The Party Line (19 page)

Everyone left the ring one by one. Julie, who’d been glaring at Nickie, waited off to the side for her.

‘You guys don’t deserve those ribbons,’ she said. She was pretending to pull a biddybid off her calf’s coat.

‘Why not?’

‘There’s no
protest
section in Calf Club.’

‘So? New sections can come along. There’s no rule against it.’

‘Well, there should be. It should be in the rules that some new kid can’t just come along and make up new sections and then flirt with the AI guy to get ribbons.’

‘It wasn’t just her idea,’ Nickie said. ‘It was both of ours.’

‘If you say so,’ said Julie.

‘I do say so.’

‘Sew your pants up.’ With that stupid comment, she gave her calf a tug and they walked off. She went a few steps, then turned around towards Nickie again.

‘Gabrielle Baxter’s trouble. She’s got a Reputation. That’s what all the parents say.’

At two o’clock it was so hot that the little kids had stopped running around everywhere and gone to sleep in the shade of the trees. Gabrielle and Nickie went to look at the inside competitions. Wherever they went, no one talked to them.

The final competition, leading. They’d worked out a way to make Larry and Vincent walk: simple in the end, just a matter of coating sugar on their thumbs then holding them so that the smell of the sugar was always just in front of the calves’ noses. If they didn’t let them lick, the sugar would last long enough for the competition. Nickie and Gabrielle headed for the ring. Nickie waited for someone to notice the sugar and shout
Cheats!

The whispering started like a little whirlwind. Jason and Erin and
Julie whispered and stared at Larry and Vincent, looked back over their shoulders at their mothers and fathers. Then the parents were talking softly to each other and all of them looking and the whispers were saying
Bobby calves
and
Pathetic
and
Eugene and Joy what were they thinking
and no one was mentioning Ian Baxter, maybe because he was just a sharemilker and not even there or maybe because of what Gabrielle was doing.

She was as tall and straight as the flagpole and, even though the judge hadn’t even arrived yet, she led Vincent to the centre of the ring, to the place where only prize winners stand. That’s what everyone was whispering about, the
cheek
of that Baxter kid. Then the whispering stopped, there was just the staring, the staring of everyone; the kids and their mothers and fathers and even the calves were staring at Gabrielle Baxter and Vincent.

Nickie imagined, for a strange second, that she was a sparrow flying overhead, looking down at the glorious sparkling brown-skinned Gabrielle Baxter in her bright orange dress in the middle of the Calf Club Day judging ring in the middle of the school field in the middle of Fenward in the middle of the Hauraki Plains in the middle of the North Island. Nickie got a sudden sick feeling that whatever happened next would be bad for everyone.

Gabrielle dropped Vincent’s lead on the ground and stretched both her arms out from her sides, the palms of her hands facing upwards. She turned slowly on the spot. Vincent moved with her, his nose following the sugar. When Gabrielle got back to where she started, she dropped her arms. All this felt like it was happening in slow motion, but really, it was over in a flash. She reached behind her and pulled down the zip on her dress. It fell to the ground around her feet. Gabrielle picked it up and draped it over her free arm. As though it was a towel and she was off to the beach. She picked up Vincent’s lead and, finally, did the pose they had practised so many times in the calf pen at home. One hand on her hip, the other resting on Vincent’s neck.

She looked at Nickie. ‘Come on. Bring Laurence. You’ve got to, for us to get the comprehensive effect.’ There was no shyness in her voice; it was chirpy-bird singsong.

Nickie’s eyes hopscotched across the faces — mouths open like the clowns in the sideshow at the A and P Show, heads turning slowly left to right, checking with each other to see if they were really seeing what they were seeing. Down that line, then back again but behind it, mother after father after mother and there she was.
Come on, Mum. Stop me. Please.
But Joy stared as though Nickie was a stranger.

There was no noise, but there was something else. A magnet made of Gabrielle. As Nickie was pulled towards her, she waited for the tugging at her back, the pull of another magnet who was her mother, who any second now would call out, forbid her to take her clothes off and stand in the middle of the judging ring in a skimpy knitted bikini belonging to dead Bridie Baxter.

Nickie understood that Gabrielle couldn’t see the beginning of what happened next because he came from behind her. A white coat and a straw hat, the sort that men wear to bowls on Sunday, and gumboots. The judge nudged his way through the people on the other side of the ring — the people getting the back view of Gabrielle’s holistic performance — and he stepped over the baling-twine fence. His head was down, he was making sure he didn’t trip.

