Another Country Altogether

24

Another Country Altogether

    All Jenny managed when she looked round the bach’s now updated décor was a pale smile, but good old Tom beamed all over his round, cheery face, announced it was looking good, gave Polly a bear-hug and did his best to wrench Stan’s hand off with the presumably congratulatory shake.

    Jenny then admitted that the two cyclamens on the bedside cabinets looked good, and Polly explained happily that they weren’t from either of the poncy garden centres, there being one in Carter’s Bay and one in Puriri, but from one of the Puriri supermarkets, at a much better price! Tom by this time was looking interestedly at the Worcester vase. He coughed suddenly.

    “Yep,” drawled Stan. “And the bowl that Cyclamen Number One’s black plastic pot’s sitting in is Minton—one of their better efforts, circa 1850—and Cyclamen Number 2 and its black plastic pot have been favoured with an interesting piece of 18th-century Famille verte that Carrano only let her have on sufferance—it’s got an invisible 18th-century crack in it. The pink in it’s not quite right but the verdict is there’s not too much of it and it tones.”

    Tom shot a quick look at Polly’s face. “Yes, ’course it does,” he agreed kindly.

    “Yer actual Famille rose vase is over in the loft above the garage, with some native foliage and supermarket chrysanths in it: welcoming for the guests, ya see.”

    “Knock it off, Stan,” said Polly mildly. “It was there, so why not make use of it?”

    “Yeah,” agreed Jenny somewhat faintly. “Might as well, eh? Well,” she went on, rallying, “I’ve never been able to see the point of buying up crap and shoving it away in cupboards.”

    “No, exactly!” beamed Polly. “Come on, I’ll show you your room—it’s got a nice little ensuite, much nicer than our bathroom, actually—and you can get settled in!” With this she led her off to the loft.

    Tom hung back, grabbing Stan’s arm painfully hard, so that he perforce hung back, too.

    “Must you torture me to death?” he asked mildly as the two women disappeared.

    “Yeah. Having a go at the party of the other part is the quickest way to break up a relationship; thought you knew that, ya twat?” replied his peer.

    “Uh—yeah. Well, I do, really. Yeah—no, don’t often have a go. But Hell, Tom, ya gotta admit it, she’s funny as a fight!” he replied somewhat desperately. “Those purple pants the glorious form’s stuffed into today were scored from Sue’s op shop in Sydney, while the warm underwear under them came from an exclusive little boutique in, if ya please, St Moritz! –She doesn’t ski, but he did,” he added heavily.

    “Look, I see what you mean, but if you look at it logically, mate, she’s only making use of the stuff she’s got.”

    Stan swallowed hard. “That’s exactly what she said herself the other day. –Down to the logically!” he added rather loudly before Tom could reply.

    Tom took a deep breath. “There you are, then,” he said firmly. “She’s unique. Not to say, she’s had more than enough to put up with, the last few years—last twenny-plus, if you ask me, though me and Jenny haven’t heard her complain. Think living with Carrano musta been bloody like living with a steamroller,” he added thoughtfully.

    Stan grimaced horribly. “Yeah.”

    “So watch yaself,” he ended.

    “Yeah.”

    The Mayhews would have the next day at the bach and then they were all due to drive down to Taupo Shores Ecolodge together, the academic mid-year breaks on both sides of the Tasman having for once coincided. Morning tea with the Baranskis was first on the agenda. It seemed to entail Thomas hauling Tom off to admire his workshop, an immense barn-like structure that formed an entire wing of his self-designed woodsmanly house—those were actual log-cabin type logs forming the lower half of its walls, yes. As Polly volunteered to go along and break up the male peer group in time for the actual morning tea, Jenny was able to ask Stan and Dorothy grimly: “Have ya seen anything of her blasted kids, yet?”

    They exchanged glances.

    “Well, Johnny, that’s the brighter twin, has a flat in the city,” Dorothy admitted. “Comparative linguistics at Auckland. Passed everything so far with flying colours, we gather.”

    “And?”

    She sighed. “I only got the tail end of it, Jenny, which was Polly coming over the day after he’d deigned to turn up and bawling all over my nice sofa.”

    They looked involuntarily at her lovely sofa—at the moment supporting Jenny’s bum—with its charming modern design of tulips on a heavy oatmeal linen.

    “She chose it,” Dorothy admitted. “Ages ago, when I got my flat after I’d landed the job at Sir G.G.”

    “Never mind that,” said Jenny grimly. “What immediately provoked the bawling?”

    “Bloody Johnny being superior, was all I got. You?” she asked Stan.

    He made a sour face. “Nothing, except that she’d thought they had more in common. I was at work when he turned up, but he stayed on for tea, and he certainly managed to look down his nose at me in a superior way.” He shrugged.

    “Right,” Jenny concluded sourly. “That’s the one she’s got most in common with, isn’t it? What about the one that lives down on the farm?”

    “Well,” said Dorothy heavily, “indifference, really, Jenny. ‘You can bring your boyfriend down if you like, Mum, only not during lambing,’ I think was the reaction.”

    “Yeah,” Stan agreed heavily. “She decided not to bother, so I didn’t press it.”

    “Goddit,” Jenny acknowledged sourly. “And the girl?”

    “Bloody Katie Maureen,” said Dorothy sourly. “Polly was hoping she’d come home for the Yank long vacation this year.”

    “Yeah,” Stan agreed. “It’s all right, Dorothy, I’ll tell her. Polly rang the little bitch at Harvard, Jenny, and got bawled out because she’d got the time difference wrong, for a start. Then she was informed that she could sleep around with as many men as she liked, and she—Katie Maureen—had never been blind, whatever her dad mighta been—yes,” he said to Jenny’s appalled face: “in so many words; but she was never gonna set foot in the bach while Polly had one of us in it. And she’d never forgive her for getting rid of her dad’s house. Then she hung up on her.”

    “Yes,” Dorothy agreed heavily. “She was always daddy’s little girl, Jenny.”

    “That does not excuse her! Jesus! I can’t imagine our Blinker ever— Well, think she’d be calmly rational about it, actually,” she admitted.

    “That’s their daughter,” Stan explained.

    Dorothy nodded. “Mm, heard all about them. Um, did Polly bawl all over you, Stan?”

    “She did, yeah, but she wasn’t steamed up about it like I thought she’d be. Seemed more bewildered, really. Kept saying the kid was always a determined little thing but she was so sweet as a little girl.”

    “Yeah, that’s what she said to me, too,” Dorothy admitted.

    “God,” said Jenny limply. “What’s the total? One superior, one indifferent, one accusatory? Poor Polly.”

    “Well, yes, Jenny, but it wasn’t much different before she met Stan!” said Dorothy quickly. “The kids were off doing their own things the minute the funeral was over! That first Christmas—woulda been, um, two and a bit months after—they were scattered to the four winds! Johnny and Katie Maureen were both overseas, and Davey was down on the farm. –He only came up for the day itself,” she added drily.

    “What?” croaked Stan.

    “Yes. You haven’t had that choice titbit? –Yeah. Used the Group’s helicopter—the employees all adored Jake: they were all so shocked they’d have done anything for the undeserving little brutes. Flew up, attended the funeral, didn’t stay for the wake—it was bloody, but then they always are—flew back.” She shrugged. “No finer feelings whatsoever: he’s got his father’s bulldozing personality with none of the—well, simple decency, really, would put it best—yes, simple decency, that characterised Jake.”

    Jenny had to swallow hard. “I’m appalled,” she admitted. “I thought our three were bad enough, but— Christ. Think I might tell Tom to let Buster have that surf-casting rod after all.”

    “No, don’t: it’s a bloody dangerous sport, and the kid’s still too irresponsible,” said Stan quickly.

    “You should talk.”

    “No, seriously Jenny. At his age he needs to get out with an older bloke who knows what he’s doing; but Tom’s not a fisherman, is he? Buy him a tinnie with a decent outboard—not too heavy for it; Tom’ll know.”

    “Tom’ll know what?” asked Tom’s voice cheerfully as the male peer group resurfaced, herded by their female sheepdog.

    “The right sort of outboard to buy Buster for the tinnie you’re gonna buy him for—would this be birthday or Christmas?” Jenny asked Stan heavily.

    “Whichever ya like.”

    “Yeah,” she said drily to her husband. “That.”

    “If ya like,” he agreed mildly.

    “What is a tinnie?” asked Thomas with interest, automatically taking his big chair.

