Ricochet Baby (7 page)

A woman, short and wiry, walks across the paddocks with two men, heading in the direction where Wendy is gazing. All three appear to be carrying long-handled rakes, although one of the men could be holding a gun. The sound of the singing behind them is shattered by the arrival of a circling helicopter. The trio shake their rakes at the sky. A man with a camera hangs out of the helicopter as it hovers overhead. Sarah half-expects to hear gunfire, and she is not disappointed — only it comes from the ground and not from the chopper. The taller of the two men is firing his shotgun.

Then Sarah sees that the grass has been disturbed; from where she stands, it appears to be flattened in a pattern of
sweeping
circles and diagrams. ‘Messages,’ says Wendy, in a loud, excited voice.

Behind them, attracted by the sound of the helicopter, the members of the garden tour have begun to emerge through the trees. The owner strides ahead of them, her presence commanding. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I’m afraid that’s all there is for today.’

Alarmed by the shots, tour bus operators are shepherding their clients away, and men are hurrying their wives down through the trees, although it is clear that most of them would like to stay.

Wendy begins to move towards the circles in the grass,
following
the three ahead.

‘Wendy,’ cries Sarah. She feels as if she has begun the most important conversation of her life and now it is being snatched away from her. Nothing can be heard over the deafening noise of the helicopter, now quivering like a giant beetle, a safe distance away from the action. There is a thin wind rushing through the air.

‘Go home, Sarah,’ calls Wendy, over her shoulder.

‘Did you give the man the money?’ Wendy doesn’t turn back.

‘Mother, did the man tell you who it was?’

Wendy walks on, drawing steadily abreast of the two men and the woman. The garden’s owner peels away from the trees and
follows
her.

‘Wendy, come back, you old fool,’ calls Sarah. It is not clear whether her mother has heard this, although Sarah thinks she pauses. ‘I don’t want to see you again,’ she shouts.

‘I’
M AFRAID YOU’LL
have to go back,’ says Edith, catching up with Wendy.

Wendy turns to her, eyes blazing. ‘It’s magic,’ she cries. ‘Pure magic.’

‘Somebody smoking waccy baccy, more likely,’ Edith says, her voice dry.

Wendy sees that, close at hand, Edith’s face is mottled beneath her tan, and that her hands are work-worn and rough. But there is an irresistible air about her that convinces Wendy they are about to become friends.

‘Oh come, don’t you believe in spirits?’

‘Madam,’ Edith begins again, wanting to steer Wendy back to the garden.

‘But don’t you?’

Their eyes meet; Edith smiles a small sarcastic smile, but Wendy can see that it is at her own expense. ‘Why not?’ she says. ‘All the same, it’s a bit of a devil, all of this.’

Wendy closes her eyes and laughs out loud, her face turned towards the sun.

I
HURRY THROUGH
the hospital car park like a fugitive, certain that someone is going to apprehend me. This is irrational, I can see, because I have done nothing wrong. It is not a crime to call
somebody
a bitch, I am the injured party. But I am shaken, and nothing makes sense.

When I find my blue Honda Civic, I sit there for a few
minutes
, my hands shaking on the wheel, before I am able to start the car and drive away I know I am not going back to work today, but I am not quite sure where I will go. I do not want to go home to Ashton Fitchett Drive, though I know that the sensible thing would be to lie down and put my feet up. I drift into a stream of traffic, down round the Basin Reserve, along past the carillon, and turn towards town. I think I will buy myself something, perhaps just some flowers, or fresh fruit, or perhaps I will go to a movie. But the traffic is heavy, and I pull left towards the motorway, and soon I am burning along beside the sea, heading north, driving towards the hill road that will take me to the farm.

At the foot of the hills I see a group of white horses at a
riding
school and lean down to make a cross on my shoe. This is what my brothers and I did when we were out driving. White horses, we would say, and we would lick our fingers, make a cross on our shoes and then cross our fingers. We made a wish and after that it was bad luck to speak until we saw a black dog. So the miles would pass, all of us shouting with relief because our fingers felt stuck to each other, black dog, black dog.

Travelling at speed, I make two more crosses, one for Bernard who has not returned my calls since my pregnancy began, and one for big brother Michael, whom I miss. I wish he had been around for me to call today. He would have known what to do. Well, maybe. At least Michael has survival skills, he got away

It is then that I remember that I have a husband, and that it has not gone through my mind to phone Paul. It is still mid-
afternoon
; if I put my foot down I might almost get to the farm and back before he gets home from work. He has been working late the past few weeks. Or perhaps I won’t go to the farm at all, maybe I’ll just
drive a little way and get the feel of the countryside around me, and then turn round and go back to town. But that’s not true. I have never turned back from the farm, not once. I fumble with the radio, my linked fingers making me clumsy.

I hear my father’s unmistakeable voice. ‘Children probably did it,’ he says.

Did what?

I turn the volume up, losing one of my crosses in my haste. Bernard’s, I think.

