Blue Smoke (26 page)

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if he is, does it really matter?’

Don said, ‘Not here, it doesn’t. Nothing matters here except staying alive.’

Drew thought about it some more, then finally shook his head adamantly.

‘No, you’re wrong, I’m sure of it.’

Keith crossed his arms. ‘Then why could he no’ keep his eyes off ye when ye were scoffing your mango, then go haring off like that when ye spotted him?’

‘Look,’ Drew said, irritated now. ‘This is complete bullshit, and you know it. Tim is about as much of a molly as I am. I’m going to see what’s up with him.’

As he walked out, and behind his back, Don and Keith raised their eyebrows knowingly at each other.

Drew found Tim sitting under the one tree in the yard. His knees were drawn up and he was systematically breaking a thin stem of bamboo, snapping it at regular intervals all the way down its length.

Drew sat down nearby and watched him. Like everyone else, Tim was wasting away. He’d been a big, strapping bloke before they’d arrived here, with long legs and arms and a well-muscled chest covered with curly gold hair. Now he was beginning to resemble some sort of stick puppet, all elbows, knees and shoulder blades. He was tanned, though, everywhere his tattered and baggy shorts did not cover, from working outside in the burning sun. He was due for a haircut — for reasons of hygiene rather than vanity or fashion, as the lice and fleas in the camp were rife — and his fair hair flopped over his forehead. They were not dissimilar, the pair of them, and their likeness had been remarked upon more than once. They were — or had been — bigger than many of their English cohorts, and had rather proudly put it down to being New Zealanders and having had the benefit of plenty of milk and meat during their growing years.

There was no milk or meat now, though, and it showed.

‘Had quite a good day in the hospital today,’ Drew said casually.

Tim didn’t look up from his stick.

Drew tried again. ‘You know that chap I was telling you about, the one with the ulcer on his backside the size of a dinner plate?
Well, Paterson has been packing it with a warm salt poultice three times a day, and we think it’s starting to draw the infection out. The redness around the sore isn’t as pronounced and there’s a lot less pus. That’s good news, isn’t it? Mind you, the hole hasn’t got any smaller.’

Tim nodded. ‘It is good,’ he said finally. ‘You must be pleased.’

‘Well, it was Paterson’s idea, not mine. But, yes, it is good.’

Drew bent his head to the left as far as it would go, then to the right, stretching the muscles and tendons in his neck. There was an ominous crack, which he ignored.

‘Look, thanks for the mango, it was delicious. But the chaps said it was actually yours.’

‘Early Christmas present,’ Tim replied.

‘Well, I really appreciate it. I’m not quite sure why I deserve a Christmas present, though.’

Tim swept the bits of broken bamboo off his lap, and glanced up. ‘I don’t get … I mean, you’re at the hospital most of the time now, I don’t get to see you as often. I just wanted to make sure that, well, that we were still mates.’

‘Why wouldn’t we be?’

Tim shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I just thought … oh shit, I don’t know what I thought. I was worried I was los …’ He faltered, and a pink flush crept up his neck and face. He was silent for a moment, then added angrily, ‘It was only a fucking mango.’

But Drew, to his profound shock, was starting to suspect otherwise. ‘It wasn’t just a fucking mango, though, was it?’

Tim didn’t reply, and reached for another stick.

Drew decided he had to have this out now, just in case, so that there couldn’t possibly be any misunderstandings.

‘Look, for God’s sake don’t be offended, but, well, we’ve been mates for a couple of years now, and we’re both Kiwis and all that, but I’m not, well …’ Christ, this was difficult.

‘Not what?’ Tim asked, looking straight at Drew.

‘I’m not … that way inclined.’

For a moment Tim looked as if he was going to deny any knowledge of what Drew was alluding to, but, to Drew’s absolute horror, tears suddenly glistened in the other man’s eyes.

‘I thought I wasn’t, either,’ Tim croaked, his face a picture of dismay. ‘At least, not until I met you.’

