“Haemophilia,” John said, and for the first time Nina saw him grumpy. “It’s nothing.”
“You two are something else,” Claudia said. “You deal with these amazing health issues and you close in on yourselves. Don’t you want other people to help you hang in there?”
“Makes sense,” John said, “but it’s not that easy, truly. Call it denial. Call it anger. Call it anything you like. You should try telling someone you’re in the final stages of a shred of good health, and soon it’s going to turn very badly to custard.”
“I’m sorry,” Claudia said. “I spoke out of turn.”
Maudie returned, water pouring down her coat, and soaking the floor. “You’re not still cooking, are you?” she said, and Nina nodded. “We’re making great progress,” she said. “We’ll have so much home cooking that no one will even notice Miss Clapham is away.”
“Better pray that the weather will clear then,” Maudie said. “I checked the weather forecast. We’re set to have full on rain for nearly a week.”
“The weather forecasters always get it wrong,” Nina said. “All the time.”
“What will happen to the fete if it keeps raining?” John was curious.
“Usually it’s postponed for a week, but seeing we might all be non-existent by next weekend, it might be cancelled.”
“A pity, isn’t it?” Nina said. “We’re so close to making a difference and a sky full of rain comes and destroys all hope.”
“Oh, don’t give up hope,” Maudie said. “If you put two and two together…”
“You get a rainbow, I suppose,” Nina said.
Maudie grinned. “You are so smart.”
Chapter 61
c. AD 1580, SPAIN: the first cocoa processing plant is established.
“It’s raining.” Bryn brushed the water from his shoulders.
“Welcome home,” Nina said.
“Got in yesterday. Been busy.” Bryn noticed John for the first time and extended a hand to him. “We haven’t met.”
Introductions over, a silence fell over the room. Bryn broke it. “Might have to call off the fete,” he said.
“We could use the community hall.”
“Or,” Maudie said, “we could stop dithering about the fete and spend the time sussing the mayor.”
“We’ll be going home then.” Claudia had changed from her costume, and Old Tom stood by with an enormous umbrella.
“Cup of tea and a biscuit,” Old Tom said. “A perfect way to spend a wet day.”
Lightning lit the room, with a boom of thunder rolling in within seconds.
“Stay here,” Nina said, and she cleared the morning’s efforts from the table. “I’ll make tea. What do you want? Peppermint? Raspberry? Licorice? Bell? Earl Grey? Breakfast?”
“We’ll go, thanks,” Claudia said. “We’ve left Miss Clapham’s dog outside.”
The water came to the boil. Nina poured it over the teabags in their enamel cups.
“Nearly as good as china,” Maudie said, raising her cup. “Can I tell you my idea now?”
Bryn looked at John, and Nina looked at her cup. “Is it a good idea?”
“The best one yet,” Maudie said. “You ready?”
As one, they nodded. They looked like a row of gawping clowns, except their heads nodded instead of turning from side to side, Nina thought. It was funny. Greg would be laughing his head off.
“Well, you know how the fete won’t happen?” she began. “Well, I put two and two together…”
“Sounds more like one and one and one,” Bryn said. “Because the fete is going to happen.”
“I put two and two together,” Maudie said, glaring at Bryn, “and I figured since there is no way that we’ll ever get the campground opened without the rates money, that we should aim a bit smaller and get the library open instead.”
“If there’s no village,” Bryn snapped, “we’re hardly going to need a library.”
“But it’s there,” Maudie wailed. “It’s there and we should be using it.”
“And our shops will still be here, empty, a home for rats and mice and cockroaches,” Bryn said, and he stood up to leave. “Ridiculous conversation this. You need to get your head in out of the rain sometimes, Maudie.”
“That’s not fair,” Maudie began but Bryn had disappeared off into the gloom. The three of them remained at the table, saying nothing, running a fingernail through a groove in the wood, polishing an already smooth spot a little more with the flat of the thumb, scraping a little piece of stuck-on sugar away.
A bus rumbled down the street. “They won’t be stopping,” Maudie said. “Stay where you are.”
But the bus did stop, and Nina heard the sound of muffled shrieks as its passengers disembarked into the rain. “Toilet stop,” she said, to no one at all, and so they stayed there, each in a private sulk about the hand life had dealt them.
“It’s not a toilet stop,” Nina said after a short while. “There’s too much noise. They’ve brought some excitement to town, perhaps a circus.”
“In the rain,” John said, and his voice was light. “A circus in this place, in the rain, with lions and tigers and acrobats and even the world’s fattest lady. They’ve come just in time for the fete.”
“That would be so much fun,” Nina said. “A circus at the fete.”
“We’ve never had a circus at the fete,” Maudie said, and Nina felt a surge of affection for this woman who took all things literally. “I wonder where they’re going to sleep.”
