Blessed Are the Cheesemakers Read online

  “I won’t bungle it,” Abbey said, bungling it. “Oh, why can’t I help him with his English homework?”

  “Junior big-time good at Englitch already!” Imi chortled. “Junior don’ need help wid Englitch. Junior need help wid map.”

  The same could not be said for Imi herself, thought Abbey, but she had a point about Junior. He was perfectly good at English, it was his math that was crap. It was just a shame that hers was, too.

  Imi, bored with the homework debacle, turned the magazine around to point out a page to her friend. “Cindy Crawford gain plenty kilos, hey Abbey? Check it out!”

  Abbey looked up from her math and stared at the photo of the curvaceous supermodel, squinting to read the caption. “She’s pregnant, Imi,” she said, trying not to let her voice betray even a sliver of emotion. “She’s allowed to put on weight. She’s having a baby. You know,” she continued, unnaturally brightly, “a pikinini.”

  Imi’s face fell, leaving her features draped in a mortified expression. She flipped the magazine over, quickly turning the pages in a bid to escape the model’s pregnant form. “’Scuse please, Abbey,” she said, quietly and far more politely this time. “’Scuse please.”

  An embarrassed silence mushroomed between the two women. Abbey couldn’t think of anything to say so she concentrated on Junior’s homework, but Imi, worried that she had upset her friend, was doing some mathematical gymnastics of her own.

  “Sixty-nine and something!” she suddenly crowed, a look of triumph lighting up her broad, brown face. “Abbey, 69.66. Check it out!”

  Abbey never failed to be amazed by her next-door neighbor. Her calculation was exactly right: 57 times 69.66 was indeed 3,970.62, and no sooner had Abbey written down the wretched answer than Junior bounced in the door, holding up her naked chicken.

  “Done my homework?” the eleven-year-old wanted to know, looking over Abbey’s shoulder. “Cool! Did you get it right this time?”

  Last time Abbey had required Junior’s plucking duties, she had answered all but one of his math questions incorrectly and he had had to fake an epileptic seizure in the classroom to get out of trouble. Rumor was that Junior had suffered a real seizure in the first few months of his life, forming the basis of a lifelong tendency to fake them whenever the going got tough. He would go far, that boy, Abbey often thought. His mother had not produced any siblings for him until five years ago, so the first six years of Junior’s life were charmed. After Imi’s sister Geen had surprised everybody with a late run of three more little “pikininis” in quick succession, though, Junior’s latter years had been lived far from the entanglement of his mother’s apron strings. The combination of intense adulation as a little child with a free hand as an older one had produced a confident, mischievous boy with street smarts almost wasted on life in the middle of a large ocean.

  “Imi helped me out this time so you won’t need to swallow your tongue on my account,” said Abbey, swapping the homework book and notepad for the plucked chicken.

  “How’s Bing?” she wanted to know. Bing was Junior’s five-year-old brother, who had just started school and whom Abbey knew was having a hard time because of his pale eyes and fairish hair. This wasn’t completely uncommon in the islands. “Genetic throwback” was the term Martin used to explain it. The traces of dalliances with early missionaries and settlers showing up generations later, he said. Nan, too, had a couple of little blondies and there were a few older ones dotted about the island, but Bing was probably the fairest of them all and a target for bullying because he was small for his age and something of a whiner.

  “He ordered a Malibu Barbie on the Internet,” said Junior. “He’s in the crap.”

  “’Scuse please!” Imi scolded him.

  “Bing knows how to use the Internet?” Abbey asked, amazed.

  “Everybody knows how to use the Internet,” Junior said, rolling his eyes as he headed for the door.

  “God, Imi,” Abbey said, collapsing back into her chair with a bewildered look on her face. “A five-year-old can use the Internet and I can’t even work your microwave oven? What is the world coming to? I swear I will never be able to leave this island. What use would I be in the real world?”

  Imi, still trying to make up for any hurt she might have caused over Cindy Crawford’s pregnancy, ignored the question and nodded in the direction of the plucked chicken. “You quick-cook him here, den bone-bone cook him at you-place?”

