3
Christmas Present
It was very early: the sky still had that pearly look to it and the vast pewter stretches of Lake Taupo had a pale, luminescent sheen. Pete had been for a swim. In his old khaki shorts, as a concession to Andrew’s sensibilities. He was now sitting peacefully on the minute crescent of pumicey sand just below their lakeside cabin. Polly went and joined him.
“Merry Christmas,” she said mildly, sitting down beside him.
“Aw, yeah, so it is. Merry Christmas.”
Silence fell. They both gazed at the lake.
After quite some time, Pete ventured: “It’ll be pretty Hellish, ya know.”
“That’s all right,” replied Polly calmly. “It couldn’t possibly be as bad as Christmas Day at the farm used to be, with Aunty Kay’s lot as well as our lot and her bossing the pants off everybody.”
“No. Good,” he granted.
Silence again.
They had been asked warmly over to the ecolodge for Christmas Eve drinks but funnily enough hadn’t fancied it, so Polly and Jan hadn’t yet seen the decorated guests’ lounge. “Did Andrew manage to get a tree?” asked Polly.
Pete sniffed. “Yer could call it that.”
“Right!” she said with her contralto gurgle of laughter. “Um, I was wondering, have they asked Janet to Christmas dinner?”
He eyed her tolerantly. “They asked her, but she’ll be home martyring ’erself over the turkey as per usual for them useless louts of sons and that wanker she’s divorced from.”
“Mm. The thing is, if the wife’s determined to do the martyr thing, the sons inevitably do turn into useless louts that don’t lift a finger round the house, and the husband’s just as bad.’
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that,” said Pete drily.
Polly smiled at him and hugged his arm. “Yeah.”
They stayed like that for quite some time, just gazing at the lake.
Sunlight was glinting off the water when Pete finally sighed and said: “I s’pose we oughta make a move. Whadda you reckon about breakfast on Christmas Day? Something solid to sop up the drinks that'll get poured down yer gullet before ya get to eat the dinner, or nothing much because ya wanna leave room for the dinner?”
“I can never decide. These days I don’t seem to be able to manage a big breakfast as well as a big meal later, mind you. But on the other hand I don’t much like hot turkey.”
“Nah, pretty tasteless, eh? Don’t mind it cold. Jan makes these great sandwiches—actually I think she might of got the idea off one of our Yank guests—good ole Goldie, was it?” he asked himself. “Uh—might of been. Cold turkey, mayonnaise, and cranberry jelly. Yum! Throw a bit of lettuce at if you insist.”
“Much nicer,” agreed Polly with a sigh.
“Yeah. Well, there’ll be ham as well. Cold, not hot, Andrew said Jayne wasn't gonna be slaving over two hot meat dishes—well, ’e’s not all bad.”
Polly smiled. “He's not bad at all, you silly. Just rather dull and conventional.”
“Think that’s me point. So do ya like cold ham off the bone?”
“Not awfully, no.”
“Nah, not as meat, eh? All right in sandwiches. I like roast duck, meself.” He eyed the duck that was bobbing placidly on the lake about three metres out.
Polly swallowed. “Doesn’t that belong to that nice Molly from the crafts shop?”
“No—there was one on the loose that we think was one of hers, yeah, but young Sean—that’s her husband, ya know him, eh? Yeah: well, he got fed up with the thing, so ’e asked me to shoot it. Tasted not bad at all,” he said reminiscently, licking his lips. “But now this one’s turned up!”
“Shoot it, too,” returned Lady Carrano with the utmost placidity.
Pete’s lips twitched but he managed not to laugh. Well—she was a farm girl, of course, and then Jake had been bloody keen on a bit of hunting: used to the notion all her life.
“Jan says I better not because it’ll belong to the permaculture nuts next-door.”
Calmly she replied: “How will they know?” and Pete collapsed in helpless splutters.
“What’s this?” croaked Jan, coming into the kitchen at a somewhat advanced hour to discover the unmistakeable smell of burnt toast, her life partner and Lady Carrano placidly eating toast and Vegemite, and a feathery corpse on the bench.
“That bloody duck,” replied Pete insouciantly. “Decided it’d be better off in our stomachs than bobbing around out there maddening the life out of me, eh, Polly?’
“Did you encourage him?” croaked Jan, staring at their guest.
“Yes.”
Jan staggered to a chair and sat down.
“I love roast duck, too,” Polly explained calmly.
“Polly, I think it belonged to the permaculture nuh— Uh, Taupo Organic Produce!”
“I know. We decided its hour had come.”
“Yeah. Have it on the 27th, love,” said Pete. “Give the ruddy turkey time to settle, eh?”
“I’ll pluck it if you like,” offered Polly, taking another slice of toast.
“No, ya won’t, I will!” retorted Pete swiftly. “That your third slice?”
“Yes; this last one’s yours.”
“Right.” Pete seized the last slice of toast. White toast.
Jan sighed. “Wouldn’t it be sensible to have something with fibre in it, to counteract the muck we’ll all be eating today?”
“Yeah, we thought of that,” agreed Pete insouciantly.
“Yes. Then we decided that for one day of the year we wouldn’t have sensible toast,” Polly explained.
Jan watched wistfully as Pete engulfed his very thin toast, in fact almost Melba toast, slightly singed an’ all as it was—he’d undoubtedly used the grill, he despised the electric toaster—with a generous helping of marg and Vegemite. At least they hadn’t gone the whole hog and used butter.
