After we got shot of Auckland and the hour of transitty little towns, we plunged into the bush and tootled along singing Bic Runga songs and Don McGlashan songs as the ferns went blurring by. It was beautiful. At one point I thought, GoGo, you fool, and I wished we could drive forever and there’d be no Blackout, no dissertation, no longing. No I didn’t. I wanted to go on. I wanted to push on, and I put my hand to my mouth to check, just as we pulled up at ‘the farm’ gates. These are quite a grand affair, iron spears set between concrete pillars topped with stone lions. The first time I saw these gates they seemed incongruous in the landscape of rolling hills and bush, but they’d grown on me. Now I felt a rush at the promise of the good food, deep couches and nice bathroom fittings that awaited us in the house. (Actually, they called it a homestead.) From the winding driveway we saw Art’s older sister Issy doing dressage, leaping sideways like a spider on Blackie in the west field. Yes, west. The whole farm was west, for that matter. Issy released her hand briefly to wave. Issy had a girlfriend, May, but she never came to ‘the farm’, I suppose because she was a girl.

  If there’d been any bad feeling about the Queen Street incident it was all on my part. Prue greeted Art, then me, warmly, with Bert tagging behind in his pebble glasses. That’s the thing about Art’s family: they rise above things. I kind of wish the pole house had been like that. I thanked Prue for the peaches and the socks. And the dried fruit. She said don’t mention it—you poor souls in the Blackout. It was all a bit tense, but in a good cause. In the dining room, which was made important by its monstrous bits of carved furniture, we sat down to a lunch of salmon, salad and warm bread. The family discussed their various projects. Issy, still fluffing up her blonde helmet-hair and giving off whiffs of horse, fleshed out the details of her latest Construction Site. She was in her final year at Elam and she had an exhibition to prepare for. I must say I was quite looking forward to the day when Issy graduated. So far Prue and Bert were her only customers. Construction Site No. 14, which hung in our front room, had been a gift.

  Issy was telling us how she’d been finding inspiration in this new subdivision in Sylvia Park.

  ‘Have you, dear?’ said Prue, touching Issy’s hand. She called her children ‘dear’. It was endearing. I thought I might do that when I had children, if ever.

  Issy ignored her mother. She stretched back in the big upholstered dining chair. She was beaky like her father, but had the Woolthamly spiky gold hair like Art. ‘So ugly it’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘The angles on the hillside. I almost envy the poor sods who have to live there.’

  ‘They’re probably grateful for it,’ said Prue.

  ‘They’re not poor,’ said Art. ‘Sylvia Park. It’s middle-management types. Junior executives.’

  ‘I know they’re not poor,’ said Issy. ‘They’re poor sods.’ The long face—so like her horse. Sorry to make stereotypes.

  Prue said it was probably a lot of Chinese immigrants with their Hong Kong dollars.

  Issy was saying, Not dollars, Mummy, it’s not dollars. But Bert said it was dollars. After the British lease ran out in ninety-seven, they kept the currency.

  ‘HKD,’ said Prue. ‘Don’t I know it.’

  At this rueful tone, Issy roused herself enough to say, ‘Why do you know it, Mummy?’

  ‘Because we export there, of course, and to the mainland.’ Prue had gone all clipped.

  ‘Do you?’ said Issy. I saw her wink at Art. ‘I didn’t know the Chinese liked dried fruit.’

  ‘You don’t need many Chinese to like dried fruit for them to like dried fruit,’ said Bert. ‘If you get my drift.’

  Issy thought this was hilarious, for some reason. ‘Get my drift! Daddy, you sound like an old hippy!’

  I saw Prue purse her lips and share a look with Bert. ‘Well, they used to like it.’

  Everyone went silent briefly to hoof down some salmon, but it seemed there was a little thing going on with the Woolthamlys. This was about as ruffled as they ever got.

  Prue put down her knife and fork like a cat crosses its paws, and she turned to Art. ‘What have you been doing, darling?’ I suppressed a yelp of laughter. For some reason. Both parents listened with rapt attention to the story of the serial killer, making mock gestures of shock—for goodness’ sake! Bert asked about Art’s dissertation, and remembered that he’d come across a book on First World War recruitment or something in the book bus that he’d show him later in the drawing room. Art pretended this was great. I liked that about Art. I loved that about him.