  Abbey sighed. Cooking had never been her strong point. Yes, she told her friend, she would cook the chicken first in Imi’s microwave then finish it in the traditional bone-bone way. This involved wrapping the food in freshly cut bamboo and searing it over the fire. Martin thought she cooked all their food that way but it wasn’t called bone-bone (burn-burn) for nothing. Getting the charred food off the fire without burning herself was a skill Abbey had yet to master. For their first two years on the island her hands had looked as though she were wearing skintight brown and beige camouflage gloves, such was the extent of her burns. Then, as Martin had started to pay less attention to her and more to his redundant waterworks project, she had cottoned on to Imi’s modern appliances and now cooked most of their food over there. (In fact, Imi or Geen—who had been sponsored by the village on a six-week Cordon Bleu cooking course in Paris—often cooked the food for her.) By finishing the chicken off bone-bone Abbey knew that she could get their hut to smell like a meal had been home-cooked there without singeing her eyelashes, a disaster that had occurred twice before.

  Imi swiped the chicken off the table next to Abbey and proceeded to stuff its skin with herbs. “My crikey!” she suddenly exclaimed, “Geen make yummily salad for you and Lady Missus Hercules Man!” She whirled over to the refrigerator and took out a beautiful-looking salad, expertly presented in a traditional wooden bowl, sealed for freshness with layer upon layer of plastic wrap, Geen’s favorite thing in all the world.

  “Check it out, Abbey!” She thrust it under Abbey’s nose. The salad was made of beans and peppers with pawpaw and peanuts, and was no doubt dressed with Geen’s special vinaigrette using 120-year-old balsamic vinegar. Abbey felt a lump rise in her throat. What would she do without her dear, sweet, loyal neighbors and friends? Geen must have remembered the Fullers were coming even though Abbey couldn’t remember mentioning it, and had forgotten it herself.

  As the chicken rotated in the microwave, Imi returned to her magazine to work out her autumn wardrobe. The fact that the Sulivans only had two seasons, wet and dry, and you got a bit of each every single day, did not deter her one bit. Like most Sulivan Islanders she was tall and slim-hipped with big firm breasts, a narrow waist and broad shoulders. Her hair grew in an irrepressible Afro and she spent a small fortune in mail-order straightening products, none of which had the slightest effect. Today she was wearing red faux-snakeskin hipsters and a skintight Britney Spears T-shirt, revealing her taut midriff and diamond-studded belly button. Abbey always felt the frumpy white woman in comparison, not helped by the fact that she relied solely on Imi’s castoffs for her own sartorial elegance. This afternoon was no exception: It was last year’s cargo pants and a white cotton shirt, both from Banana Republic. Actually, the hand-me-down system worked quite well for her, apart from the fact that Imi was six inches taller, so Abbey’s pants were, as usual, rolled up and the shirt tied at her waist. She looked like someone who had started the day much bigger. Coincidentally, she often felt that way, too.

  The microwave boinged just as the faint sound of the Fullers’ Hercules C130 heralded its arrival on the island. Abbey jumped to her feet and grabbed the chicken out of the microwave. She would have just enough time to wrap it and stick it in the flames before the guests arrived, but she really should have been keeping a closer eye on the fire next door.

  “Aaaargh!” she gurgled to Imi as a boiling glob of chicken fat sloshed out of the Tupperware container it was in and landed on her hand. “Can you get me the salad, Imi? What was I doing sitting here reading magazines?
I need my head read!”

  Imi passed over the salad, shaking her head at her friend’s panic. “Go slow-time, Abbey. They jus’ friends.”

  Abbey balanced the salad on her hip and headed for the door. There was no such thing as “just friends” where Martin was concerned. Having people to visit was a big deal for him and Abbey didn’t want to let him down. She’d done enough of that already.

  “Thank you, Imi,” she called as she made her way next door. “You’re a life saver.”

  “No worries,” came the reply. It was something of an island motto and Abbey wished with all her heart she could embrace it. But there was too much of the Londoner left in her, or left in Martin anyway, which she supposed was the same thing. Abbey wrapped the chicken and threw it in the fire, then pricked up her ears at the unlikely sound of a car engine and the tooting of a horn, followed by great cheers and laughter. Out on the porch, she was flabbergasted to see Tomi Papara, the island chief, driving haphazardly through the village in a brand-new bright-red convertible. The top was down and the little car was crammed with local children, all hooting and shrieking at every kangaroo hop and honk of the horn. Tomi looked as though he had died and gone to heaven.

