Consolation

17

Consolation

    It was still early. The sun was up, though, and the lake had lost its pewter sheen; the sky was a pale washed-out blue with a lot of light cloud and the water looked chilly. Polly was sitting on the grass right down by the edge.

    Michelle Callaghan hesitated and then went over to her. “Hullo,” she said mildly.

    Polly looked up and smiled. “Hullo, Michelle! How lovely to see you! How are you?”

    “I’m good, ta,” replied the sturdy Mrs Callaghan gruffly, sitting down beside her. “Pretty, this hour, eh?” she added, looking at the lake.

    “Mm, lovely. It’s always pretty… I saw a coot, earlier,” she revealed.

    “Right, usually a few about. Any ducks?” she asked neutrally.

    Gratifyingly, Polly exploded in giggles. “No!” she gasped. “Not after that glorious thing with the apricot and celery stuffing of Jan’s!”

    “Yeah, sounded good-oh,” she agreed, grinning.

    “How did you do yours?” –Pete had brought home four corpses and Jan had forced him to give one brace to good old Michelle, who’d cleaned the ecolodge for them since time immemorial and was completely reliable. And don’t argue, neither Andrew nor Jayne had the palate to appreciate them! This was true, so Pete, grinning, had awarded the startled Michelle the ducks.

    “Well, I’m not much of a cook,” Michelle admitted. “Usually just do plain stuff. Few roasts, y’know? Or Mum’s Irish stew: you can use a bit of beef or lamb in that, just cheap cuts, they work good. Only Jan said if ya roast the wild ones they might be a bit dry and tough. She reckoned that book of hers, it said if you’re gonna roast the wild ones, they gotta be rare, only Bill and Mike, they don’t like meat that’s all bloody. Can’t say I’d fancy duck that way meself, neither.”

    “No,” agreed Polly, making a face. “Raw duck? Ugh!”

    “So Jan said, soak them for a while, like a few hours or overnight, in some red wine and then just casserole them in it, like, whole—well, I’ve got a big roasting pan: you know, one of those enamel ones with a lid, had it for ages—with a bit of onion and stuff. So she gimme a bottle of that red wine you give them a bit back,”—Polly nodded, it would have been Jake’s Coonawarra red, and what better fate could it have met?—“only then she laughed and said with Bill and Mike on the job she better give me one to drink, too. It turned out real good, with a few herbs—Jan picked some for me. Tender as nothing and falling off the bones. I just let it cook on a lowish heat for ages like she said. Had it with mashed potato and a bit of roast kumara—I done it in the oven, since it was on.”

    “That sounds lovely!” she beamed.

    “Yeah, corker. The red wasn’t a bad drop, either,” she conceded.

    “Jake always liked it. I don’t go much on wine, myself, but I don’t mind a glass of that stuff. But we had white wine with the stuffed duck, because Jan thought the dried apricots might clash with the red.”

    “Was it all right?”

    “The white? Not bad, I suppose. I think it was a Chardonnay.”

    “Aw, yeah: had that. Yeah, that sounds okay. Hey, was that all he shot?”

    A brace for them and a brace for Michelle? Wasn’t that enough? “Um, I think he might’ve sent a possum or two to its doom,” she admitted.

    Michelle sniggered. “Good on ’im! Nah, I meant, was that all the ducks?”

    “As far as I know. He said he did think of bagging a couple more for Wal and Livia, only she’d ruin them, so he didn’t bother.”

    “Aw. Might be a few hanging around, still, eh? There’s that ole gun of Dad’s around somewhere,” she said thoughtfully.

    “Michelle, it’s not safe to use an old gun!” she gasped.

    “Nah, you’re right. Dare say Pete’d check it out for me, though.”

    “Yes, I’m sure he would!” Polly agreed in relief. “But can you shoot? I mean, you’ve got to aim and stuff. Jake once made me try, but I shot a tree three over from the one I was aiming at, so that was that. –It was in the reserve up the road from our bach,” she explained.

    “I getcha. Nah, well, wasn’t thinking of me, but Bill and Mike reckon they hadda learn at school. Rifle Brigade or something.”

    Polly looked at her doubtfully. Michelle was a bulky, square figure, today clad in the smart yellow overall that Andrew considered appropriate wear for the ecolodge’s cleaning lady. She was rather an odd colour: most overseas visitors assumed she was part Maori, but she wasn’t: her dad been a huge guy from somewhere peculiar in the former Soviet Union. Reputed to have jumped ship, not that anyone round Taupo way had worried about that. It was very hard to tell her actual age: she hadn’t changed much since Polly and Jake had come down to Taupo when they were first married, but she must be pushing sixty by now. Bill, the husband, and Mike, his brother, who lived with them, were, she thought, a bit older. Um, had New Zealand schools made boys learn to shoot back then? Say, fifty years back? About 1960? Well, evidently they had.

    “I see. Um, they’d be prosecuted if they were caught,” she said cautiously.

    Michelle merely shrugged.

    Er—yeah. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time Bill and Mike, severally or in concert, had been hauled up before the magistrate. Whether or not for a barney in the pub, and whether or not over Michelle’s favours. Nobody was quite sure which of them was the youngest kid’s father, but all that was well in the past and they all lived together very amicably now. The prudes, of course—Janet being a prime example—wouldn’t have anything to do with them, but the rest of Taupo didn’t give a damn.

    “Um, Michelle,” she said cautiously: “did there use to be a Maori family living over the way from you with a very pretty daughter?”

    Michelle evinced no surprise at this question’s coming out of the blue, but merely replied: “Yeah, the Watenes. Julia, her name was. Yeah, she was pretty. Dunno what happened to her—think she went down to Wellington. Then the mum died, that’s right. Well, she was getting on, Julia woulda been the youngest, think she was over forty when she had ’er. The boys had long since pushed off. Ole man Watene, he just walked into the bush one day and shot ’imself.”

    “Michelle, how dreadful!” she gasped.

    Michelle nodded. “Yeah, it was. Poor ole bastard. –That was ages ago, Polly, who in blazes told you about them?”

    Polly swallowed. “Janet,” she managed in a small voice.

    Michelle gave a rich snort. “Her! Coulda told you anything! She’s never set foot round our way.”

    She could well believe it. “Mm. Um, she said the pretty daughter was going round with a man called Stanley Smith,” she croaked.

    “Aw, yeah, him,” Michelle agreed. She was obviously trying not to grin. “Good-looking bloke. Looked like that film star that done Ben-Hur.”

    Polly had to swallow hard. So Janet hadn’t made that bit up! Why she’d thought she might have, goodness only knew, but it had struck her that— Well, she might have got him mixed up with someone else.

    “All the girls were nuts on him. Well, ya couldn’t help fancying him,” Michelle conceded. “Stuck-up, though. Thought ’e was too good for Taupo. Drove a ruddy great Impala, that’s right—think it might of been a government cast-off or something, but anyway, he had it re-sprayed pale blue. Thought ’e was Christmas in it.” She produced a mild snort. “Julia was going round with him for a while, that’s right, but she told me he was too big for ’is breeches and she’d had enough.”

