The dogs were wildly excited by this evening’s entertainment and frolicked joyously around me. On about our ninth lap of the orchard Mildred miscalculated and ran into the corner, where I might have been able to catch her had the pup not chosen that moment to run between my legs and trip me up. I sat down hard in the wet grass and, as Mildred skipped past, swore with impressive fluency. I hadn’t even realised I knew some of those words.
As I climbed grimly to my feet the pup took one look at me and slunk behind a handy pear tree just as Matt’s quad bike came up the hill and stopped on the other side of the fence.
‘Help!’ I called.
‘I thought I’d better, before you strangled that poor dog with your bare hands,’ he said, climbing off the bike and stepping over the fence. He left the headlights on and they lit the falling raindrops prettily, although I would have enjoyed the effect more from somewhere dry.
‘Did you hear me swearing at it?’
‘They probably heard you in town.’ He smiled. ‘And I thought you were a nice girl.’
‘Surely you didn’t,’ I said. ‘Mildred needs lambing, and I can’t catch her.’
‘How the hell did that happen?’ he asked.
‘Immaculate conception?’
‘Probably. Either that or some mongrel ram that lives up in the scrub.’
‘It would have had to be a pretty desperate ram,’ I said. ‘She’s an eight pinter, at least.’ (The pint scale of sex appeal, for those who are not familiar with it, refers to the number of pints of beer a man has to drink before starting to think a woman is pretty.)
We advanced on Mildred, who sagged visibly as she calculated the decreasing odds of escape. She looked wildly from one of us to the other, lost her head and bolted between us. Matt grabbed her as she passed and she promptly collapsed in a heap. I don’t know why sheep do that when caught, but it’s quite a handy reflex. In this case, though, it would have been handier had she not collapsed halfway down a little clay bank. ‘Get up, you lousy animal,’ he said, trying to heave eighty kilograms of dead weight up onto the flat.
I took two handfuls of wool on her other side and together we lugged her a couple of metres up the hill into a little grassy depression.
Matt wiped his wet face on the wet sleeve of his raincoat, which achieved not much at all. ‘You do it,’ he said, ‘your hands are smaller.’
‘I haven’t lambed a ewe for about ten years.’
‘It’s just like riding a bike.’
I wiped my hands on the thighs of my jeans and pushed my sleeves up to the elbow. The lamb had vanished back out of sight during our invigorating little run, but I found a foot just inside the vulva and caught it between the second and third fingers of my right hand. I pulled it gently out straight, held it in my left hand and reached back in for the second foot. As I grasped it the lamb pulled away from me – fair enough, too; who would want to come out into weather like this?
‘It’s still alive,’ I said.
‘But what are the chances of Mildred feeding the bloody thing?’
‘Slim to none,’ I said. ‘Maybe we can palm it off onto Clare.’
I drew the second foot out straight and pulled them both together, and the lamb slid out onto the grass.
It lay quite still, but when I pressed two fingertips to the little wet chest under its elbow I felt a faint heartbeat. ‘Come on, little dude, breathe.’ I plucked a blade of grass and tickled its nose, and then rubbed its little chest vigorously with my knuckles.
‘I don’t think it’s going to be a starter,’ said Matt.
‘It’s got a heartbeat.’ I pinched its nose again to prompt a breath, but the lamb lay limp and lifeless. I felt again for the heartbeat – nothing. ‘Oh, crap.’
‘Better check in case there’s another one in there,’ he said.
I wiped my hand again and inserted it back into the vulva. ‘No.’ I got slowly to my feet. ‘Mildred, you lousy mongrel sheep, you didn’t even try.’
Matt pulled Mildred up onto her sternum and nudged her with the toe of his gumboot. ‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Bugger off.’ She lurched to her feet and hared off to the far end of the paddock. ‘Never mind, Jose.’
I sighed. ‘It would just have been nice to make something better, for a change.’
‘You do,’ he said quietly, bending to pick up the pathetic little corpse. ‘I’ll take it home and put it in the offal hole so the dogs won’t retrieve it. Unless you were wanting to perform a little burial service?’
