Ecolodge Country

22

Ecolodge Country

    Andrew had committed the crowning folly of letting Keith and Erin Arvidson book in at Taupo Shores Ecolodge for Easter.

    “What?” groaned Jan.

    Jayne looked guilty. “Um, yes. Well, Andrew said he didn’t care for him, though he couldn’t say he’s got anything specific against him,”—Jan’s mouth opened and closed silently—“but we can’t turn away custom, after all.”

    “Have they been touring round EnZed all this while or gone all the way back to Adelaide only to turn round and— I’m not asking,” she groaned.

    “I thought Erin seemed very nice,” Jayne offered timidly.

    Jan groaned. “Yes, she is, poor woman, but he is a wolf in slimy snake’s clothing—I’m not kidding! That time you and Libby first came over from Australia, Pete found out that he got off with that ghastly Leanne right under poor little Erin’s nose!”

    “Oh, dear,” she said faintly. “That’s horrid.”

    “Yeah. Added to which he makes Erin do all the work, from scrubbing his ruddy safari shirts in special eco-friendly biodegradable muck by hand, to cleaning the flaming campervan!”

    “Surely not?” she said faintly.

    “Believe it. The excuse is his father’s bad back. He hasn’t had it yet, and he can't be less than sixty by this time, though he did take early retirement—took a package. They were probably only too glad to get rid of him.”

    “Mm.”

    Jan sighed. “Just be careful not to be alone with him, Jayne, dear. I don’t mean he’d jump on you, but he will squeeze your arm in a very nasty way, and get far too close as he does it. –Not me!” she admitted with a laugh. “Polly.”

    “I see. Do you—do you mean last time she was staying with you?”

    “Yeah. Fortunately it was after the hunter-gatherer activity with Michelle, so she was able to take it in her stride.”

    “Ugh,” she said, imagining it.

    “Ugh is the word,” Jan agreed. “Oh, and you’d better warn Libby, because I rather think that if he tries it on with her, Bob will go absolutely spare. Knock him for six, probably.”

    “Um, yes, he is very protective of her. Um, and I think I’d better tell Andrew. I mean, he sounds really nasty, Jan.”

    “Yes. Actually, he always reminds me of greasy Pecksniff trying it on with poor little Mary in Martin Chuzzlewit. –I must admit my hair stood on end; not just with revulsion: wasn’t expecting Dickens to go quite that far!” Jan admitted. “Um, in a book, lovey.”

    “Yes, of course,” she said nicely. “—I must say, it’d be lovely if Polly could come down again. Um, maybe not at the same time as them.”

    “Yes, it would. Well, why not? If she feels like making it for Easter, well, she took bloody Keith in her stride last time, as I say. And forewarned is forearmed. I’ll ring her!” Jan decided.

    “Good,” said Jayne, smiling.

    Andrew’s reaction was: “That doesn’t sound very nice, darling. But are you sure that it wasn’t just one of Jan’s exaggerations?”

    Jayne made a sick face. “No-one could make up that bit about squeezing poor Polly’s arm.”

    “No. Very well, we’ll blacklist the man. But I’m afraid we will have to put up with him for Easter. However, since all our other guests will be middle-aged or elderly, I don’t think he’ll be tempted to misbehave himself.”

    “No. Good.”

    Libby’s reaction was to stare at her sister in naked horror and gasp: “Ugh!”

    Jayne nodded hard.

    “Heck, couldn’t you ring them and say you’ve overbooked or something?”

    “I thought of that, but Andrew said it’d be awful if they spread it round and we got the reputation of not being reliable. So much of our custom is word-of-mouth, you see. But don’t worry, he said he’d make sure he waits on their table himself, we won’t have to go near him.”

    “Oh, good,” she said, sagging.

    Unfortunately Jayne didn’t warn her not to breathe a word to Bob, so that evening Libby poured out the lot to him, her big, innocent brown eyes wide with horror.

    “What? Jesus, why the Hell did bloody Andrew let him book?” he cried.

    “Um, he didn’t know. It’ll be all right, he says I won’t have to wait on him.”

    “Too bloody right ya won’t! –Cripes, the creep made a pass at Polly right after her mum had died and she still wasn’t over losing her husband?”

    “Mm.”

    Bob clenched his big bony fist. “Gimme two seconds alone with the little shit,” he muttered.

    “Um, don’t do anything silly, Bob,” she quavered.

    “I won’t, lovey. Not unless he asks for it. But look: first sign of him making any sort of pass—any arm squeezing or getting too close—you let me know pronto. Okay?”

    “Okay,” she said faintly. “Um—that time they were here when we came over to stay with Dad and Jan, they went on the Tallulah, and he was all right: I mean, Erin helped with the bow rope and everything: she was great. But he just sat quietly up the front, he didn’t, um, try anything on.”

    “Uh—right. Lemme get this straight. He just sat there like a turd while Erin helped moor her?”

    “Mm.”

    Bob breathed heavily. After a moment he admitted grimly: “Says it all, really, doesn’t it?

    “Easter?” said Polly with a smile in her voice. “That’d be lovely, Jan. I’ll just have to check—can I ring you back later?”

    Rather puzzled, Jan agreed that of course she could.

    Polly rang back at about five-thirty, just when Jan was looking in a depressed way at some GIANT carrots from Pete’s vege patch and wondering what the Hell to do with them and if they’d even be edible at all.

    ‘We’d love to come down for Easter, Jan!” she said with a definite laugh in her voice.

    “We?” croaked Jan.

    “Mm. Me and Stan. Um, I don’t suppose we could use the ecolodge’s loft, could we?”

    “Well, it isn’t booked, Andrew doesn’t like letting it, shoving guests in a loft over the garage isn’t toney enough,” replied Jan automatically. “Stan?”

    “Mm. I think you’ll like him. He’s almost as much of a macho idiot as Pete!” she replied with a loud giggle.

    “Hah, hah,” said a masculine voice in the background.

    “Uh—righto, then, the loft it is,” croaked Jan.

    “Great! See you— What?” The masculine voice in the background said something Jan didn’t catch and then Polly said: “The macho maniac reckons he can get away from work by one o’clock on the Thursday. That’ll be us with half of Auckland, but with a bit of luck we should make it by eightish.”

    “Whenever you like. We’ll be here,” said Jan weakly.

    “Okay. I’ll ring you if anything goes wrong.”

    This time Jan quite clearly heard the mysterious Stan say loudly: “What the Hell’s gonna go wrong, ya silly moo?”

