Arts And Crafts

9

Arts And Crafts

    Dan Carter had decided to live up Carter’s Inlet because of the name. Good enough reason as any, wasn’t it? Well, actually he’d found Carter’s Bay on the map—his bay!—and decided to live there, only when he’d got there he’d been disappointed. The really old bit of it, on the waterfront, had either been relentlessly done up or pulled down entirely and replaced with trendy hideosities—that white complex plonked splat-bang on the bay was a monstrosity: vaguely Mediterranean-style, little balconies sprouting here and there, dotted with trendies in weirdo sunnies, dying native tree-ferns and, uh, shit, Western Australian grass trees?—uh, no, dying native cabbage trees, bad enough, in pots. Further along, more central, on a corner where a long side road met the street edging the waterfront, what could have been a really nice, genuine, dark-cream-all-over, rundown old New Zealand pub was totally trendy, sparkling in new paint, the charming balconies on its two sides sporting completely refurbished Sydney lace instead of the rusting bits of iron fretwork that had been endemic to the species when he was younger. Uh—a lot younger, actually. Gee whillikins, they even had pavement sun umbrellas! On closer inspection the place proved to contain two flash restaurants, one so swept-up your hip pocket would’ve been feeling the pain for the next two years, the other filled with the over-dressed, over-showered, over-deodorised and over-after-shaved or over-perfumed middle classes. All shouting their heads off—charming. Also, they did require a reasonable standard of dress in the restaurants, sir. Jesus wept! Dan, in his old but clean jeans, his very old but clean-on-this-morning tee-shirt and his rubber jandals that ninety percent of the male half of New Zealand wore on its feet in the weekends the moment the weather was warm enough to do so, had obediently retreated. He hadn’t bothered to give the “Side Bar,” so labelled, more than a passing glance. Full of trendies—yep.

    The layout of the little town of Carter’s Bay was really odd: it was bisected by the main north highway. There was nothing much immediately to right and left of the highway: the bay area of the town was on your right as you drove north, that was, the eastern side, and over to the west, a fair way down past a large service station that looked recently done up, was the main part of the town. Back around the 1920s it would have been quite a flourishing little settlement, with its big cream post office, clock tower and all, and its solid Bank of New Zealand. According to Dan’s very old map that had belonged to his dad, plus some recent Internet research, that would have been when the railway—a spur line, but nevertheless—still came up here. The old rural industries were long gone, however, together with the infrastructure that had supported them. The bay had gradually silted up, the salt from the tidal inlet had invaded the surrounding over-farmed land, all the timber had been logged out by 1925—the “Historic Carter’s Inlet” website had had a very smudged photo of two scrawny blokes with a pit saw to prove it—and the land had regressed to the low scrub of second growth. The flour mill had closed down because the land was too salty and/or degraded to grow wheat any more and the dairy factory had closed down because there was nothing for the cows to graze on, and over the next sixty years all the little shops had closed except for the endemic New Zealand “dairy” selling newspapers, bread, sweets, and a meagre selection of tinned and later frozen foods, as well as milk and cream. The railway line had long since been abandoned, as had most of New Zealand’s railway system. The coastal freighters that had once transported timber and a certain amount of wool from the hinterland were no longer needed—and couldn’t have got into the silted-up bay in any case.

    If you penetrated beyond Carter’s Bay’s main road that ran through the shopping area which still contained the old post office building and the little dairy, almost crowded out by supermarkets, car sales yards, and a ruddy Garden Centre, and got as far as the newish roundabout and the motorway, you discovered that there were no houses built between the mid-1920s and 1950. There were a few from the Fifties: even tiny Carter’s Bay hadn’t been immune to the post-war baby boom—but instead of the genuine frosted-glass front doors and the occasional sealion balancing a ball on its chromium-plated nose that Dan had been hoping for, though not really expecting, the remaining little wooden bungalows either had obviously never been able to afford these luxuries, and just stood plainly and barely in their quarter-acres of badly mown, lumpy lawns, or had recently been done up horribly: the front doors replaced by faked-up panelled things, painted to match the equally ersatz shutters, for instance. One beauty, which featured the sort of cream-rendered, square-topped arch over the front door that he hadn’t thought had yet reached his native shores, had gone the whole hog and had the motif extended to the side, so that the garage was now joined to the house by a cream-rendered, uh, not arch, exactly: it was straight. Arm? The genuine EnZed roller door, also in cream, sheltered behind this arm. It wasn’t a new house: Dan had driven along very slowly, peering, and verified that the trendifying didn’t extend down the sides: that was a genuine Fifties window, slap-bang up against the roofline, cheapest way to build, set in genuine, if cream-painted, Fifties weatherboarding. Ye gods and little fishes.

    As the architecture more than indicated, there had been an almost complete hiatus in the life of Carter’s Bay until the relentless hand of the developer had struck in the 1980s. Carrano Development, to be exact. In his time Dan had done stints on their building sites, though not up here. Hard to avoid them, actually, if you wanted a job in the construction industry in EnZed. Carter’s Bay now sported whole roads full of charming “colonial” villas, complete with colonial finials on their garage roofs, yep, too right, and dinky little crazy-paving front paths that if you took a second look you realised were tinted concrete, patterned to look like crazy— Yeah. All with tiny manicured, pocket-handkerchief front gardens. No kid would have wanted to play in them and in fact no kids had been observed.

    One such house had had a “For Sale” sign so he’d knocked, and as there had been no reply had gone round to take a look at the back garden. It wasn’t a garden at all: it was a set of little outdoor rooms. Truly horrid. Abutting the house was a giant patio area—well, Mum would’ve called it a patio, she’d thought having a patio was the pinnacle of suburban success, poor old Mum—complete with its patio furniture. Possibly that was to be expected in the 21st century, mm. But beyond it a series of lowish walls and fences, some solid concrete painted white, some corrugated iron, believe it or not, painted, believe it or not, light grey, and some composed of hefty wooden stakes in a variety of lengths, painted a uniform and very depressing dark grey, divided the garden into—well, a series of little rooms! Some of these rooms were broken up by areas covered in large white pebbles, far too big to walk on: what the Hell would they be like after a windy New Zealand winter of endless rain and dead leaves galore? There were strange structures, sheltering more seats and tables, and exotic pots filled with mutant EnZed flax in strange colours. One little room had its own miniature fountain, too. Surrounded by ten-centimetre-high black grass. And more pebbles. Parti-coloured patches of them, within anally neat geometric concrete borders. God! Something was missing—not just a stretch of plain grass for the kids to play on, no: besides that. Dan had retreated to the car, scratching his jaw slowly.

    “Shit!” he realised. “No washing-line! Um, no drying green at all,” he amended feebly. “What a way to live!”

    Other areas of Carter’s Bay featured either more very new fake colonial bungalows or the alternative, smallish blocklike two-storeyed places, some detached but most in rows, “townhouse”-style, their smooth sides smothered in pale terracotta, cream or, even worse, grey paint. It was impossible to tell what they were made of. Certainly not good old EnZed weatherboards. The grey ones, which looked newer—their minute front yards were almost completely devoid of growth—were notable for their lack of windowsills. He’d driven round dazedly for a while, and found himself next to Carter’s Bay Primary School. Cripes, right there was a field with real Jersey cows in it! As he watched a man and a dog began to herd the cows together and chivvy them towards a large lorry...

    Yeah, presumably those had been the very last cows vanishing from Carter’s Bay. Dan hadn’t returned to the main road with its shiny new supermarkets, its shiny new Toyota yard and its flaming archwayed “mall”: he’d driven right out to the roundabout, intending to get the Hell out of it back to town. There he’d got stuck behind a giant bus and ended up on the road to, uh, God knew where. He’d shrugged, and followed the bus: why not? Maybe there’d be a tourist attraction along here somewhere that his map hadn’t mentioned.

    The bus, it dawned as glimpses of water began to be revealed to his right, must be following the road up Carter’s Inlet: and sure enough, it topped a rise and turned right, and there was Kingfisher Bay spread out before him in all its glory! Serried ranks in its bloody marina and all. Dan would have turned tail but there was now a fawn Volvo on his tail and a silver Lexus and a very nice old cream Merc that he wouldn’t have minded owning himself coming towards him, so he followed the bus on down. It turned out to be a tourist coach heading for the slab-like high-rise hotel on the little point over to his right. Dan pulled in, got out, and breathed in lungfuls of damp, salty air. After a moment he sat down on the low seawall.

    “God,” he muttered, staring at the view of motionless grey-green inlet, mangroves on its far side, and very low, very flat land adorned with dark, low scrub beyond that. “Trendyville, N.Z., in the middle of the bloody mangroves!”

