Marley's Ghost

1

Marley’s Ghost

    Jake Carrano was dead. True, he had been in his seventies, but pretty hale and hearty, so it had been a bit of a shock. And besides, he was—well, he was Jake. The sort that you couldn’t imagine not being there—heck, how long had the Carrano Group been one of the biggest multinationals? Seemed like forever, though when you thought about it, as Jan Harper found she was doing, it must’ve only been back in the Seventies that Carrano Development had really got going, growing from a mere sprig of a New Zealand construction company with fingers in several overseas pies to a mighty forest kauri, its tentacles stretching further and further abroad into more and more expanding business areas... To go on mixing metaphors. Uh—hang on. When had Polly met him, again? Well, after her and Pete had got together, obviously, because they’d come down to them at Taupo for a bit of a honeymoon—not the official one, that had been in Paris, only they’d had to put it off, Polly’d had to get back to her varsity job in Auckland. But, um... No, hang on, must’ve been in the late Eighties. Before or after the crash? Um... Not that it mattered, Jake was reliably rumoured to have made money out of the big corporate débâcles of the 1980s. That sort of bloke. Everything turned to gold at his touch, kind of thing. So what the Hell was gonna happen to the company now? Well, big corporations went on rolling along like Ole Man River regardless of who was at the helm, the mere Jan Harper whose sole corporate experience was in managing the humble Taupo Shores Ecolodge acknowledged, but heck! You just couldn’t imagine it without Jake!

    “You can’t imagine the Carrano Group without Jake at the helm,” she noted, apropos, to her life partner.

    “I’ve never been able to imagine a flamin’ multinational anyway,” returned Pete McLeod sourly.

    Jan sighed. Jake had been Pete’s old cobber—they’d known each other for ages and ages: must be—shit, over fifty years? Couldn’t be! Uh—yeah. Time flew when you were having fun—right. Well, Pete was well into his seventies, more than ten years older than her, but— Yeah.

    “No, the brain does kind of start to bubble in the brainpan when you really try to imagine it,” she agreed glumly.

    Pete eyed her uneasily. “Uh—yeah. Well, dare say nothing’ll happen, Jan. Dare say wee Katie Maureen might take over eventually, she’s got the nous,” he offered.

    Yeah, but the kid was only—uh—shit. Well, other people’s kids, you lost track of their ages, didn’t you? She was two years younger than Polly and Jake’s twins, so... “Um, she’s not as wee as all that, Pete, she must be... Um, twentyish?” she finished weakly.

    “That’d be about right. She’s got his smarts, though.”

    Jan had to gulp. Where had he got that one from? Pete wasn’t a telly-watcher—and thank God for it! “Um, yeah, she’s a bright kid.”

    “Wiremu Tuwhare,” said Pete laconically to the subtext.

    “What?”

    “Smarts. Young Wiremu Tuwhare. Got it off him. Quite a good one, eh?”

    “Yes,” said Jan very weakly indeed. Wiremu was about eighteen and she’d have said he and Pete had nothing in common besides their gender. He was one of the “carving boys”—how the expression had become daily currency round Taupo way she had no idea, but so it was—one of the carving boys who demonstrated traditional Maori skills to the rich and credulous who infested Fern Gully Ecolodge, the real ecolodge further round the lake. As opposed to this here Taupo Shores Ecolodge which Pete’s oldest daughter, Jayne, and her second, Andrew Barker, were now running, which had only ever been a pretend ecolodge, and still was, even Andrew with all his management-speak and human resources skills and etcetera having recognised that their established clientèle, the comfortably off middle-class retirees with time on their hands and the super in their pockets, didn’t want what Pete called fully organic how’s-yer-fathers, they wanted comfortable beds, central heating and good home cooking. And these days—the nice middle-class sort were no longer what they had been in Jan Harper’s mum’s day—the booze flowing like water. Mum had never indulged in anything stronger than a very small sherry before dinner on very special occasions. Oh, dear...

    “What?” asked Pete.

    “Mm? Oh—nothing, really, love. Well, just comparing the way our guests, I mean the ecolodge’s,” said Jan on a sheepish note—it was sometimes hard to remember they weren’t running it any more—“um, comparing the difference between their lifestyle and the attitudes of Mum and Dad’s day.”

    Pete scratched his lean jaw. “Wouldn’t say there was any essential difference. No white gloves and hats and church every Sunday, I’ll grant yer that. And they can knock it back like nobody’s biz, the nice lot never did that in the Forties and Fifties, eh? Mind you, everybody else did... ’Member the Six O’clock Swill?”

    “No!”

    Pete just waited.

    “Um,” said Jan, swallowing hard, “I do, actually, Pete: sorry. I mean, not experiencing it... I remember coming home from varsity when I was doing my B.Com., hoping I’d be able to get past that ruddy pub near the bus stop before they all surged out.”

    “Yeah,” he said mildly.