    “Anything could.”

    “Crap. Ya reckon it’s four hours from Auckland, right? Tell ’er we’ll be there by seven at the latest and we’ll bring some of that booze of Jake’s, okay?”

    “He reckons,” said Polly’s voice with a laugh in it, “we’ll be there by seven and we’ll bring you some of Jake’s wine that he found in the shed, temperature-controlled in a special fridge thingy that turned out to be a flaming wine cupboard—all right, wine cellar,” she said, not to Jan, “so it’s completely useless for anything else! –What? Oh, yes: Veuve Cliquot as well as more reds. –What? I thought it was that Aussie stuff that starts with C.” There came an incomprehensible reply and Polly said: “Oh. Well, that does start with C. –Châteauneuf du Pape, Jan. Do you like margaritas? There’s a whole crate of tequila, so if I bring some limes and some rock salt we could have the real thing.”

    “Uh—yes, love them,” she croaked.

    “Good! See ya soon! Bye-bye!” she said brightly.

    “Bye-bye,” replied Jan dazedly, hanging up. She looked dazedly at the carrots. “You don’t cut it,” she informed them.

    “Don’tcha mean you don’t cut them?” said Pete’s voice from the kitchen doorway.

    Jumping, she gasped: “Don’t do that! I’ve already had one shock too many today. –Well, several, actually, but definitely one huge one.”

    “What?” he said mildly.

    “Polly is gonna come down for Easter—”

    “Good, and if that flamin’ Keith Arvidson starts sniffing round ’er I’ll knock ’is block off.”

    “I very much doubt that you’ll need to, because she isn’t gonna stay in our spare room, she’s gonna stay in the ecolodge’s loft with a bloke!”

    “It is more private for f—”

    “YES!” bellowed Jan. “Um, sorry, dear. No, well, that’s why, of course. But out of the blue?”

    Pete scratched his head. “We don’t know it’s out of the blue, love. What’s his name?”

    “Stan,” said Jan dully.

    “Aw. Don’t think I’ve ever heard her mention— Hang on. It’ll be that bloke you and Livia were burbling about called Stan Something last time she was down!”

    “Oh, good grief!” cried Jan. “The mysterious Stanley Smith! –But it wasn’t him!”

    “Noddif that’s the Stanley Smith I’m thinking of, no,” Pete allowed. “’E’s carked it. It was in the papers. Drove ’is flamin’ Beamer—’e’d graduated to a Beamer by then—drove it straight into a tree somewhere down the South Island. Speeding under the influence,” he elaborated.

    “That can’t be right, Pete, Janet never mentioned it. –But she said it wasn’t him, because he looked like Charlton Heston!”

    “Eh?”

    “Ben-Hur,” said Jan dully.

    “Aw, him! Yeah, thass right, ’e did, a bit. Red hair. No, well, come to think of it Janet wouldn’t of noticed, because the crash was back when she was splitting up with poor ole George Barber.”

    “I see. Then this is presumably the Stan that wasn’t him, that she was bawling over.”

    “Sounds logical,” he agreed.

    “But Pete, who is he? Livia had never heard of him, either!”

    “Dunno. Dare say we’ll find out.”

    “He—he sounded— I mean, I didn’t speak to him, but he was there. He sounded…”

    “Yeah?” he prompted kindly.

    Jan frowned over it. “Completely at home. Um, that’s not quite right. As if he'd known her all her life, Pete!”

    Pete scratched his narrow jaw. “Could of, I s’pose. Unlikely we wouldn’t of heard of ’im, though. Hang on: unless he married someone else, and now ’e’s a widower!”

    Jan swallowed. “This is starting to sound like one of those ruddy human interest stories from the flaming EnZed Woman’s Weekly.”

    “Eh?”

    “When I was waiting for a haircut last week,” she sighed.

    “Aw, right, all is explained. Well, remains to be seen what ’e’s like, eh? But ya can ring Livia and tell her the Stan Smith mystery’s solved,” he said kindly.

    “This is it!” beamed Polly as the old pale cream Merc crunched onto Taupo Shores Ecolodge’s front sweep.

    It would be, yeah, there’d been no other buildings on the obscure back road and they’d just passed a sign at the end of the drive that said: “TAUPO SHORES ECOLODGE” and below that in smaller letters “Restaurant”, and below that again “CRAFTS ON TAUPO SHORES”. Stan took one hand off the wheel to touch her thigh lightly. “Good-oh.”

    “That’s the garage, see?” she said, pointing to their right at what was obviously a garage. “With the loft over it. Um, do you think we should check in or just go straight down to Pete and Jan’s place? –You just go down that track at the far side of the garage.”

    Stan drew up outside the front door. “Let ’em know we’re here, eh? Then get on down to your mates’ place. How far is it?”

    “Only a couple of minutes.”

    “Right,” he said limply. He hadn’t had that impression at all. “Here we go: action,” he said as the front door opened and a mild-looking bloke in perhaps his late forties or early fifties came out.

    “That’s Andrew, he’s Jayne’s husband. –Hi, Andrew!” she cried, opening her door.

    The bloke greeted her very nicely, was the only way of putting it, Stan decided drily. Okay, she’d said he was the ideal host for an ecolodge infested by the nicer sort of retiree, and he now saw exactly what she’d meant. His wife, Jayne, who came hurrying out a few minutes later with her very attractive figure swathed in a huge apron, was obviously very sweet—and very pretty: looked rather like Polly, actually. The Andrew bloke having declared firmly that they mustn’t hold them up, Jan would have dinner waiting for them, and having handed over the key to the loft, they were waved on their way.

    She was right: it was only a couple of minutes to the nice little house by the lake where her mates lived, so he needn’t have worried about that Châteauneuf du Pape getting jolted too much on back-country tracks, eh?

    Their reception there was so different from the one at the ecolodge that it felt like they’d wandered into another country altogether. There was a white picket fence and a matching gate with a notice on it saying “Private Property” in staring red capitals. Polly got eagerly out of the car and opened the gate, so he followed her. They’d got about two yards up the nice wide concrete path when a skinny, elderly bloke came round the corner of the house with one of those flaming Roundup wands in his hand. Wands as seen infesting the lawns of the more anal type of retiree or second-homer round Gorski Bay way.

    “Aw, there you are,” he said neutrally.

    “Hi, Pete!” cried Polly enthusiastically. “Isn’t it a bit late to be wanding ruddy dandelions?” Forthwith she went into a giggling fit. Behind her, Stan’s eyes began to twinkle.