    “Yup,” said a friendly American voice from beyond his right shoulder.

    Dan gasped, and turned his head. A skinny, balding middle-aged guy, very tanned, was looking at him mildly. Good God, he looked... normal. Faded jeans, elderly tee-shirt, elderly sneakers. He also looked vaguely familiar, but— Oh, yeah: Jack Klugman—Quincy M.E.!

    “Trendyville, N.Z., is what it is, sure ’nuff,” the Jack Klugman lookalike agreed.

    “Yeah,” said Dan weakly.

    “One or two of us still manage to retain our sanity, mind you,” the guy added.

    Dan eyed him drily. “How?”

    “Live further on up the Inlet, got our own five-acre lot, don’t bother with the consumer junk.”

    Dan’s mouth twitched in spite of himself. “That’d do it,” he allowed.

    “More or less, uh-huh. Say, you wouldn’t be looking for a genuine wooden boat, would you? Nice little cabin cruiser, good working order?

    “No—well, if I had the dough, yeah.”

    The guy sighed. “Same old story. Them as want ’em, ain’t got it. Aluminum runabout?”

    “I could probably afford one of those at a pinch, yeah. Throw in an outboard, will ya?”

    “Can’t afford to, business ain’t that good. Though there’s an incredible number of ’em what fancy themselves as weekend sailors and don’t know beans about draught, let alone tides, sandbanks and the fact that this here inlet gets real shallow, even the channel, when the tide’s out,” he noted.

    The tone was extremely mournful, but Dan’s eyes began to twinkle. “Got it! Run a boat repairs business, do you?”

    “That as well, yup. That’s mine,” he said, nodding at one of the little shops in a row of three that Dan had turned his back on, largely because expanses of plate glass under fake colonial gables were more than his stomach could take after the architectural splendours of Carter’s Bay.

    “Oh—right. Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies,” he recognised. “You Sol, then?”

    “Uh-huh. Sol Winkelmann.” He stuck out a hand.

    Dan shook, perforce. “Dan Carter. Thought it was gonna be my bay—ya know? My mistake.”

    Sol’s wiry shoulders shook. “Right! Wal, have the Inlet instead, it’s already got your name on it,” he offered generously.

    Dan gave the marina a look of loathing. “Don’t think I want it frankly, Sol.”

    “Understandable. But if you like to come on up to the boat repair yard, and then maybe potter on up a bit, I could show you the bits that ain’t all bad?’

    “Uh—well, yes, I’d like to!” said Dan, rather startled. “But what about your shop, Sol?”

    “They ain’t beatin’ a path to it, and I got a new helper, anyroad. –HEY! TRENT!” he bellowed. “Trent is the given name,” he explained mournfully.

    “Right,” Dan agreed neutrally.

    A tall, skinny boy who might be as much as eighteen appeared in the doorway of Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies. Short, spiky, fawnish hair looking as if he’d just fallen out of his pit. Woulda taken him half an hour, min’, with the comb and the gel, Dan recognised silently. Long, baggy dark tee-shirt bearing a strange device, hanging loosely from the bony shoulders, skinny-cut dark jeans bagging slightly round the skinnier legs, giant spanking-new sneakers.

    “Didja want me?” he called cautiously.

    “Your name Trent?” replied Sol.

    “Hah, hah,” he said uneasily, shifting from foot to foot.

    “Just gonna take this guy over to the boatyard, show him a bit of the Inlet,” Sol explained. “You’re in charge of the store, okay?

    “Okay!” he agreed, brightening horribly.

    “This way, Dan. –He can only burn it down,” Sol drawled.

    “Right. Hang on: I’d better lock the car. Though given the lot that passed me on the way down I could hang out a sign saying ‘Nick me’ and there’d be no takers,” he noted.

    “Yup. Volvos, were they? BMWs?” asked Sol conversationally.

    Dan grinned. “Yeah, them an’ all.” They strolled gently towards the marina. “And a lovely old Merc that I wouldn’t mind owning myself,” he admitted. “Saloon.”

    Sol smiled. “Oh, yeah: she dates from 1973, what they call the post-facelift model. Solid as a rock, drives like a dream. Notice the driver?”

    “No,” said Dan blankly.

    “You do surprise me.”

    Apparently he should have done. “The road was pretty busy and there was a Volvo on my tail,” he said lamely. “What about him?”

    “Her, not him, is the point. Never to mind.”

    Dan gave him a doubtful look, but didn’t ask. Sol led him to a little aluminium dinghy complete with outboard, and they headed westwards up the inlet, past the marina and the view behind it of trendy Kingfisher Bay with its expensive retirement mansions and holiday homes—shit, a whole row of fake Dutch gabling!—all facing due north with giant plate-glass windows, shielded with giant awnings in more styles than the human brain could take in. The boatyard was just round the next point, in a little cove of its own, well sheltered, the ground rising very steeply from the water, with no buildings in sight save the yard’s very old, tarred boatshed. After introductions to Sol’s amiable business partner, Euan Knox, and a thorough inspection of the boats he was working on, they pottered on up the inlet...

    “Yeah,” Dan concluded with a sigh. “Parts of it are still good.”

    “Mm-hm. Iffen you can shut your eyes to all them professors’ houses.”

    Dan smiled a little. There weren’t that many—fewer than a dozen, and only on the side of Carter’s Inlet to their left, the same side as Kingfisher Bay and the boatyard. Sol had already explained there were strict council restrictions on subdividing, up here. The other side, apparently, was partly university land further down, then the extensive property belonging to the one house on that side, and lastly, extending right up to the top of the inlet, a bird sanctuary.

    “Mercifully few, really, Sol,” he replied.

    “Yeah. Well, I reckon the current situation’ll just about see me out. Après moi le déluge, huh?”

    It had already dawned that the bloke was very far from uneducated. Dan nodded, agreeing, and had to repress an urge to ask what the Hell he was doing out here, at pretty much the ends of the earth. None of his business, after all.

    Somehow after that, and after a strange but tasty lunch back at the boating-supplies store composed of hot frankfurters, white bread, and really bad tea, the last made by Trent, Dan found himself agreeing eagerly to take a look at the “apartment—beg pardon, Trent, flat”—above the three little shops.

    Well, shit, could you do better for a neighbour than Sol Winkelmann? And the place’d be peaceful enough at night, the flat took up the whole of the first storey above the shops, and there were no other buildings near the little block. And it did have a great view of his inlet: you couldn’t even see the marina unless you flattened your cheek to the windows and peered! You could see the Royal Kingfisher Hotel, unfortunately, but not all of it. Oh, why not? He had to live somewhere, after all, and the rent was surprisingly reasonable.

    Which was how Dan Carter came to be living in Kingfisher Bay. In fact, how he came to be pulling in to the residents’ parking area behind the little row of shops just in time to catch two burglars attempting to break into the crafts shop!

    He opened his car door and yelled: “Oy, what the Hell do ya think you’re doing?”

    The smaller burglar turned round. “It’s me, Dan!”

    Dan swallowed. “Sorry, Grace, didn’t recognise you in the dark!” He got out and came over to them. “Got the key, have you?”

    “Yes!” she snapped.

    There was a short pause. “It’s stuck,” she admitted.

    “It’s me,” said the taller not-burglar glumly. “Keys hate me.”

    “I turned it first, though,” admitted Grace.

    “Mm, but I think my fell influence is filtering through, Grace,” she said glumly.

    “You are just like Mum,” Grace discovered on a pleased note. “She can’t work keys, either. It must run in the family!”

    Dan cleared his throat desperately. “An aunty, are you?”

    “No,” she said.

    At the same time Grace said: “She could be.”

    “Run that by me again,” he croaked.

    “She’s not Mum’s sister, she’s her cousin. Some people call their mother’s cousin aunty. Or their father’s. –Your dad’s cousins’ kids from Napier do, eh?”

    “Some of them, yes,” the not-aunty agreed.

    “Uh—right. Shall I have a go?” Dan suggested weakly.

    “I don’t think it’s gonna work just because you’re a male, but try, by all means,” said the not-aunty neutrally.

    Ouch! Was she a man-hater? Pity, because she had that lovely contralto voice of Michaela’s. Dan tried the key. It was a Yale lock and the little block of shops wasn’t that old—well, a bit older than Grace, he thought. But they were right, it didn’t work. Felt as if the lock was jammed. “You sure it’s the right key, Grace?” he asked cautiously.

    “Yes!” she snapped.

    “Um, Grace,” said the not-aunty on a nervous note, “it’s not the key to the boating-supplies store, is it?”

    “No, ’course not! That’s on my key-ring!” she retorted crossly.