“Want some?” offered Polly generously.
Jan gave in. “Oh, blow it! Yes, why not? Christmas comes but once a year!”
“Bottoms up! Christmas comes but once a year!” old Baines encouraged Polly, raising his glass cup of eggnog. –The retirees who patronised the ecolodge expected eggnog on Christmas Day, so eggnog they got. It wasn’t quite the same crowd as when Polly had arrived: most people preferred to stay home on Christmas Day, or inflict themselves on the relations, but Baines was still here, as were Mr and Mrs Morton. The ecolodge was full, however: the other four rooms were occupied by new guests, booked in specially for Christmas, largely because this year the offspring were in places like Noumea or, if less affluent, Fiji or Rarotonga, or gone to the in-laws instead. Mr and Mrs Ferguson from Auckland, Mr and Mrs Silver from Wellington, Mrs Jean Walker and Mrs Susan McDowell, also from Auckland but a different suburb—widows, girlhood friends: Jan had assured Polly that you got a lot of that syndrome in the ecolodge life—and Mrs Carrie Hanley Jones and Mrs Verna Dettweiler from Evanston, Ill., also widows. The last two were friends of Mrs Salome Jackson from Evanston, who had once had a real great Christmas at Taupo Shores Ecolodge, as Verna Dettweiler had assured Polly. Since Polly happened to know that that Christmas la belle Salomé had seduced a Mr Robinson from Glendale, Auckland, and walked off with him right under Mrs Robinson’s nose, she’d only managed a pale sketch of a smile in response to this intel. Very luckily Mrs Dettweiler and Mrs Hanley Jones weren’t the sort that registered things like other people’s pale smiles. Nor had they, thank God, heard of the name Carrano: so, although Andrew had made the mistake of introducing her nicely as Polly Carrano it hadn’t meant a thing to them. Jan had then grabbed him, dragged him out to the kitchen and pointed out the error of his ways, so after that he hadn’t introduced her to anybody.
“Bottoms up!” Polly agreed obligingly, raising her glass. Ugh! Absolute muck!
Baines didn’t notice she was trying not to let a sick look appear on her face, he was getting far too close and telling her all about the mileage he’d had from his silver Lexus coming down from Auckland...
From the other side of the room Pete glared. “Seventy-five if ’e’s a day, the ole fart,” he growled.
“Yeah,” agreed Bob. “Harmless, though, Pete.”
“Disgusting, more like.”
“True,” he agreed mildly, watching as Ferguson elbowed his way up to Polly and Baines, officiously topped her glass up from the bottle in his fist, and began to bore on...
“What the Hell was that?” croaked Pete.
“Think ’is name’s Ferguson. He’ll be boring on about on their trip round Cornwall last winter. –English summer. Had some of that on the all-day Rotorua tour the other day.”
“Jesus,” he muttered. “Uh—why Cornwall?”
“God knows. ’E never give us a reason, Pete. They never do,” he added drily.
Pete grinned reluctantly. “No.”
“And I can’t tell you what ’e saw in Cornwall, if anything, ’cos all ’e was on about was the mileage ’e got from the hire car,”—Pete collapsed in splutters—“and the wrong routes the GPS system kept giving ’im.”
“Yeah!” Pete blew his nose. “I actually meant what’s in that bottle he’s got in ’is fist?”
“Aw. Dunno.”
Taking a deep breath, Pete dived into the scrum of be-shorted, long-socked retirees and frilly-frocked, newly hair-set spouses and widows.
’E was at it, all right. “So Janice reckoned I hadn’t set the GPS right, but there was nothing wrong with the setting, it got us to Plymouth all right—”
“That reminds me,” Baines interrupted ruthlessly: “I went to New Plymouth last October, it’s supposed to be the season for the rhododendrons, but the weather was awful, the cloud cover was down all the time I was there; would you believe—”
“We ended up on this shocking back road, on the way to St Ives—”
“Really? As you were going to St Ives?” said Polly loudly. Her contralto quite easily drowned the both of them. “Did you meet a man with seven wives?”
Pete cleared his throat desperately. “Yeah. Whass in that bottle you were filling up her glass with, Ferguson?” he demanded in a steely voice.
Good old Pete! The much-travelled one actually blinked, Polly registered with glee. “Uh—well, just a drop of vodka to brighten up the eggn—”
“She doesn’t need vodka at this hour of the morning, are you barmy?” Firmly he grasped Polly’s arm and led her away.
“Ta, Pete!” she gasped, collapsing in giggles. “My hero!”
“My pleasure. Been dying to tell one of them ’e’s barmy for years, if ya wanna—”
“Yes!” she gasped helplessly.
Pete grinned foolishly. “Aw, ya guessed.”
Polly wiped her eyes. “Funnily enough, yeah. –Why is eggnog always putrid?”
“Dunno. Think it’s a law.”
“Mm. I couldn’t just have a nice glass of Perrier instead, could I?”
“If there is any. Sort of thing that Andrew thinks is an extravagance,” he said with a grimace.
“Mm, well, this lot wouldn’t know it if they fell over it,” she conceded drily. “I’ll ask him.”