    The elderly bloke replied on a sour note: “Late in the day or late in the season?”

    “Both!” she replied with a laugh. She then threw her arms round him, wand and all. “I’m so glad to see you, Pete!”

    “Yeah, me too, lovey,” he replied, obligingly returning the hug with the arm that wasn’t holding the wand. “Oy, no need to bawl, ya know.”

    “I’m not,” said Polly, stepping back, sniffing and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand but smiling. “I kept thinking we’d never make it, a tyre’d blow out and we’d drive off the road or a truck’d crash into us on the motorway or there’d be an awful earthquake or—”

    “Bullshit,” said Stan firmly. “Had quite a smooth run down once we got out of the bloody Auckland metropolitan area.”

    “There was that hold-up near Hamilton,” she corrected him.

    “Usually is,” Pete acknowledged. “They still working on ruddy by-passes and assorted shit?”

    “Mm, apparently,” Polly agreed.

    “Right, well, nothing’s changed in the last fifty years, then,” he noted unemotionally. “Now, I gotta warn you—”

    “Is Jan all right?” she gasped.

    “YES! –Aw, right, she’ll of been worrying about that, too,” he noted, apparently to Stan. “She has regular check-ups, that heart by-pass is not gonna come undone or whatever crap you been imagining, and the pacemaker Jake paid for’s working a treat. And her blood pressure’s good-oh.”

    “Mm. I just… I kept thinking… things.”

    “Well, don’t. The doc reckons she’s good for another twenty years. All I was gonna say was, whatever she’s dreamed up to do with me carrots, tell her ya like it, okay?”

    Polly began to smile—to Stan’s considerable relief. “Would these be giant hoary carrots that you planted too early and left in too lo—”

    “Yes! All right, the things turned into ruddy giants while me back was turned!”

    “Like the beetroot!” she gasped.

    “Eh? Aw. Well, yeah. I was thinking of them parsnips, meself, but I don’t think that was the time you were down here, actually. Hang on, was that another time flamin’ Keith and Erin Arvidson were staying? Uh—they’re here again: ruddy Andrew booked ’em in before anyone knew what ’e was up to. Turns out he didn’t have a clue about Arvidson.”

    “I know: Jan said. It’s all right, Pete, I can handle him. He’s exactly like poor Margaret Prior’s horrible husband, Derek. Well, his speciality’s bum squeezing, but he has to be pretty drunk to get that far.”

    Stan took a deep breath. “Just hold your horses, Polly. What exactly has this Arvidson type done and who exactly has he tried it on with?”

    Polly looked uneasily at Pete.

    “Came onto her last time she was down here,” said that gentleman instantly.

    “Did ’e, just?”

    “It—um, well, he is slimy,” Polly conceded, “but it was nothing much, just a bit of, um, confidential arm squeezing and, um, leering.”

    “Thanks, that’s very clear,” he said tightly.

    “In case it hasn’t dawned, this was right after her mum’s funeral,” noted Pete.

    “Got that, thanks.”

    “He isn’t the type that’d go any further,” said Polly uneasily.

    “Not ’alf!” responded Pete angrily. “Got off with that bloody Leanne bitch right under poor old Erin’s nose! Um, be the time you and Jake were staying with Wal and Livia, that’s right, when Jayne and Libby had just come over from Australia. He filled poor old Erin full of punch until she passed out, then him and Leanne got on with it on the Tallulah. –I came in for the fond goodbyes next morning: been for a dip, thought I might dry off on the ole boat. They never realised I was there.”

    “That makes it pretty clear,” murmured Stan.

    “Ugh! With Erin right there?” croaked Polly.

    “Yep. –Aw, yeah: they had the loft, that’s right: that was the time they’d arranged to meet up with some mates and it fell through, so we fitted them in. Our mistake,” he ended sourly.

    “Heck, yes. Poor little Erin!”

    “Right. Treats the woman like his slave,” he informed Stan. “Bugger claims to have a bad back—no, lemme get this right—this’ll grab ya,” he informed him. “Claims he might get a bad back because his dad had one—he’d be sixty by now—and every time there’s anything like work to be done he gets warning signs. And leaves it to her.”

    “Jesus.”

    “Yeah,” replied Pete with satisfaction.

    “Right, well, I can promise you if he even looks like trying it on again with Polly he’ll get more than a warning sign,” said Stan flatly.

    “Join the queue,” returned Pete. “You’d be Stan Smith, then?”

    “Not quite. Stan Gorski,” replied Stan, unmoved, holding out his hand. “Good to meet you, Pete.”

    Pete was about to shake and then realised he was holding the wand. He dropped it, wiped his hand down the side of his elderly jeans, and shook. “Yeah. Likewise. So she had the jitters all the way down, eh?”

    “Yeah. Thought it was just my driving. Well, and nerves about us meeting up.”

    Pete sniffed slightly. “Right.”

    “Were ya wanding the dandelions?” asked Stan with a twinkle in his eye.

    “Eh? Aw—no. That was an excuse,” he admitted, picking the wand up.

    At that moment the little bungalow’s front door opened, a squarish female form appeared, silhouetted by an inside light, and a voice called: “Pete! You can stop pretending to wand non-existent weeds, they’ve got here! Bring them in, for God’s sake!”

    To the which hospitable speech Stan responded by breaking down in horrible sniggers.

    Smiling, Polly called: “The tequila’s in the boot, Jan! –How are you? It’s so wonderful to be here!” And, hurrying up the remainder of the path, threw herself at her and hugged her soundly.

    “Likewise,” said Jan dazedly, patting her on the back—Polly wasn’t usually nearly so demonstrative. “That him, is it?” she added, peering into the gloom.

    “Yes, of course!” she agreed, going into a giggling fit.

    Jan peered. “What the Hell are they doing?”

    “Macho—booze—unloading!” she gasped.

    Jan peered. “But you said the tequila was in the boot. They’ve got their heads in the back.”

    “Yes!” she gasped. “The French red’s in the back seat, tenderly strapped in and cradled in the duvet!”

    “Shit,” said Jan unguardedly: “he’s as bad as Jake!”

    “Yes!” gasped Polly helplessly. “Something—like—that!”

    Grinning feebly, Jan led her indoors.