    “Oh. Sorry,” she said meekly. She sounded completely genuine: it didn’t go with the man-hater bit, at all, and Dan felt rather confused. He peered at her in the gloaming but couldn’t really see her: there were no lights at the back of the shops, and the nearest street lamps, what few there were of them, were beyond the wide belt of bushes between the carpark and the corner of the block.

    “Um, well, the lock feels to me as if someone’s been having a go at it with the wrong key,” he admitted. “Not you, before you start!” he added hurriedly. “It’s possible someone tried to break in.”

    “Annick’s put notices up, ‘No cash kept on these premises’,” Grace reminded him.

    Yep, so she had. Annick Pic was one of the partners in Kidstuff, the very expensive children’s clothing boutique that was the third of the little shops. It did a roaring trade: Kingfisher Bay was stuffed with well-off retirees and holiday-homers all keen to buy crap for their grandchildren, and Carter’s Bay itself, thanks to the huge staff needed by Sir George Grey University on the northern side of the inlet, now had a goodly number of affluent middle-class parents silly enough to want to trick their kids out in expensive crap, too. And the Point, on the southern side of the actual bay, had, he had now gathered, been full of affluent retirees since the Seventies: there were more doting grandmas there. Annick, as the name indicated, was a Frenchwoman, and along with the expectable common sense and business acumen she was the sort that didn’t let Them, whoever They might be, get away with a thing. One of those iron-hard women, whether bourgeoise or peasant, straight out of Maupassant.

    “They’d have to read them, first,” murmured the not-aunty.

    “Hah, hah,” replied Grace on a weak note. “Um, well, whaddare we gonna do, Polly?”

    “I dunno. Go up to your place and dump all the stuff there?”

    “If we did that,” said Grace logically, “then we’d have to pack it all again to bring it back down.”

    “Um, yes. I don’t like to leave it in the car, though,” she said uneasily. “I mean, that lady is expecting Galerie 2 to sell it for her; what if it got nicked?”

    “Park it up the Royal K,” returned Grace firmly. “They lock it at night.”

    “Er, I have driven in and out of their carpark unimpeded, around elevenish,” murmured Dan.

    “Not the carpark, ya nong! The parking basement!” she retorted witheringly.

    “Grace, I think that’s only for guests,” he said kindly.

    “Yeah! That’s what I’m saying!” she cried.

    “Oh,” said Dan feebly, attempting to peer at the not-aunty again. “So are you?”

    “It’s only temp’ry,” said Grace firmly, before the woman could answer.

    “Yes,” she agreed mildly. “I really live up the Inlet, but I’m—” She hesitated. “Um, kind of redecorating.”

    “Undecorating,” Grace corrected on a firm note.

    “Yes,” she agreed with a smile in her voice. “That’s it!”

    By this time Dan Carter was beginning to get a strong feeling that he’d fallen down the rabbit hole. “Look, before you two pour the tea and wake up the Dormouse, can we just clarify this? You’ve got a room at the Royal K?”

    “Yes, I said.”

    “I mean, you’re not intending to drive up there on spec?”

    “No, I’ve actually got a room. –You’re right, Grace, the stuff’ll be safe in their basement carpark.”

    “Yeah, come on, then. Hey, could we have tea there?”

    “Jesus, no!” gulped Dan before he could stop himself.

    “I don’t think she means the main dining-room,” said the not-aunty calmly.

    “Nah, ’course not. The Hongi Heke Room. I think its pizzas are all right,” Grace declared firmly.

    “Yes,” she agreed. “It’s odd, but they seem to have improved, I don’t think it’s just that I’ve got used to them. Somehow the bits of capsicum don’t seem so...”

    “Raw?” offered Dan helpfully.

    “No, not that,” she replied seriously. “So acid, I suppose I mean. They don’t seem to give you dreadful wind any more, and they’re sort of... Well, sweeter would be a misnomer, for green capsicums. Milder, I think is what I mean.”

    “Dad thinks so, too. He bought a bag of mixed ones at the supermarket and Mum chopped a green one up and put it in the salad before he knew what she was up to, and he said we could all chance it if we liked but be warned, the wind’d keep us awake all night—but know what? None of us had wind at all!” Grace finished on a triumphant note.

    Her fellow participant in this Mad Hatter’s tea party agreed seriously: “Yes. They must have developed a modern variety that’s milder. And with softer skins, too, I think. I had pizza at the Hongi Heke Room a couple of days ago and I didn’t burp once.”

    “Then can we?” gasped Grace eagerly.

    “Yes, sure.”

    “YAY!” she cried, dashing off round the building.

    “Are you parked out the front, March Hare?” said Dan feebly to the remaining participant.

    “Mm. –Sorry, we were using our idiolect without thinking of the effect it might have on those who hadn’t come across the tea party before,” she said with a gurgle in her voice.

    Yeah. Well, young Grace had been, sure. But he had his doubts about the not-aunty. “Idiolect?” He’d never in his life heard a living human being utter the word!

    “Don’t mention it. Adds variety,” he said drily. “Look, what is your name?”

    “Polly. What’s yours?” she replied flatly.

    Dan gulped. “Uh—sorry. Dan. Dan Carter.”

    “Oh, right: the man who owns the Inlet!” said Polly with a laugh.

    “I wish. No, well, if I did, know what I’d do first?” he said as they headed towards the road.

    “Um... Knock down the Royal K?” suggested its guest tranquilly.

    “Uh—no. Second,” he admitted, rallying. “Raze that bloody marina.”

    “Yes, it’s horrid, isn’t it? Serried ranks, unknown in Nature.”

    “Damn right.”

    They reached the road and her car was revealed in the dimmish light of a street lamp a little further up towards the Royal K.

    “So it’s you that owns that 1973 Merc!” he cried.

    “Yes. I like the old models.”

    “Me, too! Isn’t it fiendishly hard to get parts, though?”

    “What parts?” said Polly with a smile in her voice. She patted the car’s front wing. “Solid as a rock.”

    “It’s got real—leather—seats, too!” gasped Grace, jumping. “Neato, eh?”

    “Yes, it’s great. Only one drawback, really,” said Polly, producing a key ring from her jeans pocket.

    The light had revealed to Dan that she must be around his age, and though she didn’t have Michaela’s and Grace’s lovely auburn hair, she was a very pretty woman. Oval face, very unlike Michaela’s square one, with a sweet look to it. Big wide eyes, he couldn’t tell what colour they were in this light. Didn’t seem to be slathered in makeup, either, though the light might be deceptive. The hair was curly, in a big fat plait. A lightish brown, he thought.

    “Uh—sorry. What was that?” he groped.

    She held up the keys. “One drawback.”

    “Uh... Oh! Yeah,” Dan acknowledged, grinning feebly.

    “I can do it if I don’t think about it,” she murmured, approaching the keys to the driver’s door.

    “I’ll do it!” offered Grace instantly.

    To Dan’s astonishment Polly conceded: “I think you’d better.”

    Dan just watched numbly as Grace capably unlocked Polly’s lovely old Merc. “What?” he said numbly.

    “I said, do you wanna come an’ have pizza?” Grace repeated loudly to the stone-deaf idiot.

    “Uh—well, if it’s okay,” he said awkwardly.

    “’Course! He can come, eh, Polly?’

    “Yes, you’re welcome, Dan,” she agreed tranquilly.—He couldn’t for the life of him tell if she meant it or not.—“You’ll have to squash in the front, I’m afraid: the back seat’s full.”

    Okay, maybe she did mean it. He got in, to the accompaniment of Grace’s loud intel as to why there were three seatbelts in the front, and why the car didn’t have bucket seats, and what condition the car had originally been in and—the lowdown, in fact. Yeah, well, what with staying at the Royal K and what she must have had to shell out for the beautiful cream leather upholstery the car now sported, not to mention what it must cost to run—1973 had been, come to think of it, after the panic over oil round about... ’72? Yes, and in its wake the Yanks had begun to build cars that were no longer gas-guzzlers, but he’d never heard that the Germans had worried too much about that sort of thing, back in those days. Put it like this, she must certainly be able to afford the hotel’s overpriced pizza.

    In the glowing ambience of the Royal K’s lobby—the carpet alone gave you the impression of the Assyrian’s cohorts: not only purple and gold, there was turquoise gleaming in there, too—he could see that Polly’s hair was brown, with gold lights and a few silver strands: maybe it was tinted a bit, but if so very artfully; and that the eyes were rather like Michaela’s: a limpid grey-green. And that she was even prettier than he had thought. That palest yellow tee-shirt wasn’t bad, either: at least, what was in it certainly wasn’t. Nice and full. She had kindly tucked the tee into the jeans and to boot belted them tightly with a narrow emerald-green belt, fake crocodile, was it? Something like that. Thoughtful of her, really! She had been wearing a sheepskin-lined denim jacket—the weather, as usual at this time of year, was damn chilly—but she took it off in the sweltering central heating of the Royal K’s lobby. Thank you, Royal K, I forgive you for being an excrescence visually polluting my inlet!