    Jenny and Tom looked wildly at Stan.

    “Cloth ears,” that gentleman explained smoothly. “It’s an aluminium dinghy, or runabout, ya nit,” he said cordially to the Dean of Environmental Resources.

    “An Australianism,” explained Polly calmly, sitting down on the tulip-patterned sofa beside Jenny. The picture thus presented was quite something: it all toned beautifully; in fact, recognised Jenny dazedly, if she wasn’t Polly you’d have suspected her of having chosen the outfit on purpose. Today it was a pair of narrow-cut dark green pants in a fine wool, the provenance of which nobody currently in residence at the bach had dared ascertain, accompanied by a fine-knit white jumper ditto, topped off by the coral-pink fuzzy bolero scored from Sue Crabtree’s op shop. The neat little ears were adorned with large creamy pearls, possibly in honour of the morning tea, and the feet were in a pair of little green suede boots that the other two ladies present had silently admitted to themselves they would kill for. The very narrow gold belt round the still-slender waist had been scored from the frightful Puriri Emporium, but at the moment only Stan was aware of this, and he was hugging the fact to himself in silent glee.

    “Were they ever made of tin?” Thomas pursued with interest.

    “Dunno,” Stan admitted cheerfully. “You?” he said to Tom.

    “Nope. Jenny?”

    “No; I’ve always taken it for granted they’re like corrugated iron,” she replied calmly.

    The males all looked baffled at this one but Polly and Dorothy nodded and agreed.

    “Er—I see,” lied Thomas politely. “Did someone mention morning tea, half an hour back?” he added politely to his wife.

    “Eh? Well, the jug’s boiled, I suppose we could have it,” she acknowledged graciously. “You types fancy leathery yellowish things out of a supermarket packet mislabelled scones, or supermarket carrot cake?” she enquired of her visitors.

    “Carrot cake,” replied Tom instantly.

    “Dorothy, I could have made you some real scones!” cried Polly.

    Dorothy got up, creaking slightly. “Phew! It’s the knees,” she explained. “That’s true, actually,” she advised them. “Don’t be taken in by the face or those incredibly gorgeous earrings and boots.” With this she departed for the kitchen.

    Polly was touching her right ear dubiously.

    “It’s all right, darl’, that was jealousy speaking,” said Stan quickly.

    “What? –Yes. Good Heavens, I could have given her some nice earrings for Christmas any time these last twenty years! But she’s always said she’s not interested in jewellery! Thomas, has she asked you for jewellery?”

    The Mayhews looked uneasily at their host but Thomas replied calmly: “No, she’s never asked me for anything, Polly. But she was very pleased with the rock I gave her for our anniversary.”

    “Of course! It’s lovely!” she beamed. “Can I show it to Jenny and Tom?”

    “Certainly; it’s in the bedroom,” he replied courteously.

    “Come on!” she urged.

    Obediently they got up and followed her out.

    Thomas looked thoughtfully at Stan. “Well?”

    “Jenny wanted the gen about her flamin’ kids, so she got it,” he replied on a sour note.

    “I see. Polly apologised for inflicting herself on our peer group in the workshop, and said she thought it might be something like that, that was on Jenny’s mind.”

    “Right.” After a moment Stan admitted: “Never did think she was slow.”

    “No, quite,” Thomas agreed in his fruity Oxbridge. “May I ask what’s on the agenda for this morning?”

    “Nice drive down to Puriri, gonna show them the bloody Emporium or I’m gonna die in the attempt,” he admitted.

    Thomas grinned. “You asked for it.”

    “Oh, it’s worth it!” Stan assured him airily.

    Promptly Thomas the Tank Engine collapsed in splutters, gasping: “I’m sure!”

    About ninety minutes later the Mayhews looked groggily around the dingy Puriri Emporium. Well, its stock wasn’t dingy: most of it tended to the frankly lurid. Glowing, even. But the shop itself was a dark, barnlike structure that didn’t look as if it had ever seen a lick of paint since it was first put up. Which must have been a fair while back: the building it was in seemed to have had a recent coat of white high-gloss but was clearly one of the oldest structures on the Puriri waterfront, adjoining, but definitely not part of, the much later erection miscalled The Arcade, which the Australian visitors had immediately identified as an undercover mall. Unlike the air-conditioned Australian malls, however, it was centred round a large space that was open to the elements.

    “Ya don’t want a flat Donald Duck, Jenny, love,” said Stan kindly as she groggily picked one up. Putatively inflatable.

    “No,” she agreed, looking groggily at the label. “Made in Taiwan.”

    “Really? This must be the opposition benches, then. That lot over there are all from China.” He nodded at some shelves of the most appallingly crude examples of the ceramic art ever to have come out of the country for which china had been named.

    “Those greyish plates have got lumps in them,” replied Jenny weakly.

    “Yep. Also the small bowls, saucers, and peculiar flat spoons. Don’t buy one for your soy sauce, the lumps on the bottom make them unstable.”

    “Right,” she croaked.

    “Those tiny brown teapots, admittedly adorable, unquote, not only dribble but leak.” Tom’s eyebrows had risen, so Stan added briefly: “Empirically.”

    Tom gave a gasp of horror. “Not on that—”

    “No, Tom, she does realise that the male side will kill her if she ever lets anything containing liquid get anywhere near that antique sideboard: apparently Carrano had the sense to drum it into ’er.”

    “Good,” replied Tom frankly.

    “What’s she up to?” asked Jenny, peering into the Emporium’s dim recesses.

    “I shudder to think. Go and see, if ya like, but if it’s a garment of any sort, please do me an immense favour and wrench her off it. I freely admit my sartorial standards are nothing to write home about,” said Stan, as the Mayhews looked pointedly at his jeans—definitely of what Thomas called the “ancient and honourable” variety—”but there is a limit to what human nerves can take!”

    “Softie,” replied Jenny with a grin, but she forged off into the hinterland obligingly.

    “Those books,” said Stan affably as Tom’s eye then strayed towards them, “are not real Westerns.”

    “Louie Llama?” he replied on an eager note.

    “Noddeven close.”

    Tom went over to their bin and picked one up nevertheless. It had a picture of a cowboy and a buxom cowgirl on its cover, which bore the intriguing title “Squiggle, Squiggle, Squiggle”. He opened it… He looked up dazedly. “I think it’s in Vietnamese,” he reported.

    “Nope. Close but no cigar,” replied Stan smugly. “Thai.”

    Tom awarded him a glare and looked through it carefully. “Bugger. No porno pics,” he reported.

    “No, one gathers several generations of hopeful little Puriri boys have also discovered that, Tom. Polly reckons that lot’s been there for as long as she can remember.”

    Spluttering, Tom dropped it back in its bin.

    “There is porn, however,” Stan added calmly. “Further back; but the really hot stuff’s behind the counter.”

    “How do you know?” he asked weakly.

    “Got curious, asked the proprietor. He obligingly produced a snuff video for me.”

    “What?”

    “Yeah. Well— For those who still have video players and like that sorta stuff, apparently, Tom.”

    “Look, cut it out! What the Hell did you— Well, Jesus, Stan, that’s really revolting! You should have shopped him to the cops!”

    He shrugged. “It might not be a free country, any more than Oz is, but blokes have still got free will. Nobody’s forcing the stuff on anybody.”

    “Well, did you dispose of it, at least?”

    “Yeah. Burnt the bloody thing—took the tinnie up the Inlet, had a little bonfire. The plastic stunk to High Heaven, God knows what it released into the atmosphere, but there are plenty of trees up there to sop it up; and it was better than ditching it in the sea to choke a poor bloody cetacean.”

    “True. –You oughta stop her patronising the place,” he decided with a scowl.

    “Tom, old mate, she’s got free will, too. And she loves the dump,” he said heavily. “I don’t buy anything meself, but that’s as far as I go. –Come on, it’s good for a laugh, at least.”

    Tom didn’t feel it was, but he allowed himself to be guided around it until they came upon—

    “Lava lamps!” he gasped, his eyes lighting up.

    “Before you forget ya principles, mate, a friendly word of warning,” drawled Stan.

    “Yeah?”

