The Party Line (14 page)

Gabrielle spun the sheet of paper around so that the picture faced him. He sat down at the table and looked. Gabrielle had filled the page with tiny, delicate flowers. In the middle she had sketched her mother. Ian was relieved it wasn’t a great likeness.

‘We had religious instruction today and I told Father Brindle about how we both have the same dreams as each other about Mum.’ She swung the page back to face her, and resumed the colouring-in.

Ian didn’t speak. It had been a while since they’d shared a Bridie dream. He’d been hoping that that little routine might have come to an end.

‘And that, therefore,’ she continued, her head down, ‘we knew for sure that that’s where she was. And that she was happy.’

‘What did Father Brindle have to say about that?’

‘He said that a good Catholic never needed proof of the existence
of God and Heaven. But it was nice, all the same, to receive a sign from Him, and that we were lucky, the both of us, to share such a strong faith.’

Ian nodded. ‘We’re lucky, alright.’

‘And then,’ Gabrielle said, ‘he asked me when we were going to come to church. Because he said we’ve been here ages and he was very keen to meet you.’

Ian watched his daughter busy over the paper; agile, elegant fingers reaching for pens, flicking their lids off, deftly applying them to the artwork. Gabrielle had the hands of her mother — long, slender fingers that never stopped moving — and there they were, easing fabric through the grip of the old sewing machine, flicking pins out, the sound of them dropping in the metal tin lost behind the clack-clacking of the puncturing needle. Bridie’s signet ring caught the light of the tiny bulb at the back of the sewing machine and flashed as those busy hands coloured purple, orange, purple, orange, purple, orange a border of purple orange pansies around the edge of Bridie in the gardens of Heaven.

And, of course, he remembered the last time he went to church, the occasion being Bridie’s funeral, and although the flowers were said to have been beautiful and the eulogy touching and the whole service a celebration, yes a celebration, of her life rather than a mourning of the obscene end of it, he remembered none of those things. What he remembered, with a shudder every time, was holding his wife’s hand as he stood in the front pew and running his fingers gently, lovingly, seductively up and down her long fingers and wondering what she had done with her wedding and engagement rings before she’d come to church that morning.

‘It’s too hard to get there just yet.’

‘Other people get there. Nickie and her family go most weeks.’

‘They’ve got sharemilkers to do all the jobs in the weekends. Who do you think does it when you and Nickie have a morning off?’ Ian asked.

‘The Janssens, I suppose.’

‘Correct. And what are we?’

Gabrielle put her pen down and stared at him, her brow creased in puzzlement. ‘What do you mean, what are we? People. Obviously.’

‘What sort of people, Gabrielle?’

She chewed at her bottom lip. ‘I give in.’

‘Sharemilkers. We’re sharemilkers, Gabrielle. We get to feed the calves, the owners get to sleep in and go to church on Sundays and any other days too, if they feel the urge.’

Ian was sure that the next time he entered a church, he’d be inside a box, on the receiving end of eulogies and prayers that wouldn’t be answered.

On Saturday afternoon, just before two o’clock, he drove over to the Walkers’ cowshed. Gabrielle had gone on ahead, her bag stuffed fat and bouncing against her back as she cycled away from the house.

‘Don’t be late,’ she called out. ‘And don’t be early.’

His truck rumbled over the cattlestop and he pulled up to one side of the tanker track. In the distance, in the calf pen, he could see Gabrielle and another girl. He wandered towards the girls, blinking in the strong light, his steps faltering.

Their clothing. Bridie’s clothing. He recognised everything, every item on both of them. Bridie’s dresses, her shoes, her cardigans. Bridie’s things, being worn in a calf pen; her scent
oh the smell of her
overridden — defiled — by the smell of calf shit and milk powder.

Fury bubbled in his chest. He shouted out
Hey
and started running, slowly at first, still disbelieving what he was seeing, then quickly, sprinting towards the pen. Gabrielle and the other girl both looked up at his call. He was just a few feet away from them. He glanced at the girl Nickie, saw her smile start to fade, then he let his gaze fall on Gabrielle.

Her smile didn’t fade. For the first time since Bridie’s death, she was deeply, utterly happy.

A leather lead was clipped to the collar around Gabrielle’s calf’s neck. Gabrielle stood next to the animal, her back straight, her smile so wide he thought it might be hurting her.