‘Oh, be quiet.’ I leant my head against his shoulder for a weak second. ‘Thank you.’
‘Any time.’ He gave me a brief one-armed hug. ‘Jo, you look like a drowned rat.’
‘You silver-tongued devil,’ I said. ‘There’s another dead lamb just near the fence, by the way.’
‘Okay. See you in a bit.’ He turned back towards the fence and I went the other way, straight up the hill, to come out on the lawn beneath the porch.
Seeing as I was out there I went round to the woodshed and scooped a pile of dog biscuits out of their drum into the plastic bucket that sits on top. I fed the three younger dogs and shut them away, carried Spud’s ration up the path and let myself in at the kitchen door. The stove had gone out and the kitchen was bleak and cold. I turned on the lights and opened the hot-water cupboard for an old towel, and heard Aunty Rose quaver, ‘Josephine?’
‘Coming!’ I wiped my face with the towel and ran my hands under the tap. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
Halfway up the hall the smell hit me like a brick. Aunty Rose was lying on the edge of her bed in a tangle of filthy bedding, tears streaming down her wasted cheeks. ‘Oh, Josie,’ she wept. ‘I’m so sorry. I couldn’t get up.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said, racked with pity. ‘It doesn’t matter – I’m so sorry I was late.’
The sheer awfulness of Aunty Rose, that epitome of cleanliness and hygiene, having to lie helpless in a puddle of crap with nobody there to help her was almost too much to bear. I lifted her to a sitting position – goodness knows she wasn’t much of a weight these days – and peeled off her filthy nightie. ‘I’ll just turn on the shower.’
‘Where were you?’ she asked weakly when I came back into the room.
‘Mildred was lambing, and Matt and I had to catch her.’
‘He’s not here, is he?’ Her voice was shrill and anxious.
‘No.’ I picked her up and carried her down the hall to the bathroom, just a pitiful skeleton with skin stretched over the top and a great red scar across her chest. She sank onto the plastic seat we had got from the hospital and closed her eyes as I washed her, leaning her poor bald head back exhaustedly against the back of the shower cubicle.
‘I’ll just change the sheets,’ I said. ‘I won’t be a minute – would you rather sit under the water, or shall I turn it off and wrap you up in a towel?’
‘Under the water,’ she whispered.
I had to strip the bed entirely, and two of the pillows were saturated. I replaced them with pillows from my bed, and while I was at it my duvet as well. Then I propped the poor woman up against the bathroom sink to dry and dress her, picked her up and carried her back to bed. Never have I been so grateful to be, after all, a strapping wench rather than a delicate wisp of a girl.
As I pulled the covers up under her chin she opened her eyes, looked at me sternly and said with nearly her old decision, ‘This is not the way I wish to be remembered, Josephine.’
‘I know,’ I whispered, the tears spilling unchecked down my cheeks. Nurses are supposed to be bright and matter-of-fact about these things: my bracing professional manner left a lot to be desired. ‘I’ll get you some dinner.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Just my pills, love.’
Back in the kitchen I stood for a moment in a trance of indecision, wondering where the hell to start. It didn’t really matter – when you’re overcome with lethargy you just have to do something. And then the next thing, and then the next, and eventually, although you
’d have sworn you were far too tired and depressed to accomplish anything, you’re finished. I turned on the tap above the big concrete sink by the back door and began to scrub sheets and blankets.
Chapter 28
TWENTY MINUTES LATER I was splitting kindling on the back porch with Percy at my side when Matt’s ute came up the driveway. ‘Haven’t you made it in yet?’ he asked as he crossed the gravel.
‘I have been,’ I said. ‘But the stove’s gone out – Kim mustn’t have come in after school.’
‘How’s Rose?’
I pushed a hank of wet hair that had escaped its tie back off my face. ‘Not very good. Could you go in and see her while I do this? Maybe she’ll eat something if you feed her.’
He patted the pig, collected up the cut kindling and opened the back door, and I followed him in. He paused at the laundry sink and looked down at the sodden heap of dirty blankets for a second, then sighed and rubbed his face with his hands as he continued on up the hall.