    “Made in China. They explode. –Whole of Puriri’s aware of it, I gather. Nobody’s buying, at any rate. Been warned off ’em by— Lessee. Thomas, for a start: Dorothy thought he might like one for the workshop; Sol Winkelmann, the boating-supplies type: he was speaking from personal experience, admits he was lucky it didn’t burn the place down; the young bloke who runs the recycling yard in Carter’s Bay; huge Maori bloke called Rewi who’s the boss of a road gang: his dim nephew bought one, blew out a window in his mum’s house; um… Oh, yes: the very, very smooth ex-CEO of Sir George Grey, who was present at my job interview. His wife fell for the bloody things, but in the first place he’s got too much taste to give them house-room and in the second place he’d been warned off by one of the local docs—had to deal with a couple of the results.”

    “Then perhaps I won’t buy one,” replied Tom very drily indeed.

    “I wouldn’t. New Zealand seems to have been de-regulated, in toto. Thomas did his nut about the relaxation of building regulations, in relation to the recent Christchurch earthquake. Not just those involving the structural side: apparently there was nothing to stop the developers from planting large subdivisions on completely unsuitable ground. Which they did. Result: heartbreak.”

    “Shit.”

    “Yeah, the place is full of that! Still, it’s generally agreed up Carter’s Inlet that we’re pretty happy with our little slice of the world, and après nous le déluge.”

    “Yeah, well, that’s pretty much why we’re planning to retire down Gorski Bay way,” Tom admitted.

    “Ri— Oh, God, what have they got hold of?” he groaned, shutting his eyes.

    Tom looked fearfully. “Uh—it’s big,” he offered. He peered. “Big and horrible. I’d say it’s either a hot air balloon or a marquee, mate.”

    “What?” Stan opened his eyes. “By Jesus!” He made a beeline for them.

    On due consideration Tom left him to it. He strolled back to the doorway and re-examined what Polly had helpfully told him were called “les soldes de l’entrée” in France. Unsold, in this case.

    “Those aren’t real cowboy books, eh?” said a very young voice from the region of his right elbow.

    “Uh—no,” he allowed.

    “Hey, don’t eat those suckers, they made my little brother sick, eh?” he then offered. “His tongue, well, it was all blue for days, Mum said the dye, it musta been pois’nous!”

    “Right; thanks for the warning.”

    “That bubble-gum, it doesn’t work,” was the next helpful piece of intel.

    “Eh?” –The kid had such a strong Kiwi accent that Tom thought he’d misheard him.

    “That bubble-gum, it doesn’t work, eh?”

    “Uh—ya mean ya can’t chew it?”

    “Neh! It won’t blow bubbles, see?”

    “Cripes.”

    The kid sniffed. That seemed to say it all, really. Tom peered cautiously inside but the gloom defeated him. Idly he picked up a strange china ornament from the next bin.

    “That’s gonna break,” warned his mentor. With this he strolled off, hands in pockets.

    Tom put the thing back very, very delicately in its bin before the prophecy could be fulfilled and he’d have to shell out good dough for it.

    … “It was a tent,” reported Stan, some time later. “She thought it might do for this Chrissie wing-ding on the lawn she’s planning.”

    “Goddit.”

    “Plastic. Already coming apart at the seams.”

    “Stan, old mate, that was blindingly self-evident from the moment of setting eyes on the dump. Why are you bothering to tell me this?”

    “Sharing the misery,” he replied, glaring.

    Alas, at this sad plaint Tom Mayhew broke down in horrible sniggers, gasping: “How are the mighty fallen!”

    “On the lawn, eh?” said Pete McLeod slowly, scratching his jaw.

    “Right,” Stan and Tom agreed.

    “Next December? –Yeah,” he ascertained. “Shit, think we might be lined up for that. Promised her we’d come and stay in her loft.”

    “Well, you’ll be comfortable there, it’s fully lined, double-glazed, air-conditioned and centrally heated,” said Tom kindly.

    “That right? Windows open, do they?”

    “Uh—” Tom looked helplessly at Stan.

    “Yes, of course they do, mate, Polly’s a bit of a fresh-air fiend.”

    “In that case I may be able to stand it,” he said heavily.

    Tom looked puzzled, so Stan ventured: “Think ’e’s talking about the wing-ding, Tom, not the loft as such.”

    “Too right, I am!” Pete shuddered. “You wanna get her pal Livia going about her wing-dings on the bloody lawn! Think there was one time she had fucking TVNZ there, too. God! –No, well, at least you’ll be spared Jake’s bloody corporate mates.”

    “I really don’t think it’s gonna be a big do, Pete,” said Stan kindly. “Uh, well, the phrase used was ‘the race that knows Joseph’ but it didn’t mean a thing to me. You?”

    “Nope.”

    “Sounds sort of Jewish,” offered Tom in a fuddled way.

    “Uh—not out of the Bible, is it?” groped Pete. “Visions of Sundee school what I usually got it in the neck for wagging come to mind. Weird pictures—some were black and white, think they held those ones up, dunno why—anyway, weird pictures of a kinda Anglo-Saxon Jesus: you get that?”

    “Yep,” Stan agreed. “We got coloured ones, too. Goddawful: put you off religion for life.”

    “Aw, yeah...” Tom discovered slowly. “Shit, I’d forgotten all about them… Bloody incredible what our parents put us through in the name of some ancient superstition, when ya come to think about it, eh?”

    “Yep,” they agreed.

    “Anyway,” Pete concluded glumly, “me and Jan’ll have to go: can’t let her down, however horrible it’s gonna be.”

    “Thanks, Pete,” said Stan, smiling.

    Back in Jan’s nice warm kitchen the male peer group of course broke down and asked Mummy pathetically what “the race that knows Joseph” actually meant; but, alas, Polly and Jan merely exchanged glances and rolled their eyes to High Heaven, what time Jenny gave a sudden gasp and cried: “Of course!” Then they all looked pityingly at the poor boys…

    “Look,” said Pete at last in tones of exasperation, after a certain amount of baffled glaring had taken place: “if it’s something to do with women’s innards, however remote, we don’t wanna know in any case, see?”

    After the initial reaction of not being able to believe their ears, all three ladies broke into delirious gales of laughter.

    “Give it up, mate,” advised Stan laconically.

    “It is Jewish, isn’t it?” said Tom suddenly.

    Jan’s and Jenny’s mirth immediately redoubled itself, but Polly wiped her eyes and said unsteadily: “How can it be, Tom? White Protestantism began in the Garden of Eden, everybody knows that.”

    “Yes!” gasped Jan. “Of course they all were, weren’t they, but I’m pretty sure she tactfully refrains from saying which sort!”

    Jenny wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Just run away and play with your boys’ toys until lunchtime,” she advised kindly.

    “Thanks very much!” cried her helpmeet.

    “Come on,” said Pete heavily. “When they get into this mood ya can’t do a thing with them.” Forthwith they exited, the three backs expressing male dudgeon—though, the ladies recognised, they might have been trying to express male solidarity.

    “Chumps,” summarised Jan briefly.

    “Yep,” Polly and Jenny agreed.

    “They were all right, eh?” Pete concluded at the end of the visit.

    “The Mayhews? Yes, of course, you idiot, Polly wouldn’t have recommended them otherwise!”

    “Could of. Might of just wanted to get a bit of custom for the ecolodge in the off-season.”

    “In that case she wouldn’t’ve come down with them,” replied Jan heavily.

    “Never said she would of.”

    Jan rolled her eyes, but since they were standing at their front gate, having just waved Polly and Stan off, and it was a bloody parky July day, retreated indoors.

    Pete mooched after her. “Could have a bit of a smoko?” he suggested.

    It was barely an hour since breakfast. Jan was about to rubbish the idea and then realised he was looking a bit droopy. Bugger. “If you like. Tea or coffee?”

    “Tea. I’ll get it, you take the weight off. –Hey,” he said, starting to muck around rinsing the teapot that didn’t need rinsing, “Polly was funny about those genuine Aussie Arnott’s Scotch Fingers, eh?”

    Er… These’d be the dry-as-dust ones she’d brought him from Australia that tasted exactly the same as the ones that he got from the supermarket in Taupo and, on closer inspection, proved to be exactly the same, they were all made and packaged in Australia. –And why on earth we were importing Aussie biscuits, Jan Harper didn’t know: the only answer to that one was, the politicians were off their heads and had no idea of the first principles of per unit production—the Aussie home market being five times what ours was—and the 21st century was in a fair way to ruining the pathetic remnants of what EnZed laughably called its economy, once and for all.

    “Um, don’tcha think, Jan?”

