Page 18 of Just Say Christmas
10
Further Bulletins From Paradise
TOM
A couple hours later, Tom’s body was weary, but not in that knocked-about post-match way, when you’d possibly broken your nose and definitely bruised your body. In the pleasant way, instead, that meant you’d played eighteen holes of golf, walking the hilly course, feeling the breeze against your skin, and looking out over the kind of blue sea and sky that calmed the mind of a boy from the Far North who hadn’t worn shoes, other than at school, at church, and for rugby, during the first dozen years of his life. And then, to top it off, had swum and dived for a few hours more. A relaxing holiday, in other words. Now, he and Koti were barefoot again, climbing the last of a hundred or so steps from the boat dock to the house where they’d be staying tonight, set all by itself onto a protruding finger of Waiheke coastline.
The house was cleverly enough concealed, despite its size, that he hadn’t been able to see it from the public walking track, other than as a flash of light from the near-continuous windows, and he experienced, for a moment, the sort of disorientating world-tilt he still occasionally got, where he couldn’t believe he was in this place, or with these people.
Victoria had done well to find a place big enough for all of them, and secluded enough to house a full quiver of star All Blacks, but then, he had a feeling she usually did. Victoria definitely belonged. A little distant, a lot intelligent, and probably more than a little scary. He imagined some face-tattooed, hundred-twenty-Kg Mongrel Mob gang member in the dock, a fella who’d thought, before today, that he could best any woman, or more like—where women didn’t figure at all in his calculus. He imagined him looking at that cut-glass profile, hearing that remote, dispassionate voice laying down its damning chain of facts as if that were the only possible way to understand the story, and realizing he was going to prison.
Tom would bet she got that all the time. He’d bet it felt awesome.
The other boys were on the deck already, he saw as he and Koti finally reached their level. Their bare legs stretched in front of them, drinking beer from the bottle. Marko and Kane, Will and Nic. Not so intimidating after all. It was like being in the sheds after a match, that was all, especially when Will called out, on seeing him and Koti, “That chilly bin empty, cuz? Don’t break my heart.”
“Nah,” Koti said, coming up the final few steps and heaving the enormous thing onto the deck with Tom’s help. “Got six crays in there. Big ones, too, thanks to Kors. If it’d been up to me, we’d have been dreaming sadly of crayfish tonight, but he’s got the magic touch. How’d you fellas go?”
“Four good snapper,” Will said, “bar the little ones we threw back, and the one the skip took home with him.” Not the skipper of the boat, but Hugh Latimer, the skipper of the Blues. He and Kevin McNicholl weren’t hanging around for the night, which would make it, possibly, easier for Ella.
“Too many kids,” Hugh had said, which was exactly the point, “and Josie’s off to Aussie on a photo shoot. No rest for the wicked.” As for Kevin, his wife, Chloe, was dancing six nights a week inThe Nutcracker,and they had a kid at home as well,so he was missing this out, too. That still left Tom the youngest player here by far, and the only one who wasn’t an All Black, but oh, well.
“I’ve got room assignments for you lot,” Koti said. “Better give those out before the girls get here, or before you get onto any more of the beer and can’t find your way. It’s a big house. It’s also gone five o’clock already, and if you don’t get in the showers, the girls are going to make you sleep on the grass. I can smell you from here. How does anybody but me ever get laid? If you’re going to Japan with me next month, Nico, you’ll have to do better. They take their hygiene seriously. Of course, after that it’s France, so . . .”
That caused a few smiles, and some wonder in Tom’s mind. Koti never seemed to take anything seriously, but wouldn’t it be a mighty wrench to leave New Zealand and the black jersey for Japan and, after that, France? If Tom ever won that jersey, he wasn’t giving it up until they pried it from his body.
“A question we’re all asking ourselves constantly,” Marko said, “filthy bastards that we are. Lucky some women like manly men, I guess.”
Koti pulled out his phone. “I’m nobly letting that pass, as I’m your best man, and not making a fully justified comment about the attractions of sheep to the South Island farmer. The real reason I need to do this now is that if I have a beer first, I’ll never be able to get it the right way round. Geez, that freediving thing’s one for the books. I’m knackered. We’d best go on inside, so I can orient myself. And possibly take a nap. Victoria will have something to say if I get it wrong. You could say she was efficient.”
“It’s a plan view,” Marko said, looking over his shoulder. “Looks like somebody made it with mapping software. It’s color-coded, too. What the hell?”