‘You have to watch, Dad,’ she said. ‘Pretend you’re the judge. Go over there. Further than that.’

Ian followed the directions. He leaned on a fence post.

‘Introducing … Gabrielle Baxter and her calf, Vincent.’

Gabrielle took two steps forward, the calf took two steps with her. She paused and adjusted her pose, putting her free hand on a jutting hip and the other on the calf’s back. The calf waited patiently.

Ian recalled seeing an advertisement for a new car in some newspaper, a pretty girl posing exactly the same way. He smiled. Gabrielle resumed her walk, leaving her hand on her hip, mincing her way towards an electric fence standard pushed into the ground about ten yards away.

When she reached the standard, Gabrielle paused again then stepped in front of the calf. She turned a full circle, switching the lead from one hand to another, her arms outstretched. Her feet performed the three-step of a waltz. She walked back to where she’d started, her smile constant for the entire performance.

‘Introducing Nickie Walker and her calf, Laurence,’ Gabrielle shouted.

Ian swallowed hard as he watched the show repeated. This girl wore a tan-coloured dress, a pretty muslin smocktop that Bridie had loved to drag out on the first warm day of summer. On Bridie it had been a mini, but on Nickie Walker it touched her knees. The shoes he wasn’t sure about … brown sneakers … Bridie had had some of those but he’d seen them on many women.

Ian remembered the morning in the school yard, when he’d touched Bridie’s scarf on this same child. How frightened he’d been — at how he’d scared her and scared himself. He fought hard to stop himself shouting at this girl, lunging at her, stripping his wife’s precious, beautiful clothes off her body. He nodded, and smiled, and clapped when she, too, reached the end of her catwalk performance.

‘Very good, young ladies,’ he said, scribbling on an imaginary clipboard. ‘If you could just line up here, as I announce the results?’

Gabrielle and Nickie stood side by side, their calves between them. ‘First prize in the Jersey section goes to … Laurence and Nickie.’ He shook the girl’s hand and was surprised to feel how rough her skin was, how her nails were ragged and dirty.

‘And the winner of the Friesian section? Vincent and Gabrielle.’

Leaning forward, he pinned the invisible ribbon on Bridie’s best black dress — the one she wore to weddings and every funeral but her own.

Joy watched Nickie push the bacon off her plate and, grimacing, wipe imaginary bacon fat off her eggs. Nickie had made good on her promise to become vegetarian, announcing the decision over the big breakfast.

Joy went out of her way to prepare meals fit only for animals and hippies — dishes with weird ingredients like rice and lentils; all but impossible to find at the stores, outrageously expensive. She scanned the backs of packets, desperate for hints on how to cook the contents into something edible. Salt helped a little, but the final results, in Joy’s view, could never be described as food.

None of it mattered in the end. Nickie ate the first few meals, ignoring Eugene’s teasing, bravely defending her new stance on animal welfare. But once the fuss died down at mealtimes and everyone got back to concentrating on what was on their own plates, Joy saw that Nickie was eating very little at all.

Sure, she picked up her knife and fork and took a couple of mouthfuls. But as soon as the dinnertime conversation was under way, she stopped putting food in her mouth. Joy, sitting directly across from her, watched as Nickie separated the mashed potato out from the greens, then reassembled them. She watched as Nickie scraped boiled egg onto the back of her fork, then lay the fork down while she talked. Joy watched as Nickie picked up the knife and fork again, removed the egg from the fork, and started the whole routine over again.

Joy couldn’t fathom how Nickie was doing it, but somehow the overall pile of food on the plate looked as though it was disappearing. It was her job — her responsibility as a mother — to confront her, Joy knew that. Several times, she took a deep breath and tried to start the conversation. She failed, and she knew why. The conversation would start with food, but finish — as it had a few days earlier — with them screaming at each other about Jack Gilbert’s violence towards his wife.
Eugene had gone out. Nickie had been sick and stayed home from school. She was washing lunch dishes and Joy was drying.

‘What do you think it is? This thing you’ve caught?’ Joy asked.

‘Dunno. Some bug, maybe.’

‘Has there been something going around at school?’

‘No. I don’t know.’

‘Well, have other kids been away sick?’

‘Some. A few.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have they all had the same thing?’