    “I see,” said Polly, nodding. It was quite a long time since she'd heard that  expression—it dated back well beyond her parents’ generation—but it was only a variant of “stuck-up.”

    “The Watenes planted loads of taro,” Michelle reported. “It’s taken over: all over the front yard. Jan reckons you can eat it. Dunno that I’ve seen it in the supermarkets, though.”

    “No, I don’t think it’s a supermarket thing. I’ve seen it in the greengrocers’, up in Auckland.”

    “You ever tried it? Bit like kumara, Jan reckons.”

    Nothing was as nice as New Zealand kumara—well, the old-fashioned sort, that they’d always had when she was a kid but you hardly ever saw for sale these days: very dark purple skins, the flesh cream with sometimes a faint indigo pattern in the centre of the tuber. It was sweet, of course, like all sweet potatoes, with an unbeatable thick, soft, almost creamy texture.

    “Taro? I wouldn’t say it was very like it, but I only had a bit of it once, in a very flash Sydney restaurant where they served everything in little piles and called it Asian fusion cuisine,” said Polly, smiling at her.

    “Eh?”

    One might well say eh! Polly looked at her with considerable liking and explained: “Sort of Chinese-y, really, with bits and pieces of other stuff added here and there. This was just a very thin slice of taro. I can’t remember what else… Some green leaves, I think, and, um, was it chicken or pork? Oh, yes: grated green pawpaw as well. Guaranteed to give you the runs, they use the ruddy stuff as a meat tenderiser,” she added on a sour note. “And a flower on the side.”

    “Sounds like that muck Jan’s always going on about. Well-handled, she calls it, revolting, eh? So what did the taro taste like?”

    “Um, pretty tasteless, really,” she admitted. “A bit starchy, I suppose. It’s not meant to be eaten like that at all, it’s meant to be baked or roasted like kumara, or maybe boiled and mashed like potato.”

    “Right. Eat it in the Islands a lot, don’t they?” she said thoughtfully.

    “Mm, that’s right, it’d be a traditional staple in their diet, like potatoes in ours.”

    “Right. Might be worth sussing it out,” she noted. “I mean, the things must just be sitting there, the whole front yard’s covered in these great big leaves.”

    “Yeah, why not? I’m sure Jan’d be able to tell you how to cook them.”

    Michelle’s eyes lit up. “Yeah! I know: I’ll dig some up for her, too!”

    “Good idea!” beamed Polly.

    “Hey, tell ya what—”

    The result of Michelle’s telling was that, when Pete wandered into his kitchen in quest of morning tea and said: “Where’s Polly got to?” Jan was able to report: “Gone over to Michelle’s.”

    “Eh?”

    “Mm. Apparently Michelle spotted her down by the lake very early, they had a chin-wag, then she helped Michelle with the guests’ rooms—I gave her an apron so as not to offend Andrew’s sensibilities,” she added drily, “and then they went off to Michelle’s place, looking… excited and secretive, is the only way to put it.”

    Michelle didn’t normally express anything more than your average tank did, so Pete croaked: “Eh?”

    “The record’s stuck,” noted Jan unemotionally.

    “Come on, Jan!”

    “Okay, I tell a lie,” said Jan unemotionally. “First Polly looked something up on my computer, then she imparted something to Michelle, and then they took off looking excited and secretive.”

    He stared at her. “What the fuck can they be up to?”

    Jan shrugged. “No idea. The word ‘gumboots’ was mentioned, however, so if you can make something of that, I’ll be glad to hear i—”

    “No! Look, stop playing silly buggers!”

    “I’m not. Those are the facts.”

    “Michelle and computers? I mean, I can come at Michelle and gumboots, yeah, but… They musta said something!”

    “They did. At least, Polly did. She asked me if I had a copy of Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book. –There it is,” she said, nodding at the table. “It was after that that she wanted to use the computer.”

    “Uh… Noddin the book?” he groped.

    “Presumably. Um, no, don’t look it up, love,” she said weakly: “that leaves a fair bit of scope, the woman’s impossibly Euro-centric.”

    Pete sat down limply at the kitchen table. “Okay, they’ve rushed off to inspect some exotic vege in Michelle’s garden that they don’t have in Europe!”

    Jan scratched her short grey crop. “I couldn’t come to any other conclusion,” she admitted.

    “Jan,” he said heavily, “Michelle’s front yard consists of grass, fullstop. And far’s I recall there’s nothing in the back garden but a bit of silverbeet, more grass, them peach trees she never does anything to, and— Aw, no, the self-sown pumpkins that are some of ’er old dad’s that got away are in the paddock, over the back fence. Okay: grass, peach trees and a bit of silverbeet.”

    “Think of a better explanation,” replied Jan calmly, getting out her old chopping board, sprinkling it with flour, and emptying a risen basin of dough onto it.

    “Using the old board again?” he spotted.

    “Yes. I will use that marble thing for pastry, it helps to keep it cool, but the bread wasn’t the same, was it?”

    “Nah. Hard to define it, really… Not the taste as such… Bit heavy.”

    “Mm.” Jan worked the dough.

    “Whaddabout smoko?” he ventured. “Make a pot of tea, shall I?”

    “I had my morning tea well over an hour back. But make a pot, by all means.”

    “All right, I will.” He made a pot of tea and got out the bloody Arnott’s Scotch Fingers. Jan swallowed a sigh. What had happened to the good old slab of bread and butter and Vegemite days?

    When he’d had two cups of tea and eaten half the packet he said determinedly: “Tell ya what, I’ll get on over there!”

    “Where?” replied Jan foggily.

    “To Michelle’s, of course! Find out what the Hell they’re up to.” He looked at his watch. “Bugger, the thing’s stopped. –No wonder I thought it was smoko time!” he noted aggrievedly.

    Jan looked at hers. “Ten past twelve.”

    “That late? Tell ya what, I can say I’m collecting Polly for lunch!”

    “Pete, we could ring Michelle,” she sighed.

    “She’ll answer it, if she’s inside, too. Otherwise we’ll of had our chips,” he reminded her. “Them two drongos never pick up. Anyway, Polly won’t have transport, eh? Save Michelle the trouble of bringing her back!” he said brilliantly.

    She sighed. “All right, go over there. But do not accept any liquid refreshment from the hands of them two aforesaid drongos!” she added loudly as he headed for the door.

    “Not that dumb.” With this he vanished.

    Jan sighed.

