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Trevor John had offered to help shift part of the flock that had been sold their new owner. It gave him a good excuse to leave a tense situation and hopefully, catch a promising glimpse of his future. A few hands from the new station met them with trucks and dogs, and beleaguered drover’s shouts of welcome.
“Mates, this is my new trainee,” Trevor John introduced Rose and then slipped an orange safety vest on her as solicitously if it were a fur stole.
“This ought to help you from being run down by a Yank tourist. They tend to forget and drive on the wrong side, ya know.”
“Bloody Yanks,” Rose scoffed, and stepped out into the roadway with the men, the dogs, and a noisy, fluffy whirlwind of anxious sheep.
“We’ll teach you, Darlin’” said Teddy, a drover who might have retired by now if he knew what such a thing was, “Just do as we do and let the dogs do the rest.”
Trevor John’s voice jumped menacingly to its lowest register and he growled deeply guttural, but always very loud exclamations of “Get on there!”
Rose followed his lead and mumbled, “Yeah, move it, will ya?” to the whirlpool of sheep around her, but her tepid effort at being stern collapsed with her laughter. Trevor John shot studied glances over at her. In a rapture of amusement such as he had never seen on anyone while standing in the middle of a flock of sheep, she looked up at him, red-faced with foolish delight, wisps of her fine blonde hair falling into her pale blue eyes. The sheep bleated their indignation and passed around her, rubbing against her legs, and she reached to stroke them. The dogs yelped at her for being such a lazy worker.
“There now, we just want to keep them moving,” Trevor John said, “not scatter them. Keep back a bit with me.”
They walked along the roadside, following the rolling flock that managed always to block at least one lane of traffic. Approaching vehicles were only occasional nuisances in an area where traffic was always scarce, but they could quickly tell which ones belonged to tourists because those were the cars in which the travelers stopped, and began shooting photographs or filming with video cameras out the car windows. The drovers eyed them, but kept their attention on their flock. The men smiled with knowing scorn at what to them was the idiotic behavior of the tourists, but Rose waved to them, as if she were part of a parade. Her posing would be immortalized by several cameras that day, and for decades to come her photo would be part of family albums as a example of a delightful memory of a genuine New Zealand countrywoman being as friendly as the pictures of the happy people in their tourist brochures, the ones who smiled toothy grins while catching trout in pristine streams.
She sidled up to Trevor John.
“They don’t know what a fraud I am. I should be ashamed.”
“Just keep your mouth shut. What they don’t know won’t hurt them, right?”
When the job was done, the men told Rose that with a bit more work she might be a champion drover one day.
“Thanks, mates.”
Trevor John and Rose returned to his old, beat-up mostly yellow Falcon, and he asked if she would mind going a further distance away to stop at another station, a prosperous station, with a new foreign owner.
“Swiss.” Trevor John said.
“Glad he’s not American.”
“Why?”
“I just am. Is Edwin’s place likely to go to a foreigner?”
“Already has, to a pommie.”
“I thought it was going to be auctioned.”
“Not the land, just some of the equipment and furnishings.”
They sat in the car parked at the gates of the property. The large manor house and well-kept outbuildings were perched on a gentle slope, gleaming white in the afternoon sunshine.
“I’ve been offered a job here.”
“Oh, I see. Nice place, isn’t it?”
“Flash, if you like that sort of thing.”
“Will you take it?”
“Pay is good. I won’t be running things though, like I do with Ed. I won’t have much of a say. Just one of the blokes.”
“You want more than that.”
“There was a time I didn’t.”
“Are you going in?”
After another moment of just looking at the wide expanse of green dotted with clean white outbuildings and all the prospects it might hold for him in his mind, Trevor John put the car in drive.
“Another time.”
They drove farther south past Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki, stopped at a small grocery in Twizel, with its fairground-like community of caravans and bungalows, still bearing the proudly independent if utterly temporary look of a mining town, and drove north skirting the teal-colored Lake Pukaki toward the Tasman Glacier and Mt. Cook. Appearing easily on the edge of an earthly paradise, yet the scene did not seem earthly, but otherworldly, as if it stretched beyond the bounds of the confines of the earth and its realities. Stark, rugged mountains, placid lakes of striking color. In a meadow dotted with yellow daisies, they sat in tall, tangled grass and ate sandwiches. Rose closed her eyes and lifted her face to the warm sunshine. The mountains all around were crested with snow, but the valley lay green and warm, and with very little sound.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“You can.”