    Stan came to in the loft for the second time that morning—under Polly’s own fuchsia tiger duna, she’d been sure it’d be nicked if they left it in the car—and peered groggily at his watch. Oh. In that case they’d better make it a very light brekkie. He was just contemplating the new-looking Italian coffee-pot that Jan had kindly provided for use on the little two-burner thing that was a feature of the loft, wondering if it was run-in yet, and if not whether the coffee would be okay, and deciding he really better get up and make some, he didn’t think he was up for another round, that had been a pretty strenuous one back, uh, three hours back, when the door opened and a large, broad-shouldered female form in a giant yellow overall walked in, stopped short, and said in dismayed tones: “Fuck!”

    “Nah, we done that already,” drawled Stan, sitting up. Just in time he remembered he was stark bollock naked, and didn’t throw the bedclothes back.

    She gave a startled guffaw, but gulped: “Sorry! They never tole me there was anybody in here! I just come to give the ensuite a going-over.”

    At this Polly stirred, sat up and said groggily: “Hi, Michelle.”

    “Hullo,” replied the solid one. “Sorry, didn’t mean to barge in, they never let me know you were here.”

    “That’s okay. It’s great to see you! But why do you want to do the ensuite? The loft hasn’t been used for months, you don’t need to, everything’s sparkling clean.”

    “Nevertheless,” she replied firmly.

    Polly smiled at her. “You’re too conscientious, that’s your trouble! –This is Stan; Stan, this is Michelle Callaghan: I’ve told you about her.”

    “Gidday, Michelle,” said Stan.

    “Yeah! Hullo!” she gasped. “You’d be Stan Smith, then, eh?”

    “Well, think Polly might’ve called me that. Me real name’s Stan Gorski.”

    “He lives in Gorski Bay, you see, Michelle, and he called himself Stan Smith because he didn’t want the awful second-homers to know his ancestor used to own the whole place, they’d’ve been all over him, especially the ladies!” beamed Polly.

    “I getcha. Lot of our ladies are like that, too, eh? –The ones that find out she’s Lady Carrano, they’re all over her,” she explained to Stan.

    “Yeah, I bet,” he agreed, wincing.

    “Yeah. Blimmin’ pests. I’ll come back later, eh?” And with this she disappeared  before they could say anything.

    “She will, too,” said Polly with a sigh. “She’d never leave a room uncleaned for a whole day.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “Um, and don’t make the bed, Stan: she gets really indignant when people like Erin Arvidson do. The sort of people who can never understand that she’s proud of her work, and jealous of her little empire.”

    “Right. Goddit,” he agreed mildly. Since she’d carried out the whole of the foregoing conversation apparently oblivious to the fact that she had nothing on, he pulled the duna gently up over her exposed breasts, smiling. “Want coffee? It’s gone ten-thirty, so I thought maybe just one slice of toast with it?”

    “Ten-thirty? Help!”

    “Yeah, we both dropped off again. Coffee, one toast?”

    “Yes, please,” she said, smiling that serene smile at him.

    Stan pulled her into his arms, duna and all, and hugged her fiercely. “I love you,” he said on a grim note.

    “Mm,” said Polly into his shoulder in a very small voice. “I love you, too. I didn’t think I ought to say it.”

    “Crap,” he sighed, hugging her tighter than ever.

    “Conventional wisdom would decree it’s too soon,” she said with a sigh. “Not to mention all my relatives.”

    “Dare say. There’s a fair bit of it about. Me sister Sue, on the other hand, told me to go for it and what the Hell had I been hanging fire for? –She did know the lot,” he admitted.

    “Really? Lucky you. Wish she was my sister.”

    “Lend ’er to you,” he said instantly.

    “Silly!” replied Polly with a gurgle, smiling up at him.

    “That’s better. No need to get your knickers in a twist, eh? No, well, Sue’s mad as a snake—never get her going on the subject of Persian cats or pugs—but yeah, she’s not all bad.”

    “Um, no,” she said in bewilderment. “Why Persian cats and pugs?”

    “Squashed faces. Says they’re unnatural and does her nut about the flaming breeders. –Two hundred years, min’, of breeders, that’d be. They get a lot of ENT problems—if ya can call ’em that with Persians and pugs.”

    “I see! Well, um, that’s entirely laudable, Stan.”

    “In theory, yes. Not when you’ve sat through an hour’s dissertation and she’s started hauling out the folders of documentation to prove it.”

    “Help.”

    “Yep, strong men have been known to cry for that when Sue gets going. The federal government’s another no-no, by the way.”

    “Um, the current one?”

    “No!” he said with a sudden laugh. “Yeah—no, that as well: in and out like fleas on a dog, never seen anything like it, makes ya cringe when ya think what other heads of state must be thinking when yet another Aussie P.M. applies for a state visit six months after the last. No, love: federalism as such.”

    “Oh! Well, I must say I entirely agree with her on that one!” declared Polly militantly.

    “Do ya? Good-oh. I’ll leave the two of ya to chat about that, then, and get down the pub.”

    “Hah, hah.”

    “No, seriously, wouldja like to meet her? I gotta get back some time and sort out my stuff: get my books and fishing tackle sent over, at any rate.”

    “Mm, I’d love to, Stan!” she beamed.

    “Right.” He dropped a kiss on her nose and got out of bed. “Coffee and toast.” He went over to the coffee-pot and unscrewed it. “And if ya haven’t got anything in common with your rellies, well, ya got Pete and Jan,” he reminded her.

    “Yes!” beamed Polly, getting out of bed. “I’m very fond of Jill and I get on really well with Dorothy, but Jan and Pete are the only people in the whole world that I can say exactly what I’m thinking to!”

    Stan Gorski didn’t say anything fatuous like “Besides me, I hope”; he merely replied stolidly: “Good-oh. Ya better nip into that ensuite before I change me mind about this coffee and leap on ya.”

    With a loud giggle, Polly replied: “Promises, promises!” And vanished.

    Over the coffee with toast and Vegemite he said reflectively: “Hey, do ya reckon  Pete’s suggestion of Terminator 2 last night was an indicator of approval, or has he merely got a mania about it?”

    “Yes,” replied Polly, giving him a hard look.

    He spluttered slightly but managed to say: “Well, I think he’s accepted me, provisionally.”

    “Of course he has! He showed you his new cellar and his fly-tying junk!”

    “Right. So he doesn’t show them to everybody?’

    “No, only to other macho twits,” she sighed.

    “Goddit. –Does he do much fly fishing?”

    There was a short silence. He looked at her in surprise.

    “No,” said Polly in a strangled voice. “He does a lot of poaching.”

    Stan gave a snort of laughter. “I getcha! Uh—and the ducks he was on about?”

