EIGHT

Enough. Enough. Who does Rose know who's the right age to be George's mother? Anyone up to forty-five she supposes. Has to be someone who comes into the shop. But why would a customer, someone who only knows her from buying or exchanging second-hand books from her shop, leave a baby with her? Doesn't make sense. For all anyone who comes into the shop knows about her, she could be a complete psycho. She knows a bit about books, can talk about them or keep her mouth shut, whatever the customer wants. She can keep her temper, even with smart mouths. 'I see you've got a feminist section,' he says, obviously thinking he's very clever, very original, 'so I wondered where the menist section was.' And he pauses, waiting for applause from the other two male customers in the shop. They are Carlos Stubbs, who loves The Book Stops Here and is always keen to work when Rose needs someone, and Leo Phillips, Olga's son, on holiday from medical school. The joker doesn't get much change from them. Carlos and Leo smile at each other behind his back. Rose will deal with this idiot.

'There,' Rose says, smiling full-on at the bugger, 'there are the sections you want. Sir.' She points to the sports, westerns, and poetry sections. The man snorts but decides not to persist.

Ninety percent of the poetry Rose sells is bought by men, just as ninety percent of the fiction she sells is bought by women. Which says something about gender differences. Rose doesn't know exactly what. That men like poetry? Enjoy density? Like a cut-to-the-chase read? Want to impress someone? That women like stories? Can't handle reality? Enjoy escapism? See there are more truths in fiction than in non-fiction? But you could say the same thing about poetry, couldn't you.

Occasionally she is lucky enough to find something someone has asked her to keep an eye out for and she might talk to this customer for a few minutes, but what does that prove? The shop is open six days a week. Rose keeps it clean and inviting. Every Thursday afternoon she rearranges the front window. The week before last she had a window full of books on parenting your own kids, other people's kids, both non-fiction and fiction. It was a lively and colourful window display because she borrowed some children's clothes from the department store in the mall and pegged them to a line across the back of the window. She received lots of approving comments about that window but really, was that enough for someone to feel she was trustworthy enough to look after their baby? This Thursday for instance it had been a window of books on pets. Didn't mean Rose was any good with animals. Thinking of the black stray cat which she chases away every time she catches it sleeping on the pantry window sill, just the reverse actually, she thinks.

No, it must be someone she knows from somewhere else. Who does she know who has a baby? Doesn't matter whether you know them well or not Rose, whoever's done this is obviously not in their right mind so put their names down.

Lizzie. Thin Lizzie, Claude calls her. His idea of a joke. As out of date as 'there, there'.

'She's not thin,' Rose said, 'well maybe a little bit, it's the fashion Claude, she's got Thelma's looks anyway, lucky thing.'

Jo and Wesley's Lizzie. Rose hasn't seen Lizzie since she visited her after the baby was born. And she'd only done that because of Thelma. The baby was Thelma's great-grandchild after all. Ada would have wanted her to visit. Took Lizzie the obligatory card and some miniscule bootees. She still looked beautiful, but her large dark eyes were tired and there were blue shadows under them. That was to be expected. She'd just had a baby. Now Rose thinks of it, she's not absolutely sure whether it was a boy or a girl. The small red wrinkled face was deeply asleep when she peered into the cot.

Lizzie, when young, occasionally accompanied Thelma when she popped over to see Rose, home on holiday. A bright little face if it hadn't been for the discontented expression. Thelma had shaken her head over Jo's handling of Lizzie's refusal to go to church when the girl was fourteen, maybe fifteen. A storm in a teacup anyway because, as it turned out, Lizzie was married from the Church of the Golden Light, and married into one of its founding families, what's more. Very suitable, everyone said. Lizzie looked lovely and Royston seemed a pleasant enough young man. He might look dull, but he had a nice smile. Rose is prepared to like Royston because his great-grandfather Elmore built her house. A bit tenuous, but that's how likes and dislikes happen. Rose met Royston's grandfather — Harvey, Ada's contemporary — once, but she won't think about that at the moment. She can't remember Royston's father's name. Yes, she can. He's called Elmore, after his grandfather. Shortened to Ellie. Ellie Hipp. To the right of Genghis apparently. Come on Rose. Get on with it. Farting about with who's related to whom is a sure sign you're getting old.

