"Go To Graceland..."

6

“Go To Graceland...”

    The visit to the thermal pools hadn’t been all that exciting—well, natural Jacuzzi, kind of thing, the surroundings not exactly decorative, though the views of the lake on the way were gorgeous. But the evening was quite satisfactory—the sex was good, if the conversation was dead boring. So a couple of days later, when Paul Foster asked her out again—just for a drive after lunch, maybe?—Polly agreed. Why not?

    She’d have bet considerably more than the contents of Jake’s cellar that his reaction to her choice of tourist venue would have been precisely what it was. “You can’t mean it!” pretty well summed it up.

    “Of course I do,” she replied firmly, getting out of the Merc and heading for the souvenir shop.

    Was she doing it for a joke, then? But she wasn’t laughing, in fact she wasn’t even smiling! Limply Paul followed her into the frightful place.

    “Hullo, Coral,” she greeted the scrawny, over-made-up dame behind the counter. “How lovely to see you again.”

    “Hullo, Polly! How are you?” cried the woman. “I was so sorry to hear about your husband!”

    Paul winced. He’d been tactfully avoiding the topic. Of course he knew—the whole country knew, in fact probably the whole of the civilised world—but she was obviously down here to get away from it all!

    “Thank you, Coral,” she said composedly. “So how are the shops going?”

    Cripes, the women plunged into it! Why would she imagine that anyone, let alone Lady Carrano, who could buy the whole of Taupo, would possibly want to know? Paul fidgeted, idly fingering some ghastly souvenir tee-shirts. “Haere Mai from Aotearoa,” and a large brown map of New Zealand with a large blue Lake Taupo, not to scale, featuring prominently in the middle of the North Island. Ugh.

    “That doesn’t sound too bad at all,” said Polly nicely. “I was afraid the global recession might really be starting to affect you.”

    “No, well, we aren’t getting the same number of Americans, of course—” Blah, blah. Paul fidgeted.

    “Yes, I’d love to see the greenstone,” Polly then agreed nicely.

    It wasn’t greenstone! Bright lime-green plastic, for God’s sake! The woman had disappeared out the back, so he hissed: “Polly, that crap’s plastic, surely you can see that?”

    “Mm? Yes, of course. She’s gone to get the good stuff.”

    “Oh, dear. Doesn’t green plastic appeal?” drawled an extremely superior English voice from the doorway, and a tall bloke came in. Gucci loafers, noted Paul.

    “Oh, it’s you. Yes, it does, actually,” replied Polly. Gee, the two blokes were eying each other off—Paul was registering Mark’s watch and posh loafers, click, click, click. Oh—and that tiny monogram over one nipple, too right. How was it humanly possibly for a plain knit shirt to look that expensive? No, well, inhumanly. “It has its own unique appeal.”

    “If you say so,” said Mark politely. “Mark Dignam,” he added in a pointed manner, holding out his hand.

    “Paul Foster. Good to meet you, Mark. So you’re a friend of Polly’s?” replied Paul nicely, shaking.

    “No,” said Polly. “He’s one of the ecolodge guests.” Aw, gee, they both winced, what a pair of tits!

    Fortunately Coral came back with her drawer of greenstone jewellery from the safe at that point, so she had a really good excuse for ignoring the pair of them. ...Oh, dear. If she bought something for Katie Maureen she’d get the lecture on despoiling the natural environment, quite probably with a dose of bearing no relation to the genuine native art. Mum’d say: “It’s too good for me, dear,” and not wear it. Probably not because she thought it was too good, but because greenstone was a native stone, in pre-European times much used by the Maoris, and to ladies of her generation it wasn’t quite nice.

    “Yes, lovely,” she agreed weakly as Coral held a pair of long, pale jade earrings up temptingly, with the information that Jayne had bought a pair just like them for her Tamsin! Yes, well, Tamsin was only a bit older than Katie Maureen and very like her, in temperament as well as attitudes, but having grown up in Australia she might not have the same reaction to New Zealand greenstone. Maybe. “Um, I have got a pair just like them, actually, Coral.”

    Swiftly Coral showed her a bangle, instead! A much darker shade, with a little gold strip round it which undoubtedly covered what Jake would have discerned to be a flaw in the stone or even a crack. Oh, what the Hell! Given that at the moment, in spite of Coral’s claims as to the continued good trade in Taupo, there was only one middle-aged tourist couple in the shop besides her and the two male wankers, neither of whom, very clearly, was gonna buy a thing.

