Second Chances (9 page)
‘Cold,’ warned Kit, resting his hand flat on the kitchen wall. ‘It’s just made of wood, really. No central heating.’
‘No insulation either,’ said Allan, who clearly thought us off our rockers. He hadn’t given up hope of selling us a concrete cake tin in suburbia. ‘This stuff on the wall is called scrim. It’s not even plaster. You’re looking at building materials from the eighteen hundreds.’
We heard the squeak of the twins’ jeans as they slid down the banisters. ‘We’ve bagged our bedroom,’ declared Finn.
‘Did you see those smaller trees right beside the verandah?’ asked Allan. Crouching down to the boys’ height, he cupped his hand and spoke in a stage whisper. ‘Be covered in lemons later. Great for fights. And the best thing— don’t tell Mum—is you have to pee on ’em sometimes! They love the nitrogen.’
The conspirators sniggered and sneaked outside to fertilise the lemon trees. I followed Allan across the hall and into a large sitting room. Sacha was standing in a bay window, one knee resting on the red velvet cushions of a window seat. The room was dominated by a heady cacophony of scents: a century of wood polish, wet grass and a strong, exquisite fragrance that turned out to be daphne bushes in flower.
‘The parlour,’ said Allan. ‘In the early days they would have kept this for best.’
Sacha looked thoughtfully across a bedraggled orchard, piling her hair up on her head. ‘Horses,’ she said. ‘There, see?’
Following her pointed finger, I spotted five horses way up on the northern side of the valley, grazing peacefully beside a stand of Lombardy poplar.
‘Why all the imported trees?’ I asked Allan. ‘Walnut, beech, poplar.’
‘Those early settlers were homesick. They brought as much of the Old Country with them as they could. Mind you, most of it should have been left at home. Gorse and blackberry—to say nothing of rats, cats, dogs, ferrets, rabbits . . . Tragic, really.’ I reckon Allan was a bit of an eco-warrior under his Jimmy Neutron hairdo. He jabbed his chin at a fence. ‘Tennis court over there. Seen better days, but nothing a bit of white paint won’t fix.’
Sacha let her hair go, and caramel ringlets cascaded around her face. ‘The boys would love it here.’
‘What about you, though?’ I asked her. ‘It’s miles from town, from friends, clubs and things. You’ll have a long bus ride to school.’
‘I’m used to taking a bus to school. That doesn’t bother me.’ Sacha’s gaze took in the horses, the tennis court and the distant sweep of the sea. ‘Actually, I think I can see us living in this house.’
‘Most rural kids drive themselves around,’ said Allan. ‘You’re sixteen, right? Well, get your learner’s licence now and in six months you can be driving on your own. Gives you a lot more freedom.’
We found Kit on the verandah. He was wearing that ragged corduroy jacket of his, I remember. The late afternoon light was a spray of gold, falling slantwise upon the hills so that every contour was accentuated. His hands were in his pockets, jingling coins, and his shoulders were up. I knew he was planning his first painting.
‘There’s the dam,’ said Allan, pointing down the valley at a shimmer of water. ‘By the cabbage trees, see?’
‘You mentioned a school bus?’ asked Kit, without taking his eyes off that view.
I swear I heard the cash register going ker-
ching!
in Allan’s brain. ‘Goes past the road gate. Dead convenient.’
*
We stopped at the beach on the way home. Allan had said he’d show us around Torutaniwha, which we gathered was the local village, and led us to a dirt car park behind some sand dunes. We could hear the rhythmic sighing of surf, and a salty breeze brushed our faces.
‘Where’s the village?’ I asked, shielding my eyes against the glare.
Allan climbed down from his truck. ‘Well, you saw the dairy; that’s our name for a convenience store. They run a tearoom and sell fuel. There’s a marae—Maori meeting place—further along the road. Then at the far end of the beach there’s some holiday baches but they’re mostly empty through the winter.’
‘Baches?’
‘Cottages.’
‘Ah. But the . . . you know. The
village
. Houses. People.’
Allan chuckled indulgently. ‘Martha, you’re in New Zealand! We have a
lot
of space. There isn’t a village as such.’
‘But where does everyone live?’
‘Believe me, there’s a community. You’ve got the dairy and the marae. There’s the Torutaniwha Tavern half a mile back, but I wouldn’t take the kids. It’s pretty rough, you get gangs riding out from the towns—they had a stabbing a while back.’ He pointed at some nearby buildings. ‘Here’s the primary school. It’ll take the little fellas up to Year Eight.’