Pete watched dubiously as she made her way over to the little bar near the door to the passage, where Andrew had now stationed himself. It was an open bar on Christmas Day, but that didn’t mean yer average retiree was gonna help themselves. Not this early in the proceedings, anyway. Presumably blasted Ferguson’s bottle was the exception.
Very nicely Andrew offered Polly a soda water instead. With a huge effort she managed not to tell him what Jan used it as a cure for, and accepted politely. If ever there was anyone more suited to running an ecolodge for the ultra-nice retirees of EnZed than Andrew Barker, she reflected drily, escaping with it, she’d like to meet— No, she bloody wouldn’t! Oh, well: she hadn’t come down for this, she’d come down for lovely Pete and Jan, and she could put up with a bit of enforced socializing with the feeble-minded, and narrow-minded, and just plain boring. Oh, God, here came another one!
“Merry Christmas again, Polly!” it greeted her.
Hilarious. “Merry Christmas again, Mr Silver,” she agreed nicely. Ugh, were those ghastly knee-socks actually held up by elastic garters? Could even the typical New Zealand retiree be that anal? Given that the bloody things came already elastici—
“Um, yes: Wayne, of course,” she agreed nicely.
“Bottoms up!” he encouraged her.
The reason they all said that was that it was a sexual innuendo which was also the sort of commonplace that could not possibly be challenged. For two pins she’d flatten him with “Up yours.” No, she wouldn’t, not when it was Pete and Jan’s relations’ Christmas party.
“Perce was saying you came down from Auckland with Pete in a helicopter,” he leered over the glass cup of bloody eggnog.
“Per— Oh! Mr Baines. Yes, I did.” She stopped, but this didn’t put him off his stroke for an instant.
“It reminds me of the time we did the Franz Josef. It is a bit pricey, but we thought, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, isn’t it? So why not go the whole hog and go on the helicopter ride? But as luck would have it they’d made a mistake with the bookings, and so they upgraded us, and we got the front seats—” Blah, blah, blah. Nothing about the astounding beauty of the glaciers with their deep blue chasms in the blinding white sheet of ice, of course. Nothing about the glories of the mountainous crags. “Halt sunt li pui, e li val tenebrus, Les roches bises, les destreiz merveillus”—not. But she got chapter and verse on just how much they’d of had to pay if they’d of booked the best seats—too right.
From the shelter of the Christmas tree Mrs Silver eyed Polly balefully. “Who is that woman with the dreadful hair?” she said crossly to Mrs Morton.
Wendy Morton didn’t usually drink but since it was Christmas— “What was that, dear?” she replied vaguely.
“Her! That woman with her hair down her back! Talking to Wayne. Wearing jeans. At her age!”
Mrs Morton’s eggnog-blurred gaze focussed. She brightened. “Oh! Well, I suppose if you’ve got that much money, you don’t care. Well, I don’t know her, Anthea, dear, but she was introduced to us as Lady Carrano!” She nodded triumphantly as Anthea Silver’s plump chins sagged.
… Bob had managed to edge his way back to his wife’s side, only being buttonholed on the way by Mrs Dettweiler and Mrs Hanley Jones, neither of whom hesitated to refer to him before he was three yards away as “That darling Bob”, by the very flushed Mrs Ferguson, who giggled girlishly at him over her glass cup of eggnog and told him he mustn’t be shy, Bob, dear, it was Christmas—he hadn’t been being shy, he’d merely been being polite—and by Mrs Walker and Mrs McDowell, who agreed before he was three yards away that he was lovely, wasn’t he?
“Never mind,” said Libby kindly before he could so much as open his mouth.
“Ta;” replied Bob weakly. “Christmas sort of... multiplies it, or something,” he admitted.
“Exponentially,” she agreed tranquilly.
“Yeah!” he said with a startled laugh. He put his arm round her waist and muttered in her ear: “Bloody Baines and the Mortons have been wising the others up on who Polly is, ya know.”
“Ooh, heck!”
Bob grimaced. “Yeah.”
The bunkhouse, which had twelve bunks, was only half full for Christmas. Four of them were a family, parents and two hulking teenagers. They’d come fully prepared—for a siege, apparently—and had set off in the 4WD for National Park very early for a picnic Christmas dinner, laden up with barbecue equipment and everything else imaginable, including not only a Christmas cake, but a Christmas pudding. Jayne had been very disconcerted: she’d been expecting everyone to accept their warm invitation to Christmas dinner, for which there was no extra charge. They didn’t advertise the fact on the website, but, as Andrew pointed out, perhaps they should. Or at least make sure the guests understood when they made their booking.
The other two bunkhousers, however, turned up for Christmas dinner, spruced up to the best of their ability, given that they hadn’t anticipated that Taupo Shores Ecolodge would be full of the floral-frocked and hairsprayed or knee-socked and ironed-shirted variety. Well, cripes, it called itself an ecolodge!
“No-one else is wearing jeans,” said Damian Macmillan uneasily, as they hesitated at the door.
“Pete is,” replied James Thurlow on a dry note.
“You can’t count him, Uncle Jim!”
“Or Bob, presumably,” he drawled.
“Is he? Aw—yeah. No, ya can’t, I s’pose.”
“Well, do you want to turn tail, Damian?” asked his uncle sardonically.
“No,” he said, scowling. “There’s a lady in jeans!” he spotted with relief.