    “It’s gorgeous, Coral,” she said, trying it on and holding it up to admire it.

    “Yes, that’s very nice,” Paul agreed in tones of heartfelt relief, the stupid tit!

    “Lovely: New Zealand jade,” discerned the Pommy tit in his turn.

    “Yes.” Past her raised wrist Polly eyed the lime-green plastic artefacts under the counter longingly. Lots of earrings. Quite a lot of bangles... Now, a set of semi-translucent lime-green plastic bangles, how’d that grab you?

    Suddenly she made up her mind. Coral Kenny would undoubtedly think she was nuts, but never mind, if she bought the expensive bangle it’d make her happy. “I’ll take this lovely bangle, please, I’ve got a velvet dinner dress it’d look fabulous with. And maybe a set of matching earrings? –Yes, those look great, thank you,” she agreed as Coral unilaterally chose a pair of drops set in gold to match the bangle. “Actually I was thinking of some costume jewellery as well, Coral. Just for fun! Could I have six of those plastic bangles?”

    Coral gulped but gallantly fished them out for her.

    Lovely! She had a very nice loose silk shirt, a bit out of fashion, but too bad, that they’d tone with nicely. But she really needed something to wear today. Something that would tone with the tee-shirt, which was a very washed-out blue. Not her colour, and actually it had probably originally belonged to one of the twins: it was too long for her and wideish across the shoulders. Something bluish, then? Ah-hah!

    “Um, well,” said Coral on weak note as her sense of taste fought with her commercial instincts, “it is real paua shell, of course, but, um, only chips.”

    “Yes,” Polly agreed, holding the truly frightful pendant up: the effect of the lovely purple-blue iridescent chips of paua shell was totally ruined by the heavy black glue-like substance they were set in. But what was truly glorious about it was that it was in the shape of a tiki, and paua shells had never been used for tikis, or indeed for serious carving of any kind. At most they might be set into large wooden posts as the eyes of the huge, ferocious carved beings the posts featured. Paua shells were essentially rubbish in Maori culture, and in certain places you still came across piles of them discarded on the beach after a feast.

    “Is this the native New Zealand abalone?” Mark was asking in a weak voice—a very weak voice, hah-hah! ’Specially as he’d now registered those highly polished ones designed as ashtrays. Which, given the declining number of smokers in the developed world, probably weren’t that good an investment for Coral, any more. Actually... Supposing a person that had a lot of Japanese friends bought a set of five of them, um, not technically a set, but five of them? They’d make perfect hors d’oeuvre dishes!

    “Coral, I was wondering about the paua shell ashtrays; I mean, not many people smoke these days, do they?”

    “No, but we still stock a few,” replied Coral temperately.

    Mm, that meant the poor woman couldn’t sell them. “Yes. The thing is, they’re about the right size for Japanese hors d’oeuvre dishes. Um, well, in Japan they’d sell them in sets of five, you see: five is a lucky number over there. If you like I could get a Japanese friend to write you out a notice in Japanese—” Oh, dear, she leapt at the offer. The bloody things had probably been sitting there for years!

    “Great, well, I’ll get on to Ken Takagaki. Would you be able to get hold of some more?”

    “Yes, the wholesalers are always trying to push them onto me,” replied Coral unguardedly.

    “In that case I’ll take five now. I could try ringing Ken, if I could use your phone? Don’t worry, they’re only in North Auckland, not Japan.”

    She leapt at that, too. And fortunately she knew the right prefix to dial. Ken’s wife Hilary answered. Thought she was mad, clearly, but fetched Ken. He had a giggling fit. But he agreed amiably to write out a notice—yes, big, Polly, okay! More giggles.

    “He’ll write it out nice and big, Coral, the right size for a notice,” said Polly. “If you keep it as the master then you can photocopy it, eh? Then you can always make a new one if you need to.”

    Coral agreed with a beaming smile, thanked her fervently, and parcelled up all her purchases, generously throwing in a pair of lime-green plastic earrings as a thank-you.

    “Go on, Mark, why don’t you buy some New Zealand jade?” said Polly meanly, as he was still standing there.

