her face and her eyes alight with laughter. She looked like a bloody model in an ad for panty liners.
Amber put her head around the door. ‘Your five o’clock’s here,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’ And off she toddled – without, I discovered, locking the back door, shutting down her computer or clearing away the little collection of used mugs from her desk.
AFTER MY LAST appointment I went home, showered and made toad-in-the-hole, it being my turn to cook. The atmosphere in the flat was still somewhat frosty after Saturday night’s fracas. (Andy had come home drunk and decided he needed a nice hot snack, then had forgotten to turn off the oven after heating and devouring four frozen pies. Did he have any idea, Sara had demanded the next morning, how much power the oven uses? Andy, hung-over and short-tempered, had told her to shut up and piss off, and things had deteriorated from there.)
After dinner I left the two of them to their Cold War and went, as usual, to Rose’s. It was raining in a dreary, persistent sort of way and a car I didn’t recognise was parked in front of the woodshed.
This was the night after Rose’s fifth chemo appointment. She had begun to lose her hair a few days earlier. She’d looked at the long grey strands covering the cushion she was leaning against with no expression whatsoever for a moment and then said, ‘Well, wouldn’t that just rip your nightie?’
‘I called Rob Milne,’ my mother told me as I let myself into the kitchen. She was cleaning the oven, scrubbing grimly at the blackened concrete-like residue of years of cooking. ‘She’s had no sleep for the last three nights. She can’t go on like this.’
‘I didn’t think you could get a house visit from a doctor unless you were the Queen of England,’ I said, wiping my wet face on my sleeve. Mum handed me a stack of charcoal-coated oven racks; I dropped them into the big kitchen sink and got out a pristine new block of steel wool with which to attack them.
‘Well, I tried calling the medical centre, and they told me to take her to Hamilton. Honestly, a two-hour drive through the gorge when she’s too sick to sit up? So I called Rob at home.’
‘You legend,’ I told her.
‘I have my moments,’ Mum agreed.
Dr Milne is a small man with a dry sense of humour and an uncanny resemblance to Radar from M*A*S*H. He came down the hall from Rose’s bedroom holding a proper old-fashioned leather doctor’s bag, sighed deeply and peered at us over the tops of his bifocals. ‘I’ve given her a bit of a cocktail,’ he said, ‘and she’ll at least get a night’s sleep. Don’t worry if she doesn’t make a lot of sense – it’s just the drugs. Call me in the morning and let me know how she is, will you?’
Mum got to her feet and smiled at him gratefully. ‘Rob,’ she said, ‘you’re a wonderful man.’
He smiled back. ‘Just you wait till you see the bill. I’ll be able to spend a week in the Islands.’
‘I was planning to pay you in goat’s cheese,’ Mum said.
‘Then I’ll send it to Josie,’ he said promptly. ‘Physiotherapists are all overpaid and underworked, aren’t you?’
‘No,’ I said, a vision of the gormless Amber rising before my eyes, ‘you’re thinking of their receptionists.’
Dr Milne gave a little snort of laughter. ‘Ah, well,’ he said. ‘You may be right. Goodnight, girls. Nice to see you again, Edith.’
He had just reached the door when it opened and Matt came in, looking damp and dishevelled. His jeans, however, were not tucked into his socks. ‘Is she worse?’ he asked, looking at the doctor in alarm.
‘Just nauseous and miserable,’ Dr Milne told him. ‘I’ve given her a couple of shots so she can have a bit of a break from trying to bring up her stomach lining, the poor woman.’
‘Oh,’ said Matt. ‘Thank you. Send me the bill, won’t you?’
The doctor patted him condescendingly on the shoulder. ‘I still remember the day I gave your teddy bear an injection to show you it wasn�
��t so bad, and you screamed the place down. Never injected a bear since. Goodnight.’
Mum sighed as the door shut behind him. ‘I think I’d better change my flight,’ she said. ‘You two are doing a great job, but Rose really needs someone here all the time.’
‘Mum’ll be home tomorrow,’ Matt said. ‘And I can sleep over here – Rose doesn’t really rate my nursing skills, but she’ll cope.’
‘Why don’t I stay for the next couple of weeks?’ I offered. ‘Just till the chemo’s finished and she’s feeling a bit better.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, and smiled at me tiredly. ‘She’d be much happier about you doing it.’