“Why Trevor John?”
“What, isn’t that common in your country, then? Billy-Bob, Jimmy-Sue and all that?”
“Very funny. Not the part where I come from, no. It’s William Robert in New England, and we are more likely not to call anyone by his name at all, or even make eye contact. So, what’s with the second name?”
“Ah, it started out as a joke. Back when I was a kid in school we had to fill out some applications for something. Possibly permission forms for one of those sad tramping outings, or perhaps for sport. I don’t recall. I filled in my first name and my middle name on the same line where it was not meant. The middle name was to go on the second line, and as usual I wasn’t paying any attention. This amused the fat-arsed master and he decided, as they will, to use sarcasm as a teaching tool. He called me “Trevor John” for an entire term to needle me, and I needled him back by calling myself that, to show he couldn’t bother me. After a time, it stuck.”
The plastic shopping bag was lumpy with peaches, apples and pipfruit, a container of strawberries.
“Thank you for taking me along to drive the sheep,” she said, reaching for a strawberry first.
“No worries. I’ve never seen anyone so silly enthused about sheep.”
“Every June we would go strawberry picking at a farm nearby. My mother and grandmother would make jam. I haven’t been in strawberry picking in years. My mother...”
She said nothing more for a moment, but caught strands of her hair and swept them from her eyes. It was not good to keep bringing up her personal past. It was also rude.
“What?”
“Nothing. I wonder what she would have thought of my droving sheep in New Zealand. She would think me a fraud as well.”
“She wouldn’t say proudly, ‘That’s my girl!?’”
Rose looked hard at the ground.
“I don’t know what she’d say, but I don’t think it would be that.”
They headed back north on Route 8, past alluvial rivers and stands of what looked like pampas grass, graceful, feathery plumes of taupe. Her head jolted back and forward whenever he shifted gears.
“Could you stop for a minute?” Rose asked.
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah. Just stop, okay? Don’t even pull over, just stop right here in the road.”
He slowed and stopped. He put the car in park, and looked at her. She got out, walking around to the front of the car and stood in the middle of the road. She did a slow 360-degree turn, searching the flat stretch of highway until it disappeared into rolling hills behind them, and erupted into white-capped mountains in the distance ahead. On either side of the road was ground that could have been pastureland, but there were no sheep or cattle grazing today, just the wind brushing the tops of the tussock. It gave the impression of either having been abandoned, or else never having been discovered. On the road for as far as she could see there were no cars ahead and no cars behind. A deep silence leant stillness to the place. The air, even without a breeze, touched her cool, sweet, and razor sharp.
Trevor John had turned off the engine, and stepped out of the car. He approached Rose, knowing the deeper sensation of silence that happened when he turned off the motor was completing the picture in her mind of this place. He stood beside her and searched her face, content to let a few more moments pass.
“God.” Rose whispered at last, shaking her head in disbelief, and sighing.
He smiled slowly.
“That’s how I feel about it, too.”
***
The old car began to complain, and Trevor John’s encouragement by obscenity seemed to have no effect on it. He pulled over to the side of the road.
“Just have a look,” he said, shrugging off the cloud of steam rising from the hood of the car. They stepped out of the car, and Trevor John took off the radiator cap with a mitten made of his shirt, and got a face full of acrid, oily moisture. He took a canteen from the trunk of the car and stepped gingerly over a barbed wire fence to an alluvial riverbed beyond the field. Rose went with him.
“Ngaio is a Maori name, isn’t it?” Rose asked.
“It’s a kind of tree.” He filled his canteen with water. “Yeah, it’s Maori. But I’m a bit of everything, really. Just a mongrel.”
“Like me.”
“What are you, then?” He smiled at her as he put the cap back on, then took her hand to lead her up the muddy bank.
“Irish and Polish.”
“Crikey, that’s not much. I’ve got that beat. I’m Maori, English, Irish, French, and Dalmatian.”
“With that kind of ethnic smorgasbord, I wonder if you can still tell me about mana.”
He corrected her pronunciation.
“Thank you.”