    “Protected native species, what else?” she replied tranquilly.

    Grinning, he concluded: “A bloke after me own heart, then.”

    “Where are they?” asked Jan, around morning teatime on Easter Saturday.

    “After that session with the rifles and the flaming targets on Crown land yesterday, Jan? Where do you think?” replied Polly.

    “Not National Park?” she gulped.

    “Dunno. Somewhere where Pete thinks Dead-Eye Dick Mark Two can help him shoot innocent feathered creatures.”

    “Ducks again?” she croaked.

    “What else? He’s decided you ought to try that casserole recipe you gave Michelle. It’ll go good with that French red wine, apparently.”

    “In it?” croaked Jan, her eyes bulging.

    “No! I’ve seen Jake pour a bottle of very expensive Burgundy over a hunk of deer, true. But no, he’s gonna sacrifice one of those Coonawarra reds on that altar, Jan, and they’re gonna drink the other stuff.”

    Jan sagged. “One small mercy, I suppose. Uh—hang on. To my certain knowledge Pete got up at four this morning. You’re not telling me that your blighter did the same this early in the relationship?”

    “Yes, of course.”

    Jan just goggled at her.

    “You can’t stop them, Jan, I thought you knew that?”

    “I’ve known women who would.”

    “I’ve known some very, very sour relationships, too,” Polly replied calmly.

    “You’re not wrong,” she conceded.

    “I’m just terribly glad Stan and Pete are getting so well,” Polly admitted.

    “Uh—” Jan met her eye. “Me, too! –God, I was on tenterhooks, Polly!” she revealed.

    “Yeah, I was a mass of nerves, too. At one point I had to ask him to stop the car, I thought I was going to throw up.”

    “Heck. Did he?”

    “Yes, of course. Got out a bottle of spring water, sponged my face and the back of my neck—he reckons that helps—and made me drink some, and didn’t drive on, in spite of the warning blasts from the motorists speeding past us, until he was sure I was feeling better.”

    “Ya mean this was on the motorway?” she gasped.

    “I couldn’t say for sure: it’s a complete muddle, isn’t it? You don’t know which bit’s motorway and which isn’t, it all looks exactly the same in spite of their daft road signs. But an awful lot of people did hoot, so I’d say it was.”

    Jan just looked at her limply. “On the motorway? A bloke?”

    “Yes. Well, there’s one or two.”

    “Er… I count two,” Jan admitted.

    “There you are, then!” she said with a laugh.

    Well, yes. They did seem to be: yes.

    Rather fortunately, Stan Gorski reflected on the Easter Monday, staggering back to the little bungalow with the stuff Jan had asked him to borrow from the ecolodge’s kitchen, he was no longer naïve enough to believe that any place could actually be, as Polly had declared the day before over Jan’s miraculous duck and Coonawarra red casserole, Paradise on Earth.

    “I got it for you,” he announced, staggering into the kitchen and sitting down heavily at the kitchen table, “but I gotta say it, Jan, I’m not up for another trip over there while Jayne’s got that moo in there.”

    “Oh, shit, you don’t mean Janet’s turned up? But it’s a public holiday!”

    “That’s the moo, yep. Turned up looking self-righteous and self-sacrificing because the ecolodge is so full and it’s no use pretending that dear Jayne can cope alone, it’s just too much for one woman and she’d be the last to criticise—you may well choke—but of course dear Libby isn’t very much help in a kitchen.”

    “Can’t cook, no,” agreed Jan faintly. “Sorry, Stan. Uh—actually nor can she, except for scones and meringues,” she added, rallying very slightly.

    “Uh-huh,” he replied very drily indeed.

    Limply Jan picked up the jar of dried marjoram. “Um, did she— God, I dunno how to put it. Um, well, first off, did she say all that in front of Jayne, and second, what else did she favour you with?”

    “Besides the cup of dark orange stewed tea, would this be?” he replied drily. “Well, no, that bit wasn’t in front of Jayne. She came in while the moo was in full spate, though.”

    “Go on,” she croaked.

    “Well, ya must know what she’s like, Jan. Do I need to elaborate?”

    “Please do, Stan, or it’ll be preying on my mind for weeks!”

    “Cripes. Well, tell ya what, why don’t you put the coffee on—I could do with something to take the taste of that tea away, think me tongue’s gone furry. And I’ll do me best to summarise—there was a lot of it,” he added drily.

    Janet had started by supposing coyly—before he’d got a word out—that he must be Stan Smith! When they were over that one she said: “Well, of course I knew it couldn’t be that Stanley Smith with the awful red hair, he was not a nice type, and I knew dear Polly would never take up with one of those!” Sniff. “They say Mike Short’s frightful, and I’d be the last to deny that, but really, that Stanley Smith was the living end. I’ve seen him with my own eyes with three different girls in the course of one day. And of course he didn’t care what people thought of him: flaunting them all over town in that car of his! Loose-moralled, was how my poor old mother put it, and she wasn’t wrong. Taupo was well rid of him! –Three unwanted pregnancies to my certain knowledge, Stan,” she added, lowering her voice, “and if that Caroline Donovan’s little Derek was poor Charlie Donovan’s, I’m a Dutchman. –Red hair,” she said with horrid significance.

    Stan winced. “Goddit,” he managed to croak.

    “Yes, well, we’ve seen the last of him, I’m thankful to say! And nobody with any sense could ever have imagined Polly would look twice at one of them! Not that poor dear Jan ever took that idea seriously—though of course she didn’t know him personally, that was before she came to Taupo—some people would have said that selfish old father of hers did not deserve her, but then, it’s woman’s lot, isn’t it? And of course after she met dear Pete, it was obvious it was meant, after all! That awful American woman he’d been living with—well, I suppose you could say they were married, but really! Roman sandals on your wedding day? And no proper ring, I must say no self-respecting woman gets round with a dirty piece of twisted wire and claims it’s a wedding ring—not that she’d ever call it that, mind you. A mutual vows ring, if you please!” Sniff. “Never did a hand’s turn around the house—the poor man had to take three jobs in the end to make ends meet. And then she takes off for Wellington with one of them!” Significant nod. “Disgusting, I call it. Unnatural.” Sniff.

    Well, reflected Stan, coulda been anything. Blackfeller? Uh… Another red-headed womaniser? Uh… Hang on: unnatural? Musta been a Les! At this point a dreadful desire to laugh overtook him and he sat there swallowing hard, and missed most of the next bit, which seemed, or so he reported to Jan, to have been largely about lemon socks and Pete’s first’s taking off for Brizzie with his two little girls.

