Happy New Year

5

Happy New Year

    Polly had spotted Merri Ferguson at the furthest point of the Rewarewa Trail, where it debouched onto the shore by the jetty near Pete and Jan’s little house. She wasn’t just admiring the lake, she was looking round her in what seemed to be a bewildered way... Oops, yes: now she was looking at a piece of paper, it’d be that blimming map Andrew had printed up for the guests, smothered in unnecessary little symbols, and the explanations of the little symbols, and extra instructions, and logos. Theirs, Crafts on Taupo Shores’, which was Sean and Molly Jackson’s craft shop on the property—yes, he had charged them a “nominal sum” for putting it in, Jan had admitted limply—plus the neighbouring Taupo Organic Produce’s—a more than nominal sum—and, even though it was a fair way off, further along the shore, Fern Gully Ecolodge’s. Much more than nominal, but with what they were pulling in, even with the current global financial crisis, they could afford it. Added to which it meant they didn’t have to supply their guests who wanted to walk the trail with a separate map, eh? Of course the result was that the map was completely incomprehensible to all but the most hardened trampers—and Merri certainly didn’t look like one of those!

    So Polly went over to her. “Hi.”

    “Oh, hi, Polly!” she replied in patent relief, so that was all right. “Um, you’ll think I’m dumb, but is this the end of the trail?”

    “Yes. You’re not dumb, no-one can follow that stupid map. There’s a sign that says ‘Rewarewa Trail ends’, but it’s back there a bit, nicely overhung by a very fast-growing shrub.”

    “I see,” she said limply. “Um, so that’s how you pronounce it?” she added, going pink.

    “Ray-wa-ray-wa, mm. More or less,” said Polly, sitting down on the edge of the jetty. “Siddown, Merri. Rewarewa in Maori, actually.”

    “Gosh!” Merri scrambled to a sitting position beside her. “That’s better,” she admitted with a sigh. “—That sounded quite different.”

    “Uh-huh. Taupo.”—Merri gulped.—“Maori.” She looked at her wryly.

    “I see,” Merri conceded, biting her lip.

    “Mm. The Anglophone tongue can’t cope too well with Polynesian vowels---and certainly the early settlers don’t seem to have tried. Well, no-one did, up until the generation that started learning a bit of Maori at school: that wouldn’t have been until well into the 1970s, and it was quite a bit after that that it really got going. And to make it worse, the New Zealand accent is largely a compound of the worst features of the Cockney and Scottish accents.” She looked at her sideways. Merri was merely looking interested. “Not ‘worst’, linguistically speaking, of course. Most distinctive, perhaps. Though my academic colleagues would doubtless dispute that usage, too. Le signe est aléatoire, et tout et tout. But don’t quote me, I’m only a statistical linguist.” She shrugged slightly.

    “Oh!” cried Merri, her plump cheeks flushing brightly. “Are you—I mean, I don’t know her full name, but—you’re not P.M. Mitchell, are you?”

    Polly gulped. “Um, yeah,” she muttered.

    “I’m so glad to meet you! I really enjoyed your Poetic Craft.”

    “Um, thanks, Merri. The title wasn’t my idea, it was the publisher’s. I was initially gonna send it to the Presses universitaires, I was just gonna call it Analyse linguistique et analyse poétique, um, like a companion piece to my first book.”

    “Of course! Analyse linguistique et analyse littéraire: I prescribe it for all my students, and woe betide them if they can’t read it in the original!” said the mild-looking Merri militantly.

    Weakly Polly replied: “Do you? Um, good.”

    “But Poetic Craft is a nice title,” she added kindly.

    “Um, thanks. Well, if you discount the subtitle: Instinct or Art in the Poetic Form, A Statistical Approach,” Polly conceded weakly. “It was a friend’s idea to offer it to that press; he’s at Oxford. And, um, well, it does take a much narrower view than my first book, of course. All the statisticians pounced on it because nothing was statistically significant, naturally,” she ended heavily.

    “And all the literature types pounced on it because it wasn’t completely flowery and totally subjective!” Merri agreed with feeling.

    ‘Mm.” Polly eyed her cautiously. “How many children had Lady Macbeth?”

    “Exactly!” she gasped, breaking down in giggles. “Um,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, “I was hoping to meet you when I came out for my interview, but you weren’t on the panel.”

    Oh, cripes. Polly bit her lip. “You’re Miranda Ferguson, then.”

    “Yes, but I’ve always been called Merri. But you know what it is when you write your thesis: they make you use your full name. And, um, then they wanted to publish it, and they just sort of went ahead. So I thought I’d better go on using it, professionally.”

    What she meant was, she hadn’t stood up to them. “Yes, ’course. I was meant to be on your interview panel, actually, but I couldn’t manage it: my mother was pretty sick, she’s nearly ninety. But she came through, thank goodness.”

    “Good.”

    “Anyway, you got it! Congratulations.” But why had she given up her London job in favour of the obscure Sir George Grey University? “Um, but Sir George Grey’s in North Auckland, it’s pretty remote, you know.”

    At this very mild hint Merri Ferguson burst into explanation. “Yes, I was really surprised at how long it took to get there from the airport. Actually, my husband died four years back and there wasn’t anything to keep me in England any more, really. Well, Jerry, our son, is in Denmark: he’s married to a nice Danish girl. They’re both professional people, they’ve got their own lives to lead—he’s a mechanical engineer and Trine’s a marine biologist. And I really wanted to get back to this side of the world, but there were no jobs going in Australia—and Mum and Dad are both gone, now, there’s no-one really close there, now, though I keep in touch with the cousins, of course.”

    Mm, she was the type that would. Presumably if they’d been at the other side of the world they’d wouldn’t all have turned up for her husband’s funeral; maybe she'd have revised her ideas about them if they had? But on the whole, no, Polly didn’t think so. Intelligent but very, very nice with it. Too nice, really. Blow.

    “So when I read the job ad, I jumped at it!” Merri was finishing with her pleasant smile. “I knew you were there, of course.”

    “Eh? Oh—yeah. I’m not teaching any more. Research Fellow. But I’ve finished my last project, I’m thinking of giving it away this year, actually.”

    Merri’s face fell. “Oh. I was hoping you might like to take a few classes—just with the Masters students, of course!”

