Fresh Fish

13

Fresh Fish

    “Tom,” protested Jenny with an anxious frown, “it’s a good idea in theory—I’m sure it would do her good to stay here for a while by herself—but she won’t have transport.”

    “She can buy a car,” he replied airily.

    Jenny went very red.

    “Um, no, I mean it,” he said uneasily. “I mean—well, why not? She can afford it.”

    Jenny took a deep breath. “And then what? We let her sell it to ruddy Buster for a fraction of its price on the excuse it’s second-hand?”

    “A used car,” he murmured. “Uh—well, no, far more likely that blasted Blinker’ll offer her a really fair price based on careful analysis of the latest car ads in the papers and the last lot of figures from flamin’ Choice—”

    “Shut up!” she hissed. “Here she comes!”

    The Mayhews tried to look innocent as Polly joined them under the deodar tree with a fresh relay.

    Once Tom had sunk half his can he ventured: “Um, Polly, I was thinking—” He inadvertently met his wife’s eye, and fell silent.

    “What?” said Polly mildly.

    “Uh—this the lot you bought at the supermarket yesterday when you borrowed the car?” he said feebly.

    “Yes. Don’t you like Foster’s?”

    “It’s beer,” he allowed. “No, um, I just wondered why?”

    “It’s an Aussie icon,” she said, smiling. “I didn’t recognise all those other names.”

    “Toohey’s?” he choked. “Vic bitter?” He began to quote a TV commercial from the long ago on the latter subject but Jenny said loudly “Shut up!” so he did, rather thankfully.

    Unfortunately he’d got too far through it, so Polly was able to ask mildly: “Why does a man need Vic?”

    “It’s a man’s beer,” he replied lamely. “Hey, I wonder if they took those ads off because they were too sexist?” he wondered.

    “They were sexist, all right. More likely their market research à la Blinker found out they’d saturated the market,” replied Jenny, giving him a hard look.

    “Does she do market research?” asked Polly with interest.

    They groaned. “All the time,” explained Tom.

    “Unceasingly,” agreed Jenny. “Then she shoves it down your throat just after you’ve spent three months’ hard-earned on the thing.”

    “Whatever it is,” agreed Tom.

    “Um, you mean it’s her job?” the unfortunate Polly groped.

    “No,” they groaned.

    “Oh. What does she do?”

    Jenny took a deep breath. “Nominally, she works in a real estate agent’s office, doing their books.”

    “Yeah. We’ve discovered that the determination to do an accountancy degree was merely part of the larger plan,” said Tom sourly.

    “You mean she’s doing a B.Com part-time?” she floundered.

    “No, she’s done it,” he said grimly. “You tell her, darl’; I can’t bear to.” He snapped open another Foster’s, since it was there.

    “Um, I wouldn’t think a real estate agent’s books would need someone with a B.Com.,” ventured Polly, as Jenny was just sitting there looking sour.

    “No.” She fortified herself from her can. “The reason I said nominally, just then, was that while she’s sailing through their accounts in a fraction of the time they assume it takes, what she’s really doing is sussing out the property market good an’ proper for her next investment. Then she buys up a place for a song, gets a mate to do it up for nothing on the promise of largesse from the huge profit she’s about to make, gets another mate to—uh—forget the silly phrase, anyway dress it up with null modern furniture and decorator-type paintings and hired pot-plants, and sells it for a small fortune.”

    “Or a large fortune, as the case may be,” added Tom.

    “Thought I was telling this?”

    “Yeah, but tell it fairly.”

    Jenny sighed. “Okay. She really struck it lucky with the last one, Polly: just after she’d bought it for a song they announced that a huge block of fancy apartments was gonna go up on the old factory site just a block away, and all the prices round there shot up astronomically.”

    “Yeah; mind you, we’re not ruling out a fat bribe for intel to someone in the local council’s planning office before she bought it,” noted Tom.

    “Yeah. Then, ya see, she pays off the two mates that did the actual hard yacker and puts the appropriate percentage of the giant profit into the next venture.”

    “The rest of it goes into something really safe, like shares in BHP the Big Australian or one of the big food wholesalers,” added Tom. “On the assumption that humanity’s gonna go on exploiting the world’s irreplaceable resources until the old planet’s dead, and that people will always have to eat. Until ditto, presumably. We’re pretty sure she’s already a millionaire, but we’re not gonna ask.”

    “With property prices the way they are these days, she’d have to be, Tom,” replied Polly calmly.

    “Yeah, you’re living in the past, love,” said Jenny heavily. “Multi-millionaire.”

    “I wish I was living in the past,” he admitted. “’Member how cute she was with that first pair of specs?”

    Jenny sighed. “Mm.”

    “You’ll just have to look forward to the grandchildren,” offered Polly drily.

    “Don’t get me started,” warned Tom. “We really thought— Shit, was that two or three before the frightful Helen? Anyway, bloody Bawler had this really nice girlfriend at one point: sensible, down-to-earth—aw, yeah, it was that time he’d shaved the face-fungus off, that’s right: she musta thought he was normal. It lasted about six months and then the bloody nong revealed that what he’d been frantically saving up for for the last six months wasn’t a down-payment on a nice little duplex they'd spotted—there are some beautiful little places round Byron way—anyway, it wasn’t. It was a flaming trip to Kathmandu. So she dumped him. Got a better job in Sydney and shook the dust of bloody Byron for good.”

    “I see,” said Polly, smiling at him. “Except what a duplex is, Tom!”

    “Uh—kinda two little houses stuck together,” he fumbled. “Think they might date back to the Twenties—these ones looked as if they did, anyway.”

    “I think you might call them semidetached, Polly,” said Jenny helpfully.

    “Oh! I see!”

    “He’s right, they’re really pretty. They usually go for megabucks, of course, especially the done-up ones, but this one was out of the town a bit, and in bad condition. Sort of thing Blinker’d be onto like a shot, but it’s out of her area.”

