To my mum.”
32
Protect and Defend
Gray
Why would absolutely no woman in my life do what I wanted?
We were back in the yurt. Daisy was making tea, and I was thinking that I hated the idea of Gilead having her phone number, and that the thought was making her jumpy, too. I was also talking to my mum on speaker.
She said, “Some fella came to the door yesterday, yeh. Dinnertime, it was. And, yeh, he was one of those from Mount Zion. I recognized the haircut. Ask Daisy why they always have such rubbish haircuts.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“I don’t tell you every time somebody comes to my door,” she said. “Why would I?”
I sighed. “Mum.”
“Why would I worry those girls?” she said. “He told me his wife had gone for a walk and hadn’t come back, that she had mental problems. Delusions of persecution, he called it, thinking she had enemies. She had medicine, he told me, but she refused to take it. Convinced he was trying to poison her. Very persuasive, if a person was a fool who’d never been around the block. I asked him if he was in the auto business. That surprised him. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m a farmer.’ I said, ‘Oh. With that line of chat, I assumed you were in sales.’ Didn’t look quite so friendly then, did he. Asked me, ‘Has she been here, or not?’ And I said, ‘Why on earth would she be? I’m out at work all day long, and if you’ll notice, I’m up here on this hill. I don’t get lost trampers banging on the door,’ I told him. ‘Best go to the police.’”
“What did he say to that?” That was Daisy. She had her palms on the edge of the island and was doing a sort of yoga stretch, bending one leg, then the other, her bum in the air. Distracting, I’d call that. She was barefoot again, her pale-blue nails right there to see, flexing and bending. She did have high arches. I seemed to be developing a thing for a woman with high arches and pretty hands and feet. And the kind of thighs that could wrap around your waist and hang on.
Oh. Mum was talking. “He said that the cops were useless. Which means, I reckon, that they recognized the signs of a woman who’s run away from her husband—run away from Mount Zion at that—and sent him on his way.”
“I don’t understand,” Daisy said, still doing her stretches, as if I hadn’t noticed that she also had a very nice little round bum, so she’d better show it to me some more, “why he didn’t come sooner. We were there a full day, and he knew it, so why didn’t he come?”
“Maybe he did,” I said. “Maybe he came that first evening. When we brought home pizza, and Mum had come home from work. When he saw us go into the house, because he knew me when he saw me today.”
Daisy stopped stretching and stood up—the stretching had caused her T-shirt to ride up, exposing a few centimeters of pale-brown skin before she pulled the shirt down again—and said, “He did? You didn’t say …”
I said, “I just realized it, is why. When he looked in the rearview mirror, I’d swear he recognized me. And I doubt it was from rugby.”
“No,” Daisy said. “It wouldn’t have been. There’s no TV at Mount Zion, and there’s no sport. I told you. They’re about the only people in New Zealand who don’t care a bit that you were an All Black.”
Mum said, “Well, no worries. I sent him about his business, so that’s done.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, finally forgetting about Daisy’s arches, et cetera. “He knows the girls were there, and now you’re there alone? No.”
Daisy said, “If he knows they were there … isn’t there a way you can find out who owns a house? A … record, or something?”
“Title search,” I said. “Yeh. There is.”
Daisy said, “If he finds out your name because of that, and he knows you live in Dunedin, because he saw you at my flat today …”
Obedience said, “He could find out about this house. He could come here.”
The words fell into a well of silence, until Obedience, who’d taken over the tea-making from Daisy, slid my mug in front of me, then offered one to Fruitful, who was on the stool beside me, not saying anything. Her hands were in her lap, and I could