  His sister butted in about how she was adding a sound layer to her Construction Sites. I suppose, when I think about it, there was always a frisson of competition between Issy and Art. Sibling rivalry, nothing unusual—although, I hasten to add, not in my family. Lisa had her drugs and I had, well, I don’t know. All this.

  Prue clapped her hands—about the sound layer—and said wonderful a few times. Issy could afford to ignore the praise. There was so much you needed a wheelbarrow for it to have any meaning. Just her, on bass, she was saying. Incredibly minimalist. Issy played in a band. For money she waitressed part time, which may not have paid much but was an endless source of anecdotes. In fact, now Issy launched into a story about a customer who wanted to read his poetry aloud in the café, and the other patrons couldn’t bloody stand it. They got angrier than if he’d tried to hold up the place with a gun, said Issy.

  Prue laughed. ‘And it was just poetry! Aren’t people funny?’

  They are.

  Bert was leaning back in his chair with his hands repeatedly cupping each other like a ball and socket. ‘You could be psychoanalysing your customers, my dear, and earning a fortune.’

  Issy had a master’s in psychology. She often said she was qualified to work in the café.

  ‘Oh, Bert,’ said Prue, exasperated but in a comic way. ‘You know Issy’s too creative for that.’

  This was what I loved about the Woolthamlys, they kept it all seemly. You could trust that nobody was going to go off like a skyrocket. Well, up until this day you could. Watch this space.

  Issy was looking at her father with her head on one side. ‘Couldn’t I just, Daddy. I could analyse them to hell and back. But, Daddy, I’m happy to just serve them their meal. That way I’m much more inspired to sculpt and play music.’

  Bert nodded in his fond, anxious way. Now that I think about it, he was kind of kind.

  Prue turned to me. ‘And how’s your . . . business going, Megan?’

  I gulped down my last mouthful of warm bread and said that things were slow because of the Blackout, but that I was hoping—But Prue’s mind was on other matters. ‘Just a minute, will you,’ she said. She called out to Mrs Muru. Prue didn’t give a fuck, to coin a phrase. I didn’t mind. I’d worked out a long time ago that if you weren’t a Woolthamly, you could never belong, so there was no point trying. It didn’t matter.

  Mrs Muru came and leaned in the doorway. She was a middle-aged Maori woman with a gammy leg, and she’d been with them for a few years. Art and Issy—and even I—said, ‘Hello, Mrs Muru,’ all together like choir practice.

  ‘Pudding in ten minutes, if you wouldn’t mind please, Mrs Muru,’ said Prue.

  Art and Issy entertained their parents with their recent travels—art, cafés, films. I didn’t blame them. You couldn’t talk about politics, religion, gender, ethnicity or justice. But I suppose it was worth it for the warmth of the house, the roast dinners, the raised glasses, the funny stories about ‘the farm’.

  Sure enough, during summer pudding, which was so tart it took the lining off your mouth, Bert proposed a walk. A weekend at ‘the farm’ wasn’t complete without a stomp over the hills with Bert while he breathlessly pointed out historic sites. A Maori battle took place on this very spot! There are worse things.

  ‘Oh, Bert, don’t this time,’ Prue said. She called for Mrs Muru to clear the table and bring coffee.

  Art looked puzzled. He asked why not—about the walk. We always went for a walk.

  ‘You haven’t heard?’ asked Issy. She was bursting with news. ‘Tell them, Mummy.’

  Now Art was all ears, but Prue said it was nothing.

  ‘What?’ Art was going pink. ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing, dear. A man took a potshot at your father a couple of weekends ago.’

  Art stood up from the table, rattling the cutlery. ‘What!’

  Prue told Art not to make a fuss. She called for Mrs Muru in quite a sharp way, and Mrs Muru came hurrying in.

  ‘Your mother’s right,’ said Bert. ‘It was just a BB gun. It’s these blasted tenants. They have no love for the land.’

  I put my hand on Art’s back. There was still this tenderness, a sort of instinct.

  The Woolthamlys had leased out some paddocks, apparently. I wasn’t quite sure why, all of a sudden, except that I knew ‘the farm’ had been carved up after the grandfather died. Several Woolthamly siblings had several blocks of land. Prue had bought out the others to get the house—homestead—on a much-reduced block.