    “I think we’d better go to the toilet before we have anything to eat,” Polly decided, as Grace tried to urge them on in the direction of the hotel’s second dining-room. Quite a feat: you had to go up a short staircase, and round a corner... Um, well, you eventually got there, if you hadn’t lost your nerve entirely.

    “Can we use yours?” Grace asked in longing tones.

    “Um, the Hongi Heke Room has got public—”

    “No! Your ensuite!” she cried.

    “Okay, if you’d rather.”

    “It’s got gold taps,” Grace informed Dan in awed tones.

    He very nearly lost his cool. “I see,” he managed.

    “Maybe you could grab a table, Dan?” Polly suggested. “Do you know how to get there?”

    “I wouldn’t claim I know. But I have fought my way to it before.”

    “Oh, good!” she smiled as Grace officiously took her handbag off her—it was emerald-green, like the belt, very pretty indeed. Though, Dan rather thought, not what the In crowd was lugging round these days. Didn’t they have to be huge, rather squashy, and completely inconvenient? –Yes, look, there went two overdressed dames lugging the very ones! Polly’s was quite small and squarish.

    “Is it a key?” Grace was demanding.

    “Mm? Um, I think so. –Or is it one of those stupid card thingies? Um, no, that was that place in Zurich— Was it?” Polly asked herself.

    Grace began searching in the bag. Dan winced: certain dames he had known would have objected strongly to that, but Polly didn’t seem to mind. Well—she was the kid’s not-aunty, of course!

    “Why do ya need a purse as well as a wallet?” Grace demanded, handing over a dark green wallet, not the same shade as the handbag but definitely toning with it, and then producing a little beaded pink purse, that in the context was completely incongruous.

    “It’s my change purse, I’ve always had it,” murmured Polly.

    “Ya don’t need it, the wallet’s got a compartment for change!”

    Dan weighed into it. “Look, talking of which, Small Change, just shut up, it’s none of your business how many purses she has.”

    “My daughter thinks it’s silly, too,” Polly admitted. “But I’ve always had it, I don’t think I could manage without it, really.”

    “Some people, they put their change, like for a parking meter, or like that, in a separate purse in the glove compartment, why don’tcha do that?” pursued Grace.

    “God! Does she ever stop?” wondered Dan wildly.

    The unfortunate Grace went very red and gave him a baffled glare.

    Polly smiled a little. “I don’t mind, Dan. She’s very determined, like her American grandma. And very logical. –I think I’d probably forget it was in there, Grace, and have a panic.”

    Grace brightened. “Aw, right. Like that time you forgot you’d lent the sports car to Katie Maureen and thought it had been stolen, eh?”

    Polly was now rather pink. “Mm.”

    Dan took a deep breath. “Look, did you ever have your room key? Or did you hand it in at the desk?”

    “I can’t remember.”

    “It’ll be in here,” grunted Grace, handing her not-aunty a small, squashed packet of tissues. And a comb. “Here’s some cards! Nah—credit card—dunno, is this a business card? You could chuck it. Nope: credit card. Ah! Here it— Ooh, heck!” She held up a card. “That dump ya stayed at in Zurich, it musta had key cards, all right!”

    Polly had clapped her hand over her mouth in dismay. “But I gave it back! I’m sure I— I mean, they ask for it when you check out, um... Don’t they?”

    “Can’t of,” noted Grace with relentless logic. “Unless ya gave them the wrong card.”

    “I do hope it wasn’t one of those credit cards you seem to keep floating around in your bag,” noted Dan, unable to help himself.

    “Shit, yeah! Have ya looked at your statements lately?” gasped Grace.

    “No. But I’m sure they would have given it back, Grace, they’re pretty up-market. No, hang on! That must be the key card I thought I’d lost! They gave me another one: that’s right!” she remembered happily.

    Alas, Dan Carter at this broke down in hysterics in the middle of the Royal Kingfisher’s awful lobby.

    Grace had gone very red. “Don’t laugh at her!” she cried in agony. “It’s not funny!”

    Feebly Dan wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “I’m sorry, Polly.”

    “That’s all right!” she said sunnily. “I’m not upset, truly, Grace. I’ll ask at the desk, maybe I did hand it—”

    “No, hang on!” Rapidly Grace produced a lipstick, a tiny round mirror, three—no, four postcards with nothing written on their backs, a large white handkerchief, looked like a man’s, and a bottle of scent from the bag, perforce handing some of these articles to Dan, since Polly’s hands were now full. “Ooh, what’s this— Ooh!” She held up a small whitish object. “Ooh, look! Isn’t it cute!”

    Dan looked and raised his eyebrows very high. Cute, it was. Almost undoubtedly worth a small fortune, it was, too, or his name wasn’t Dan Carter. “A netsuke?” he croaked.

    “It’s the little mouse,” said Polly, swallowing hard.

    “Ye-ah!” breathed Grace. “Aw, I geddit: ya mean it’s one of the ones from Zurich? I thought you were gonna gave them all to Oxfam? Like, the money for them, I mean.”

    Polly was very flushed. “I couldn’t resist keeping just this one. I—I got Sotheby’s to value it and gave the same amount to Oxfam, instead.”

    “That’s fair,” Grace approved seriously, nodding the auburn mop.

    Dan had been left open-mouthed some miles in their wake. Had the kid said “all”? How many valuable Japanese netsukes did the woman own, for God’s sake? Grace was now urging him to admire it. “Yes, it’s very cute,” he agreed feebly. “Um, beautiful as well as cute, Grace,” he added uncomfortably. “It’s a wonderful piece of carving.”

    “Yeah, you’re right,” she decided.

    “Let him hold it, Grace,” said Polly.

    Dan took it, perforce. Slowly he smiled. “I see what you mean,” he said to Polly.

    “Yes. Just looking at it, I could have given it up, adorable though it is, only once I’d held it, I couldn’t.”

    “Totally understandable,” he agreed. “But why should you give it up, anyway?”

    She licked her lips. “Um, conspicuous consumption?” she muttered.

    “Leave her alone!” cried Grace. “It’s none of your business!”

    Dan looked from one to the other of them in bewilderment. “Look, if I’ve put my foot in it somehow, I’m very sorry. I do agree that the little mouse is completely irresistible. It’s one of the loveliest netsukes I’ve ever seen.”

    “Yes. It’s all right, Dan, you weren’t to know the circumstances. Put the stuff back, Grace, I’ll ask at the desk. If you’d like to order for us, Dan, we both like the Milano.”

    “Right you are.” On present showing, would he ever see the two of them again, if he left them to their witterings? But he went off to the Hongi Heke Room obediently.

    The Royal K’s service wasn’t exactly speedy, and Dan had time to get himself round a beer, very slowly, and order another, well before the pizzas appeared.

    “I have ordered,” he said reassuringly as Polly and Grace resurfaced, Grace looking very well brushed and emanating very strong wafts of... Christ, had the woman let her use her Arpège? Must have, that lovely smell was unmistakeable.

    “Promettez-lui n’importe quel dessert, mais offrez-lui Arpège?” he suggested as Grace, reminding them that you could choose your puddings from the buffet, went off to check them out.

    “Yes. She’s at the age where they find scent irresistible, never mind how inappropriate it might be,” replied Grace’s not-aunty tranquilly.

    “Mm. Ah... forgive the lack of tact, but if I don’t ask I may burst. Had you handed your room key in at the desk?”

    “No. The receptionist found it in a secret compartment of my wallet where I’d put it so’s it’d be really safe,” she replied tranquilly.

    Dan choked.

    “She hasn’t got ESP,” said Polly, still tranquil. “She was on the other day and saw me put it there, so she thought I might’ve done it again today.”

    He nodded helplessly. Tears ran down his face.

    “It was a key card: flat, you see,” she added in a dispassionate tone. “Which is why we didn’t realise it was in there.”

    “Yes! Unlike all the other cards!” he gasped.

    Unemotionally Polly snapped open the purse, and handed him the large white handkerchief.

    Dan mopped his eyes gratefully. “Mmm, Arpège,” he noted, handing it back.

    “Yes: I’ve always loved it. –I took the credit cards out of my wallet because I don’t want to use them,” she added, still unemotional.

    “Why not just cancel them?”

    “I don’t know how to. I did look on one of the websites, but there was nothing about cancelling a card.”

