‘There’s a lot of that happening,’ Shanni said conversationally, and then, as the girl at the checkout counter made a grab for her microphone, Shanni shook her head, smiled sweetly and stepped sideways.
‘I need it, there’s a pet,’ she said. ‘I have a very important announcement.’
‘What…?’ the girl demanded but she was too late. Shanni was in full flow. She was standing in front of the middle register, giving her a clear view of almost everyone in their various aisles. Which was a lot of people. This must be pay day or something, Pierce thought, bewildered. The supermarket was packed.
‘Many of you know Pierce MacLachlan,’ she said conversationally, and he had a frantic urge to surge forward and grab the microphone. But he couldn’t quite get his legs to work.
‘He bought a local farm,’ Shanni went on. ‘For those who don’t know, it’s a neat little farm with a fabulous farmhouse. Pierce is a city architect. I’m assuming he saw the farm advertised in a city paper. He made an appointment with the agent. He liked what he saw and he bought it. No problem. Except there was a corporation negotiating to buy it so they could set up a factory here. The factory then had to be built on a site near the next town, which means many of you now have to pay an additional cartage to get your milk there. Pierce is sorry about that, but it’s not his fault. He didn’t know. If you’re blaming him, then it’s totally unfair. Unchristian, really.’
There was absolute silence. Customers in Pierce’s aisle turned and stared at Pierce and his brood of kids. Everyone else stared at Shanni.
‘So Pierce moved in,’ she said. ‘And, while everyone was tuttutting in disapproval, he invited Maureen to stay. Maureen was Pierce’s foster sister. She had four kids and was pregnant with the fifth. She was also dying.’
There was a general intake of breath. An assistant manager-a guy of about nineteen wearing more grease than a fish shop-was striding towards Shanni looking as if he knew what to do with anyone who was interfering with
‘Leave her be, Dwayne.’
‘Mum, she can’t-’
‘Shush. I want to hear.’
‘Anyway,’ Shanni said, ignoring Dwayne as insignificant to her story, ‘Here was Maureen with her kids. In desperate trouble. Her background is irrelevant. I’m not asking you to judge Maureen. We can’t. For Maureen died eight months ago.’
‘We know this,’ someone called out.
‘Then if you do you should be ashamed of yourselves,’ Shanni snapped. ‘I gave you the benefit of the doubt, that you didn’t know the facts. So I’m repeating them. These kids…They’re fantastic kids. You can’t imagine. Wendy’s eleven. She’s held her brothers and sisters together like the little mother hen she is. All the kids-Wendy and Bryce and Donald and Abby and Bessy-every single one of them deserves a medal for the care they took of their mother and the care they’ve taken of each other. But of course, there are five of them. When Maureen was ill there was no one to look after them. Social Welfare knew Maureen was dying. They were rightly concerned. Maureen was terrified they’d be separated. She begged Pierce to help. Not being the children’s father, Pierce could do little. But Pierce has a big farm and a bigger heart. He thought if he was the kids’ stepdad then he might just be able to keep them together. So he and Maureen married.’
There was silence. The locals hadn’t figured this part of the story. They’d preferred juicier versions, Pierce thought. Various kids with various parents, kept for whatever nefarious purpose they might like to imagine.
‘Do you really think Social Welfare would let Pierce keep the children if they don’t think he has the best interests of the kids at heart?’ Shanni demanded, and there was even more silence.
‘You know, I was brought up in the city,’ Shanni said. ‘My mum got glandular fever when I was seven, and she was ill for months. I remember that time as scary, but you know what? My dad and I never had to cook. Our local community-city folk-used to turn up at our place with food. My school organized a roster. It makes me cry now, more than twenty years on, to think of all those big-hearted people.
‘But you,’ she said, lowering her voice. She didn’t have to worry about it so much now. She had the absolute attention of every single person in the supermarket. ‘These kids go to your kids’ school. You’ve known Pierce was in trouble. But all he gets from you, his community, is more and more reports forcing Social Welfare to keep on checking.’