‘I do feel I should go home and check up on your father,’ Mum confessed. ‘A diet of tinned spaghetti on toast can only support a man for so long.’
‘And eggs,’ I said. ‘He can fry eggs. But you should go home – he sounded all wistful on the phone yesterday.’
‘If you can’t cope you’ll ring me, won’t you?’ said Mum.
‘Promise,’ I told her. Putting down my block of steel wool I looked at the oven rack I’d been scrubbing. I couldn’t discern any improvement at all. ‘I really don’t think I’m making any progress here.’
‘Move over. Let me try,’ my mother ordered – she is a very managing woman. She must have always been a bit like that, but after thirty-odd years spent organising my father, the King of Dither, she has become almost totally incapable of letting anyone finish a job without elbowing them out of the way and doing it properly herself. ‘Go and see if Rose is still awake. She might like a cup of tea.’
Matt and I went down the draughty hall to the end bedroom and peered around the door. It was beautifully warm thanks to a little oil heater in the corner, and Rose was lying back on her pillows with her grey hair spread out around her like a fan and her eyes shut. Her face, in the soft light of a truly hideous brass bedside lamp, was all hollows and shadows and looked frighteningly old. I hadn’t realised just how much weight she had lost in the last month.
‘She’s asleep,’ I whispered.
‘No I’m not,’ said Aunty Rose, her voice soft and slurred. ‘Come in. Who is it?’
‘Me,’ said Matt, ‘and Jo.’ He went into the room and sat beside her on the edge of the bed. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Good,’ murmured Aunty Rose. She groped for his hand and held it.
I leant my head against the doorframe and watched them – two of my very favourite people. I was lucky to have grown up with Matt to play with and fight with and stop me turning into a brattish only child, and even luckier to have had Aunty Rose’s eccentric loving presence only two paddocks away throughout my formative years.
‘Pat,’ said Aunty Rose suddenly, opening her eyes.
‘No,’ he said gently, ‘it’s Matthew.’
‘Pat, you shouldn’t be here.’ She closed her eyes again and moved her head restlessly on the pillow.
Matt looked at me, alarmed.
‘Dr Milne said she might be a bit out of it,’ I said softly. ‘It’s just the shot he gave her.’
‘You know we talked about this,’ Aunty Rose continued. ‘She’ll find out and she’ll take Matthew back to England and you’ll never see him again.’ She grimaced painfully, a travesty of a smile. ‘And let’s face it, that child is going to need some sort of sensible presence in his life – he sure as hell won’t get it from Hazel or my parents.’
There was a thick, dense, appalled silence. Very gently, Matt detached himself and stood up. I moved aside for him and he went blindly past me down the hall. I looked from Aunty Rose’s still face to his departing back, turned and went after him.
‘Matthew, love,’ Mum was saying as I reached the kitchen door, ‘are you alright?’ She had turned from the sink and was looking at him with concern. ‘She’ll be okay. Your aunt’s as tough as old boots, you know.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. He opened the back door. ‘I’d better go . . .’
Evidently assuming Rose’s appearance had been truly frightening, Mum reached for a tea towel, wiped her hands and went quickly out of the kitchen to check on her.
‘Matt,’ I said helplessly, so sorry for him – and for Rose – that it hurt.
‘’Night, Jo. See you tomorrow.’ He bent to pull on his work boots.
Not knowing what to do but wanting to do something I went across the room to him and touched his shoulder. ‘It’s okay.’ What a bloody stupid thing to say. I took my hand away again.
‘Did you know?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘I won’t say anything.’
‘I know that.’ He stood up straight. ‘Don’t look like that, Jose, it’s not the end of the world.’
I put my arms around him and hugged him fiercely and he sighed, hugging me in return. He was very warm and he smelt nice – like soap and clean cotton and something faintly spicy. It occurred to me after a little while that smelling somebody else’s boyfriend isn’t all that cool, and I let him go.
‘Are you doing your shoulder exercises?’ I asked.
‘Hmm? Oh, yeah. Sometimes.’
‘Twice a day, please, or you’ll be really unhappy in a couple of months when you’re supposed to be heaving calves around.’
‘Yes, Jo,’ he said obediently. He smiled and flicked me lightly on the nose. ‘Hey, thank you.’ And he let himself out into the rainy dark.