“Not a problem.” He glanced at her sideways as they trudged out of the wet field of tall grass, which billowed and slapped at their shins in the afternoon breeze. “Why that, especially?”
She stepped over the wire fence he held down with his boot.
“I just want to know if it exists.”
They stood eye to eye, being the same height made that easy. She searched his face, lined, intense, attractive, and wondered if it was an effort for him to remain so expressionless. She knew she could not have done it.
“Mana is like personal honor or respect, I reckon,” he said at last, “but like anything else, it becomes a bit watered-down in the translation. But don’t look to me for an expert in things Maori. I’m only a quarter and never been to a marae. There’s Pakehas without of bit of Maori in their families who can tell you a lot more about it than me. Kids can learn the language in school, now. I’m not actually sure how much my dad knows of it. Bugger, he kept a lot to himself. Not that he was raised in the Maori way, either, exactly. Even if he was, it’s not like him to share. He lived by his own example of honor, and if you were too stupid to get it, to hell with you.”
“Your father was only part Maori.”
“And English. And my mum was everything else.”
“My father was Polish. That is to say, he was really a New Englander. Or really an American, I suppose, but I never met an American who wasn’t something else instead. Sometimes, I don’t think he knew what he was. Anyway, he refused to teach us Polish, even though he spoke it at home with his parents when he was a child. He didn’t want it spoken in his house. Sometimes he’d break down and say a few sentences in Polish when he was talking quietly with his mother, but that was just a way to show her affection without actually doing it.”
“He kept things to himself, too, did he?”
“Only because he couldn’t get them out. Maybe it was that way with your father. Did you think he ever felt like he was a victim of prejudice in his younger days?”
“I reckon, but his form of protection was to deny it ever happened. To admit it would have been an embarrassment. He practically denied he was at all Maori.”
“Why, do you think? I understood that kind of typical colonial prejudice by the whites was not as bad here.”
He smiled, a knowing, self superior smile that charmed as much as it insulted her.
“Compared to what? The Australian aborigines? The American slaves? South Africa? No, of course not. Enzed’s got a much better reputation for fairness, and deservedly so. Still, this isn’t truly a classless society and was never intended to be. The Europeans were usurpers, and they usurped, full stop. Today, people still fall through the cracks. Never mind whatever egalitarian tripe you might have read in your tourist brochure. Did it mention that people can actually be burgled, raped or murdered in New Zealand, too? Or did it just say how friendly we are, how we walk behind our sheep on the side of the highway and wave to tourists?”
She considered him out of the corner of her eye, still half-diverted watching the waving tufts of grass.
“You’ve thought about your father, and all of this for some time now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t expect a lecture on egalitarianism. Or New Zealand’s self image.”
His eyes flickered with a flash of discomfort, he lowered his eyes, and poured the water into the radiator.
“I didn’t actually mean that he was ashamed of being Maori. I don’t really know how much prejudice was a factor in his life. What I mean is, he just did his own thing, and never included anybody else in it. Including Mum and me. Whereas the Maori way is a more family and community-oriented way of going about things, and Dad was bloke who didn’t look for company.”
“Neither do you?”
He ruffled, having been put on the spot, but put on a gesture of good will and patience by actually giving her an answer.
“Living up to my dad’s standards was hard enough. Trying to live up to the iwi might have been a bit beyond my limited abilities.”
She had more questions, but checked herself.
“My old dad could be a fool, sometimes,” he said.
“Well, there’s assholes, and then there’s assholes, relatively speaking.”
“Arseholes.”
“Not you, too?” She looked disappointed. “All right, arseholes. My father, God rest his soul, was one such arsehole, or he could be at times. Gruff usually to the point of being nasty. Never spent much time with us kids, I think he felt that working hard at a factory job he didn’t like to support us was enough and his responsibilities ended there. He went to school functions only with the greatest reluctance and never even bothered to feign interest. However, he taught me a lot about this particular subject.”
“What, prejudice?”
“Oh yeah. He became my shining beacon of integrity, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that.”
“How did he manage that?”
“He was never bigoted. Never.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my beloved grandfather, to my surprise and shock, was,” Rose said, reaching for the leftover peach he offered her. As she took it from him, their fingers touched. She glanced into his eyes for response, but kept talking.