    Michelle’s road hadn’t changed. Well, not in over fifty years, really. Bit awkward to get to, and that there was the Council dump that you hadda negotiate. But once you were past it there was only a very nasty bend and an unexpected dip to the one-way bridge over the minute creek, and then up the slope and— Bugger! A blind corner at the top—and then you just went down the gentle slope on the other side and there it was. Tui Avenue. Not a tui in sight—might of been if there’d been any kowhais or even the odd pohutukawa or two, they liked the blossoms on them, too, but there weren’t. To the right it was mainly swamp until you reached what would have been the next section but two to the Callaghans’ old place if there’d been any markers left at all. That tumbled heap of bricks had once been a house, true. To the left it was low scrub, then an empty section, that was, no house but it was full of old tyres and rusty old iron—that there looked like a bit of an old Humber, to him, and that was definitely a tractor wheel. Then there was another section, standard quarter-acre, containing a once-painted wooden house that was visibly falling apart, in fact its verandah roof had definitely come down, with a front garden full of tall grass and what Pete would have taken his dying oath was a choko vine gone wild. And then on your right it was the Callaghans’, it had been painted within living memory if you were over thirty years of age, with them two drongos as usual in the saggy old armchairs on the verandah knocking back the home brew. And on the left—

    Pete broke down in sniggers. On the left was a huge forest of giant green tropical-looking leaves, something over knee-high, and in amongst it was good old Michelle, not in the poncy yellow uniform Andrew had somehow kidded her into thinking she looked like Christmas in, but a grey tent that mighta once been a shirt over what were probably the oldest jeans in Taupo, not that there weren’t one or two contenders, and another scruffy woman with a long, brown, fuzzy plait, wearing a once-white greyish tee-shirt over what were probably dark jeans, though with that tropical forest it was hard to tell. They were both bent over, apparently absorbed.

    As he watched, Polly straightened, threw the long, curly plait back over one shoulder with a muddy hand and waved, beaming. That tee-shirt had a very faded ad for Steinlager on it. Been years since he’d seen one of those. Where the Hell had she got it from?

    Pete got out of the car. “What the Hell are you two up to?”

    Michelle stood up. “Digging taro, of course!” she panted.

    Er… He now perceived that they both had spades. “Eh?”

    “Digging taro!” beamed Polly. “See?” She waved at the low tropical forest.

    Okay, they were digging taro. Come to think of it, it wouldn’t—if that was what it was—have been in that poncy Pommy book of Jan’s, no.

    “Look, you sure that’s what the stuff is?”

    “Yes, of course!” beamed Polly. “I’ve seen it in lots of greengrocers’ shops in Auckland!”

    Pete would have taken his dying oath there wasn’t a greengrocer’s shop left in the ruddy place. Giant supermarkets in every suburb—yeah. “Name one,” he said grimly.

    “Um, well, I can’t name it, but it’s down Dominion Road. Run by a nice Indian couple.”

    Michelle tramped over to him, crushing giant leaves as she came. “Yeah. They got Indian recipes for it, too; seen them on the computer, eh, Polly?”

    “That’s right.”

    “We got some for Jan, too,” she added, showing him the stuff she was cradling in the skirt of that tent she was wearing.

    Pete peered. “Could be taro, yeah,” he allowed.

    “Of course it is!” said Polly with a laugh.

    “Well, who planted it?”

    “Mrs Watene, mostly. The ole joker wasn’t much help,” explained Michelle. “She had quite a garden, at one stage, but see, the taro, it’s taken over. Them boys of theirs were around, back then, but see them lifting a finger to help!” She snorted. “Julia give ’er a bit of a hand, but she had to go to school, and then she had sports practice in the weekends.”

    “Satisfied?” asked Polly with a laugh.

    “I may be,” he replied superbly.

    Sadly, at this effort both the moos broke down in sniggers. “Well, come on, lunchtime,” he said heavily. “Ya don’t want those,” he added as Polly scooped up an armful of the huge great tuber things.

    “Yes! They’re for Jan!” she panted.

    “It’s a surprise, see?” grinned Michelle.

    It’d be that, all right. Huge great hairy tuber things, each one at least a foot long…

    “Pete, they’re perfectly all right!” said Polly with a laugh. “They eat them all over the Pacific, and Asia as well. And you can eat the young leaves and shoots, too, only the website did have a warning about, um, I think it was oxalic acid—anyway, it was a warning, eh, Michelle?”

    “Yeah. They’re all right if ya boil em ’up good, though.”

    “Yes. But we thought we’d just try the tubers.”

    Oh, good. “Ya didn’t think to bring a basket or a carton, didja?” he asked heavily, mentally contemplating the mess that lot were gonna leave in the four-wheel-drive.

    “I’ll get you a carton,” said Michelle obligingly. Forthwith she tramped over to the house in— Her old boots, right. Or properly speaking, her old dad’s old boots.

    “So are you wearing the gumboots?” he demanded of Polly.

    “Um, yes,” she replied in bewilderment, goggling at him.

    “Right, that’s cleared that little mystery up.”

    Suddenly she collapsed in a fit of helpless laughter.

    “All right!” he said, when she seemed to have stopped. “We couldn’t figure out what the fuck the pair of you were up to, with gumboots and computers and that poncy Pommy cookery book of Jan’s!”

    Polly gave a yelp and was off again.

    Yeah, well, at least she wasn’t bawling. Pete eyed her a trifle wildly. He could only conclude that digging up ruddy taro tubers with Michelle had acted as a cure, or something!

    “Where is she, Jan, dear?” asked Livia cautiously, sitting down at the kitchen table while Jan filled the jug.

    “Down the vege garden with Pete. Bedding out seedlings—beg ya pardon, established seedlings—of broccoli and cauliflower, and I sincerely trust not cabbage—oh, and Brussels sprouts—for winter harvesting.”

    Livia just goggled at her.

    “I think the position is, they plant them out in, um, bunches, to get established and then they, um, plant them out further apart in their permanent beds,” explained Jan somewhat weakly. “That is, if ruddy Pete’s got round to digging and manuring the beds in the first place.”

    “I see, dear,” she replied, faint but pursuing. “I didn’t know Polly liked gardening.”

    “Well, she grew up on a remote East Coast farm, I suppose her mum would always have had a vege garden. No, well, it’s similar to hunter-gatherer activity, really, like digging taro with Michelle.”

    Livia had been looking blank but at this last phrase she brightened and cooed: “Dear Michelle! Isn’t she a treasure?”

    “Yep. Worth her weight in gold. Completely reliable. I’d have been lost without her, all those years we were running the ecolodge.”

    “Yes, of course! But I’m not quite sure where the hunting comes in, Jan, dear… Pete wouldn’t take Polly out shooting things, would he?”

    “No, evidently she can’t hit a barn door. No, um, hunter-gatherer activity, Livia. Uh…” If she said “atavism” Livia wouldn’t have a clue. Went on the stage at seventeen, never read anything but her scripts, women’s mags and whatever they published theatrical goss’ in in Britain back in the Dark Ages. She was bright enough, no question, but with nothing to back it up. “Um, well, I meant that reverting to something really basic that our primitive ancestors used to do—like grubbing in the soil for food,” she said with a little smile, recalling Pete’s graphic description of the two of them amidst the taro—“seems to be just the sort of therapy she needs, at the moment.”