Jim raised his eyebrows slightly. That lady was Lady Carrano, or he, James Albert Thurlow, was a Dutchman in his clogs. “Yeah. Well, could join her: safety in numbers, eh?”
“Righto. She looks all right,” decided his innocent nephew.
Rolling his eyes only slightly, Jim let himself be led off to join the richest woman in the country. Well, depending on how Sir Jake had left it, but—yeah. Thereabouts.
“Hullo. Is it all right if we talk to you?” the wet-behind-the-ears lad greeted her.
“Sorry,” said Jim, coming up behind him. “My name’s Jim, and this object is my nephew, Damian. –It’s Polly, isn’t it? We did meet once, at a corporate wing-ding, but you won’t remember me, I was just one of the faces in the crowd.”
Impartially she awarded him and bloody Damian the devastating smile that, actually, Jim had noticed at that bloody corporate wing-ding, and said: “You wouldn’t be Donald Macmillan’s son, would you, Damian?”
“Um, yeah! Do you know Dad?” he gasped.
“Slightly; you’re very like him. I know your mum: I was at school with her,” she said nicely.
“Heck, were ya?” he gasped.
“Seventeen. Possibly another year at Grammar will knock some company manners into him, or at least teach him when to shut the gob,” said Jim cordially.
“It never had that effect on my boys. –They’d’ve been years before your time, Damian,” she added nicely. “So what subjects are you doing next year?”
He plunged into it and Jim, swallowing a sigh, went off to get them something to drink. He could have eggnog, seventeen or not, and serve ’im right! Okay, he’d given her the opportunity to admit who she was and she hadn’t taken it—not that you could blame her. That bloody wing-ding had consisted of their lot from CohenCorp, and Carrano’s lot, plus and a load of visiting firemen from Malaysia on the one hand and Dubai on the other, not to mention the load of pseuds from Wellington, and she had been surrounded, yes, surrounded, by fawning males of all nationalities.
Gee, when he got back with a whisky for himself and an eggnog for Damian two elderly twits in knee-socks had joined her and were yacking their heads off, but ya know what? Jim Thurlow wasn’t in the least surprised.
“Who’s that?” growled Pete in Jan’s ear.
Jumping, she gasped: “Who?”
“Type talking to Polly.”
Jan peered. “Um, the man from the bunkhouse, I think. Well, must be: he’s wearing jeans and he isn’t geriatric,” she added, rallying slightly. “He looks all right.”
“Who is ’e?” he demanded sourly.
She sighed. “I dunno. He booked for the two of them—I think the boy’s his nephew, Jayne said, rather than his son—he booked, they’ve come. Just drop it, Pete. If she fancies him she fancies him, there’s nothing we can do about tit.”
He snorted. “Her! –Ten to one ’e’s married,” he pointed out bitterly.
It was no use saying they weren’t Polly’s keepers, because at the moment they more or less were, weren’t they? Thanks to his brilliant move. “Not if he’s down here without her at Christmas, Pete, and just drop it, will you? Where’s Tamsin? Go and have a talk to her, for God’s sake, she is your only granddaughter.”
“No. She’s in the kitchen, telling ’er mum she could of done it all much more efficient,” he replied sourly.
Jan winced: that was Tamsin, all right. Not that she didn’t pitch in, she more than pulled her weight with the ecolodge’s bloody treks. The so-called guided “bush” walk down the carefully designed Rewarewa Trail, which actually ended up on the property about ten yards from their place, had mysteriously become extremely popular this season. The rather more genuine bush walk, the Rimu Trail, which was an all-day affair of about 16 K, or, as it had started out, 10 miles, was also proving popular, not so much with Taupo Shores’ own geriatrics, but with the real ecolodgers from Fern Gully Ecolodge. Although it owned quite a lot of land, Fern Gully didn’t have any real bush for walking purposes, because most of it was former farmland that had reverted to scrub and then, when a British hospitality firm had taken it over for their ecolodge, been carefully replanted with native trees and shrubs. Which were notoriously slow-growing. True, it was possible to walk in amongst thirty-inch-high saplings, but it wasn’t all that exciting—or what the rich greenies that infested the place had come out here for. Well, Taupo Shores was doing okay out of it, and Tamsin was invaluable as the guide: Libby couldn’t possibly have managed all that walking, every other day.
“All right, Pete, do ya want to go and rescue Polly from that perfectly nice-looking bloke?”
He did, fancy that. So they made their way over to them through the seething mass of geriatric Christmas revellers—what in God’s name was in that bloody eggnog? Had someone spiked it? Because Andrew had been responsible for it, initially, and his idea of eggnog was ten of globby muck to one of actual liquor.
Just as they reached them the bloke was in the act of taking the boy’s glass cup off him with the remark: “That’s enough of that muck for you: think someone’s spiked the bloody stuff.” Which proved he couldn’t be all bad, for God’s sake, but Pete went on glaring at him!
“Globby,” said Polly in her most detached voice as the boy, already very flushed, protested incoherently.
The uncle sniffed at it. “Bourbon,” he decided.
“Didn’t know there was any left,” Pete admitted.
“Mr Ferguson was pouring vodka into it earlier,” said Polly, still detached.
The uncle gaped at her. “Then why didn’t you say something? I did mention he's only seventeen, didn’t I?”