“I loved my grandpa, God rest his soul. He was everything my Dad was not: Kind, gentle, talkative. Always interested in everything I did, always encouraging. He was a lovely, lovely man. The kind of guy who would lie on the floor with you and play your games, and give voices to your stuffed animals. But—and here’s the big but—a he was a bigot. I began to pick up on this when I spoke of friends or teachers at school who were not white. Or Catholic. He would get stiff and change the subject, once he actually made some remark, I forget how he put it now, that such and such people, blacks, Jews, Puerto Ricans, whoever he happened to be talking about at the time—it was all the same to him—were not as good as we were and we should avoid them and ridicule them from a safe distance. Bask in the comfort of our own self-superiority. That was the upshot. I was too shocked to say anything for a minute, and then I said,
“I think God thinks we’re all the same.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. I don’t think he wanted to get into with me, but I don’t know why, since he was forever clashing with my dad about everything, including race issues. They seemed to almost enjoy fighting.”
“Father and son,” he said, his brow furrowing. “I’ve played that game.”
“My dad had a friend from work who was black, and they hung out together sometimes. Went bowling a lot. Fishing sometimes. When Mr. Hale came over to the house, Dziadzu would hide up in his apartment and not come down. He wouldn’t even suffer to be introduced. I think he thought my dad invited Mr. Hale over to stick it to him, and now I’m wondering if he did.”
“Using Mr. Hale?”
“Maybe. It was hard to tell with my dad sometimes.” She began to laugh. “My Polish grandmother, though, was fascinated by Mr. Hale. She always found an excuse to leave her kitchen and come down to backyard where Mr. Hale and my father were drinking beer and berating the Red Sox. She’d pretend to be going to pick beans or something in the garden and suddenly notice him there, so she could wave to him or shake his hand. I think she was dying to have him up to her kitchen to feed him golumbki, but my grandfather was sulking up there.”
“Red socks?”
“Baseball team. Boston Red Sox.”
“Ah. Now, gah-wump-ki. Is that what you said?”
“Stuffed cabbage.” She shaped an imaginary one with her hands. “But deep down, I don’t think he’d really stoop to using Mr. Hale just to irritate his father. My dad had a belligerent way of doing what he felt like doing without regard to anybody else’s feelings, but he had integrity. A code of honor all his own. Maybe something like your father. Sometimes, what he belligerently felt like doing actually was right. Like the issue of Mr. Gazoo.”
“Another friend of dad’s?”
“Sort of. Mr. Gazoo was not a person, he was a lawn figurine. We had a neighbor who was a complete asshole...arsehole. The king of them. It turned out that one of his many unpleasant qualities also happened to be prejudice. The house next door to us was up for sale one summer, and our arsehole neighbor, Mr. Murphy, seemed to develop this fixation on prospective buyers of this house. He was afraid that a black couple might buy it, and I guess ruin the fabric of our white bread street. I’m sure he was not too crazy about my grandparents, either, or my mom because they were all foreigners, but at least they were white, and Mom even spoke English, far better than he did, I might add. Even if she did have a habit of calling pancakes ‘pikelets.’”
Trevor John smiled.
“So, Murphy put a little plan into action which he felt would prevent the likelihood of blacks buying the vacant house. He bought one of those lawn statues of a jockey figure, and this one was painted with a black face. To his way of thinking, this tacky bit of suburban kitsch was like firing a warning shot over the bow of any middle class black couple wanting to live across the street from an arsehole like him. Humiliate them before they move in, so they know where they stand, that was his thinking. My dad hated it, only because he knew what Murphy was up to.”
“What did he do?”
“He went over in the middle of the night and painted the jockey’s face green. Made him look like a Martian. So we called him ‘Gazoo’ like the little Martian character on The Flintstones. Murphy was furious. He called the cops. Demanded to know who did this destruction of his property. My dad went out to mow the lawn, wearing a halo over his head, while the cops were taking info from Murphy in the street. The cops thought Murphy was an arsehole, too, but they kept a straight face about it until he went into the house and they got back in their car.”
“Did he take the statue away, now that it was spoilt?”
“Not at first. He actually, arsehole that he was, took great pains and a can of turpentine to remove the paint. Then he put the statue back. Of course, most of the black paint came off as well as the green, so he had to buy some black paint to cover the horrid sickly blotchiness of the poor little guy’s face. The first night he put Gazoo back out, someone sneaked over in the middle of the night and painted his face green again. It was my dad.”