    Jan came to with a start. “Oh! Sorry, dear: ruminating about the country’s so-called economy. You mean bringing them over for you because they were genuine ones? Mm, she was.”

    “Yeah. –Wonder how she got ’em through Customs?” he wondered idly. “Well, probably just didn’t declare ’em,” he decided breezily. “Musta learnt a few things, living with Jake for over twenny years, eh?”

    “Mm. Did—uh—did Stan mention miniatures to you?” asked Jan cautiously. “The keywords would be Persian and cat.”

    “Eh?”

    “No, all right. Polly said he went funny over it—funny-peculiar, not funny-hah-hah.”

    “Ya better tell me,” he said heavily, putting the teapot on the table to brew.

    “Did that jug boil before you poured—”

    “Yeah, yeah. Go on: funny-peculiar.”

    Making a face, Jan retailed Polly’s report.

    “So the bloke can put ’is foot down when ’e has to. Good on ’im,” was Pete’s reaction.

    “Uh—well, yes. Come to think of it, it’s true they never question women’s personal jewellery: Jayne brought those lovely pearls of hers over with her, didn’t she? For all the Customs people knew she could’ve just bought them brand-new and been intending to flog them off over here for twice what she’d paid for them.”

    “Yep. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t bloody silly of Polly to do it deliberately, though. I‘m on Stan’s side,” he said firmly.

    Jan smiled. “Are you? Good.”

    He blinked, but rallied. “Ya can’t say she can’t be mad at times, lovey. Remember how Jake used to go on about that time she chucked a rock onto that bloody lawn of his at three in the morning to see if it’d set off his flaming spotlights and alarms?”

    Jan choked slightly but admitted: “I’d forgotten that.”

    “Yeah. Ya know—don’t get me wrong,” he warned, “but I think she’ll be happier with Stan than she was with Jake, really. Well—more comfortable, maybe, is what I mean. Well, for one thing they’re more on the same wavelength with the intellectual stuff, eh? Not saying Jake wasn’t a Helluva bright: he was, but he left school at fifteen, ya know. And personality-wise… Well, someone once said to me that being in the same room with Jake was like trying to stand up in a strong wind; aw, yeah: and ole Wal once said ’e was like a ruddy steamroller—which ’e was, ya can’t deny it. Well-meaning, of course, when it was on a personal level, like the way he took on the permaculture dump next-door and sorted the lot out, after the bloody tsunami. Not just the money side, either. Sorted out them remaining concubines of that permaculture prick Terry’s, too, didn’t he?”

    “Ye— Um, Pete, love, thought we’d agreed not to mention that word now the man’s kids are growing up?”

    “Well, ’e was a prick, Jan, ya can’t get past it!”

    “No: ‘concubines’,” said Jan, wincing.

    “Aw! No, well, forgot. Poor little buggers. Didn’t even marry the oldest one, did ’e?”

    “No,” said Jan heavily, “and the ones the Throgmortons have adopted aren’t even hers, so do try, Pete.”

    “Yeah. Well, wouldn’t in front of them.”

    “No,” agreed Jan valiantly.

    “Anyway, what I’m saying, I think living with Jake on a daily basis was a bit of a bloody strain. Well, wouldn’t of fancied it meself, and I’d known ’im a bloody sight longer than Polly had.”

    “You’re right,” said Jan with a smile. “Not that she couldn’t stand up to him, but—yeah. Strain’s the exact word, Pete: always having to be ready to rein him in, eh?”

    “Yep. –Cripes, I remember one time, we were down the Kaimanawas—” He plunged into some anecdote of Jake’s bull-headed recklessness in the long ago, the word “pig”, its variant “bloody great Captain Cooker”, and the further variant “vicious great tusker” occurring far too often, but Jan just switched off, nodding occasionally and rescuing the teapot and pouring the tea that he’d apparently forgotten about.

    “Ye-ah…” he concluded, sighing, and picking up a giant slice of the fruit-cake that she’d put out, unremarked, during the flow: “that was Jake for ya. Nobody could tell ’im a thing!”

    “Right,” replied Jan nicely.

    Pete siphoned up tea, finished his slice of cake hungrily, and then appeared to come to. “We having fruit-cake for morning tea again?”

    Jan took a deep breath. “Yes. Because I’ve taken a vow, Pete, that those genuine dry-as-dust Aussie Scotch Fingers of Polly’s were the last Aussie biscuits that are gonna be consumed in this house. You are not gonna contribute to the final breaking of the back of what laughably passes for EnZed’s economy by buying Aussie goods that we oughta be manufacturing for ourselves!”

    “Righto,” he agreed amiably. “Never thought of it like that. Yeah, you’re right, love.”

    Jan sagged slightly. Yeah, well, there you were. He might be, to use Stan’s delightful Australian expression which unfortunately none of the cloth-eared lot in these parts would recognise, no matter how many times they might hear it on the Aussie soapies on the idiot box, “as mad as a snake”, but like, thank God, Stan Gorski himself, he was a reasonable man. Unlike Jake Carrano.

    Christmas was nearly upon them and the pohutukawa trees were in bloom, dusting the far end of Carter’s Inlet with a powdering of deep red. In their branches a curious concatenation of clonking and whistling noises could be heard.

    “The tuis are back!” reported Polly with a beaming smile, panting into the bach’s main room.

    Stan hadn’t got the fulltime lecturing job, but had been appointed on a part-time basis to take the first-year tutorials, help out with the first-year lectures, and oversee the Faculty of Environmental Resource’s boats. Didn’t pay as well, of course, but it was better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick. The position might have been part-time but nevertheless it had kept him pretty busy during the second semester, and there was a fair amount of preparation to do for next year, as Thomas had gone over the old first-year tutorial plans with an eagle eye, and decided they needed a complete upgrade. He was working at one of the small desks they’d fitted into what had been the little side room. He looked up with a start. “Huh?”

    “The tuis are back!” she beamed.

    He turned round, but Carrano’s Don Binney painting, Tui, Carter’s Inlet, was still there on the wall above the antique kauri sideboard. Apart from the big bed, these were the only two items she’d retained of the room’s original furnishings. The bloke had abolished the painting when he went all minimalist, but Polly had disinterred it from the garage—leaning against the wall in the lee of the flaming so-called wine cellar behind a pile of other junk—and reinstated it. The picture was a somewhat stylised treatment of two shiny black birds with cute little rolled-up white parson’s bands under their chins in a rather tired-looking tree with a few scattered yellow flowers hanging off it. True, the thing clashed somewhat with her fuchsia tiger bedspread and re-covered sofa, but so long as she was happy, he didn’t give a fuck.

    “Never went anywhere, so far’s I’m aware,” he said mildly.

    “What? No: the real ones!” she beamed. “There haven’t been tuis up the Inlet for years, but they’re back! They must’ve been attracted by the pohutukawa flowers!”

    “Right. Well, that’s gotta be a good omen, eh?” he said kindly.

    “Yes, definitely!”

    “Better get on the blower to your mates, then.”

    “Um, well, Michaela will be pleased, but she’s busy potting. And so will Beth, but I’d better not phone her, I don’t want to wake the baby. At this rate they’re gonna have to call him Bawler, like Jenny and Tom’s eldest!” she said with a giggle.

    “Right. Jack getting any sleep, is ’e?” he asked with friendly interest.

    “Not much!” said Polly with a giggle. “Serve him right for not taking precautions! Not to say, believing that Beth can count!” She went into a cascade of gurgling giggles.

    Stan grinned. “Like that, was it?”

    “Mm!” she gasped, still laughing.

    “Well, who else would be interested?”

    “I don’t think Dorothy’s interested in birds. And Jill’s English, she’ll never have woken up to hear the tuis clonking in the kowhais.”

    Stan ignored the ethnic references, and seized on the essential point. “Clonking?”

    “Mm! They make a funny noise. It’s only one of their calls, they’ve got a musical kind of whistle as well. –I know! I’ll ring Jan!”

    Stan was in no doubt whatsoever that even if Jan didn’t give a stuff about odd birds that clonked and apparently had been giving Carter’s Inlet the cold shoulder since time immemorial, she’d pretend to be thrilled, so he just said mildly: “Good-oh.”

    Sure enough, Jan was appropriately thrilled, good on ’er.

    After that curiosity overcame him, so they got into the tinnie and rowed cautiously up the Inlet, not using the outboard, as Polly seemed sure it would scare them, until they were close enough to hear the tuis. Or tui, ethnic plural, as in the painting.