    The wanker wasn’t phased, of course. “I’m afraid I have no-one to give it to, Polly.”

    “No wife?” put in Paul. Help, he was jealous! Usually the male side stuck together like glue.

    “No wife, no sisters, both parents long since passed on,” he drawled.

    “The tee-shirts are nice,” offered Polly as neutrally as she could.

    Paul swallowed. “I don’t think he wants a tourist tee-shirt, really, Polly.”

    “Not really, no,” Mark agreed politely.

    “A tea-towel?” she suggested. “Actually, I’d better get some for Mum and the aunties. And my sisters-in-law. Trouble is, if I buy different ones they’ll start comparing them.”

    “Very funny,” said Mark drily.

    What? For Heaven’s sake, what universe did the man live in? “Haven’t you got any aunts or sisters-in-law, either?”

    “Er—an ex-sister-in-law.”

    “My lot are almost as bad,” admitted Paul, suddenly descending to an almost human level. “I gave Aunty June a very nice set of English soap for Christmas—you know the kind of thing.” Polly nodded kindly, the more so as Mark was looking completely blank. “Yeah. And I thought I’d better not give Aunty Kate exactly the same, so I chose the same brand but a different perfume. Anyway, it was the wrong thing, Mum rang me up and harangued me about it. They don’t like being given the same thing even if it is a different perf— Yeah,” he said with a silly grin as Polly collapsed in giggles, nodding madly.

    “Relatives are all the same,” agreed Coral. “If I was you, Polly, I’d choose different tea-towels, then they can’t say you didn’t put any thought into it, can they?” she ended brightly.

    “Yes!” gasped Polly. “Right!” She groped for her hanky and blew her nose. “No, you’re right, Coral, that’d be exactly what’d happen.”

    “Of course,” Coral agreed on a grimly pleased note. She went over to the middle-aged couple and asked in a determined voice if she could help them.

    “Come on, tea-towels,” said Polly weakly. “Let’s see...”

    Coral’s tea-towels had always been the traditional luridly patterned tourist ones, but according to Aunty Jan, who collected these artefacts, they were getting harder and harder to find these days, all you seemed to get were “designer ones that cost the earth”, incorporating “silly things supposed to be native flowers or birds that look like nothing on earth.” Today Coral certainly had a few of these, yeah. Blow. Most of the others, more traditional, featured unlikely-looking maps of New Zealand surrounded by pictures of, take your pick, tourist attractions or native birds and flowers.

    Mark looked round cautiously but the shopkeeper was now engrossed in urging something on the tourist couple. “Polly,” he said in a low voice: “they are all rather frightful.”

    “Yes, but I’m in Taupo, and Mum knows, you see, so they’ll all be expecting something. Um, this might do for Aunty Jan…” she conceded, holding up a strange thing prominently labelled “Tongariro” but featuring a large conical shape that bore no relation whatsoever to the low, tumbled mass left behind by Tongariro’s great series of eruptions millennia back. Mount Tongariro wasn’t a cone, it was technically a compound volcano, with lots of different vents, cones and craters. Um, maybe some nit of a designer had looked up Tongariro on the Internet, found a lot of pictures of Tongariro National Park, which was what “National Park”, so referred to by the whole of the country, actually was, and picked out the most striking peak? Ngauruhoe, in other words.

    “Um, no,” she decided. “She’d be bound to spot it was wrong: she collects tea-towels.”

    Mark frowned. “That has got to be apocryphal.”

    “Um, no,” Paul admitted, clearing his throat. “People do.”

    Polly smiled a little. “Mm. She lives down in Christchurch, mind you... Oh, blow it: they’ll compare them whatever I choose, and whichever one I send her she’s bound to have it already, so what the Heck!”

    Coral was very pleased to be able to sell her some tea-towels, and as no-one had expected she’d throw them in for a freebie on account of the inordinate cost of the genuine greenstone bangle and the help with the ashtrays, no-one was disappointed, were they?

    “Come on, Paul, afternoon tea,” Polly decided.

    Not altogether to her surprise Mark came out to the car with them.

    “I see, so that was the object of the exercise!” he smiled.

    Polly stared at him. “Um, what? The tea-towels?”

    “No, no! Helping the woman out with her blessed ashtrays!”