“How do you know?”
“The next day he asked my mother what color she had wanted the window box planters painted, and wanted to know if green would be all right with her, since there happened to be a leftover can of green paint in the cellar, and he might as well use it up. My mom smiled at him and said green would do. She knew. I think that was one of few moments I can recall that I actually caught them loving one another. I do treasure that.”
Rose became quiet, lost in her memory and Trevor John left her there for a moment. His eye wandered across distant kowhai trees that had already turned from yellow to spring green. He was sorry she had missed them at their height of color. He wanted her to see how beautiful they could be instead of just having to take him at his word.
***
They drove a little further on, but eventually the car rebelled again. The Falcon had seen better days. Trevor John closed the hood thoughtfully, respectfully under the circumstances, and looked out at the flat, thin line of pink and purple clouds still glowing on the horizon in the wake of the sunset. Twilight had been upon them for some time, and they each knew it and that there would be consequences. It would be very dark soon. He shot a glance at Rose, who expectantly and less respectfully leaned against the tired old car.
“Well, Rose, this had best wait for tomorrow. Not far from Burke Pass. Shall we see if we can find a bed for the night? We can ring Sue and Ed.”
“I didn’t notice any motels on this stretch, or any towns large enough for one.”
“No fear. We’re going to be house guests,” he said, and led the way.
“Of who?”
“Whoever.”
There was no traffic on the road so there seemed to be no opportunity for hitchhiking. Rose was glad to see that Trevor John’s instincts had led them to a small farm. A somewhat sagging house with a corrugated tin roof lay snug behind a rise.
“I suppose we could have just slept out in the open,” she said, as he knocked on the door.
“Not if you don’t like keas picking you apart with their beaks, or mozzies so thick you could wear them as a coat. Sleeping in the car would have been no better, with that window gone.”
A woman answered the door. She peered at them in a manner that Rose wondered was irritation, curiosity, suspicion, or just a bad case of near-sightedness. The woman opened the door and motioned for them to enter.
“Tim!” she shouted, and did actually wipe a pair of spectacles in her hands, and placed them on her nose.
“Gidday,” Trevor John said, “I’ve got a car that’s gone crook back there. I need to ring my boss, please?”
She nodded briskly and pointed toward the kitchen. “Tim” entered, newspaper in hand.
“He needs to ring, Tim, his car’s dead.”
“She’s not dead, she’s just crook!”
“S’truth,” Tim said, “There’s a lot of life if them if you’re a man who knows what he’s about. My ute’s twenty-year.”
“Oh Tim, stop with your ute,” the woman said, and turned to Rose, “men and their utes. Come have some tea, then.”
“Hahdy’ya do?” Rose said, offering her hand, “I’m Rose Chleb.”
“Chleb?” the woman looked at her curiously, failing to bring up the required phlegm, “what kind of name is that, then?” she asked seemingly with more concern than curiosity.
“Uh, it’s Polish. I’m from the us”
“Are you really?” the woman said, brightening, “Tim, did you hear, she’s from the us of A.”
“I’m standing right here, Evelyn.”
“Well, you must sit down here.” She pulled Rose to the kitchen and gestured to the plastic chairs around the blue-green Formica table. Tim followed and sat across from her, folding his hands over his newspaper and smiling at her as if they were both job applicants waiting their turn to be interviewed. Trevor John spoke to Sue on the phone. She tried to overhear, but Evelyn kept chattering.
“Are you on holiday? How do you like New Zealand, then?” She put the kettle on and began to pull already baked scones out of the freezer and pop them to warm in the oven.
“Very, very much,” Rose said, without hesitation and what she hoped was acceptable enthusiasm, “I’ve always wanted to see your beautiful country, and I’m visiting some cousins.”
“You have cousins here, do you?”
“Yes, my mother grew up in New Zealand.”
“Your mother!” Evelyn was pleased. “Where was she from, then?”
“The North Island, around Auckland.”
“Auckland. City girl. Did you hear that, Tim?”
“I’m sitting right here, Evelyn.”
“Well, we’ve never been to Auckland, but we have gone as far north as Wellie,” she said, and began to assign them teacups, bread plates, and teaspoons.