“I’m going to see,” Maudie said. She peered through the window, trying to see along the street. “There’s a few people outside the café,” she shrieked. “Customers!”
“There are a lot of umbrellas,” Nina said. “The rain isn’t a problem for them. I wonder if they’ll come in here.” She didn’t think it likely; they had, after all, been parked for a good five minutes already.
“Perhaps they all want toilet paper and tomato sauce from Bryn.” John’s voice was dry.
“Let me see,” Nina said. “People always come here before they go to Staceys.” The little roof over the front steps provided an inadequate shelter. She held her apron over her head. She must look ridiculous, but really, to have a bus load of people not interested in visiting Sweet Treats was quite out of the ordinary.
A woman in the crowd seemed to be looking for something. She saw Nina and took a few steps towards her. A man called her back, but the woman kept coming, leaving behind her the shelter of the man’s umbrella. Their height reminded her of her parents. A great sigh escaped her. What she wouldn’t give for a stint in the Greek Islands about now.
The woman wiped rain from her face, and looked towards Nina again. She looked back to the man and then at Nina. “It’s dry in here,” Nina shouted, and the woman screamed.
“Nina! It’s Nina! Oh look, look, it’s my Nina!”
She’d know her mother’s voice anywhere. In a fug, Nina stepped onto the path. She took one step, and then another towards this woman who screamed her name. When she was enveloped in her mother’s arms, she lifted her face to the sky. Rain, or tears – would she ever stop crying – drenched her face. Her father wrapped his arms around them both.
The gabble of sound surrounded them, causing Nina to draw closer to her parents. “Who are they?” she said, not bothering to look at anything other than her parent’s faces. “Did you bring the entire population of the Greek Islands back to New Zealand?”
“No.” Her mother half-laughed, half-hiccupped. “They’re your friends. Our friends. From school, from church, from life. We came to find you.”
“But you didn’t know where I was.”
“We knew you were in the north, because we were able to track the region where your phone call came from,” they said. “It was enough of a clue.”
All around her, people exclaimed over finding her, how she had changed, how she had not changed, how they had missed her, the things they had done, the things they thought she must have
done since she was last with them, the things they were going to do now that she was found again.
“And where’s your dear wee boy,” said one. “It’s his birthday in two days. We’ve brought presents.”
Somehow John hustled them away from the crowd and into Sweet Treats.
He shut the door firmly. “We won’t be long,” he said. “Nina needs ten minutes with her parents. There’s a nice café over there” – and he pointed to where Maudie stood with confusion written all over her face – “and I’ll tell Nina to come see you there.”
They went. They were excited but they weren’t rude. John found himself staring up at Queen Victoria, wondering if he should join Nina at the big kitchen table or slip out the door. But where would he go?
Nina saved him. “John.” Her voice wavered, and John went to her in an instant. Nina’s parents looked from John to Nina, waiting for an introduction. Nina, it seemed, had lost all social graces. John held out his hand to Nina’s father.
“John,” he said. “I’m Nina’s friend.”
“George.” Nina’s father shook hands heartily, patted him on the back so heartily John could feel his ribs rattling. “And Barbara.”
Nina’s mother visibly relaxed. He wondered why, and then he realised what he must look like to a mother with a pretty daughter. Old, gaunt beyond his years. They’d never believe he was only five years older than Nina.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said to Barbara. What did fellows say to suspicious mothers to make them feel their daughters were safe?
Barbara looked around the room. She nodded approval, looking only in concern to the place where a kitchen sink and stove would normally be. She looked back to the fireplace, then at the fudge, and then at the cast iron pots. “You cook on the fire?” she said. “The sweets?”
Nina nodded.
“But there’s someone who helps you?”
“When they can,” Nina said. “The owner, my boss, is somewhere else. I don’t know where. She left the day I arrived.”
“Just left you?” her father said. “With all this?”
“Hard work is good, Dad,” Nina said. “You always taught me that.”
“You’re my little girl,” he protested.
“Hardly little,” Nina said. She took a deep breath. “And the work has been good for me.”
“Nina,” her mother said. “I recognise grief when I see it. Where is Greg?”
She tried to keep from crying, she really did, and she tried to form the words without feeling her face twist and distort with the pain of it all, and she tried to look her parents in the eye, but she couldn’t. “He died,” she said. “He died.”
She couldn’t bear the look on their faces. From being rosy with joy, they had gone ashen, as gray as she had felt ever since that dreadful day in the doctor’s office. She dropped her head onto her arms and felt her father’s big hand rub her back, and her mother’s gentle fingers running through her hair. She could feel the unasked question and she knew she must somehow explain the past ten years to the people who loved her most in the world.