  “Check it out, Abbey, Mazda motorcar!” he called as he bounced past her house, waving furiously, while seven little heads behind and around him jerked backward and forward in unison.

  Abbey was aghast. Ate’ate had one road. It went from the airstrip to the village and was about 1,500 meters long. It only needed to be 300 meters long, but the villagers had extended it so that they could have more fun driving an ancient Jeep left behind by the Americans. Having one vehicle on Ate’ate had been ridiculous, but two? Martin would be outraged. Still, Tomi’s enthusiasm was infectious and Abbey couldn’t help laughing.

  “What’s next, eh? Bloody traffic lights? And here I was thinking you were stuck in the wop-wops.”

  Abbey spun around and into the arms of Shirley Fuller. She’d been so preoccupied with Tomi’s wheels she hadn’t even seen her friend approach but soaked up her embrace like a dried-up sponge would the first fat raindrops after a yearlong drought.

  “It is so good to see you,” she said, squeezing her friend with surprising ferocity.

  “Hey, hey, you’ll bring tears to my eyes,” joked Shirl, pulling herself away and dabbing dramatically at her eyes. “And I wouldn’t want to go wasting any water now, would I? It’s a precious resource, after all.”

  Abbey laughed, embarrassed. “So, he’s already given you the speech then?”

  “Try stopping him,” said Shirl. “I had to take to my scrapers or I’d still be there getting a bloody ear bashing.”

  Abbey grinned at her friend, delighted at the sound of her harsh and scratchy Queensland accent.

  “Are you okay, darl?” Shirl asked. “You look kinda”—she scrutinized Abbey’s features—“I don’t know. Different, I ’spose. Smaller.”

  Abbey managed a laugh.

  “Well, it has been six years, Shirl, perhaps I’ve shrunk. Anyway, I’m happy to report you still don’t look a day over twenty-one yourself.”

  Shirl laughed her smoky laugh. “Point taken,” she said good-humoredly. “Now, are you going to show me around the place or what?”

  Shirl was wearing her everyday outfit of sleeveless cotton shirt, below-the-knee moleskin skirt and RM Williams boots. She wore the same outfit whether she was going to church, loading crates into the cargo hold or sipping champagne cocktails at a mayoral reception. She was a true-blue Aussie and Abbey adored her.

  “Come in, come in,” she said, leading the way into the hut, where the smell of home-cooked chicken was making a very good impression. Shirl stopped inside the door and looked around her, aghast. She knew that Abbey and Martin had been living a pretty lean existence but she hadn’t imagined for a moment that it was this no-frills. The hut was one big room with woven matting walls and exposed beams, through which she could see the thatched roof and, in places where it met the walls, the blue late-afternoon sky. There were windows on each side covered with bamboo blinds, and beneath the one on the right, surrounded by a flimsy curtain, stood a rickety wooden double bed with a lumpy-looking mattress and a candlewick bedspread.

  At the back of the hut was a battered stainless-steel sink, held up on either side with two beer barrels; to the left, a mesh-covered safe and to the right, a sort of indoor/outdoor open fireplace in which the green-wrapped chicken smoldered happily. Other than a shaky-looking set of shelves and the table with its three nonmatching chairs, the only piece of furniture in the room was a steamer trunk in which she assumed Abbey kept her clothes. Shirl tried to rearrange her lined, leathery face into a shock-free expression but it didn’t work.

  “Bugger me, Abbey,” she finally said, showing her usual diplomacy. “Where’s the rest of it?”

  “Well, the loo’s outside with the freshwater shower,” Abbey said falteringly. “Come on with you, Shirl. It’s not that bad.”

  Shirl walked, slightly stunned, toward the table and threw herself into a chair that threatened to topple sideways on its uneven legs. She sat like she’d been riding a horse for a week.

  “I knew you were on the bones of your arse, Abbey,” she said, “but, Jeez, you should have said something.”

  “We’re okay, Shirl, really,” Abbey insisted. “It’s not about money. We have plenty of that. Well, Martin does. This is the way he wants us to live and it’s not that bad. Honestly, I’m used to it. It’s been eleven years for goodness’ sake, and for most of those we didn’t even have the table and chairs!”