Tears trickling openly down his tanned cheeks now, he reached out and lightly ran the tip of his finger over the warm skin of Drew’s shoulder. His touch was as deep and as powerful as an electric shock, and Drew leaped back instantly, appalled at the effect it had had on him.

Tim withdrew his hand and got to his feet. ‘God, I’m so sorry,’ he mumbled.

Drew watched him go in confusion, and unconsciously began to dig his fingers into the base of his skull. He was getting another headache.

Hawke’s Bay, September 1944

A
s far as Jack Leonard was concerned, Ana Deane had become indispensable to him, both as a farm worker and as a friend.

She’d been with him for two and a half years now, and he thanked God she had chosen to stay rather than go home when the Women’s Land Service changed the rules about working for relatives. He’d had Nola Butt and Betty Weaver here for some time, too, but neither could really compare with Ana, although Nola was pretty good — a hard worker with an aptitude for farming, even though she was a townie. But Betty, buxom and cheerful, was hopeless on the farm. She wasn’t at all confident on horseback, couldn’t mend a fence to save herself and cried every time a lamb died, but she gave everything her best shot and laughed along with it,
and
she was a truly excellent cook. It hadn’t taken long for them all to decide that her main duties would be the cooking and the domestic work, looking after the kitchen garden, feeding the animals and mothering the orphaned lambs in springtime. And all of that was essential, of course, because it allowed the others to get on with the business of sheep farming.

Ana, however, was a completely different kettle of fish. The girl could do everything a bloke could do, save all but the very heaviest
of lifting jobs, she had a stomach like cast iron when required, which was often, and she had the rare knack of being able to look at things from every angle at once. Jack had always planned at least a year ahead — you had to, on a farm — but Ana seemed to be able to see well beyond a mere twelve months, and he had already implemented some of the ideas she’d suggested. In a deliberately low-key manner, of course, so that he wouldn’t feel stupid for not having thought of them himself.

He was thinking exactly this as he trudged across the horse paddock and climbed wearily over the stile into the yard. It was almost dark, and his bones ached mightily after a full day in the saddle mustering. The sheep were all down now, and the first lot safely under the shearing shed for the night so they’d dry out in time for the start of shearing tomorrow.

The gang had arrived this afternoon — shearers, their wives, kids and all — but they would all have a role to play. They were Ngati Kahungunu, a family affair from Maungakakari, and Ana had organised them; this would be their second year on the Leonard farm. During Ana’s first year with him he’d been able to get in only a very last minute, rag-tag gang, and the clip had suffered accordingly. Their general ineptitude had annoyed Ana quite spectacularly and the following year she prevailed on her family for assistance. As soon as the gang finished here they would be off to do the clip at Kenmore, and then on to somewhere else after that, so they only had a week at the most. Jack prayed that it wouldn’t rain, as the wet always slowed things down.

The shearers’ quarters had been tidied up and made habitable, thanks to Ana yet again. Her father and three men from Maungakakari had come over and set to fixing the roof and replacing the windows and the long drop that had been wrecked in a cyclone three years ago. He was a very decent fellow, Joseph Deane, Jack thought, and extremely able considering he had only
the one leg. They’d discovered they’d both been at Gallipoli.

As he crossed the yard and dodged the sheets flapping on the line Jack noticed that the rickety old farm bicycle was propped against the wall of the house. That meant that Betty, who actually could ride a bike, had probably been into Kereru to collect the mail and perhaps some groceries. It was a twelve-mile pedal there and back, and the return journey always rather precarious if the purchases had included items such as a large bag of flour, but there just wasn’t the petrol to go jaunting off to the tiny town in the truck for anything less than an emergency. Or the occasional beer.

He kicked his boots off at the back door and went into the kitchen. As usual there was the smell of something delicious simmering on the range, and on the table sat plates piled high with what he guessed — if his nose served him correctly — was baking, covered with damp tea towels. He lifted the edge of the closest and saw to his delight that it covered his favourite — cheese scones, nice big round ones with extra cheese on top. Betty’s scones were a delight, always light and soft, never stodgy or prone to giving a man constipation. A good pat of butter would do these real justice, he thought, sneaking one out and raising it to his nose to savour the comforting, tangy aroma.