With truly horrible detachment—you couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor bugger—Polly replied: “(a), You were giving it to him; and (b), It’s Christmas.”
Not to Jan’s surprise, Pete went into a sniggering fit immediately, and the boy promptly followed suit.
The bloke went very red. “You could still have spoken up, for God's sake!”
Well, it was what ninety-nine blokes out of a hundred would probably have said, yeah; nevertheless Jan cringed. Sure enough, Polly just looked at him thoughtfully.
“Excuse us,” he said grimly to the ambient air somewhere between Pete’s and Jan’s heads. “—You can have a coffee, Damian.” And with that he pulled the lad bodily away.
“Aw, Uncle Jim! I’m not drunk!”
“Shut up.”
And they were swallowed up in the seething mass of geriatric Christmas revellers.
“Did you have to? It is Christmas, after all," said Jan heavily to their guest.
“Yes,” said Pete immediately.
“What he said,” agreed Polly calmly.
Jan sighed. “What’s wrong with the man, for God’s sake?”
“He’s an exec with CohenCorp.”
“Uh—was he sucking up to you?”
“No, in fact he was ultra-tactful. Didn’t even use the bloody handle.”
Jan stared at her. “He doesn’t look like a smoothie to me!”
“No, I don’t think he is. And quite bright, really.”
Jan sighed. “All right, the man was tried in the fire and found wanting.”
“Good thing, too,” added Pete on a vicious note.
“But what else could he have said, Polly?” she burst out.
“Well, I don’t actually know, Jan,” she replied with a little smile. “I was just hoping it’d be something different.”
“Jake woulda told ’er she was a fucking stupid moo to let ’im give the kid the muck; that or told ’im it was his funeral but go right ahead and finish it, if ’e wanted to be spewing ’is guts out before the turkey was on the table,” noted Pete.
Jan looked uneasily at Polly but she just said mildly: “Probably. He certainly wouldn’t have knuckled under.”
“Knuckled...” Jan’s voice trailed way.
“’E did,” noted Pete fairly. “Walked off, eh?”
“Mm, I suppose he did,” Jan conceded, swallowing. “All right: perfectly nice bloke, tried in the fire and found wanting, subject closed. –What are you drinking?”
“Soda water.”
“Didn’t think there’d be any Perrier: costs cash dough,” agreed Pete.
“Ssh!” hissed Jan.
“Andrew’s got the ecolodge’s accounts well into the black, has he?” asked Polly in an amused voice.
Jan sighed. “Yeah, yeah.”
“That’s good,” she said mildly.
“Mm. Well, if you want fancy drinks there’s always Fern Gully—or you could go across the other side to Taupo Harmonic Vitality.”
“The health farm place that your Patty’s helping to run?” said Polly, smiling at Pete.
“Yeah. Herbal wraps, they go in for: you had them?”
She winced. “No.”
“Good on ya,” he conceded. “Um, Patty did say her and David might pop over this arvo, love,” he reminded Jan.
“Well, they won’t be stonkered on what the health farm’ll serve up for Christmas dinner, that’s for sure!” she retorted with feeling. “They did have chicken last year, mind you,” she said to Polly.
“Go on, I suppose I can take it!”
“Well, David’s father did most of it—he was living in Sydney for twenty years,” said Jan fairly. “It was sort of a chicken salad.” She stopped.
“That prawn thing sounded wor—” began Pete.
“Yes! They were both sickening! –I’m just wondering if I oughta tell Polly after all, so close to dinnertime.”
“You’re speaking to the woman that’s eaten sautéed spinal cord in Paris,” said Polly drily. “Not to mention whose husband ate dolphin in Japan.”
“Shredded warm chicken, black Californian grapes, shredded green paw-paw, baby eggplants, don’t ask me if they were cooked or not, cherry tomatoes, and a dressing composed largely of rice wine vinegar, palm sugar and finely chopped chilli,” reported Jan rapidly.
“Bloody,” agreed Lady Carrano tranquilly.
Jan nodded, shuddering.
“Yep!” Pete agreed. “The shrimp salad thing, it had mango in it, as well as some stuff that wasn’t rice. Ripe mango, not green, in case you were wondering. The things only cost an arm and both legs.”
“The not-rice was quinoa,” said Jan very faintly.
“Of course: for the protein!” replied Polly cordially.
Her eyes met Jan’s, and they both broke down in mean sniggers.
Whoever had put out the place cards had tactfully put Polly next to Pete. Unfortunately Jan wasn’t on her other side, and nor was that lovely Bob that Libby was married to: Ferguson was. Janice Ferguson was of course on his other side. She managed to spend almost the entire dinner talking exclusively to him on topics of mutual interest in which it was impossible for Polly to join. –Not realising, noted Polly, eyeing the woman sardonically, that she didn’t want to join in!
Opposite her were Mr and Mrs Silver. The chatty Wayne S. made several attempts to converse across the table, but these were all successfully blocked by Anthea. There wasn’t even the consolation of being able to drink lots of champagne, which Polly loved. Because all there was, was fizzy New Zealand white, which managed to be far too sweet and horribly acid at the same time. She did drink some of it, but after a bit Pete kindly took her glass off her, remarking: “This muck’s gonna give you Hellish wind, love. I did tell ’im not to touch it with a bargepole, but the bloke’s got no palate. ’E got it locally, ya see: the bottle stores all put their prices down over Christmas if ya buy ’em by the dozen. All compete, of course: you’ll find one lot’s gone one cent a bottle cheaper, and just when you’re wondering if it’s worth the petrol to drive to the far side of town the next one’s ad comes out and theirs has gone down one and a half! –Wind,” he concluded firmly.
