Chocolate Cake for Breakfast (42 page)

‘Hi,’ he said, looking up as I reached the top of the stairs. ‘Have fun?’

‘Yeah, it was great.’ I smiled at the visitors. ‘Hi.’

‘Helen, this is my father, Brian,’ said Mark. ‘And this is Jude.’

‘Nice to meet you both,’ I said.

‘Hello,’ said Jude. She was very thin, with wrists like twigs and the leathery skin of the long-term sun-bed devotee.

Mark’s father glanced at me, nodded stiffly and turned back to his son. ‘How’s that shoulder?’ he asked.

Somewhat taken aback, I dropped my bags on the bottom step leading up to the bedroom. I hadn’t expected the man to fold me in his arms and greet me as a daughter, but a hello in passing would have been nice.

‘Fine,’ said Mark. ‘Tea, Helen?’

‘Yes, please.’ I went up to the bench beside him, and he smiled at me fleetingly as he reached for another mug.

‘What does “fine” mean? Back to normal?’

‘Yes.’

His father reached across the bench for his tea. ‘So Ted Fraser’s off to Japan, is he?’ he asked.

‘Yep,’ said Mark, dunking a teabag.

‘He’ll do fairly well out of that, I imagine. You should have a think about it yourself.’

Mark, whose contract with the New Zealand Rugby Union had been renewed back in December for another three years, passed me my tea without replying.

‘Leave it too long and you’ll find you’re past your use-by date,’ his father continued. ‘You’d be a fool not to sign with one of those overseas clubs while they still want you.’

‘We’ll see in a few years,’ said Mark. ‘Jude, your tea’s here.’

Jude approached unwillingly and seated herself on the edge of a bar stool.

‘Have you driven up today?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘It’s a lovely road up through the Awakino Gorge, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so.’

I gave up.

‘What brings you up here?’ Mark asked.

‘Shindig for her brother,’ his father said, jerking his head towards his wife. ‘Sixtieth birthday, isn’t it? We’re staying there the night.’ He looked at me. ‘So you’re a vet, are you? I suppose you like horses.’

‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Cows are more my thing.’

‘Right out of luck living here, then, aren’t you?’ And taking a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket, he removed the toothpick and began to attend to his teeth.

Murray got up from his sunny spot in front of the balcony door, stretched and sauntered across the carpet. He rubbed his chin along Jude’s foot, and she nudged him away. Thus encouraged, he gathered himself up and jumped lightly onto her lap. You have to admire the way a cat will unerringly choose the least feline-oriented person in the room to drape himself over; I’m sure they do it on purpose.

‘Brian, get this thing off me,’ she said breathlessly as Murray settled himself down, paws folded beneath his chest.

‘Leave it alone. It likes you.’

I went around the end of the bench and lifted Murray off her lap, and she began pointedly to brush away imaginary cat hairs.

‘You should have had that lineout ball at the start of the second half,’ Brian said thickly around his toothpick.

Mark rested both hands on the bench top and said, in the tone of a man whose patience is fast evaporating, ‘Lucky I’ve got nothing to prove to the selectors.’

His father took the toothpick from between two back molars and gave him a flat, unfriendly stare.

The visitors didn’t stay very long, which was, as far as I could see, the only redeeming feature of the whole experience. Mark accompanied them out and came slowly back upstairs, and putting my arms around him I hugged him tightly.

‘Ow,’ he said mildly, hugging me back. ‘Bruised ribs.’

I slackened my grasp. ‘Sorry. I love you.’

‘Thank you. You too.’

‘Is your father always like that?’

‘Yeah, pretty much,’ said Mark. ‘He was a bit pissed off that I didn’t want to buy him his next-door neighbour’s farm.’

‘I can’t think why not.’

‘I’ve already bought him one. Half of one, anyway.’

I looked at him questioningly.

‘He had to pay Mum out when she left,’ he explained.

I mused for a moment on how it must feel to be regarded by your father – and your brother – as a handy source of cash.

‘Your family –’ I started, and stopped.

‘You’ll like Mum,’ he said.

‘What does she think about the baby?’

He looked a bit blank. ‘I’m sure she’ll think it’s very cute when it’s born.’

‘She hasn’t said anything about you having a baby with some girl you just met?’

‘We’ve been going out for a year,’ he said.

‘We’d only been going out for a few months when I got pregnant,’ I pointed out.

‘Don’t think it bothers her,’ he said. ‘Look, my family’s not like yours. We don’t have a whole lot to do with each other. I see Mum every year or two, and she texts me before a Test match to say good luck, and that’s about it.’ He let me go and opened the fridge, selecting, after some thought, a block of cheese.

‘So how did you end up so nice?’ I asked.

‘Did I?’

‘Yes. And it doesn’t really seem like you had much encouragement, growing up.’

Mark cut himself a thick slice of cheese. ‘I was bloody lucky,’ he said soberly. ‘Jack Thornton – he was the Blues’ forwards coach when I started playing; he’s in Scotland now – took me under his wing a bit. He used to have me round for tea and talk to me about what I was going to do with my life. And then I had Alan as a flatmate.’ He broke off a corner of his cheese and tossed it to Murray, who was watching him hopefully from the floor. ‘I read somewhere that someone interviewed a whole lot of young blokes who’d done time. They asked them what might have stopped them from going off the rails, and every one of them said, “Someone who gave a shit about what I did.”’ He smiled at me crookedly. ‘It’s true.’