Kit whistled. ‘
That’s
a school?’
We moved closer. Torutaniwha school was built of white weatherboard, with deep porches. It looked vaguely colonial—an African hospital, perhaps, from the 1950s, tucked neatly under the hillside in sheep-nibbled pasture. There were picnic tables below the trees, and a fort complete with flying fox.
‘They’ve got a swimming pool!’ exclaimed Sacha.
Allan nodded. ‘Most country schools do. In the summer term the kids’ll be in and out of that three times a day. We get long, scorching summers, here in the Bay. Want to take a look at the beach?’
A path of duckboards led us through the dunes. We emerged at the southern end and wandered woozily down to the water. The beach was perhaps half a mile long, fringed by rugged hills. Sacha found a piece of driftwood, bent down beside her brothers and began to etch their names in sand letters three feet high. She was wearing low-slung jeans and a ribbon as a choker, like a hippy chick. The boys raced around her, in and out of the waves, shouting out the spelling.
I was distracted by the distant sight of two riders galloping along the beach. They kicked up a sandstorm, heads high, broad-brimmed hats flying behind them. Kit hummed spaghetti-western music, puffing Clint Eastwood’s cigar.
‘Cool,’ said Sacha, as the riders slowed to a walk, rode into the waves and began to swim their horses. The breeze nudged her hair, striking fiery sparks in the evening sun. Then she smiled, really smiled, and I felt a great weight lift off my chest.
‘Do S!’ yelled Finn. ‘Do S, S, S! S for Sacha!’
She handed him the stick. ‘You have a go. Start up here . . . uh-huh . . . then it’s like a
s
slithery old
s
snake.’
The glittering sea lapped gently, flashing with reflected light, and the moving figures of my children became silhouettes against a backdrop of rippling mirrors.
‘Will you look at it,’ muttered Kit. ‘
Look
at this place. It’s . . .’ he searched for the right word, ‘
clean.
’
Our dream house.
We got a survey, of course. We weren’t so head over heels with Patupaiarehe that we didn’t check for dry rot and subsidence; but as Allan had promised, it was sound. The vendors even threw in a lawnmower and quad bike. We were cash buyers, and the place was empty. It was ours before you could blink.
We’d been in New Zealand less than a month when we stocked up on the bare necessities—mattresses, bedding, crockery—checked out of a rather comfy motel, and drove to our old homestead on the hill. It was late August; nearly spring, in this topsy-turvy world. A drift of daffodils, unexpected and nostalgically English, greeted us like old friends as we navigated the drive.
But winter wasn’t finished with us just yet. Within two hours of our arrival the sea disappeared and the landscape blurred under the shroud of a southerly storm. As a kind of reception committee, bolshy adolescent winds tore straight off the icy wastes of Antarctica and pounded the old house, whose wooden walls bulged inwards with each gust. The rain lashed horizontally; we pitied tiny lambs who huddled by their mothers, clearly wondering what kind of a world this was. In the distance I spotted a farmer—a woman, head bowed against the wild weather—driving among them on a quad bike. The barking of her dogs sounded faint on the wind. It wasn’t what you’d call a tropical scene.
All afternoon we draped ourselves over the wood-burning stove in the kitchen, blowing optimistically and coaxing flames with bits of wet wood. I thought longingly of our heated motel room as we watched DVDs on Sacha’s laptop—
Mary Poppins
, because we all needed a comforting nanny just then—and wondered what in God’s name had induced us to buy this icebox. Why not one of those concrete palaces, with their insulation and draught-proof aluminium joinery and heat-exchange systems?
When we ran out of milk, I volunteered to drive the twins down to the dairy. My windscreen wipers squeaked and sloshed as I edged along the unfamiliar road. Rounding a corner, I was forced to brake smartly for a mob of sheep and lambs. They milled all over the road and up the verges, snatching mouthfuls of grass despite being harried by several dogs. Seconds later a red sports car skidded to a halt behind mine, wheels shrieking on the wet bitumen. The driver was female; I spotted a supersized bob hairdo.
‘Look!’ screeched Charlie from the back seat. ‘A cowboy!’
There was indeed a cowboy, in a real cowboy’s hat, apparently untroubled by traffic or downpour. He sauntered alongside his flock, sitting easily on a giant piebald horse and wearing a long stockman’s coat with the collar turned up. Dripping hair curled around his neck. I could have gazed for an hour, but the driver of the red car clearly had no eye for picturesque masculinity. Engine revving, she inched forward until the red menace filled my rear-view mirror.