    Stan collapsed in startled sniggers. “By cripes! They do clonk!”

    “Yes,” said Polly with her serene smile. “They do.”

    He looked at her sitting there in a peculiar outfit consisting of a very frilly pale yellow sleeveless blouse with a nasty splodge of white paint on one of the salient points and a pair of pale pink stretch pants that had gone saggy at the knees and bum, with her hair in a big untidy, fuzzy plait, the lot topped off by a bright red plastic sun-visor scored from Puriri’s depository of all the most unsaleable, unlikely junk in the western Pacific, spelled Emporium. And somehow felt very odd indeed: rather as if a giant hand had reached right into his chest and squeezed his heart. Not painful, no. Breathless, excited, overcome? Some of those. Which at his age was ridiculous.

    “English muffins for lunch would be nice, don’t you think?” she said.

    Stan leapt where he sat. “Huh?”

    “English muffins, for lunch. Or don’t you think they’re lunchy things?”

    The way he felt at the moment he’d have eaten hemlock if she’d suggested it. “’Course they are: why not?”

    “Ooh, good! With real butter, just for once?”

    “Yeah, that’d really hit the spot, darl’.”

    “Good! –Do you want to row back? It’s a lot heavier than I realised, with two.”

    Well, ya could say that—yeah. On the other hand, it was a Helluva lot—one Helluva lot—better! Grinning, he took the oars and rowed them back to the bach to a lunch of toasted “English” muffins with salty New Zealand butter, washed down with Foster’s lager on his part, it having been the only Aussie beer he could find amongst the weirdo Kiwi boutique beers that were springing up all over the show like rashes—all far too sweet and in many cases deliberately flavoured with revolting herbs or fruit into the bargain—and on her part, fizzy spring water that had gone a bit flat in the fridge because she hadn’t screwed the top back on tight enough, but that she didn’t wanna waste.

    There were some strawberries but they were rather sour, not to say rather tasteless, just like the Aussie supermarket ones, so she did her favourite trick of zapping them in the microwave—Carrano had installed one in the bach’s kitchen, thank God, and she appeared to accept it as a fixture, though she didn’t use it much. What you did with the strawberries, see, you cut them up and sprinkled them with raw sugar, mixed them up fiercely in your microwaveable bowl, and bunged them in until they just started to froth up and— “Look out!” Then rescued them, and used the resultant sauce on ice cream or plain yoghurt. Plus as required, mopped up the sticky mess in the microwave before it could turn to strawberry concrete and be there for evermore.

    The sauce thus produced was admittedly delicious, but was it worth the agony of wondering whether it was gonna froth all over the bloody microwave, and watching it like a hawk in order to make a lightning grab? Apparently, yeah.

    Why was it that women had nerves of steel about that sort of thing, mused Stan, eating his delicious strawberry-sauced yoghurt, but went to pieces over things that a bloke wouldn’t have thought twice about? She was terrified of anything electrical—operating microwaves didn’t seem to count, but he wasn’t gonna even try to figure that one out, a bloke could run mad that way. Panicked when he unplugged the jug without turning it off at the wall first, panicked when he checked out the electrics after they’d had a power cut—while the blackout itself had left her unmoved. And just about burst into tears when he bought a powerboard and plugged in both their laptops, the printer and a small electric heater to it in order to connect them to the one wall socket. Overloading and starting a fire were gonna follow as night the day, apparently. And as for recharging a flaming mobile phone— Bowing three times and running round the house widdershins was about it. Or possibly Sue’s phrase, “holding your mouth in the right shape”. He had tried to point out that it did not matter if you plugged that end (referred to as “that wee thingy”) or that other end (referred to as “that plug thingy”—technical) in first. And no, the power did not have to be turned off at the wall first!

    “Huh?” he said coming to with a jump.

    “I said, shall we have coffee? –You’re very absent-minded today, are you okay?”

    “Fine. Just musing on the impenetrability of the female mind.”

    “It’s our cultural brainwashing,” replied Polly briskly. “You know that. Do you want coffee?”

    “Oh—yeah. I’ll make it,” he said kindly.

    “That might be a good idea,” she admitted. “I’m always afraid I’ll forget the water again and the pot’ll get white hot and have to be thrown out. I’ve never done it since that one time, mind you, but I have to concentrate so hard in case I do do it again that I’ve started wondering if it’s worth it.”

    “Uh—yeah,” he managed. She sounded quite placid about it! “Better leave it to me in future, then.”

    “That’d be lovely, actually. Thank you, Stan,” she replied politely.

    “No worries,” he croaked. He tottered to his feet and got on with, apparently, the male task of making coffee correctly in a very ordinary Italian coffee-pot like what both sexes had been using in Italy since time imm— Never mind. If she was happy, he was happy!

    The next day Sol disclosed that that woulda been the time that Carrano went absolutely spare, it had taken hours to get the horrible burnt stink out of the kitchen, but no, he didn’t think she’d been afraid Stan might go spare, too. And iffen he was at a loss to understand how anybody could forget the water, well, he guessed he was at one with the beleaguered male half of humanity in that, guy.

    “Right. Um, stop me if this is too personal, Sol, but is Michaela terrified of electricity, too?”

    “Yup!” he confirmed cheerfully.

    Stan sagged slightly. “Right,” he conceded.

    Sol’s eyes twinkled. “Speaking for myself, I’ve taken the tack that I don’t even try to figure out the whys and wherefores, I jest set back and enjoy it!” He cleared his throat. “’Ceptin’ in Polly’s case, I wouldn’t let her see it, guy, because we have heard the expression ‘MCP’ getting bandied about in that quarter.”

    “But— No, you’re right: I’ll just sit back and enjoy it!”

    Stan hadn’t objected when Polly had wanted to install one of those stair-elevator things in the loft to spare Jan the stairs—seemed only sensible, and she could more than afford it. He’d had his doubts about any New Zealand firm actually pulling their fingers out to get it in before Christmas, though, but she’d rung someone in Carrano Development and that was all she wrote. Two blokes with mobile phones and clipboards turned up just over two hours later, took notes and preliminary measurements, and accepted lunch gratefully, not seeming to mind it was a strange Asian-style soup—Polly had discovered some frozen “Chinese” dumplings, not imported, a local effort, in one of the Puriri supermarkets for a very good price, which she added to a base of instant Japanese tofu miso soup. To this she added some noodles and a few sliced veges to taste, this time it was broccoli but nobody actually objected. It all got boiled up with about five times the amount of water the soup packet suggested, and then she added some Asian sauces with a little sugar and finished off each bowl with a drizzle of sesame oil. A lot more palatable than you mighta thunk, in fact one joker asked her for the recipe for his wife. Dessert consisted of coffee and baklava—moving further West, yes—but they didn’t seem to object to that, either. The workmen turned up next day, too right.

    But sparing Jan the stairs because of her pacemaker was one thing, and flying her and Pete up from Taupo because Pete shouldn’t be driving all that way at his age was quite another. “Look, Polly, it’s cutting the bloke’s balls off,” he said flatly.

    Her face fell. “But—”

    “He’s a competent driver, his eyesight’s as good as mine, he’s ruddy fit, and ya told me yaself that he quite often drives up to the King Country and back to see some mate that raises pigs, a bit of rabbit shooting optional.”

    “Um, dairy cows, the pigs are only a sideline. Yes, but—”

    “I looked it up on the map—well, had a bit of trouble, the cartographers don’t seem to recognise the name, but I finally worked it out. There and back in one day, right? Work it out,” he advised.

    “With lunch or afternoon tea in the middle of it, though!”

    True. Plus a bit of slaughtering of the wildlife—though rabbits were pests here, same as in Oz—legacy of the bloody Brits.

    “Yeah. Well, in that case suggest to Jan they go that way and stop off for lunch.”

    “But it would be so much easier to fly: they could come up with Dave O’Reilly when he does his delivery for Taupo Organic Produce!”

    Yeah, or Polly could pay the bloke to make a special trip. He eyed her drily.

    “Or Don McLeod could bring them up in the helicopter: he could bring them all the way, Stan, and land it on Jake’s landing strip right over the road!”

    “Helicopter pad,” he corrected heavily. “Look, I’ll ring Pete and suggest it.”

    “But I thought it if I rang Jan she could suggest it tactf—”

    “Are you deaf?” Stan enquired mildly.

