Chidgey Pet

The International Bestseller
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-78770-474-9
Verlag: Europa Editions
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 336 Seiten

'FAULTLESS.' -The Guardian *** 'A SLY PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER.' -The Observer Like every other girl in her class, twelve-year-old Justine is drawn to her glamorous, charismatic new teacher and longs to be her pet. However, when a thief begins to target the school, Justine's sense that something isn't quite right grows ever stronger. With each twist of the plot, this gripping story of deception and the corrosive power of guilt takes a yet darker turn. Young as she is, Justine must decide where her loyalties lie.  Set in New Zealand in the 1980s and probing themes of racism, misogyny and the oppressive reaches of Catholicism, Pet will take a rightful place next to other classic portraits of childhood betrayal: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Go-Between, Heavenly Creatures and Au Revoir Les Enfants among them.

Catherine Chidgey's novels have been published to international acclaim. Her first, In a Fishbone Church, won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and at the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific). In the UK it won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in The New York Times Book Review and a Best Book in the LA Times. Catherine has won the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for The Wish Child. She lives in Ng?ruaw?hia and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato. Her novel Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chidgey, Catherine

Leseproben

CHAPTER 4
Amy and I were walking her cocker spaniel on the cliffs above the rocky beach – we went there most weekends, to let Bonnie have a good run around. Stunted, prickly shrubs flanked our way, blown into the shape of the slopes by the relentless wind, and clusters of feathery fennel swished and bobbed. Bonnie darted through the flax bushes that shook their hooked black seed pods like beaks. We knew never to stray far from the track, and certainly never to get anywhere near the edge; it was a long way down to the shore, where the kelp made shifting shadows in the water. Old gun emplacements and observation posts dotted that part of the coastline, looking out to the harbour’s mouth for an enemy that never came. Sometimes we climbed inside them to feel the strange hush of the thick concrete walls, to run our fingers over the steel beams clotted with rust. A few times we’d seen Mrs Price jogging along the cliff track in her lime-green leggings, her candyfloss-pink crop-top, bright as some sleek tropical fish. That day we’d timed our walk for when we thought she might be there, and we were both keeping an eye out for her, wanting to be the first to say hello. ‘Tell me what her car was like again,’ said Amy. ‘Black seats,’ I said. ‘Boiling hot when I first climbed in – I burned my legs.’ ‘What else?’ Amy threw Bonnie’s old chewed tennis ball, and the dog brought it straight back. Above us the seagulls glided on the wind, their bellies flashing white. ‘A tape deck that played music when she pressed the button,’ I said. ‘What was the song?’ ‘The one about getting physical and hearing your body talk.’ Amy giggled, threw the ball into the wind again. ‘What else, though?’ ‘A Saint Christopher medal stuck to the dashboard. And she looked in the mirror before we left school and put on some fresh lipstick. Pink, with little sparkles in it.’ ‘But what was the main thing about the car? What was the thing you did wrong?’ Amy knew already; she’d made me repeat the story a dozen times that week. ‘I went to get in the wrong side, because it’s an American car.’ ‘And what did Mrs Price say?’ ‘She said, Do you want to get me arrested?’ We laughed, but I could see myself in the driver’s seat: smoky sunglasses shading my eyes, my lips shimmering as I sang along to the getting physical song and made up words for all the ones I didn’t know. I threw Bonnie’s tennis ball, and she shot off after it. The wind lifted our light cotton skirts, and we had to keep holding them down for modesty’s sake, though I liked the push and gush of it. I snatched at a fennel frond, crushed it in my palm to release the thick aniseed scent, while somewhere below us the waves destroyed themselves on the rocks. ‘Not even Melissa’s had a ride in that car,’ said Amy. ‘It was just because I wasn’t feeling well,’ I said. ‘No. You’re the new pet.’ ‘Don’t be stupid.’ But Amy had been keeping watch, keeping count. ‘She let you clean the blackboard on Wednesday, and you’ve read the morning prayer twice.’ Bonnie dropped the tennis ball at my feet and nudged my shoe, then looked up at me, waiting. ‘I haven’t really thought about it,’ I said. A lie. ‘Are you blind?’ said Amy. Bonnie nosed the ball closer to me, and I flung it ahead of us, all my weight behind it. I was aiming along the track, but the wind seized it and it veered towards the cliffs, bounced once, bounced twice, then disappeared over the edge. The dog streaked after it, her paws churning up the grass, and I heard Amy yell, ‘No! Bonnie, no!’ while I just stood there. Every gull in the sky began to shriek, as if they could see something terrible coming, something unstoppable. And on Bonnie ran, heading straight for the edge, and I shut my eyes while the gulls wheeled and screamed, and it was all my fault, my own stupid fault, and what would we tell our parents? Amy would hate me now, she would hate me forever, and I could never make it right – and then I heard her sobbing, ‘Good girl. Good girl,’ and I opened my eyes and saw her burying her face in Bonnie’s neck. And of course she hadn’t leapt to her death: of course pure dumb instinct had stopped her. Though Mum and Dad had warned me to keep close to the track at all times, I ran for Amy and Bonnie, and the three of us pressed ourselves low to the ground and gazed over the edge, tracing the path of a loosened stone as it tumbled down to the rocks, down to the waiting water. I still dream about that sometimes. Amy didn’t speak to me on the way home. She clipped Bonnie’s leash to her collar and strode off down the track, and I had to rush to keep up. ‘It wasn’t on purpose,’ I said. ‘Amy? I’d never do anything like that on purpose. You know I love Bonnie. I love her so much, she’s like my own dog. Dad won’t let me have a pet because I’ll only get attached. Amy? Amy?’ I was gabbling, I knew, but she gave no indication she even heard me. On she marched, her mouth a hard line. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ I kept saying. ‘Will you just look at me? You can have my Care Bears pencil case if you like. You’ve always wanted one. Please, Amy!’ Whenever Bonnie stopped to sniff at something, Amy yanked on her leash. I was supposed to be staying at her house that night: what if she didn’t speak to me the whole time? What would her parents think? We were at the corner of their street when the idea came to me. She was still hurrying on ahead, but I grabbed at her hand, and when she tried to shake me off I said, ‘I’ll tell you something else about Mrs Price’s car.’ She paused for a moment, shot me a sideways look. ‘Like what?’ ‘It has a cigarette lighter, underneath the tape deck.’ ‘So?’ she said. ‘My dad’s car has one of those.’ ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, but I bet he doesn’t let you smoke.’ ‘What?’ ‘She told me not to tell anyone.’ ‘Not to tell anyone what?’ Bonnie was whining, nudging Amy’s foot for the lost tennis ball. ‘After she put on her pink lipstick,’ I said, ‘she lit a cigarette. One of those menthol ones.’ I was making it up as I went, but it felt true – Mrs Price wouldn’t smoke just any cigarettes. ‘Then she asked me if I wanted a try,’ I said. That felt true too. ‘She did not!’ said Amy, but I knew I had her. ‘She passed it to me, and I took a puff and blew it out like they do on TV.’ I mimed this for Amy, my mouth a softly puckered O. ‘It tasted pepperminty. Her lipstick was on it, but I didn’t mind. I flicked the ash out the window and gave it back to her, and she said I mustn’t tell anyone. So you can’t either, okay?’ ‘Okay,’ said Amy. ‘Wow. Okay.’ When we got back to her house, Mrs Fong had made my favourite: sweet and sour chicken with jasmine rice, which she served in dishes patterned with blue dragons. Around the edges translucent dots formed snowflakes and stars. Mrs Fong said that some people thought they were rice grains set in the clay, but really they were holes filled with glaze, and if you held a dish up to the window the light shone through. She kept them for special guests. She asked me to say grace, and we all held hands like a family. Amy had told me they’d only become Catholics to fit in, and to get her and her little brother David into St Michael’s, but it had stuck: they knew all the proper words at Mass – even at Benediction – and Father Lynch said they were a beautiful example of the reach of God’s love right into other religions. They still had a shelf in their living room where they displayed family photos of dead people and burned incense by the statues of Chinese gods – the Goddess of Mercy was my favourite, with her gleaming white robes and her white crown. But they also had a table with a plastic Mary and Jesus who looked like they were made of icing, and on the wall a life-size photo of the Pope, with a crumbling sprig of cypress from last year’s Palm Sunday tucked behind one corner and a little holy-water font from the Christian supplies shop underneath. Mrs Fong said, ‘Please, start while it’s hot,’ and Mr Fong and Amy and David picked up their chopsticks and began eating. A pair of chopsticks sat next to my plate too. I tried to balance them between my fingers, but they kept sliding across each other, falling apart like pick-up sticks. When I did manage to grasp a piece of chicken, it plopped into my lap as soon as I lifted it. ‘I forgot your fork!’ said Mrs Fong when she noticed me struggling. ‘Oh my goodness, you’ll starve – you’ll disappear! Amy, get Justine a fork, please.’ ‘I don’t know what’s so hard about it,’ said Amy. ‘David’s been using chopsticks since he was three.’ ‘Don’t be rude to your guest,’ said her mother. ‘Mrs Price can use chopsticks,’ said Amy. ‘She showed us, with two pencils.’ ‘She’s very sophisticated,’ I said. ‘I think she’s lived overseas.’ ‘Mum was born overseas,’ said Amy. ‘Dad went and got her from Hong Kong.’ ‘Mrs Price, Mrs Price,’ said Amy’s mother. ‘All I ever hear these days.’ Bonnie lay in her basket, watching me with her big dark eyes. Amy had begged and begged her parents to let her have a dog, until finally, for her birthday, they took...