    “Yeah. The unlamented Alison: Jayne’s and Libby’s mum. She did,” said Jan limply, pouring coffee. “That it?”

    “No-o, Jan!”

    Wincing, she said: “I’d better get out the fruit-cake: this calls for something solider than coffee.”

    “Well,” Stan admitted, after he’d praised her miraculous rich, moist fruit-cake, “most of the next bit was about Carrano.”

    “Ugh. Couldja just give me the gist? I think I’d better know the worst. Though I don’t think she'd criticise him to Polly’s face.”

    “Maybe. Well, to give him his due, she thinks he was genuinely fond of her.” He looked at Jan’s face, and said drily: “Yeah. And she can say this for him, he certainly rallied round—I might not’ve got all of this—he rallied round when the frightful permaculture man was drowned in the tsunami with two of them. Uh—not sure two what. But she is quite sure that it was his money—Carrano’s, that’d be—that paid for the oldest one—and no self-respecting woman would ever have lowered herself—to what, unspecified—uh, his money that paid for the oldest one’s flat somewhere in Auckland after she was left destitute. So no-one can say he wasn’t a generous man—though anyone that rich’d never miss it. –Yep,” he agreed to Jan’s expression. “Sort that has to qualify any expression verging on approval, however faint, isn’t she? And she dares say we’ll never know just how much of his money pulled that place—think this was still in reference to the permaculture bit—out of the red, though of course no-one can say that General, uh, Throgmorton, think it was?—Yeah,” he said, as Jan nodded, “that he isn’t managing very well, and the poor little kiddies have come on amazingly: you’d never know they were the same filthy little creatures in those frightful rags. And Polly herself told her that the poor little creatures had—the voice got so low here that I almost missed it, only she made sure I didn’t: ‘revolting intestinal parasites.’ Unquote,” he finished unnecessarily.

    “Worms,” said Jan heavily. “Them and the rest of Taupo’s schoolkids. There’s a season for them, the chemists have these big coloured display boards they put out periodically, likewise for nits.”

    “Same as in Oz, then.”

    “Yes. I can’t believe that even Janet was that mealy-mouthed— Yes, I can, though: you’re a male.”

    “Goddit,” he admitted, shaking slightly.

    “That the worst of the Jake bit?”

    “Nope. In spite of his good points she didn’t hesitate, her phrase, to say he was basically a selfish man and neglected poor Polly shamefully, and she holds no brief for that generation—she can’t be more than ten years older than her, if that—but if she did tend to go off the rails from time to time no-one could blame her. He was off on the other side of the world for half of that marriage. Unquote, again.”

    “Jesus,” said Jan faintly.

    “Yes, well, it’s best to know the worst, Jan,” he said sweetly.

    After a moment it sank in and Jan croaked: “Oh, fuck. She said that to you?”

    “Yep. –That was the worst, apparently, because there were no gory details.”

    “Small mercies,” she muttered.

    “Uh-huh. –Polly and Pete still out diggin’ up pawpaws in the pawpaw patch?”

    “Ye— You don’t dig up pawpaws, you twit!” Stan just grinned broadly at her, so Jan continued feebly: “Yes. Some sort of hunter-gatherer activity, anyway.”

    “More gatherer in this instance, I fancy, though that’s usually used of pre-agricultural communities,” he murmured, and Jan Harper nodded silently, recognising not for the first time that he was a bloody bright and well educated bloke, the laconic macho manner to the contrary.

    Never mind that Paradise on Earth had been somewhat marred by the gloomy, not to say jaundiced gossip of Janet Barber, everything in the garden might have remained pretty lovely, as Stan Gorski was to acknowledge wryly to himself, had he not strolled out to the little jetty just opposite the house. Jan had explained that she’d given up on Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book and was just gonna braise today’s lot of Pete’s hoary carrots in a bit of white wine and the marjoram he’d fetched from the ecolodge for her, and serve them for lunch with some of the cold boiling bacon from Pete’s mate in the King Country who raised pigs, with mash if Pete and Polly ever surfaced with the potatoes, but there was plenty of time; having checked his watch, Stan had ascertained that she was right.

    Pete’s old Taupo Shores Tallulah—scene of the encounter of the pest Arvidson with the Leanne dame, if he had it right—was moored at the jetty, being contemplated by a tall, lanky bloke in the same sort of tired jeans and droopy, heavy-knit jumper that Pete wore—sort with the weird sleeves that didn’t have a seam at the shoulder joint but went in a kind of inverted Vee right up to the neck, making the average bloke look as if he didn’t have any shoulders at all. This bloke, however, did not look as if he didn’t have shoulders. He was probably about Stan’s own age, with a mop of thick, silvered curls.

    “Gidday, mate,” Stan greeted him mildly.

    “Hullo,” the bloke replied in the customary greeting of the country.

    Since the jetty had a railing, he was leaning on it. Stan joined him and leaned on it too. They leaned in silence for a bit. Then the bloke said: “Would you be Stan?”

    “That’s right: Stan Gorski,” Stan replied mildly.

    “Yeah. I’m Bob Kenny—Pete’s daughter Libby’s husband.”

    “Right. Good to meet you, Bob.”

    “You, too.”

    They leaned on the railing and stared at the boat.

    After quite some time Bob revealed: “Pete’s reclaimed ’er. Andrew—you met him yet? –Yeah. Well, he did his nut, she was supposed to be for the ecolodge clients, ya see. Lunchtime cruises; Libby usually used to captain ’er. Only she does actually belong to Pete, he had a perfect right to grab ’er back, not saying ’e didn’t. But it upset all Andrew’s blessed schedules.”

    “Right, got that,” replied Stan, swallowing a grin. “Struck me as a scheduler, yep.”

    “Yeah. Efficient bloke, mind you. And he suits Jayne—Libby’s sister, met her, too, have ya? –Yeah. Nice woman. Anyway, Andrew’s decided to bite on the bullet and buy a new launch in time for next summer season.”

    “Right.”

    “Yeah. Only now Libby, she’s having kittens at the idea of having to drive it. –Uh, sail it,” he corrected himself with a silly grin. “She always calls it driving.”

    “I see,” said Stan, smiling. “Not all that into nautical terminology, then?”

    “No. Not into anything to do with anything kind of sporty, really.”

    “Good on ’er,” he said mildly. “Never much fancied the sporty type, meself.”