    “Plus ça change, or something...” said Jan vaguely, staring dully into space.

    “You feeling all right?” he asked sharply.

    Oh, Lor’! It was a few years since that bloody heart attack, and she’d had a pacemaker put in and she was fine, she had a regular check-up and she was on the blood-pressure pills and, in short, she was fine, but Pete had never really got over the fright it had given him. Well—he had naturally expected to go first.

    “I'm fine, love. It’s just—well, something like this does tend to pull you up short, eh?”

    “Yeah,” he said heavily as there came a knock at the front door and Andrew’s voice called: “Hullo!” He got up. “Why doesn’t he just come in, he knows the ruddy door’s unlocked,” he grumbled.

    “Too nice,” said Jan with a sigh, heaving herself to her feet. “You did pack your suit, did you, Pete?”

    He eyed her tolerantly. “Polly won’t give a stuff if I roll up in me jeans, love, but yeah. –Leave that!” he added sharply as she made to pick up her case.

    She wasn’t an invalid, she was fit as a flea and the doc said he’d never seen anyone make a recovery like she had, and the pacemaker had been inserted by the best heart surgeon in the country, Sir Flaming Shiny-Face in person, up in Auckland at the Mater itself, at Jake Carrano’s expense and insistence. And at very short notice. Well, yeah, the bloke had owed him one—for what, Jan frankly didn’t want to know. Could’ve been anything from illegal stock market tips to the bling the wife wore round her neck having come into the country in the Carrano jacket pocket—oh, yeah. He’d always been like that, and Polly hadn’t managed to actually stop him. Temper it—yes. Stop him—uh-uh. But there had been no reason except his old friendship with Pete why she, Jan Harper, should have merited the sort of op that, no kidding, Rothschilds flew round the world for. Jake had been like that: hard as nails in business, but a really decent, generous bloke.

    “Uh—ta, love,” she said as Pete grabbed the suitcase and headed for the front door of their nice new little house by the lake, bellowing: “Hold yer horses! We’re COMING!” Poor Andrew had only called out: “Hurry up, you don’t want to miss the plane!” Oh, well: he was making Jayne very happy, that was what mattered. Pete always had found the ultra-nice sort a bit hard to take. And, easy-going though he was, you couldn’t blame him for not being a box of birds, with Jake gone. End of an era? Too bloody right.

    “Have one of these,” said Polly Carrano heavily, proffering a plate of artistic-looking little thingies.

    Jan peered suspiciously. “What are they?”

    “Dunno. But Adrian Revill made them, so they’ll be all right.”

    “Good.” Jan took one. On second thoughts she took two.

    Polly looked round the crowded main drawing-room of the Carrano mansion, and sighed. “People are rallying round,” she said heavily.

    Jan had thought they might be—mm. She winced.

    “My relations, mainly,” she added heavily.

    “Mm.” Jan waited, trying not to wince again, as one of them sailed up to them, cooed understandingly at Polly, smiled nicely if blindly at her, Jan, snatched the plate out of Polly’s resistless hand, and swanned off with it. Red hair. That didn’t narrow it down much, half of Polly’s side had it. She’d escaped it, her long hair was shiny brown, very thick and wavy, with golden lights in it and these days a few little silver streaks, but her Katie Maureen had it.

    “Karen,” said Polly dully. “One of Aunty Kay’s daughters.”

    “Uh-huh.” Jan had met Polly’s Aunty Kay before; she looked round very warily indeed.

    “In the kitchen,” said Polly heavily. “Putting Adrian right.”

    “God!” she gulped involuntarily.

    Polly shrugged. “I did warn him.”

    “Oh,” said Jan feebly. She sought desperately for another topic of conversation but all she could come up with was who was gonna support Adrian Revill’s restaurant financially now, with Jake gone? Which didn’t seem tactful, in the circs. “Um... who’s that one?” she produced feebly.

    Polly peered. “Which?”

    “Youngish. Red hair.” Jan would’ve said “black dress,” only they were all in those, with hats heretofore only glimpsed on TV on the heads of Royals and those attending the Melbourne Cup. “Talking to that bloke you said was one of the blokes from the varsity.”

    “That leaves a fair amount of—” Polly gulped. “Vicki. One of my cousins; I mean, most of them are,” she admitted with a silly grin. “Um, one of the Austin twins, Jan. Turned up without the hubby, so those rumours must be true.”

    “Right. Is the bloke from the varsity married?”

    “Yeah.”

    Jan had thought so. They usually were, at that age. “Right.”

    “That’s her twin, Ginny, over there,” added Polly.

    Jan peered. “Um, next to that sort of squarish bloke from the varsity?”

    “Uh—oh! Literally. No. –You’ve met him, Jan, that’s Thomas the Tank Engine.”

    Jan had to swallow—not yummy little savoury thingy.