  Prue said it was true about the tenants. ‘They don’t love the land like we do. They’re Chinese. They don’t understand the meaning of it. Do they, dear?’

  I rolled my eyes at Art but he was sipping his demitasse with great concentration.

  Bert was waving his hand in a gesture of non comprende. Mrs Muru waited for his hand to go back on his lap before she took his plate. He kept on. He didn’t know why they wanted to come all the way down here. From China.

  ‘Because it’s paradise, Daddy,’ said Issy. She smiled the Woolthamly strong-toothed smile.

  ‘Because it’s cheap land,’ Art said. He suddenly looked doubtful. ‘Isn’t it?’

  But Prue was telling Bert to keep well away from the fence line. God knows there was plenty to go on with.

  Bert shook his head. ‘All I want,’ he said, ‘is occasional access to that site. There was an important battle up there. Occasional access, and it was in the terms of the lease.’ Blah blah blah.

  ‘Daddy!’ said Issy.

  It was true he didn’t often get upset. I must say I wondered why he was so agitated. He’d only acquired the land by marriage. He was like me, or how I would be in the future once Art inherited.

  Bert sucked on a cigarillo. ‘Blasted tenants.’

  •

  When I came back downstairs with my jacket and walking shoes, I could tell there’d been a confab in the drawing room. Art, Issy, Prue and Bert were emerging, all looking flushed. I heard Prue say as they dispersed, ‘And we certainly won’t tell Grandma Woolthamly tomorrow. It might kill her.’

  Outside, I asked Art what all this was about—did Issy come out?

  Art banged out his boots on the doorstep. ‘We might have to sell the business,’ he said. ‘Might. There’s been an offer—the assets and the debt or something. Things aren’t good.’

  A slightly cold feeling went over me, I wasn’t sure why. I took a breath to ask a question, but Art shook his head. Not the place. Bert was crunching around from the back of the house with his walking poles.

  Bert, Art, Issy and I set off down the wide gravel path from the house and turned along the road. We were skirting the orchards, close enough to see gnarly apple trees with their fruit still small and sour-looking. As we came up over the north-west hill, I looked back and saw that some of the trees were shrouded in blue like an elderly woman leaving the hairdresser’s. I thought of Grandma Woolthamly, and the secret that was being kept from her. Over a dale, you could just glimpse the blaring silver roof of the drying plant.

  Bert was yelling into the wind, ‘See that hill? The Maoris came swarming down it but the colonials drove them back.’ I knew all this. There was a plaque commemorating a siege at the pa. But Bert had just read a new history on the area and he was telling us, breathlessly like David Attenborough as he climbed up the sheep tracks, how the siege story wasn’t true. All that about women and children surviving on no food and little water for three days—rubbish. There was new evidence they were down at the village the whole time, gorging on paua. ‘Fabulous stuff,’ he said. The wind blew, the grass rippled, the cows eyed us. It was gorgeous.

  We were walking north along the bumpy side of the hill when I saw something twitching on the ground up ahead. As I hurried closer, I saw it was a little flop of a rabbit caught in a trap. It was half-alive, its leg glistening with blood under the vice, its pulse fluttering like a kite. I called to the others urgently, but they were in no hurry. Art came up and stooped to wrench open the trap, and the rabbit tumbled out. I think I was saying, Oh God. I knelt down and slid my hand underneath the soft warm tiny-boned body. It convulsed and one brown eye below its furry eyelid wavered in and out of consciousness. I thought it looked up at me imploringly. Later, Art said that was fanciful, but I’m sure it did, it looked at me and it asked for help. What I thought was, this was what I wanted to do with the street kid. I wanted to cradle him.

  Issy was saying something about how rabbits are more intelligent than we thought, she read an article. I was baying, Oh God, oh God. The rabbit’s brown fur rippled as a shudder came from deep inside it.

  ‘Okay, Sylvia Plath,’ said Art. He took a rock, held it high up against the sky, and brought it down on the rabbit, which went into a rictus. Had another go. The rabbit slumped dead.

  I felt dazed. Tears sprang into my eyes, but I tried to mop them up because it was only a rabbit. Issy thought they might eat it, but Art said it was too skinny. My vision was clearing, and I saw him turn it over and inspect it.