    “Yeah, the painter-decorator mate wouldn’t be able to get up there in his weekends—well, not and have time to put in the required hard yacker,” noted Tom sourly. “Added to which he might have the nous to ask her to pay for his petrol.”

    “How far is it?”

    “From Sydney? Well over seven hundred K. Takes about eight hours.”

    “I see!”

    “Yeah. Well, ya could make it. Leave work around four on the Friday—together with half of Sydney, so add on two good hours to the driving—get there around two a.m., provided you hadn’t stopped for a meal on the way, of course; five hours’ sleep, stagger up around seven, choke down the mug of Instant, put in the usual twelve-hour stint—”

    “Shut up, Tom,” sighed Jenny. “And for God’s sake don’t dare to say anything like that to Blinker or she’ll be forcing the poor guy to do it!”

    “Yeah,” he admitted wryly. “We can’t decide whether he’s got a hopeless crush on flamin’ Blinker or he’s just completely spineless and needs the work. Not that there isn’t plenty of demand for his sort of stuff, but there’s a Helluva lot of competition in the field, and he hasn’t got much drive.”

    “Or any,” noted Jenny.

    “As my learned colleague so correctly suggests, or any,” he agreed. “Nice enough bloke, but you’d only have to set eyes on him to realise he’s got ‘wimp’ tattooed on his forehead.”

    “Um, I suppose that sort of combination can work out quite well,” offered Polly unconvincingly.

    “Mm. We keep telling ourselves that,” said Jenny drily. “On the other hand, who’d wish Blinker as a mum on any kid?”

    Polly sighed. “I was just thinking the same thing the other day about Katie Maureen, actually… She’d be terrifically efficient and hygienic, it’d have the right sort of nutrition from the word ‘go’—”

    “And be a chronic bed-wetter,” finished Tom gloomily.

    “That’s about it, yes.”

    “I dunno about you,” he admitted, “but we’ve been asking ourselves for the last several years where the Hell we went wrong.”

    “Jake and I used to ask ourselves that; though in his case it was more because the boys didn’t want to come into the business, of course. We did try to give the kids a normal life. Well, Jake did his best to shower them with presents when they were little, but I managed to restrain him most of the time. And Katie Maureen despised all those frilly frocks he used to buy her: I used to think it was a good sign.”

    “Well, she hasn’t turned into a simpering Miss,” said Jenny kindly, “and it sounds as if the twins are doing okay: they’re both doing what they’re interested in, aren’t they?”

    “Mm, that’s true. Well, so are your kids!”

    “Yeah—well, swimming and surfing, in one instance, but yeah,” Jenny conceded, giving the instance a hard look as it came up from the beach, panting, with its board under its arm. “Buster, you can load up that board, thanks.”

    Buster pushed his wet yellow curls off his wide forehead. “Thought we weren’t going back till tomorrow?”

    “That’s right, and this arvo we’re going over to the Brinkmans’.”

    “Aw, heck!”

    “Mrs Brinkman particularly said she’s expecting you,” said his mother in a steely voice.

    “Mum, she’ll try and shove that awful Melanie at me!”

    “Then this will give you an opportunity to exercise your social skills and just treat her politely and disinterestedly,” replied Jenny brilliantly. True, Tom had to cough and cover his mouth in a hurry, but nevertheless Polly looked at her with huge respect.

    “Aw, heck, Mu-um!”

    “Never mind aw heck, go and put that board away.”

    “But I could get in some surfing later this eve—”

    “No! They’re having a barbie and we’re expected to stay for it!” she snapped.

    “But—”

    “Get on with it, Buster,” said Tom in a bored voice. “And do the world a favour and have a shave while you’re at it.”

    Scowling, Buster mooched off.

    “Well done, that heavy father: have a medal,” said Polly in a shaken voice.

    “Hah, hah,” he replied uneasily.

    “Do I dare ask what’s wrong with this Melanie girl?” she added.

    “We’ve never managed to work that out,” replied Jenny heavily.

    “No: just looks like an ordinary girl,” agreed Tom. “Quite pretty, usual amount of giggling; junk jewellery, poisonous perfume and make-up, daft high heels—completely indistinguishable from about five million of her peers.”

    “It’s possibly the way Ma Brinkman insists on it,” said Jenny.

    “Could be. But she insists on everything.”

    “Yes, but presumably he doesn’t find all the other stuff embarrassing.”

    “What other stuff?” asked Polly.

    “You’ll see,” replied Jenny grimly.

    “Help, I don’t have to come, do I?”

    “Yep,” said Tom, while Jenny was drawing breath to apologise and explain.

    “Um, sorry, Polly,” she said, “but I was stupid enough to let on we had a guest, ya see—I thought it might work as an excuse to get out of the bloody barbie—only then she dragged all the lurid details out of me and made me promise to bring you.”

    “Mm. Insisted on ’em, see?” said Tom.

    “Yes, but—” Polly swallowed hard. “Did you tell her I’m Lady Carrano?” she said in a voice that came out far smaller than she’d meant it to.

    “God, no!” replied Jenny in horror. “I wasn’t that far gone! No, um, it was more very old mate from Paris days—she found that most intriguing,” she added on a vicious note, “and, um, poor lonely widow, I’m afraid.”

    She sagged. “That’s all right. Thanks, Jenny.”

    “Uh—she’s bound to ask you what your husband did,” Tom warned uncomfortably.

    Polly smiled her seraphic smile at him. “I’ll just lie, Tom!”

    Mr Brinkman had a new barbecue. A Weber, of course. Gas-fired, of course. Huge, of course, but he didn’t say that. It was self-evident, actually. It had its special place on the brick patio, well away from the house walls—he explained why at length but Polly didn’t listen, she merely smiled nicely. Mr Brinkman—he’d urged her warmly to call him Phil, meanwhile taking her elbow in a confidential manner and breathing warmly all over her—had apparently decided to take charge of her. Meanwhile his wife was doing her best to inflict Melanie on Buster—she did look just like any ordinary girl, but he was observedly squirming—in the intervals of explaining earnestly to Jenny that they’d have a nice sit-down in the lounge-room, she didn’t believe in too much ultra-violet just because it was summer—self-evident, she was very pale—plus exactly why the air-con in the house was now performing to specification.