Gabrielle turned around. The judge lifted his head and stopped. He had a clipboard in his hand and it dangled at his side, his pen swinging off it on a thin blue ribbon. The judge was Mr Gilbert.

He took off his hat. His forehead was shiny with sweat. He ran the back of his hand across his eyes, then put the hat back on. His eyes travelled from the top to the bottom of Gabrielle. Nickie was close enough behind her to see that he was being a judge. But not a calf judge, a girl judge. He was taking his time to look over the pedigree and grooming of Gabrielle Baxter.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked. He lifted his clipboard and read the paper on it.

Gabrielle grinned at him. Nickie’s heart skipped another beat and the sick feeling grew to a dangerous puke level.

‘You know who I am, Mr Gilbert,’ she said, laughing. ‘Gabrielle. Ian’s daughter.’

Mr Gilbert looked up at her again, but this time his look didn’t
drift away from her eyes. ‘Put your clothes on,’ he said. ‘Get dressed and leave the ring.’

‘Why?’

‘This is not a beauty contest. You’re making a fool of yourself. And your father. Put that dress on right now and get out.’

Gabrielle’s dress was still over her arm. Nickie waited for her to put it on. There were no human sounds, just birds chirping and calves chewing on the long grass. There was a gurgle and a splosh as one of them pooed. Somewhere further away, a lamb bleated. A lamb, or maybe a goat.

‘Show me,’ said Gabrielle. She spoke louder than before and Nickie knew Gabrielle was making sure everyone could hear her.

Mr Gilbert was tapping his pen on his clipboard. His legs were apart and his stare was on Gabrielle. What he was doing was looking at Gabrielle again: up and down, up and down.

‘Show you what, Gabrielle?’ He said it slowly; it was coming not from his mouth but from somewhere deep inside him. Like a dog lying low, getting ready to attack something little and hopeless. ‘What is it you want to see?’

‘The rules,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Show me where it says you have to wear certain clothes on Calf Club Day. Where it says that togs are banned.’

Mr Gilbert read his clipboard again, as though he knew it was written somewhere. Gabrielle giggled and looked around at everyone watching. Her eyes were wide and she was laughing and rearranging her pose. Nickie took another sneak look at the crowd and it was as though they were all watching something amazing on the telly, for example the episode of
Coronation Street
from just a while ago when the viaduct collapsed and everyone had to wait and see whether David Barlow would get Ena Sharples out alive.

Mr Gilbert’s hands were shaking, he was having trouble holding the clipboard steady. He had something to say to Gabrielle that he didn’t want anyone else to hear. He stepped towards her, coming so close that Nickie wondered whether one of those gnarly, shaky hands was going to reach out and touch Gabrielle’s brown skin.

‘Get dressed, you little slut.’

Only two people heard it. Gabrielle and Nickie. Mr Gilbert walked back towards the crowd, in the direction he’d come from.

‘Hey, Mr Gilbert,’ Gabrielle said. Not said, shouted. ‘Could you please come back for a minute?’

Mr Gilbert’s steps slowed down, but they didn’t stop and he didn’t look back.

‘Hey, Mr Gilbert,’ Gabrielle called out again, louder this time. ‘Please?’

There was something in her voice that made him turn around. Then she was marching towards him, in her little black bikini, the orange dress thrown on the ground beside Vincent. She went right up to him before she spoke, but her words were loud enough for everyone to hear.

‘Have you bashed up Mrs Gilbert today, Mr Gilbert?’ Soft as butter, but clear and loud.
My name is Gabrielle Baxter. We’re on the Gilbert farm.

Silence. Nickie watched as Gabrielle’s gaze travelled across the faces around the ring. Gabrielle’s chin was high and her smile proud yet kind — as if she was sorry indeed to be ruining Calf Club Day but relieved to finally get everything sorted out.

Mr Gilbert pulled away from Gabrielle’s grip and climbed over the twine fence to the outside of the ring. His clipboard was tucked under his arm. Nickie held her breath, waiting for him to come back for revenge. The picture was as clear as a movie in her head. His hand swinging, crunching into Mrs Gilbert’s stomach, but it was not Mrs Gilbert’s stomach, it was Gabrielle’s tiny brown tummy and she fell to the ground and Vincent nuzzled her for more sugar, and the second punch came in hard to the side of Gabrielle’s head. And then.

That didn’t happen. None of it. He didn’t come back. He walked through the crowd of puzzled adults saying
What the hell’s going on
and he didn’t stop to talk to anyone. He went into the school and didn’t come out again.