Betty Home's daughter. Anne. Big girl. Shy. Wore braces for years. Betty owns Calico and Cottons, next door to The Book Stops Here, and Anne used to help out after school and on Saturdays. Anne had a baby about three months ago. Didn't seem to be a father in evidence and Rose hadn't asked. Rose has seen Anne and the baby, smiled, said what a lovely baby, now she can't even remember whether it's a boy or a girl either. She doesn't really know Anne anyway. Pleasant enough in the shop, but her shyness and her unwillingness to smile because of the braces she wore made being served by her anything but a pleasure. Rose's association with Betty is different. It stems partly from them both having shops in the same area, but mainly because Betty has such a great shop. It is fatal for anyone keen on quilting, patchwork, appliqué, embroidery (any craft really) to enter Calico and Cottons, absolutely fatal. Rose has never gone into that shop without buying something. 'I bet I'm Betty's best customer,' she told Olga once. 'That's what Puti says,' Olga said, 'she says Betty doesn't sell fabric and sequins, she sells dreams.'

Surely Betty would say if Anne was in any trouble? But would she? Rose doesn't talk about her personal life to customers or other shop owners. Why would Betty?

There's Millie. Yes, Millie. Now Millie's a distinct possibility. Perhaps a bit obvious? Millie with the blue and red spikes of hair, the nose ring, and the long, long legs. Rose knows Millie from a series of encounters when Millie was squatting in the old house across the road. About a year ago. Must have been a little while after Ada's accident. After a screaming and shouting match with her boyfriend, Millie had stormed out of the flat they shared. She'd taken no money, no clothes, not even a sleeping bag. She was at odds with her parents who don't like the boyfriend so she couldn't, or wouldn't, go home. She remembered the empty houses in Little Salamander. She'd been to a party in one once. Perhaps, Rose asked tentatively, it was the same one Lizzie went to, they were about the same age. But Millie didn't think Lizzie was there. 'She was a year ahead of me,' Millie said, as though that decided it. Rose thinks she's wrong. There couldn't have been two teenage parties in the empty houses which both got out of hand and ended with police being called, could there? Olga had looked at Rose pityingly when she'd passed this thought on to her.

'We'd all just finished School C exams,' Millie said, 'thought it'd be good to have our party in an empty house. Someone called the police. But anyway I remembered. So that's why I'm here. I've just missed a period,' Millie told her, 'Mum'll kill me.' Rose found the girl's frankness astonishing, but engaging.

Millie didn't seem too worried. She asked if she could use Rose's shower and Rose felt she couldn't say no. She also gave Millie breakfast when Millie felt like eating and lent her a sleeping bag. Rose was awed by Millie's apparent unconcern about her situation. If it had been Rose, she'd have been climbing the wall.

'What's the use of worrying?' asked Millie. 'If I am pregnant it's no use, and if I'm not, there's no point.'

Rose thinks there is definitely something scary about this philosophical viewpoint but she can't, at the moment, see what it is. Now she wonders if it's because it leaves out worrying. Rose thinks she's probably addicted to worrying, that it's habitual, second nature. To leave it out of the loop is unnerving somehow. She thinks of the slaves her great-grandfather may have been involved in transporting to America. When they were told that they were now free men and women some stood rock still, unable to move, aghast as they stared into space at this unknown thing called Freedom. Slavery, being treated as less than human, was what they knew, was familiar, comforting. Freedom was too frightening, too strange. Sometimes it took two generations to change this. Even that was lightning quick compared to lots of white southern homes where new generations were imprinted from birth, it seemed to Rose, with their parents' entrenched beliefs on racial superiority.