    “No: I don’t think they want you to,” he admitted feebly.

    “Yes, that did dawn. Never mind, if I don’t use them it’s just the same, isn’t it?”

    Dan rubbed his chin dubiously. “Uh... Think there’s some that might charge you a fee just for the privilege of having the card, Polly.”

    “No; I mean, I’m sure there are, but not these cards, they’re all ones my husband chose, and he wouldn’t have stood for that.”

    “Right,” he acknowledged cautiously. She wasn’t wearing any rings on her left hand, but these days, that could mean anything. The right hand was adorned with a pretty green glass thing, about the same colour as the dinky little handbag and belt: she certainly had taste. Well, anyone who couldn’t bear to part with that lovely little mouse must have! The tee-shirt’s pale yellow was a very soft, creamy shade that looked perfect with emerald green, too. Yep: taste.

    At that point the waiter swanned up and fawned on them with the wine list—odd, because earlier he’d had to go into the semaphore act to get the blighter to take any notice of him. She only wanted a lager, good-oh. Dan ordered that for her, another one for him in case the fawning wore off at the discovery they weren’t gonna order the dearest wine on the list, and a Coke for Grace.

    “Before she comes back, for God’s sake tell me why you were trying to break into Galerie 2,” he begged.

    “I’ve been talked into being their craftsperson liaison person and sourcing stuff for them. We went down to Paeroa and bought a load of stuff off a lady who does papier-mâché.”

    Dan’s eyes bulged. “Papier-mâché?”

    “Not what you’re thinking. I suppose it is a strange medium for it, really, but she produces very streamlined, rather art deco small pieces of furniture. Lacquered. They’re very smart.”

    “If you say so, I’ll have to believe it, Polly. That mouse of yours is the most exquisite thing I’ve laid eyes on for years.”

    “Mm. Want another look?”

    “Yes, please!”

    Smiling, Polly produced the little mouse and a rapt silence fell at their table, with its wonderful view of Kingfisher Bay in the dark. –The reflection of the restaurant, quite. With a nasty whitish glimmer over to the left that was the regimented ranks of expensive hardware in the marina.

    “I might have the Black Forest cake. What were the other ones?” asked Grace, coming back and sitting down.

    “You were looking at them, Grace,” replied Polly numbly.

    “No! The other netsukes!”

    “Oh! Well, there were a lot. Mostly ivory. There was a fish that I rather liked. And a little man with a pot, Sotheby’s expert spent ages squinting at him. And a peach, with a leaf and a twig. That one wasn’t ivory, it was... I forget. Some kind of stone.”

    “Jade?” Grace suggested keenly.

    “No. I think it might have been agate. Cream with streaks of brown and a tinge of coral.”

    “Tell me the brown had been used for the stalk and I’ll shoot myself right now!” said Dan with a chuckle.

    “I’d better not tell you, then! –He means it sounds to die for,” she explained kindly to Grace.

    “Yeah! I’m not dumb, ya know! Gee, I wish I could of seen them,” she said on a wistful note.

    Polly bit her lip. “You had to go to school. And I had no idea what there might be or how long it’d take.”

    “Yeah. –Didja order the Milano?” she demanded out of the blue of Dan.

    From the sublime to the ridiculous, eh? “Jawohl, mein Führer,” he sighed.

    Uncrushed, Grace pursued: “A big one?”

    “King-size,” he sighed. “And if it isn’t enough, there’s nothing to prevent us ordering another. Well, apart from the time they take to arrive,” he noted fairly.

    “Good,” she said simply.

    Dan looked weakly at her not-aunty but she merely smiled at him—lovely smile, smallish, neat teeth, he really loathed large horse-teeth on a woman, call him culturally brainwashed, but there it was—and opened the handbag again. “Is this enough?” she asked, handing him forty bucks.

    “No, that’s all right.”

    “No, we invited you, don’t be silly.”

    “Yeah, we did. She can afford it!” Grace assured him loudly.

    Feebly Dan took the dough, noting feebly that he’d pay for pudding, in that case.

    “You better put the mouse away, Polly, it’d be awful to lose it,” added her forceful relative.

    “Yes,” she agreed obediently, popping it in the bag.

    The pizza proved to be quite edible, Grace continued to chatter nineteen to the dozen, not impeded by the necessity of putting food in the gob, and Polly continued... Dan couldn’t define it. Well, his hormones were standing up and dancing a tarantella, not to mention other parts of his anatomy, so it was a bit hard to think, let alone indulge in analysis, but if he’d had to define her attitude to yours truly, he’d have said... wary? Not quite. Um, cautious? Yes, pretty much. Approved of his approving of her gorgeous little mouse, but, uh—yeah. Very modified rapture. He didn’t gather any more factual intel about her, though that wasn’t surprising, with Grace yacking on about flaming Paeroa and the craftswoman down there, and their fruitless search—instigated by Guess Who—for real Lemon & Paeroa...

    Funnily enough he woke up quite early on the Sunday—hadn’t slept too well. Had a very odd dream, in which the ivory mouse, almost as big as Grace but somehow still its ivory self—dreams did that sort of thing—was sitting up like Jacky driving Polly’s fabulous old car and he was sitting beside it trying vainly to persuade Grace, who was in the back seat, yacking, to shut up and hand that papier-mâché hat-box full of bottles of Arpège over to him before she ruined it and broke the bottles… God! Polly was beside her not saying anything, but just at the point where the dream suddenly decided to put her in the front next to him—the third seatbelt, of course—he woke up. Jesus!

    ... Hat-box? Had anybody even mentioned hats, let alone a hat-box? Was that Freudian, or... Um, had Grace, somewhere in the blathering, been on about Polly’s hats? He didn’t think so, but he hadn’t really listened. Uh, well, you could interpret it every which way, if you were so inclined, eh? The confinement of “commitment” and suburbia? Yep. Restrictions of the high life, of the sort led by these who could afford rooms at the Royal K? Yep, again. ...Something to do with the Mad Hatter? A warning not to let yourself get involved, i.e. boxed in, with someone whose idiolect was incomprehensible, not to say who could deliberately throw the word “idiolect” around, and who was manifestly not that interested in yours truly? And spilt perfume for spilt milk…? Well, yeah, you could go on letting your psyche dredge up shit that could fit the dream forever. That was, in Dan Carter’s considered opinion, what dream analysis, not to say yer Grate Psychological Analysis itself, was all about.

    The weather was pretty miserable out there, he ascertained, peering through his stretches of plate glass at solid grey murk. –Someone, some time in the past, had mercifully had enormous denim curtains made to completely cover the huge triangular windows, three of the buggers, that filled the three gables that composed the flat, so at least it was possible to keep the dump fairly warm in winter. Fairly. Shivering, Dan staggered through to the kitchenette and blearily put the coffee on.

    He hadn’t had any furniture but Sol Winkelmann had kindly put him on to the recycling dump, Goode as Olde, that occupied the site of Carter’s Bay’s old bus terminal—and the great old black bus barn, lucky sods. So now the window end of his dining-room sported a horrid brown Formica table, circa 1966—strangely “Danish modern” wooden legs with brass whojamaflickies on their ends. Mum and Dad had bought one very like it, but rather larger, when he was about nine. And three matching chairs—matching one another, not the table. Very nice, actually: plain and chunky, solid rimu, mid-Seventies would have been his guess, created to order for the types who’d been into the Habitat bit. Upholstered seats, a grubby Laura Ashley print. Aunty Lynne, who’d been really up with the play—she was a lot younger than Mum—had had a very similar print, but in blue and white, in her bedroom. These chair seats were... It had probably once been coral or terracotta and white. Well, possibly on the tannish side of such a shade. The brisk young woman at the recycling place had declared he could easily re-cover them! Dan was in no doubt he could but he hadn’t pointed out that to do that, one needed the impetus. There was a fourth chair—not part of the set, sadly, a plastic garden thing of the stacking variety, but it was currently in the bedroom, he was using it to dump his clothes on overnight.

    Dan took his coffee over to the table, sat down, and gloomed at the grey murk. Talk about the pathetic fallacy!

    He wasn’t expecting any action downstairs for quite a while. The Royal K might have a scattering of misguided American, Japanese, or Chinese tourists with grandchildren they wanted to spoil, but that would only be a trickle of custom, so Kidstuff didn’t open on Sundays in winter, the terrifying Madame Pic having determined it wasn’t cost-effective. Galerie 2 usually did open, but not until eleven. Sol opened, but later than usual: this time of year, the knowledgeable boaties would be scraping their boats’ bottoms and the cretinous, of whom there were apparently many, would just have left ’em tied up at the marina. However, before very long there was a noise of car doors banging, and voices. Then a goddawful racket—Jesus! It seemed to be coming from right underneath his kitchenette. Dan clapped his hands over his ears, and staggered off to grab his parka, handily placed on a hook on the back of his front door—he’d put the hook there himself, the cheaper alternative to buying a fancy brass Seventies-style, fake art nouveau coat stand from Goode as Olde, with the protective coating manifestly largely worn off the brass. They could recoat ’em for you, mind you.

