Second Chances Part 34

A couple of s...o...b..arders were dragged over the brow of the hill; boys, kitted out in bandannas and mirrored goggles. As the tow sprang away they shot cla.s.sily to one side and promptly tumbled, tangling legs and boards. Sacha smiled. One of them-a young thug with sun-bleached locks-cursed, made a s...o...b..ll and threw it full in the face of the other. Then they spotted us and instantly became serious sportsmen, scrambling upright and banging ice off their boards with gloved hands.

'Hey,' said one, nodding in Sacha's general direction.

'Hi,' replied Sacha.

'How yer doin'?' grunted the other.

Having exhausted their store of erudite conversation, they began to zigzag down the run.

'Cute,' I crooned fondly, as the blond one tried to do a very small jump and ended up face-down in a snowdrift.

'He's cute all right,' said Sacha. 'Nice b.u.m.'

I giggled, ecstatic at the normality of it all. Turning my face up to the immaculate summit of Ngauruhoe, gilded now, I muttered a fervent prayer of thanks to . . . well, I don't know. The spirits of the land, maybe. G.o.d, even. The mountains were watching us, and they were kind.

'No one else is coming up,' Sacha said reluctantly. 'Must have closed the lifts.'

She was right; it was later than I thought. A blue gauze of shadow lay across the white undulations. I turned around, laborious and duck-footed on my skies. 'We'd better call it a day, or Kit will have them sending out the Saint Bernards for us.'

She didn't move. 'I don't want to go. I feel clean up here.'

'Last one to the cafe's a sissy!' I yelped, frantically paddling with my poles. Seconds later, a red-suited figure was flying past me and down the slope, snow and ice spraying up around her.

'Pitiful!' She was crowing with laughter. 'It's like racing a dying snail!'

We've made it, I told myself exultantly.

Ha! We'll see about that. It was my mother, with her inimitable flair for piddling on my fireworks.

'No, Mum. Really. We had a problem, but we dealt with it.'

The hubris! Pride comes- 'Yeah, yeah. I know where pride comes. Now shush and let me concentrate. This bit's icy.'

By the time I'd crawled my way to the bottom, the rest of the family had handed in their skis and were drinking hot chocolate outside the cafe. The boys sat on either side of Kit in their dungarees, swinging tired legs and exaggerating their prowess as future Olympians. They cheered sarcastically as I limped up, doing the ski-boot moonwalk.

'It's the dying snail!' cried Sacha. 'Saved you some of my Twix bar.'

'I may not be speedy, but I'm stylish.' I sank down at the table, pulling the instruments of torture off my feet with a sigh of relief. 'Got any hot chocolate for a dying snail?' Kit handed me his own cup.

'I like going skiing, Dad,' said Charlie. He rested his head on his father's arm. 'When will we come back again?'

Kit grinned at me. 'Ask your mother. She wears the trousers around here.'

'I wish it wasn't over,' said Sacha.

That Hawke's Bay winter had no bite. Misty mornings were followed by shining days. Late in July the earliest lambs arrived, rickety legs and tails like helicopter rotors. Daphne flowers bloomed once more, filling the garden with lemony sweetness. Their scent took me straight back to that dreamlike day-nearly a year ago-when we first saw Patupaiarehe.

With only weeks to go until the Dublin exhibition, Kit was practically living in the studio. Call me fickle, but his sobriety was almost becoming a drag; I missed sharing a gla.s.s or two. Sacha, too, was working under pressure. She was back in the orchestra and always preparing some esoteric subject for the debating team-This house believes that G.o.d is dispensable, and This house believes that chivalry is dead-or it may have been the other way around, I forget. She asked to wheelbarrow across a stack of timber for the smoko hut and work in there at weekends, and we agreed because the twins were irrepressibly noisy. She was never to lock the door or draw the curtains, though. I often burst in unannounced but there were no signs of anything but coffee, music and hard work.

One day, Charlie lost his Game Boy. We searched everywhere.

'Keep looking,' I said cheerfully, while my heart sank. 'It must be somewhere. It's just gone AWOL.'

And there it was, under his bed.

'You were scared I'd taken it, weren't you, Mum?' teased Sacha, who'd helped in the search. 'Oh ye of little faith.'

'No!'

'You're a terrible liar.' She skipped up, put her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. 'I'm sorry I went off the rails.'