    Polly knew several very pleasant guys called Phil, but she now had a strong feeling that that name was going to induce in her a writhing nausea for the rest of her days. “I see,” she managed feebly as they reached the said barbecue on its said spot.

    He immediately told her a lot about its general merits and specific performance at such-and-such a temperature… Jake had also had fancy barbecue equipment that was, when you analysed it, merely an outdoor grill. The same functions and a much better result could be attained in a comfortable kitchen, using the stove that you’d already paid for, more especially the oven, if one desired to roast a leg of lamb or nice piece of sirloin, which Phil Brinkman was now on about at unnecessary length—demonstrating the thing’s lid. They must be very comfortably off, if the bugger could even think of wasting a prime cut of beef on his bloody barbecue! Merely outdoor oven or not. But then, the acres of uniformly smooth brick paving, the square miles of glass, the matching square miles of striped awnings and the fully ducted air conditioning the house featured had already told her that.

    Once upon a time, shortly before the landscape designer’s evil eye had fallen upon it, the house must have had a lovely view, like the Mayhews’—though not with a glorious old deodar in it, no. Straight out to frothing white waves and then nothing but turquoise sea shading to blue and deeper blue, and then the wide blue horizon of the Australian east coast… It now had a view of acres—burning acres—of uniformly smooth terracotta brick, interrupted a couple of metres or so away by several squared-off terracotta brick pillars, on top of which sat an unlikely erection of teak rafters which Mrs Brinkman (Louise) had already claimed gave it a “Bali garden” touch, and up which trailed a stunted growth which might in another ten years—if the situation wasn’t too dry, salty and windy for it—develop into a wisteria, as claimed. The barbecue was off to the right, but unfortunately not hidden by a stout brick pillar, no. It was backed by a long brick wall about eight feet high, extending from the corner of the house. In one or two little niches in this a struggling rosemary seedling or two might be glimpsed. To the far left was another long brick wall, about ten feet high, parallel with the other one, but, for no apparent reason, reaching further towards the bottom of the garden. It featured, about halfway along it, but still on the brick patio, a “lounging area”. Polly knew that was what it was because Louise Brinkman had already told her it was. This included a wooden “pa-goal-la”, Bali-style with turned-up rafters, which sheltered three large settees, one against the wall, the other two at right angles to it, facing each other. They were heavy things in some sort of dark grey-brown, loosely-woven substance which did not have the appearance of any kind of natural product. Definitely not cane—no. Or bamboo. Their large, square cushions (seats and backs) were an unattractive dull grey. Flanking the two opposed ones were matching plinths, white plinths, surmounted by large white pots, holding red-leaved plants which from this distance appeared to be specimens of hybrid Phormium tenax. New Zealand native flax, yes. Within the square area formed by this lounging arrangement was not a patio coffee-table as anyone might have expected, but a shallow square pit, or hollow, in the centre of the larger space. One could only wonder why. It didn’t hold anything.

    Further towards the middle of the patio, maddeningly not quite centred, was another pit. This one was much larger, and round. Many happy hours had undoubtedly been spent by some brickie laying those terracotta bricks around its edges. Mr Brinkman—Phil—had already informed her it was a fire pit and “all her idea”. Mysteriously it held not a fire but a clutch of potted hydrangeas. Hitherto Polly had been under the impression that only poor benighted Brits and Europeans who had winters under six feet of snow went in for potted hydrangeas—the things grew like weeds in most of the settled areas of both Australia and New Zealand—but clearly, to the landscape designing mind all things were possible.

    Unfortunately the designer’s efforts didn’t end where the brick paving of the patio did. No. The patio proper was finished by a low brick wall, about the right height for sitting on, upon which several large terracotta pots had been placed at widely spaced intervals. Not round ones like anybody might have. Oblong ones. These held a selection of small shrubs which had been tortured into unlikely positions with heavy twisted wires. Phil had already informed her that those were never gonna work. Polly hadn’t had the strength to ask whether they were supposed to be bonsai or topiary.

    The wall’s entire purpose wasn’t to shield the view of the sea: there was a gap in the centre of it, of course not parallel with the fire pit. This opened upon a flight of steps. Phil had already explained that they had had to have the lower lawn dug out. Mm, you would have had to, if you wanted a lower level. The lower lawn, though the appellation now scarcely applied, was laid out—well, the inspiration had possibly been a cross between an Elizabethan knot garden and the formal gardens of Versailles. In smallish, geometric sections. Concrete-edged, not brick. Most of them were filled with pebbles in subfusc shades of grey and fawn, but some were filled with low-growing silver-leaved salt-tolerant plants. That was it. Beyond this travesty of a garden was merely the glorious view of the Tasman.

    “I was thinking of a few orchids,” said Phil Brinkman on a wistful note. “Brighten the place up a bit, y’know?”

    “In pots? Mm. They are nice. Cymbidiums are quite easy to grow,” said Polly cautiously.

    “Yeah. They’d look kind of Bali-ish, don’tcha reckon?”

    Polly lied cheerfully.

    “Yeah,” he said sadly. “Only the bloke went and told us that there’s quite a long stretch when they don’t flower, ya see, and they need to be left outside, or at the least in a well-ventilated glasshouse, and see, we could of fitted one in, you can get nice small ones everywhere these days, only it’d ruin the look of the garden.”

    “I see,” she croaked.

    “Like calamari?” he suddenly asked out of the blue.

    Polly was completely thrown. Was that an Italian word? Phil Brinkman, who in spite of the occasional wistful note was a cheery, pink-faced, stoutish little man, was undoubtedly of Anglo-Celtic descent like the majority of the white population of Australia, and did not strike as the type to be acquainted with any foreign languages.

