Page 75 of Kiwi Sin
Oriana didn’t say anything, just got up and began clearing plates. I stood up to help her, because that was the right thing, surely. She didn’t say anything but “Thanks,” but when she served a cake topped with sugar-dusted cherries and accompanied by a pitcher of custard, she told me, “It’s a fruit dessert. The kind you wanted, I hope.” As if she’d made it for me.
I took a bite and sighed. The cherries were baked tender and juicy and surrounded by moist almond-scented cake, and the custard sauce was the real thing, rich and golden, not the stuff you got in bottles from the supermarket. “Yeh,” I said, and smiled at her. “Thanks. It’s perfect. It’s what I’ve missed.”
She smiled back, and this time, it wasn’t tentative.
“I reckon it’s good to be good at things,” I said, even though we were in front of everybody. “Whether they’re women’s things or not. I’m only good at men’s things, myself. Doesn’t mean I can’t do the rest, because I’m learning. Not one bit good at them, though.”
“And you don’t want to be,” she said.
“You could be right.” I laughed because, suddenly, that was how I felt. Because she’d made me that cake, maybe, and I’d finally had a chance to bloody Valor’s nose and kick him down the stairs. Oriana’d got to say what she needed to at last? Maybe I’d got todowhat I needed to. “Reckon we’re both stuck in our …”
“Your rigid gender roles?” Priya asked.
“Maybe,” Oriana said. “Why not, though? I help with the garden, too, and the animals. Which are things men do, in Mount Zion,” she told Gray. “Men do everything outdoors there, but Ilikebeing outdoors. I do the things Ilike.What’s wrong with that?” Probably the most assertive speech Oriana had ever made in her life, and I was smiling. She looked at me and said, “What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m impressed, that’s all.”
“What’s wrong with it is that you don’t like anything that pays decently,”Priya said. “Looking after kids and tending the garden and cooking and knitting and taking care of animals? You’re going to have flatmates until you’rethirty.You’re going to bepoor.”
“I earn money,” Oriana said, the set to her jaw a little less soft.
“Working with babies?” Priya asked. “Babysitting? I know what you earn. How are you ever going to move out of here and then keep up with the rent doing those things? You have to at least be a teacher to earn anything working with kids,and you need university for that. Or you could get married, I guess, but men don’t want somebody poor, either. Anyway, I’m not going to get married until I’m thirty. I’m not going to be trapped with somebody awful just because I don’t make enough money to leave.”
“Money’s not everything, of course,” Gray said neutrally. “And Oriana’s welcome to live here as long as she likes.”
Daisy said, “I’d say, ‘Said by somebody who’s always had heaps,’ except that you haven’t.”
“Gray’s mum cleans houses,” Oriana said, as if she hadn’t heard any of that. “Is she not good enough, then, Priya?”
“Shesupervisespeople who clean houses,” Priya said.
“Now she does.” That was Gray. “Started out cleaning them, though, right enough.” His brown eyes were level, and so was his voice, but you wouldn’t want to cross him, and Priya was coming close. “We shared a house with another single mum, too. Never had much, and she’ll tell you that’s all right. Careful what you take from all this new you’re seeing.”
“Kind hearts are more than coronets,” I said. “And simple faith more than Norman blood.”
Daisy said, “What?” and stared at me as if the rocks had spoken. Or as if she hadn’t realized I could read, maybe.
I shrugged. “Didn’t you have that poem in school, then?” Mount Zion had been big on poetry of a certain type, Tennyson and Kipling and blokes like that. Poetry of the empire, they’d said, which had been explained to us as “the period when our British values and military might were at their pinnacle.” We’d had to memorize them, and to recite them, too.
Oriana said, “I had that poem. I always liked it.” As she was the living proof of the lines, I didn’t doubt it.
When we’d eaten our cake—I had a second helping, it was that good—Priya said, “I’ll do the washing-up,” and hopped up to get started. Daisy said, “I’ve got some more, uh, working out to do myself. Something I wanted to ask you, though, Gray, about my form. In our room?” Upon which he said, “Course,” and followed her there as if he were a magnet and she was the pole.
I glanced at Oriana. Pretty obvious what was going on with that. She looked like she knew it too, but she just said, “I’d like to have a look at your hand, Gabriel.”
I blinked. “My hand? My knuckles may be a bit bruised, but that’s all.” I was meant to ask her to take a walk in the garden. That’s what Honor had suggested, andalsowhat Drew had suggested, so it must be right, and this was the time. Unfortunately, I had no idea what to say to her there. Did I talk about what had happened with Valor? Not talk about it? Talk about something else?Whatelse?
She sighed and, for once, looked a bit exasperated.“Gabriel.I mean yourstitches.”
“Oh.” I looked at the bandage. “What about them?”
“I want to see them,” she said.
“Odd sort of desire, surely,” I said.
She laughed, exasperated again, and said, “Just … come into the bath with me.”
Right,I thought.Right.I was completely confused by now. I wanted to go—of course I did—but I also didn’t. I’d have said that Oriana felt the same way I did about having relations, especially after what she’d told us today about Valor. Now she didn’t? Was it living with Gray and Daisy, then, when they weren’t married? Had it been corrupting, the way the Prophet had always warned? Gray was as devoted to Daisy as any man I’d ever known, though.