    “Oh! Of course! Well, that is good!”

    “Mm.”

    “Bettany Throgmorton was saying that she went over to Taupo Organic Produce to have afternoon tea with the children on Saturday. I think that’s a good sign, too, don’t you?”

    Well, maybe. Depending on who’d initiated it. “Whose idea was that, Livia, do you know?”

    Livia beamed. “It was Polly’s, Jan! She rang up and asked if she could come!”

    “Good grief,” she said limply. ”That is an improvement. That’s the first thing she’s initiated since the bloody funeral. –I feel quite limp,” she discovered, sitting down heavily.

    Livia immediately bounced up, declaring she'd make the tea, Jan should just sit there… Jan let her. She might well use the Earl Grey by mistake like she had last time she’d volunteered, when Pete had choked on his, but too bad… “Eh?” she said, coming to with a start.

    “Are you sure you feel quite well, Jan?”

    “Yes, I’m fine. Just hugely relieved, really,” Jan admitted.

    “Of course, Jan, dear! It’s been a strain for you. I just wish I could do something practical to help!”

    Jan winced. “Not another party, please, Livia.”

    “No, of course not! She doesn’t need that at this stage, and nor do you! Well, would you like to come to dinner? Just us, no other guests. And I could ask Aidan to do us something rather special, if you’d fancy it!” she beamed.

    This bloke was one of the partners in flaming Taupo Harmonic Vitality, the extremely pricy health-farm place further along the lakeshore on Livia’s and Wal’s side. The posh side, right. He ran it together with his son, David, a very sweet guy, who was married to Pete’s third daughter, Patty. Her mother was an American cow, but Patty was a lovely girl. Aidan, unfortunately, when he wasn’t designing ever more unlikely harmonically vital dishes for the health-food nuts, was into yer très haute cuisine. Wonderful cook, yes, but would Polly feel like the sort of fancy nosh that Jake had been keen on? Jan didn’t feel she needed a reminder at this stage. Besides, she’d always had much simpler tastes than him. Added to which, it was very hot today and the weather looked like holding. A bit of cold chook and a nice salad was what was called for!

    “That’s a very kind thought, Livia, and we’d love to come, but I don’t think Aidan’s cuisine would hit the spot, just now. Perhaps when Polly’s really on her feet, eh? Just something really light’d be better. Um, cold chicken and salads? –I’d just get a nice rotisserie chook from Chickin Lickin’, if I was you,” she added quickly before Livia could suggest buying a lovely organic one from Taupo Organic Produce, ruining it in her swept-up space-age oven, and having to ring Jan up, burst into tears down the phone, and beg for help.

    Livia looked dubious. Jan’s heart sank. “We-ell…” she said, “do you think one would be enough? I mean, five of us…”

    Phew! Happily Jan advised her to get two, adding: “The things seem to be getting smaller and smaller every year, too, don’t they?”

    “As a matter of fact they do, yes! Very well, Jan, two chooks!” she said gaily. “You’re so practical, Jan, dear!”

    Er—it was that or go under, Livia. But given Wal Briggs’s financial status, she didn’t mention the point. “And, um, Polly doesn’t like fancy salads, so, well, just sliced tomato and lettuce?”

    “Yes. And I know! Wallace is very good at boiling potatoes, so he could do some, and I’ll just put some of that lovely Heinz Salad Cream on them, with a few chopped chives!” she beamed. “Isn’t it wonderful that you can get it out here? It was poor dear Mummy’s absolute favourite…” With this she launched into tales of the long ago in some obscure town in Pongo. Mummy had been a widow, of course. (Jan was secretly convinced that this was a euphemism for unmarried mum, but she’d never voiced the thought.) They had had a semi-detached villa, quote unquote, though Livia admitted with a sigh that poor Mummy had just called it that, it wasn’t really a villa… The tiniest pocket handkerchief of a front garden, and of course poor Mummy had always been desperate to keep up appearances… Jan at this point winced slightly, though she didn’t imagine Mummy had been anything like the frightful dame who over-acted in that English TV series. Well, for one thing, according to Livia she had been “very slim” and “always kept her figure.” Livia wasn’t capable of expressing as much in so many words but nevertheless she managed to get over the clear impression of a stiflingly repressive ambiance, filled with shibboleths, social no-no’s and fear of what the neighbours would think… God. Not for the first time in the company of Livia Wentworth Briggs (born Olivia Warbutt, she had at one time disclosed), Jan found herself thanking her lucky stars that she’d been born and raised in New Zealand suburbia on your typical quarter-acre with a sensible, down-to-earth mum who’d encouraged her to do an accountancy degree…

    “Yes,” said Polly, some time later when the morning tea had been consumed, the tea itself rather stewed, but never mind, and Livia had departed in a cloud of merry “Bye-bye’s” and Madame Rochas. “I always think that, too, when I’m with Livia.”

    “She’s done all right for herself,” Pete pointed out. “Wal’s not short of the readies.”

    “No, but just think what a life she’d’ve had if she hadn’t met him, Pete!” said Polly earnestly. “A fading English actress who’d only made a success of one very silly rôle in a very silly series—little more than a soapie, really—because she wore a see-though blue negligée that showed her nipples?”

    Pete had a coughing fit.

    “Shuddup,” ordered Jan grimly. “And don’t mention the word ‘rouged’ on pain of death!”

    Pete had another coughing fit. His eyes watered and he gasped for breath.

    “Serve ya right,” noted Jan viciously.

    “They all used to say it,” said Polly heavily. “In fact you only had to breathe the words ‘Livia Wentworth’ in front of the blighters… Jake, and his business mate Ken Armitage; and Bill Michaels, of course; and Bill Coggins, in fact Meg reckons he still does it: they saw some putrid rerun on TVNZ not long ago of a local thing she had a bit-part in and he said it. I’ve even heard Bruce Smith and Keith Nichols sniggering over it!” she added crossly.

    “Um, your nice GP, yes. Who’s the other one?” asked Jan.

    “A mate of Bruce’s. ENT,” she said sourly. “Stupid affluent males, none of them would bother to put themselves in her place for an instant!”

    Er… Bill Coggins was a teacher and for some years hadn’t been all that well off, but on the whole Jan saw what she meant. They all had assured places in society and regular incomes. “Yeah.”

    “She must have felt,” said Polly slowly, “as if life itself was shifting sand under her feet. No wonder she made a few grabs at whatever was offering.”

    “Besides ole Wal, was this?” asked Pete.

    “Shut up,” she ordered grimly.

    Cringing, Pete shut up.

    “Yes, well,” said Jan on an uneasy note—she hadn’t liked the implications of that “shifting sand” image at all—“she did find Wal, so all’s well that ends well, eh?”