    “Um, sorry, what?” she fumbled.

    “Calamari! You know! Rings!” he said with an expansive wave.

    “I don’t think I’ve ever had it, Phil.”

    “Heck, haven’tcha really? The fish shops here are full of it. And the supermarkets. This was frozen, of course, but it’s nobbad.”

    “Oh, are you going to do some on the barbie?” she asked, faint but pursuing.

    “Yes, ’course! Prawns as well, don’t worry!” Jolly chuckle.

    Not a joke related to that silly Paul Hogan ad the Yanks had trotted out—no. “Um, I’m sorry, Phil, but I’m really not fond of seafood,” she croaked.

    “Aren’tcha? Don’t know what you’re missing!” Another jolly chuckle.

    Er—yes, she did. A dose of very, very unpleasant summer-sickness. Seafood out on a baking hot patio in the Australian summer? The man was mad!

    “Never mind, there’ll be stacks of other stuff,” he said kindly. “Chicken—takes a while, ya have to cook it through—and lamb chops, of course! Me son-in-law’s bringing the steak, but I told him to get somethink decent, don’t worry!” Jolly chuckle.

    “That’s good. I do like steak.”

    “Good! I’ll do you a nice juicy one!” This time the jolly chuckle was accompanied by a cosy squeeze of the arm.

    Polly repressed a sigh and said: “Lovely. Shall we go back inside, Phil? It’s a bit hot out here for me, I’m not used to your climate.”

    “Heck, it’s not hot today! Mind you, Louise can’t take the heat, either. Come on, then!” Not relaxing his grip on her arm, he led her indoors.

    If the woman couldn’t take the heat, WHY had she had that huge expanse of brick laid just outside her enormous lengths of plate glass? Polly refrained from either rolling her eyes madly or grinding her teeth, but it was a real effort. And funnily enough she had a feeling that the reward for it would not be a cold beer.

    No, it wasn’t. A nice cup of tea, with scones and “just a banana cake I rustled up—well, it’s easy, isn’t it?” Coy giggle. And they might as well sit round the table for it.

    Given that the giant dining table in the giant sitting-dining room was already laid for it, yes, they better had. So they did.

    The scones were certainly excellent of their kind. Obviously the sort made with egg, beautifully risen, their insides softly yellow, their tops lightly browned, and, since they’d been carefully cut out with a real cutter, all perfectly regular in size and shape. If scones could be anal, that was what they were. Polly had been brought up on your good old Edmonds Cookery Book baking-powder basic scone, which contained merely salty New Zealand butter, plain flour, Edmonds baking powder and a pinch of salt. Bound with milk. Mum’s were superb: they turned out huge and irregular because the secret of a good basic scone was as little handling as possible: she’d just set the dough on a floured board, pat it very gently until more or less even and then cut it up quickly with an old table knife that was almost paper-thin. No scone was ever the exact same size or shape as any other but they all tasted wonderful. Light as air. Like scones did oughta. These ones of Louise’s were more like a cross between a scone and a sweet American muffin in both texture and taste, and gave the strong impression that they oughta be adorning Ye Cosy Country Corner Tea Shoppe in an English village, complete with frilled check gingham tablecloths and curtains, window boxes of geraniums or petunias, and strings of double-parked vehicles outside—a mixture of new Land Rovers and new VW Golfs, probably. Dainty teas for the well-off middle classes, quite.

    The casually referred-to banana cake was of course one of those sweet loaf things made in an oblong tin, not a round job, which would have been trotted out with a lot more ceremony. It was adorned with icing, though, too right. Passionfruit icing, was the intel, but where were the seeds? Had Louise actually sieved the passionfruit? Come to think of it, she certainly seemed anal enough. Ye gods. Polly didn’t take a slice, she loathed banana cake. She just let the woman believe she wasn’t very hungry. Which in spite of the air-con that was indeed working beautifully, was true.

    Louise wasn’t inflicting merely herself, Phil and Melanie on them, no. She had murmured on greeting Jenny that “Poor Josie and Ron” were coming. Expect anything—yep.

    Josie and Ron McConnell at first sight did not look poor. Certainly not in a pecuniary sense. True, Josie was clad in the sort of floral cotton sunfrock that Louise herself was in—the sort of sunfrock, in fact, if you looked at the contemporary photos, you’d realise Australian women had been wearing in summer at least since the Thirties. The fullness and length of the skirts varied slightly with, or rather somewhat behind, the dictates of fashion, but they remained sleeveless. And floral—yep. Usually very wide straps over the shoulders, politely shielding the bra straps, though simple shallow scoop necks, leaving the frock’s shoulders entire, were also perennially popular. Josie’s was the sort with shoulder straps and ipso facto a square neckline. It had a looseish waist with the skirt very lightly gathered into it. It reached just below the knees, which as she was a large woman was probably a merciful dispensation of Providence. The predominating shades in the pattern were blue and green, on white—Louise’s being similar, though hers had pink, apricot, pale blue and green.

    With this simple dress, however, Josie was wearing a shortish heavy necklace of chunks of aquamarine interspersed with small gold beads, plus a much longer necklace composed of small pearls widely spaced on a very slender gold chain. Her ears sported, not the matching aquamarine earrings you might have expected, but a pair of very nice sapphire and diamond ones: small drops of the sapphire below a couple of round stones, one of each, set in gold. Polly had had enough experience of the real stuff Jake had loaded her with to be pretty sure the stones were all real. The woman’s plump hands were laden with rings, all obviously genuine, too: the engagement ring was a good-sized Australian black opal and its mates, smaller black opal oval and milky-white opal heart, decorated the other hand, together with a quantity of gold. The captious might have said the diamond chips of the eternity ring swore at the black opal, true. After this you didn’t really need the reassurance of the beautiful Italian peep-toed blue shoes her plump feet were stuffed into. Not short of a few bucks—quite.