    Polly sighed. “No. Go on, then. But I’m merely being sensible, it’s not cutting his balls off at all!”

    “It is from his point of view, ya silly moo. –Think about it. Put yourself in the place of an old guy in his seventies who knows he’s not the fit young buck he once was, Polly.”

    After a moment she admitted: “All right, it is.”

    “Yeah.” He rang him. As expected, Pete rubbished the suggestion of flying.

    “But he flew up with Don, himself, to collect me that first Christmas after Jake died!” she protested when he’d rung off.

    “That is not the same case, as I think you can’t have failed to realise,” Stan replied levelly, hoping he wasn’t putting his foot in it but deciding if they couldn’t be honest with each other it was NBG.

    “Yes. Sorry. I was letting myself do my feminine thing. It isn’t entirely deliberate: part of it’s instinctive. But Jake rather liked it, so I suppose I sort of got into the habit of turning it on… Yes. Stupid, and when you come to think of it, patronising of me, really. Sorry, Stan.”

    “Apology accepted,” he replied mildly.

    “I always wonder,” she said thoughtfully, “how many other people play rôles incessantly…”

    “Most people are too dumb to, darl’.”

    “Yes!” Polly admitted with a laugh. “I suppose they are!”

    And that seemed to be that. Stan sagged slightly.

    So Pete and Jan drove up—without a break, Pete having rubbished that one, too—and duly admired the stair-lift, and the loft. And settled in happily for a peaceful week up Carter’s Inlet. The only cloud on the horizon, as Stan and Pete agreed privily over a couple of frosties in the tinnie, having taken ’er out to the mouth of the Inlet in case the kahawai were running, being the promised—make that threatened—wing-ding on the lawn.

    The wing-ding on the lawn had had to be a pre-Chrissie thing, because everybody had plans for Christmas itself. Jan and Pete had admitted glumly that they were expected to turn up at the ecolodge and they really didn’t feel they could let Jayne down. Some of the locals had already taken off: Polly’s cousin Beth and her husband, Jack Perkins, had left for the South Island, where first off her bloody mother, Jack’s phrase, was gonna have a go at her for getting pregnant in her forties and then was gonna coo over the result, and after that his bloody sister Kathleen was gonna give her dire warnings about the unacceptable risk of Down’s Syndrome—which little James Perkins did not have, thank God, but that wouldn’t stop her—and then she’d coo over him, too. Stan eventually worked out that Beth’s mother must be the Aunty Jan for whom Polly had bought a Hermès handbag. Coals of fire, kind of thing? Her other cousin, possibly second cousin, Clara, who’d taken over at the crafts boutique, couldn’t make it, either: this was the year of her family’s big treat: hiring a campervan and driving down to the thermal area. Then there was an interesting Jewish couple who lived down in Kowhai Bay that Polly saw quite a lot of; he was retired now, but they’d both worked as political scientists at the Pacific Institute of Political Studies, on Puriri Campus. They were headed to Israel to stay with his very old friends who dated from his kibbutz days—he was a Russian Jew, smuggled out of the Soviet Union by his grandparents as a child. Stan had an idea he wasn’t too well, these days, and this would be a last trip for him. A real pity, because he was a very interesting bloke, he’d have liked to see more of him.

    The other people of the race that knows Joseph that she’d invited all managed to turn up, however, but there weren’t that many of them, to Stan’s relief, and it dawned that the phrase must mean people that she really liked and had something in common with. She had got a tent, yeah, though not from the Emporium, from a place that hired out marquees for weddings and so forth. Candy-striped. It looked bloody silly plonked in front of the little creosoted bach overlooking still, quiet, essentially null Carter’s Inlet, but too bad.

    “Jeez, candy-striped marquee, huh?” said an American voice in his ear as he stood there eating something incredibly good that had apparently been provided by the chef from The Quays. “Boy, does that bring back the long-ago… Had one for my nephew Junior’s fifth wedding anniversary: Ruthie, his wife, jest loves them candy stripes…To think when I come out to little old Noo Zealand I imagined I was leaving all that garbage behind me!”

    “Ignore him,” ordered a brisk female American voice before Stan could reply. Gracie Rosenberg, ninety if a day, nodded her taffy-coloured head briskly at him. “Likewise if he tells you it was for the simple life with the kids and ducks.”

    “Mom, I got kids and ducks! Well, a kid. And if Carter’s Inlet ain’t the simple life, I dunno what—”

    “Rubbish, Sol. –He came out on a mixture of male menopause and that silly crush he had on that Phoebe woman,” stated his mother briskly.

    Stan looked round nervously but Michaela was well out of earshot, on the far side of the marquee with its rolled-up sides—it was a lovely clear, sunny day—with young Grace apparently telling her what she ought to eat, or so the gestures would suggest. Phew! He looked weakly at Sol.

    “Or ya could put it like that,” that gentleman allowed, grinning. “Wore off. Mutual incompatibility,” he explained smoothly. While Stan was still choking, he added smoothly: “Have some of the duck-liver pâté, Mom, it’s out of this world.”

    “That sort of thing is full of saturated fats and clogs your colon, you know that, Sol.”

    “Okay, try some of this angel’s breath pavlova with the sliced kiwis and real non-aerosol cream,” he replied instantly.

    At this point Stan said desperately: “Would you like to sit down, Ms Rosenberg?” –It was her maiden name. She had once been married to Sol’s father, known in the family as Poppa Winkelmann, but this had been in between his two bouts with Momma Winkelmann: Gracie and he had amicably agreed it had been a mistake and she’d made sure to hang on to all the loot he’d given her, according to her son. She was wearing some of it today: a very nice lapel clip of coral, pearls and gold on her nice coral linen-look pants suit. Smart as paint, that was Gracie Rosenberg.

    She favoured her host with a tolerant look, ordered him to call her Gracie, everyone did, informed him she was fitter than the two of them put together, and warmly recommended dandelion extract as a heathy—not alternative to, no—replacement for coffee, but allowed her son to take her arm and steer her to a chair.

    Stan wouldn’t have minded sitting down himself, actually. Jesus! She was like a small cyclone.

    Pete lounged up to his side. “That the old American mum?”

    Stan shuddered slightly. “Yeah.”

    “Goddit. Polly warned us about her.”

    “Yes,” the hostess admitted, coming up in his wake with—thank God!—a couple of cans of Foster’s in her fists. “I’d say she means well, only she doesn’t. She means the accurate thing, however much it hurts.”

    Stan’s jaw dropped but Pete preserved his cool—he had, after all, known Polly much longer. “Yeah, I’d say so,” he allowed. “Well, hand it over.”

    Smiling, Polly handed over the beer. They drank thirstily, though Pete did then note: “Gnat’s piss. Why didn’t you ask ’im to buy something decent?”

    “Couldn’t find anything decent,” drawled Stan. ”Unless raspberry-flavoured boutique muck strikes your fancy?”

    “No. Shit.—Are you kidding?—Shit. Didja try the bottle store at the pub?” Stan just looked blank so he pursued: “Or the one at The Tavern, down Puriri?”

    “No, I tried the supermarkets’ liquor departments and the big Liquorland in Puriri,” he said limply.

    “Barmy. DB, mate.”

    “Huh?”

    “DB Draught. Or if ya like, Tui Pale Ale’s nobbad.”

    “Eh? Ya don’t mean Toohey’s, do ya, mate?”

    “Nah. Ya must know what a tui is: shit, ya got Jake’s fancy picture of them on the wall in there!”

    “Oh! Like the birds?”

    “Yes,” Polly confirmed. “Tui beer—all right, pale ale,” she said quickly as Pete frowned and opened his mouth. “There’s a picture of a tui on it. Steinlager’s another one that’s been popular for years. It’s a lager, but I find it just a wee bit too sweet.”

    “Yuh—uh—German?” he groped.

    “Nope, Lion Nathan,” replied Pete succinctly.

    “The big New Zealand brewers, Stan,” said Polly kindly. “I dunno if they made it originally, though; wasn’t it an early boutique beer that got taken over?” she said to Pete.

    He shrugged. “Dunno. Never used to drink it. Still don’t, unless forced.”

    “Okay, then, mate,” said Stan somewhat limply. “DB Draught. When found, make a note of.”

    “Um, it’s awfully heavy, though, Stan,” ventured Polly.