Gabrielle picked up her dress and held it up to the sun to see if there were any wet stains on it, then she gave it a shake to get rid of the grass.

One by one, parents came through the little opening into the ring,
whispered to their kids, and quietly led them and their calves away.

Something touched Nickie’s shoulder. Her mother’s hand, resting there. For some stupid reason it made Nickie cry. A few tears then uncontrollable sobbing, the sort that makes your body shake and your breath go all rubbery.

Gabrielle moved close and put her arm around Nickie. ‘It’s okay, Nickie,’ she said. ‘It’s better now. It’s better that everyone knows. We can help Mrs Gilbert now.’

Joy took her hand away. ‘Nickie. Stop it. Pull yourself together and take your calf back to the truck.’ She gave Nickie a little push. ‘Go on,’ she said. Nickie tried unsuccessfully to pull Larry away as Joy turned to Gabrielle.

‘What’s going on, Gabrielle? What did you say to Mr Gilbert?’

Gabrielle patted Vincent and looked at Nickie. The look said
Help
but Nickie couldn’t help. She couldn’t do anything.

‘Gabrielle,’ Joy said. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

Gabrielle looked Joy straight in the eye. ‘Do you really want to know, Mrs Walker? I’ll tell you, if you like. If you’re
sure
you want to know?’

Larry’s legs had crumpled under him again, he was having another rest. Nickie crouched down beside him. She could feel the heaviness of the air between them, words hovering above, inside fat black thought bubbles. Nickie knew the bubbles wouldn’t pop; the thoughts would stay right where they were, unspoken. Her mother must have guessed what Gabrielle had said to Mr Gilbert — not the exact words, maybe, but she knew what it was about. If she wasn’t kind enough to help Nickie cope, she was never going to talk about it with Gabrielle.

If you’re sure you want to know?
Nickie didn’t need to look back over her shoulder to know that Gabrielle would be standing tall, looking good, staring Joy down with a smile. Daring Joy to say
Yes, tell me. Tell me, so I can help.

People had started coming back to the judging ring. Mums and dads dawdling their way across the field, their arms crossed, bodies hunched slightly forward, giving away their hunger for gossip. They slipped in beside each other for a quiet little talk as they got closer.
Bits of the conversations reached Nickie.
What did she say? I’m sure I heard bashing … His sharemilker’s daughter …

Whispers and murmurs, all muddled, like when Nickie spun the dial on the wireless and the needle whizzed from the 300s right up to over 1200 and voices from all the stations from all over the world came in and faded out as she left them behind. Clockwise, ’til the dial wouldn’t go any further and she knew she’d hit Outer Space, where the black came down upon her.

She passes the college on the left and crosses the black metal bridge over the river and looks to the right, and the big Lemon & Paeroa bottle has disappeared.

But no, there it is, set back further, that’s all, framed with shrubs and manicured gardens. Nicola remembers now reading something about it in the newspaper, how they decided to move the bottle to allow people to pull over and stop, rather than slow down and stick their cameras out the window and cause a pile-up, all for the sake of a blurry brown and yellow snapshot.

Kids in school uniform spill out of the school and walk the bridge beside her. As she pulls up to the intersection, they cross in front of her without checking for traffic. Already, they’re dragging their cigarette packets out of their pockets. Nicola grins at the maintenance of old traditions and thinks how much easier it must be for them to have a lunchtime fag, hidden by the new shrubbery. A girl with purple hair and glinting face piercings glares at her and shouts
Fuckin perv.
Nicola shakes her head and laughs.

Her name won’t be graffitied at the base of the new bottle.
NW and GB friends forever.
It’s a relief to know it’s properly gone, even though everyone knew it was Gabrielle, not her, who had painted it on the first bottle. Right underneath the other sample of Gabrielle’s handiwork.
JG is a wife beater and a raper
. Both the inscriptions appeared one summer — Nicola’s last before starting college — while the Walkers were up the Thames coast on holiday.

Joy’s back. ‘Raper. Huh? That kid thought she knew everything.’

‘Doesn’t matter how you bloody spell it, Mum.’

‘She taught you a few things. Disrespect, for a start.’

‘For Christ’s sake—’

‘Not to mention blasphemy.’

The patheticness of this monologue is amusing even to Joy, who rolls her eyes and leans forward in her seat. She eyeballs the students, who of course ignore her. ‘Scruffy individuals.’

‘Leave it be, Mum. You’re making a scene.’

The girl with the purple hair has stopped in the middle of the road to stare.