    The hubby, Ron, was unremarkable in sneakers, well-pressed longish grey shorts and a lightweight grey knit short-sleeved shirt. But the tiny motif on the chest kind of gave that game away and the sneakers were Reeboks. The giant hunk of gold on the manly left wrist didn’t look poor, either.

    Josie would have had a pink-and-white complexion in another country. Here it was rather sunburnt and her face and arms were shiny with sunscreen but you could tell she had been a very pretty girl in her youth—the rather overblown rose variety. She had probably been blonde but the hair was now a cheerful yellow, very short at the back and rather bouffant in front but brushed well back. Not a fashionable nor an expensive do but one that obviously required a considerable amount of maintenance. Trip to the hairdresser at least every other week—yep.

    She was extremely genial in manner, seemed thrilled to be here, greeted Jenny and Tom and the introduction to Polly with beaming smiles, forced a large plastic container of potato on salad on Louise for the barbecue and all in all seemed thoroughly prepared to enjoy herself. So why poor?

    Ron was much quieter, one of those small, rather meek men who did have large, cheery wives, but there was nothing in his manner to justify the “poor”, either. In fact his greeting to Polly was quite bright and perky and he immediately asked her if she was interested in tropical fish.

    Er… unless Louise pitied anyone whose hubby was addicted to tropical fish?

    Polly could only conclude they must have some secret sorrow, like a recent death of a close relation—she could only hope to God it hadn’t been a child. Or, um, a child on drugs? Or maybe one of them had to have a frightful operation and or/was terminally ill and they were putting a brave face on it? Or, um, Ron had been caught out dirty dealing in whatever lucrative business he was in? It kind of limited the possible topics of conversation, didn’t it?

    Fortunately Josie was more than capable carrying on a conversation all by herself and proceeded to launch into it. There was nothing of substance, it was partly about some neighbours, partly about the inadequacies of the small local supermarket and partly about some bloody costume drama she’d been watching on the box. Oh, recorded them all, eh? Mm. Neither Jenny’s nor Polly’s responses were quite adequate, and Louise kept popping out to the kitchen, so it was just as well that just as they were about to sit down to the afternoon tea another couple arrived.

    Maeve and Kym. Maeve was solid, though not as large as Josie, with hennaed hair that possibly was homage to putative Irish ancestry—there were a large number of people in Australia with Irish ancestry, whether or not descendants of those who had fled the potato famine or been transported for nicking stuff to feed their families. Her sunfrock was a cheerful yellow with cheery red, um, possible poinsettias or dahlias on it. Cheery, anyway. Her sandals were fawn and not Italian. Kym was one of those huge, red-faced Aussie men. Clad in an enormous Hawaiian shirt, intensely floral on a very bright royal blue background and, Providence once again being merciful, not shorts but huge baggy grey cotton trousers. She’d probably heard of him, he greeted Polly, wringing her hand excruciatingly hard. Kym Corrigan Motors!

    “She’s a Kiwi, Kym,” said Jenny quickly.

    “Aw, right!” Hearty laugh. “Well, Polly, I’ve got five dealerships here in NSW, all up an’ down the coast, ya see, and—” Etcetera. Polly didn’t say that her husband had been into car dealerships too, in his early days, because then he might interrogate her and make the connection. She just smiled and nodded at appropriate intervals and let him rip.

    Until Louise firmly shepherded them all to the afternoon tea table, of course. They all sat down in couples, help! True, Phil sat at what must be his usual place at one end of the big oval table and Louise was on her feet serving, but there was an empty chair next to him and she was standing right by it, so… Polly went round to the other side of the table and took an empty chair there, next to Tom. Unfortunately this meant that Kym was on her other side.

    Over the afternoon tea Louise, Josie and Maeve, who all seemed to know one another very well, exchanged gossip about friends and family and the costume drama on the box… Kym told Polly a lot more about his dealerships and genially offered Ron a trade-in for “that clunker of yours”, jolly laugh. Phil joined in with a long story about the dependability of the Volvo. It wasn’t clear whether he owned one but Polly could only conclude he probably did.

    At the conclusion of the horribly long-drawn-out meal Kym asked Polly jovially if she’d like a nice little Mazda. One previous owner, getting a little bit long in the tooth now, jolly laugh, but she had air-con!

    “No, she wouldn’t, it’s a sardine tin with no crash bags!” said Tom crossly. “Offer her something decent, for God’s sake!”

    Kym scratched his chins. “Well, talking of Volvos, had a nice waggon in just the other day. Got a lot on behind, mind, if you’re not used to them.”

    “Drives like a tank,” noted Tom grimly.

    “Well, yeah, but safe as houses. What do ya drive at home, Polly?”

    “A Merc,” replied Polly in her most detached voice. Not saying how old it was.

    He brightened horribly. “Yeah? Now, I can do you a lovely model! Two years old, the old bloke that owned it trades them in after two years, barely run in, never done more than go to the shops in ’er—owns that ruddy great terracotta-rendered place on the point: you seen it yet?”

    “No.”

    He winked. “No loss.”

    “Thought ’e drove to his son’s wedding in ’er?” drawled Tom. “Melbourne’s a bit further than the shops, isn’t it?”

    “Hah, hah. Yeah—no, that was the only long trip—not that he did drive, one of the nephews drove ’er for ’im. But that’s it, honest!” He beamed at Polly. “Crash bags, air-con, of course, lovely interior, real leather upholstery.”

    “Well, yeah, except the car’s a boring sort of fawn and the seats are ditto,” noted Tom drily. “But yeah, she looks a decent car, Polly. Tell ya what!” he said brilliantly, turning his shoulder firmly on his wife, “you could stay down here for a bit if you bought ’er! Give you your independence, eh? –We gotta get back to work, still a few loose ends to tidy up,” he explained to Kym, “but she’s footloose and fancy-free. Give you a bit of a break, Polly, love. We’ll be down for Christmas, of course: you could stay on for it!”