She took a deep breath. ‘All these kids have had chicken pox. Now Bessy has it. I know, she’s in the supermarket when she shouldn’t be, but there’s no choice. Even with me helping. Yesterday Pierce stayed up all night with an ill child, but he had to take Bessy to the doctor. He was so tired, he went to sleep in his car while waiting for a prescription. The kids were safe at home with me, but he got reported. He got home to face yet another check. Then last night someone decided Welfare weren’t doing their job, the job someone here seems to want, which is running Pierce and the kids out of town. So they decided to help things along.’
‘Shanni,’ Pierce said and started forward, but Wendy grabbed his shirt and clung.
‘Let her say it, Dad,’ she said. ‘These people don’t like it.’
‘So someone let our bull into the garden,’ Shanni said. Her voice was strained now, like she was having trouble going on. ‘Not only that, but whoever it was stirred Clyde up, wounding him with a peashooter over and over again until he was vicious and uncontrolled. I guess whoever it was imagined that it’d be Pierce who went outside when he heard a bull in the garden, but we still have a sick baby. Pierce was upstairs with a howling Bessy. So Donald…’ she motioned to Donald ‘…our seven-year-old, who like every one of his siblings is brave and resolute and desperate to do the right thing, went out to tackle the bull on his own.’
There was a general gasp. Horror. But the lady who’d been stocking the shelves was looking at them differently. Appalled.
‘I’m an old friend of Pierce, and I’ve come to help. I heard Donald in the garden,’ Shanni said into the silence. ‘I got there just before the bull charged him.’ She motioned to the sling the doctor had put her arm in. ‘I ended up with a wounded shoulder. But if I hadn’t been there…’ She broke off.
‘But I was,’ she said softly.
‘Shanni, leave this,’ Pierce said. He put Wendy aside and started walking up the aisle towards her.
‘Oh, I’m leaving it,’ she said, and she managed to smile at him. ‘We’re all leaving. We’re going to the beach for a holiday. Pierce has had this place up to his ears, and I don’t blame him. But in a couple of weeks we’ll be back. To put the place on the market…’
‘Shanni?’
‘You can’t keep the farm if these people keep demonizing you,’ she said softly. ‘So all I’m doing is laying the facts before everyone.’ She took a deep breath and then beamed, switching channels. ‘Okay, everyone. Enough from me. You were in the middle of a riveting announcement of a red-hot special in laundry detergents. Dwayne, over to you.’ And she handed over the mike, just as Pierce reached her.
He stopped just before her. She was smiling, but her eyes were wary. Worried.
‘I had to do it, Pierce,’ she whispered. ‘When the doctor told me what scum you were, what everyone here thought, I damn near slapped him.’ Her smile firmed a little. ‘But then I would have had to slap everyone here, too, and I’d probably end up in jail, and I want to go to the beach. Can we still go to the beach, Pierce, or are you mad at me?’
‘I’m mad at you.’
‘How badly is your shoulder hurt, miss?’ It was Dwayne’s mother. She looked white-faced and frightened. There were a few white faces around, Pierce thought. How many people had been in on the Clyde plan?
‘It’s mostly just bruised,’ Shanni assured her.
‘When are you going to the beach?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Then you’re not to cook tonight,’ the lady said, and suddenly she’d turned and grabbed the microphone from her son. ‘I’m on casserole tonight,’ she boomed into the microphone. ‘Dora, can you make one of your apple strudels?’
‘And I’ll make a hamper they can take with them,’ someone called.
‘We don’t need-’
‘I think we need,’ Dwayne’s mother told the supermarket grimly. ‘I think a whole lot of us need a lot more than you do.’
They drove home in silence, Shanni in the front passenger seat and the kids packed into the back. For the life of him Pierce couldn’t think of what to say. She’d blown him away. She’d been a virago, protecting her young with every ounce of her being.