    “Yes, it was very generous of you, Polly,” Paul agreed quickly. “Not to say, buying that bangle. –She's already got one, not to say a magnificent Chinese one in carved jade,” he explained.

    “How on earth do you know that?” said Polly weakly.

    “Sorry! Gwen—that’s my ex, Mark—Gwen insisted on showing me an article in some women’s magazine that had photos of them. They’re lovely pieces, they stuck in my mind.”

    “Um, yes,” said Polly weakly. “Over the top, really: Jake chose them. That Chinese thing lives in the safe, he had to get it out specially for the photo.”

    “I’m glad to hear it!”

    She smiled limply: she’d rather have had it handy, in her dressing-table drawer. And if the thing hadn’t had the publicity no-one would ever have known about it, would they?

    “Um, there was no object to the exercise, Mark. Well, I love souvenir shops, if you call that an object.”

    “But—”

    “Coral wanted to sell me stuff, so I let her. –Just put yourself in her place!” she said impatiently.

    “Mm, I suppose I see,” Paul agreed on a dubious note.

    “Well, yes,” Mark conceded, “but was it necessary to buy that lurid green plastic junk?”

    Polly sighed. “Mark, I wanted the plastic junk. And this awful non-ethnic tiki, before you start!”

    “You couldn’t have!” said Paul unguardedly.

    “Yes! They’re so ersatz they’re gorgeous, can’t either of you see that?”

    No, they couldn’t: they were exchanging glances of male solidarity, mixed with “must humour the poor woman, remember she’s recently bereaved”; Jesus! Not that she’d expected anything else. In fact, why had she dragged Paul here at all? Playing “Now I’ve Got You, You Bastard”—quite. That TA book, way back in the bye and bye, had been spot-on, never mind certain up-themselves persons that had sneered at it as pop psychology. Mainly that foul American bloke she’d been mixed up with back then... But even her friend Jill Davis had looked down her nose at it. No, well, too pop for her, too.

    “Never mind. Come on, let’s have some afternoon tea. We’ll go to Graceland, it’s only a step. You wanna come too, Mark? I could just do with a tinned asparagus and grated carrot club sandwich,” she said briskly.

    “That’s so ersatz it’s gorgeous, too, is it?” he replied drily.

    “Horrible, but you’re not wrong in essence!”

    Paul having conceded he wouldn’t mind a coffee and been foiled in an attempt to put the shopping in the car, off they went to Graceland, Polly a thorn between two roses.

    As expected, the two of them got on like a house on fire. It was great: she didn’t have to talk at all! Mark was very interested to hear that Paul was a lawyer, and admitted that he was retired from the diplomatic service, Paul politely not asking him why, at his age, and very obviously completely unaware of the reason—well, you didn’t get the British home news here unless you went out and hunted for it. A subscription to The Guardian Weekly was about all that was available—available but very pricey—and the local media only picked up whatever was really big on CNN or Reuters. And very often not that, if something intriguing like a house fire or a motorway pile-up had occurred locally. Mark then further admitted that he was considering settling out here—the man was nuts, the life was all too clearly completely different to anything he was used to, he’d go mad with boredom in the first month!—and Paul explained about the good side of Taupo (like what they weren’t on as of this min’) and as a matter of fact he did know someone very reliable in the real estate business who could put him onto a good thing...

    Nuts. Did he imagine that all this—Coral Kenny’s souvenir shop, and Graceland with its good old traditional New Zealand tinned asparagus and grated carrot club sandwiches, or today’s alternative, tinned asparagus and hard-boiled egg club sandwiches—was an aberration? That Taupo itself was an aberration? Well, it was a tourist town, of course, but visiting firemen and the preponderance of souvenir shops apart, it was pretty much the norm. True, Mark could presumably afford something more up-market to live in than the norm, but good grief! The minute he poked his nose out of doors...

