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“You could look older,” Kane said. “Because you have muscles. And I’m tall. I could look older, too. I could say I’m thirteen.”
Luke wasn’t sure what to say. After a minute, he said, “Thirteen wouldn’t be old enough. And it’d be cold.”
“Oh,” Kane said. “Maybe it would be an adventure, though.”
Luke had to smile. “Maybe.”
Another few minutes with their breath coming out in puffs, their feet pounding against the tarmac, doing their best to outrun the cold. Finally, Kane said, “If you said you wouldn’t go. If you refused to get on the plane. You could stand your ground. Dad’s always saying to stand our ground.”
Luke said, “It’s not happening. We have to face it. It’s not. We’re kids, and that means you have to go where they tell you. In three years, though, you’ll be in Dunedin with me. We’ll be in school together again, for years this time, and when we’re done with it, we’ll be able to choose for ourselves. One thing I can tell you, though. When I’m grown, I’m not playing for Dad.”
“How, though?” Kane asked. “If he says you have to?”
“Because,” Luke said, “I’ll be a man.”
Now, he was a man, and he wasn’t playing for his dad. He was back in New Zealand, though, and he wasn’t sure what it meant.
How much would his dad care what he was or what he did, at this point? Luke hadn’t even lived in the country for more than eight years, and he had been an All Black—for two seasons before he’d left the country—and Kane still was one. Kane wasn’t playing for their dad, but he was here and doing the name proud, wasn’t he? Besides, it wasn’t just the two of them anymore. They weren’t their dad’s last hope.
Well, they were the only sons, so probably they were the last hope, from Grant’s point of view. But maybe it wouldn’t matter as much now, especially since their dad wasn’t coaching anymore.
You know it’ll matter. Grant wasn’t coaching because he’d been passed over once again for the All Blacks, and because the Highlanders hadn’t renewed his contract this time. Luke didn’t know what Grant thought about that, because he hadn’t been home for yonks, but he could guess. “Bloody soft,” Grant would say. “Drew Callahan? He knows how to be a skipper, he knows how to play the game, but as a coach? A ‘player’s coach.’ What’s that? Coddling them, is what. Understanding them. I don’t need to understand them. They need to understand me. I have a system. It’s been proven to work. All they have to do is commit and dig deep. If they won’t, that’s not my fault. Heaps more fish in the sea, boys willing to work hard, gagging for a chance at Super Rugby.”
So, no, Grant wouldn’t be taking any of it philosophically, even though he was sixty and rugby wasn’t the only thing in his life anymore, because he had, astonishingly, remarried three or four years after Kane’s arrival in En Zed, and that marriage had changed almost everything. Everything but Grant’s nature.
Miriama Armstrong, Luke’s stepmother, was a petite, pretty, gracious Maori lady with a core of steel. She’d made a warm, colorful home for all of them, and somehow, she’d wrapped Grant around her finger in a way Luke’s practical, stoical mum, a better match in every way, had never managed to do.
They’d had a daughter, Kiri, who was a teenager now and all right. Shut down a bit, like Luke and Kane, around their dad, not to mention her mum, who could give Grant a run for his money when it came to pushing her children, but who wouldn’t be?
Nyree, that was who.
Miriama’s daughter, the fringe benefit or the forced addition—Luke had a feeling Grant saw her more as the latter—had been awkward and a little clumsy back then, at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. She’d had a brace on her teeth and specs perched on her nose, and had been plump, too, which Luke was sure had horrified his father. Nothing Grant had ever said had made Nyree disciplined, orderly, or good at sport or maths—or shut her up or changed her mind, either. She’d laughed and she’d cried, and she’d always, always talked back. She’d emoted all over the shop, in fact. Luke had been astonished, but he couldn’t say he’d learned much, because he’d been nearly out of the house by then, and anyway, it was too late to change. He was who he was, and that was that. But he’d liked her. He still did. Somebody had to talk, he reckoned, or the world would be a pretty boring place.
He thought about Nyree, her outsized life force, and her own surprising upcoming marriage to Marko Sendoa, a hard man amongst hard men, while he painted trees, because he didn’t want to think about any of the rest of it. About what had happened with his mate, Matt, especially, when Luke had tried to tell him. How appalled he’d been, and how quickly his mind had seemed to fly back to all that nakedness in the changing sheds, all that grabbing in the scrum. It hadn’t gone well, and Luke had only just started telling. The fellas at Nyree’s hen party had seemed OK, and so had Marko, but what would they think if they were asked to play with Luke now?
Was he being brave at last, or just stupid and self-destructive? Why had he come out with this now, when he had absolutely no idea what he was going to do if the worst happened and he was out of the game? Why hadn’t he waited until he’d retired, at least? He’d never had many mates, but at least he’d had a team. At least he’d had parents, such as they were.
What would he be if he had none of it?
Stop it, he told himself, going on doggedly with the trees. You didn’t stay at the top level in international rugby without some emotional equilibrium. He’d always had that, even as a kid. He’d done what he could to make his life work out, and he’d learned to live with the parts that didn’t. His parents hadn’t been much on loving kindness, but they’d cornered the market on stoicism, and it had rubbed off.
If he didn’t have stoicism anymore, though. If the raw places hurt too much to hide … what would he have then?
He didn’t know, so he painted trees and didn’t talk.
Eventually, he’d find out. And then he’d deal with it. No choice.
CHAPTER 4
Obviously Gay
It had gone six, but Hayden was still painting blades of grass when Zora came in to announce, “Twenty minutes until pizza. Marko phoned and said he was collecting it on the way over. Seems unfair that the two of you have to do the painting and buy the pizza, but Marko insisted, and since pizza is Casey’s favorite and it was Rhys’s turn to cook anyway, events snowballed.”
“I’ll just do this next bit first,” Nyree said, which Hayden could have predicted. Nyree was a woman on a mission, even if that mission was painting fairies. At the moment, she was painting a mouse peeking out of Hayden’s grass, which had been inevitable.
“Marko said you’d say that,” Zora said. “He says he’ll take the brush out of your hand again, and carry you downstairs in front of everybody if he has to. He’s getting you one with veggies and cheese, though. I’m supposed to tell you that.”
Nyree laid down her brush. “Because I’m not allowed to eat cured meats. He’ll also have them put pesto sauce on it, just so I won’t be able to resist. And he absolutely would carry me downstairs, or make me think he was about to. Is it bad that I like that about him?”