    “Um, I can’t, Tom, I have to go down to the farm and see Mum. But, um, well, what does Jenny think?” she ended feebly.

    At this Jenny, who had not been rendered suddenly deaf by her husband’s speaking to those on his other side, got up and came round to the back of her chair. “You’d be very welcome if you do want to stay on for a bit, Polly. And don’t worry, we won’t inflict Buster on you, he’s slated to help a friend of ours paint his house before Christmas. Tom and I’ve got loads of admin stuff to clear up, we’ll have to be in at work, and Canberra’s pretty boring, ya know.”

    “Yeah, anal,” she agreed incautiously.

    Jenny gave her a warning look, but continued mildly: “We wouldn’t dream of leaving you here without transport, of course, so if you do fancy this car of Kym’s, why not? Blinker’ll get you a really good price for it when you want to get rid of it.”

    “Or ya could ship it back home: why not?” said Kym cheerfully. “I can handle all the paperwork for ya, no sweat!”

    “Um, thanks, Kym, but it really isn’t worth it, it costs an arm and a leg to import cars into New Zealand. Um, well, yes, I think I would like to stay on, Jenny.”

    “Good! Sea air, eh? We’ve gotta get off early tomorrow, Kym, but why don’t you come over some time in the morning and she can look at the car.”

    “Righto!” he agreed.

    Maeve had apparently been absorbed in cosy chat about recipes with Josie, but at this she turned round and said, leaning past her husband’s bulk: “He doesn’t really sell any more, he just runs the business. Why don’t you send a salesman, Kym?”

    Ouch! Polly cringed. Deadlier than the male and then some! Could the woman  possibly imagine that huge, loud, cheery Kym was some sort of catch? But they all did it: Enzed suburbia was also thick with possessive wives who took one look at her and jerked sharply on that ring through the nose.

    Kym Corrigan was, however, made of slightly sterner stuff than the majority, for he just said airily: “Aw, it’ll be a nice change, darl’: just like the old days. I’ll see you about eleven, Polly.”

    What could she say? Over Maeve’s dead body? “Thank you, Kym,” she murmured.

    Louise then chivvied them all to “the comfortable seats” and the frightful afternoon wore on…

    There was still no clue as to why Josie and Ron were “poor”. Nobody took much notice of Polly, and several more couples arrived, so she was able to drop out of the conversations entirely and just smile and nod agreement with whatever was being said if anybody glanced her way. Jenny appeared to be bearing up with equanimity: presumably she was used to them. Though as she hadn’t seen the TV costume drama she couldn’t bear her part in that conversation. Those conversations: every time a new floral-frocked middle-aged moo arrived, the topic started up again. Meanwhile the menfolk were deep in cars, ride-on lawnmowers, fishing gear, and boats…

    Eventually a lot more people arrived, Louise stopped bothering to make introductions, the chilled white plonk and the Bundy and Cokes started to circulate amongst the wives, and the Bourbon and the Scotch started to circulate amongst the blokes, and Phil Brinkman, swathed in a plastic barbecue apron sporting a design of startling indecency, disappeared to the obligatory clouds of smoke on the patio. Dusk fell—they were reasonably far north, so there wouldn’t be much twilight—and lo! Little fairy lights came on all over the teak thing balanced on the square brick pillars, on the pillars themselves, and on the pergola, pardon, pa-goal-a. Plus a string of them along that low wall. And Louise began to chivvy people out to the— No, wait! Phi-il! The mosquito lamps!

    Then they were released onto the patio. Polly went and sat quietly on the low wall: there was now such a crowd that she was quite sure no-one would notice her.

    After quite some time someone did, but it was only Buster.

    His hair was wet. “Been for a swim?” she asked kindly as he sat down gloomily beside her.

    “Yeah. That Melanie, she’s hopeless.”

    “Mm, I could hear the squeals at one stage.”

    “Yeah. Sort that thinks it’s funny to fall off her boogie board.”

    But you didn’t stand up on the things, you just sort of lay on them, surely? How could you fall off? “I don’t see how you could fall off, Buster. Or has the surf got rough?”

    “Nah, nothing to it. Nah, she’s the sort that falls off deliberately.”

    Oh, dear. “I get it.”

    “Yeah.”

    “Um, there’ll be lots to eat, though,” she offered kindly.

    “Yeah, only Ole Man Brinkman, he’s the sort that ruins a decent steak with grog. Pours it on, see? Think ’e does it ’cos ’e likes to make the ladies squeal when the muck catches fire.”

    Polly winced. How horribly graphic. Typical of the suburban arm-squeezing type, though. One of the would-be daring pathetic shows put on by the semi-male who liked to think he would if the wife’s eye wasn’t on him but in fact bolted for shelter if left alone with you. Bolted either physically or verbally; that was one of the favourite times for trotting out the phrase “my wife…” “Spirits, would it be, Buster?”

    “Whaddelse? Whisky, I think. Or maybe Bundy. Both, prob’ly.”

    “Jake once did a pig like that,” she admitted heavily. “That’s right, my young cousin Vicki was staying with us—she’d have been about Melanie’s age—and she squealed like anything when the stuff went up in flames.”

    “Yeah,” he acknowledged glumly.

    “Well,” said Polly, sighing, “it can’t go on forever.”

    “No, it only feels like it!” replied Buster with a sudden laugh. “Hey, did ole Brinkman let on whaddelse they’re having?”

    “Besides steak? Well, he mentioned prawns—”

    “He’ll burn them, he always does.”

    No loss, in Polly’s opinion. “Um, and chicken and lamb chops.”

    “He’ll burn the chicken, too. The chops might be all right. Didn’t mention fish, did ’e?”

    “Um, I don’t think so; I mean, the only other thing he said was calamari. What is it, Buster?”

    The young man replied simply: “Squid rings.”

    “Oh, good grief! It must be the Italian word for squid!”

