Chocolate Cake for Breakfast Page 5

  ‘Helen, get my blanket back!’ she demanded.

  ‘But I need it!’ said Caitlin.

  I swung my smallest sister up with a grunt of effort and sat her on one hip. Annabel has the same build as a bull terrier: compact but extremely dense. ‘Come on, let’s go see what your mum’s doing,’ I said. ‘Do you think I’d be allowed to stay for tea?’

  ‘Yeah! Can you read me Bad Jelly the Witch when I go to bed?’

  ‘I’m sick of Bad Jelly,’ I said. ‘Can’t we find something else?’ Reading to Bel was deeply painful; you only ever managed half a page before she waved you imperiously to silence and took over herself. And her grasp of the text was shaky at best, so you had to wait while she furrowed her brow and muttered, ‘Um . . . Um . . . No! Don’t help me! I can do it!’ I tried to stick with nice, short books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which at least kept this penance to a minimum.

  ‘Please?’ Bel asked.

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Your eye is red,’ she informed me.

  ‘I know. I got kicked by a cow. Hi, Em.’

  My stepmother turned from the stove to kiss me. ‘Sweetie, your face!’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t hurt at all. But it looks nice and impressive, don’t you think?’

  Em brushed my bruised cheek with beautifully manicured fingers. ‘Nick shouldn’t expect you to put yourself in these dangerous situations,’ she said.

  ‘Please don’t ring him,’ I said. ‘Promise me you won’t.’ Sometimes, just fleetingly, I fantasise about having a traditional evil stepmother who wants nothing to do with me. It would be so much less embarrassing.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Em. ‘Any weekend plans?’

  ‘I’m on call.’

  ‘Again? Sweetie, it’s slave labour!’

  ‘No it’s not,’ I said, letting Bel slide to the floor. ‘I swapped weekends so I can go to Mary-Anne’s hen’s weekend in August.’

  ‘Mary-Anne,’ Em repeated. ‘Which one is she?’

  ‘The short one with curly dark hair who manages to say “my fiancé” at least twice per sentence.’

  Em nodded. ‘Ah, her. Now, I need a favour,’ she said, giving her cheese sauce a brisk stir, then putting down the wooden spoon and tilting her chin up towards the ceiling. ‘I can feel a nasty bristly hair, and I can’t see it in the mirror. Can you get it for me?’

  I peered obediently at her neck. ‘No, you’re good.’

  ‘Look harder,’ she ordered. ‘I’m having lunch with Christine Marshall tomorrow, and she’s got eyes like a hawk.’

  I looked harder. ‘There?’

  Em’s hand flew to the spot I had touched. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even notice that one. That’s it; I’m going to have to start waxing my neck.’

  ‘No, you’re not. It’s minute. You’d practically need an electron microscope to see it.’

  ‘Annabel, fetch my tweezers. Or maybe I should just go straight for your father’s razor.’

  ‘Daddy doesn’t like it when you use his razor,’ said Bel.

  ‘She was only teasing,’ I said.

  ‘She does use his razor. It makes Daddy sad.’ She shook her curly blonde head mournfully. ‘Poor Daddy.’

  ‘Annabel! Tweezers. Now,’ Em ordered. ‘Helen, love, Monique Ledbetter’s having an Intimo party next week. Why don’t you come with me?’

  ‘What, another sex toy thing? No way,’ I said, leaning against the bench beside her.

  ‘Honestly, Helen, I don’t know where you developed all these hang-ups.’

  ‘I think I got most of them at that sex toy party.’

  My stepmother smiled a small and wicked smile. ‘Sweetie,’ she said, ‘grow up. Anyway, this one isn’t sex toys, it’s really lovely lingerie. Just gorgeous – very feminine and flattering. And she’s putting on wine and nibbles.’

  ‘What night is it?’ I asked. Not that it mattered, because if it was on a night with no prior commitments I was going to invent an engagement on the spot. I love Em very much, but her idea of feminine and flattering and mine are poles apart.

  ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I’m going to the movies with Keri.’ It’s so nice not to have to lie. ‘Where’s Dad?’

  ‘At your grandmother’s. Apparently she’s got no water.’