    Oh, well. That type couldn’t be told, of course. Polly just ate her genuine old-fashioned asparagus and carrot club sandwich and her vanilla slice up hungrily and drank her coffee and looked round Graceland eagerly. The plastic asparagus fern in the small glasses on each table was the same but something was different... Ooh, yes! New red roses! Not plastic ones: the sort that were made of some sort of fabric and looked quite realistic. On the far side of the room a couple of middle-aged women who looked like locals caught her eye and smiled nicely. Um... Oh, yeah. Cronies of Janet’s. Ugh, two tables over from them, that was Mrs Miser Ron Reilly in person! What was she doing here? The word was that Miser Ron didn’t approve of throwing good money away on bought afternoon tea when you could have the same thing at home for a fraction of the price. And she was known to concur in this opinion! Added to which, if you deserted your front window for the delights of Graceland there was always the chance that you'd miss something vital going on in the street. A neighbour washing his car, for instance. Or a mysterious unknown going into Bob and Libby Kenny’s place next-door that would turn out to be a mate of young Neil Kenny’s from Auckland but that could have been a burglar—apart from knocking at the door and being admitted, kind of thing... Polly tried to look really hard without appearing to, not easy.

    “That is Mrs Miser, yeah,” said a neutral voice from her rear.

    “Yes!” she gasped, jumping.

    “Gidday; thought it was you,” said Don McLeod mildly, coming up to their table.

    “Oh, hi, Don,” said Polly weakly to Pete’s second cousin. “Yeah, I thought it was her, but what’s she doing here?”

    “Having afternoon tea?” hazarded Paul, looking at Don with disfavour.

    “Yeah,” the burly helicopter pilot agreed, unmoved. “Those are the relations from Dunedin she’s got with her.”

    “Right!” said Polly with a laugh. “All is explained!”

    “Yeah. Seen ole Vern Reilly yet?”

    “No, how’s he getting on?” she asked eagerly.

    “Nobbad. Still a bit crooked, y’know? But pretty well recovered from that bloody stroke, now. Slowed ’im down, mind you.”

    “I must pop round and see him.”

    “Could go this arvo? He’ll be home.”

    Okay, she could dump boring, conventional Paul and even more conventional Mark and go and see lovely old Vern Reilly—mind you, Mrs didn’t like her, but then she didn’t like anybody, as far as was known—or she could stick it out with these two wankers, getting more and more bored... Right, blow it!

    “Yeah, okay, Don. –Tell you what, Paul, why don’t you drive Mark over to your place: then you can give him your real estate friend’s address and show him the house on that side of the lake that you think he might like. Don’ll see I get back to the ecolodge, won’t you, Don?”

    Stolidly Don replied: “Yeah, sure.” Though with a certain ironic look in his eye that Polly didn’t think she was imagining.

    A certain amount of farting around by the two wankers then took place—no, what was that word of Jill Davis’s? Yes: pfaffing around! –That; but they finally pushed off, Paul eagerly showing Mark something on his bloody iPhone.

    “Twin souls,” said Polly sourly.

    “Same type, eh?” Don agreed mildly.

    She sighed. “Yeah.”

    “Have another cup of coffee: take the taste away,” he suggested kindly.

    “Good idea. Um, well, actually I’d rather have an orange juice.”

    “Whaddever ya like,” he agreed, strolling off to get them.

    The crowd in Graceland was thinning out, now, so Julie, Grace’s helper, came back to the table with him, ostensibly to clear it but actually to sit down and have a nice gossip. Don didn’t appear to mind—but then, with that type of man, it was difficult to tell. Added to which, they expected women to gossip, didn’t they? But as Polly had no objection to telling Julie anything she wanted to know, and contrariwise to hearing anything she wanted to impart, she didn’t attempt to stop her.

    That being over, Don watched tolerantly as Polly delved into her large plastic shopping carrier—“Kenny’s Souvenirs” in red and a large map of New Zealand in green, Taupo very blue, not to scale, with a few Maori korus in brown.

    “Gloating,” she explained.

    “Right. That’s all junk, ya know,” he noted amiably.

    “That’s the point.”

    “It’s your money.”

    “I do donate to Oxfam!” said Polly crossly.

    The unfortunate Don blinked. “Uh—yeah. Do ya? Good on ya.”

    She spread the tea-towels out and looked at them carefully.

    “That’s not Tongariro,” spotted Don instantly. “I’d say it’s Ngauruhoe.”

    “Yes, but never mind, there’s always a chance that Aunty Jan hasn’t already got it. She could start a new subsection to her collection: volcanic tea-towels!” said Polly gaily.

    “Cripes, she’s a collector, is she?”

    The proprietor of Graceland had come up to their table unnoticed during the inspection of the tea-towels. “That’s a good idea. Mum collects them, too. She’s got a big Royal section: does your aunty collect those, Polly?”

