The Party Line (18 page)

Nickie tied them, then picked up the knitted togs. ‘People will be able to see through these.’ She said it, although she had no plans to strip off in front of anyone.

‘See how there are two lots of knitting?’ Gabrielle replied. ‘Two layers? One under the other? Well, once you get them on, they sort of arrange themselves so that there’s no way you can see anything. Go on, put them on. You’ll see what I mean.’

Nickie pushed at the knitted triangles, trying to flatten them out against her chest. ‘I can’t wear this, it’s too big …’

‘I’ll fix it.’ Gabrielle stood behind her and pulled hard at the crocheted strings. ‘There you go.’

Nickie looked down. Her skin had turned the grey colour that undies go when they’ve been washed with the dark things. The bits of her that stuck out most, such as feet and knees and elbows, were blotchy.

‘It’s not really your colour,’ said Gabrielle.

‘Not really.’

‘But at least it matches Larry.’

‘Hmm.’

‘You’ll look comprehensive.’

Walking back out into the sunshine made Nickie squint. By the time she and Gabrielle reached Larry and Vincent, Nickie was sweating hard. The wool from the bikini annoyed her skin.

Vincent and Larry looked how Nickie felt. Both of them stood by the fence with their heads halfway to the ground, as though they were on their way to having a mouthful of grass but had forgotten what they were doing. Nickie checked Larry’s water, he hadn’t drunk any of it. Vincent’s bucket was empty, which Nickie thought was a good sign. That maybe they’d both been drinking out of the same one.

‘Where’ve you two been?’ Eugene came around from the other side of the truck. He sounded fed up. ‘You should be looking after these calves, not disappearing. You need more water,’ he said, walking away. ‘They kicked over one of the buckets.’

Mr Burgess came on the loudspeaker to welcome everyone. No one listened. It was always the same speech every year and the only thing that ever changed was the names of the judges, who had no kids at the school and were therefore impartial and also therefore not interesting to listen about.

The first competition was grooming. Everyone was giving their calves a final brush down, pulling the loose hair from under their bellies and cleaning their faces of goob. The other calves’ coats were shining, but Larry and Vincent looked worse than when they’d come off the truck. Every time Nickie took her eye off them they’d lie down in the grass. Larry’s front legs were still covered in shit from when Vincent pooed on him in the truck. Nickie grabbed the bucket and poured water over him.

‘Dis
gust
ing,’ said Gabrielle.

‘Yeah, well,’ Nickie said. ‘It’s Vincent’s fault. He did it. You can’t shit on your own front legs.’ Vincent looked away, as though he was denying it was him.

The girls clipped the calf leads onto their halters. Larry’s head fell back low again. Gabrielle put her hand in her pocket and took out two little plastic bags. She handed one to Nickie. Gabrielle cupped the open bag in the palm of her hand and held it behind her. Vincent lifted his head and nuzzled his nose into the white powder. Nickie did the same for Larry.

‘Let’s go,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Are you ready to strip off when we get there?’

‘Yes,’ Nickie lied. ‘But I think we should hold back. ’Til the leading section.’

‘Why?’ asked Gabrielle. ‘It’s so hot already.’ She blew down the front of her dress and pulled the fabric away from her stomach.

‘Because,’ Nickie said, ‘if anyone makes a fuss about it, we’ll have to get dressed again. And if we’re banned from wearing the bikinis for the
rest of the day, we’ll miss out on doing our best bit at the very end. You know … the walking like models.’ Nickie played it cool, pretending to do some last-minute brushing of Larry’s skinny ribs. ‘Also,’ she said, ‘leaving it for last will mean we’ll definitely be first in the swimming pool.’

‘Alright,’ said Gabrielle. She looked a bit annoyed. Nickie thought she might change her mind once she got to the ring. If that happened, Gabrielle’d have to be comprehensive all by herself.

‘The sugar’s not going to last long. Have you got some more, for later? For the leading?’ Nickie asked. They were going to have to cheat in the leading, although Nickie hadn’t worked out how exactly they’d hide the sugar. Larry and Vincent weren’t the sort of calves to do stuff for the joy of participation, no matter what Mr Burgess said about the spirit of the day.

‘Yep. I’ve got it all sorted out.’

They dragged the calves across the field towards the judging ring. Most of the others were already there. On one side, the Friesians were lined up, on the other, the Jerseys. Their coats looked soft and clean and perfect. Larry’s and Vincent’s did not.

