a kindness to him, underneath. Not in what he said, because God knows he wasn’t much for the cards and flowers. Rough as guts, and didn’t talk much, but he was a worker. Loved his mates, of course, and loved a pint at the end of the day, but he loved a joke, too. I imagine we’d have rubbed along together pretty well, in the end.”
I’d never known him. He’d died before I was born, before he and Mum had even talked about getting married, as far as I knew. He’d been working as a firie, battling a bad bushfire in South Australia, the Kiwis called in to help their neighbors across the Tasman. He’d been caught, along with three others, by a fire that had jumped the control line. My dad, the biggest of them, had been in the rear, carrying the mate who’d been overcome.
The other two got out. He didn’t. But when they found the bodies, he was still hanging on to his mate.
I’d been called brave for nothing more than putting my body on the line to make a tackle, or taking a hit I could see coming. That wasn’t brave. What I did was easy. Or, rather, what I’d done. I wasn’t doing it anymore.
Mum said, “Daisy could be a bit like your dad, maybe, now I think of it. Got the courage, that’s certain. Protective. Stubborn, too.”
“You think?” I asked, and Mum laughed.
“Tell the truth,” I said. “What did you think when I brought her in?”
“Thought she was about the most shut-down person I’d ever met,” Mum said. “I thought it was shock, nearly drowning, losing the car, which is enough to be going on with, but now, I’m not so sure. She’s bitten off more than she can chew with those girls, I’d say, but I’m guessing I’m wrong again there. She’ll do it right enough, and if anybody comes sniffing around, she’ll send him on his way pretty smartly, too. She’ll have a plan made already, and she’ll cope. She won’t have energy left over for much else.”
I was quiet a minute, then said, “Warning me off?”
“No, darling. You’ll choose for yourself, and I wish you would. I reckon there are easier women, though. Both ways around, maybe. Easier on you, and easier on her. Daisy’s going to be fireworks.”
“I like fireworks.”
“No,” she said. “You like sparklers. Light them up safely, wave them around a bit, and when they stop sparkling, you’re done. Easy-peasy, no danger of getting burnt. Fireworks? They take care.”
That was a bit much. I opened my mouth, shut it again, and leaned down to pat the dog. My mum said, “There’s the dog, now. You haven’t even had a dog all this time. And when anybody’s asked, you’ve made a joke about how you weren’t ready.”
“I’ve never said anything about a dog to anybody,” I said. “I’ve never thought about a dog. I haven’t even thought about this dog.”
“No,” Mum said. “I meant not ready for the wife.”
“I didn’t think you’d noticed what I said about the wife. You’ve never mentioned it.”
She took another sip of tea. “You never asked.”
I could have said, “I’m not asking now,” but I had, a bit. I’d asked her what she’d thought when she’d met Daisy. I’d opened the door, and Mum had walked straight through it as if she’d been standing out there for years, waiting for it to happen.
Which, of course, she probably had.
She said, “Is it the head?”
It wouldn’t have made sense to anybody else. Unfortunately, it made sense to me. When I’d taken those three-too-many head knocks in a single season, when the symptoms had never cleared and I’d had to retire at thirty, well before I’d been ready to hang up my boots, I hadn’t coped well. You could call it depression, but it hadn’t felt like depression, because I’d done the last thing from lying on the couch and moping. I’d set about getting the firm off the ground instead, desperate for something to do, for my life to mean something still. Finding out who I was when I wasn’t an All Black.
So, no, I hadn’t felt depressed. I’d felt irritated, constantly stuffing down my anger and frustration at every delay, every obstacle. Which was rich, since, first, being a builder is all about delays and obstacles, and second, I should’ve learned to cope with unanticipated roadblocks after ten years in rugby. Injuries and loss of form, coaching changes, and, always, the knowledge that if I