She has heard news reports and seen the evidence of how quickly those kind of emotions can rise in the firing and desecrating of some Islamic churches in the United States and in the assaults on people thought to be Muslims, one death even. As though their outrage and panic over the terrorist attacks could be quietened by the use of fists, pipes, torches on innocent individuals, all of whom were citizens of the same country. These acts of aggression made an ugly contrast to the courage and resilience and yes, kindness, now flowing through New York City itself which she'd seen and heard about in those same news reports. Maybe you scratch some people and find courage and kindness where in others you find hatred and cowardice. All too deeply entwined ever to be separated.

That's how you and worry are, she thinks irritably, firmly entwined, you can't bloody live without it. If we're talking scary, Rose tells herself, you don't need to look any further than right here. She decides to leave it. She's got enough on her plate. Where was she. Millie.

Millie said, 'Anyway, he'll be back. He's crazy about kids. Always fooling around with his brothers, playing rugby and that. Actually he needs to grow up himself.' Millie was right. Her boyfriend turned up a couple of days later, distraught and penitent, having looked all over town for her, and she gave him another chance. Must be the sex, thinks Rose, what else can it be?

Rose saw Millie some months later, with her smiling mother, when she came into the shop to show Rose the baby. She can't remember that baby's face either, thinks it was a girl, but she's not sure. Millie had left her boyfriend again — for good this time, so she said. 'He wants me to marry him,' she said, 'can you imagine?' Millie's mother raised her eyebrows at Rose and her lips tightened, but then she relaxed them as she smiled besottedly at the baby. So Millie, minus the nose ring, plus her baby, is living with her parents, God help them. And I'm getting nowhere, thinks Rose.

Maybe she's going down the wrong path. Maybe it's not the mother who left the child on Rose's back porch disguised as a carton of tomatoes. Maybe it's the mother who has problems and someone has removed the baby from her care? And left him with Rose? Well, it could be. Stranger things have happened. In that case it could be someone older. Maybe it is someone older. Or maybe some fool wanted to leave a baby with the last person in the world a baby should be left with. To put the mother off the track. Obviously someone connected with this baby has problems. The bruises on George's arm are evidence of that. Rose feels her head buzzing unpleasantly. She is tired.

Something's up with Jo, that's for sure. It could be Lizzie. It could be anything. Maybe Wesley's having an affair. Maybe Jo is. It's true Jo and Lizzie have been at odds since the girl was fourteen — before, probably — but plenty of mothers and daughters are like that. It's not exactly new. Whichever way you look at it, for any of these women to leave their babies with Rose was too absurd to be taken seriously. Yes Rose, but it is serious because someone has. She sees the little blue arm waving. Who else does she know who could have babies?

There's Leo, Olga's son. He's safely in Dunedin isn't he? Studying to be a doctor. In his last year at med school. As far as Rose knows, he doesn't even have a steady (dated word, Rose!) girlfriend. An image of Leo, a screaming baby under his arm, struggling on and off planes from Dunedin to Wellington and then getting the shuttle to Lower Hutt, not to mention finding a tomato carton, before he drops the baby off at Rose's, makes her smile. Even supposing Leo has fathered a baby with a woman no one's ever heard of, he'd surely head straight to Olga, he wouldn't dump a baby on Rose. The whole thing is ridiculous.

She likes Leo. Last holidays he had to do some sort of survey. He dropped in for a cup of coffee and started talking about the camping weekend Olga and Rose had just had which had ended in disaster. Like Olga, Leo can't really understand why Rose hated the experience so much.

'Look Leo,' Rose said, 'just take my word for it. And that word is disaster. An absolute disaster. OK, it was my fault. Olga was so enthusiastic about the joys of sleeping in the open, the fresh air, the delights of walking through bush. Against my better judgement, I agreed. That was my big mistake. I made one condition. There must be a tent. Modern, waterproof, all the trimmings. Well there was a tent. Bright yellow and blue. It was waterproof, which was just as well because it pissed down all weekend. It was very nice sharing a sleeping bag with Olga but she trod on my mascara, my back muscles were in agony after carrying the backpack and there was no Panadol, and the dehydrated potatoes made me heave. And the rain —'

'You can't blame camping for the weather,' Leo said, trying not to laugh.