    “Yes!” Polly agreed, suddenly awarding her her brilliant smile. “Of course she did! –Come on, Pete, I saw a whole lot of cape gooseberries down the back of Michelle’s place, and she said we’re welcome to them!”

    “Eh?”

    “Or I could borrow the four-wheel-drive,” said Polly with a twinkle in her eye.

    “Over my dead body!” He shot to his feet. “Dare say she might let us pick a few peaches, too, eh? –Fancy some peaches, love?”

    Jan jumped. “What? Oh: peaches? Yes, lovely, ta, Pete. Tell Michelle I’ll bottle some for her, of course.”

    “Righto. –Come on. And don’t ask to drive!” he ordered Lady Carrano.

    Giggling slightly, Polly followed him out.

    Jan sagged. Well, more hunter-gatherer activity couldn’t be bad… Therapeutic, anyway. … “Shifting sand under her feet?” Oh, cripes.

    Whether Jan’s uneasiness had spread to Pete or whether it was just part of his post-funeral restlessness and, well, feeling that Time’s wingèd chariot was hurrying by at a rate of knots, she couldn’t decide, but certainly the next thing to disturb the tranquillity of Taupo Shores Ecolodge was his potty behaviour. Rather unfortunately it wasn’t Jan herself who was directly affected.

    Andrew Barker looked at his sister-in-law’s distressed face and said firmly but kindly: “Just calm down, Libby, and tell me slowly. I’m sure we can sort it out. Now, something about the boat, is it?”

    Libby sniffed hard and scrubbed at her eyes. “Yes. The Taupo Shores Tallulah.” She gulped. “She’s gone, Andrew! And I swear I tied her up properly, I always do!”

    “Of course,” he said soothingly. “This was yesterday afternoon, right?”

    Libby nodded hard. “Mm.”

    “What did you do with the key?” She was looking completely blank, so he prompted: “The key that starts the engine, Libby.”

    “Oh! Um… I put it in my pocket. –Did I? Um… Oh, no, that’s right: Dad came along and said he might take her for a spin. He meant yesterday evening, I think. Only it can’t have been him, she’s not down at their jetty, either!” With this she burst into noisy tears.

    Mm, well. The fact that the boat wasn’t moored at Pete’s jetty meant nothing, of course. Andrew was in no doubt that the old blighter had sailed her off without letting anyone know what he was up to. It was probably some sort of reaction to his earlier suggestion that Polly might like to relieve Libby at the wheel when she was off-colour… He swallowed a sigh. The ecolodge proper was full, they had ten university students in the bunkhouse, and Fern Gully Ecolodge, their very much more up-market neighbour further along the lake, had rung to make bookings for two couples on today’s lunchtime cruise…

    “Pete’s probably just taken her for a run,” he said soothingly. “Just so long as we know where the key is.”

    “But what about all the people that’ve booked for the cruise?” she asked soggily.

    “Don’t worry about them, I’ll take care of it. Why don’t you pop into the kitchen and have a nice cuppa with Jayne?” he said kindly.

    Sniffing juicily, his sister-in-law agreed she would, and went off. Not making her usual joking remark about “the universal panacea.” Andrew made a face.

    He picked up the phone. Then he hesitated. No, it wasn’t fair to dump it on Jan's shoulders just because she was the old pest’s life-partner. Okay, he’d let Fern Gully know and then their own guests… Damn Pete! He was getting more and more irresponsible! Even if he did own the boat, as he’d recently pointed out, it had been understood that she was part of the ecolodge’s facilities! Well, he’d had enough. He knew boats were damned pricy but the business was doing well, and he still had a bit squirrelled away for a rainy day. Glaring out at a faultless blue sky and the deep blue expanse of the big lake, Andrew said under his breath: “Right. It’s bloody well raining.” And picked up the phone to ring Fern Gully with grovelling apologies…

    It was about half-past four, which meant that there’d be a slight hiatus between feeding the ecolodge guests’ fat faces on an undeserved and unneeded delicious afternoon tea, and preparations for their ditto dinner. Which didn’t entirely explain why Jayne had appeared on Jan’s back doorstep with a pot of loganberry jam for her to try. The loganberries were from Taupo Organic Produce, next-door, but she hadn’t gone bonkers and spent the ecolodge’s dough on them, they’d had a glut that had all ripened at once, and these were a freebie. Or so, reflected Jan as Jayne smiled her lovely innocent smile, the generous Bettany and Hugh Throgmorton had given her to believe!

    Jan hadn’t had her own afternoon tea, she’d been waiting for Pete and Polly to turn up, but they were probably off hunter-gathering somewhere, so she uncovered the scones that were sitting under a tea-towel on the bench, and got some for the two of them.

    “Mm, the jam’s turned out well, Jayne!” she approved.

    “Not too sweet?”

    “No, just right; and it’s set well.”

    “Yes,” said Jayne in relief. “Well, I made six pots, so I suppose we’ll let the guests have some—though Janet won’t approve!” she added with a sudden giggle.

    Jan grinned. “No, she never does. ‘Wasting it on them,’” she quoted.

    “Um,” said Jayne as the last of the buttered and jammed scones vanished, “do you know where Dad is this arvo, Jan?”

    Ouch. Now what? Jan took a deep breath. “No, I just assumed that he and Polly had gone off to dig something up, or pick something. Probably something that doesn’t belong to them.”

    “Yes,” she said, swallowing. “Well, I’m afraid it looks like they might have gone off to, um, fish something up, Jan.”

    “If he gets nicked for poaching trout it’ll be about time,” replied Jan calmly.

    Jayne gave a weak laugh. “Oh, dear! No, um, the thing is, Jan— Now, you must promise not to get agitated about this: it’s just silly, it’s not dangerous or illegal.”

    “You do surprise me,” Jan admitted. “Go on.”

    “Um, he’s taken the Taupo Shores Tallulah, we’re pretty sure.”

    Jan sighed. “It is his boat, lovey, and— Well! I dunno why, but Mrs Mitchell’s funeral seems to have got him all stirred up—and then, he’s worried about Polly, too. I think,” she said, frowning over it, “that he feels responsible for her, in some odd way… Well, because Jake was such an old mate, and now she’s got no-one? Those kids of hers are complete no-hopers, and, well, she’s got quite a few kind friends in Auckland, but it’s pretty obvious they’re all absorbed in their own lives. All couples, too, that doesn’t help,” she added grimly.

    “I see… Yes, it’s understandable. Um, but I’m afraid Andrew’s very cross about the boat, Jan,” she said, swallowing hard.

    Oh, lawks. If she’d been another woman Jan would have offered her a belt of something bracing at this point, but Jayne wasn’t any sort of drinker. A daring rum and Coke was about her level. What had she drunk at that bloody barbecue party of Livia’s last summer? Jan couldn't member but it had been something pretty innocuous.

    “Yes, well, that’s understandable, too, Jayne,” she said kindly. “Look, we’d better have a sorting out when the silly bugger gets back. Either he repossesses the damn tub completely or we sell it to you and Andrew at a nominal sum.”