    “Me, neither. Well,” Bob Kenny admitted, scratching his lean, square jaw, “there was that Gerri Pullman, back in me green youth, as ya might say. Not a local—a tourist. What you Aussies call a backpacker, I think.”

    “Uh—don’t you?”

    “Nope, we’d say a tramper. Gerri, she could head off across flaming National Park at dawn, bent double under the huge pack with the best of ’em, surface at teatime, wolf it down, and be up for a ruddy athletic round of how’s yer father on top of it.”

    “Right,” acknowledged Stan, trying not to laugh.

    “Funny girl, looking back. Scrawny, of course, all muscle, and I don’t say she had much on top,”—Stan nodded, understanding that Mr Kenny was not referring to the mental capacity of this Miss Pullman—“only ya could see she was still female. Bit lemon-shaped, ya know?”

    “Yeah, I think I get yer drift, mate.”

    “Yeah,” he acknowledged with a silly grin. “Boy, was I shagged out by the end of one of them sessions… Know what she really liked?”

    “The mind boggles,” Stan replied lightly, grinning at him.

    “Yeah, well, nothing actually kinky. Liked me to kind of bite her nipples—not hard, mind you—”

    “It has been known!” he conceded.

    “Yeah, only then she wanted me to kind of pull them out, ya know? Stood out amazing, they did. Never seen anything like it, before or since.”

    Stan gathered that the bloke’s experience was fairly wide. “Well, I have,” he admitted, “but she was a Black girl—African. Often have long nipples—dunno why.”

    “That right? She into a bit of biting, too?”

    “Not so much, though I can’t say she objected. Well, didn’t object to anything much, actually! Not a biter herself, though. Had that?”

    “Not really. One or two nibblers—yeah. Nothing much. You?”

    “Mm,” said Stan, rubbing his left shoulder reflectively. “She was African, too—her sister, actually.”

    Bob Kenny gave a startled snicker.

    “Yeah, well, they were up for it if I was up for it. Sequentially or simultaneously, ya might say,” he admitted.

    “Shit, never had that. They’re more conservative round Taupo way. Well—in that regard.”

    “Yeah,” said Stan, his shoulders shaking slightly. Presumably Mr Kenny had sampled a fair few. “Yeah—no, the sister, she was the biter. Really into it—the excitement wore off pretty fast, actually. Gimme a shocker on me left shoulder: got infected, hadda go to the doc. In France, this was—Paris. The doc had seen it all, and then some, like ya might expect. He wasn’t shocked or even surprised: in fact the bugger laughed his head off, told me I was bloody lucky it wasn’t worse and in my shoes he’d give her up before she had a go at me balls.”

    “Cripes!”

    “Yeah,” agreed Stan wryly. “So I took his good advice, since he’d cleaned the wound real good and his ointment seemed to do the trick. Though that coulda been partly the bloody great needle he stuck into me bum—antibiotics: they don’t muck around in France. Told me to me face he’d do an AIDS test and if I’d got it I had only meself to blame. I hadn’t, though he was quite right: I woulda only had meself to blame.”

    “Bloody lucky,” replied his peer simply.

    “Yeah. So I gave up the twosomes or threesomes with curvy little Black girls with huge nipples and only done this very nice model-girl that I met, believe me or believe me not, when she was showing frocks at the flaming Australian embassy. One of them hands across the sea get-togethers—mad, why would the Frogs want Aussie goods, let alone Aussie fashions? She was from Morocco,” he said reminiscently. “Pitch black, too, but a much—” He had to stop, Bob Kenny had collapsed in a painful wheezing fit.

    “A much nicer class of girl,” he finished, grinning.

    “I should koko!” gasped Bob, shaking with sniggers.

    Grinning, Stan allowed himself to snigger, too.

    Their joint sniggers had barely died away on the soft April breeze over the great lake—it was a beautiful day, hardly a cloud to be seen, the blue expanse at its peaceful best—when a coy tenor voice said: “Well! What a pair of naughty boys, if one may so!”

    And a middle-aged bloke in a revoltingly well-pressed camouflage jacket open over a palest khaki safari shirt, this combo set off, not the word, by ironed—yes, ironed—spanking-new dark jeans and a spotless pair of palest fawn suede safari boots, emerged from the Tallulah’s cabin and leered at them.

    Bob had gone crimson—not embarrassment, rage, Stan deduced as his big hands were seen to clench—and he growled: “Sod off, Arvidson, if ya know what’s good for ya!”

    “Good for me?” replied Keith Arvidson with a sickening giggle. “Tt, tt! I have to say it, I don’t think it would be very good for you, Bob, if Libby ever got to hear about the lady with the interesting nipples!”

    Bob turned purple and spluttered.

    “Shut it, mate, or you’ll get yours,” warned Stan.

    He gave a titter. “Mine? One hopes and prays that poor dear Polly Carrano doesn’t know the half of what you’ve had in the past, Mr Gorski.”

    He came up the jetty’s steps from the boat, smirking. “She really has had enough to cope with in her life, poor dear,” he added, pausing at the top of the steps.

    “I thought I told you to shut it?” said Stan tightly. “Just leave her out of it.”

    Unphased, Arvidson continued: “I’m quite sure that that marriage wasn’t all it was cracked up to be: well, the world was his oyster, wasn’t it? If you added up the hours he actually spent under his own roof, they’d come to less than a tenth of their married life: you could hardly open a paper without seeing a report that he was off doing dubious business somewhere or other. One can’t say that poor Polly wasn’t justified in straying just a bit. Well, of course he was a Maori, and more or less dragged up in that orphanage, so they tell me: no background. One would never dream of saying so to her, but his death must really have been a bit of a relief.”

    “What?” shouted Bob furiously.

    “Well, yes, Bob; one can’t blink at facts, can one?” He stepped up onto the jetty proper.

    “And she certainly celebrated the fact when she came down the Christmas immediately afterwards: she definitely spent a night—or two!—with a fellow from the other side of the lake,”—he walked up to them looking smug and attempted to edge past them—“and a little bird told me that at the same time she was hooked up with an upper-class Englishman who was staying at the ecol—”

    At that point Stan gave him one in the belly and one in the mouth and he went right over the railing and splash! into the lake.

    After a moment’s stunned silence Bob Kenny said feebly: “Good on ya, mate.” He paused. “Wish I’da done that,” he admitted.

    “Yeah: asking for it,” grunted Stan, blowing on his knuckles. “He drowning?”

    Bob peered, without much interest. “Neh. Too shallow. Pity, eh?”