“Not me,” Koti said. “I’m just the messenger. I’d have been much more casual about it, if it had been up to me. Lucky it wasn’t, or half of us would’ve been sleeping on the couch, or the whole thing would’ve fallen through. Like I said, that’s Victoria. I’ve got a timetable here as well, planned down to the minute. She must not know who she’s dealing with. Going to be like herding cats, I expect. Never met a more buttoned-down woman in my life, and I’m married to an accountant. How’s she Nyree’s bestie again?”
“University,” Marko said briefly, and jerked his chin. In the direction of Kane. Oh, right. Kane had gone out with Victoria for a bit there, hadn’t he? It had been a long time ago, he thought, but Kane’s expression was wooden, and he was looking out to sea, to the green and brown humps of the minor islands of the Hauraki Gulf, and at the skyline of the city beyond. Could be he wasn’t listening, but Tom didn’t think so. More like he was trying not to hear.
After, what, more than a year? But then, Tom didn’t really know Kane at all. They played for different teams and were ten years apart in age and about a stratosphere in professional standing, and Kane was a pretty private fella anyway, as Pakeha boys from the South Island could tend to be. Maybe there was more to it than Tom had assumed.
Inside the house, Koti was issuing directions. “You’re sharing with Kane, Tom,” he said, when it came his turn. Which wasn’t the best news Tom had ever heard. Whose idea had that been? Ella, he saw with a quick look at the plan, was sharing with Caro. It looked like Kane wasn’t the only one facing a romantic desert this weekend. Why?
Maybe he should be more sensitive. This was Ella’s first time back in Auckland since she’d left it after signing over the twins to Hugh and Josie over a year before. Could that be what was wrong? If so, why hadn’t she just said?
Shewouldhave said, which meant that couldn’t be it. Ella was honest. It was one of the things he liked best about her.
School, maybe. She was finishing up her secondary schooling next week, and she could be worried about her results. Tom hadn’t worried about his own, but then, all he’d wanted to do was play rugby. In mid-February, though, Ella would be starting at the University of Canterbury, aiming for a diploma in maths, but also hoping for a scholarship to help her do it. A Top Scholar award would give her ten thousand dollars a year, she’d told him, and with a single mum who was a vet tech in farm country and didn’t own her home, ten thousand dollars meant the difference between finishing her education with a heavy loans burden, and not. Besides, she wanted to be the best. Something Tomdidunderstand.
She wouldn’t be taking a gap year, which was a bit unusual, but not for Ella. For one thing, there was having the money to do it. Beyond that, she’d told him, “I feel like I alreadyhada gap year. I went somewhere else and had new experiences, anyway. You could say that. And now I just want to get on with things, you know?”
So it was that, or it was the babies. He hoped. Girls were confusing at times, even Ella, and that day when she’d signed over the boys forever had been an emotional one. It had also ended, as if not enough had happened, with Marko and Nyree’s engagement, which could have been hard in itself, except that he wasn’t sure Ella’d had room for any more emotion at that point. She’d held strong through all of it, sure of her path and her purpose, but when she’d left Auckland, she’d left everything behind, including him. And now she was coming back.
Could he seem like too much of a reminder of all that? Probably not. Probably more like—a year later, and she’d gone back to being young, and wanting to be free. He was only two and a half years older, but they were two and a half pretty important years.
He hadn’t realized how much he’d miss her until she’d gone home to Tekapo. He’d been on his way to fulfilling his lifelong dream at the age of nineteen, which was more than he’d ever thought possible, and he’d had more than enough work to keep him occupied. Hehadmissed her, though, and had come to visit her that spring in a brief interval in his Mitre 10 Cup duties, while Marko had been off with the All Blacks at the start of the end-of-year tour.
Ella hadn’t even been in her final year of school, and maybe he should have felt bad about that, but he hadn’t, then or since. Other than not putting her on his Instagram in her green-and-black-plaid uniform, or dressed any other way, for that matter. She wanted him to come visit, he wanted to go, and that was good enough for him.
He’d already met her family, who were all right. Well, other than her mum, who still tended to regard him suspiciously, and had put him on the couch in the lounge, then wandered through at least three times a night for the two nights he was there, while he was trying to get comfortable on about forty centimeters too short a surface. “Coming out for a drink of water,” she’d say, or, “Just need the toilet.” Closing the barn door after the horse had gone, or just disapproving in general, he couldn’t work out which.
The second day, he went up the mountain and out with Ella’s Uncle Ander, Marko’s dad, to help with the sheep, which was better. It mostly involved opening and closing gates, since he didn’t actually know anything about sheep, but that was all right, too. He knew how to follow directions. Ander wasn’t nearly as chatty or as quick to laugh as Tom’s own dad, but in the world of rugby coaches, he’d have fit right in.