‘These circles are sophisticated and well planned,’ says the reporter interviewing Glass.

‘Look, I’ve got nothing to say about this. The Ag Department chaps are coming out here to have a look at what’s been done to the pasture and then the grass will be raked over,’ says my father. ‘I don’t know how you got hold of this garbage.’

‘Well, as I think I explained, Mr Nichols, we had a call from a tour bus operator on his cellphone.’

‘What are you paying him?’

‘Have you heard the word pictograms, Mr Nichols?’

No, Glass has not.

‘Well, let’s say, do you think this is a natural phenomenon, or is it a sign?’

‘What sort of a sign did you have in mind?’ Glass asks, letting his guard down.

‘Circles are sometimes ascribed to flying saucers and space men. Do you think this could be a sign from another galaxy?’

‘Bugger off,’ says Glass.

‘These circles appeared at the Nichols’ farm early this
morning
,’ says the reporter, in summary. ‘The formations appear to be about forty metres long, although the farmer is not keen on
measurements
being taken. Mr Nichols says that his cows are, quote, “all going haywire”. Police are talking to Mr Nichols junior who was seen taking aim at a helicopter earlier in the day with a .22 rifle.’ The reporter wraps up his story. ‘An attempt is being made to
photograph
the crop circles for further analysis before they are destroyed.’

I have reached the far side of the hill and turn off down the road to Walnut. Walnut, where I grew up and went to school, is a market town situated north-east of the main line. The Tararua Ranges rear their blue spines to the west, the coast lies in the
opposite 
direction. The sea is close enough to smell when the wind is right, and for seagulls to take shelter during storms, but too far to see from the farm, even from the hills where my father runs beef cattle. The market square has been built like an old English town around a group of walnut trees where the locals spread tarpaulins in the autumn to collect the nuts. The wide, leafy walnut branches are older than my father’s father would have been. The village, for that is really what it is, used to be famous for an annual frog
jumping
championship but that was abandoned years ago when the
animal
rights people got to hear of it, and if they had seen the way my brother Bernard blew frogs up with a straw through their bums until they popped, they would have had even more to say about the matter. Now they have an annual cider tasting festival instead.

In Walnut, there is a garage, a Town and Country Farm Centre where you get everything from nails to pots and pans and gumboots, a coffee shop and takeaway bar, a supermarket and a hairdresser, and a police station. The fresh fruit shop has closed down, so has the post office, all but one of the banks and the
jeweller’s
; the ladies’ haberdashery is hanging on by the skin of its teeth. There are five churches — Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist and the Salvation Army — and the charismatics, who have the most worshippers anyway, use the gymnasium. The three pubs in town are not as old as you might expect because the Temperance Union held sway here for years, but they are well used. My grandfather belonged to the union, I think, but I don’t know much about him. I never met him, not in the flesh at least. Correction, I met him when he was dead, but that hardly counts.

This is the area the settlers used to call the Widerup; my brother Michael used to call it that when we were children, a secret name, a corruption. I drive up a valley, past vineyards and new hacienda-style houses with arches and signs inviting people in to taste wine, past small, ugly, modern houses that have replaced some of the older, more picturesque cottages on the farms. But nothing really changes. Old mansions still stand behind avenues of trees. Sometimes I visited those places when I was a child,
depending
on my friends of the moment. Mostly, though, I spent my time with Pamela, whose family, I suspected, was hard up, although such matters were never mentioned. My family had moved from being poor to moderately wealthy, but I was taught to keep money to myself. Aunt Dorothy once said to me, before she went
completely
round the bend, ‘Listen, young lady, old money makes out that wealth’s not important. The women wear their sparklers in the garden and get them all dirty, so you can’t see what they’re worth. New money flashes them. We Nichols don’t wear them at all except on our birthdays.’

A fire of tree stumps burns in a paddock. Spicy smoke filters through the air conditioning, and I am filled with an enormous longing, and a sense of loss that I don’t live here any more, under the eggshell dome of the sky, among the remembered hills, the wide Widerup.

B
ERNARD AND
O
RLA’S
house, which comes before my parents’, is empty. I stand uneasily, listening to the ticking of an electric fence and a magpie shrieking like rusty iron from a macrocarpa. I breathe in the hot, acrid smell of the tree. Although the four-wheel drive is parked in the driveway of the top house, it, too, is empty. The remains of a picnic lie on tables under umbrellas; half-stacked cups and plates, leftover food on trays. An open blue bottle of Bombay Sapphire stands under the crab apple tree, its fragrant, ginny scent drifting through the leaves.

An agitated woman makes her way towards me through the lavender walk. Her eyes are teary behind big glasses and she pushes back reddish-brown hair growing out of a poodle perm, as if she is hot and tired.

‘If you see my mother, would you tell her I’ve gone home?’ she says, as if I am someone who has been there all the time. ‘You’ll know her, she’s got long white hair and a mad look in her eye.’

‘What have you done with your mother?’ I ask.

