What You Wish For, page 35
‘Why?’
‘The gold diggers will come flocking,’ Bronagh asserted. ‘And you know what a babe in the woods Vic is. Next phone call, I’ll make him swear not to go on any dates until we get there, so I can vet the candidates.’
‘No dates for nearly six months? Seems a bit harsh.’
‘Better safe than sorry,’ said Bronagh, cheerfully. ‘Some folk out there are madder than a box of frogs!’
EPILOGUE
The Moose
It must be more vigilant. The incident in the grassy glade had proved that not all men could be relied upon to stand mute and motionless. The gunshot — so loud. It had awakened all the survival instincts that the moose had foolishly suppressed. Men were dangerous. It would never again forget that. The cow was halfway through its pregnancy, and convinced the calf was male. All the more reason to keep the little herd safe.
So it was with trepidation that the moose approached the glass house in the trees. The man without clothes had always been kind and gentle, but men were dangerous. What if he’d hidden his real nature all along, and today was the day he’d finally do the moose harm?
Peering through the trees, the moose saw that the man sat in his downstairs studio, clad only in a pair of headphones. He sent music out into the air, the man had once explained.
‘Into the universe, perhaps,’ he’d added. ‘Wherever those with open senses will receive it.’
The music sounded to the moose like the squeak and crunch it made when it walked over the old tin and bricks of a long-abandoned bush shack. It much preferred the wail of a female in season, but it supposed every being was entitled to its personal taste.
The moose could not see the woman. She must be out, wearing her pink, sparkly clothes. But, as it neared, it caught smells that belonged to other humans, strangers, and it halted immediately.
If that had been the only smell coming from the house, the moose would have turned back, but overlaying the human scent was the aroma of fresh-baked Russian buns. Cheesy, jammy, delicious. The moose had not eaten a bun in many days.
Taking care with every step, the moose drew closer to the house. The buns were on a table outside on the lower patio. It could see them there, on the corner, almost within reach.
But wait — the humans it had smelled were there also. A man and a woman, clothed, reclining in the egg-shaped seat that hung from the joists of the deck above. How the two could be comfortable in that tight space, the moose had no idea. They were both slender, true, and the position they were in suggested closeness was not an issue. The young man, with his dark skin and hair, made an attractive contrast to the young woman, whose hair shone gold as aspen leaves in autumn. The moose’s DNA remembered aspens.
Neither human had noticed the moose, but then that was understandable as their faces were mashed together in a way that surely must risk damage to their teeth. Quietly as a mouse, if a mouse weighed four hundred kilograms, the moose sneaked to the side of the table, and with its prehensile lips, eased a bun from the plate and into its mouth.
It could eat it here and now, and consume a second, but the moose now knew better than to take such complacent risks. Besides, buns always seemed to be in season at the man’s house.
The moose trotted off to eat the bun in the safety of the trees. It would come back another day.
Acknowledgements
To make Gabriel’s Bay seem like a real place, I had to write about cultures that aren’t my own. A little knowledge being a dangerous thing, I decided to get expert advice. Thank you Rijula Das and Matariki Williams for your time and your invaluable suggestions, translations and corrections. Any errors that remain are my own.
Thanks also to the following people who have made my life immeasurably easier and much more fun:
Harriet, Abby, Rachel and Rebecca at Penguin Random House; Barbara, copy-editor and provider of Swedish moose art; my agent, Gaia, and her lovely assistant, Alba.
My talented writing group: Whitney, Alisha, Fiona, Helen, Simon, Finn, Ruby, Sarah, Penny, Redmer, Meryl, Libby, Fran, Stuart, Pallas, Rijula and Johnny.
Elisha and Juliet at Vic Books, Pipitea; Gareth and Lou at Wardinis; and Carole and her team at the Women’s Bookshop for championing Gabriel’s Bay. Hope you like this one, too.
Peter and Mary Biggs, David Hedley, Claire Mabey and Andrew Laking, Marty Smith, Anne O’Brien, Catherine Wallace and Gail Pittaway, Rachael King, and Mark Cubey for inviting me to their brilliant book fests.
To John Campbell, who said (I have witnesses) that Gabriel’s Bay was an important New Zealand novel.
And David, Callum and Finn, my Robertson clan.
PS: Those who know about agriculture will spot that avocados are unlikely to be grown in a place where the lambing season is as late as Vic’s. But Gabriel’s Bay is a deliberate amalgam, and wherever you think it is, you’ll be correct.
CATHERINE ROBERTSON’S novels have all been number one New Zealand bestsellers. Her fourth novel, The Hiding Places, also won the 2015 Nelson Libraries’ Award for New Zealand Fiction. Catherine reviews books for the New Zealand Listener and is a regular guest on RNZ’s The Panel and Jesse Mulligan’s Book Critic slot. She is married with two grown sons, two Burmese cats, two rescue dogs and a powerful vacuum cleaner. She divides her time between Wellington and Hawke’s Bay.
A heart-warming, thoroughly entertaining novel about a whole community.
Kerry Macfarlane has run away from his wedding-that-wasn’t. He lands in coastal Gabriel’s Bay, billed as ‘a well-appointed small town’ on its website(last updated two decades ago). Here Kerry hopes to prove he’s not a complete failure. Or, at least, to give his most convincing impression.
But Gabriel’s Bay has its own problems – low employment, no tourists, and a daunting hill road between it and civilisation. And Kerry must also run the gauntlet of its inhabitants: Sidney, single mother deserted by a feckless ex; Mac, the straight-shooting doctor’s receptionist; a team of unruly nine-year-olds; a giant restaurateur; and the local progressive association, who’ll debate apostrophe placement until the crack of doom.
Can Kerry win their respect, and perhaps even love? Will his brilliant plan to transform the town’s fortunes earn him a lasting welcome in Gabriel’s Bay?
‘Gabriel’s Bay is a rich, layered, affecting view of life in a small New Zealand town.’
— Maggie Trapp, NZ Books
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Black Swan is an imprint of the Penguin Random House group of companies, whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published by Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2019
Text © Catherine Robertson, 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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Cover photograph by alex_tok/iStock
Author photograph by Russell Kleyn
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.
ISBN: 978-0-14-377282-8
THE BEGINNING
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Catherine Robertson, What You Wish For