  ‘Poor Dad,’ I said.

  ‘He shouldn’t be far away,’ Em said. ‘You’ll stay for tea, won’t you, sweetie?’

  At ten that night I was reading in bed with Murray on my feet when my phone buzzed beside me. It was a new message received from Mark T (not to be confused with Mark M, a tubby and cheerful classmate currently doing a residency in equine medicine in Ohio). I gave a happy squirm as I opened the phone, and Murray opened one golden eye and glared at me.

  How many calving cows tonite?

  None so far. How is Dunedin?

  Cold. Sleep well x

  I squirmed again, and Murray bit my toe through the duvet. ‘But he sent me an x,’ I explained.

  Murray looked completely unimpressed.

  After four minutes of intense thought I sent back: You too x

  I picked my way through the gumboots and empty swap-a-crates at the back door of Sam’s flat (where they subscribed to the Sky Sport channel) just after seven the next evening, and went into the kitchen to find his flatmates playing cards at the kitchen table.

  ‘You cheating bastard,’ said Will, whose back was to the door. Will was a thoroughly nice bloke. He was thoughtful and courteous and painfully shy, and he could only just bring himself to talk to me.

  Dylan, who was loud and inconsiderate and thought he was far more attractive to women than was in fact the case, lifted one buttock off his chair and farted in greeting. ‘Evening, Helen.’

  ‘Cheers for that, Dylan,’ I said, looking at the floor and deciding not to remove my shoes.

  ‘Better out than in.’

  ‘Dear God,’ I said faintly as the smell reached my side of the kitchen. It was the sort of odour that is depicted in cartoons as an evil green mist. ‘What have you been eating?’

  ‘Beans and eggs,’ said Dylan. ‘Grab me a beer while you’re next to the fridge, would you?’

  ‘Get your own beer, you low-life,’ Will said, getting up. ‘Come into the lounge, Helen, before you pass out.’

  Sam was lying full length on a battered couch, reading a rugby magazine, a beer on the floor beside him. ‘Here you go, Hel,’ he said, folding it open and passing it over.

  The article was headed Locked and Loaded, with a picture of Mark taking up the rest of the page. It was one of those artistic publicity shots taken from so close up you can see the individual hairs in the subject’s designer stubble and the faint creases around his eyes as he gazes into the middle distance.

  He’s worn the number four jersey for over ten years, and the farm boy from Taranaki who made the All Blacks on the strength of just one season at provincial level has never looked more dangerous. Kurt Wallis talks to Mark Tipene about the impending Tri Nations series, composure under the high ball, and that mysterious blonde hottie.

  I lifted Sam’s legs and sat down on the couch, letting them fall back across my lap.

  ‘Comfortable?’ he asked, just a trifle sarcastically.

  ‘Yep. Thanks.’

  He’s twice been awarded New Zealand Sportsman of the Year, his picture graces the International Rugby Hall of Fame, and opposition forward packs almost wet themselves at the thought of facing him on the field. His name has been linked to a selection of the country’s most luscious females – among them the delectable Tamara Healy, no mean sportswoman in her own right.

  A selection of the country’s most luscious females. Oh, man. I might, with the light behind me and in the eyes of a particularly fond observer, pass as quite cute in a girl-next-door kind of way, but in my wildest dreams I could never achieve lusciousness.

  This is a man whom opposition coaches label a cheat, while in the same breath
urging their players to model their game on his. A man who raises money for victims of domestic violence, who has had a beer with the Prime Minister and drunk tea with the Queen of England, and yet who recently refused a lucrative book deal on the grounds that his life wouldn’t make very interesting reading.

  ‘Do you think that perhaps the guy who wrote this has a bit of a crush on him?’ I asked. The way this article was going, Mark would be leaping skyscrapers and rescuing people from burning buildings by the bottom of the page.

  ‘I got the impression he wants to marry him and have his babies,’ said Sam.

  ‘Mm.’ I bent over the magazine again, in search of further references to this mysterious blonde hottie. There was more fulsome praise to wade through, and great screeds of rugby jargon. I think the writer even said something about ‘good clean ball’. As opposed, presumably, to all that nasty dirty ball that is such a blight on our national game. The hottie didn’t make her reappearance until the last paragraph.