    “Yep.”

    A smile gradually spread across Bob’s wide face. “Done a bit of boxing in your time, then, have ya? That was the old one-two, if ever I seen it!”

    “Aw—yeah. A bit,” he allowed.

    The smile widened into a grin and Bob bashed him on the back. “Have a flamin’ medal! Been wanting to do that for years! Come on, Pete’ll wanna hear about this soonest, and we’ll drink to it!”

    “Why not?” agreed Stan.

    Bob slung a long, bony arm around his neck in a comradely manner and they went off together, not bothering to spare the floundering Keith Arvidson so much as a glance as he tried unavailingly to haul his soaking form up onto the bank.

    “It's all very well to laugh,” admitted Jan at the end of Pete’s second-hand but nonetheless graphic report—Bob and the perpetrator himself just sitting by grinning like nanas the while—“but it could be a very serious matter, you know: Keith Arvidson’s just the type to see you prosecuted for assault, Stan. Not to say, to bring a huge damages suit.”

    “Ooh, help! Yes, he is!” gasped Polly in horror.

    “Bullshit,” said Pete sturdily, refilling her glass on the strength of it. “Can’t prove a thing. No witnesses.”

    The ladies looked wildly at Bob but he merely confirmed stolidly: “That’s right.”

    Pete refilled his glass on the strength of it.

    Jan looked at him limply. She looked limply at Stan. He just looked back at her blandly. She opened and shut her mouth. Then she said weakly: “Look, what’s the betting the creep’s told Andrew the lot by now? And he’s probably threatening him with a lawsuit, too!”

    “Won’t wash. Nothing to do with the ecolodge as a business, didn’t happen there. And I still own the property, the business only pays rent,” said Pete calmly.

    “Good-oh,” noted Stan. “Well, might be threatening ’im with God knows what—type that would. But if ’e thinks it over, there’s a fair bit he’d have admit to, not least to his poor bloody wife. Eavesdropping, for one.”

    “Yeah. And slander, for two,” added Bob.

    “Right. Added to which, I have a feeling that Pete’s only got to breathe a hint about him and the Tallulah and he’ll sheer off.”

    Pete collapsed in splutters, gasping: “Too right!”

    “Um, that’s a point. I expect Andrew will be angry, though,” said Jan with a sigh. “Not good for the ecolodge’s reputation if the story gets out.”

    Into the sudden silence in Jan’s kitchen Stan’s voice said laconically: “I’d say sorry if I was, Jan, but I’m not.”

    “I should flaming think not, and if you hadn’t decked ’im, I would of!” growled Bob.

    “But what on earth did he say?” asked Polly.

    The three macho men eyed one another warily. Bob cleared his throat but didn't speak.

    “He was having a go and you and Jake. Put it like this, love: at Jake, at you, and at your marriage,” said Stan heavily.

    “Um, our marriage was all right. We understood each other. But if it was about me, it was probably all true.”

    “Dare say. Point is ’e shouldn’t have said it. Any of it.”

    “Nah. It wasn’t just what ’e said, neither, it was the way ’e said it,” put in Bob.

    “Yeah. –Oy, Pete, Jan’s glass is empty,” Stan prompted him.

    Obligingly Pete refilled Jan’s glass.

    “Ta,” she said weakly. She sipped Veuve Cliquot. “Mmm…” She blinked. “Good grief, Pete, how many bottles have you opened?”

    “Only two,” he replied insouciantly. “Fizz doesn’t go far. Cheer up, love. The bloke asked for it, ’e bloody got it, and it’s over.”

    “Yes, well, I wish I’d seen it!” Jan admitted with a sudden grin. “But all the same… Look, I hate to say it but I think it might be best if you two popped over to Wal and Livia’s for the rest of your stay.”

    “But Stan’s got Tuesday off, we were gonna have another lovely day here!” cried Polly in dismay.

    “Uh—yeah. Well, digging taro with Michelle got mentioned,” Stan allowed, “but yeah. Sorry, darl’.”

    “Don’t apologise: the more I think about how he squeezed my arm the sicker I feel,” replied Polly, making a face of revulsion and wriggling. “Ugh!”

    “Yeah. Right. Wished I’d socked ’im a bit harder,” he admitted. “No, well, ya reckon your mate Livia won’t mind?”

    “No, she’ll be thrilled. But, um…” She looked uneasily at Pete and Jan.

    “Bit of a gusher. All frills and furbelows. Jangly bits hanging off ’er. Her heart’s in the right place, though,” Pete explained.

    Stan’s shoulders quivered but he replied sedately: “I think I can cope with that.”

    Yes, well, reflected Jan, getting up to phone Livia, he could undoubtedly cope with anything. And actually, thank God for it!

    Livia, as it turned out, was entirely of the same opinion. In fact she phoned Jan later that night—when Jan and Pete were already in bed, the day having proven vicariously exhausting. Jan was re-reading A Tale of Two Cities—she’d gone back to Dickens recently—and Pete was looking at a fishing magazine, glancing up now and then in order to condemn some other joker’s notion of reels, trout flies or whatever.

    “Jan, darling, I really think Polly’s found her match!” she breathed.

    “Uh—bit early to say so for sure, Livia. But it does look like it, doesn’t it?”

    “Oh, very much so, Jan, dear! Isn’t he lovely? Such an unpretentious man. Wallace liked him at once, and I must say, that’s not like him! And that dry Australian sense of humour! –Jan, doesn’t he make you think of an older Steve McQueen?” she hissed. “And the figure!”

    Jan cleared her throat. “Er—yeah.”

    “Well, fingers crossed, darling, of course, but I really do think it’s going to be all right!” she carolled.

    Jan found she’d sagged with relief. “Oh, good,” she produced limply.

    “Don’t you wish you’d seen him hit that awful Keith Arvidson?” she hissed.

    At this point Wal’s voice said in the background: “‘Punch out’ is the expression, love.”

    Livia gave a loud giggle. “I must admit that sent him up immediately in Wal’s estimation! –Yes, punch out, of course. One, two, splash!” She collapsed in more giggles, in fact Jan rather fancied she might have dropped the phone.

    Jan found she was grinning from ear to ear. “Yes,” she agreed, regardless of whether Livia could now hear her. “That woulda been good. One, two, splash!”

    Pete looked up from his fishing rag. “One, two, splash, eh? I’ll remember that!” he threatened happily. “Yep, says it all: one, two, splash!”

    On due consideration, Jan had to concede it did. In more ways than one.

Next chapter:

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