‘Leave this to me,’ said Gabrielle quietly, as she took her place on the end of the row of Friesians. Nickie slipped in to the Jersey line.

The judge was the lady from Paeroa who brought the fish and chips to the school every Friday. Nickie recognised her straight away because this term she was fish and chip monitor. She’d never really taken much notice of her, but now Nickie could see that, under her big straw hat, the woman had the qualifications to be the grooming judge. She wore lots of make-up and she’d had her hair done properly at the hairdressers.

She judged the Friesians first. She stopped in front of every calf and looked at its face. Then she stepped slowly right around it, running her hand over its coat and underneath, feeling for loose hair. When she got to Gabrielle, she bent right down to eyeball Vincent.

‘Your calf’s a lot smaller than the others,’ she said. ‘Why did you choose such a small one?’

Nickie was close enough to hear everything the judge said. She
didn’t say the words
bobby calf
and Nickie thought this was a good sign. If she didn’t know about bobby calves, being a fish and chip shop owner, then she might consider Vincent’s other qualities.

‘Big’s not always the best,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Little people deserve love, too. And little underprivileged calves.’

The judge nodded and smiled and wrote something on her clipboard. She turned around and came across to the Jerseys. She started at Nickie’s end.

‘How’s Miss Fish and Chips?’ she asked, smiling, and Nickie said she was good, thanks, though being a vegetarian now she couldn’t order fish or a sausage, which was the other choice.

She bent down to look at Larry. ‘And who do we have here?’

‘This is Laurence. He’s underprivileged, like Vincent.’

Her lovely eyes with lovely green eyeshadow went to Larry’s belly, then his legs.

‘We had a bit of a last-minute disaster,’ Nickie said. ‘Involving Vincent.’

The judge smiled again. ‘Never mind.’

Neither Larry nor Vincent won a ribbon for grooming, but their big event was still to come. The girls sat in the truck. It was nearly eleven o’clock and already too hot to be outside.

The door on the driver’s side of the cab swung open and Eugene climbed in. He was wearing his town clothes, which were his second to best ones — grey trousers and a checked short-sleeved shirt. There were wet patches under his armpits.

‘How’d you get on, girls?’ He said
girls
, but he was really looking only at Nickie. He pulled his cap off and scratched his head.

‘We didn’t win,’ Nickie said. ‘But the judge was really nice.’

‘You know,’ he said, ‘you could give the next event a miss, if you wanted. You don’t have to enter everything.’

‘What is it? The next event?’ Gabrielle asked.

‘Breeding. It’s when the judges pick the calves that are the biggest and strongest. The ones that have come from the best herds. It’s a competition of pedigree.’

Nickie could see where this was going. She looked at Eugene, who
was pretending to be busy pulling cobwebs away from the corner of the windscreen. There was no hope for two bobby calves in breeding.

Gabrielle put her feet up on the dashboard. ‘I think we should enter. We should enter everything, that’s what Mr Burgess said. There’s honour in participation.’

The cobwebs were stuck to Eugene’s fingers. He tried to scrape them off.

‘Well yes, that’s true. Generally. But I’m just thinking of you, that’s all. The both of you.’

Nickie had a feeling that her father was also thinking about himself. About what people would say if they turned up for the breeding section with bobby calves. Every year, when the ribbons and the cups were handed out, the parents of the winners were as proud as the kids. They came into the ring and shook hands with the judges as though they had done all the hard work.

Joy appeared at the truck door. She was wearing an orange dress, too, though hers was faded and too tight across her stomach. Her arms had saggy bits that wobbled when she reached up to lean against the cab doorway.

‘Twins.’ Gabrielle grinned. Joy said
Humph
. Nickie could feel the fist curling in her stomach. Why did Joy make it so hard for Nickie to like her?

‘I just suggested,’ said Eugene, ‘that the girls not bother with the breeding section. Seeing as … What do you think, Joy?’

Joy pulled at her dress. Her eyes flicked towards Gabrielle’s outfit; Nickie knew she was comparing the loveliness of it to her own drab look. Her lips puckered and twitched which meant something mean was coming, and it did.

‘Forget the breeding competition,’ she said. ‘You’ll make fools of yourselves out there. You and us, too.’

The fist in Nickie’s stomach bounced. ‘Come on, Gabrielle,’ she said, nudging her with her elbow. ‘Let’s go. We can stand together, on our own. In our own division. The bobby calf section.’