    “No, we couldn’t let you do that, we’d pay you a fair price, of course!” she gasped, going very pink.

    Yeah, well, Jayne wasn’t short of a few bob: the much older first husband who’d bullied her all their married lives had at least, having mercifully dropped dead, left her with a huge insurance pay-out and a very nice house in a nice Brisbane suburb with no mortgage—he’d been a headmaster for years. All the same, Jan had no intention of letting Pete rook her over the price of that floating tart’s bedroom.

    “We’ll work something out. But on present showing I doubt if he’ll want to sell. Mind you, he’ll lose interest in it, of course. The bloody thing’ll sit there at the jetty mouldering away until it sinks or we get done for polluting the lake or something.”

    Jayne’s sweet oval face was very pink. She bit her lip. “Mm. Um, Andrew did say he’s thinking of investing in a new boat, actually.”

    Ouch. Still, you couldn’t blame him. “I think that might be easier in the long run,” Jan admitted. “Have another scone?”

    “Um, no, thanks, Jan, I really ought to be getting back. Um, can you think of anything to do with one of those big pumpkins of Michelle’s?”

    Jan’s jaw dropped. “She hasn’t given you another one of those monsters, has she?”

    “No, Polly did.”

    Help. Jan hadn’t even thought the bloody things’d be ripe yet, if that was the right word with pumpkins. Let alone that Polly was capable of lifting one! “Well, they're usually a bit stringy for pumpkin pie.”

    “Mm. I have tried that before. It went a bit grainy,” she admitted sadly.

    “Yeah. Uh—roast it, freeze it, then come winter turn it into soup, and sieve it? It’s a lot of work for a bloody great pumpkin you didn’t want in the first place!”

    “Mm.”

    Jan’s eyes narrowed. “Wait on… Ever heard of pumpkin chutney?”

    “Um, no!” she gasped.

    “Nor’ve I, but there’s no reason it wouldn’t work. Might need something a bit juicier as well. Um… Got it! Pete’s flaming beetroot! They’ve gone berserk. Everyone told him they would, but of course he wouldn’t listen.”

    “That’s a good idea. The pumpkin would sort of bulk it out.”

    “Yep. Uh… Polly’s hunter-gatherer activity hasn’t landed you with anything else, has it?” asked Jan cautiously.

    “Well, she offered us some taro, but Andrew said our guests would never eat it.”

    Given yer average comfortably-off pakeha retiree that formed the majority of their clientèle, no, how true.

    “And the blackberries, of course,” she added happily.

    Jan winced. “Blackberries? Where from?”

    “Um, well, she said she’d foraged them, Jan. –Is that the right word?”

    It was a good euphemism for “nicked”, yeah. “It seems to be the latest trendy word for getting out and picking stuff that no-one hereabouts’d dream of eating, yeah, like nettles and dandelions and toadstools. Don’t worry, the Council hasn’t been spraying the verges, they will be safe. If that’s where she got them,” she noted grimly.

    “I—I suppose she must have. She did say there’s lots near Michelle’s place, that’s right.”

    “I dare say, but she hasn’t got transport: my heap’s in for servicing, and Pete won’t let her drive the sacred four-wheel-drive. However,” said Jan on a grim note, “she wandered off yesterday—she gave them to you yesterday, right?”—Jayne nodded.—“Yeah. She came back with suspicious bluish stains on that goddawful Steinlager tee-shirt she got off Michelle, but claimed airily she’d only eaten a few off the verge.”

    “But she gave me a big bucketful!” she gasped.

    Oh, God. “Just before she wandered off she had a confab with Pete down by the jetty,” said Jan grimly. “A certain amount of pointing ensued but I must admit I didn’t take much notice.”

    “Pointing what at?” asked Jayne faintly.

    “The general direction of Taupo Organic Produce and those beautiful big organic blackberries that Hugh Throgmorton’s been slaving to establish for the last three years or so!”

    Poor Jayne gulped.

    “Well? Do they look cultivated?”

    “No-o…Not really. I mean, they’re not big and even, like their loganberries.”

    Jan sagged. “One mercy. No, well, in that case Pete will have told her the secret of their huge overgrown hedges of them that the Council doesn’t know about. –Wild ones. Not on the verges, on their property.”

    Jayne bit her lip. Her shoulders shook slightly.

    “Don’t you dare laugh,” warned Jan. “He’s encouraging her!”

    That did it, and Jayne gave a wail and collapsed in a gale of laughter.

    Jan just waited it out grimly. “I know I said all this hunter-gatherer stuff was therapeutic—”

    “Don’t—Jan,—dear!” she gasped.

    Jan sighed. “Oh, well. The Throgmortons can afford it. And if they’d known about it they’d have given her the blimmin’ things, of course.”

    Jayne wiped her eyes. “Oh, dear! Yes. But that wouldn’t have been real, would it?”

    She wasn’t the brightest of Pete’s daughters—Libby had by far the best brain. But just sometimes she could hit the nail squarely on the head.

    “By golly,” said Jan numbly. “You’re right.”

    Jayne just nodded, and smiled her sweet, innocent smile at her.

    It was nearly seven o’clock and the two of them still weren’t home. Jan didn’t think for a moment the bloody Tallulah Tub had turned turtle, she thought they were up Pete’s secret trout stream, poaching trout that the Department of Conservation  types’d see him nicked for. She looked in a lacklustre way at a lettuce. Er—no, better wait and see if it was gonna be fresh trout. In the meantime, however—

    She marched into the sitting-room looking militant, poured herself a hefty Johnnie, didn’t bother about the bread, thanks, and put her feet up on the sofa.

    It must have been about an hour later when a beaming, muddy and very damp pair of idiots turned up in the kitchen, her helpmate bellowing happily: “OY! Jan! Fresh trout!” and their honoured guest immediately collapsing in a gurgling gale of contralto laughter that, funnily enough, didn’t strike Jan’s ear pleasantly, this time.

    She staggered in there, sighing. “Look, you superannuated twit, what if your granddaughter had brought her boyfriend over? He does work for the flaming DOC, ya know!”

    “Only does water conservation crap, though.”

    “Fish live in water,” she noted.

    Polly collapsed in a fresh burst of giggles.

    “We done good,” Pete reported, unmoved. He unwrapped the bundle…

    Jan gasped.

    “We’ll have to freeze some,” said Polly. “I can help gut them, I’ve watched Jake do it loads of times.”

    “I bet he never let you operate, though,” replied Jan automatically. “How the Hell— I know you’ve been out all day—Andrew’s hopping mad about the ruddy Tallulah Tub, by the way—but this many? Jesus, you didn’t go over to the fish farm, did you?” she gasped.

    “Nah! They only got tiddlers in their big ponds, anyway,” Pete noted. “Breed ’em to sell to the Japs and Chinese for stocking their trout farms what are gonna put our lot out of bus—”

    “Yes! Shut up! How did you manage to grab this many TROUT?”