    He staggered down the narrow staircase that occupied a sliver at the very end of the block—put in, Sol had kindly informed him, when Sir Jake Carrano, who apparently owned the whole of Kingfisher Bay, not just the little block of shops, had decreed that the three tiny apartments upstairs should be thrown into— Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Dan had begun to get very sick of the sound of that name. The guy had apparently also built the Royal K—well, one of his companies, same diff’—and, in fact, his bulldozers had gouged out yer actual Kingfisher Bay in the first instance, at a spot on the inlet where previously no bay had been. Dan might have taken this last as one of Mr Winkelmann’s exaggerations, designed to snare the unwary, but several serious persons, conspicuously lacking in anything definable as a sense of humour, had confirmed it. As had Dad’s old map. So much for the environment. The ubiquitous entrepreneur had also built Sir George Grey University, but the whole country knew that one. At least he’d had the grace to endow it, rather than expect the EnZed taxpayer to cough up.

    The racket was coming from round the back. He staggered round there, shivering. Sol was attacking the back door of Galerie 2—slap-bang under his kitchenette, right—with a hunk of machinery. Grace was supervising.

    “What— What the Hell are you doing?” screamed Dan.

    “DAD!” shouted Grace, as this had no effect. “DAD!”

    Sol switched the bloody thing off. “Huh? Oh—hi, Dan. Hope we didn’t wake you.”

    “By the grace of God, no. You bloody nearly deafened me, though, just as I was ingesting a quiet coffee. What the Hell are you up to?”

    He sniffed slightly. “Drilling out the lock.”

    Grace jumped up and down. “Yeah! We gotta replace it entirely, eh, Dad?”

    “Now?” replied Dan terribly.

    “Good a time as any!” returned Sol insouciantly.

    “Oh, get KNOTTED!” he shouted, flinging away from them.

    In his wake Grace looked dubiously at her father.

    Sol looked bland. “In a snit, huh?”

    “Yeah. He was all right last night,” the innocent Grace replied in bewilderment.

    With a huge effort Sol refrained from clearing his throat. “Mm. Guessed we started too early for him. Wal, let’s get it done, then we can make coffee and offer him a donut, huh?”

    Jumping up and down, she agreed: “Yeah! Great!”

    There was a ring at Dan’s very loud doorbell just as he’d almost decided to—well, either go back to bed and give the day away entirely, or not. One of those. Or possibly make another pot of coffee and singe a piece of toast. He stomped downstairs breathing fire and brimstone. If this was some cretinous tourist wanting to know when Kidstuff was gonna open—

    “Fancy coffee and donuts?” said Sol blandly.

    Dan took a deep breath.

    “Or have you already had breakfast?”

    He sighed, and gave in. “I’ve had a coffee, but I wouldn’t mind another. Thanks. And a donut might—I say might—make me feel marginally human.”

    “Okay, come on. I cain’t guarantee ’em, mind. I bought ’em at the supermarket, Friday morning, and took ’em straight home and froze ’em, so we can but hope. –I’d keep that there windcheater on, if I was you,” he added.

    Dan hadn’t realised he was still wearing it. “Uh—yeah. Frozen donuts?” he asked feebly.

    “Yeah, well, I’ve verified empirically,” said Sol gloomily, leading the way to his boating supplies store at the other end of the block, “that iffen you put ’em in a cake tin or even a Tupperware container, or shove ’em in the fridge, they go stale and taste like... Gee, cain’t define it,” he discovered. “Plaster? Close, anyroad. So being as how a friend told us that the trick with French bread is to freeze it the moment you get it home, thought I’d try the same technique with donuts. It worked okay last time.”

    “Oh, good.”

    “So long as you remember to take ’em out well in advance of when you want to eat ’em,” he added neutrally, holding the shop door open. “Shit, that dad-blamed bell’s dead, all right,” he noted.

    Grace popped up from the back regions. “Give up on it, Dad! It’s not worth the effort.”

    “I might,” he acknowledged sadly.

    “I’ve put the coffee on!” she added brightly.

    Dan winced in spite of himself.

    “No, it’s okay, I’ve trained her up real good,” Sol reassured him.

    “Yeah! An’ I’m not vague like Mum an’ Polly!” Grace informed him eagerly. “Hey, know what Polly did?”

    “Grace, honey, I don’t think he wants to know,” said Sol quickly.

    Grace’s round face fell ludicrously.

    “Yes, I do,” lied Dan quickly. “Go on, Grace.”

    She beamed, and took a deep breath. “Well—”

    At the end of the saga Dan just looked limply at Sol.

    “It’s easy to do,” the American said simply.

    “Uh—yeah, well, I’ve left the coffee on the heat, but not without water... I mean, how could you forget the water?” said Dan dazedly. “It’s integral to the whole process.”

    Sol rubbed his chin. “Think that’s the male mind speaking, Dan. I’m the same, left it on the heat too long, but with water in it.”

    “Heck, Dad, how hot did it get?” gasped Grace.

    “It wasn’t too bad. The coffee was good and stewed, though—undrinkable. What ours’ll be if you don’t go keep an eye—” Grace had shot out.

    “And before you ask,” said Sol calmly, “I don’t let Michaela nowheres near my coffee-pot—either of my coffee-pots, not the one here and not the one at home. Okay?”

    “Yeah,” said Dan, trying to not to laugh.

    “It’s done!” panted Grace, rushing back. “It didn’t get too hot, Dad!”

    “Great, well, let’s have it, huh? Come on in back, Dan.”

    They went out to the rear of the shop, where there was a power point above a shelf supporting an electric jug, a saucepan, several mugs, a carton of milk, and an electric element of the portable variety with an Italian coffee-pot sitting on it. Plus several Tupperware containers. Dan smiled.

    “Same style as yours?” asked Sol.

    “What? Oh—yes: Italian, make great coffee. No: you really have got real Tupperware!”

    “Sure! The donuts are in that one, if you wanna—” Obligingly Dan struggled with hermetically sealed Tupperware, what time Sol poured the coffee under close supervision by Grace. Hers was mostly milk. Dan smiled again.

    “They okay?” asked, Sol as their guest was looking dubiously into the Tupperware pot.

    “Um, yeah, but, uh, did they have sugar and cinnamon on them? The sugar doesn’t seem to have come through the freezing process.”

    Sol peered. “No. Never to mind, they come through better than what the ones with icing did.”

    “Yeah. It kind of melted.” Grace peered. “I think the sugar’s melted!”

    “Yep.” Sol shot a sideways glance at Dan. “If so be as any of us had done physics at high school, we could probably tell you exactly what phenomenon was involved, too.” He picked up two mugs. “Come on, honey, bring your mug through.”

    They went back to the main part of the shop, where Dan was ceremoniously offered what Grace called “the visitor’s chair,” while she perched on a stool that lived behind the counter, and Sol sat on a chair that ditto. The counter being counter-height, the effect produced by this last was very odd. Well, given that the Jack Klugman look was a bit like a slightly demented parrot in any case, a bit like a slightly demented parrot peering over a fence at you?

    “Taste all right, huh?” Sol discovered happily.

    Dan nodded round his.

    “Goob!” agreed Grace thickly though hers. She swallowed, with some difficulty. “You can still taste the sugar!” she assured them. “And the cinnamon!”

    The donuts had all but vanished, their guest was looking a lot more human, if you discounted the whiskers, and Sol had just decided that, as the consensus was no-one needed more caffeine at their time of life, he wouldn’t refill the coffee-pot, when the blow fell.

    The mention of the coffee-pot had recalled Grace to the last topic but seventeen. “Hey: Jake, he reckoned their pot got white hot, he said Polly was a hen!” she reported with relish.

    Sol had been sorta kinda praying that name wouldn’t come up, leastways, not in his presence, because for he had a sorta kinda feeling that the guy didn’t know. He looked at his Big-Mouth of an offspring limply.

    “What?” said Dan weakly.

    Grace nodded hard. “Yeah! ’Cos the kitchen, it was full of smoke, even with the extractor fan on, and the big one over the stove, too: you know, like a big funnel, one of those fancy ones, and all the windows open! An’ Jake, he said she could easily have burned the house down!”

