From Under the Overcoat (20 page)

‘No, no …’ She rolled her eyes, her face burning. ‘It’s just unusual … for a burger and chips. Takeaways, more or less.’

‘I never took it away.’

‘No. God. Sorry …’

‘So it’s okay with you, Veronica? If I eat my dinner with a knife and fork?’ He was smiling now, teasing her.

‘Well, you know …
big brave breath
… my mother would love you.’

‘You can hold your head high in any company, if you know how to manage yourself at the dinner table. My gran told me that.’ He ate another mouthful. ‘So what’s she look like?’

‘Who?’

‘Your mother who would love me.’

‘A sore thumb. She sticks out like one, around here.’ Ronnie blushed again, at her own wit.

Peter kept eating, slicing thin wedges of meat patty. He laid down his knife and fork, sat back, put his hands behind his head. Smiled at Ronnie. Ronnie melted.

‘She’s up herself, my mother,’ Ronnie offered. ‘She can’t be like everyone else. She won’t even try.’

‘In what way?’

‘Oh, you know. She’s got this accent like the Queen and
she doesn’t care. She starts talking and you can see people laughing at her, pulling faces and that. She just keeps going.’

‘Well, she can’t help it. None of us can help the way we were brought up, can we?’

Ronnie shrugged. ‘I suppose … it’s embarrassing though.’

‘Only if you let it be. Your friends should have more respect.’

‘For my
mother?
’

‘For you.’ Peter smiled at her and finished his meal.

The next time he pulled up outside the café, Ronnie reached for her handbag under the counter. She took out the cream linen napkin and the ornate silver cutlery — soup spoon, knife, fork, dessert spoon, dessert fork, teaspoon and the matching napkin holder — and hurried to his usual table. By the time he came through the doorway she was back at the till.

He stood before the set table, arms folded. Ronnie held her breath, her heart thumped in her throat. His smile, when it came, made the skin on the back of her neck tingle.

‘Nice,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘Very nice. Did you steal them from your mother?’

‘Sallies,’ Ronnie replied. ‘There was one of everything on the sale table outside. I was just walking past, that’s all. Saw the table setting, thought of you.’

‘Nice,’ Peter said it again, still smiling, but this time at her.

He was just about finished his meal. Her heart was thumping.
Ask now. Do it now
.

‘Do you live in town?’ she said.

He chewed and swallowed. Figures, she thought. No talking with your mouth full.

‘Just south, straight opposite the mill turnoff. Basic little
place, but cheap. And quiet. I like being out of the way. Call in sometime. Come and have a look.’

THREE DAYS SEEMED ABOUT
right, she thought. Not too soon, but not so long he’d think she wasn’t interested. She drove past the gate a few times, just checking where it was. On the third evening, she turned off the highway, her heart thumping, and drove down the metal track.

He was outside chopping wood. He blinked, his face frowning.
He doesn’t recognise me
. Ronnie panicked, her face bright red as she turned the engine off. Then he smiled and waved.

They drank beer on the back steps. Sat there for hours, felt like it anyway. Ronnie couldn’t believe they’d met, properly, only a couple of days earlier. She felt like she’d known him all her life.

He told her how his mother had tried to bring him up on her own, but couldn’t cope. She’d gone to Australia and left him with his grandmother. Ronnie said she was sorry to hear about it. Pete shrugged and said it was all okay.

She told Pete she’d been thinking about going to university, but wasn’t sure about it now. Though she didn’t say the
now
.

‘What do you think?’ she asked. She leaned back against the doorway, stretched her legs out in front of her.

Pete shrugged. ‘You should do what you want to do.’

‘But what’s
your
opinion?’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘Well, what would you do?’

Pete laughed, sat back against the doorframe with his arms folded. ‘You really want to know? If someone was offering
me a free ride out of here? A chance at something big? I’d be gone.’

Ronnie swallowed. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Though she still wanted to go to Auckland, it’d be nice to come back in the weekends and know he was around. She wriggled her toes, bent forward and picked fraying rubber off the edge of her jandals.

‘I get pissed off when people bag this place,’ she said. ‘Don’t you?’

Pete shrugged. ‘Don’t care, really.’

‘That’s what’s made me think twice about leaving. You know. It’s as though everyone assumes you
want
to leave. It makes me feel like staying.’

None of this was true. Pete was the reason Ronnie wanted to stay. But she liked the way it all sounded, when she said it.

‘It’s never happened to me,’ Pete went on. ‘No one ever said
Oh Pete, let me pay for you to go to university
. So here I am. Don’t ever ask others to take responsibility for your happiness, Ronnie.’

He put down his beer and kissed her. Then he took her hand and led her inside. In the dim light, he undressed her and they made love on a mattress on the floor.

Some nights she stayed there. He never asked her to move in, but after a while most of her stuff ended up at his place. Halfway through that summer she turned eighteen.

I can do what I like
, she said to her parents, dragging her suitcase out the door.

RONNIE HOLDS AN EMPTY
jug under the tap on the keg, watches
the beer flow. She turns it off when the jug’s a third full. Enough to make it look like she’s been drinking. The light’s fading, she can empty the jug bit by bit on the grass, no one will see.

It’s amazing. An hour ago all she could think about was her next joint. Now she wants this baby. She wants it to be big and pink and healthy. Funny how it’s turning into a night for knowing new things. She feels it then, it touches the back of her neck like warm breath. You couldn’t call it a breeze, not yet, but it’s coming. She’ll be alright soon. Just knowing that the wind is on its way is enough.