    They eyed her tolerantly…

    On the far side of the lawn, or to be accurate of the table containing the food, Jan and Dorothy had their heads together. “This is miraculous!” decided Jan, having swallowed.

    “Yep, all Adrian Revill’s food is,” agreed Dorothy happily. She took a huge bite of something. Her eyes went very round. “Mmm! –I dunno what it is,” she admitted  happily, having swallowed, “but it’s extra.”

    “I’d say it’s a pâté de campagne. En croûte,” replied Jan weakly.

    “Yeah? Sort of a fancy meatloaf with a crust, woulda been my best shot. Think I’ve had it before, at The Quarter Deck. –You know: the lunchy restaurant at The Quays in Carter’s Bay.”

    “So that is the chef from The Quays!” said Jan, staring at the very handsome man in perhaps his mid-thirties who looked a bit like a younger Mel Gibson. “But what on earth’s he doing here on a working day?”

    “Well, either the sous-chef’s holding the fort—it’ll only be ladies’ lunches at this time of year, he’s more than capable of coping with them—or they’ve closed for the day. Adrian’s here—let me rephrase that. He’s been invited because he’s one of the race that knows Joseph. But he’s here because he owes Polly a fair bit: it was her that talked Jake into putting money into his restaurant venture when he wanted to take over the old waterfront pub. He was only in his twenties, back then.” Dorothy had finished her wodge of pâté, so she grabbed a slice of what looked like quiche but would undoubtedly prove not to— “My God,” she said reverently. “If this is yer standard bloody EnZed quiche, I’m a Dutchman in his clogs in his tulip garden!”

    “Leek tart,” replied Jan limply. “I think he’s used sour cream in it. –I didn’t think blokes were allowed to be of the race that knows Joseph, Dorothy—though maybe Pete and Stan are grudgingly admitted. Half-caste, possibly.”

    Dorothy managed a grin but couldn’t for the moment speak. “Adrian’s always been of it,” she finally managed. “Same sort of sharp mind as hers. No illusions, and sees five sides to every question.”

    “I see!” Jan took a miniature filo roll but said: “So do you think she’s really not starry-eyed about Stan, then?”

    Dorothy swallowed. “Doesn’t necessarily follow. But yeah, on due consideration. She’s always been aware of her own motivations. And other people’s—which is largely the bit most blokes can’t take.”

    “Mm. We got the impression he can, though.”

    Dorothy nodded hard. “Jesus, that can’t just be leeks and sour cream!” she sighed. “Don’t tell me: my virus scanner won’t retain it, I have tried to reset it for culinary topics, but NBG. –Well, Thomas and I are strongly of the opinion that the bloke can take anything, actually, Jan. He’s as bright as she is, though he may not let it show.”

    “Yes,” Thomas agreed, lounging up in time to overhear this last speech. “That is, if we’re speaking of Dr Gorski, double Ph.D. an’ all.” He eyed Jan a trifle sardonically.

    “Double?” she gasped, dropping the remains of her yummy mini filo roll which held not the dreaded silverbeet but, as Polly had promised, genuine spinach with just the right amount of goat’s cheese and fresh thyme. And a tiny grating of lemon zest.

    “Yes. Geology from Sydney, marine engineering from Caltech. –Thought you might not have realised,” he admitted.

    “No. We knew about the geology, but… Look, why the Hell didn’t you take him on fulltime?” she hissed.

    Thomas looked warily over his shoulder but Polly and Stan had now been absorbed by the Winkelmanns in toto, Michaela having liberated a whole platter of savoury hors d’oeuvres and young Grace a ditto of sliced cold duck—Peking, he rather thought—sitting in small lettuce leaves.

    Dorothy’s attention now appeared to be on the second platter of cold duck, but she managed to swallow and said: “He was up half the night over that. I came to around three in the morning, realised he wasn’t there, and found him in the sitting-room staring at the Inlet in the dark.”

    “In the moonlight, you unromantic horror,” returned Thomas, taking a duck-filled lettuce leaf. “Mm, Peking, or its close cousin,” he decided. “I was thinking it over,” he explained to Jan. “The ability and the qualifications were there, no argument, and he could certainly do the job—and I’d have liked to appoint him. But I decided that psychologically it might well be the wrong move. For the last ten years or so he’s been pretty well footloose and fancy-free: never had to work set hours or to a set timetable.” He shrugged a little. “In the end, Jan, I didn’t think he’d be happy in the fulltime job.”

    There was a short silence under their part of the candy-striped marquee’s shady roof.

    Then Dorothy said kindly to the stranger in their midst: “Thomas has got the sort of mind that thinks round all the angles, Jan. That’s why Polly can stand him.”

    “Thanks,” he said blandly.

    Jan nodded numbly. “By God. I reckon you’re right, Thomas.”

    “Yes. He’s done very well with the first-year tutorials; it’ll be good to have him on board from Week One next year. And he’s worked miracles with the bloody boats: thought I was gonna have to bite on the bullet and ditch the big launch this year, put in a request for a special equipment grant extra to my faculty budget. But no: he stripped the engine, found the problem, reground the appropriate part, and got the bloody crate going, smooth as silk. McRae’s roped him into his pet project, too: customised design for a two-person sub, new propulsion system—or rather a completely new angle on a traditional one.”

    “Greek,” noted Dorothy, helping herself to some cold chicken mousse.

    “No, I think it’s French— Oh!” said Jan with a laugh. “Not the mousse! Well, I get the point, Dorothy: playing with his boys’ toys, eh?”

    Dorothy nodded round the chicken mousse.

    “Well—uh, well, all I can say, Thomas,” Jan concluded, “is thank you on behalf of all those who’ve known Polly since she married Jake.”

    “Or even earlier,” said a voice from behind her, and Jan jumped and gasped. “Sorry,” said Jill Davis cheerfully. “Allow me to add my grateful sentiments to hers, Thomas.”

    “Thanks,” he replied modestly.

    “Don’t thank me, just stop hogging that platter of rare roast beef and pass it over,” replied Jill cordially.

    “There’s some horseradish sauce, too,” he said meekly, passing them.

    “Good.” Jill helped herself to miraculously thin but juicy slices of cold roast beef. “Tried that wet-looking fennel thing?” she enquired generally. “Looks dead, but tastes like ambrosia.”

    “Nope. Too aniseed-y: he’s forced it on me before,” replied Dorothy firmly, giving her spouse an ungrateful look.

    “Fenouille à la Grecque: that’s Greek in French,” said Thomas cordially to Jan. She choked on her mouthful of cold chicken mousse. Smiling a little, he put some salad on Dorothy’s plate.

    “Thanks. What is it?” she said suspiciously.

    “An Italian salad. Eat.”

    “If that’s goat’s ch—”

    “No. Sliced mozzarella. –Caprese,” he said briefly to Jan. “The green bits are basil, Dorothy: you’ll like it with the beef.”

    Since it was there, Jan also tried the Caprese salad, which she often made herself, though with the preponderance of nanny goats around Taupo Shores Ecolodge—originally Pete’s, they were now nominally Bob’s, but he was still using the ecolodge’s little milking shed and tiny dairy—usually with goat’s cheese instead of mozzarella. It went very well with the wonderful cold roast beef and the extraordinary horseradish sauce. Which had more than just cream in it. Giving in, she asked Thomas: “What’s he added to the horseradish sauce, do you know?”

    He made a face. “No. He won’t let on—trade secret.”

    “Blow.”

    Two minutes after that the gourmets were confounded, to Dorothy’s secret glee, because Gretchen came up, accepted some roast beef and horseradish sauce and noted: “This is excellent. I think he adds a little yuniper to the horseradish sauce, no?”

    Jill, Jan and Thomas gaped at her.

    “Have I the wrong word? –This English sauce,” she said to Jill. “Au raifort.”

    “Yuh—uh—yes,” she croaked. “Horseradish, that’s right. These culinary experts couldn’t guess what the secret ingredient was.”

    “Yuniper. It flavours chin.”

    “Does it? If you say so,” Jill replied limply. “Unless I’m wrong, aren’t juniper berries little round black things? I can’t see any specks of black.”

    “There are no shpecks off black in chin, either. Nevertheless, good chin is flavoured vith yuniper.”

    Before the Kowhai Bay housemates could come to blows Jan said quickly: “He must soak them in the cream.”

    “Infuse,” murmured Thomas.