    “Now who’s bellowing about trout?”

    “I showed him, Jan,” said Polly serenely.

    “Yeah. She’s been reading up about how the Aborigines in Australia used to build fish traps—they were real good at it, eh?”

    “Yes,” Polly agreed. “My friends in Australia read an article about it that they passed on to me. No-one’s ever given them proper credit for it. Their fish traps were similar to some of the Maori ones I’ve read about—um, actually that was only in the context of catching eels, but I dare say they caught fish as well. Anyway, I got interested, and found a really excellent diagram. So we tried it out. You construct a sort of vee shape in the water, using lots of dirt and rocks, and block off a little pond behind it, and the fish swim into it, you see.”

    “Yeah. Then ya just pick them up and chuck them on the verge and your obbo bashes them on the head with a handy rock, and Bob’s yer uncle,” explained Pete.

    Polly nodded hard. “Mm! And when you’ve got enough, you simply unblock the pond and they can swim through as usual.”

    Jan sighed. “Right, that explains the fact that you’re both soaking wet and muddy. Well, never mind the conventions, you’re not gonna track that lot through the house, you can both take everything off right here and bung it in the machine.”

    Pete shrugged, and began disrobing.

    “What if Andrew walked in?” said Polly with a loud giggle. She hauled the frightful Steinlager tee-shirt off. Nothing under it: well, it was wet enough to have left no doubt of that, actually.

    Pete was now down to a pair of very nice blue, navy-trimmed underpants from the half-dozen that Jan had got him for his last birthday and that he was wearing because she personally with her own hands had thrown all his old saggy ones out. Polly removed her filthy, soaking designer jeans. That meant she was down to a very pretty pair of pale green bikini panties.

    “Turn round—both of you,” ordered Jan.

    Looking mildly surprised, they turned round.

    “Right. Your bums are soaking wet. Take those ruddy pants off.”

    Pete shrugged, what time Polly merely removed the panties, and asked, giggling: “Can I turn round, now?”

    “Whatever. –Pete!”

    “I’m getting round to it.” Grabbing at Polly for support, he laboriously removed his underpants.

    “Good. Now take them to out to the laundry,” said Jan in a steely voice. “Not YOU!” she shouted as Polly bent to pick up her jeans.

    “But I was the ringleader, Jan!” she said with a loud giggle.

    “Really? Had the key to the flaming Tallulah Tub in your pocket, too, didja?”

    “I’m doing it, I’m doing it,” groaned Pete, grabbing up wet, muddy clothes. “Monday, eh?” he noted, looking at the panties.

    “For God’s sake stop perving at Polly’s pants and heave them in the machine,” groaned Jan.

    Polly collapsed in giggles again.

    “Look, go and rub yourself dry and get dressed,” she sighed.

    “Jawohl, mein Führer!” she replied with a loud giggle, going.

    Jan looked weakly at two dozen beautiful fresh trout. They’d gone barmy, that was what. Barmy.

    … “No,” she said some time later, as Pete suggested they turn the grill on now. “Work first. Those fish need to go in the freezer, pronto. Get on with it.”

    Glumly he and Polly continued gutting and scaling trout…

    Jan just sat back, sipped a Johnnie—it might have been her third or fourth, who was counting? And let them get on with it.

    “It’s Polly, isn’t it?” said a horribly coy tenor voice.

    Polly looked up with a start from Pete’s rows of giant beetroot. Smarmy smile, trendy sunnies, expensively trimmed silver hair, horribly sharp fawn safari shirt— Oh, shit! Keith Bloody Arvidson. “Hello, Keith. How did you get here?” she asked weakly. –Obviously couldn’t read, no-one but a blind man could miss those “Private Property” notices of Pete’s.

    Okay, the shit had ignored them. He explained coyly that he had knocked but there seemed to be no-one around, so he’d just come on round… He got horribly close, removed the sunnies, and awarded her a sort of leer. “How lovely to see you again, Polly. I’m sure you’ll find lovely Taupo Shores most restful and therapeutic, if I may say so,” he cooed in a nastily confidential tone, squeezing her upper-arm in what was possibly meant to be taken for a gesture of sympathy.

    Polly backed off. “Did you need something, Keith? Pete and Jan aren’t really part of the ecolodge any more, you know.”

    “No, of course not,” he agreed with hugely saccharine understanding. “No, well, the truth is, I think I might be coming down with nettle rash—I was doing the trail, but it has got a little overgrown, hasn’t it? So I thought if I just dashed in, perhaps Jan might have something to nip it in the bud.” Silly laugh, and he got horribly close again. “I’m terribly susceptible, I’m afraid.” Another leer—unmistakably meaningful this time, ugh!

    Was nettle rash fatal? One could only hope. “I shouldn’t think Jan’s got anything, I’ve never seen any nettles round here,” said Polly, trying to sound indifferent. “You’d better hurry back to the ecolodge and ask them.”

    “I suppose so…” he agreed wistfully. “Oh, dear, how maddening! We were planning to clean the campervan today, too… Well,” he continued bravely, not noticing that his audience had taken a deep and furious breath, “I shall just try to grin and bear it, though by the way it’s starting to feel— Oh, well! Soldier on! Lovely to see you again, Polly!”—A quick squeeze of the arm again before she had time to back off.—“Abyssinia!”

    Ooh! It was hard to know whether to scream or stamp or— Get one’s breath, actually. Polly breathed deeply and furiously. The shit! The whole nettle rash thing was a plot to get out of helping poor Erin clean the campervan, clearly! Added to which she knew that Keith Arvidson had never cleaned any sort of bloody vehicle in the entirety of his married life: Pete and Jan had both given her earfuls at various times. If he wasn’t flat out on his backboard having almost strained his back he was flat out almost having an allergy attack. Pete had reported into the bargain, though clearly finding it hard to believe even of the egregious Keith Arvidson, that at home in Adelaide he’d never let Erin take the car to the carwash because he was allergic to the cleaners they used. The conclusion being—certainly the one that Pete had come to—that he let the poor silly moo clean it for him. “Wanker” was far too good a word for Mr Arvidson.

    … “What?” said Jan in dangerous tones. “Bloody Keith Arvidson? Just tell me whether he tried it on, and get that over with, ta.”

    Polly made a face. “He squeezed my arm revoltingly and got far too close and breathed spurious sympathy all over me, but that was all. Well, apart from some feeble innuendo.”

    “No bottom squeezing or pinching?”

    “No, I think he’d need to be liquored up to go that far. Never mind that,” she said dismissively. “Just listen to this!” She poured out the nettle rash story, face very flushed.

    “Yeah,” Jan agreed sourly. “That’s him. Notorious from here to Adelaide and back for never doing a hand’s turn. Uh—though I have to say it, Polly. The woman doesn’t have to give in to him.”

    “Jan, the creep’s got ‘sulker’ written all over him! If she doesn’t want that for the next week, all she can do is give in!”