  ‘See that hillside over there?’ said Bert. ‘Rabbit warrens all through it now that the blasted tenants have control of it.’

  Art asked if this was the leased land, but Bert was striking out ahead. ‘The Maoris came storming down that ridge, but we were too much for them.’

  ‘Daddy!’ said Issy. She was thumping off after Bert. ‘Is this the leased bit?’

  ‘The least bit!’ said Art.

  ‘Oh shut up!’ said Issy.

  Art seemed a bit stung and I felt sorry for him. This wasn’t the Woolthamly way. He wobbled after Bert and Issy, over the uneven turf towards the fence. There was a stile.

  ‘But shouldn’t we not be on it?’ said Art.

  ‘They’re only leasing it,’ said Issy. ‘Surely.’

  I followed, feeling sick. Their voices sounded muffled. On the other side of the stile, we assembled again and continued in silence south, back down past the orchards. When we could see the house again, there was a sense of relief. Art took my hand and we smiled at each other, walking along bumpily together. Bert had cheered up enough to point at a stand of trees further down the gully. ‘See those natives. There was an uprising happened there.’ I looked at the trees intently and imagined the scene. I wanted to get the image of the rabbit’s agony out of my head.

  •

  Before dinner we sat on the huge white couches sipping sherry and eating pigs-in-blankets in front of a roaring fire in the drawing room. It was March, and getting cool in the evenings. Not so bad, you might think, and you’d be right. Dinner was half a roast sheep in the formal dining room. Mrs Muru served. After dinner, back in front of the fire, I did the costume—meandering to a finish, of course, and there was the added bonus of the chandelier and the lamps. I worked right under a spotlight. It was good to have something to do with my hands. Practical things went down well at ‘the farm’. Prue leaned forward in her armchair and had a look. Absolutely lovely, she said, and was inspired to get out her rug-hooking. I calculated she’d paid five hundred bucks for the materials, and could have bought it made up for less. We talked about art and films. Art had the book on First World War recruitment, which he was gazing at dolefully. Steered clear of the ballet.

  Every so often I thought about the client, even though he was a philanderer and a capitalist. I remembered his mouth. A peculiar shot of electricity ran through my body and came out at my fingers, where they met the fine silk. I remembered the cigarette taste, and something voracious, and I looked up to see if anyone had noticed my body turn into something irresistibly sexy. They hadn’t.

  We went up to bed and passed, as always, under the razor gaze of the Woolthamly ancestor in his gilt frame. Fell asleep to the hooting of owls and the silence. The rabbit.

  27

  Grandma Woolthamly arrived late Sunday morning for lunch, in a cream summer coat and her feet stuffed into beige pumps. She lived in a care facility in Stratford because she was going a bit batty in her old age and had once set fire to the kitchen, despite Mrs Muru. Everyone greeted Grandma Woolthamly enthusiastically, including me. But it seemed that today something was up with Grandma Woolthamly. She stood in the vestibule tipping forward and trembling, and said she wanted to go back home.

  ‘You mean to the care facility, Mummy?’ shouted Prue, who was trying to wrangle off Grandma Woolthamly’s coat. ‘But you’ve only just arrived.’ The linen didn’t have much give in it. In the end, Issy and I held Grandma still while Prue tugged the sleeves backwards.

  ‘Home,’ said Grandma Woolthamly.

  ‘You are home, Grandma,’ said Issy. She said this again, louder, and asked Grandma Woolthamly if she wanted to stay the night.

  Prue took up the theme. ‘Do you want to stay here tonight, Mummy!’

  Once Grandma Woolthamly was freed from the coat, she said again, ‘I mean home.’ Then her pumps and her stick clacked over the marble tiles to the drawing room.

  We parked ourselves on the couches and ate canapés and drank more sherry while everyone shouted comments at Grandma Woolthamly, about ballet, art, sculpting. Grandma Woolthamly didn’t seem to be listening. She munched on her mushroom square thingies as if she were starving. Prue tried ‘the farm’ as a topic of conversation, then meat. Bert mentioned the cloud formations, interesting at this time of year. It was the humidity. It got so desperate that Prue shouted, ‘Megan’s embroidering a wonderful dress, Mummy!’ I smiled a gory smile, but Grandma Woolthamly swivelled her gaze to land on Art and demanded, ‘What about the business?’