The Party Line (13 page)

Her mother didn’t answer. Nickie was beginning to wonder whether she was just thinking these sentences, rather than saying them out loud.

‘Mum?
Mum
. Do you remember that? Do you?’

‘Hmmm.’

‘What the fuck does
hmm
mean Mum? Is that a yes or a no?’

She waited for the lecture about swearing. It didn’t come. Things
were more than weird now. They were creepy.

‘Well. The thing I was upset about was … Mr Gilbert bashes up Mrs Gilbert.’

Nickie’s mother said nothing.

‘Mum? He beats her up. We have to do something. To help Mrs Gilbert.’

Her mother stood up. Nickie didn’t roll over to face her. She stayed right where she was.

Why wasn’t her mother talking to her? Nickie could hear her opening the drawer of her bedside table, then shutting it again. She could hear her breathing deeply, as though trying to calm herself.

Nickie started crying. The tears came slowly at first, running down her face onto the eiderdown. They got thicker and faster and Nickie tried to swallow them but couldn’t keep up with the fast flow. They weren’t just for the Mrs Gilbert drama. They were for everything. Everything that had happened since Gabrielle had arrived in Fenward.

Her mother sat back down and put her arm around Nickie. Nickie’s body shook. If her mother had asked her then to tell her everything —
everything
— Nickie would have. But her mother just held her. It felt like it went on for hours. In the end, Nickie had no tears left, she was all dried out inside like a prune. She drifted off to sleep, and when she woke, it was dark in the room. The blinds were closed and her mother was gone.

She looked at the little bedside clock — it was six-thirty. PM. She’d only been asleep a few minutes. The bedroom door was slightly open. She stood up and felt dizzy, so quickly sat down again. The door opened.

Nickie was ready to tell her mother what she’d seen happen in the Gilberts’ house — even ready to get herself in trouble for sneaking out at night. Ready to tell her about Yvonne and the safe places for people like Mrs Gilbert. All her mother had to do was start asking questions.

She didn’t, though. She stood and looked out the window. When she turned around, she had her angry face on. Tight lips, that little frown above her eyes. Nickie wasn’t so sure now about being ready to confess.

‘Have you … have you
talked
to Mrs Gilbert? About this?’

‘No.’

‘Well then. What on earth makes you think these terrible things about Jack Gilbert?’

‘I … I just know about them.’

‘Jesus … if your father finds out …’ Her mother was shaking her head. She never blasphemed. But it was dawning on Nickie that she wasn’t angry with Mr Gilbert. The anger was for Nickie.

‘Nickie. Sometimes things happen and … well, it’s not what it looks like. I mean, it can look like something, like a fight, for example, if you don’t know exactly the situation. But it can turn out to be something else. Something completely harmless.’

‘We think you need to talk to her, Mum. If you just talked to her, there are some people that can help her.’

The look Nickie got then told her she was in trouble. Her mother’s face had frozen, it was so angry.

‘We? Who is
we
?’

‘Me and Gabrielle.’

Her mother nodded slowly, her eyes closed. ‘And who did you have in mind to … to
help
? With this so-called problem?’

‘There are really nice ladies who look like normal people who can rescue—’

‘Stop.’ Her mother spoke quietly, holding her hand up.

‘But, Mum … if we, if you talk to Mrs Gilbert—’

‘Stop it. It’s none of your business, Nickie. It’s no one’s business. What goes on in other people’s houses, between husbands and wives.’

‘But, if you could just ask her, Mrs Gilbert, go there for a cup of tea and bring it up—’

Nickie didn’t see it coming. Just the flash of pink across her eyes, the scrape of her mother’s ring, and then the sting of the hand hitting her cheek. And the smell of onions. Her mother must have been cutting onions for tea before she came into the bedroom. The smell stayed on Nickie’s face after she slapped her.

‘I’ll say this just the once, Nicola,’ her mother said. Her voice was calm and quiet, a little bit like Yvonne’s had been at the library.
‘You keep your nose out of other people’s business. Especially adults’ business. You and Gabrielle … you tell her that. There’ll be big strife if you don’t. Big strife for the pair of you, and for Dad and me, and for lots of other people if you go sticking your nose in …’

Nickie’s face stung. There was a thin line of blood from the ring. She had nothing to say.