Kit and I renegotiated the ban on her car, and she began to drive into town to do the family shop. She always brought home a receipt and change, solemnly laying them on the kitchen table. I'd pretend to throw the receipt away, but once she was gone I checked that everything balanced.

The third trip went very wrong. Sacha seemed to be gone a long time. Finally she ran into the kitchen without any shopping, gabbling incoherently, her face flushed and tear-streaked. I caught the words car and totalled.

'Whoa.' I held up my hands. 'Stop, doll, stop. Have you had an accident?'

'No! It's the car, I was in a shop and when I came out . . . Some frigging a.r.s.eholes . . .'

I was already heading across the yard. 'h.e.l.l,' I breathed, staring. 'What on earth?'

Sacha's poor little Toyota had been ambushed. There was a scar right across the bonnet, the paintwork bubbled and faded. The rear windscreen had been smashed and there was gla.s.s all over the interior. It looked like a person who's been savagely beaten, their nose bleeding, their face a pulp.

'They've thrown something on it,' said Sacha, her eyes wide with horror. 'Acid or something . . . you can smell it.'

'Did you see who did this?'

'Imagine if that was someone's face.'

I shivered. 'I'd rather not. This happened where? The Countdown car park?'

'No. I stopped at a dairy on the way out of town because I remembered you wanted a paper. When I came out . . .' She gestured at the carnage.

'Have you been to the police?'

'I came straight home. I was so scared . . .' She pressed both hands to her mouth. 'There was a load of really freaky guys hanging around outside the shop-you know, leather and gang patches.'

'Could you describe any of them?'

'No way! I didn't even look at them, I just got in and drove straight home.'

'It will have been kids with nothing better to do,' I a.s.sured her. 'We should feel sorry for them, really.'

'I don't feel sorry for them.'

'So you never actually saw who did it?' The policewoman squinted glumly at Sacha's rather spa.r.s.e statement. 'Not much to go on.'

'Sorry.' Sacha was twirling a plastic bangle.

'What d'you think it is?' I asked. 'Some kind of acid?'

'Brake fluid probably,' said the officer. 'Makes a mess of old paint. It's cheap and easy to get hold of.'

'CCTV cameras?'

She looked pained. 'If there were any, and if they were on, and if they were facing the right way.'

'Mindless vandalism,' I suggested, and she gave a world-weary sigh.

'There's some idiots about. Sign here.' Then she filed Sacha's statement, presumably under H for Hopeless.

On the way home I kept glancing at Sacha's plastic bangle. She saw me looking, and smiled resignedly. 'You're wondering where my silver bracelet's gone, that Lou gave me.'

'Not really.'

'You think I'm back on the meth.'

'No! It's just . . .'

'We're not allowed to wear jewellery at school. It's against the rules apparently, but n.o.body bothered to tell me. Got confiscated.'

'Oh, for heaven's sake. How petty. When do you get it back?'

She made that teenage 'I dunno' noise, and I wondered how long it would be before I stopped looking over her shoulder.

We had the broken window replaced. Later, Sacha spray-painted the bonnet, disguising the ravaged paintwork with swirly flowers. But she didn't go shopping again.

The first of August was the anniversary of the day our plane touched down at Auckland airport. On cue, the weather finally turned wintry. There was ice in the air, and dripping cloud clung to the hills. I had the fire blazing all day in the sitting room as well as the kitchen, but I still felt shivery.

I'd invited the Colberts, Tama and Ira to dinner on the Sat.u.r.day, to help us celebrate the day. I phoned them all in the morning, though, and cancelled. According to the local paper, a quarter of all children in Hawke's Bay had been off school with the latest strain of flu-which in practice seemed to mean anything from a life-threatening virus to a cold-and our house was no exception. Kit had been in bed with a fever, which was stressful because he was leaving for Dublin in ten days and didn't have time to be ill. The boys were whiney and flushed, though happy enough as long as I let them take their duvets downstairs to watch Ice Age. Sacha was in a miserable state.

'You've given her your virus,' I told Kit, coming downstairs after taking her temperature. 'She can hardly move.'

Kit had his feet up on the kitchen stove, drinking Lemsip with a hot water bottle stuffed up his jumper. He turned a page of his newspaper. Then another. I didn't think he was reading. 'Sure it's flu?'