    For some strange reason—though all were rich and strange—Polly’s Aunty Jan considered Royal tea-towels hopelessly down-market. “No, she says everybody’s got those. She specialises in scenic ones, Grace.”

    “There’s been a fair few of those about over the last fifty-odd years,” noted Don in horribly neutral tones.

    “Don’t take any notice of him,” advised Grace loftily. “Well, these ones with the maps are all new, Polly, Coral got a new lot in this season, so with a bit of luck she won’t have any of them yet!”

    “Oh, cripes. Are they all new?”

    “Mm,” she said, nodding hard. “I rather like this one,” she admitted, fingering an offering in shades of green, with a brighter green New Zealand surrounded by birds and flowers amidst green foliage.

    It was one of the traditional-looking ones, of course. “Yes, that’s a pretty one... Help. If they’re all new I really oughta nip back and buy one of each for her. See, I was just gonna give Mum and the aunties one each—”

    Grace knew exactly what she meant, and no, it wouldn’t really do to give one aunty a complete set and then just give her mother and the other aunties one each...

    “Give ’em something else, then,” said Don kindly. “There’s plenny of choice.”

    Yes, but it was all junk and they wouldn’t want it! Polly stared at him in dismay.

    Grace gave him a warning look. “Tell you what, Polly, I’ll pop over with you and give you a hand—Julie can manage here for a bit, the rush is over. Now, you’ll want something nice, but not too dear, it has to balance the tea-towels, doesn’t it?”

    “Mm,” said Polly gratefully. “Thanks, Grace.”

    “That’s all right, dear!” Grace bustled off to speak to Julie.

    “Hey, you sure you want to?” said Don in a lowered voice.

    “Yes. I—I can’t think— I mean, a set of tea-towels might not cost all that much, but—”

    “Yeah, okay, calm down. Grace’ll see you right.”

    “Mm.” Belatedly it dawned. “You don’t have to come, Don!” she added quickly.

    “Rats. Wanna go over to ole Vern’s, don’tcha?”

    “Yes, but—”

    “All right, then.”

    It seemed to be settled. Limply Polly let Grace and Don bustle her back to the souvenir shop.

    Coral Kenny was only too thrilled to sell her the complete set of tea-towels for her Aunty Jan, and, since it was a special present, to give her a second plastic carrier bag especially for them. She and Grace between them competently sorted out a variety of nice little native wood boxes and bowls and nice little real pottery mugs for her other relations—not those souvenir ones, Don, don't be silly! As he held up a white china mug decorated with a brown tiki, and the mystic rune “Made in China” on its bottom.

    “Brown tikis?” said Polly weakly.

    “You don’t want that stuff, dear,” Coral told her kindly.

    “We’re always short of mugs at home, though,” said Polly, eyeing it wistfully.

    “Those are only for the tourists,” Grace explained dismissively.

    “Not a bad price, though,” Don discovered. “Think I’ll buy one ta, Coral: that place I’m in was supposed to be half-furnished but the half didn’t include any crockery.”

    Coral sniffed, and she and Grace exchanged glances.

    “Yeah, all right, don’t say it,” he said heavily. “Serves me right for taking one of Miser Ron’s dumps.”

    “Ooh, help, is it?” gasped Polly.

    “Yeah,” he admitted wryly.

    He and the two Taupo shopkeepers watched tolerantly as Lady Carrano clapped her hand over her mouth, failed to control herself and collapsed in giggles.

    “Better than breaking down and crying, poor thing,” allowed Grace, waving them off from Coral’s doorstep.

    “Yes, it was touch and go there, for a minute,” said Coral with a little sigh.

    “Mm. Well, he was a lot older than her, you know, Coral.”

    “Yes, but you know. It would still have been a shock.”

    Grace was herself a widow. She sighed. “Yeah. It always is... No, well, no comparison, of course!” she said on a brighter note, pulling herself together. “I mean, it was a terrible shock when Roger was killed in that awful accident, but I was so much younger... You’re more resilient at that age—you know.”