Pete’s talking to Jack and Sandy and Liam and Lucy. He catches her eye, winks at her. ‘You met Lucy?’ he calls out, beckoning her over.

Pete’s telling them about a pig dog he used to have, when he was a hunter, years ago. Ronnie never knew he’d been a hunter. Then again, she’s never asked him what he did, before he worked in the bush. She’d assumed he’d always done that.

‘This dog,’ says Pete, ‘would take on any pig in the bush. It was tough as. But at night, when I went outside, I’d find the cat curled up asleep between the dog’s front legs.’

Lucy’s gazing up at Pete, like he’s some sort of god, and Jack’s cracking up. Just the sort of story Jack would like. Sandy’s told Ronnie already how Jack can’t actually bring himself to do the dirty side of vet business, put animals down. Which is why he never actually finished vet school.

None of that matters, thinks Ronnie. She’s having a baby. They are, her and Pete. And look at him. Look at Pete — this man who makes everyone feel comfortable, talks to people as though he’s known them his whole life. Ronnie can’t wait.
Not long now, ’til she can touch him on the arm, pull him quietly away from the crowd and tell him.

IT’S DARK. THE PARTY’S
in full swing. Everyone’s dancing and singing. Everyone’s out of it. Ronnie drifts around, dips in to conversations, then she’s off again. Mosquitoes buzz thirsty over skin. There’s a fire burning in a rusty old drum, the last of their wood from winter. It’s the only light and even though the night is hot, people close in around it. Giant bush moths, big as bats, dart towards the flames.

Ronnie turns her face to the hill, looks up at the skyline. She can just make out the black silhouette of the tree tops against the sky. No chance of hearing the wind, not tonight, but it’s there. She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply.

She turns around to the mill. It’s beautiful at night; a black monument studded with tiny moving lights. She imagines glow worms. The smoke plumes look as though they’ve been painted onto the sky but Ronnie knows they’re shifting, blowing away towards the west.

Bob Marley’s singing about playing in the government yard in Trenchtown. Notch bearhugs her from behind. ‘You just got here? I was looking for you before. Where you been, cuz?’

‘Over at the car, getting some more tapes. Everyone’s sick of yours.’

‘You cannot be saying that, girl. You cannot be tired of Marley. Ever.’

Ronnie would like very much to say how tired she is, but for the moment she enjoys the closeness of Notch. He’s her uncle, not her cousin, but there are only a couple of years
between them. The family’s two black sheep — the ones who denied their
potential
and stayed in Tokoroa. Notch has always been around; skinny Notch with his limp and his cute dimple in his chin and his wicked quick wit.

‘You okay?’ He’s looking at her now, his hand under her chin, forcing her to eyeball him.

‘I’m okay. Knackered, though. From the packing up and shifting and that.’

Notch’s mate Clem is rolling a joint on his knee, his leg propped up on the keg stump. Ronnie starts to move away, then she stops. She makes herself watch him. Watch as he sparks the joint alive, a red glow flaring on the first toke. He hands it to her.

‘No thanks. I’m good,’ she says, handing it on to Notch. She means it too. She’s good. She’s going to be fine.

‘So where are they?’ Notch wants to know.

‘Where are what?’

‘The cassettes.’

‘Forgot them. Forgot about them when Sandy and Jack turned up.’

Notch reaches out, takes her arm. ‘Come on then, let’s go get them.’

‘Marley’s alright.’ She can’t be bothered walking back to the car. There aren’t even any cassettes in there, not that she can remember.

‘Come on.’ The pressure on her arm is firm.

THEY’D BEEN LIVING TOGETHER
about a month. She finished work early — it was quiet.
Get on home
, her boss said.

There was dust along the track. Pete, home early too. Someone with him. Ronnie blinked hard. It was the first time she’d seen her mother for weeks — since the big fight when she moved out.

Ronnie watched as they walked together slowly across the paddock, towards the broken concrete path that started in the middle of nowhere and snaked through the long grass to the house. Her mother was wearing shoes with heels. Pete took her arm, held her elbow gently and stepped her over the uneven ground.

Ronnie met them at the door. Her mother had a package under her arm.

‘Patricia’s got something for you,’ Pete said to Ronnie.

They sat around the old table, drinking tea, and Ronnie opened the envelope. It was fat and brown. On the outside was stamped
Massey University
.

‘I rang them,’ said Patricia. ‘The course you pulled out of. You can do it all by correspondence. So I’ve enrolled you, Veronica.’

‘The whole thing, the whole first year. You do it at home, post the stuff off,’ said Pete. Ronnie wondered when he had become such an expert in education.

‘Isn’t that wonderful, sweetheart.’ Patricia reached across, held her hand out to Ronnie. ‘It only arrived this morning — it was in the letterbox when I stopped there on my way into town.’

Ronnie looked at Peter. He was watching Patricia.
I live with him and I have no idea what he’s thinking
.

‘So, I was wondering how to go about it … how to bring it up with you, and I look up, and right in front of me, walking
down Bridge Street, I see Peter. I took a big breath, tooted the horn, and called him over to the car.’

Ronnie thought her mother looked as though she’d like a medal for her bravery.

‘I don’t know how you two are placed …’ said Patricia. ‘But maybe you could cut back your hours at the truckstop?’

‘Or quit altogether,’ Pete said, shrugging his shoulders, eyebrows up, questioning her mother. ‘What do you think, Patricia?’