39

IN JUNE THE BLUES HAD TWO CONSECUTIVE GAMES IN
Australia. I went home to Broadview for a few days while Mark was away, returning with five rubbish bags full of small pink clothes. Em had had them piled ready for me in the hall when I arrived, unwilling to take the risk that I might have a boy and thwart her garage-decluttering schemes. My grandmother gave me a pair of hand-knitted bootees, one a good inch longer than the other, told me I was retaining a lot of fluid and said she supposed rugby players were like sailors, with a girl in every port.

I lunched with Alison and called in to work to catch up on the gossip, where I spent a pleasant hour ventilating a cat for Keri while she sewed up its diaphragmatic hernia. This freed up Zoe to lurk around the corner texting her new man, so everyone was happy.

It’s a dreadful thing for a rugby player’s girlfriend to admit, but I was secretly hoping that the Blues wouldn’t make the Super Rugby play-offs that year. They did, which meant that Mark spent the last weekend in June in Pretoria and the first weekend in July in Christchurch. And having won both games, the Blues had a home final at Eden Park against the Queensland Reds.

At around seven on the morning of the final, which also happened to be my due date, I woke up, wriggled laboriously to the edge of the mattress and rolled off because it was easier than sitting up.

I was completely over pregnancy. My back hurt, my ankles had vanished and I needed to get up at least three times a night to pee. I felt as attractive as a sea cow, and about the same size. Em had been right: there’s nothing like the discomfort of late pregnancy for reconciling you to the thought of childbirth.

Getting to my feet I collected my cell phone from the bedside table and lumbered off to the bathroom.

Mark wasn’t home – the team always stayed together in a hotel on the night before a game, even when they were playing in Auckland. I was in the shower when he rang, and as I stepped out to answer the phone I caught my toe and staggered forward against the bathroom vanity. I didn’t hurt myself, but I did manage to knock my phone off the sink bench and into the toilet.

I had fished it out and was drying it sadly on a towel when the landline rang. ‘
We’re not home, leave us a message and we’ll
get back to you
,’ said Mark’s voice as the answer phone picked up. Then, ‘McNeil, where are you? You’re not in labour, are you?’ I was only halfway down the stairs when he hung up.

Better call him back straight away, I thought, before he had time to worry. And then I realised I couldn’t, because I didn’t know his number. I never dialled it – I always called him from my cell phone.

I looked up the hotel where the Blues were staying and rang reception, and they wouldn’t put me through.

‘I’m his girlfriend,’ I assured the man at the other end of the line. ‘I promise I’m not a stalker.’

‘Then might I suggest you try his mobile, madam?’

‘I haven’t got the number – I mean, it’s on my phone, and my phone’s broken – look, could you just call his room and ask him to ring ho–’ At which point I realised the supercilious prat had hung up.

I did a brief ungainly dance of rage, then called Saskia, whose number was written on the back of the phone book, and woke her up. When at length I got hold of Mark he had reached the hotel lobby on his way home to look for me. He was somewhat curt, as worried people often are.

After this inauspicious start the day passed peacefully enough. Mark came home for a few hours at midday and then left again to do serious match-preparation things, and I took myself out for a long walk with one foot on the pavement and the other in the gutter. (Aunty Deb’s tip for bringing on labour – she had also advised me to eat a whole pineapple, but I could picture the potential side effects far too clearly to be tempted to try it.)

At five thirty I was standing at the stove, poaching chicken thighs in ginger broth and wishing I’d chosen a dish that could have been put in the oven and left to do its thing, when the doorbell rang.

‘Whoa,’ said Sam, looking me up and down as I opened the door.

‘Be quiet, or I’ll sit on you and crush you like a bug,’ I said. ‘It’s great to see you guys.’

‘You too,’ said Alison, hugging me. ‘How are you?’

‘Good. Fat and cranky, but otherwise good. Come up and have a drink.’

‘Lovely place,’ she said as she reached the top of the stairs.

‘Is that your bedroom up there?’

‘Yep. Go up and have a look round, if you like. We finished setting up all the baby’s stuff last week.’ The cot was made up ready and the canvas drawers were filled with tiny clothes. My hospital bag was packed, waiting with the baby’s car seat on the changing table, and Mark had hung an animal mobile from the ceiling. I was inordinately proud of it all.

‘What’s happening at home?’ I asked Sam, prodding a chicken thigh with a fork.

‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘Oh, Jeff Burton drove his tractor off a cliff the other day.’

I twisted experimentally to see if it would make my back feel any better, and found that it didn’t. ‘Is he alright?’

‘He wasn’t in it – he got out and forgot to put the handbrake on. Are you okay there, Hel?’

‘Sore back,’ I said. ‘No biggie.’

‘You’re not going to have this baby in the stands, are you?’

‘Sadly, I doubt it.’

‘Well, please don’t.’