    Mm. Added to which, she was well rid of him, Coral Kenny recognised drily. Roger Hutton had been completely hopeless as a husband: couldn’t hold down a job for more than two minutes, spent all his weekends on that motorbike of his that had eventually got him killed, left everything to do with the house and their kiddy, Mandy, up to her—not that he was the only one to do that, by no means! But good Heavens, tied to the house with a toddler and not knowing if he was gonna turn up with the announcement that he’d given away yet another job—! Well, there wasn’t much choice round here, never had been, but they always needed men in the forestry, and he’d been hefty enough. He had tried it—yes. Too much like hard work. You couldn’t say so, of course, but it must have been a blessed relief when he died.

    Grace was gazing vacantly down the road in the direction in which Polly and Don McLeod had vanished. After a bit she said in a lowered voice: “Coral, you don’t suppose her and Don...?”

    Coral gave one of her sniffs. “I dare say it might amount to a fling, Grace. Goodness knows I’d be the last to speak ill of the poor woman, with her husband just gone, but Jan Harper reckons she is that sort.”

    “Um, yes. Well, Janet Barber had some stories...”

    “You don’t want to listen to her, dear. No, well, I do know Jan quite well, of course, now that my Neil’s married to Pete’s granddaughter.”

    “Yes, of course,” Grace agreed.

    “But in my opinion, it won’t go further than that.”

    “He’s a nice man, though, Coral.”

    Coral gave her a tolerant look. “Yes, but Polly’s got a doctorate, she teaches at one of the universities up in Auckland.”

    Grace swallowed. Don McLeod was a lovely guy, but—well, you couldn’t call him slow. Quite intelligent, really. But...

    Coral pounced. “Well, who was she with today?”

    “Uh—oh, earlier on! I dunno who they were, exactly, I think one of them’s staying on the good side of the lake, he’s a friend of the Briggses. Livia Briggs was in Graceland just the other day—she’s starting to look quite frail. I thought she was only in her sixties, but Janet was saying she’s actually in her seventies.”

    Ignoring this significant piece of intel for the nonce, Coral replied: “That’s right, that’ll be the Fanshaws’ place, they’re always letting it—dunno why they bought it, they’re never here—and the other one, he’s English, staying at the ecolodge. Well dressed, did you notice? –Casual clothes, of course. Very well-spoken.”

    People who came into Graceland always wanted morning or afternoon tea, or lunch, it wasn’t a question of having to make a sale, so Grace wasn’t used to having to size up her customers’ socio-economic status the way Coral was. She nodded respectfully.

    “He’s very intelligent, I’d say,” Coral added. “But Polly pretty much flattened him.”

    “What did she say?” she gasped.

    Coral’s shrewd and rather beady eyes narrowed.  “It’s not so much what she says, dear, it’s the way she says it.”

    “Yes,” said Grace sadly. “I see.”

    “So you can tell that Janet Barber, next time she’s in Graceland,” Coral concluded with a certain sparkle in her eye, “that Polly’s not gonna take up permanently with Don McLeod, however many times he flies her down in his helicopter!”

    Pete’s conclusion was pretty much the same. He was sitting on the jetty at the end of the Rewarewa Trail when Polly got back, so he was well placed to observe that the bloke she come back with wasn’t the bloke she set out with. The more so as Don came over and sat down beside him. He said “Gidday, Pete,” so Pete obligingly acknowledged: “Don.”

    Then there was a bit of a silence.

    Finally Pete drawled: “Rescued her from that tit of a lawyer from the Big Smoke, didja?”

    “Yes,” replied Don, unmoved. “Likewise that tit of a Pom what’s staying at the ecolodge.”

    “Eh?

    “Tall joker. Fancy shoes. Bob Charles shirt only not yer actual Bob Charles, if you take me meaning.”

    “Aw—him. Uh—hang on: ya mean there was two of ’em?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Where was this?”

    “Graceland.”

    Pete gulped, Don wasn’t sorry to see.

    “Yeah,” he said on an extra-kind note. “See, she was sitting there trying to make herself believe that that really was Mrs Miser on the far side of the room having an actual costs-money afternoon tea and them two ponces were yakking their heads off and ignoring her.”

    “You can drop the red herrings, ta, Don, Miser Ron and the missus have got relations staying.”

    “That’s right,” he agreed unemotionally. “So I rescued ’er, see?”

    “Uh—yeah. Well, good on ya,” he said with an effort. “So how’d ya shake them off?”