    And possibly just one or two with the Third Years—yeah, heard that one before. Then before you could turn round your bloody schedule was full and you were spending half your life driving up to Sir George Grey University, which even if you did live to Hell and gone at Pohutukawa Bay, was still about an hour’s drive on the motorway. Alternatively, you could lurk in your very small bach on the shore of Carter’s Inlet, only five minutes or so by boat from the said new foundation on the other side of said inlet. Never seeing your husband or kids because the place was far too far from the city, the rival and much older-established university that both Johnny and Katie Maureen had chosen, and before that, their schools. Well, Merri wouldn’t have that problem. And she was pretty obviously the sort of chatty person that could make friends anywhere and settle in easily. Once upon a time Polly would have said that she was, too. Now she wasn’t so sure.

    “Um, a lot of it’ll be administration, you know,” she said cautiously to the new Professor Ferguson.

    Merri assured her she was looking forward to it! Mm—politic, yes. But actually it looked like the truth.

    “What in Hell went wrong?” asked Jan as Polly came and sat down in the kitchen. “We thought it looked as if the two of you were getting on like a house on fire.”

    “Peering from behind yer kitchen blind an’ all as you were—yes.”

    “Found out she’s a nice, ordinary, boring little dame?” suggested Pete.

    Polly raised her eyebrows very slightly. “Got it in one, Pete. Have a gorilla.”

    “Ta. I’ll have two. –What the Hell has happened to ’is Havanas, come to think of it?”

    “Pete!” shouted Jan, turning purple.

    “Um, no, it’s okay, Jan. Nothing’s happened to them, Pete, they’ll still be sitting in that bloody great Spanish humidor he blackmailed out of that Argentinean guy that time. The boys don’t smoke, thank God. I’ll ring Daph and ask her to send them down, if you like.”

    “Righto, ta. Know the number, do ya?”

    “Um, I’m not sure of the prefix, from here.”

    “He’ll get the phone book,” sighed Jan.

    She was right: he did. So Polly rang Daph in Pohutukawa Bay. After a slight diversion onto the precise significance of the expression “humidor” she grasped it and agreed to post them to— No, okay, if Polly said so, courier. Um, how did you do that, Polly?

    “There,” she said, finally hanging up.

    “Yeah, I think she might of got it,” agreed Pete cheerfully. “—Come on, Jan, love, she’s got the dough!”

    Not saying she was thinking seriously of giving it all to Oxfam, Polly sat down again. “Mm. As a matter of fact it turns out that Merri’s actually Miranda Ferguson, that I was supposed to help interview back when Mum had that bad turn—um, I might not’ve mentioned her, Jan.”

    “Let me just get this straight. She’s one of your linguistics types? Not a literary bod?” croaked Jan.

    Her very own idiolect, it must’ve rubbed off! Polly smiled. “That’s right.”

    “Doesn’t mean she has to have anything in common with the woman,” put in Pete firmly.

    “No,” Polly agreed gratefully.

    “Rubbish!” cried Jan crossly. “About the same age, the same subject, what’s wrong with her?”

    “She’s too nice.”

    Silence reigned in Jan’s warm kitchen. Even Pete didn’t say “See?”

    Finally Polly said: “Can I do anything? Chop something for lunch?”

    “Uh—what was I gonna have?” Jan asked herself distractedly.

    “Sandwiches,” said Pete. “There’ll be a huge blow-out dinner tonight, love.”

    “Oh, God: New Year’s Eve, I’d forgotten,” she groaned.

    “Don’t go,” said Polly.

    “Jayne’ll be upset if we don’t, Polly. I mean, you ask your old dad and his de facto to a New Year’s Eve rave-up with the ghastliest crowd ever assembled under one roof—”

    “Hang on!” Pete objected. “There was that time—”

    “Don’t quote Bob’s ginger-headed dame at me again, Pete, I can’t take it!” she cried.

    “Canadian. Ginger-headed dame,” Pete explained clearly to Polly.

    “NO!” shouted Jan.

    “Uh—aw, no. That was the second one, eh? Yeah, this other was, uh—American?”

    “Yes. Seattle,” sighed Jan.

    “Oh, yes,” Polly remembered. “You’ve told me about her before.”

    “Have I? I dare say,” said Jan heavily.

    “Um, both of you, actually.”

    Promptly Pete went into a spluttering fit.

    “Anyway,” said Polly quickly, “I’m sure Jayne will understand if you don’t go tonight, Jan. What are Libby and Bob doing?”

    “Turning up to the New Year’s rave-up: they work there, Polly!”

    “Don’t think that lot’d notice if they didn’t, mind you,” noted Pete fairly. “No, well, sandwiches, then. You sit there, lovey: me an’ Polly’ll get them.”

    “Go on, then.” Belatedly Jan recollected that Lady Carrano was their guest. “Um, thanks, Polly,” she said weakly.

    Phew! At least she was off the topic of Merri Ferguson. “Da nada,” said Polly cheerfully. “Sliced wholemeal, Pete?”

    “Yeah, go on, torture me.”

    “I’ll let you choose the filling,” she said kindly.

    He brightened. “Know what I’d just fancy?”

    “I’m trying not to imagine it!”

    So they had Pete’s idea of a light sandwich snack. Slabs of cold lamb, Jan didn’t remind him that she’d been saving that for a proper lunch, so Polly didn’t say anything either, with real homemade tree-tomato chutney.

    “Tree-tomato,” Pete pointed out on a firm note.

    “Yep,” Polly agreed.

    “Wouldja believe—”

    Of course she would. They were all getting on, these days. But she let him tell it, anyway. There was a lot of it but it amounted to the current generation’s not even recognising the name tree-tomato. Insisted on calling ’em tamarillos. The permaculture nuts’ kids had even got Hugh and Bettany Throgmorton believing that was their real name!

    Not pointing out that (a) it was, the New Zealand Fruit Marketing Board or whatever they were had officially made up the name when it had dawned that on the other side of the world they were exoteek gourmet fruits, not strong-tasting, iron-stuffed things that fell off your grandma’s tree; or that (b) the Throgmortons were both English; or, indeed, that (c) “tamarillo” had also been Jake’s anathema—red rag to a bull—Polly just nodded kindly.

    “Humouring me fer me own good, eh?” Pete ended with a silly grin. “All right, I’ll shut up!”

    See? You couldn’t define Pete, but let’s just say he was the complete opposite of nice Merri Ferguson and all the other nice, quite bright people that you were supposed to get along well with because you had so much in common with them.

    Okay, she’d been very lucky to find Jake: she’d always known that. Not that, if you looked at it objectively, they’d had all that much in common, either. Both agin the government, of whatever political persuasion, but he loathed them because he was a dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur, and she loathed them because she was a red-hot socialist. Attraction of opposites? Maybe. Same sort of sense of humour. Same intolerance of pseuds—though he’d let it show more. Same lack of illusions? Maybe, again.

