Dinner at Rose's (36 page)

‘That’s got the little bastard,’ said Cheryl with satisfaction. ‘Right, what do I need to know about this afternoon’s lot?’

‘I think everyone’s files are up to date,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure whether you’ll want to strap Paul Moss’s ankle – he sprained it really badly a few months ago and it was doing well, but he called this morning to say he’d tweaked it again. And if you can manage to put the fear of God into Keith Taylor so he’ll look after his reconstructed shoulder you’ll be doing better than me.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Cheryl, ‘but I’ve got a horrible feeling that since the baby I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew.’ She pushed herself up to sit and shrugged her shoulders experimentally. ‘Oh, well, we’ll see. Off you go.’

THAT EVENING MATT
picked up
Pirate’s Lady
from his aunt’s bedside table and examined the front cover. ‘That dress defies the law of physics.’

I looked over his shoulder at the picture of the impossibly buxom girl draped across a man who, judging by his white blouse and the parrot on his shoulder, was supposed to be the pirate. ‘The dress is the least of her problems. Look at her breasts.’

‘I am,’ he said. ‘They look pretty good to me. Very perky.’

‘But they’re in the wrong place,’ I pointed out. ‘Does it mention in the story that she’s deformed, Aunty Rose?’

‘Oddly enough, no.’ She shifted her head on the pillows.

‘Pills?’ I asked. The top-up pain pills, which she took when her morphine wasn’t cutting the mustard, made her very sleepy and she avoided them if she could.

She sighed. ‘I think I’d better. I can’t seem to get comfortable this evening.’ Which meant that the pain was all but unbearable. This
fucking
disease.

I lifted her so she could swallow her tablets, and Matt shook up her pillows before she lay back. ‘Should I read something?’ he asked. ‘Or would you rather I didn’t?’ He pulled
The Oxford Book of English Verse
towards him across the bedclothes.

The corner of Aunty Rose’s mouth twitched. ‘How about a bit of that pirate book?’ she suggested. ‘I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.’

Matt picked it up and held it at arm’s length, as if it smelt bad. ‘Really?’ he asked plaintively.

Aunty Rose looked severe. ‘Consider it penance.’ She had already told me at some length what she thought of presumptuous youngsters who took time off work and reorganised nursing arrangements without even bothering to consult the patient.

I curled up in the armchair at the end of the bed and listened with enjoyment to the gurgle of the oil heater and Matt’s slow-voiced rendition of
Pirate’s Lady
. (Calling the woman a lady, considering she seemed to have the morals of an alley cat and the sex drive of a teenage bull, seemed a bit of a stretch, but then
Pirate’s Strumpet
just didn’t have quite the same ring.)

‘“Eyes hot with desire,” ’ Matt read with increasing misery, ‘“MacAdam cleared the table with one thrust of his powerful right arm. Grasping the girl’s slender wrist he drew her towards him. Her breath caught on a little sob, half of fear and half of desire, as he lowered his head to graze one exposed nipple with his teeth . . .” ’ He put down the book and looked at his aunt pleadingly. ‘Don’t make me keep going. I’m not old enough.’

I ceased sniggering into a cushion and looked up. ‘But we’ve got to find out what happens next,’ I complained. ‘You can’t stop now.’

‘Oh yes I can,’ he said.

I laughed. ‘Wimp.’

‘I think you’ve suffered enough,’ said Aunty Rose sleepily. ‘You may stop.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, putting the book face down beside her on the bedclothes. ‘Reading this kind of carryon to your aunt is just wrong.’

‘Like watching porn with your grandparents?’ I suggested.

‘Why is it,’ Aunty Rose murmured, ‘that every generation believes that they were the ones to invent sex? Go away and let me sleep.’

I lingered behind Matt to rearrange the water glass and hand bell at her elbow. ‘You will ring, won’t you?’

‘’Course,’ she whispered. ‘Go away, Josephine – the boy needs his sleep and he won’t leave until you’ve kissed him goodnight.’

He was lying on the chaise longue when I entered the kitchen, looking up at the griffon with his arms folded behind his head. ‘Hey,’ he said, and smiled at me sleepily.

I went and sat beside him, bending to kiss him. ‘You should go home to bed.’

‘It’s only eight-thirty. I’ll go and check the cows at nine.’ He turned onto his side and hooked the index finger of his free hand over the waistband of my jeans, pulling it down an inch.

‘What are you doing?’ I enquired.

‘Just wondering if you’re wearing the pink lacy knickers.’ He peered down. ‘Nope. Bugger.’

‘I was wearing them yesterday.’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said. Then, ‘My darling, how about not doing that?’

He grinned and opened the second button on my jeans. ‘You love it.’

‘I would so much rather
not
have your baby sister find you taking off my jeans,’ I said.

‘Oh, alright.’ He did the buttons up again and lay down, pulling me comfortably back against him.

I squirmed round within the circle of his arm to lie down too, using his bottom arm as a pillow. ‘Stu said you looked interested when he mentioned the pink knickers,’ I remarked, ‘but I didn’t believe him.’

‘He was right,’ said Matt, running his free hand lightly up and down my arm.

‘He refers to you in his emails as “the delectable Matthew”.’

‘I’m not quite sure how I feel about that.’

‘You should be flattered. Stu is only attracted to good-looking men; he’s very shallow.’