This time, no nice Mrs Fish and Chip Lady. The judge was someone who actually knew about cows, Kelvin the AI man. AI stood for
Artificial Insemination. Kelvin was more halfway between a teenager and a man; Nickie thought he was about twenty. His job was to come to the farm in his truck and make the cows pregnant, the ones that didn’t get pregnant with the bull. He used tubes and a little machine with something in it. Nickie wasn’t sure how it all worked.

When Kelvin got to Nickie and Gabrielle, he stepped back and shook his head. His eyebrows turned into one black caterpillar under the brim of his hat. Finally he said something. ‘What have we got here?’

‘Presenting Laurence and Vincent,’ said Gabrielle. She was tucking her hair back behind her ears with one hand, and pulling on Vincent’s lead with the other. They were both struggling to keep the calves on their feet; you had to keep the lead tight otherwise the calf took advantage and tried to collapse for another lie down.

Kelvin was smiling at Gabrielle. Gabrielle blew at her fringe and shook her hair like the lady on the Blue Clinic shampoo ad.

‘Bobby calves. At least they should have been,’ said Kelvin. ‘What’s the story, ladies?’ He meant Lady Gabrielle. Nickie didn’t care. She could see the other kids with their big pedigree calves were getting hot and bothered and sick of waiting for the judging. This was brilliant.

‘The story is this,’ said Gabrielle. ‘You’ve got your Jersey breed over there, and your Friesians over that side. And this year, there’s a third category, which is rescued bobby calves. That’s us.’

Kelvin smiled a little bit, then the smile turned into a big chuckle. Nickie thought it was a
Good on you
type of laugh, but she saw Gabrielle’s face change, her charming look dissolve.

‘Kelvin, you’re a man,’ Nickie said.

Kelvin turned his attention to Nickie for the first time. He slipped his sunglasses down his nose and had a good look at her.

‘Nickie Walker. Eugene’s my dad. 12943 on Potter Road.’

His face lit up. Nickie remembered Eugene saying that Kelvin Harper was not much good with names, but he could recite the AI number of every farm in Fenward.

‘You’re a man, which means you were once a boy,’ Nickie carried on. ‘Imagine if you were born a calf. A boy calf. Just because of that, you’d be thrown on the bobby calf truck. You’d be a sacrifice.’

‘So?’ Kelvin wasn’t following the logic after all.

Gabrielle stepped in again. ‘Kelvin,’ she purred. ‘Think of it this way. We are the protest category. We are protesting against the killing of newborn calves, just because they’re boys. Or sick and weak.’

Kelvin nodded slowly and Gabrielle beamed at him. It wouldn’t have mattered what she’d said, or what animal had been on the end of her lead. Kelvin was all hers.

‘Hey, Kelvin,’ someone shouted. It was the father of one of the other boys in the ring. The man was standing behind his son with his arms crossed. ‘Any chance of you coming over and judging the proper entries in this competition?’ The man started pacing along the edge of the judging ring. ‘It’s too bloody hot to be standing here much longer.’

‘Shit,’ muttered Kelvin. He gave the girls one last grin, then went to look at the other calves.

Larry and Vincent sank to the ground. Gabrielle fished more sugar for them out of her pockets. She said glucose was important in fighting dehydration. The girls sat down with the calves. Nickie closed her eyes and thought about the cool water in the swimming pool.

Gabrielle nudged her. ‘Stand up,’ she said. Kelvin was back, and six other calves and their owners had crossed over to join them. Three of them were Jerseys and three Friesians.

Kelvin awarded first, second and third places to the Friesians. They were all huge calves and he said they had great breeding potential. He did the same to the Jerseys, this time mentioning milk production. There were two ribbons left in his hand when he got to the end of the line, to Nickie and Gabrielle.

‘First place in the protest section goes to Nickie Walker,’ he announced. ‘And a very close second to …’

‘Gabrielle. My name is Gabrielle Baxter,’ said Gabrielle softly.

‘Gabrielle Baxter,’ shouted Kelvin. His chest was puffed out and his shoulders back and he looked as though he had awarded a ribbon to himself. ‘It would have been first equal, but poor Vincent here’s got a dose of the scours.’

Kelvin left the ring. Straight away, some of the parents came over.
They didn’t look happy, pointing and shaking their heads. Kelvin held his hand up to them; Nickie guessed he was reminding them that the judge’s decision was final and no further discussion would be entered into.