    “Wash it down with a lager, Pete?” she suggested helpfully.

    “Yer talked me into it!”

    “Yeah, go on. It’ll be a precaution against Andrew’s idea of something to toast the New Year with,” Jan conceded.

    Polly fetched them from the fridge. “Us older people could all get very tired and slope off before the toasts.”

    Pete and Jan exchanged guilty looks.

    “This one here has to take care of herself, ya know,” Pete allowed, patting Jan’s hand.

    Promptly Polly agreed: “And I’m a grieving widow. Right! Ten-thirty be too early?”

    “Definitely not,” Jan admitted, trying not to laugh.

    “Good. Everybody synchronise yer watches!” ordered Pete.

    Okay, why not? They synchronised their watches.

    “Now we just gotta decide what video to watch when we get back,” he concluded through a giant mouthful of lamb and tree-tomato chutney sandwich.

    “The Rocky Horror Show,” said Polly immediately.

    “There’s some good in her, ya know,” he advised the ambient air. “Nah—lent it to young David, bugger it. Forgot to get it back off ’im. Next?”

    Jan licked her lips—not lamb with tree-tomato chutney. “Pretty Wo—”

    “NO!” they howled.

     “All right, no,” she conceded, wincing. “Um... I’m brain dead.”

    “You must be!” noted Polly. “On New Year’s Eve? Um... You Only Live Twice?”

    “Don’t think we’ve got that one,” Pete admitted, scratching his head.

    “It’s the one set in Japan.”

    “Um, no. I had a very fuzzy tape of it, but it jammed in the ruddy player. Had to throw the whole thing out,” said Jan sadly.

    “Dr No’s nobbad,” offered Pete.

    “It’s not New Year’s Eve good, though,” Polly objected.

    “Nah, yer right.”

    “Think of some really good trash!” Jan urged their guest.

    “I have!”

    Silence.

    “Have you got Space Cowboys?” Polly ventured.

    “No.”

    “Is it trash?” Pete asked with friendly interest.

    “Well, it’s not high art, Pete! It’s got Tommy Lee Jones and Clint Eastwood in it! Oh, yeah: and James Garner—Maverick to you. Um, I’ve just remembered: Donald Sutherland’s in it, too,” Polly realised, gulping.

    “In that case,” said Jan grimly, “we won’t dash down and see if Blockbuster’s got it. –Or Taupo Independent Video Hire, before you start.”

    “Wasn’t gonna,” replied Pete virtuously. “Um, well, my only other suggestion’d be Terminator 2, buh—”

    “YES!” cried Polly.

    He blinked slightly, but made a quick recover. “Righto, then. Why not?”

    “Goody, I haven’t seen it for ages!” she said gleefully.

    “Jake musta liked it, surely?” Pete croaked, lowering his can.

    “Yes, but other things intervened, Pete. Business trips to the other side of the world. Business papers that hadda be read. International phone calls because over there the wankers would be at work, but not pulling their fingers ou—”

    “We geddit!” he said quickly.

    She sighed. “Yeah... And Johnny and Katie Maureen don’t like it.”

    Pete looked in a startled way at his helpmeet but Jan almost managed to give the impression she didn’t see him. “Um, but Davey does?” she asked limply.

    “I thought he did, Jan, but when he decided to take the farm on I asked him if he wanted to take any of the videos and DVDs but he only wanted that thing about the bus, of our lot. –I bought it because I quite like Sandra Bullock. Only it’s really dumb, she’s wasted in it.”

    “Um, maybe he thought you and ’is dad might wanna hang on to the really good ones—” began Pete.

    “No. I generously offered him Terminator 2—well, I knew we could copy Daph and Tim Green’s, you see—but he said it was a bit old-fashioned and the special effects weren’t that good, really. –Well, we did say I haven’t got much in common with the three of them,” she reminded them.

    “Eh?” croaked Pete.

    “Um, maybe you weren’t there, Pete, I might’ve just said it to Jan. But it’s true, I’m afraid. I love them, but I can’t talk to them. And we don’t even laugh at the same jokes...”

    “Jake was a great one for ’is joke,” Pete agreed glumly.

    Silence fell.

    Eventually Jan took a deep breath.

    “Don’t be bracing,” warned Polly quickly.

    “Wasn’t gonna be. Just thought I’d get another round in.”

    “Good.”

    “Yeah,” said Pete in relief. “Good. –Hey, we saw Terminator 1 a bit back. Now, it creaks, if ya like!”

    “Not a classic,” Polly agreed.

    “Nup. –Only two sequels that ever been real classics, in my opinion,” he said thoughtfully.

    Bugger, was Pete gonna reveal he had feet of clay after all. “Yes?” she said cautiously.

    “Terminator 2, of course. And Star Trek the Next—”

    “—Generation!” cried Polly. “YAY!”

    “I’m with you,” said Jan, sitting down limply and shoving the beers at them, “but that much?”

    “That much!” Polly agreed fervently.

    “Them types at the ecolodge,” Pete deduced.

    “Yes, quite a microcosm,” Polly elaborated. Pete obviously didn’t get that, but clearly Jan did: she was wincing but nodding. Yes, well, there you were. Representative sample, pretty much, eh? Well, counting the ones at Christmas as well as the current lot of shockers, of course, but—yeah. Representative sample.

    The ecolodge’s lovely main lounge was seething again. The crowd was thicker than at Christmas, no pun intended, that didn’t help. The bunkhousers—a new lot—had all been warmly invited for New Year’s dinner and drinks, and this time they’d all accepted. Four male students of the slightly hairy, backpacker variety, these ones were merely from the South Island. Lots of hairy, knobbly knees in evidence but they’d made a real effort, all their shorts and tees were clean. Ugly but clean. Two female clerks from Auckland, done up to the nines in floaty tunic things over non-matching tights or very tight pants, loads of dangling bling, and glowing make-up, especially around the eyes, scaring the bejasus out of the boys. They were looking relieved to be somewhere civilised, a change from looking, according to Libby, limply dismayed by the surroundings they’d found themselves in. Four of the middle-aged, keen-tramper type. Mixed doubles, but all safari-shirted and be-jeaned, too right. And two defiantly butch girls from Wellington, also clerks but as unlike the other two as could possibly be imagined. The boys were clearly terrified of them, too, only not as much as they were of the two lipsticked hetero ones.

    “Is it always like this?” asked Merri.

    “What?” bellowed Polly. The decibel level was at painful point, all the overseas ones were yelling their heads off: unlike the Christmas lot, they hadn’t hesitated to take advantage of the open bar.