“One cousin still lives up there, but another cousin lives down here on a farm. Trevor John and I were just moving some sheep. We expected to be back before dark.”
“Stupid cars. A terrible nuisance,” she clucked.
“They’re not terrible,” Tim objected, “my own ute’s twenty-year.”
“You and your ute.” Evelyn said, and caught Rose’s eye, patting her shoulder as if it was a clever punch line. Rose grinned affably. She devoured two scones before Trevor John joined them.
“All right at home?” Rose asked.
Trevor John took his cup from Evelyn and smiled his thanks at her.
“I told Sue we’d be back by tomorrow noon, surely.”
“Right, then, you’ll need to stay, won’t you?” Evelyn said, thumping her fists lightly down on the table as if to get down to business.
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
Evelyn waved him away as if he had said something insulting.
“I’ve just got to pull out the bed from the sofa. Tim, you help me with that.”
“We’ve had that sofa bed thirty-five year.”
They were both out of the room in search of sheets and blankets and pillows before Rose could swallow the last scone.
“This is awfully nice of them,” Rose whispered to Trevor John, leaning over the teapot, “they don’t even know us. We could be ax murderers.”
“Bring your ax with you?”
“No.”
“I shouldn’t think they’d have much to worry about. Not ‘til we can find us an ax somewhere.”
“They think we’re together, don’t they?”
“We are together.” He drained his tea.
“No, I mean together, together. Like married or something.”
“Or something.” He grinned, “Do you mind?”
“Ordinarily, yes. Under the circumstances, no. I expect you to be a gentleman, Sir.”
“Don’t I look like a gentleman?”
“How do I know that lemon junk heap of yours really died? Maybe this is an intricate plot to have your way with me.”
“It hasn’t died,” he barked, “It’s just a bit crook. I can have it running before you rub the sleep out of your eyes!”
“Of course you can,” Evelyn entered, “right then, we’ve put you in the lounge.”
***
Evelyn’s generous offer of a nightgown for Rose was declined on the basis of Rose’s being at least five sizes larger than Evelyn, but Tim gallantly offered an old rugby jersey, which she accepted. Trevor John waited calmly in bed, his hands clasped behind his head, as Rose emerged from the bathroom in her rugby jersey. She put her bundle of clothes on the end table next to the bed and took a brief glance around the living room. There were family pictures on the walls in a jumble of happy faces, one large one of a particularly stern-looking old woman. She mesmerized Rose.
“That’s Granny,” Trevor John said, “I’ve just had the entire family history and several wishes of good night. I almost thought they were going to wait to tuck you in and sing you a little song.”
“That woulda been nice.” Rose beamed, clearly as pleased with the rugby shirt as she had been with the sheep. She noticed that Trevor John was bare-chested. The blanket covered him from the waist down.
“You are wearing something, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Me undies.”
“I see.”
“You could.”
“Some other time.” she said, “Let me take this opportunity to remind you that I am as big as you are and very likely as strong as you are. Furthermore, I am wearing a rugby jumper, which clearly makes me tougher than you.”
Trevor John laughed.
“In that case, I’d better say good night,” he said, and clicked off the table lamp on his side of the bed.
Pitch blackness, with no moon and no streetlights out the windows, made Rose feel slightly claustrophobic. The bed creaked when he rolled on his side away from her. She stretched her long body out upon the hideously uncomfortable thirty-five-year-old repository for unexpected guests and would-be ax murderers, and in the sleepy echoes of her mind, began to recite the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, and then to pray for Edwin and Sue, Nora and Peter, Tristan, Trevor John, Evelyn and Tim, her sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews, for the souls of her parents and grandparents, for the peace of the world. She had time for a brief mental Act of Contrition and a general all-purpose thank You, before she fell deeply into sleep, barely winning the race by a nose.
She realized in her last moments of consciousness that she never told her ex-fiancé Chuck it was her habit to pray silently to herself like this before she went to sleep. How long would they have been married before she told him? They were not as close as they should have been, to be planning marriage, she thought. It was partly her fault, obviously. She closed her eyes, glad that she had figured something out at last.