I wagged a finger. 'Hark at you, Mr Death's-door! You've been moaning for days, and the boys aren't too bright either. Half the country's off sick. So yes, I'm sure it's flu. What happened to the poor teapot-did someone drop it?'

He looked around his paper at the remains of the china pot, stacked neatly on the bench in three pieces. 'Finn used it for target practice. His new sling is very effective.'

'So I see. I'm going to confiscate that thing . . . Of course it's flu. Shame on you for asking.'

'We're both thinking it. Why shouldn't I say it?'

'Swine flu, bird flu, man flu. Who knows? We've got to stop suspecting Sacha all the time. We have to move on.' All the time I was talking, I was looking for our Wedgwood pot, a wedding present that we never used. It wasn't in the cupboard, or the laundry, or the wooden chest where we kept vases. 'We have to trust her,' I muttered.

'What are you looking for?'

'This,' I said quickly, lifting out a gla.s.s vase. 'I'm going to pick some daphne flowers. I love the smell. It makes me happy.'

He looked at the vase, and then at me. We stared silently at one another for a moment. Then he lifted the paper in front of his face, and I hurried outside.

Thirty-two.

Kit was on his way to Dublin.

Our place was chaos in the week before he left. We'd never have managed without Pamela. She telephoned the airline and found out exactly how to transport the canvases he was taking with him. With her help they were meticulously wrapped, covered in Fragile stickers and stowed in the car for their journey to Auckland airport. Kit had booked the cheapest flights possible because our budget didn't run to luxury; of course, this meant multiple stopovers. There were a thousand technical problems to solve in transporting the paintings, but he thrived on every one. He was alight, alert, incandescent with excitement. It was like living with a sparkler.

On his last evening, I'd shut the office door at Capeview with a sigh of pleasure. I'd booked a stretch of leave and was feeling demob happy. It was dark when I arrived home. The Colberts' blue pick-up was parked under the tree. I heard quiet voices from beyond the woolshed, then a plaintive, feeble snickering.

Rounding the corner I came upon a scene straight out of a children's storybook: in a makeshift pen a paraffin lamp rested on the ground, casting a yellow pool of light. Finn was kneeling in the straw, his back very straight. Charlie was jammed up against his brother while Kit and Jean leaned on a fence nearby. Resting on tiny knees and sucking on a bottle in Finn's hands was the smallest lamb I have ever seen. I made an amazed face at Kit as I tiptoed closer. The tiny creature sucked, bleated, b.u.t.ted Finn and sucked again. I could hear slurping and bubbling as the milk left the bottle.

Jean's eyebrows arched in comical kindness. 'I hope you don't mind, Martha. A baby girl for your menagerie.'

I looked at the lamb, whose tail was wagging ecstatically. 'No mother?'

'Died,' declared Finn knowledgeably, as though he'd lived seventy years on a farm. 'They do sometimes, y'know. It happens.'

'She's Bleater,' said Charlie. 'Bleater Brown. Is it my turn yet, Jean?'

Jean gave a theatrical start. 'Oh yes, I forgot. Master Charlie's turn.'

Finn handed the bottle to Charlie, but the milk was almost gone and Bleater was soon enthusiastically sucking at an empty bottle.

'Here,' murmured Jean. 'You sit like this, young fellow. Stick your legs out in front. That's it.' He gathered the animal in his arms and laid her in Charlie's lap where she lay still, eyes drooping.

'She's a day old,' whispered Charlie. 'Come and touch her, Mummy.'

I crouched beside him and fingered the warm, springy topknot. The lamb smelled of milk and lanolin. 'She's falling asleep,' I said. 'Little motherless baby. Can we eat her with mint sauce?'

'Not funny,' scolded Finn, kicking me quite angrily. It hurt, but I didn't complain. I probably deserved it.

'We have to feed her every four hours,' said Kit.

'We? I suppose you mean the royal we, Kit McNamara, since you're on a nice restful plane to Dublin tomorrow.'

'No need to feed her at night.' Jean picked up the empty bottle. 'One at your bedtime and another first thing is fine. When she's much older, she will have lambs of her own and the boys will sell them and be very rich.'

'Sell them where?' I asked, which was a silly question.

'Well, let's cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we?' suggested Jean. The adults began to wander inside, leaving two boys and their baby in a huddle. 'Farming is red in tooth and claw, Martha. Lambs are generally bound for the meatworks. Perhaps the male offspring could rejoin my flock and then . . . well, quietly disappear.'