    “Is it always like this?”

    “YES!”

    Merri gulped.

    “It’s NEW YEAR’S!” she bellowed.

    Merri nodded weakly.

    Polly could have said: “But sometimes it’s outside, they have a barbecue instead,” but she didn’t bother. Because while being outside did mean that some of Pete’s and Jan’s friends could be asked, it didn’t mean, contrary to what one might suppose, that the decibel level would be any less.

    Fortunately Pete came up at that moment and, taking Merri’s elbow in a friendly way—the poor woman jumped—said loudly: “Come on, love, lemme get you something decent to drink,” and led her away. Possibly technically forced a way through the throng with her.

    Polly fought her way back to Jan’s side. “Did you sic him onto her?”

    “Yes! Thought you might say something blighting!” she cried.

    “Ta!” she bellowed.

    Jan just nodded.

    The decibel level rose, and the drinks sank. Over by the Christmas tree the boys from the bunkhouse, who’d imbibed too much fizzy, acid EnZed white far too fast, had discovered a box of squeakers and hooters—some of the curled-up, paper variety with a small, lurid feather on the tip, some of the cone-shaped, cardboard variety with a small plastic mouthpiece—and were now hooting and squeaking ecstatically. Over by the French windows the two lipsticked girl clerks had buttonholed Mark Dignam and, batting the eyelashes terrifically, were asking him what he did. Polly peered. Right, those weren’t just glasses of Coke in their hands, or she, Polly Maureen Mitchell Carrano, was a Dutchman.

    “Rum an’ Coke!” bellowed Jan in her ear.

    “Yeah!”

    The decibel level rose—though some might have said it couldn’t possibly—and yet more drinks were sunk. Christina Nordquist and the two butch girls were now deep in earnest confabulation. Polly eyed them nervously.

    “We’ve never actually had a Lesbian cat-fight at the ecolodge,” said Jan in her ear.

    She jumped. “I was wondering.”

    “Eh?”

    “I was wondering!” she screamed

    Jan nodded hard.

    They watched in mingled fascination and trepidation...

    More drinks were sunk. Andrew changed the CD. Hell’s teeth: Vangelis? Goddawful, whatever it was. Cosy Patsy Weinberg and Rhonda Furbank had buttonholed one of the middle-aged, keen-tramper couples from the bunkhouse. What in God’s name could they all be talking about? Well, women like Mrs Weinberg and Mrs Furbank could rattle on about nothing forever, but...

    “Go and find out!” boomed Jan in Polly’s ear.

    “All right, but whaddaya bet?” she cried.

    “Grandchildren!”

    What? Bull-shit! Polly made a rude noise, and fought her way over to them.

    Jan just waited, sipping her tumblerful of Teacher’s to while away the time...

    Polly was back, scowling. Jan eyed her mockingly.

    Polly stuck her tongue out at her. “Grandchildren!” she shouted sourly.

    Jan just nodded mildly.

    The CD was changed yet again. Choice selection of Andrew Lloyd Webber hits. Jesus! Polly gave up, yelled in Jan’s ear: “Go and hide in the kitchen! I’m going outside!” and fought her way over to the front door.

    Phew! That was better. Never mind it was technically an inside door, that hunk of kauri Pete had nicked was good and solid. She sat down on the verandah steps.

    Unfortunately after about five blissful minutes’ solitude the door opened. Oh, shit!

    Mark Dignam came and sat down beside her looking entirely neutral. All right, she wasn’t gonna be the first to speak! Polly glared grimly at the gravelled sweep.

    He sipped his drink slowly. Out of the corner of her eye Polly could see it was in a whisky tumbler, but it was colourless and slightly fizzy... Soda water? Surely the man couldn’t be drinking— Nah, must be a gin and tonic. No ice, typical Pom, that’d be it.

    Finally he drawled: “What is this curious gravel?”

    She jumped slightly. “Curious gravel.”

    “No, truly?”

    “Road metal,” said Polly heavily.

    “Thank you. It’s been nagging at me.”

    “It’s endemic to New Zealand, they think it’s what gravel is!” she said loudly and crossly. “And to get even more technical, it’s crushed greywacke! Satisfied?”

    “Yes. Thank you very much.”

    Silence again. Well, relative silence, the door wasn’t entirely soundproof. And it was getting dark, the crickets were starting to chirp.

    “Crickets!” he said with a startled laugh.

    Polly jumped sharply. “Uh—yeah.”

    “So what are the ones that sing during the day?”

    “What?”

    Mark swallowed. Was the woman being deliberately annoying or was she genuinely blank? “The insects that sing incessantly during the day. Not—not a chirping sound, like the crickets. More of a—a zinging sound?”

    Oh, good grief! “Cicadas,” she said limply. “Sorry, I suppose I’m just so used to them. You hear them all the time in summer.”

    “But only in the country, surely?” he said with a nice, diplo smile.

    Flatly Polly replied: “No. All over the suburbs.”

    “I see,” he said weakly. “I never realized before how urbanised I am.”

    “Yeah, well, it’s a different lifestyle here to what you’d be used to.”

    “Mm. –Tell me, has dinner been put back in order for us to drink ourselves silly until the witching hour?”

    “Pretty much, yeah, I’d say so. Either that or there’s been a disaster in the kitchen. But as I don’t work here,” she added crossly, “I’m not gonna go and find out!”

    “I never for a moment imagined you did,” he murmured.

    Silence again. Polly was not gonna be the first to break it; why didn’t the man just push off?

    “Ah... I gather from Merri Ferguson that you’re going to be colleagues, this academic year?” he murmured.

    “If I stay on, yes.”

    “Mm. The university is in North Auckland, is that right?”

    “Yes, in Puriri County. A long way north of the city.”

    “Mm: Merri described the area in ecstatic terms.”

    Polly blinked. When had the woman had her interview, for God’s sake? Oh—back in May, right: they had had a couple of weeks of glorious blue weather, yeah, before the rain set in and North Auckland resumed its normal look: dull grey sky over dank, dull green fields and low, dark, unlovely scrub. It was all pretty flat around that area—well, on an inlet, far enough north to have mangroves but not far enough towards the tropics for them to grow much more than three feet high. Not exciting. And the green of mangroves was as dull a shade as you could possibly imagine. But with the tide in, and on a fine blue day, yes, Carter’s Inlet could look good. And Sir George Grey University’s powers-that-be had landscaped the grounds with loads of manuka cultivars—though they probably hadn’t been in bloom at that time of year—and loads of EnZed flax cultivars that fifty years back no-one had ever heard of. Lightish red striped ones, very dark red striped ones, dark green and yellow striped ones... A nightmare of fake native flora, in fact. Plus and very artistic large boulders, of course. Not granite, no. Hunks of greywacke, would be her bet. From the same place as they quarried the gravel—yep.