“Eighteen cents. I suppose it isn’t impossible,” replied the statistical linguist thoughtfully.
“Not if you’re putting it on the plastic, no. Fancy a lager instead?”
“I certainly would, if you’re getting them in,” put in Jan from his other side.
“Yes, please, Pete,” Polly agreed thankfully.
“Right!” He exited in the direction of the kitchen.
“What would you usually have?” asked Jan.
“The fat of the land,” she sighed. “All Mum’s side’s the same, they go mad at Christmas.”
“Um, no, I didn’t mean down at the farm, actually. If you were at home.”
If was the operative word! Well, Jake had been extremely gregarious, of course, as well as hyperactive. Polly sighed. “I can’t actually remember the last Christmas we did spend at home. Mum always wanted us to go to them when the kids were younger, of course, and Jake loved it, he never had a family Christmas when he was growing up.”
Oh, dear, this was the wrong to say, Jan was looking at her in dismay.
“So I suppose we’d’ve gone down to the farm ninety percent of the time, Jan,” she said quickly. “Um, not so much the last few years... Well, last year we didn’t even have it together, really. Jake and I were at the farm with Davey and Mum—I think I told you that, eh? But Katie Maureen went off with some old school friends to Noumea, and Johnny had a couple of weeks in Switzerland with his pen-pal’s family. Um, not pen-pal exactly, a guy he’s been exchanging emails with. They’re about the same age, and this boy’s very keen on learning Japanese, too.”
“Right. So, um, what are the kids doing this year, then?”
Polly had been waiting for some time for someone to ask this, but so far, with supreme tact, everyone had held off. That acid fizz must have gone straight to Jan’s head! “It was all arranged ages back, and so everyone said it’d be silly to change it, life must go on, etcetera.”
Jan was now looking horrified.
“No, it’s all right, Jan, they might as well get on with their lives. And I’d much rather be here than stuck in that mausoleum in Pohutukawa Bay. Do you remember Ginny? One of my cousins, she was at the wake.”
“Um—oh, yeah, that the one that was working in Japan for ages?”
“Mm. She’d arranged for Johnny and his Swiss friend, Klaus, to stay with a Japanese family for a month, so he’s over there. And Jake had jacked up some mates in Cambridge to take Katie Maureen, their girl’s aiming at an M.B.A., too, so that’s where she is.”
Jan brightened. “That’s not far! We could nip up and—”
Ooh, help! Polly bit her lip. “Um, no, sorry, Jan, I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea. Not Cambridge, New Zealand, and not even Cambridge, England.” She swallowed. “Cambridge, Mass.” She watched wryly as the penny dropped.
“Goddit. She’s not just aiming at an M.B.A., she’s aiming at a Harvard M.B.A.!”
“Mm. It sounds disloyal to say it, but... Well, I probably wouldn’t to anyone but you, Jan. I don’t seem to have anything in common with the kids, any more.”
As you might have expected, lovely Jan didn’t wax all sympathetic, in fact she thought it over and then replied thoughtfully: “No, none of them are much like you, really, are they?”
Gratefully Polly agreed: “No.”
Maybe it was just as well that Pete came back at this moment and plonked a six-pack on the table in front of them. “Oy, you two aren’t getting mournful, are you?’
Polly laughed. “No, Pete, in fact I feel quite a bit better, actually!”
Poor Pete looked in a stunned way from the prune-faced Ma Silver and the cheery Wayne, opposite, to Ferguson and his lemon-face of a spouse, to their left, and croaked: “If you say so, pet.”
Promptly Polly collapsed in giggles, nodding madly.
“Normal life,” proposed Jan with a certain relish, raising her can of lager. “Here’s to it!”
“Perdition to it, more like!” he returned, drinking.
“I’ll drink to that,” agreed Polly with precision. “Hic! Blast, you’re right about that awful EnZed white, Pete, it gives you the burps, all right! –Cheers!”
“No, all right, the dinner wasn’t too bad,” conceded Pete quite some time later. “But why the fuck did she have to spend what was left of a lovely fine day talking to them dim gay mates of Patty’s from California that work at the ruddy health farm?”
“Lovely nature,” said Jan, yawning widely. “No, all right, Pete. There wasn’t anyone else to talk to, was there?”
Pete opened his mouth and shut it again.
“All in couples,” she pointed out.
“Yeah. Well, where is she now?”
“Went for a walk.”
He looked at her in alarm. “A walk where to?”
“Uh... down the Rimu Trail, I think. Hic! Ooh, pardon me: that fizz that David’s father brought over was really something, eh?”
“’E’s not all bad,” he conceded, getting up. “I better go and look for her.”
“Um, she might want to be alone, love,” said Jan uneasily.
“Well, she can want, it’s getting dark!” He marched out.
… Shit! Who the Hell was that bloke? Pete broke into a run.
“Aw—’s’you!” he gasped in relief.