***
She felt the dawn before she could discern it in the gray dimness of the room, and listened to the morning sounds of wakening birds. They sounded excited, happy, and Rose smiled at their giddy foolishness. Did they think it would never be morning again? She glanced at Trevor John, and could make out the mound of his back and shoulder turned to her, his legs pulled slightly up to cuddle the warmth from their blanket. The bed creaked slightly when she lifted herself on her elbows, craned over his body to look into his face. His expression was untroubled, and the minute lines around his eyes and mouth were smoothed. For no reason she could name, she suddenly felt protective of him. She would let him sleep, and gradually eased herself down again, sinking into the blanket that covered them both, and took advantage of their warmth together without taking any part of the blanket away from him. There was the temptation to put her back against his, but she decided she would not.
She drifted back to sleep again, but only for another twenty minutes. When she woke, she knew she could stay in this spot quite exquisitely comfortable for the rest of the day but would sleep no more.
She felt him shudder, then stretch, his legs cracking as he did so, with a soft sleeper’s groan, and rolled onto his back in what must have been his own ritual of waking. He began to roll onto his opposite side, and rolled into Rose. His face bumped against hers and he started, pulled back, opening his eyes with difficulty. He had forgotten she was there.
Rose smiled, watching the deepening lines of concern on his face return with his bewilderment.
“Morning,” she said in a soft, low voice. He pulled back from her and sat up, and looked around the room, at the TV, the table pushed to one side, the fold-out bed on which they were sleeping. Granny on the wall.
“That’s definite morning-after panic. You look like you just woke up in bed with a murdered hooker, which I think I’m beginning to resent. Did you forget my name, or just where you are, or both?”
He rubbed the forest of new stubble on his cheek and glanced down at her.
“You’re Rose,” he said at last, “and this must be heaven.”
“Charming, but it’s too late to flirt or make your move now that we’ve already spent the night together.”
He lowered himself to one elbow and looked at her, “It’s never too late, and you can’t blame a bloke for trying. Just as well. Granny’s looking.”
“I have a feeling Granny’s seen some sights in her day.”
“How did you sleep?”
She answered, “Very well. It was nice, sleeping with someone. I had just about come to the point of accepting I would be sleeping alone for the rest of my life, and then you ruined my resolve.”
“Why do you have to resolve to sleep alone?”
“Because I can’t sleep around, and I can’t find someone to grow old with me.”
“Are you looking for a husband?”
“No. I never did that, not like I was a mission. But I sure wouldn’t have minded finding one somewhere along the way.”
He considered her a moment, but would not lift the errant strand of blonde hair off her forehead, or tuck the sheet against her, or touch his knee to hers.
“I think it’s best to go without a partner,” he said.
“For how long?”
“For as long as you can stand it.”
“Then what?”
His smile faded. “I’m not a clever bloke, and I’m too lazy to work really hard for anything. I want you to know that.”
“Why?”
“So you’ll stop sussing me out, playing at Guess What He’s Going to Say Next.” He rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling a moment, before turning his head back to her. She was still looking at him, thoughtfully.
“Why didn’t you ever make up with your father?”
He answered promptly, “I’m afraid of the old bastard.”
“I was wondering to myself if you had a condom with you.”
He lifted his eyebrows and peered at her, trying to see her expression in the dimness of the room, or what might lay behind her expression.
“Were you?”
“Because I would really like to make love with you.”
He looked as if he did not believe her, until she began to feel sorry for sounding as if she were teasing him. His dark eyes glanced quickly around the room again, and tried to ignore Granny.
“Down-to-business sort of woman. When did you come to this matter-of-fact decision?”
“Been thinking about it for a while, now.” She was not teasing, she was quite open and guileless. “How do you feel about that? I don’t want to push you.”
He almost smirked that he would require being pushed, but stopped and only sighed instead, and looked at her with what seemed an unusual a sense of peace. Her desire for him grew more intense, but she said nothing because it was his turn to speak.
“If you’re not having me on,” he said, and drew closer to her, speaking softly, “I would like to make love to you.”
She whispered, “What makes you think I’m not serious?” She touched his face with her warm hand that had been under the covers, gently pulling him closer, and kissed him. She parted from his lips only just to whisper,
“And I don’t think you’re lazy at all. In fact, here’s your chance to prove it to me. So, do you?”
“Have a condom, yes.”
“Wait,” she sat up and pulled off the ruby shirt, “I can’t do this in Tim’s rugby jersey. He’s had this forty-year.”