    “It can look quite pretty on a fine day with the tide in. But it’s all very flat round there, and the mangroves can be pretty depressing in the rain.”

    “Mangroves?” he said with a startled laugh.

    Oh, God, Poms! “Yes. Only about three foot high. Sub-tropical.” Polly got up. “’Scuse me, maybe I’d better see if something has gone wrong in the kitchen.”

    Mark watched limply as she walked off quickly round the corner of the building. Damn! What the Hell had he said?

    At last the feast was set and the guests were able to stagger into the restaurant and have it. Place cards, again. Oh, thank God! They’d put her between Pete and Bob. Polly sat down with a sigh of relief.

    Jayne and Libby were both serving. “You are gonna come and sit down and eat, are you, Jayne?” she asked.

    “Yes, of course, as soon as everyone’s got their starters!” she beamed.

    Oh, heck, avocado with shrimps—no, prawns, Jayne would probably call them, she’d grown up in Australia, of course. “Jayne,” she croaked, swallowing, “I—I’m not very fond of prawns, I’m afraid.”

    “What she means is,” said Pete briskly, “the mere idea of seafood in summer makes ’er wanna throw up, and don’t tell us about refrigeration, Jayne, lovey, if a person can’t face it she just can’t face it. And I’ll skip it meself, ta, and that goes for Jan, as well.”

    Poor Jayne’s lovely oval face had fallen ten feet. “But we always used to have prawns at Christmas and New Year’s, Dad!”

    Pete sniffed slightly. “Dare say. This isn’t Australia.”

    “No air conditioning,” put in Bob unexpectedly.

    “No, that’s right,” Polly agreed gratefully.

    “Um, look, there are some avocados left, so I'll just serve everybody—”

    Polly got up. “Don’t be mad, I’ll do it.”

    They watched limply as she marched off to the kitchen.

    “Used to cooking in her own house,” offered Pete at last.

    “Yes, I suppose she is,” Jayne admitted.

    He eyed her platter drily. “Don’t think she’ll be putting mayonnaise on them, though.”

    “Look, shut up, Pete,” sighed Jan. “I’m sorry, Jayne, dear: we should have warned you. It’s our generation, you see. We never even had a fridge until I was about ten.”

    “Yeah, and Polly grew up on a backblocks farm, see. Doubt if she’d ever even tasted seafood until she grew up,” said Pete thoughtfully.

    “Yeah, within living memory—just,” said Bob quickly. “Come on, Jayne, I’ll brave it.”

    “Bob, they’re perfectly good, I’ve only just taken them out of the fridge!”

    Bob just hated very, very cold avocado. “Yeah, ’course. They look corker.”

    Gratefully Jayne served him.

    Pete eyed him sardonically, but mercifully refrained from speech.

    Libby had been serving the bunkhousers at the big table, but she’d overheard it all—the ecolodge’s restaurant wasn’t very big. She followed Polly to the kitchen. “I’m not very fond of seafood either, to tell you the truth.”

    “Good. Fancy an avocado half with a plain vinaigrette?”

    She nodded thankfully. “Yes, I’d love one, thanks, Polly!”

    Not surprisingly, at the adjoining table Mark had also overheard the lot. Who the tactful person was who’d placed him between Merri and Christina, God knew. Sublime to the ridiculous, kind of thing. “I gather this is an Australian tradition?” he said to Merri.

    “Mm. We always have prawns at Christmas and New Year’s.”

    “It looks delicious,” he lied.

    Merri went very red. “I do know the English saying about months with an R in them, Mark!”

    Christina bent forward. “They have proper refrigeration in the kitchen, Merri: I have checked.”

    She had what? They looked at her in horror.

    Frowning, she said: “It all seems so ad hoc, I thought I had better check. But I can assure you it is most hygienic.”

    “Um, I think the ad hoc thing is the New Zealand style, really, Christina,” said Merri weakly. “Well, and Australian. Um, very free-and-easy.”

    “Sort of,” said Mark wryly, thinking of his stint in Canberra. True, the hail-fellow-well-met thing had characterised a large number of the Australians he’d met—at least the males—in many walks of life. On the other hand he’d encountered a goodly number who were anal control freaks. The more you penetrated into suburbia the more this characteristic became apparent, in the shaven lawns, the fiercely-trimmed standard roses, and the spotless driveways where no speck of grass nor weed dared to show its head. The females were even more so. Controlling and completely anal retentive. It wasn’t so apparent in the younger ones, but put them in a neat suburban bungalow, and wham! One of the secretaries at the Commission had made the mistake of renting a house in one of the suburbs round Canberra—well, possibly a satellite town, but it was all suburbia—and she’d been in tears because some damned neighbour woman had had a go at her over not positioning her rubbish bin correctly on the kerb. No kidding. This was once a week, for the rubbish collection, of course: the things were not allowed to remain out there all week. Another neighbour had got up a petition to have a street tree removed because it was dropping leaves on her driveway and staining the pavers. Not a gum tree, no—they did drop leaves and bark all the time—but no: something non-native and deciduous. Once a year, right? Right.

    “Um, I think Aussies are pretty free-and-easy, Mark,” objected Merri in surprise.

    He raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps you’ve never encountered the suburbs round Canberra, then, Merri. I’d describe them as hopelessly anal, myself.”

    Merri’s mouth opened silently in consternation and Christina, to Mark’s astonishment, coughed suddenly.

    “Yes, well, I think it was very wise of you to check, Christina,” he said nicely.

    “Yes. Better safe than sorry is the English expression, I think?”

    “Quite. And following that adage—” Mark pushed his plate of shrimp-filled avocado aside. That mayonnaise looked threatening, too.

    Christina’s eyes twinkled. “I think you are being over-particular in this instance. But I cannot blame you. I also was brought up with strict notions about the fruits of the sea. My mother is most particular about seafood and fish of any kind.”

    “Yes? Is your home by the sea?”

    Smiling, Christina proceeded to tell him a great deal about her home.

    Merri looked on in indignation. Honestly! She’d only said— Everybody said it! Everybody knew Aussies were very easy-going! What did he mean? All right, he was a horrid man, and very superior, and she’d been taken in by the good looks and the upper-class English manners. –Manners! Huh!