A sleepy sort of silence fell, and I lay in his arms and felt perfectly content. Falling embers hissed in the stove and Spud’s tail thumped once or twice against the floor as he stirred and then settled back to sleep. I could feel the slow rise and fall of Matt’s chest as he breathed and his hand was warm against my stomach.

‘Do they all call you JD in Australia?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Mostly just Stu,’ I said. ‘Graeme did sometimes, when he particularly approved of me. Which wasn’t very often, come to think of it.’

‘Why not?’

I sighed. ‘Childish sense of humour, using the bread knife to cut cheese, biting my nails, wearing jeans with jandals, being too scared to get my ears pierced – that kind of stuff.’

‘Life with him must have been a barrel of laughs.’

‘I’m exaggerating,’ I admitted. ‘But the last few months weren’t much fun.’ In a way it had been a relief to walk in on Graeme and Chrissie. It’s unspeakably horrible to know you’re irritating the person who is supposed to love you and not know why things have changed or how to make them right again. At least that had explained it.

Matt didn’t say anything, but his arm tightened around my waist.

I was going to tell him it didn’t matter – that even at our best Graeme and I hardly had the kind of love the poets dream of, that apart from Stu and shoe shops Melbourne contained not one thing I missed. But he breathed out on a long sigh and his grip slackened as he slid into sleep. If you want conversation with a dairy farmer in August it pays not to leave silences of over thirty seconds. He knew all those things anyway; I threaded my fingers down between his and closed my eyes too.

‘MATTHEW
PATRICK
!’ HAZEL
shrilled.

I went instantly from deeply asleep to more awake than I had ever been in my life, and leapt to my feet. This was a mistake; blackness boiled in front of my eyes at the sudden shift from horizontal to vertical and I had to lean against the table and clutch my head in both hands.

Matt has far better nerves than I do, and was considerably more sleep-deprived – he didn’t leap anywhere. He merely frowned, opened one eye a fraction and said, ‘What?’

‘What are you
doing
?’ his mother cried.

‘Sleeping,’ he murmured, and prised the other eyelid open. ‘Hi.’

‘And
what
would Cilla think if she saw this?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Matt wearily. He sat up and ran both hands backwards through his hair, which gave him the same coiffeur as the eccentric professor in
Back to
the Future
. ‘I haven’t seen Cilla for weeks.’

‘Oh,
Matthew
,’ his mother lamented. ‘That delightful girl.’ And putting her smart black clutch down on the table beside me the woman actually wrung her hands.

I was struck by a most inappropriate urge to giggle, and caught my bottom lip firmly between my teeth. Matt met my eye above his mother’s head and said, carefully grave, ‘Never mind, Mother, this one’s delightful too.’

‘Well, yes, of course she is,’ said Hazel mechanically. But she sank into a chair as if the effort of remaining on her feet, under the weight of this heavy blow, was too much to bear. ‘Oh, Matthew, I
do
wish you’d settle down instead of flitting from girl to girl.’

‘Like a butterfly?’ I suggested helpfully.

‘Watch it,’ ordered the love of my life, scowling at me in an only half-successful attempt not to laugh. ‘Don’t worry, Mum, my flitting days are over.’

‘You need to remember, Matthew, that you’re the only male role model your sister h-has, now.’ Her voice gave an affecting little hitch at this reference to her dead husband. ‘It’s not good for her to see you picking up and discarding girls as if they were . . .’ She paused in search of a suitable simile, and I managed to fight down the urge to suggest one. Avocados, perhaps; you have to palpate them individually to find one at the perfect stage of ripeness. Or jeans – buying the right pair is a solemn undertaking and the experienced shopper expects to have to try on quite a number before finding a good fit.

‘Settle down, Mum,’ Matt said. ‘Anyone would think I’d spent the last ten years working my way through every woman in the district.’

‘Have you?’ I asked with interest.

He shot me a withering look.

‘Of course you’ve only been home for four,’ I murmured.

‘True,’ said Matt. He stood up and stretched. ‘Right, I’d better go and check my cows. Goodnight.’

‘You don’t need to run away, Matthew,’ said Hazel.

‘I’m not,’ he said shortly. ‘I’m checking the cows and going to bed.’ He kissed his mother’s cheek and then my mouth, a brief hard kiss that was really just to make a point. ‘See you tomorrow.’

‘Goodnight,’ I said as he opened the kitchen door.

‘’Night,’ he said to me. ‘’Night, Mum.’

‘Goodnight, love.’ She watched him pull the door closed behind him, then turned to me with a small sad smile. ‘Let’s go and see how Rosie is, shall we?’

‘It’s only been a day or two,’ I said impulsively. ‘We haven’t been sneaking around behind your back.’

Her smile became even sadder. ‘Thank you, dear,’ she said, and I felt like a complete worm. That’s the remarkable thing about Hazel: you might consider her the silliest woman of your acquaintance, but she can still play you like a virtuoso. It’s quite a gift.

Chapter 32

A
FTER SENDING MY
eleven o’clock appointment on her way, handbag swinging precariously from the handle of her right crutch, I wandered out of the consulting room to find that Amber had vanished. She had been replaced by a tall, greying man in his fifties with a snub nose and very blue eyes. His glasses, without which he can only see about three feet, were balanced on top of his head.