‘Oi! Those are for the gang!’

Jack started guiltily and dropped the scone; it bounced off the table and landed on the floor, then rolled over to the sideboard. There was a furry streak of black and a cat pounced on it, batting it about merrily with one extended paw before crouching over it and proceeding to tear the cheese off the top.

‘That was clever, wasn’t it?’

Betty stood in the doorway, her arms filled with vegetables from the garden to make soup for tomorrow. A blue scarf covered her blonde hair, although it failed to prevent the curls from escaping
in all directions, and the sleeves of her work shirt were rolled to her elbows. Her love of cooking was reflected in her figure, which strained the buttons at the front of her shirt and roundly filled out the seat of her trousers. Her pale blue eyes were bright and merry, and her cheeks their perpetual pink. Jack always thought she should be a poster girl for the WLS, she was that healthy and bonny.

‘He’ll be sick, he will, if he gutses all of that,’ she admonished.

‘Should I take it off him?’ Jack asked, envisaging himself stepping into a puddle of cold cat sick on the back porch at five o’clock tomorrow morning.

Betty waved the suggestion away, a bundle of radishes coming loose and rattling to the floor. ‘Damn. No, leave him to it, he’ll be all right. He hardly ever overeats, that one.’

She crossed the floor, dribbling the radishes in front of her with her foot as she went, and deposited the vegetables on the table. There were silverbeet, potatoes, carrots, a cabbage and the last of the leeks.

‘Did you go into town this afternoon?

Betty nodded. ‘We were short of a few things. Oh, and there’s a letter for you. It’s on the mantel in the lounge.’

Jack snatched another scone and hurried out of the kitchen. Since the girls had come to the farm, the lounge, or ‘front room’ as he always referred to it, had lost its abandoned air. Betty had washed the curtains and the antimacassars over the back of the sofa and armchairs, cleaned the ancient ashes from the fireplace, dusted and polished, and regularly set out small vases of wildflowers. There was currently a pile of knitting at one end of the sofa — a tiny jacket in pale lemon Nola was making up for her sister’s new baby — several copies of the
Woman’s Weekly
strewn across an end table, and a bottle of Betty’s pink nail varnish on the mantel.

Next to it sat an unopened letter.

Jack picked the envelope up, hesitated, then turned it over. It
was, as he had hoped, from his son David, currently a patient in the New Zealand military hospital at Helwan in Egypt. David had been wounded three months ago, and there had been real concern that he not might survive. He hadn’t actually said this in his letters, but Jack knew his son well and had read between the lines. He’d been shot in the arm and the wound had become gangrenous; there had been ‘a few dodgy weeks’, according to David, but he was on the mend, although he didn’t think he’d be going back to his old unit.

Jack tore the envelope open and unfolded the single page it contained, covered with his son’s bold but messy writing.

Jack read the letter twice, then checked the date at the top of the page: 29 August 1944. His heart lurched as he realised that David could be home any day now, if he wasn’t already. But wouldn’t someone have contacted him, if he was perhaps in a New Zealand hospital? Surely the bloody army would have? He’d get on to them as soon as he could, but the farm didn’t have a telephone so he’d have to wait until the next time he went into Kereru. Which wouldn’t be for a few days yet as they were just too busy.

He read the letter one more time, then took it to his bedroom and placed it carefully under the wooden jewellery box on the dressing table. The box had belonged to his wife, and he’d left everything in the room just as it had been when she was alive.

There was a discreet cough, and he glanced up to see Ana standing in the doorway. She was dusty and dishevelled after the day’s mustering, the warm spring sun already encouraging freckles across her nose and cheeks.

‘Everything all right?’ she asked. ‘Betty said you had a letter.’