  And the blonde with whom he was snapped at Auckland’s waterfront last week? Tipene frowns and scratches his chin. ‘Sorry,’ he says finally, ‘which one was that?’

  I handed Sam back his magazine and rested my head despondently against the back of the couch.

  He laughed. ‘And you used your sock to show him how to put a prolapsed uterus back in.’

  ‘The sock was a high point,’ I told him. ‘Then I took him to a calving at Joe Watkins’ and covered him in rotten afterbirth.’

  ‘Awesome,’ said my supportive cousin.

  ‘Who’d you cover with rotten afterbirth?’ Dylan asked, ambling in and throwing himself into an armchair.

  ‘Mark Tipene,’ said Sam. ‘You know – him.’ He waved a hand towards the TV, where in the pre-game ad break an admiring crowd of All Blacks was clustered around a dinky little car I doubt any of them would have been seen dead driving. ‘The reason behind Helen’s sudden interest in rugby.’

  ‘Mark Tipene?’ Dylan repeated, eyeing me sceptically.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Sam. ‘She met him at Alistair Johnson’s party last weekend and asked him what he did for a living, and he asked her out on the strength of it. I suppose he thought it made a pleasant change from girls drooling on him.’

  On screen the players ran onto the field. It was a clear, still night in Dunedin and the men’s breath steamed in the cold. A pair of chilly-looking New Zealand Idol finalists sang the Australian and New Zealand national anthems, with added quavery bits to prove that they were serious musicians. Mark’s face in the line of black-uniformed men was grim and handsome, like a storybook hero’s, and my stomach gave an uncomfortable little lurch.

  ‘Beer, Hel?’ Sam asked, prodding me in the ribs with a sockclad foot.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘What’s the difference between a ruck and a maul?’ I whispered ten minutes later.

  ‘In a maul they’re passing the ball back from one to the other, and in a ruck the ball’s on the ground and they’re tickling it towards their side with their feet,’ said Sam.

  ‘Cool. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Be quiet.’

  Mark, in the middle of the All Black lineout, reached up as his teammates lifted him and swiped the ball casually from the hands of the Australian jumper. Then he promptly disappeared from sight under a boiling mass of black and gold jerseys. I stiffened in alarm. How on earth was that legal? He’d be trampled to death if the ref didn’t blow the whistle . . .

  The whistle blew. Well, I thought, better late than never. Presumably now one of those stomping brutes would be sent to the sin bin. In the top left-hand corner of the TV screen a little picture of a whistle appeared, with Not rolling away beside it. Mark was getting to his feet, and a gold-shirted player had the ball.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve got to roll away when you’ve been tackled,’ Sam explained. ‘You’re not allowed to kill the ball like that.’

  ‘How was he supposed to roll away with ten enormous thugs lying on top of him?’

  Sam shrugged. ‘Those are the rules. And he probably could have rolled away – they all try to make it look like they couldn’t help it. You get away with as much as the ref will let you.’

  ‘I still don’t see how getting squashed flat can be his fault.’

  ‘Helen, shut up,’ said Sam.

  Great try. You legend.

  Not the most inspiring of text messages, but its composition occupied the entire drive home and the removal of a rabbit’s large intestine from the kitchen floor. Murray, the soul of generosity, always left the bits he didn’t want for me.

  The phone buzzed. Thanks. Any calving boys?

  I was still frowning at the screen when it was followed by, Or even calving cows. Ah yes, of course. The pitfalls of predictive text.

  None of either, I wrote. How many bones broken after that game?

  None. All good.

  Thats a relief. Goodnight x

  And I only agonised for two minutes about the x, which was definitely progress.

  Nite miss you x

  I didn’t actually jump up and down and squeal, but it was close.

  6

  SPRING IS BY FAR THE MOST INTERESTING TIME OF YEAR in large-animal practice – the work is mostly emergency rather than routine, and almost all the really cool medical conditions of cows occur around calving. The only downside is that lots of them don’t occur during business hours.