Feeling suddenly about a thousand years old I closed the door behind him and turned to tackle the oven racks once more. What a thrilling way to spend an evening.
‘Jo?’ Mum asked cautiously, coming around the doorway from the hall where she must have been lurking.
‘Yes?’
‘Have you and Matthew been arguing?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Ah.’ It’s amazing what delicate shades of meaning can be infused into a single syllable; she managed concern and gentle enquiry and a truly noble reluctance to poke her nose in where it might not be wanted.
I chose to ignore these subtle undertones. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘bugger these oven racks. They’re never going to come clean, and Rose couldn’t care less anyway.’
‘I expect you’re right.’ A brief silence fell, until she said with real anguish, ‘Josie, love, please tell me what’s wrong.’
I sank wearily onto the chaise longue, under the griffon’s sardonic eye. ‘Rose thought Matt was his father, and she told him he mustn’t keep coming over or Hazel would find out about it and take Matt away from him.’
‘Oh,’ said Mum. ‘Shit.’ She sat down beside me and leant her head back against the balding velvet. ‘Poor Matt.’
I nodded.
‘Will he say anything to her?’
‘No,’ I said definitely.
‘Are you sure? Rose would be so upset – she’s never forgiven herself.’
‘You mean you knew about it?’ I stared at her.
Mum sighed. ‘It was so sad. Patrick had never really met Rose before he married her sister, you see. None of us had. She moved in different circles. And of course Hazel’s the most painful woman on the planet, and Rose is kind and warm and intelligent and – well, you know how wonderful Rose is. I think poor Pat realised he’d picked the wrong sister within a few months, but by then Hazel was already expecting Matthew, and he just wasn’t the type of man to leave his pregnant wife for another woman.’
‘So why did Aunty Rose buy this place?’ I asked. ‘Why on earth wouldn’t she move to the other end of the country and try to get over it?’
‘She did,’ said Mum. ‘She moved to Christchurch. But then Matthew was born, and Hazel fell completely to pieces.’
‘What – post-natal depression?’
‘I suppose so,’ Mum said. ‘At the time we just thought it was typical Hazel behaviour, but that’s probably a bit unfair. Anyway, there was no way she could manage the baby, and Pat was trying to run the farm and look after Matthew and keep his wife from doing herself an injury, so Rose came home to help.’
‘What a l
ousy, miserable balls-up,’ I said softly.
‘Yep,’ said Mum. ‘We wondered if Pat might leave Hazel when Matthew got a bit older, but then Kim came along. Hazel always insisted that Kim was an accident, but I’m not at all sure.’
‘You think Kim was a husband-detaining strategy?’
‘Yes, I suspect so,’ Mum said. ‘Matthew was – what? Ten? Eleven? – and I can't imagine Hazel would have been able to get him away from his father without an almighty battle. And almighty battles aren’t Hazel’s style; she prefers to guilt people into doing what she wants.’
I recalled Patrick King’s funeral with a new clear-sightedness. Hazel had been prostrate with hysterical grief while Aunty Rose comforted Kim and Matt, organised undertakers and eulogies and the catering and a thousand other details, just quietly trying to make things a little bit easier for Pat’s children.
‘God,’ I said violently. ‘What a bitch that woman is.’
Mum smiled a bit sadly and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘She’s just selfish, and not very bright.’ She reached out to tuck a strand of hair back behind my left ear. ‘I don’t know how much of this you should tell Matthew – she is his mother.’
‘I cannot imagine, in any circumstances, talking to Matt about his father’s love affair with his aunt,’ I said flatly.
‘Well, if he talked to anyone about it, it would be to you.’
‘No, I expect it would be to his girlfriend.’
‘Josie, sweetheart,’ said my mother tenderly, ‘have you considered telling him how you feel about him?’
I stiffened. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘He cares about you, too,’ she assured me.
‘Oh, stop that,’ I snapped. ‘We’re just friends.’
Mum smiled and kissed my cheek, and only the knowledge that she would twist anything I said into further proof for her little theory kept me quiet.
‘HOW LONG DO you reckon you’ll stay with your aunty?’ Andy asked. He leant a shoulder against the doorframe of my cupboard-bedroom and watched with an expression of deepening gloom as I threw clothes into a bag.
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