'Then,' Rose's voice was charged with indignation, 'in the middle of the second night, in the pouring rain, we were woken by a bull! The bloody thing nudged me in the back. Well I didn't know what it was at first. Then we heard this slobbery sniffle, Olga said it must be a bull, and I screamed. What did she expect? She said they must have heard me in Auckland. Anyway, it frightened the bull and it took off — quickly followed by me. I'm just not suited to any kind of lifestyle which doesn't include showers and heated towels, Leo. Pathetic I know, but that's the way it is.'

Leo grinned, he'd heard the story of the ill-fated trip from his mother and wanted to get Rose's version. He picked up the clipboard. 'What have you done with your life,' he asked, 'in twenty-five words.' He had to do twenty of these idiotic interviews to get paid.

Rose repeated the words as a question. 'What have I done with my life?'

He nodded. 'Crazy eh?'

'Not as crazy as camping. What have I done with my life. Well, I've lived it I suppose,' Rose said finally and shrugged, 'what else is there to do?'

'I like that,' Leo said, 'I like that. Now. What do you do when there are bad times?'

'I tie a knot and move on,' Rose said after some more thought. 'Or,' she added, 'I run away.'

'What do you do when there are good times?'

'The same,' Rose said promptly, and they both laughed.

What about Malcolm? Malcolm, Lizzie's brother. A sort of carbon copy of his father minus the devotion to the Church of the Golden Light and the walk shorts. Ten years older than Lizzie (Jo had had some miscarriages in between those two), formerly the head of English at Wai-iti College, now an adviser on education working at Parliament. He lives with a woman who makes cushions. Beautiful, lush creations which cost a fortune. And good luck to her, thinks Rose. There's a lot more to a good cushion than people think. What was her name? Something Irish. Finola. A little older than Malcolm, family on the West Coast. Into permaculture and organic gardening apparently. Must have to wear gloves if she wants to keep her hands smooth for the cushions. Odd partnership really, but you never know about other people. Finola. Always reminds Rose of that man. Fintan Tuohy. Changed his name to Fintan Patrick Walsh. The Black Prince, people called him. He worked from the shadows, a bit like Iago. Ada hated him. Rose never quite knew why. She had an idea he'd made a pass at Ada.

Maybe Malcolm and Finola had had a baby. And kept it secret? Getting ludicrous, Rose. She's hardly said hello to Malcolm in a year, but has met Finola once during that time because she arrived to visit Lizzie as Rose was saying goodbye. There's no way Malcolm or Finola would leave a baby with her, even if they had one. They're practically strangers. It had been funny though, the way Finola stared at her as if she was some new plant or insect in which she was interested but wary. Maybe Finola always looks at people like that.

'Those papers Malcolm did on public policy have stood him in good stead,' Leo said to Rose. He didn't say it sarcastically but his voice was not pleasant either.

'What exactly is public policy?' Rose asked, thinking of George Orwell.

Leo said, 'Theoretically it's the process of research and the analysis that goes into formulating government policy. Practically most of it gets binned, a large part is a complete waste of time and money, and a fraction, if you're lucky, might prove to be useful.'

Rose frowned so Leo added, 'I suppose it has some merit, this advice these experts hand out. Very Yes Minister though. What Finola sees in Malcolm I'll never know.' Oh ho, thought Rose, like that is it?

'Look,' Leo said, reaching into the New Zealand non-fiction, 'this is good. This woman was a political advisor for a number of years. Read it.'

'Looking For Honey. Linnie Duggan.' Rose nodded. 'OK.'

'It's good,' repeated Leo, 'but depressing.'