    It was table d’hôte, of course, but there was a vegetarian choice: a hot nutmeat loaf, the alternative for the carnivores being Apricot Chicken. Naturally there was a multiplicity of side dishes, most of these considerately vegetarian. Peas were in season at this time of year and the Schumachers were very glad to hear that these were organic, from Taupo Organic Produce. They had already made a foray next-door and been given a tour of the delightful grounds, unquote. The nut loaf was much appreciated, not only by them but also by the two butch girls from Wellington—the vegetarian-ness apparently going with the butch-ness just as it had thirty years back: Polly for one had had some Lesbian student friends who were dead ringers for these girls. Um... the four of them were at the same table. Was this deliberate segregation?

    “Bob,” she said cautiously, “are all the vegetarians at the same table on purpose?”

    Bob cleared his throat but didn’t have to explain anything, because his wife immediately broke down in a choking fit, nodding her untidy mop of dark brown curls madly.

    “Right: got it!” Polly admitted.

    “Andrew,” he said redundantly.

    Immediately Polly broke down in a choking fit.

    “’Tis practical,” acknowledged Pete fairly.

    “Stop—it—Pete!” she choked.

    Grinning, he said: “This gravy’s nobbad, eh?”

    “Sauce,” she corrected unsteadily.

    “Aw, right. I’d of said it was fancy gravy, but you’re the expert.”

    “Actually gravy is a sauce,” she noted detachedly.

    “True. –See these tiny wee carrots what back in the day you’d of called thinnings?”

    “I still would, unless Hugh Throgmorton’s less canny than I thought.”

    “Eh? Aw, see whatcha mean. Great way of getting rid of ’em, eh? Yeah, well, you might of said that deciding to do them for a crowd like this was mad, but see, Jayne’s got a Janet Barber in the kitchen.”

    Polly’s shoulders shook. “Mm!”

    Jan bent forward. “Washed within an inch of their lives. She disapproves totally of cooking anything with its tops on, of course, let alone its skin—”

    “Stop!” she howled, breaking down entirely.

    “Relished it,” finished Bob unexpectedly, grinning.

    Polly nodded helplessly, mopping her eyes with her extremely nice, thick, expensive-type paper serviette that had been put out specially for New Year’s. Lilac, unfortunately: there wasn’t all that much choice in Taupo and the cream ones had run out. Never mind, there were also lilac shades in the dainty bunches of flowers on all the tables. Very neat dainty bunches... Janet, again? No, she wouldn’t ask.

    “Sauce is a French word, of course,” she noted, “so you might assume that gravy is the Anglo-Saxon equivalent and the differentiation dates back to the Anglo-Saxons’ dislike of their Norman masters—”

    “Like corpse only meaning dead body,” Jan agreed. “Or sheep and mutton.”

    “Yeah. But Mr Gates’s computerised dictionary’ll tell you it’s from Old French grave,” said Polly neutrally.

    “But surely—!” cried Libby. She blushed. “I mean, sorry, Polly, I don’t really know anything about etymology; but the word can’t have changed its meaning that much, can it?”

    “That’s what I thought, so I checked the egregious Mr Gates in my good old Concise Oxford, and gee, know what? It reckons gravy probably does derive from grave, but that it was a misreading of Old French grane, meaning stew.”

    “That’ll be it!” beamed Libby.

    Polly speared a piece of chicken with her fork. “Mm, well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Except that the Concise Oxford says grane as in Old French cookery books. There couldn’t have been many of those!”

    “No, but what’s the betting the Anglo-Normans would have written their recipes out—at least some of them—to kind of preserve their heritage?”

    “Libby,” objected Jan, “the English cooks wouldn’t have been able to read.”

    Libby’s big brown eyes narrowed. “No, but imagine a Norman lady talking housekeeping with a friend, and the friend passes on this really great recipe—”

    “For chicken stew,” put in Pete.

    “Yes—and the other lady, she writes it down, and then she reads it out to her cook!”

    Polly’s eyes twinkled. “My mind went through exactly that process, Libby. But then I was stymied by the thought that the cook would only speak Anglo-Saxon.”

    “Oh, blow. –No, hang on! It must have been like today, when most people can’t speak any French but people that can cook know some French cookery words!” she beamed.

    “That does sound likely,” Jan agreed.

    “Sounds good to me, Libby, love,” Bob approved.

    “Yes. And quite possibly, if they did have cookery books, the scribe wrote down grave instead of grane, because he wasn’t a cook,” Polly concluded.

    Jayne and Andrew, now the main course was served and everyone’s glasses had been refilled, were now sitting opposite, with Jayne’s Tamsin and her Neil. Jayne had been listening to the conversation with great interest. “Yes, it’s just like that funny misprint we found in that Jane Grigson recipe!”

    “Uh—which book?” groped Jan. She still relied on her ancient Jane Grigsons, yellowed and falling apart though they were, and Jayne often borrowed them. –Paperbacks. 1970s. Amazing how soon very cheap paper deteriorated.

    “English Food. You remember, Jan!” she urged. “She leaves the salt out.”

    “The crumpets?” asked Polly.

    “Yes,” she agreed, smiling.

    “Might of done it deliberately,” said Pete, eating Apricot Chicken hungrily.

    “No, Dad, it’s in the list of ingredients, but in the instructions she never mentions it!”

    “Goddit,” he conceded mildly.

    Andrew had been listening to the exchange in some amusement. Now he said on a weak note: “Darling, you’re not telling me you tried to make homemade crumpets?”

    “Not tried, did,” said Jan.

    “Yes, weren’t you— Oh, no,” Jayne remembered. “You and Bob had driven over to Rotorua to see if you could find a small restaurant that’d do a deal on lunches for our tour groups. –Last winter.”

    “Don’t get yer knickers in a knot,” Pete advised his son-in-law. “Tasted just like the bought ones, so they gave it away, eh, Jayne, love?’

    “Yes!” she said with a laugh.

    “Me, too!” Polly admitted. “Gosh, that was ages ago...”

    They looked at her in some alarm, but she merely smiled at them and said: “I do hope these are organic Otago dried apricots in the sauce?”

    “Of course,” agreed Jan smoothly.

    Andrew smiled very weakly, Jayne choked and clapped her hand over her mouth, and Pete, Libby and Bob all sniggered, so Polly concluded she was right. It was exactly like Mum’s recipe. And Aunty Kay’s, come to think of it. 1974, New Zealand Woman’s Weekly—yep. As to why on earth Jayne had chosen it for this crowd—! She looked around cautiously. No, scrub that. They were all lapping it up, from the bunkhouse boys from the South Island—be just like their grannies’, of course—through the middle-aged trampers, to the smiling, middle-aged American widows. Cripes, even that skinny little prick from Birmingham was lapping it up! She didn’t turn right round to see what bloody Mark Dignam’s reaction to it was, she didn’t wanna know.