    “Yeah, think so. They’ll be those frozen ones and you can bet ya boots the way the old joker does them they’ll be like rubber.”

    “Thanks for the warning,” replied Polly, smiling at him. “Well, apart from that, the only thing I’m sure of is Josie’s potato salad!”

    “It’s revolting. Dunno what she uses in the dressing but it’s real sicko. And she always puts sultanas in it.”

    “Ugh!”

    “Yeah.”

    “That would appear to be that, then,” said Polly lightly.

    “Yeah. Shoulda had more afternoon tea, eh?” He was apparently referring to himself, for he then added: “Only I hate banana cake.”

    “So do I!” beamed Polly.

    “Good on ya.”

    She looked sideways at him. “Um, Buster…”

    “Yeah?”

    “Um, why would Louise Brinkman refer to Josie and Ron as poor?”

    “Eh? The McConnells?”

    “Is that their name?”

    “Yeah. It’ll be because of Carol McConnell,” he decided.

    “What—what happened to her?” said Polly in a trembling voice.

    “Eh? Nothing. Well, she took off for Pongo a couple of months back with a bloke that her mum couldn’t stand, if ya call that happening.”

    “What was wrong with him?’

    “Nothing. Well, he’s a Brit, but quite a decent joker. Electronics engineer. Works for some firm that makes electronic alarm systems. Quite good money in it, evidently.”

    “He wasn’t married or something, was he?”

    “Nope. Carol isn’t that mad. Only Mrs McConnell, she thought she oughta marry this new doc they’ve got round here. Um, you might not have noticed the medical centre, it’s not on the main drag. Just off it.”

    “Right. All is abundantly clear!” said Polly with a sudden laugh. “Thanks, Buster!”

    “Any time. –Hey, there might be some decent fish if that Stan Smith joker turns up tonight. Mind you, he can’t stand Ma Brinkman—well, what rational adult can?” he said with a wink that suddenly made him look very like his father. “But she keeps on inviting him because he’s a poor, lonely bachelor, ya see. –According to her,” he noted, looking dry. “That’s not the story Dad heard down the pub. Anyway, ole Pa Brinkman’ll pay him for the fish, ya see, only reason he comes.”

    “I see. But won’t Mr Brinkman ruin it, too? Jake used to say it was very easy to ruin fish on the barbie.”

    “Yeah, ’tis. Only Stan, he always cooks it himself!” he grinned.

    “Let’s hope he turns up, then!”

    “Yep.”

    The crowd thickened, the decibel level rose, the smell of burning meat pervaded the air, ladies began to circulate urging various forms of salad on the unwary—mostly carbohydrate-based, how odd, when the Australian shops were bursting with fresh produce. Possibly the worst offering was the rice salad with pieces of mango and prawns in it. Polly gulped. Either would have been bad, but both? Hang on… It was starting to ring strange bells… Ooh, yes! Something Jan and Pete had said had been served at that health farm on Lake Taupo for their notion of a Christmas dinner, except that it hadn’t been rice with the mango and—not prawns, they’d said shrimps, but same diff, in Australia “prawns” was the normal usage… Got it! The totally trendy, healthy version from Taupo Harmonic Vitality had used quinoa, not rice! Rice must be the equivalent for the nice Aussie affluent classes who weren’t into the absolute pinnacle of trendily healthy vital eating!

    A considerable period went by and then Jenny surfaced and told Buster crossly to get off and get Polly something to eat. He went, though pointing out it’d all be burnt.

    Polly was just going to urge Jenny to sit down when a dame burst out of the crowd, grabbed her arm, declared she’d be able to tell them, and dragged her off. Blow. Polly went on sitting there…

    Buster reappeared, but without any provender. “Hey, Stan is here, he’s just arrived, he came in the front way, usually he just comes up from the beach, the tinnie must be in dock!” he gasped. “He’s just gonna put the fish on!”

    “Great,” said Polly, smiling at him.

    “He’s brought some decent bread, too: want some?”

    “Yes, please, Buster.”

    “Hang on!” He thrust his way back into the seething crowd. Polly looked dubiously at the oblivious backs, winced, and decided discretion was the better part, even if Buster never did manage to find anything edible.

    She’d completely given up expecting him back when suddenly he appeared, panting slightly at the effort of forcing his way through the yelling, eating and drinking crowd of comfortably-off suburbanites. “There y’are!” he gasped, handing her half a loaf of ciabatta bread. “Sorry it took so long! We’ve got some fish for ya!”

    She was just going to say where was it when a slim man swathed in the particularly offensive barbecue apron that Phil Brinkman had earlier been wearing surfaced beside him, holding a large plate of fish.

    “Thank you very much, Buster,” she said as he passed it to her.

    “Don’t thank me, thank Stan!” he grinned.

    “Thank you, Stan, it looks lovely,” said Polly weakly to his companion. He was perhaps about her own age or a bit older, very tanned, balding, with what hair he had shaven very short, so that it was just grey bristles, and with one of those lean, narrow-jawed faces, rather wide across the eyes, that you sometimes saw on men with Irish blood. The Steve McQueen type in later life, really. Not very tall, certainly not as tall as young Buster Mayhew. Not exactly handsome, but very, very attractive in a completely masculine way.

    “You’re welcome, lady,” he replied on a horribly dry note.

    Oh, help! Obviously he must think she was one of Louise Brinkman’s ghastly friends! Before she could say anything more—though God knew what she could have said—he turned and vanished into the crowd.

    “Come on!” beamed Buster, sitting down beside her. “It’ll be good!”

    “Mm.” Limply Polly let him eat most of the fish. It was lovely—very fresh. But somehow she wasn’t hungry any more.

