Pearl and Finn
Pearl walked along the road intending
on taking the dogs to the shore for a swim, clean them up a bit. Both had
indulged in an early morning cow pat roll. She’d seen them wriggling in the
bitter green patches of grass in the far paddock and then they galloped back to
her, all gleaming smiles and shaggy, stinking pelts.
What happened though, was that she
turned into the driveway at the corner, before the creek trailed out to the
town harbour, as she always did when she walked in this direction. It was like
she held divining rods ahead of her. Stop in for a cup of tea and watch the
dogs lolling under one of the orchard trees, buy some fruit and then head home
again with a juicy little tremor of potential rolling in her belly.
He was hunched over weeding out the
blueberry section, his floppy cotton hat obscuring the view beyond the soft,
emerald milk thistles. The dogs leapt through the neat rows of calendula
seedlings to get to him, their tails like flags, pocking the freshly turned
earth. He straightened and put one hand to his lower back. Then he saw her and
his whole being gladdened.
“You won’t have to dig holes for that
next lot,” she pointed to the dogs’ tracks. “Sorry ‘bout that.”
He growled at them and shooed them
off. “I’ll teach them one day. When you’re not looking. They’ll never do it
again.”
“Hey, Finn,” she pranced. “It’s my
birthday today.”
“Well. Happy Birthday To You!”
“Shall I put the kettle on?”
Finn lived in a shed that was split
into rooms by wardrobes and tea chests. Despite the apparent chaos of gutted
cars, motorbikes and ropes of drying onions and chillies, he was meticulously
tidy and always served Pearl properly brewed tea in porcelain cups.
He looked at his watch. “We can do
better than that.”
Inside the gloom of the shed, he
washed his hands at the sink and pulled an unopened bottle of Drambuie down
from the kitchenette.
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