  It rained steadily all the first week in August and we were flat out at work. I enjoyed it; I was getting lots of good experience and it distracted me nicely from obsessing about Mark. Sitting around waiting for the boy you like to call does your mental state no good at all. Besides, it’s embarrassing.

  The insides of my elbows were bruised purple from calving cows, which made me feel pleasantly stoic and hardworking. I did six breech calvings in a row, operated on a calf with a twisted stomach and spent Saturday night on Sam’s couch so as to watch the All Blacks play South Africa live at two thirty on Sunday morning. Sam’s couch was uncomfortable and his flatmates were highly amused, and I was thankful that the following week’s match against Australia was screening with a two-hour delay on poor people’s TV, so I could watch it at home.

  Just before three the next Friday afternoon I was sitting on the edge of Thomas’s desk, drinking coffee and waiting for the next calving. We often had an early afternoon lull and then a run of calls around three thirty, once the dairy farmers had checked their calving mobs.

  Anita came up the hall and vanished into the dispensary behind the front counter. ‘Who’s on call this weekend?’ she called.

  ‘Me,’ said Richard, who was leafing through the Auto Trader in a corner.

  ‘I’m on back-up,’ I added.

  ‘I’ve just induced six little heifers at Justin Smith’s, so you might spend a bit of time there this weekend pulling out calves.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ said Richard sourly. ‘What are they in calf to?’

  ‘Angus,’ she said, reappearing with a box of thirty-mil syringes under one arm. ‘Justin’s already had two heifers down with pinched nerves, so we thought we’d better get the rest of the calves out before they grow any bigger.’

  ‘Yippee fucking skip,’ Richard said, closing his paper and stalking off to sulk in the lunch room.

  Anita, who had three small children and a husband with two share-milking jobs, snorted. After work each day she picked up the kids, bathed them, fed them, supervised their homework, took them down to the cowshed while she examined that day’s accumulated sick cows, packed each of the kids a nourishing lunch for the next day and put them to bed so she could spend a relaxing evening with the farm accounts. She had almost no sympathy for anyone else who felt they were overworked and underappreciated.

  The automatic doors at the front of the shop opened and Hamish Thompson came in out of the rain. ‘Afternoon, all,’ he said, kicking off his gumboots.

  I slid to my feet and went up to the coun
ter. ‘Hi, Hamish, how are things?’

  ‘Bloody wet.’

  ‘True. What can we do for you?’

  ‘Box of Clavulox and some milk let-down stuff for heifers,’ he said.

  I turned towards the dispensary and found Anita already gathering the drugs. ‘Are you alright for syringes and needles, Hamish?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ He settled himself comfortably against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other and running a hand through his hair. He looked like Hollywood’s take on the rugged, virile man of the land, and I’d have bet a reasonable sum of money that he was hoping you’d think so. ‘Enjoyed your hot date the other night, did you, Helen?’

  ‘It was great,’ I said. ‘There’s something so romantic about cutting up a rotten calf.’ When talking to Hamish it was fatal to show the slightest sign of embarrassment. He was like a hyena, prowling around the edges of the conversation in search of an opening, and if you provided one he would attack without mercy.

  ‘So I heard,’ said Hamish. ‘Has he called you?’

  ‘None of your business,’ I said, although I smiled to take the edge off.

  ‘Just taking an interest,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to sign something?’

  I pushed his docket and a pen across the counter.

  ‘Has he called?’ Thomas asked from his desk.

  ‘Of course he has,’ said Anita. ‘Look at her, she’s blushing like a schoolgirl.’

  I hadn’t been, but my cheeks immediately began to grow warm. Blushes are such suggestible things.

  ‘So you reckon he really likes her, Hamish?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Seemed pretty keen. No accounting for taste, I suppose.’ He signed his docket and handed it back to me, grinning.

  ‘But surely he could get any woman he wanted,’ said Thomas. ‘No offence, Helen.’

  I had a fairly quiet Saturday: two calvings, a vomiting dog and three kittens with ringworm belonging to Fenella Martin. Ringworm is hardly an after-hours emergency, but what really annoyed me was spending half an hour of my life listening to Fenella explain that mating brothers to sisters and fathers to daughters is line-breeding and not inbreeding.