    Buying the car from Kym Corrigan was not as easy or straightforward as the naïve might have assumed. Luckily Polly was no longer naïve, so she was on her guard. Unfortunately all her clothes were rather formfitting and she didn't think Kym needed that sort of encouragement. But as the Mayhews left Jenny had given her a hug and told her to use anything, so about an hour before Kym was due—he’d struck her as the type to turn up early, quite possibly in the hope of catching you just out of the shower—she went and had a look in their room. Ah-hah! A really horrible baggy tee-shirt, possibly one of Tom’s, it looked a bit large for Jenny. It was the most ghastly shade of dark brown. Washed-out bitter chocolate? Well, something like that. You could see it must once have been much brighter, or possibly she meant deeper. Anyway, it was truly horrible. She took it back to her room, firmly got into one of the bras she’d hoped not to have wear at the beach house, and put the tee-shirt on. Ugh! It came well down her thighs, completely covering her bum, good. Her jeans were tight but the tee definitely covered the worst of them. She scraped her hair right back with the help of an elastic band, squinching it up into a sort of untidy bun at the nape of her neck. Then she put on an ancient wide-brimmed saggy straw sunhat of Jenny’s and a large pair of black Polaroid sunnies of her own. Vintage 1960s, according to Jake very collectible, but Kym Corrigan most certainly wouldn’t realise that. Her sandals were rather frivolous, unfortunately, flatties with little twists of green leather on the one hand, or little twists of pink leather with smallish heels on the other. Polly put on the green pair.

    Kym blinked, but didn’t seem all that discouraged, alas. He took her arm very, very warmly, ugh! It kind of went on from there. They had to try the car’s wings… As far as Wollongong, where he insisted on giving her lunch—what the Hell was Maeve gonna say, she was the sort that would run an iron régime: lunch always at a set time and woe betide those who didn’t show up for it. She didn’t manage to shake him until gone four o’clock,

    When she finally was allowed to take possession of the vehicle she was so pooped that she just drove it to the supermarket’s carpark, tottered into its large booze department—it was a Woolie’s—and bought a big bottle of gin—surprisingly, they did have Gordon’s—looked in vain for any rum but Bundaberg and Bacardi, settled for a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label instead, and staggered out with them.

    Back at the weekender she had a good belt of gin and ice—Tom and Jenny didn’t go in for mixers and she’d never thought of getting any in—and fell on her bed and slept for a solid hour.

    Then she had a nice sit under the deodar reading one of Jenny’s books, a detective story set in Venice by a writer she hadn’t encountered before, and sipping more gin and ice until the sun sank and the mozzies arrived. So she went inside with the flyscreens all firmly closed—the Aussies were sensible about flyscreens, absolutely everybody had them, why the Hell hadn’t our lot caught on to them? Well, Jake had had them put in, of course, but you couldn’t count him.—And had a sustaining tea of bread—a rye loaf that Jenny had got by mistake thinking it was the plain one but that was actually the one with caraway seeds in it—and mousetrap cheese: Tasty, luckily the Mayhews shared her loathing of such bland cheese imitations as Colby or Mild. Then she had a bit more gin, not bothering with the ice, and went to bed.

    Not surprisingly she woke up around six the next morning with a splitting head. She went to the loo, took three Panadols, and passed out again.

    Jesus! What the—? Polly sat up in bed with a pounding heart. Oh, shit. Some idiot at the back—geographically front—door. Blast! She got wearily out of bed. At some stage, though she had no recollection of it, she must have discarded Tom’s awful old tee, not to mention the bra, so she was merely wearing a pair of pale lemon bikini panties that had been Jake’s choice. Not from a boutique in Paris, no, or they’d have been hand-sewn silk. No, they were nylon with a nice cotton gusset, bought from Farmers when she’d gone into town and dropped in at the Carrano Building first, big mistake, to say she was going to look for something for a birthday present for her nephew’s little boy and could they meet for lunch lat— He’d shot to his feet immediately. Farmers’ toy department had developed inevitably into Farmers’ ladies’ lingerie department. The set of panties—one for each day of the week, she’d thought that sort of thing had died the death years back, but apparently not—had followed as night the day. Polly had no idea what day the lemon ones were supposed to be.

    She grabbed up the pale green floaty thing that Phyllis had forced her to buy, swathed herself in it and staggered off to the front door.

    Thank God, it wasn’t bloody Kym Corrigan. She peered blearily at a slim guy, droopy faded green cotton hat, shabby checked cotton shirt, shabby much-creased khaki shorts… Uh…

    “Gidday,” he said in the accents of the country. “Tom and Jenny gone, have they?”

    “And?” replied Polly grimly, preparing to slam the door and streak to the phone to call the cops.

    “Like some fish?”

    What? “Not if they’ve been sitting in that esky,” said Polly with loathing, glaring at the large foam hamper on the path beside him, “for hours in the heat!”

    “Uh—fresh first thing this morning,” he fumbled.

    The man was expecting her to look a fresh fish in the eye in the state she was in? Ugh! “No, thank you,” she said tightly.

    He shrugged. “Have it yer own way.”

    Polly shut the door quickly.

    Stan Smith retreated down the dusty path scratching his head a bit under the daggy cotton hat. What the Hell had he done? Last night he’d thought she’d looked a bit of all right—well, only dame at that bloody do of Louise Brinkman’s apart from good old Jenny Mayhew that hadn’t been slathered in lipstick and muck, hairsprayed to Hell and gone, and dressed in some frightful flowery tent. She’d looked sort of sweet, cheeks all pink, sitting on that bloody wall on the Brinkmans’ Goddawful patio, in jeans and a nice tight tee-shirt. Pale orange—the experts would probably have called it apricot or some such. Or maybe peach? Anyway, nice and tight with a few tiny sparkly thingos on it here and there, and as nice a pair stuffed into it as he ever hoped to see in his lifetime... Lovely smile, too.

    Okay, she was just another snooty middle-class moo, just his luck. He’d really thought, since she was staying with Tom and Jenny, and Jenny was the decentest type you’d ever hope to meet… Well, fuck!

    Not that there was gonna be any of that in the foreseeable future, was there? Hah, bloody hah.

Next chapter:

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