“Hullo, Pete,” replied old Rewi Tuwhare. He wasn’t young Wiremu’s granddad, he’d be his... great-uncle? Or possibly great-great. Looked like a very old tortoise. In fact Pete and Jan had seen the very tortoise: one of them David Attenborough TV programmes, it had been, Jan was keen on them. Pete could take them or leave them, they were all faked up, in fact another one had actually shown you how they faked them up. Well, not going so far as to show you the actual jar what they brung the stick insect or whatever it was in, but bloody nearly. –Galapagos tortoise, was that it? Oldest one in the world, or something. Well, she’d be safe enough with old Rewi, but what the Hell were they finding to talk about?
He squatted down beside them on the bank. “What you two talking about, then?”
“Fishing, mainly,” replied Polly mildly.
Pete choked slightly. Well, yeah, the old bloke’d pull ’em out of the water, too right. But it wasn’t fishing.
“Yeah. And a bit of carving,” added old Rewi.
“Eh?” he said limply. Never seen the old boy with a chisel in his hand in his puff! And he had known him all his life.
“Yes: Mr Tuwhare was telling me about the stuff they’ve got the boys doing at Fern Gully. They don’t know what they’re doing,” said Polly, still mild.
The old bloke spat—fortunately into the lake. “Neh.”
“Um, well, they do the rough work with chain saws, I’ll grant ya that,” said Pete on a weak note, “but they finish ’em off with chisels, don’t they? –Or were you expecting ’em to attack them hunks of Pinus radiata with greenstone adzes?” he asked snidely.
Rewi sniffed.
“It’s the wrong wood, too, Pete,” Polly explained.
“We all know that, ta!”
“They got it all wrong,” said the old boy.
Pete waited, but that appeared to be that. “Uh—all right, if you say so. Um, well, you coming back, Polly? It’s getting dark.”
“In a bit,” she replied, staring at the western sky over the darkening lake.
“Okay, then. –What you doing out here, anyway, Rewi? Young Wiremu said his mum was having the whole family over this year. Shouldn’t you be at the rave-up?”
“Pete,” said the old man heavily, “just shut up, eh?”
Pete looked from their faces to the placid scene of lake and sky, and gulped. “Right.”
They waited in silence while the last faint streaks of sunlight faded out.
“Give us a hand, wouldja, Pete?” said the old man at last.
“Who’ll give him a hand, though?” asked Polly with a giggle, scrambling up.
“Hah, hah.” Rewi let Pete haul him up. “Ta,” he grunted. “Didn’t see me boat on yer travels, didja?”
“No,” he croaked. Shit, was the old boy pissed?
“Then I must of left it in the other direction, eh?” the old bugger replied. “See ya. –See ya tomorrow, Polly.”
“Yes, righto, Mr Tuwhare! Night-night!”
“Ta-ta,” he said, heading off down the track.
See her tomorrow for what? One of old Rewi’s poaching expeditions? Pete opened his mouth and then shut it again. “Come on, then,” he said weakly.
Polly took his arm with a giggle. “Supreme tact, Pete!”
Pete swallowed a sigh. Yeah, well. Incorrigible, was the word for her.
Whatever it was her and the old boy got up to, they musta done it fairly early in the morning, because by breakfast time she’d disappeared. Resurfaced around lunchtime. Didn’t come in, though: Pete spotted her sitting on the little jetty near the end of the Rewarewa Trail. It had railings most of the way along it but not at the far end or, obviously, above the steps. Quite a nice pozzie, it was, out there.
“Fancy some lunch, in a bit?” he suggested, sitting down beside her.
“I’m not really hungry, thanks, Pete.”
“Me, neither,” he admitted. “Never am, really, on Boxing Day.”
“No,” she agreed in a small voice. A tear ran down her cheek suddenly.
“Bugger,” said Pete under his breath. He put an arm round her. “Bawl all ya like, lovey.”
“I’m all right, really,” said Polly wanly, sniffing hard. “I wasn’t really thinking about Jake… Though he did love it down here. Um, it’s—it’s Boxing Day, you see, Pete.”
He didn’t see, actually. “Yeah?” he said cautiously, trying to remember if Jake had ever spent Boxing Day down here.
“We missed last year because of course we were down at the farm… Then when we got back Jake and I went the next Sunday.”
“Um, yeah?” he groped foggily.
“To the—to the lawn cemetery, Pete,” she said in such a low voice he could hardly hear her.
Uh… Jake of course was an orphan: couldn’t have been one of his relations, and hers all came from down the East Coast or Taranaki. Unless the old aunty that had lived in Auckland was buried there—the rabid Anglican one. Did Anglicans go in for that? Hang on: what about Jake’s mad ex? No, impossible, the bloody woman had tried to shoot him, missed and got Polly in the arm and then shot herself—on his patio. Reason Jake had got rid of his first house in Pohutukawa Bay and built that ruddy great mansion further up on the cliff top. He’d never have wanted to visit her grave, surely?
“Um, yeah?” he ventured cautiously.
“Mm. When we were first married we always went on Boxing Day if we were home—only Mum was so keen on having us down at the farm… It got so it was hard to fit it in, and the kids didn’t understand—well, at first they were too little, they just thought it was a nice ride in the car to a sort of park, I think, but later on it was obvious it just made them uncomfortable, so Jake and I always went by ourselves.”
“Didja, lovey? A relation, was it?” he said kindly, squeezing her a bit.