    “Yeah, and she said it was a monstrosity and she wouldn’t mind burning it down,” said Sol quickly, hoping to— God knew what. Distract somebody—anybody!

    “That was after, Dad. Mum reckons she said it because he’s dead. You know, like you reckoned people do funny things when there’s been a death in the family?”

    Sol shut his eyes.

    “You did,” said Grace uncertainly.

    Hurriedly he opened them. “Yeah, sure I did, Grace, sweetie, but I don’t think Dan wants to—”

    “Yes, I do,” said Dan grimly. “I don’t think I actually got Polly’s surname last night, Grace. What is it?”

    “Carrano, of course.”

    Those above the age of going-on-fourteen might have registered that there was now a tingling silence in the boating-supplies store.

    “Only she reckons she might go back to her maiden name—that’s Mitchell, ’cos see, she always used it at work anyway, she was Dr Mitchell at the university, eh, Dad?

    Jesus God, why appeal to him: couldn’t she see he was brain dead? “Yuh,” he gulped.

    “She’s taken her rings off, too—well, the other day she had her engagement ring on her right hand. Mrs Swadling, she says most ladies don’t when they’re a widow, and maybe there was something wrong with that marriage that none of us knew about,”—Sol’s jaw sagged—“but Mum reckons she’s an idiot, and that’s total bullshit, they were really happy together. ’Cos see, Jake, he really understood her!” She paused for breath, panting slightly.

    “Yuh—uh—did Michaela say that Jake understood her, honey?” croaked Sol.

    “Yes, I just said! And then she said that maybe it hurt a lot, and that’s why she took her wedding ring off—see?”

    Possibly everybody did see, but nobody spoke.

    “Don’tcha think, Dad?” asked Grace in a voice that shook a little.

    “Yes, I do, honey,” he said quickly. “That was very sharp of your mom.”

    “Yeah,” she agreed gratefully. “See, Polly, she’s been doing a lot of mad things, Dan; like, she didn’t tell anybody that she was going to Zurich, she just took off.”

    “Uh—I think she did tell one of the kids—Johnny, I think,” said Sol limply, not looking at Dan.

    “No, she said she was flying to Europe, but not where. And there was more in the safety box than just the netsukes, there was, um, jewels and stuff, too! And, um, dunno. Like money only not actual money,” she reported dubiously. “Mum said it sounded like shares, only it wasn’t, I don’t think. And she gave it all to Oxfam.”

    Sol more or less gave in. “It was bearer bonds, Pumpkin. You couldn’t be expected to have heard of them: only rich people have them. Cross between bank notes and shares, I guess. The bank took ’em off her hands and sent off the same amount to Oxfam—wal, less their service charge, them gnomes of Zurich are on the ball.”

    “Yes, that was what she said!”

    Sol risked a look at Dan’s face. “She can’t help being Lady Carrano, Dan.”

    “No?” he said wryly. “I think she could have helped marrying the man, couldn’t she?”

    “Um, they were in love,” said Grace on a dubious note.

    Sol got up. “Yeah, they sure were. Biggest EnZed romance of the decade—no, I tell a lie: the century, it woulda been. You wanna nip in next-door, honey, and sort out some space down in back for that stuff you got off of the lady yesterday? Here you go,” he said, digging in his hip pocket and handing her a key.

    “Only thirteen,” he said neutrally as the shop door banged behind her. He sat down again.

    Dan sighed. “Yeah. I’m sorry, shouldn’t have come out with that crack in front of her. –I remember when it was in all the papers,” he admitted. “And something about some bloke getting bumped off in Carrano’s pool, too, wasn’t there? Were you out here then?”

    “No, I missed it. But I gather there was a huge to-do, yeah. His ex, who was crazy anyroad, went even crazier and shoved this poor guy into the pool in the dark, under the impression it was him, is the story. Then she shot herself in front of him just when he had a parcel of friends in.”

    “Nasty,” said Dan neutrally.

    “Uh-huh. That was at the old house, further down the hill at Pohutukawa Bay. He built a new one after that, right on the cliff top, great view of the sea, that’s the monstrosity Polly didn’t manage to burn down with her coffee-pot—the one she wants to get rid of. Well, has, I think, soon as the lawyers have done their thing. She’s told Sotheby’s they can have the French Rococo ceiling out of the small dining-room iffen a firm can be found to get it out, and let the local paediatrician know he can have the house for a children’s hospital cum research centre in childhood diseases.”

    “Praiseworthy,” he said neutrally.

    Sol sighed. “I guess it’d be no use telling you she’s a farm girl from the backblocks down Napier way, and Michaela’s cousin, to boot?”

    Dan swallowed. “Grace did say she was her mum’s cousin.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “That green thing on her right hand—“

    “Emerald. He got it years before he met her—somewhere in South America, had it off of a guy he was doing business with. Don’t say the EnZed Customs and the tax department must never have had a sniff of it, we’ve all realised that. And it would be worth a king’s ransom, yup.”

    “Thanks.”

    “Fella, it ain’t her fault.”

    “No,” said Dan heavily. “I suppose it isn’t her fault that I feel like a total twit, either.”

    To his astonishment Sol rubbed his narrow jaw and admitted: “It might be, she’s capable of it.”

    “Oh,” he said numbly.

    “Only if you’d said something first off that got right up her nose. Did you?”

    “I don’t think so. Well, I accused them of burgling Galerie 2, but I don’t think it got up her nose. And I admired the car.”

    “You’d be in her good books, then,” said Sol mildly.

    “Oh. Uh, wasn’t her husband keen on it?” he ventured.

    “Huh? No, no, he liked it okay! Quite into cars. Mind, his own taste ran to new models—usually drove a new model Merc himself, the Rolls was technically the property of the Group.” He looked bland.

    “Yeah, thanks for that, Sol,” said Dan sourly.

    “Jes’ thought I better say it before someone else did. Thing is, there’s plenty—not excluding two of her own kids, I might add—that have asked her why in God’s name she chose an old clunker when she coulda had anything at all. Wal, few years back she had a Lamborghini. Drove it like a bat out of Hell, too,” he said reminiscently. “Then, after that—was it right after?” he asked himself. “Think so. He bought her a Rolls Royce Corniche, ’cos for he couldn’t stand the bat out of Hell bit. Silver-blue.”

    “Thought you said that was the company car?”

    “Nope, this was one for her, Dan. She still had it when he passed on, but Grace tells me she’s handed it over to the paediatrician guy.”

    Dan gaped. “Eh? She got a thing for him, or what?”

    “Or what,” said Sol blandly. “Boy, you ain’t seized her essence at all.”

    “I’ve sat through one pizza dinner with the woman, with your kid yacking her head off the entire time!” he snapped.

    “You’re forgiven, then,” drawled Sol. “She ain’t into the sort of conspicuous consumption that Jake went in for, geddit? Never has been. Used to let him give her expensive presents and dress her up like a dog’s dinner because it made him happy—geddit?”

    “Uh—she did say something about conspicuous consumption, relative to, um, I presume Grace meant a safety deposit box,” he admitted feebly.

    Sol’s eyes twinkled. “Called it a safety box, huh? –Yeah. No, well, Polly’s got a liberal conscience, you might say.”

    Dan looked at him limply. None of this sounded at all plausible to him.

    “So she’s let Bruce Smith, that’s the paediatrician guy, have the car along with the house. Dare say it’ll endow a bed for another sick kid, iffen he can find anyone in this country what can afford to take it off his hands.”

    He swallowed. “Um, yeah.”

    “Wouldn’t you do the same?” said Sol in an idle voice, getting up and opening the cash register. “Gee, hope no-one comes in wanting change today. That Trent can’t get it through his thick head that a store needs a float.”

    “What about those notices that terrifying French dame’s put up?”

    “Far’s we’re concerned, they’re a lie. Not that I want my window or my door smashed in by burglars after this here seventy-five cents,” he conceded.

    Frowning, Dan got up, came round to his side of the counter, and peered. Seventy-five cents. Right. He went back to the public side of the counter. Sol was silent, and after a moment or two it dawned that the bugger was waiting for him to reply to his last question.

    “Look, I would prefer to endow a children’s hospital rather than own a flash car—” He broke off. “Okay, I wouldn’t prefer it, I’d love to own a Corniche, who the flaming Hell in their right mind wouldn't?”

    Sol just nodded mildly.

    “But if I had to choose between the two, of course I’d bloody well choose the kids’ hospital, wouldn’t you?”

    “Think I’d have to. I got one of them liberal consciences, too,” he said sadly. “Boy, did it get me into trouble back in my Easy Rider days, too.”

    “What?” said Dan numbly.