  Shirl looked doubtfully around the room once more, as if to check that there wasn’t a luxury suite she’d overlooked the first time. She scratched her wiry gray head. “Well, no offense, darl,” she said. “But if you think me and the old cheese are going to bunk down on the floor we might as well crank up old Herc right now and hit the road.”

  Abbey laughed at the look on her friend’s face. “And here I was thinking you were the rugged Ocker,” she teased. “Where’s your pioneering spirit?”

  “I’m fifty-two years old and I live in a sixteen-room house with four bathrooms and climate-controlled air conditioning,” said Shirl. “If I want to rough it I turn the heating down in the swimming pool. Now tell me I’m not sleeping here, Ab.”

  “You’re not sleeping here, Shirl,” Abbey said, amused. “You’re sleeping at my friend Pepa’s house, three huts away. She’s going to stay at her sister’s place and she’s leaving you and Jim her heart-shaped bed and her Jacuzzi.”

  “Now we’re talking,” said Shirl. “So where are those blokes? I could murder a beer.”

  Later, as she gnawed on a chicken bone and sipped at a glass of wine the Fullers had brought with them, Abbey congratulated herself on the meal, by her standards anyway, being a roaring success, despite the draining properties of her husband’s apparent black mood.

  “A bloody Mazda MX5 convertible?” he had railed. “On a Pacific island with one dirt track not even a mile long? He must be mad. And what about the emissions, eh? Did he ever stop to think about that? About the damage the carbon monoxide could do to a delicate ecosystem like Ate’ate’s?”

  Abbey felt obliged to keep chatting with Jim and Shirl in between Martin’s outbursts, even though she knew it was better to stay silent when he was in this frame of mind. Ignoring his rancid commentary, she knew, only made him worse, but on the other hand the pleasure of normal conversation in familiar English was too delicious to forsake. She expected there would be “a moment,” and was barely surprised when it came as she stood to clear the plates.

  “Abbey,” Martin growled, staring at her thigh and throwing his knife and fork onto his chipped plate. “What is that?”

  He motioned for her to move closer and proceeded to pull from the side pocket in her cargo pants a thick wad of plastic wrap. The same plastic wrap Geen has used to preserve her beautiful salad and which Abbey had ripped off as Martin and Jim arrived home for dinner. Th
ere was nothing Martin hated more than nonbiodegradable materials, especially plastics, and here she was flaunting one of the worst examples in front of their guests. Abbey’s heart sank as her husband held the plastic wrap up in the air like a badly soiled diaper and his blue eyes darkened and hardened.

  “Are you stupid?” Martin spat.

  Jim and Shirl Fuller had stopped chewing and were watching the scene unfold with matching horror.

  “Do you think we came all this way,” Martin said, his voice low and dangerous, “and worked this hard for this long, so that you can pollute these islands with your disgusting rubbish?”

  Abbey, praying silently for him to shut up and not ruin the evening, said nothing.

  “Well? Do you?” roared Martin. “Are you that stupid?”

  “Steady on there, mate,” Jim said, saving the situation by casually standing up next to Abbey and reaching for Martin’s plate. “Not an arm or a leg, eh?”

  Martin fumed silently as Jim clattered and banged the plates while Abbey stood, rooted to the spot, waiting to see what was going to happen.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, Abbey. Help the man,” Martin said, which meant he had decided not to take his rage any further. She shook with relief as she scuttled to Jim’s side and started stacking the dishes.

  “How about you leave the blokes to tidy up and take Shirl for a walk?” said Jim, his eyes friendly and sad above his bushy gray beard. “You’d like that eh, darl?” he said, turning to his wife.

  The look that Abbey saw pass between them made her heart bleed. It spoke a thousand words. It said, we understand. It said, we’ll help. It said, aren’t we lucky we’re not like that. It said everything Abbey had ever wanted to hear in a look but hadn’t for so long that she couldn’t remember now if she ever had.

  Eyes down so that she couldn’t see Martin’s face and tell what he was thinking, she whispered her thanks to Jim and headed outside, Shirl following. The full moon was shining its giant flashlight on the Pacific as they walked silently down to the water’s edge and sat on the jetty, their legs swung over the edge, as for a moment they just listened to the singsong lapping of the low tide underneath.