The life of a political advisor sounded much like her mother's life. Always beating your head against the proverbial brick wall, lots of telephone conversations, meetings, interruptions, disappointments, and even when there was a success it was always partial. Nobody ever told the truth although they didn't tell outright lies either. They couldn't afford to tell the entire truth because it would be manipulated by a journalist or an opposition politician, couldn't just say we're just having a look at this, because 'this' would then be presented as an established fact, and all hell would break loose. And if you wrote a memo about it, and it got 'leaked' to the media, all hell did break loose. You had to keep in sweet with all sections. Linnie Duggan reckoned everyone, of whatever political hue, was united in their dislike of unionists. Tory politicians think they're devils incarnate and socialist politicians see them as loose cannons who will lose them votes.

Rose liked Leo. He was easy to have around. Content to sit on a chair and read. Another serendipitous browser who said he got no time for this in Dunedin. 'This is my holiday,' he said. Although he and Olga didn't agree on everything they had an easygoing relationship which Rose thinks reflected well on Olga. Although there were always undercurrents. Just as there were between herself and Ada. We were too much alike, thought Rose, my mother and I. Both one-eyed, dogmatic, argumentative. Rose had long ago forgiven Ada the months of hard drinking after Sim died, but not the legacy of uncontrollable anxiety when she was in the company of anyone who'd had more than three drinks, her fear of their unpredictable behaviour. And she was not sure she'd ever lost the shock she got, the incredulity she felt, when she discovered that her mother was sleeping with Peter Pearl. Claude said he'd seen it coming a mile away and Rose should have too. 'You go round with your eyes shut?' grumped Claude.

Olga's theory was that Rose was, naturally enough, jealous of Peter's place in her mother's life. 'You were thirteen. Your father had died in, well, strange circumstances; you and your mother were very close, then this odd little man comes along and pushes you out of your place in the nest,' Olga postulated. 'Only human nature that you resented it, and him. Just like you've never liked Elena. Simply because Claude married her, not because there's anything inherently unlikeable about the woman.'

Rose laughed. 'Thank you Sigmund,' she said. 'You may well be right. Peter was certainly different to my father. You couldn't have got more opposite personalities. Sim was so outgoing and Peter Paul Pearl has to be the shyest adult man I've ever met. For a stranger to get a word out of him was like pulling a tooth.'

'Perhaps Ada had had enough of gregariousness.'

'As for Elena, I know she's going through hell, but in a way it's her own call. She could take more pain relief.'

'She hates the effects of them. Says she only feels half-alive.'

Rose knew that feeling only too well. They'd prescribed Tamoxifen for her after the operation but she'd hated it. Other women, she knew, either had no choice or felt no effects, but she did, so she stopped taking the tablets. She knew how Elena felt. She remembered Claude announcing he and Elena were getting married and her angry disappointment that it wasn't Ada and Claude, her panic when a few weeks later Elena asked her to be a bridesmaid. She'd said yes, of course, what else could she say? She wouldn't have hurt Claude's feelings for the world, let alone risked Ada's indignation and annoyance. Rose would never have heard the end of it. Fortunately Elena was as difficult as it was possible for any bride to be. She changed her mind on colours about six times, then when she'd settled on pink, which had been her first choice anyway, she took another week to choose between chiffon or taffeta. Rose had fancied something plain and stylish, but Elena wanted and got gathers, flounces, rosebuds and large droopy picture hats as they were called. 'I only intend to be married once,' she said, 'might as well make the most of it.' She loved Claude, there was no doubt about that and even Rose had to admit, but only to herself, that he looked happy enough. Elena wore white and had a long flowing veil. She looked like Margaret Lockwood in a B-grade movie. Totally unsuitable, Rose thought, for an older woman.

'God, I was such a judgemental little bitch,' Rose reminisced to Olga.

'Most of us are,' Olga said, 'at that age. It's all so simple and straightforward then. If everyone behaved and thought just like us then everything in the world would be all right.'

In all the wedding photos Rose was frowning or blinking. 'It was those shoes,' she told Ada when she asked crossly if it would have hurt Rose to smile. 'Elena insisted on those awful high-heeled sandals which were not only impossible to walk in but dangerous. I felt like an idiot child dressed up for a costume drama.'