“Leukaemia,” she said, and it came out sounding like the most hated word in the English language. “He got leukaemia and there was nothing I could do except love him.”
At some stage, John left the kitchen, dashing across the road. “Give me a couple of cans of lemonade,” he said to the rushing Maudie. “It’s Nina’s parents we’ve got over there, and it’s her friends you’ve got in here. Keep them here. My lot won’t be going anywhere for a while,” and he slipped back to Sweet Treats.
It was Bryn who came to the rescue. John had gone to him. “There’s a whole busload of Nina’s friends here,” he had said. “They need somewhere to stay.”
“The community hall,” Bryn said. “Here’s the key. Luckily Old Tom’s been keeping it clean. Do they need anything?”
“I don’t know,” John said. “Surely they’ve brought sleeping bags.”
“I’ve got baked beans and Weet-bix,” Bryn said.
“There’s always fudge,” John said, and the two of them slapped each other on the back.
“It’s Friday,” Bryn said. “She never works on Saturday. She’s managed to triple the population of our village and we’ve got the fete on Sunday. This will be an interesting weekend.”
“And it’s raining,” John said. “Don’t forget it’s raining.”
Chapter 62
c. AD 1590, FRANCE: Benedictine nuns make barley-sugar triangles with a secret ingredient – “perlimpinpin”.
Most of Nina’s friends came from the church in which she’d grown up. As the sun went down that evening, they came together to sing. One of them had brought a guitar, another had a harmonica. They sang in harmony; they sang badly off-key. When Nina and her parents, with John, Maudie, Mrs Potts, Bryn, even Old Tom and Claudia opened the creaking door, a cheer went up. Nina’s father raised his hand for silence.
“This evening we will welcome in the Sabbath as a family,” he said. “You are our family, as much as Nina is our family. We have worried for her, we have prayed for her, and now we have found her.
“Although we knew Nina would have struggles as a young solo parent, we had no idea of the struggles she truly faced. She has, by the grace of God, risen above her challenges. She will, by the grace of God, continue to be a blessing to others in spite of her hardships.
“We will sing a little, and we’ll ask God to be with us, in our midst, and then you can hear a little of Nina’s story.”
Silence descended on the group as the realisation fell on them that maybe Greg was someplace else. It was no surprise that he had not been at work with Nina, but for him not to be here now? Anxious looks were exchanged, and Nina did her best to smile bravely. She managed an apologetic look at Mrs Potts and Maudie, even at Bryn. She hoped they would not think less of her after this evening’s revelations.
“Do you want to talk?” her father said, and Nina nodded.
“Not too much though,” she whispered.
She wiggled her bum, trying to get a little comfortable on the hall floor, but its hardness remained unwelcoming. She held her thumbs and she looked at the ceiling. She blinked rapidly, then swallowed hard. Her mother put a hand on her knee.
“Greg died nine months ago,” she said. “He was nine years old.”
Her friends gasped, and some groaned out loud. As one, they seemed to reach their hands out to her, yet they remained in their place. A roll of toilet paper appeared and the sound of vigorous nose-blowing punctuated her story as her father told it. Tears rolled down Nina’s face and she buried her face in her father’s chest. It was dark there, it was safe. She listened to the vibrations of his voice and wondered why she’d ever thought she could nut out her life alone.
Chapter 63
c. AD 1600, ENGLAND: a German diplomat describes the black, sugar-rotted teeth of Queen Elizabeth I and her courtiers.
John awoke with a start. What on earth was a beastly cat doing yowling in the middle of the night. He glanced at his watch. 4am.
The cat yowled again, closer, as though it intended to come through the window. The rain began to fall again, lightly at first and then harder, as though someone had turned a million taps on full blast. He wondered about the people scattered throughout the village. Nina’s missing family, all of them. He’d sometimes wondered why she was so alone. He still wondered. People. You could never know them.
As though to agree, the cat yowled once more. John lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. Perhaps he would never know why Nina’s family weren’t there when she needed them most, but he did know that he was glad they were here now.
*
It never occurred to Nina’s friends or her parents that she might have faced opposition to being closed on Saturday. She took them on the big loop walk, over the hill, through the scrub, past the waterfall, then back along the beachfront. “It is beautiful,” they said. “How lucky Nina is to live here.”
Barbara sat on the fi
rst bench she came to. “Lovely, lovely view,” she said. “It makes my heart feel calm.”
The sun glinted off the little plaque attached to the seat. Eyes on the goal. Nina moved on to the next seat. Avoid procrastination. And the next. Do not be distracted. And the next. Overcome fear or it will overcome you.
She remembered with shame that she’d still not read the newspaper articles which Bryn had brought her. She shoved the thought to the back of her mind. Other things had a higher priority today.
“This chair is different,” her mother said. “Can I sit on it?”
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