I opened the door of the stove and fished in the wood box for a decent-sized piece of wood to use as a back log.
As I balled up sheets of newspaper Matt came back into the kitchen and said, ‘She’s asleep. I’ll do that – you go and have a shower.’
I stood up. ‘Thanks.’
‘This is crap,’ he said. ‘You’ve already got a full-time job, and then you get home and start again here.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘You’re working much longer hours than I am. But she was lying there in the dark, crying, and she couldn’t get up by herself . . .’ I stopped to force the tears back down. ‘This isn’t working anymore.’
‘Then either Mum’ll have to do the day nursing, or Rose will have to go into hospital,’ he said. He began to screw up sheets of newspaper with rather more violence than was required. Hazel would probably do it, but she would need effusive thanks about seventeen times a day and perform her duties with such nobly repressed suffering that it would be intolerable to witness.
‘I could quit my job. Cheryl can just get over it. It’s not going to be for very l-long.’ My voice broke and the tears welled up inexorably.
‘Jose, you can’t,’ he said gently. ‘You’ve got a mortgage to pay, for a start.’
I wiped my eyes on my damp sleeve. ‘With any luck the house has sold by now. And if it hasn’t, Graeme’d probably cover it for a while – he’s being quite nice at the moment.’
‘Look, go and get dry, and then we’ll talk about it.’
He was filling the kettle when I re-entered the kitchen after my shower, and Spud sat in front of the newly lit stove with a reproachful look on his face. Clearly he was unimpressed by the chill in the room and thought poorly of whoever was responsible for letting the fire go out.
‘Dinner’s in the microwave,’ Matt said. ‘Coffee?’
‘Oh, dear God, yes.’ I had put on three layers of wool and still felt like an icicle.
‘How many sugars today?’
I considered. ‘Two, please.’ I took the milk out of the fridge, unscrewed the top of the bottle and sniffed warily. It wasn’t good. ‘Bugger. I hate powdered milk.’
‘I can get some from the vat,’ he offered.
‘Of course not! Just make it three sugars.’
He looked at me with amusement. ‘Right you are.’ He reached down a pink china jug with a gilt rim from its high shelf and began to mix up milk powder and water.
I came up to the bench beside him and upended the milk bottle over the sink. There was a long pause, and then a gelatinous white lump slithered from the bottle to sit, quivering in a sullen sort of way, in the sink. Definitely not good.
‘How was your day?’ I asked.
‘About normal for this time of year. Cow down in the swamp, twelve calves to pick up and I had to tube five of the little bastards because they wouldn’t suck, raincoat leaking – that sort of thing.’ The microwave beeped. ‘Grub’s up.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, poking lumps of milk down the plughole with the handle of a wooden spoon. ‘You’re a legend.’
‘I know,’ said Matt. ‘It was pretty taxing. You’ll appreciate the way I spread the food out so it would heat more evenly.’
I turned to retrieve an enormous plate of super-heated lasagne from the microwave. ‘Hey, Matt, I was thinking – I could start leaving work at two or three if your mum could come over for the mornings. I’ll have to run it by Cheryl, but she’ll be fine with it.’ She probably wouldn’t be, in actual fact, but she wasn’t in any position to argue. A part-time employee is better than none at all.
‘I’ll talk to Mum.’ The kettle boiled, and he poured hot water into two mugs.
I put down the plate and opened the drawer beside him to find a fork. ‘Thanks. It’ll be better if you ask her.’
He sighed. ‘Yeah.’ He stirred my over-sweetened coffee with deep concentration. ‘Jo . . .’
‘Mm?’
He turned and cupped my cheek in one big hand, ducking his head to kiss me. My heart gave a great bound of exhilarated amazement that lasted all of half a second before my brain caught up, and then plummeted like a stone.
‘Don’t do that,’ I said unhappily, twisting away from him.
Matt stood quite still for a moment. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I thought – oh, fuck it.’ He sounded exhausted and utterly miserable.
‘You’ve got a girlfriend,’ I said bitterly. ‘Remember?’