Rose's injured tone made Ada's face clear and a slight grin appeared. 'Elena's not the only drama queen round here,' she said, 'and for God's sake don't add to it by whining.'

Rose must have looked mutinous because Ada said, 'Well I think Elena looked wonderful,' then she added, 'get over it Rose. You can't have things happen just because you want them to.'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Oh for God's sake grow up,' snapped Ada, then she sighed and tried again. 'There are some things you can't change. The sooner you see that and accept it, the happier you'll be.'

Rose didn't stalk away, you didn't do that to Ada, she had to satisfy herself with maintaining a cold silence. It was all her mother's fault anyway. Anyone could see Claude was worth a million Peter Paul Pearls. You only had to look at their names for a start. What sort of a man was called Peter Paul Pearl?

Elena's condition was very hard on Claude. To see someone you love being tortured by that horrible disease must be awful. Even so the uneasiness still between her and Elena was not all Rose's doing. Elena was often cool when they met, was given to snide remarks about Rose's clothes. 'Another new outfit?' she marvelled, or, 'wish I could afford that fabric.'

'She's probably just nervous,' Olga said.

'Nervous!' scoffed Rose, 'what's she got to be nervous about? Oh no, I know what it is. From the first time we met she thought I was a spoilt little madam, and she still does. She and Claude have been married for yonks, twenty-eight years, something like that, and I never go to Claude and Elena's without an invitation. So it's not just me.'

'What about Claude?'

'He wants to keep on side with the both of us so he ignores it.'

'I tried that,' Olga told her. 'Doesn't work. Apart from Leo my marriage was a mistake. A big one. Not just for me. We knew it and I think we'd have done something about it when Leo was older. We were meant to be friends, nothing else.' She laughed. 'No mistaking whose son he is though.' Leo, named after his father, had inherited his dad's dark copper hair. 'Tūhoe,' Olga said.

Go away, Rose tells Olga in her head. She puts her hand to her mouth, remembers kissing Olga, feels her really close. 'Go away,' she says out loud, 'go away.'

She has to go to bed. Some sleep might do it. If she starts thinking every woman who comes into the shop is George's mother she'll be here all night. She gets up and peers at George. Should he be sleeping this long? Don't be silly Rose, apart from shitting and crying this is what babies do. She shakes her head. When you think about it, the responsibility is huge. Who could have put him on her porch?

Well she knows one regular it couldn't be. Too old for one thing. Mrs Connor, at least eighty, was a Mills & Boon fan. She exchanged fourteen Mills & Boons every week. Her memory was failing a bit so as long as she didn't do it too close to the last time she read them, she happily accepted books she'd read at least six times before. Her husband read Westerns, non-stop by the look of things because he exchanged twenty every time they came in. There was nothing wrong with his memory. He just enjoyed reading the same books. 'Doesn't like surprises,' his wife said, indulgently. They lived in what was once a state house and still found time to grow their own vegetables and keep a couple of chooks for the eggs. For a treat they would listen to the National Radio Listeners' Requests on a Saturday night. They enjoyed hearing the old songs. 'And it's not unknown for us to get up and have a dance,' Mrs Connor confided. Rose imagines them sitting one each side of their fireplace, both reading and listening to the radio, one occasionally catching a glance from the other, smiling and saying, 'Shall we?' Both of them rode bicycles still, their only concession to modernity, crash helmets. They rode in single file — he went first of course. 'Likes to think he's the boss,' Mrs Connor said, in the same indulgent tone, 'and I think, well, he's getting on, why not?'

Go to bed. Go to bed Rose. Leave it to the Skeleton Woman. The only trouble with that, Rose thinks, is that she takes her time. I don't want to be greeting George's mother when I'm in the middle of hosting his twenty-first. Shit, thinks Rose, I'll be over seventy. If the cancer doesn't come back. Come on, she says to the Skeleton Woman, come on, get a move on.