    Sol nodded mournfully. “Hair down to my collar, riding through Texas on my huge great Harley what I could barely control, bandeau handkerchief round the forehead an’ all... They shaved it all off for me before I’d gotten hardly a quarter way across the state. Lucky it wasn’t a lot worse, as my mom’s never failed to remind me, since.”

    Dan was just about to demand heatedly if this was apocryphal, when a laughing contralto said from the doorway: “Yes! It’s a miracle he lived to tell the tale! And tell the tale. And tell the—”

    “Yeah, yeah,” replied Sol, grinning all over his lean countenance. “Dan ain’t heard it before.”

    “But I can almost guarantee he’ll hear it again!” retorted Polly cheerfully. “Hi, Dan. It isn’t apocryphal, though everybody that’s heard it thinks it is.”

    “No,” he croaked. “Hi, Polly.”

    “Did you survive the capsicums all right?” she asked, bringing the carton she was lugging over to the counter and setting it down carefully. “Smaller things, Sol. She reckoned they’re only test pieces, but I think they’d sell like hot cakes.”

    “Great. –They give you wind?” he enquired of Dan in a friendly manner. “Grace was okay. But the kid’s got a stomach like iron, grown up on Michaela’s silverbeet salad and my chilli.”

    ”Uh—no, I was fine, thanks,” he said feebly.

    “Oh, good! Me, too. I think they are milder,” Polly decided. “—See what you think, Sol. If you don’t think they’ll be suitable, Jillian Frew won’t mind.”

    “Sheesh, Polly, if you think they’re suitable I’m sure they will be!”

    “Um, no, I’d rather you checked them first,” she said uneasily.

    “Okay,” he said amiably. He began disinterring objects from the carton.

    Dan looked limply at Lady Carrano. That jacket was brown ranch mink or he, Dan Carter, had never been dragged whining round an up-market department store in his formative years by a consumable-fixated mother—not to say, dragged to such cinematic delights as appealed to the cretinous consumable-fixated minds of the credulous world-wide. Mum had been very keen on Doris Day. Weird how Hollywood had persisted in casting her with gay leading men, when you came to think about it. There was one bloody thing that Mum adored—she now had a video of it, and for all he knew a DVD as well—that actually had “mink” in the title! Um... Not Rock Hudson, for once: no… Got it! Cary Grant! Mum had never been able to afford the furs at Smith & Caughey, of course, that wasn’t why she went.

    “You know,” he said conversationally, “whenever I see a fur coat—not that you do much these days, the animal righters seem to have won that one, don’t they?—but when I do, I’m irresistibly reminded of a real shocker of a Doris Day thing my mother’s been fixated on for the last fifty years.”

    “That Touch of Mink,” replied Polly instantly. “Mum adores it, too. Fascinating, isn’t it? Could you ever work out why a healthy hunk of a male would be prevented from getting up the lady he’d taken to Bermuda for the porpoise by a few spots on the face?”

    Alas, Sol collapsed in a loud spluttering fit, while Dan’s jaw was still sagging.

    “No,” he croaked, trying to pull himself together. “Uh—well, I was only about eight, I think, when Mum dragged me and my sister Doreen to the thing. Uh—yeah, that’d be right, it was Doreen’s twelfth birthday, she’s four years older than me.”

    Sol blew his nose loudly. “It’s a wonder it didn’t warp you for life, guy.”

    “Perhaps it did,” said Polly calmly.

    Dan was beginning to recover his wits, and was able to ignore Sol’s further splutters. “Maybe. But not to the extent of being able to understand why a few spots on the face prevented copulation. –Hang on: his or her face?”

    “I meant his. Back in the Sixties everyone knew that a gent would never have gone to bed with a lady with dots of evenly-spaced calamine lotion on her face,” she replied calmly.

    “Yeah!” he gasped, breaking down entirely. “Wasn’t it bloody?”

    “From one perspective, yes. Reinforced innumerable undesirable stereotypes. But on the other hand it’s perfect, in its way. Doris hanging on grimly to her virginity, Cary Grant treating women like dirt in the belief they’d find it irresistible, any red-blooded woman on earth preferring him to Gig Young, for God’s sake!”

    “Was it?” asked Sol feebly, wiping his eyes. “Not that real funny guy that usually played the guy’s boyfriend?”

    “No, this was definitely Gig Young, that’s what made the whole thing even more incongruous. Those totally ludicrous scenes with their skin breaking out were collector’s items, really. Not even a hint that the spots might have descended lower than the jawline.”

    “No, I don’t think there was. Well, I have been forced to sit through it since, we usually watch some crap or other when I go to see Mum, but I can’t say I actually pay attention. Um, but maybe I was too young to get it,” said Dan dubiously.

    “No!” she cried. “I watched it with Mum just recently! Not a hint!”

    “Right,” said Dan, grinning. “Mind you, there’s some really funny scenes, too. Like when she buggers up the card-sorter.”

    “Aren’t you getting mixed up with that hilarious thing with Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda? Uh, photocopy machine, isn’t it?” groped Sol. “And, uh, Lily Tomlin, was it?”

    “9 to 5,” said Polly briskly. “No. They ripped off that scene with Jane and the photocopier from That Touch of Mink.”

    “She’s right, you know,” grinned Dan. “Think it’s the one with the automat, too—that right, Polly?”

    Polly collapsed in giggles, nodding madly.

    “You’d have to see it,” said Dan mildly to Sol.

    “Uh—think I have,” he admitted, scratching his head. “Wal, most of the time there was just me and Gracie—that’s my Mom,” he explained to Dan. “I got dragged to a fair few chick flicks in my time, too—not that we had the phrase, back then.”

    “You’d have been older than Dan, though, when it first came out,” Polly objected mildly.

    “Yeah, but Gracie still needed someone to go to the movies with.”

    “Yes, of course,” she said, smiling warmly at him. “When you think about it, it’s a really interesting social document.”

    “Thought we just agreed it was ludicrously unreal?” said Dan drily.

    “I was going to say, because of its portrayal of the working girl’s way of life in the late Fifties and early Sixties. Small cramped flats, eating at the automat, coping with new technology at work. And being splashed with mud when you’re going off to a job interview would be a real tragedy. A man who could afford to shower them with mink would have been just a dream, nothing they’d ever meet in real life. And of course the Pill had only just been invented, most girls would have spent a lot of time stressing over not getting pregnant,” she ended serenely.

    Dan found that Sol was eyeing him sardonically. With a huge effort he refrained from mentioning that thing on her back. “Uh—yeah. Okay, Polly, modified rapture. What have you got in this box?”

    “Boxes, mainly.”

    “Yup,” Sol agreed. “Now, this is pretty. Could be a jewellery box, huh?”

    It was about the right size, yes. Black lacquer, inset with... Not mother-of-pearl, no. Some kind of polished creamy shell, though.

    “That’s what I thought,” Polly was agreeing in some relief. “Um, but some of the others are different shapes, I couldn’t think what you might use them for.”

    Sol withdrew one. The putative jewellery box had had a hinged lid but this one, which was square in section and about 15 or 16 centimetres tall, had a curved-topped lid which pulled off. “Good tight fit,” he approved. “Tea.”

    “Tea?” echoed Polly limply.

    “The up-market alternative to Tupperware?” suggested Dan snidely.

    Cheerfully Sol returned: “Sure, why not? The crafts boutique’s clientèle just love this sorta junk!”

    “Junk?” echoed Dan weakly, eying Polly uncertainly.

    “Generically speaking,” she said calmly. “You’re right: they can clutter up their horrid Melamine-lined kitchens with the stuff till it comes out their ears,” she decided. “In that case, we could maybe sell a set of them. Another one for coffee, and one for sugar. What do you think, Sol?”

    “Yep, give it a go: why not? Come on, we’ll take them in next-door, I think Grace will’ve cleared some space by this time. Lessen you’d like to keep one, Polly? –Perk of the job,” he assured her kindly.

    “No, thanks, Sol. They are pretty, and some of the bigger pieces are real works of art, but I don’t want any more consumer junk cluttering up my life.”

    Sol shot Dan a sideways glance. “What I thought,” he said blandly. “You wanna keep an eye on things in here, Dan? I won’t be long. Or I could just lock the place.”

    Dan found he’d somehow been envisaging himself helping Polly unload her car, and Sol staying in here. “No, that’s okay, I don’t mind,” he said weakly.

    Weakly he watched the two of them go out. Shit! ...Um, well, possibly not shit, since she was Lady Carrano, and recently bereaved at that, and he was Mr Nobody from Nowhere.

    ... No, well, in that case, shit anyway.

Next chapter:

https://anothercountry-apuririchronicle.blogspot.com/2023/08/this-commercial-life.html