‘No I haven’t,’ he said. ‘Broke up months ago.’
‘Months ago?’
‘That night she decided you and I were having an affair.’
A tiny, painful stab of hope pricked me in the chest. I opened and closed my mouth like a goldfish for a while, and then managed, in a sort of croak, ‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘I – I thought you knew,’ said Matt. ‘I thought Kim would have told you.’
‘But I saw Cilla in the supermarket buying Bride and Groom magazine,’ I said to my feet.
There was a short silence, and then he began to laugh. Jo,’ he said affectionately, ‘you womble.’
These romantic words caused the little gleam of hope to swell and blossom. I sat down abruptly on a kitchen chair and burst into tears of sheer blessed relief.
Poor Matt was completely nonplussed. ‘Oh, hell,’ he said helplessly. ‘Jo, I’m sorry. I’m a moron and – and you probably want me to go take a running jump, but I love you so much.’
In response I merely cried harder, burying my face in my hands. I had been trying so hard to come to terms with the dismal truth that Matt was just never going to feel the same way about me as I felt about him – I had decided that when Aunty Rose died I'd better move to the other end of the country so at least I wouldn’t have to see him every bloody day. And now he had suddenly turned everything upside down, and it was all just too much.
After a little while he came to stand in front of me, wordlessly pulling my head up against the solid warmth of his body and stroking my damp hair. I couldn’t stop crying but I put my arms around his waist and hugged him fiercely.
‘Shh,’ he said softly. ‘Come on, love, it’s okay.’
‘S-sorry,’ I gasped. ‘Trying . . .’
He detached me and mopped my eyes with the hem of his shirt. Then he pulled me to my feet and kissed me.
Matt had been my kissing gold standard ever since the night before he went overseas all those years ago. He had kissed me with a sort of skilful and leisurely enjoyment that reduced me to a quivering heap of nerve endings, and nobody since had ever turned me on quite like that. Tonight was completely different. He wasn’t slick and practised at all but almost savage – he held me too tightly and I could feel him shaking as his lips found mine – and it blew that nine-year-old memory into the weeds.
I took his face in my hands and kissed him back with the sort of fervour you’d expect from a really impassioned TV evangelist. And about thirty seconds later the kitchen door opened, and Kim tumbled in out of the rain with Andy in tow.
TO BE DISCOVERED attached like a sucker fish to Kim’s brother brought me back down to earth at speed. I tried to jump back but was foiled in my attempt to retreat – preferably to the other end of the house, if not the district – by Matt’s arms tightening implacably to pull me back against him. I looked at him, puzzled, and then realised that little though he enjoyed being caught with me in his arms he would be much, much unhappier showing his little sister his erection. I stopped trying to escape and rested my forehead against his shoulder.
‘Well,’ said Kim. ‘Well, well, well.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ her loving brother said.
‘Kim, leave them alone,’ said Andy, deeply embarrassed. But Kim wouldn’t recognise embarrassment if it jumped up and hit her over the head. She shook her sleek brown head to dislodge the raindrops, perched on the edge of the table and asked, ‘How long has this been going on?’
‘About a minute,’ I said with some bitterness. It would have been nice to enjoy it for just a little longer without anybody else’s input.
‘Excellent,’ said Kim approvingly. ‘Good stuff. Took you long enough, but then neither of you is all that bright.’
‘Kim,’ I said, ‘go away, or I will beat you with a stick.’
‘She doesn’t mean it,’ Kim told Andy.
Matt gave me a little thanks-I’m-good-now squeeze, and I let him go.
‘Josie, you’re a mess,’ his sister informed me.
‘I know.’ I turned and went out of the room. In the bathroom I turned on the cold tap, looked in the little mirror above the sink and winced. The face looking back at me was red and puffy with wild hair and swollen eyes – I looked like someone fresh from a gruelling bout of Chinese water torture. Washing my face wasn’t going to be enough to make me into a thing of beauty, but I did it anyway, brushed my hair into something resembling order and went to peep into Aunty Rose’s bedroom.
Dinner at Rose's Page 20