He nodded; he didn’t mind her asking at all.

‘From David, he’s coming home.’

‘That’s great news, Jack!’ Ana exclaimed, and then asked the question that everyone was compelled to ask when they learned that someone in the forces was coming home early. ‘Is he … I mean, what …?’

Jack sat down on the edge of the bed, the frame squeaking beneath his weight.

‘He doesn’t say, he just mentions his arm and that he’s on the road to recovery. Doesn’t sound too put out by it, though.’ Jack pulled a face. ‘But then David never was one for complaining. Broke his ankle once, when he was a boy, falling out of the big tree behind the lav, but didn’t say anything to his mother because she was busy getting a roast into the oven. Just sat out on the steps waiting until she’d finished. It must be quite bad, though,
for him to be sent home for good.’

Ana thought so, too, but kept her opinion to herself. Instead, she said, ‘Nola’s in too. We’ve done the horses and the dogs because Betty’s too busy. Have you seen the baking she’s done? It’s enough to feed an army. She says it’s a “welcome” supper for the gang.’

But then, there was a small army on the farm now. There were at least fifteen people in the shearing gang, and she knew them well because almost all of them were her relatives.

She smiled. ‘Actually, I think that’s why they were so keen to come back this year — because of Betty’s amazing scones.’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ Jack said as he got to his feet again and stretched until his spine cracked. ‘I’m for a wash. What are we having for dinner, did she say?’

‘Stewed neck chops with celery and dumplings, potatoes and vege bake, and rhubarb pie for afters. Yum.’

It was an excellent dinner, shared by the four of them sitting around the kitchen table. The animals had all been fed, the shearing gang had settled in, and everyone seemed to be happy. Especially Jack.

Dabbing at his lips with a napkin, which Betty made him use whenever he ate at the table, he said, ‘When David comes home, two of you will have to double up, I’m afraid. Will that be all right?’

The girls looked at each other and shrugged.

Betty said, ‘You can come in with me, Nola, if you like. I’m happy to share.’

Nola tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear before she spooned up the last of her pie. Through a mouthful of rhubarb and cream, she replied, ‘Fine with me, but I warn you, Betts, I’m not sharing anything else with you.’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Betty, although they could all see the twinkle in her eye.

‘You used my hair brush this morning, didn’t you?’

‘No,’ Betty lied.

‘You did. I left it on my dresser when we went out, and when I got in tonight it was on my bed,
and
it had blonde hairs in it!’

Betty inelegantly ran a finger around the rim of her pudding plate to collect the last of the cream. ‘Well, actually, I might have used it. I’ve lost mine.’

‘That wouldn’t be the hair brush out in the yard on top of the dog kennels, would it?’ Ana asked.

‘Yes! Yes, that’s where I had it last!’

Jack knew he shouldn’t ask, but he did. ‘Why did you need your hair brush out there?’

‘Well, when you came in last night, the dogs were awfully mucky, so I thought I’d give them a bit of a tidy up.’

Ana rolled her eyes. ‘Betts, working dogs get mucky, they’re supposed to.’

‘Mmm, I know, but they seemed to like it so I just kept going.’

Jack covered his smile with his napkin, and made a mental note to buy her a new brush next time he went into Kereru. If he could find one, of course.

They were out of bed the next morning at four-thirty, in time to have breakfast and get ready for the day’s shearing. Betty had already been up for a while, and was away on the tractor up to the shearers’ quarters with a couple of things they needed. They’d brought their own cook, who would prepare all of their meals and morning and afternoon smokos, but Leonard had offered them anything they wanted out of the garden, and given them a couple of hoggets.

They met her on the way back down and she waved cheerfully, nearly putting the tractor into a gorse bush.

Ana pulled Mako up. ‘Are they ready to go?’ she asked, anxious
for the day’s work to be under way.

‘Yep, and they’ve got the most gorgeous little baby with them this time. You know Katarina? It’s hers and he’s so
sweet
! All cute and brown like a little button.’