    Don looked wry. “I didn’t: she did. Sent ’em off to the Kiwi one’s place to look up the address of some land agent and look at a house the Brit might be interested in. Didn’t get whether it was to rent or buy, Pete.”

    Managing to ignore this second red herring, Pete replied: “Right. Goddit. So then what?”

    “Took ’er back to Coral Kenny’s dump, wanted more tea-towels for the aunty what collects them—you sure you wanna hear this, Pete?”

    “Just get on with it!”

    Don shrugged slightly. “Grace come with us. Well, Polly was starting to look a bit upset—something about the mum and the other aunties ’ud get their noses out of joint if she give the aunty that collects them a whole set of the bloody things, so she hadda choose something that cost about the same for the others. Clear?”

    “Yep,” replied Pete insouciantly.

    Don had to swallow, but continued valiantly: “Funnily enough Coral seemed real keen to sell her even more junk, so they sorted out the right stuff for her. Pottery. Dinkum rimu bowls for putting nothing in. Geddit?”

    “Yeah. Um, she seem interested in any of it, Don?” he asked cautiously.

    Don made a face. “No. Liked me tiki mug, though.”

    “This be a heavy white thing with a flamin’ brown tiki on it, made in—”

    “—China. Yeah. Don’t tell me Jan’s giving that sorta crap houseroom!”

    “No, Libby loves the bloody things, Bob’s bought her a whole set. She had one to start off with, I think—” He stopped, as Don was overcome by terrible sniggers. “Yeah, well, Polly and Libby get on real well,” he conceded. “Both pretty bright, ya see. Got degrees and all that.”

    “Yeah, okay, Pete, don’t rub it in with a bludgeon,” said Don weakly.

    Pete hadn’t been meaning to, actually. Not at that particular point. “Was that it, then?”

    “Eh? Aw—no. Real object of the exercise was, she wanted to get on over to see ole Vern Reilly. So we done that. Mrs looked at us like we was something the cat dragged in—”

    “Always does. You could of been Royalty and she’d of done it,” he put in swiftly.

    Don gave him a dry look. “Polly Carrano pretty much is, out here, isn’t she? But ole Vern was real pleased to see her. Took us out to look as ’is blessed greenhouse. You know that you could train cucumbers up poles like flaming vines?”

    “Yes, the permaculture nuts next-door’ve had ’em growing up trees for years.”

    Don raised his eyebrows slightly. “Right. Ya learn something new every day.”

    He’d stopped, so Pete said on a weak note: “And that was it, was it? Vern’s cucumbers?”

    “Yep. Then we come back here.”

    He’d stopped again. Pete glared.

    “I’d say,” said Don slowly, “that Janet pretty well summed it up, really.”

    “Juh— Janet Barber? That moo?” cried Pete indignantly.

    “Yeah. Said: ‘Of course I’m not one to gossip—’”

    “What? The cow’s the biggest gossip in Taupo!” he shouted.

    Don let the echoes ring for a bit.

    “Um, well, after Mrs Miser,” said Pete weakly.

    “Doesn’t mean she hadda be wrong, though, eh? She said: ‘Of course I’m not one to gossip’”—Pete glared but let him get away with it—“‘but poor Polly has got a history of taking up with good-looking men, but there’s never anything in it. And for all his’—um, don’t think I've got her actual words quite right, here—”

    “Just get on with it!” shouted Pete.

    “She said something about that manner of Jake’s being just on the surface—don’t ask me what manner she meant—and underneath of course he was a very shrewd businessman but very intelligent as well. And, uh—well, she’s mealy-mouthed as all get-out, ya know that, Pete—but what she meant was, Polly likes them bloody bright, and bloody macho with it.”

    Pete swallowed.

    “And funnily enough,” said Don McLeod very wryly indeed, “I concluded I wasn’t up to it. Ta all the same.”

    Pete swallowed hard. “No.”

    Silence reigned. Both men stared at the lake.

    “You’re one with the vast majority then,” Pete allowed.

    “Yeah. Pity, really.” He shrugged. “She is very pretty, and we’re about the same age. And you were right about her not wanting a fancy life, too: she told ole Vern she can’t wait to get shot of that bloody house of Carrano’s. But— Nah. Sort that’s too bright for her own good.”

    Yeah, that was what the vast majority concluded, all right. Pete just nodded.

Next chapter:

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