    “Ja, that,” said Gretchen happily. “By the vay, Thomas, I haff been thinking about this part-time yob you haff giffen Stan: I think you haff done qvite the right thing for him. He is very happy having a little free time to potter, and it enables him to still do some deliveries for Col James. He did not vish to let the man down, you know. He has considerable sympathy vith the vorking man and small businessman.”

    “When did all that occur?” gasped Jill.

    “It’s been simmering for some time, I think. It crystallises just now, on the vay up here.”

    Thomas looked at the three flabbergasted ladies’ faces. His lips twitched but he merely said smoothly: “Good. I’m glad you approve, Gretchen. Now, would you ladies care for champagne?

    “Yes, please, Thomas,” replied Gretchen politely.

    “Is there any?” asked Dorothy on a weak note.

    “Definitely, but I have a feeling Polly’s forgotten about it.”

    They looked over at Polly, now rather flushed, with Stan’s arm round the enchanting pale green slim-cut little cotton jersey-knit number that nicely outlined the curves, and the curls starting to come unwound from the bundled-up do. He was in the cream Australian pants in which he’d made his first appearance on this side of the Tasman.

    “Understandable!” said Jill with a laugh. “—Yes, please, Thomas.”

    “Totally,” Dorothy admitted deeply.

    “Dorothy?” said Thomas pointedly.

    “Huh? Yes, of course I’ll have some champagne—that is, if it’s still that stuff of Jake’s.”

    “Bound to be. –Jan?”

    “Well, yes, that’d be lovely, ta!” Jan agreed with a laugh. “He only had jeans when they were down at Taupo,” she said to the ladies.

    “Levi’s? Tight?” asked Dorothy eagerly.

    “Oh, ja, like he wore vhen we came to dinner,” Gretchen recalled. “Ja, they looked good.”

    “No, just jeans,” said Jan feebly.

    “Treat in store, then,” promised Jill happily.

    “Mm,” Jan admitted with a feeble grin.

    “It seems to be a consensus, then,” noted Thomas blandly, departing in search of champagne.

    The ladies were silent, sincerely doubting the reference was to the champagne.

    Finally Dorothy admitted: “Yes. Deliberate. The bugger always is. –Bad as Polly.”

    They looked at one another, smiled weakly, and didn’t contradict her.

    “I was thinking,” said Polly on an uneasy note, rather late on Christmas Day itself. They’d had loads of invitations to spend it with various people but had decided just to have a quiet day together. Quiet with the slight interruption around nine a.m. of young Grace Winkelmann, eager to show them her brand-new American watch from Gramma Gracie. Presumably her parents had managed to hold her back forcibly until that advanced hour. Luckily Polly had warned Stan it would happen, so they weren’t discovered in a compromising position. Though Grace did point out that that “dressing-gown” of Polly’s was see-through.

    “Mm? Thinking what, darl’?” replied Stan.

    “Um… it’s Boxing Day tomorrow,” she said. Blow, her voice had got rather small, and she hadn't wanted to do the feminine “little me” thing at all!

    Stan was immediately on the alert, though he didn’t let it show. “Usually comes after Christmas Day, at least in the British Commonwealth,” he acknowledged.

    “Mm. Um, well, you may not like it, Stan, and you don’t have to come.”

    “Yeah? Where ya wanna go?”

    Polly swallowed involuntarily. “To the lawn cemetery.”

    He’d thought it might be something like that. Though what Boxing Day had to do with it— “Fine, pet, if you wanna put some flowers on your husband’s grave—”

    “No!” said Polly desperately, feeling her face go very red, what a nit! “I mean, Jake would be quite pleased, of course, but that’s not really how I remember him. I mean, um, don’t take this the wrong way, it doesn’t affect how I feel about you, but he's a sort of presence. Well, maybe that’s what a memory is, and I must say I’ve never seen a definition of it that made sense, but anyway. I—I don’t mean he’s a hovering ghost or anything silly like that,” she ended uneasily.

    “I get it. Yeah, I’d say ‘a presence’ defines the memory of a person rather well. Had a few old mates that dropped off the twig, one way or another, but the one I particularly remember in just that way is ole— Uh, can’t say his name, love, it’d be an insult to his beliefs. The old bloke I knew in Central Australia. He was—well, I’m not much good at describing people. He had a very strong personality, terrifically knowledgeable about his own culture, and sharp as a tack with it. I suppose we just hit it off. Anyway, he’s still here,” he said, smiling at her and hitting himself on the chest.

    Polly nodded hard. “That’s exactly it! It’s not entirely a mental thing, is it? You do feel it here,” she agreed, copying his gesture. It was a lot more interesting when she did it, Stan admitted to himself, smiling a little.

    “Yep. So—some other rellie, is it, darl’? Of course I don’t mind, if that’s what you wanna do.”

    “Um, no, it’s little Grant,” said Polly in a strangled voice.

    Stan looked at the red cheeks in surprise. What the—? Jesus, had she had an illegitimate kid, yonks back? “I think you’d better spell it out, Polly. Whatever it is I’d be happy to go with you.”

    “Thanks. It—it’ll sound silly. He—he was Jake’s and Esmé’s son.” She swallowed. “Little Grant Carrano.”

    “Uh—the first wife’s?”

    “Mm. –It was terrible, Stan!” she burst out, not having intended any such thing. “He died when he was only seven, but he’d never developed mentally, he couldn’t communicate, he didn’t know his parents, and Jake said he used to have terrible screaming fits! Um, there was a lot of mental instability in his mother’s family, and I think the consensus at the time was that it was related to that, but I don’t know that modern medicine would agree. As a matter of fact Jake once said that Esmé was furious when she found out she was pregnant. Um, so I wondered—though I never said so to him, it was bad enough as it was—I wondered whether she might have tried to abort the foetus. Um, behind his back.”

    “This the madwoman that took a pot-shot at him and then shot herself? Right. Ugh, as a matter of fact I’d say that sounds all too likely.”

    “Yes. Anyway, if we were home on Boxing Day Jake usually liked to go and put some flowers on his grave. Um, and there’s no-one at all to remember him now, poor little boy, except me,” said Polly. A tear ran down her cheek, and she sniffed hard and wiped it away. “Sorry. I swore I wasn’t gonna bawl. I’m not trying to play the sympathy card or anything, and I don’t mind going by myself—”

    “No! Sweetheart, of course I’ll come with you!”

    “Thanks. I was afraid you’d think it was really silly, because of course I never actually knew him, I’d have been about eight when he was born.”

    “I don’t think it’s silly at all, I think it’s bloody sad: poor little creature that never had a life, eh?”

    “Mm, that’s exactly how I feel about him.”

    “Right, we’ll go.”

    So they went.

    “This is it,” said Polly. They stood looking down silently at the little grave marker. All it said was “Grant Carrano”, his dates and “At peace”. Stan automatically did the maths. Yes: seven. God.

    After a while Polly sighed and laid her little bunch of flowers on the grave. She’d got them just before Christmas at the Carter’s Bay supermarket: the usual cheapo mixed bunch with a bit of that fuzzy white florists’ stuff, wrapped in cellophane, or what passed for it these days. This was transparent with large white spots on it and the bunch was tied with pink squiggly ribbon.

    “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “if he’d been normal, I’m pretty sure Jake would still have divorced Esmé, but I don’t think he’d ever have married me. He was so keen to have kids… Though he was terrified that whatever Grant had might’ve been on his side; not knowing who his parents were, you see.”

    Stan’s arm tightened round her waist. “Mm.” Well, he reflected, that possibly explained rather a lot—why she felt so strongly about coming to the little boy’s grave, for a start. Some sort of guilt that she’d reaped the benefits of his tragedy? Yeah, something like that.

    “Sometimes I feel guilty that I’ve only had everything I’ve had—my life with Jake, and the children—because he died,” added Polly, sounding completely detached.

    Stan took a deep breath. “Right. I was just thinking that, myself.”

    “I thought you might be,” she replied tranquilly.

    “Uh-huh.”

    “I may be deceiving myself, but I don’t think that’s why I feel I have to come here. And it’s not that I think I should because coming here was important to Jake. I just feel so very, very sorry that he’s a little boy that never had any sort of life, and that there’s no-one else to remember him.”

    “Mm,” he murmured, laying his cheek gently against her curly head.

    They stood like that for some time.

    Finally Polly said: “I’m glad you wanted to come with me, Stan.”

    “Me, too, love. Ready to go home now?”

    “Yes,” Polly agreed with a great sigh. “I am.”