‘One, two, three . . . four! Four dogs,’ marvelled Finn. One seemed to bark all the time, while the others worked with silent efficiency.
Suddenly, the red car’s driver pulled around me and drove into the sheep, trying to scatter them with a long blast on her horn. At first I was shocked, but what happened next had me laughing out loud. Neither the shepherd nor his horse seemed to notice her, but the man turned his head and spoke briefly to his dogs. They sprang into enthusiastic action, charging around the mob and pushing it right onto the red car. The four of them seemed to be laughing, too. Within seconds the woman was caught in a sea of bleating mayhem and could do nothing but sit and fume. I could see her gesticulating arms.
‘Bloody townies,’ I sneered, having lived in the countryside for a full three hours.
When we came to a wider stretch of road, the shepherd pulled his animals off to one side. Mrs Bob Hairdo roared crossly northwards with a final burst of her horn, to which he mockingly tipped his hat. As I passed, he nodded to me. I glimpsed a proud nose in a long, furrowed face.
As Allan had promised, the dairy was also a café. Its tables were giant cotton reels around a lily pond. The owner wore her hair twisted like a croissant on the back of her head. She was middle-aged and well upholstered, tucked into a tie-dyed skirt with tinkling bells around the hem and, when she discovered we were new residents, she threw in chocolate cake on the house. The rain had taken a breather, so Finn and Charlie pottered outside. I could see them chatting to some creatures in a hutch.
‘You’re the family that’s moving in up at Patupaiarehe?’ the woman called from her kitchen. Her skirt jingled.
I warmed my hands beside a glorious glass-fronted fire. ‘Mm. We only arrived this morning, and I’ve never—
ever—
been so cold in my life.’
She laughed. ‘It’ll blow through by tonight.’
I asked her about the shepherd on the road.
‘Tall bloke? Big black and white horse? That’s Tama Pardoe.’ She shook her head. ‘He’s a law unto himself. Hang on, I’ll just get my daughter.’ She nipped into the back of the building and reappeared with a chunky young woman jiggling a bald baby. ‘I’m Jane, by the way. This is Destiny and Harvey. Say hello, Harvey.’
Her grandson grinned toothlessly, and I cooed on cue. Destiny wouldn’t have been long out of her teens. She was blessed with wide eyes and flawless skin but—frankly—a bus-sized rear that should not have been squeezed into those leggings. She offered to get out her rabbits for Finn and Charlie.
‘She left her boyfriend,’ whispered Jane, once the girl was out of earshot. ‘Stashed Harvey and her rabbits in the car and drove away. His mother kept coming round all the time, interfering, nagging, telling them how to run their life. Destiny warned him, time and again, “It’s me or your mother,” and—you’ve guessed it—spineless weasel chose his mother.’
‘Fantastic name,’ I said.
‘Destiny?’ Jane unloaded a tray with drinks and cake. ‘I was a bit of a free spirit when she was born. Used to travel around in a wooden house bus with her father. Canary yellow, it was, like Mr Toad’s caravan. He sold crystals. I did a bit of tarot reading. Now I’m just a dumpy grandma. Comes to us all.’
Jane was right about the storm. Maybe she’d read her tarot cards. Weather patterns can move with startling suddenness in New Zealand, and by sunset the front was passing away to the east. It left in its wake a limpid sapphire band that gleamed across the Pacific horizon. Sacha took the boys out to explore their new territory. The three had scarcely disappeared into the trees when Lou phoned, wanting to hear how we were settling in. I was delighted to hear my sister’s voice, but she sounded indecently pleased to discover we’d spent our first day huddling over the fire.
‘I thought you’d be wearing t-shirts and taking little dips to cool off?’ she crowed.
‘It’s still winter, Lou.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s the end of August.’
‘But our seasons are reversed. You have to add six months, remember? So August here is the equivalent of . . . um . . . February there.’
‘Well obviously. I knew
that
,’ she said testily, but I’ll bet she’d forgotten. You can’t tell my sister anything.
‘How’s Phil?’ I asked, and she harrumphed even more.
‘You’ve unsettled him. He’s getting itchy feet, talking about going back into clinical—oh my God, Theo! Coming darling, you’re all right, that’s it, brave boy . . . Sorry, Martha, got to go. Theo’s fallen down the stairs.’
I made two cups of coffee and went to look for Kit. He was lounging on the verandah steps, staring down the valley with his sketchbook and a travel set of watercolours on his lap. I rested my head on his shoulder while the setting sun put on a fireworks display, just to welcome us.