    “Or leave him. No, well, she’s devoted, Polly. And more than that, she admires him,” said Jan heavily.

    Polly made a face. “Mm. I did notice that, that time we were down here when they were.”

    “Which of the many?” she groped.

    “I’m sure it feels like a hundred times they’ve been inflicted on you, but there was only one time we were staying here when they were. Spring. The time that Vern Reilly brought Hill Tarlington over, when he was sussing out sites for Fern Gully.”

    Right. The good-looking English guy that had fancied her dead rotten, mm. They had seen him since, actually, plus girlfriend, when Fern Gully Ecolodge had had its Opening: a bunch of the English types from the firm that owned it had come out. “What did happen to him?” asked Jan in an idle tone.

    “He’s married to a lovely girl that he’d been pining after for years,” replied Polly with a smile. “He told me all about her.”

    To the best of Jan’s recollection she’d only met the Tarlington bloke when he’d come over to the ecolodge for dinner, he hadn’t been staying with them. And it hadn’t just been Polly and Jake, there’d been a group of guests—well, a small group, it had been their off-season. “When did he have time to do that, or shouldn’t I ask?”

    “We got together back in Auckland,” Polly replied airily.

    All was now abundantly clear, though as the bloke’s name wasn’t Stanley Smith it couldn’t have been him that had upset the apple cart earlier, could it? “I see,” she said heavily. “Well, dump that beetroot on a sheet of newspaper, will you?”

    Polly set down her bucket and retrieved an old newspaper from the strange narrow cupboard that was a feature of Jan’s largely kit-set new kitchen. “Wonder what this cupboard is actually for?” she wondered.

    “Nobody knows,” replied Jan simply.

    “Um, trays?”

    “That has been suggested.”

    “Oven trays?”

    “That, too.”

    “Chopping boards? You know: those colour-coded ones that no normal human being could ever get right. Some sort of silicon, I think. Hard, but they still scratch like buggery.”

    “Chopping boards have been suggested,” Jan agreed affably.

    “Old newspapers?” suggested Polly wildly.

    “What a good idea!”

    Gratifyingly, Polly broke down in giggles at this feeble effort.

    “What do you actually propose doing with all those beetroot?” ventured Jan when she seemed to have recovered.

    “I thought I’d wash them and then get started on the chutney. Jayne thought Pete could saw the pumpkin into big chunks for us, then she’ll blitz it in the microwave to get it started, and then we’ll be able to peel it!” she beamed.

    Okay, making pumpkin-beetroot chutney was apparently going to be therapeutic, as well as the hunter-gatherer activities. Better than poaching more trout, true. “Does this mean that my kitchen will be uninhabitable for hours while chutney-making operations are under way?”

    “Yep,” said Polly cheerfully, getting up and going over to the sink.

    “What are you doing?” asked Jan with foreboding.

    “I’m gonna give them a good wash. They have been rinsed, but they’re still grubby.”

    “Ri-ight… Are you gonna boil them up first, then?”

    “Yes, we decided it’d be easier.”

    “No, it won’t,” said Jan briskly, going over to the oven and turning it on. “You can roast the bloody things, we don’t want the kitchen filled with steam for hours in this weather. And never mind if they bleed like billyo, the huge ones can be chopped in half, thanks.”

    “Okay,” she said obligingly, starting to wash them.

    Jan peered. Jesus! They were all huge! And there was a bucketful of the buggers, and even if the pumpkin was half the size of Michelle’s usual offerings… “Look, this amount of beetroot plus one of Michelle’s monsters will make six times more chutney than the ecolodge can possibly get through, Polly. I mean, not everybody likes beetroot—or chutney, for that matter.”

    “Um, Pete said to dig that row,” she reported dubiously.

    “That’s one row?” croaked Jan. “How much is still— I’m not asking! Just think of something else to do with at least half of them.”

    “Half?” she replied sadly.

    “Half. What else is gonna go in this mixture, or don’t I dare ask?”

    “Jayne’s sort of got a recipe. Well, onions, of course. And spices. She’s got it all worked out.”

    Not if Polly hadn’t weighed the bloody beetroot, she wouldn’t have.

    “And guess what!” her guest added before she could point this out. “She’s got a whole lot of muscatels left over from Christmas: she said they weren’t popular—she’d been reading a book about the traditional English Christmas, I think—”

    “Yeah. Hard sauce. Pete did warn her there’d be no takers, and fortunately he warned Andrew, too, so he cunningly spooned it out with the pudding.”

    “They’re not all bad, Jan!” she gurgled.

    “Yeah,” Jan admitted with a silly grin. “So she’s gonna bung the muscatels in too, is she?”

    Polly nodded vigorously. “Mm! ’Cos I told her they’re old Mrs Tonks’ secret ingredient, and she makes the best chutney in the whole of Puriri County! She’s well into her eighties now, but—” Forthwith she plunged into the whole bit…

    Jan just sat back and let it flow over her. Okay, possibly the Beetroot God that had prompted Pete to plant the bloody things had had the right idea after all. Thank You, Beetroot God, for helping to take Polly’s mind off her troubles, not excluding the mysterious Stanley Smith, and for keeping her happy and busy grubbing the things up—she was filthy, but Jan wasn’t gonna point that out, nor that there was no need to keep on wearing that Steinlager tee-shirt from Michelle: she did have other garments with her, and failing them she, Jan, could supply her with plenty of slightly more respectable tee-shirts.

    Quite some time later that day, an indescribably sticky and smeared Polly—Jesus, she even had some of the muck in her hair!—reported happily over the pots and pots and pots of bright beetroot-red chutney—the addition of the pumpkin seemed to have helped the colour, far from ameliorating it: “You know, there’s something quite consoling, really, about making chutney.”

    Personally Jan had always found it exhausting. And very hot, because almost all produce ripened when the late summer weather was at its peak. Okay, so be it.

    Happily Polly got out a loaf of crusty white bread and a pound of butter. “I thought we could try it for afternoon tea!” she beamed.

    On cue, Pete appeared. “Good-oh! Let’s! Hey, we could bung a bit of cheese on too, eh?”

    Giving in entirely, Jan sat down to a strange afternoon tea of milky tea and slabs of bread and butter spread with the leftover beetroot chutney that hadn’t been enough to fill another jar. Cheese optional.

    At the end of this feast Pete sat back replete, and beamed: “That’s better!”

    Looking at Polly’s very flushed, smiling face, and bearing the word “consoling” firmly in mind, at the same time firmly banishing the memory of that shifting sand image, Jan agreed: “Yep. Hits the spot.”

    Pete then got his second wind and had a go at bloody Keith Arvidson, but never mind. You couldn’t have everything. And at least, reflected Jan happily, neither she nor Polly was fated to live with a wanker like that!

Next chapter:

https://anothercountry-apuririchronicle.blogspot.com/2023/08/speculation.html