Another tear ran down her cheek and she wiped it away with her hand. “Yes. Sort of. Did—did Jake ever tell you about little Grant, Pete?” she asked in a shaking voice.
Gr— Oh. Oh, shit! “Yeah,” he croaked. “Son by that bitch of a first wife of his, eh? Come down just after ’e got the news the poor little tyke was incurable, never gonna develop normally. Never seen a bloke so cut up. We took off for the bush—the Kaimanawas. Poured for a week, couldn’t see yer hand in front of yer face most of the time. Never got a sniff of pig, let alone deer. Anyway, seemed to be the right medicine, he decided he’d arrange for a permanent nurse at home—proper facilities and all. That cow, Esmé, she wanted to shove the kid in hospital and forget about him. Tried to claim it was all Jake’s fault, too: you know: unknown parents, blah, blah. Didn’t have any of this DNA stuff back then, of course. Don’t think he quite believed it, but it rocked ’im. Though mind you, he reckoned the bitch never had wanted the kid: came home from work about a week after the pregnancy had been confirmed to find her passed out on the best part of a bottle of gin—tried to get rid, he reckoned. Well, they pumped her stomach out at the hospital, but she went on drinking while she was carrying the kid. Went back home to ’er doting dad when the doc broke the news the kid was never gonna be normal, Jake tell you that?”
“No. I knew he was very worried about his possible genetic heritage when the twins were on the way, though.”
Pete sniffed. “Yeah, well, there were some weirdos in her family, weren’t there?”
“Mm. Well, we’ll never know whether it was her drinking or her genetic make-up, or both, or just one of those tragic accidents, and it doesn’t matter now… She left him several times, I think, but he stuck it out until the little boy died. He was seven by then.”
“Yeah: I remember that,” said Pete tightly.
“Mm.” Polly leaned against his wiry shoulder and sighed. “There’s no-one left to remember him now, except me. Poor little boy…” Another tear ran down her cheek.
Pete tightened his arm on her. “Yeah.”
After quite some time she said: “I’ll take him some flowers when I get home.”
“Yeah, that’d be nice,” Pete agreed. “Um… anybody that could go with you, love?”
“No. I—I might have mentioned him to my friend Jill Davis, back when Jake first told me, but that was over twenty years ago. Nobody knows we used to take him flowers on Boxing Day. I’d rather go by myself, really.”
“Mm, understandable.” He leaned his head on hers, and sighed.
Jan had spotted them from the kitchen window quite some time earlier. She watched uneasily, forgetting that she’d been about to make a salad for lunch. They sat there for ages, not talking any more, as far as she could tell.
Eventually she came to, gave herself a shake, and got on with the salad. Though without enthusiasm. When she worked up the guts to look out again they were just getting up.
Pete came into the kitchen looking gloomy.
“Where’s Polly?” said Jan cautiously.
“Gone to have a piss and wash her face.”
“Right.”
He sighed. “It’s not Jake—well, gotta be that, partly. I’ll tell ya later, love. If I'd known— No, well, she didn’t wanna stay up there for Christmas Day, but… Oh, well. It’s too far to rush back just for Boxing Day.”
Jan nodded groggily.
“This for lunch?” he said, eyeing the salad with disfavour.
“Mm.”
“Think I’d rather just have bread and Vegemite.”
Jan opened her mouth and thought better of it. “Why not?”
In the end they all had white bread—Pete’s choice, of course—duly anointed with marg and Vegemite, and washed down with large mugs of tea, while the salad drowsed in the fridge.
“That’s better!” Pete concluded with a sigh, draining his second mug.
“Yes,” Polly agreed. “There’s something awfully comforting about bread and Vegemite, really, isn’t there?”
Well, at least it seemed to have been the right medicine. Jan just nodded kindly.
She got the whole story out of Pete that evening. Not asking why this was the first time he’d breathed a syllable of it.
“Bloody, eh?” he concluded.
Jan blew her nose. “Mm.”
“Still, at least it wasn’t her kid.”
“Pete, she must be feeling she should be putting flowers on the poor little boy’s grave for Jake’s sake.”
“I got that, thanks.”
“Mm. Sorry.” Jan blew her nose again.
“You need a pick-me-up,” Pete decided unilaterally, getting out of bed and heading for the door.
A pick-me-up in his terms could be anything, but it turned out just to be a shot of brandy. Jan drank it gratefully.
Pete had naturally awarded himself one. “Took a glass in to her,” he noted.
“Good. Can’t hurt.”
“Nah. Aw—and don’t offer her gin, will ya?”
Jan gaped at him. It had always been one of Polly’s favourite tipples.
“That bitch, Jake’s ex, she tried to abort the kid by knocking back the best part of a bottle of it.”
Jan winced. “Right. Gin’s out, then.”
“Yeah. And she loves being here, told me that.”
“Good. We’ll just have to let her get over things in her own time. And Pete—” Jan hesitated.
“Yeah?”
“Look, if she takes up with another bloke or even that smoothie lawyer bloke again, just ignore it, okay? If that’s her way of coping, so be it.”
Pete sniffed. “I got that, ta. Anything that’ll help her forget her troubles is oke by me.”
Of course it was, bless him! Sneakily Jan blew her nose again.
Next chapter:
https://anothercountry-apuririchronicle.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-ill-assorted-crew.html
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