    “The pav was good,” Pete conceded as they settled down to watch Terminator 2.

    Polly looked down her short, straight nose at him. “Does one conclude this is ay popular local dish, then?” she drawled in an appalling simulacrum of an upper-class English accent.

    Pete choked. “You overheard that, too, didja?”

    “Hard to miss it.”

    “Yeah.” He lowered his voice—Jan was mucking around in the kitchen—and said cautiously: “Didja hear the Merri woman flatten ’im good an’ proper for it, too?”

    “Yep. Good on ’er,” Polly replied drily.

    “Right. –Bob reckoned she sort of fancied ’im,” he ventured.

    “Honestly! And you lot accuse women of gossiping!”

    “Yeah, yeah. –And vice versa, whass more.”

    “What? Oh—he fancied her? I dare say: she’s got that very sweet manner, and a lovely skin; and I dare say he’s a tit man. So?”

    Pete shrugged. “So that’ll put ’im off good and proper, is all.”

    “Mm, well, you may not have noticed, but earlier on she produced a typical Aussie commonplace and he flattened her. –Quite a good one, actually, I wouldn’t’ve thought he had it in him.”

    “So he’d already gone off ’er?”

   “No, actually I think the commonplace put him off her.”

    Jan had come in with a tray of tea in time to overhear this. “For God’s sake! What commonplace, and who was put off whom?”

    “Whom, eh?” retorted Pete with relish. “You gonna hand round them mugs of tea or just stand—”

    Sighing, Jan handed them round. “Who and what?” she said, sitting down.

    “And whom,” added Polly. “Go on, Pete, you can tell her.”

    “Um, well, Mark Pommy Up-’Imself and the little Merri woman, but I dunno what the Hell it was.”

    “What?”

    As Polly was blowing on her tea and apparently not even paying attention any more, Pete offered: “According to Polly, here, the Merri women come out with this here commonplace—not a word ya hear bandied about much in Taupo—”

    “Get on with it, Pete!”

    “She come out with it and he flattened her. Because it put him off her.”

    “Yeah, feet of clay,” agreed Polly.

    “But what was it?” cried Jan.

    “It won’t be that interesting,” warned Pete, blowing on his tea.

    “She produced the usual cliché about easy-going Aussies, Jan, and he snapped back with the anally neat Canberra suburbs,” Polly explained.

    Jan had never visited the capital city of New Zealand’s large neighbour—or wanted to. “Are they? Worse than our lot?”

    “Much.”

    “Right, got that.”

    “Good, well, shuddup about it and play the ruddy tape,” grunted Pete.

    “You’ve got the blab-out, you nit!”

    “Aw, right.” He fumbled with buttons.

    “Upside-down,” said Polly laconically.

    “Eh? Bugger the bloody thing! GO!”

    Having had its remote pointed at it, not away from it, the player obligingly started up and, barring a certain amount of blowing on and slurping up, a rapt silence duly fell...

    It did occur to Jan to wonder, as they crawled into bed yawning, to the faint sound of fireworks from the town end of the lake, if the Mark bloke’s opinion of the Canberra suburbs had raised him in Polly’s estimation. Unfortunately it also occurred that Polly would have realised she’d be wondering this—bummer.

    For once Polly slept like a log, only stumbling up to pee about five-ish and then falling right back asleep. She came into the kitchen around eight o’clock to find Jan making toast.

    “Hi. Is Pete still asleep?”

    “No. Gone fishing. Reckons there won’t be anyone out there looking for poachers on New Year’s Day. Want some toast?”

    “Yes; ta, Jan.”

    “Real coffee?” offered Jan with a smile, grabbing the coffee-pot. “What’s that French phrase of yours?”

    “Un grand bol de café au lait. Mm, lovely!” She watched as Jan filled the pot, turned the heat on under it and warned it to kindly draw attention to itself by hissing loudly when it was done. “Yeah, it’s fatal to take your eye off the things.”

    Jan winced. “Cripes. What happened?”

    She shuddered. “It was dreadful, Jan! It was almost white hot, and the smell—! Jake went ropeable because once it had cooled down and the extractor fan had been on with all the windows open for an hour—it was midwinter, too, that didn’t help—he unscrewed the thing and did a forensic examination, and it turned out I’d forgotten to put any water in it. See, if it had had water in it, it would have bubbled up through the whatsit and, um, anyway. No water.”

    Jan looked at her coffee-pot in horror. “Christ, I did, didn’t I?”

    “Yes, I was watching.”

    She sagged.

    “That was why I was watching. –Pity I caught it in time, really, it could’ve burned that bloody house down.” She watched drily as Jan took a deep breath and refrained from saying anything about it being too soon to make decisions like getting rid of the house. “He did leave it to me, lock, stock and all those barrels down cellar. That reminds me, would Pete like a barrel of real Portuguese port?”

    Jan looked at her limply. “Whadda you think?”

    “Good, I’ll send it down. Several dozen French reds? Dunno what they are. I thought Andrew might like some of the Coonawarra reds for the ecolodge.”

    “Polly, the man’s got no palate!”

    “No, but some of the guests might have.”

    “I think he’d insist on paying you for it,” said Jan cautiously.

    “I’ll just tear the cheque up.”

    “Look, the stuff Jake squirreled away down there’s worth a fortune—several fortunes. You can’t just give it away! For one thing, what about probate?” she ended limply.

    Polly shrugged. “That shit! –No, it’s all been listed.”

    In a former life Jan had been an accountant. “Yeah, but until you’ve got probate you’re not supposed to touch— Oh, what the heck. Yes, thank you very much, Polly: we’d love some decent reds and a barrel of port, and if you want to waste good Australian stuff on the ecolodge, by all means do.”

    “Good! They can have those awful liqueurs from the main bar, too, come to think of it.”

    “Yeah, well, the ninety-nine percent that won’t recognise a Coonawarra red when they knock it back’ll sure appreciate those!” said Jan with feeling.

    “What I thought.”

    “Um, don’t the kids drink?” asked Jan, inspecting the coffee-pot. The answer was a lemon. “Talk about watched pots!”

    “Nope, they’re all into healthy muck whirred up in the blender. Well, Davey might have a cold lager after a day’s hard yacker on the farm, if it’s a hot day, but that’s it. Johnny and Katie Maureen are really into those wheat-grass drinks.”

    “Er...” groped Jan.