‘Do you hear what I’m saying?’

Nickie nodded.

Fenward. Flat, green plains, drunkenly stitched with power and telephone lines that began as crucifixes, receded to ‘I’s, then finally to indecipherable smudges in the distance. Somewhere past the limit of sight, the green merged into grey and the paddocks became sky became a smothering weight across his shoulders as Ian worked Jack Gilbert’s farm.

It was vast and open, this land, but there was no horizon. If there was no horizon, there was no boundary between here and elsewhere. The prospect of infinite plains constricted his chest, made him gasp. Of course, he knew none of this was true, it could not be true. But when he stopped and stared into the distance, there it was: the evidence of the existence of nowhere else.

They hadn’t spent much time at the beach, up north, after Bridie got sick. But knowing the coast was close had always been enough. He could taste it in the salty, just-bitter breeze when it caught the back of his throat. There was the cry, too, of the seagulls. And the sky, which was surely as deep as the ocean beneath it. Promises of elsewhere — those were what made you want to stay.

They had arrived in Fenward in winter and the skies had been so grey that day and night were only degrees of each other. Summer would be different, Ian thought. The air would stir and the sun would burn off the cloud and it would be possible — easy — to breathe. This couldn’t be summer, even though the skies were often blue, not grey. It couldn’t be summer because far away, where a horizon should be, black clouds hung low, waiting for a chance to roll on in. And there was still no air for breathing.

How long could a person be expected to hold his breath? What happened if a person held his breath for winter, then spring, then summer, then, when autumn arrived, with the assurance of a cool breeze, it turned out to be as suffocating as all the other seasons? At that point, a person would have no choice but to move on.

Jack Gilbert’s farm was devoid not only of hills, but of any feature of interest — a stand of native bush, or an old barn or shed, used or abandoned. Ian contemplated this, as he puzzled, weeks earlier, over where the extra calves had come from.

The milking herd had been waiting for him at the fence line as usual that morning. He’d pulled the heavy steel gate back across the race and clipped it to the fence. The cows knew what to do. They walked past him, streams of thick saliva stalactiting from metronome jaws. Steam puffed from their nostrils into the still, murky air. Ian leaned against the fence post, waiting for the stragglers. His new dog, Bounce, was tied up next to him.

Bounce saw them first. He crouched low to the ground, ears flat against his head. A guttural growl came from deep inside the dog. One was a Friesian, the other a Jersey. They were huddled by the fence line, halfway down the paddock.

There were more. Four bedraggled, scrawny calves in all. All of them thin and shaky on their feet.

Ian sprinted ahead of the herd and swung a race gate across in front of the leaders, stopping their progress towards the shed. He did the same behind them, locking them inside a small section of the race, before separating the calves off from the herd.

One calf — one, or maybe two — he could understand. The fences were not completely fixed. It was possible that a cow had had twins, or even triplets, and two of the calves had wandered through to another paddock, escaping first muster. But four?

Ian milked, then went home and phoned Jack Gilbert. They met at the shed half an hour later.

‘How’s the dog working out?’ Jack asked, as he slammed the door of his truck shut. Bounce was tied up at the fence. ‘He’s smart, eh?’

‘He’s keen, alright,’ said Ian.

Bounce had belonged to Jack. Jack had offered the dog to Ian, proposing a weekly deduction in wages until the animal was paid for. The price — $60 — had sounded reasonable to Ian, until he tried to work him. Bounce was vicious, snapping at the legs of stock, drawing blood if he could. Once he’d tasted it, the dog turned rabid, worrying
the beast until he was close to bringing it down. Ian had to wade into the dangerous frenzy with a stick, beating the dog away before serious injuries threatened the livestock. Bounce therefore spent most of the time tied up, and Gabrielle was forbidden to go near him. Ian knew the alternative was buying and training his own dog, but this felt like commitment and commitment felt suffocating.

‘It was hard to part with him,’ Jack went on. ‘But I believe in doing a man a favour, when you can.’

‘Too right, Jack. Thanks again,’ Ian said.

They walked down the race together. Jack picked at his teeth. ‘So what’s the problem?’