‘Nothing, really. We were late for the tour bus, so we took my car. I waited down the road for her, but the bus went hours ago. I expect she was on it. Oh well, I just thought I should check. Good luck,’ she calls, as she gets into her car. I don’t know why she thinks I am part of the establishment, standing there in my navy-blue maternity dress, dangling car keys in my hand. The air is warm and still, as she chugs down the road in a car that has seen better days.

I am thinking that I should go inside, leave a note, find
somebody
. This is when I see the woman’s mother, or that’s who I
suppose
it must be. She doesn’t look well, but from what I can see her problem is not terminal. I feel like a cold-hearted bitch, but I’ve seen enough of this kind of thing in my life and I don’t really care.

T
HE
W
ALNUT COFFEE
shop is about to close; I glance at my watch and discover the day nearly over, it’s almost five o’clock.

Denise, who was two years behind me at school, is languidly wiping down the last table. I sit down and smile at her. ‘Hi, Denise, I’ll have a Devonshire tea. Please.’

‘We’ve only got tomorrow’s food left,’ she says.

‘Great, let’s pretend we’re getting ahead of ourselves,’ I say, and because she is a subservient kind of person, and younger, and dying to ask me when my baby is due, she does what I say. I expect my mother treats her like this all the time.

I sit by the window and eat three scones and all the jam and none of the cream and, just as I hold the chrome pot over the cup for a second cup of tea, I see my bother Bernard coming out of the police station. He looks impatient and bad-tempered, and for a moment I think he won’t see me. He is heading towards the European, the
hair-dressing
salon. Just as he is about to turn in, he sees me and pauses. Calling out to someone I can’t see, but I suppose it’s Shelley de Witt who runs the salon, Bernard comes into the coffee shop.

‘The cops took me in,’ he says, leaning against the door frame.

‘Shooting, eh?’

‘People been talking?’

‘I listen to the radio.’

‘You’ve been to the farm.’

‘Yes.’

‘See Ma?’

‘Nope.’

He pulls a chair out from the table and turns it back to front, straddling it and resting his chin on his arms.

‘Want a cup of tea?’

‘Nah. I might have a beer.’ He nods in the direction of the nearest pub.

‘Shouldn’t you be home milking?’

‘You thinking of running the farm?’ His gaze takes in my stomach.

‘Oh quit it, Bernard. I came in here for some peace and quiet. Are the cops laying charges against you?’

‘Probably not. Depends on their evidence. Shit.’

‘Who’d do a thing like that?’ I say, meaning the circles. My brothers and I have always understood each other’s shorthand, I’ll say that about them. ‘I mean, who could be bothered?

‘Smart arses. Townies, I expect.’ The old gulf yawns between us, but he is saved by the appearance of Shelley de Witt. You can tell, by the way people are herding together, that there is excitement in the air in Walnut this evening. A little knot of locals chatting in the middle of the road calls out to Shelley as she passes. I’ve never liked Shelley since she gave me a pudding-bowl haircut the week before I started high school. That was when I decided to let my hair grow long. I haven’t had it cut since. Shelley’s at least forty-five by my reckoning. Her fingernails are long and red, and she is deeply suntanned; I’ve heard she goes topless by the river. She calls her salon the European because she’s travelled abroad. She says
everyone
in Walnut is a country hick, but she’s stuck around so long it’s hard to see her angle.

‘I heard you were in the family way,’ she says.

‘Who told you that?’ I don’t like the way Shelley gossips either. She’s great at playing both ends against the middle, while she snips and blow waves.

‘Your Dad hasn’t been in for a haircut for a while.’ I know she is saying this for my benefit. There have been rumours about Shelley and she cultivates them; this is her back serve.

‘I’ll make him an appointment,’ says Bernard. He turns a white grin on her, and though he’s not much to look at, I can see a flash of the charm he had as a boy.

‘How are the folks?’ I ask, for something to say, though I only have to listen to the news to find out.

‘The same. Dunno why they bother.’

I hadn’t expected such major intimate stuff, here in the Walnut coffee shop. I had thought that he would say okay, great, they could do without this lot — something like that. But this is Walnut, not Lambton Quay.

‘Marriage is marriage,’ I say, and shrug.

‘Yeah, well you’re in on the secret these days, aren’t you?’

He gets to his feet and I realise that Shelley has been waiting for him.

‘Bloody cops took me in in their car. Shelley’s dropping me home.’

‘By the way,’ I say, not getting up, ‘speaking of mothers,
somebody’s
left one under the camellias.’

His mouth drops open. ‘Get to the point.’

I explain about the woman in the garden looking for her
mother. ‘I think I found her. After she’d left. I saw some feet
sticking
out from under the hedge.’

‘Jesus, Rob.’

‘She’d been into the gin, she was passed out cold.’ I feel pleased with myself, and I don’t care that I have shocked him. The woman was alive, I could see that. I pick up my handbag and walk out ahead of them.

‘Give my regards to Orla,’ I remember to say, before I am out of earshot.