    “Maybe they haven’t reached Taupo yet. Greenish: revolting. You have to use a juicer, not a blender, otherwise the effect on your colon’s disastrous and you spend next day on the toilet with your old mum telling you she told you so. And your dad sniggering himself sick.”

    “That’s very clear!” The toaster had long since done its thing, so she retrieved the popped up slices and automatically put some more bread in.

    Did they want that much toast? “That’ll be eight slices, Jan,” said Polly weakly.

    “Eh? Oh, blast! It’s this super-duper four-slice toaster that Andrew gave us last Chris—”

    Polly collapsed in hysterics, gasping: “I might have known!”

    The coffee-pot having at last condescended to produce coffee, they settled down to it. Mmm! Un grand bol de café au lait with toast and Vegemite! “Yum!” said Polly.

    “What do you usually have for breakfast?” asked Jan idly.

    Polly gaped at her. “Well, you stayed with us for weeks, Jan! Un grand bol de café au lait with toast and Vegemite. Muesli if Katie Maureen catches me in time, true.”

    Jan produced a feeble smile. “I thought you might only have been having it to humour me.”

    “No, not a masochist!” she said cheerfully. “Talking of which, I’ve got to go to Zurich.”

    “What?”

    “I’ve got to go to Zurich.”

    “That’s what I thought you said. Why?”

    Polly made a face. “Jake left me this secret letter with explicit instructions in it, the stupid twit.”

    “Jesus, a numbered bank account?” said the former accountant in naked horror.

    “No—well, them, too, but he’d admitted those to his accountant, so we’re legal as far as they’re concerned.”

    Jan tried to imagine what else the gnomes of Zurich could be hiding for Jake Carrano but possibly the shock had numbed her brain. “What, then?”

    “Safe deposit box. The letter included directions to where he’d hidden the key, would you bel— You would,” she acknowledged. “Don’t ask me what’s in it.”

    “The letter didn’t say?” croaked Jan.

    “No.” She watched drily while Jan’s brain whirled in speculation and its owner sat there with her mouth slightly open. “Yeah. Gold bullion, jewels—‘conflict diamonds’ was the phrase that occurred to me, but I don’t think he’d have dared, he knew my opinion of that. Bearer bonds, quite possibly. It’d serve him right if they’re in American dollars, eh?” she noted detachedly.

    Poor Jan just nodded numbly.

    “Yeah. Stolen old masters? The phrase ‘Hermitage’ also came to mind.”

    Jan swallowed. “Yeah. Likewise ‘Duke of Wellington.’”

    “No, I think they got the Goya back—though who knows? Maybe they got a fake and the real one’s— No, all right, I’ve stopped.”

    “For God’s sake take someone with you,” croaked Jan.

    Eh? “For what? A witness?”

    “No, uh—just for support, Polly! I mean, Jesus!”

    “No death duties, these days, Jan, the idiot EnZed government’s abolished them,” Polly reminded the former accountant.

    Jan was rather red. “No, but what if he’s got stocks and shares stashed away that’ve been quietly gathering interest over the years? The estate is liable for income tax! Look, Polly, a dying wish is one thing, but defrauding— Hang on. What are you planning to do with it all?”

    “Oxfam.”

    Jan swallowed.

    “I shouldn’t have told you, I kind of forgot that with your accounting background—”

    Jan pulled herself together. “Rubbish! The ravings of a bereaved widow? Poor thing, she doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

    Polly grinned. “That’s right. Just be kindly supportive.”

    “Yeah. Kindly supportive with another cup of coffee,” she decided. “But I am serious about taking someone with you,” she admitted, taking the pot over to the sink.

    Polly sighed. “Who? There isn’t anybody compatible.”

    “Uh—your mate Dorothy, the one that’s the university librarian at Sir George Grey?”

    “Was. She’s retired now: had enough of the user-pays shit. Um, no, well, she’s married, Jan.” –Jan’s face of dismay was pretty clearly indicating that it was dawning that practically all of the compatible people she knew—fingers of one hand, kind of thing—were. Her old friend Jill Davis wasn’t, but she had a demanding fulltime job.

    “I don’t mind, actually. I’d rather go by myself. I don’t know the city well but I have been there before, funnily enough. I’ll stay at the hotel Jake liked, they’ll look after me.”

    Jan Harper was quite sure they would. She nodded numbly.

    “Yes, all right!” she said crossly to her partner in life, later that day. “It was such a flaming shock that I completely forgot to interrogate her about whether she’s changed her opinion of the Mark bloke. And you’d have done the same, let me tell you!”

    Pete scratched his chin. “Nothing Jake got up to would surprise me, love. –Where is she?”

    “That flaming lawyer mate of Wal and Livia’s rang up and came and collected her in his bloody Merc, that’s where, Pete!”

    He shrugged. “Maybe ya didn’t need to ask her about the Pommy joker, then.”

    Jan gave him a filthy look.

    “So where’ve they gone?” he asked idly.

    “Eh? I dunno! That palace he’s hired on the good side of the lake, for a snog? Orakei Korako the Thermal Wonderland? Whaka’, to admire the Dulux Hi-gloss?”

    “Stale,” replied Pete calmly.

    “Look, your guess is as good as mine!”

    “Yeah, well, my bet’d be it won’t be Whaka’.”

    “Last time I heard her on the subject she reckoned she’d changed her mind about it. Something about the mixture of the natural wonders and the Dulux Hi-gloss on those ersatz Maori fence posts having its own appeal? Uh... well, the comparison was with the American Southwest, but she’d lost me, there,” she admitted feebly. “Um, modern kitsch and, um, well, natural wonders,” she ended, even more feebly.

    Pete merely returned calmly: “Fifty cents?”

    “Skinflint,” replied Jan automatically. Suddenly she laughed. “No, well: a barrel of genuine Portuguese port?”

    “Eh?”

    “Will you bet a barrel of genuine Portuguese port that she hasn’t gone to Whaka’, Pete?”

    “With that lawyer nit? Yeah, why not, I’ll never have to pay— Hang on!” His eyes lit up.

    “Yeah, yeah,” sighed Jan. “Sending it down soonest. By courier, for all I know. Plus some of his French reds—well, she didn’t specify how many, but my bet’d be— Where are you going?” she cried.

    “Shed. Get me tools. Build a proper cellar,” he said tersely, going.

    Jan sighed, but admitted: “Oh, well. It hadda be some new mania, and a proper cellar might as well be this year’s.”

Next chapter:

https://anothercountry-apuririchronicle.blogspot.com/2023/08/go-to-graceland.html