‘You’ll see in a minute.’

Ian hadn’t said, on the phone, why he needed to meet Jack. Six months of watching Gabrielle playing on the party line had taught him there was no such thing as a private conversation in Fenward. He couldn’t make sense of where the calves had come from, but he was sure others, listening in, would have their views.

The calves were still huddled in the far corner of the paddock. He leaned his stick against the fence and rested his hands on the top wire, between the barbs.

‘They were just there, this morning,’ he said. ‘Four calves, turned up out of the blue.’

He unlatched the gate and the two men slipped into the paddock. ‘Nowhere near the herd, the cows weren’t interested in them,’ he added.

They were close to the calves now. Jack pulled one away from the cluster and looked it over, head to tail. He did the same to the rest.

‘You must have missed them, when they calved.’

Ian shook his head. ‘That can’t be right. It’s just not possible … Not four appearing from nowhere, all on the same morning.’

‘Are you saying your fencing’s finished, Ian? Because guess how it looks to me? It looks to me as though you’ve put the cows in with the herd after they’ve calved, and these calves — these twins, triplets, fucking quads for all we know … that
you
didn’t even know you had — have bellowed and bawled and eventually found their way to their
mothers through God knows how many broken fences.’

Ian took a deep breath. ‘Jack, the cows haven’t gone anywhere near them … they’re not their calves. Come on …’

Ian laughed, and Jack’s mood switched. He shook his head, grinning widely. Ian would never get used to how quickly it happened.

‘Someone put them here. Someone’s brought them here and put them in with the milkers. That’s the only logical explanation for them all turning up overnight,’ Ian said.

Jack straightened himself up tall and ran his fingers through his hair. He scratched at the back of his neck and bent down, running his hands over the calves’ bellies, down their legs, and then inspected their tails.

‘No markings on them,’ he said finally. ‘Stick them on the truck. Might as well get something for them.’ He turned again to leave. ‘Oh, and Ian — they are my calves.’

That was it then. They were Jack Gilbert’s calves.

In the last week of November, Ian received a letter. The envelope was pink and big, the size of a child’s birthday card. It was framed, on both the front and the back, with tiny hand-drawn stars. The colours alternated purple and orange. His name and address was printed in Gabrielle’s careful scroll, and bore her signature sign-off:
Fenward, Hauraki Plains, North Island, New Zealand, Southern Hemisphere, Earth, The Universe, The Solar System, Floating in Space. Space
was barely legible, disappearing into minute letters and merging with the star occupying the bottom right corner of the envelope.

Ian opened it while he walked from the roadside to the house. It was an invitation from Gabrielle Baxter and Nicola Walker to attend a dress rehearsal of their planned performances at Calf Club Day.
Your attendance is required at the Walkers’ cowshed at two o’clock on Saturday. Be there or be square.
It was centred on the page, and on each side of the words were drawings of calves — a Jersey on the left and a Friesian on the right. Both the calves were wearing high-heeled boots.

Gabrielle ached for ribbons. In Silverdale, she’d looked on while the farmers’ and sharemilkers’ kids paraded their pets around the school
field on Calf Club Day. They stood in proud-puff lines of first, second and third and collected those slivers of coloured silk. Pale yellow for third, royal blue for second, and the blood red of first prize.

Rhys, his Silverdale landlord, had offered Gabrielle one of his calves. Gabrielle had gone to the cowshed with him and looked over all the candidates. She came back and crawled under the covers next to Bridie and, with her face buried into her mother’s needle-thin arms, said that she didn’t like any of them enough to be her Calf Club Day pet. Bridie needed someone with her most of the time by then. Gabrielle understood it was her.

He stuffed the envelope in his trouser pocket and went inside. Gabrielle was doing schoolwork at the kitchen table, her books open, pencils and felt pens scattered. He glanced down at his trousers — the envelope was not visible.

‘How come,’ said Gabrielle, ‘we haven’t been to church here yet?’

She didn’t look up. Her hair hung over her face.

‘What’s your homework?’ His hand reached into his pocket, folded over the envelope and pushed it down into the fabric as far as it would go.

‘It’s not homework. It’s a drawing. Of Mum. In the gardens of Heaven.’