Nickie took her hands from the soapy water and let them rest on the edge of the bench. ‘What’s with all the questions, Mum? I’ve only been sick for one day. It’s no big deal.
God
.’

‘I know it’s not a big deal. I just wondered, that’s all. It’s not as though it is the middle of winter. Everyone gets sick then. Just a bit strange, to get something in November …’

‘Well it’s nothing. Okay? So stop the interrogation.’

Nothing was something. Nickie plunged her hands back into the hot water, her eyes focused on the job of scrubbing pots. Joy put down her tea towel and put her arm across Nickie’s shoulders. Nickie flinched at her mother’s touch, but she didn’t pull away. They stood quite still together, watching soap suds collapsing on top of the dirty water.

‘Nickie.’ What? What should the next words be? ‘Is everything alright?’

Nickie turned to Joy. Joy saw that her eyes were glistening. Not tears, not quite. But nearly.

Nickie swallowed. ‘You know what it is, Mum.’

Joy sighed and shook her head. ‘Don’t start …’

Nickie turned back to the dishes, plunging her hands into the water.

‘For God’s sake, Nickie. It’s Gabrielle who has started this … this muck-raking, isn’t it? Before she turned up—’

‘What? What happened before she turned up, Mum? Nothing,’
Nickie shouted. ‘Mr Gilbert beat up Mrs Gilbert and she walked around with all those bruises and you … all you mothers laughed at her and said she was clumsy. So yeah …
nothing
happened before Gabrielle came.’

It was all Joy could do to stop herself raising her hand again to Nickie’s face. Instead, she grabbed Nickie’s shoulders and shook her. ‘I’m telling you, Nickie, cut it out. You’ve got no idea …’

‘Shut the fuck up, Mum. And let go of me.’

Joy processed the words individually, rather than as a complete sentence. She removed her hands from Nickie’s shoulders and picked up the tea towel. She folded it carefully, perfectly, and placed it on the bench. Her hands opened the third drawer down and found a dry tea towel. Just pots left to dry now. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Gabrielle Baxter talk. Joy had no words to fling back at Nickie. Shut the fuck up. That’s exactly what she did.

On the last Tuesday night before Calf Club Day, the committee wives were to meet with Ewan Burgess in the school staff room to finalise plans. Joy picked up Ruby on the way.

‘How are you, Joy?’ Ruby asked, as she slid into the front seat and slammed the door.

‘Good, Ruby. Yourself?’

‘Oh, alright. You know,’ Ruby said. ‘Eugene? Nickie? All okay?’

Joy glanced at Ruby. It was too dark to read her face. Ruby was looking straight out the window, towards the road.

The car picked up speed. ‘They’re fine,’ Joy said. ‘Nickie had a day off a couple of weeks ago, some bug, a twenty-four hour thing, I think. She slept all day but she was right as rain the next day.’

‘Poor old thing. That’s no good.’

‘Did you hear of anything going round?’

Ruby didn’t reply. She was leaning forward in the dark, searching for something in her handbag down at her feet.

‘Ruby? Did you hear anything about anyone else getting sick? Sick kids?’

‘No,’ Ruby replied, after what felt like an age. ‘Nothing. Maybe it was just one of those things. You know. Kids get sick, bowled flat one
day, fine the next. As though nothing ever happened.’

‘Maybe. Maybe you’re right.’

‘She’s alright now? Nickie’s back to normal?’

‘Pretty much so.’

Joy gripped the steering wheel so hard, her knuckles looked ready to burst through her skin. If she was going to confide in someone, it would be Ruby. They were all close, all the wives, but she’d known Ruby the longest. Ruby was the least likely to gossip.

‘She’s not herself, though.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Moody. One minute she’s the old Nickie, the next you can’t look at her without being spat at.’

‘Well they say, don’t they, the teenage years …’ Ruby sounded unconvincing, and unconvinced.

‘It’s the language that gets me, Ruby. The most disgusting words you’ve ever heard, coming out of her mouth.’ Joy felt her own voice choking up.
Careful
.

‘Oh, Joy, they all swear, don’t they, when they think you’re not listening? They hear it from the men, out on the farm, and school, too, of course. The sharemilkers’ kids, some of them …’

‘No. It’s not like that. I mean, the words are bad enough. The worst words you can think of. But the more shocking thing is the way she uses them.’

‘What do you mean?’