    “Sorry,” said Polly feebly. “Everybody does call him that. Thomas Baranski. No, the red-headed girl talking to him is one of, um, well, one of the relations from Christchurch, I think she's Mum’s Cousin Ruth’s daughter. No: that’s Ginny, over there by the window with the Japanese guy.”

    Jan looked. Her jaw dropped. The two red-headed Austin girls were twins, as Polly had said, and they were both in black dresses with black hats, but within those parameters it was hard to imagine, given that this was a wake that you had to turn up at looking decent, two more different outfits. They were probably in their late thirties, though these days it was hard to tell. Vicki’s black had glittery things all over it and was kind of draped and ruffled and the hat was a huge, gauzy affair with those weird spiky feathers plus and several huge black blooms, Jan would have called them peonies, they were definitely too fluffy to be roses, and her neck was loaded with bling of the very-latest-but-not-real-jewellery variety, Jan was no expert but that wasn’t hard to tell. Ginny’s outfit was tailored, there was no other word for it, tailored. Form-fitting, though not as tight over the thighs and bum as her twin’s, by no means. Very, very plain. In Jan’s mum’s day it would have been called a two-piece, did they still say that? The black dress had what seemed to be a square neckline, just below the salt-cellars, whereas Vicki’s creation dipped right down to the black lacy bra in front. Ginny’s short bolero jacket, they probably didn’t call them that these days either, had three-quarter-length sleeves and very, very neat collar and lapels. Well, tailored—yeah. The hat was a tiny cap, air-force type, tilted at just the right angle on the glorious red-gold hair. The said hair was in a severe bun. Quite a contrast to Vicki’s mass of curls—yep. And no jewellery at all.

    “Chalk and cheese—yeah,” said Polly.

    “Mm? I’ll say! What does she do, Polly?”

    Polly eyed her drily. “High-up exec with the Group.”

    Jan gulped.

    “Don’t say it: Katie Maureen’s on track to go the same way,” said Katie Maureen Carrano’s mother heavily.

    “All right, I won’t,” Jan agreed, hurriedly stuffing the second of the two savoury little thingies into her mouth. Ooh, different! Yum!

    “All right?” asked Polly kindly.

    Jan swallowed, and gaped at her. “Me? Yeah! Shouldn’t I should be asking you that?”

    “No, I meant the little canapé or whatever it was, actually.”

    “Oh! Sorry. Um, yeah, completely yummy.”

    “Good. –Ginny was in Japan for yonks, with the Group’s Japanese office, then she had a stint back here and then another in the London office, but she’s back in Tokyo now,” said Polly, looking thoughtfully at her cousin.

    “Uh-huh. Is the Japanese guy her husband?”

    “No, one of the many boyfriends. Her mother’s hoping she might come back home now: take a position with Head Office. What she doesn’t know,” said Polly, making a little face, “is that the Group’s shifting Head Office to London. It’s been in the pipeline for a while, and with Jake gone there’s no reason for keeping it here.”

    Yo, boy. Still, at least the other twin still lived in EnZed! Jan took another look at the vivaciously flirting Vicki. Oh.

    “Yeah. According to Aunty Kay, those girls are a disappointment to their poor mother in almost every way,” said Polly very drily indeed.

    “Polly, you’ve said it yourself, she’s the sort that calls a spade a bloody shovel!” hissed Jan as another one swanned up to them.

    Polly winked one luminous grey-green eye at her. “Hullo, Corinne,” she said mildly as it cooed at her. “No, well, you know,” she added awkwardly as it asked her solicitously how she was bearing up, dear. “Um, ta,” she added limply as it urged a plate of small thingies upon her with the reminder that she had to eat, it was a difficult time, of course, but she mustn’t endanger her health on the strength of it.

    “Ta,” said Jan limply as she was favoured in her turn, not pointing out that she wasn’t a grieving widow and this thingy looked as if it was full of cream, which was slightly counter-indicated in her case.

    Remarking it that it was so lovely to see that everyone was rallying round, it then, mercifully, swanned off into the crowd.

    “One of the cousins from Napier,” said Polly dully, looking at her wee thingy dubiously.

    “I wasn’t asking!” replied Jan hurriedly. She bit experimentally into hers. Ugh! Uh—no, it was dairy sour cream, what a nit she was! “Shour cream with shmoke’ salmon,” she said indistinctly through it.

    “Is it? I’m not really hungry.”

    “Gib i’ ’ere.” Jan swallowed. “—Give it here, she’s not looking.”

    Gratefully Polly passed her canapé over.

    Possibly it was the effect of sour cream on the brain, but Jan at this point gave in and asked: “Polly, what’s gonna happen to your mate Adrian Revill’s restaurant? Wasn’t Jake backing it?”

    Polly smiled a little. “Not literally Jake. Inky & Sticky & Co.”

    “Right,” said Jan weakly. That wasn’t really its name, but she’d always called it that. It was the Carrano twins’ company, that Jake had set up when they were about—uh—four? Less, quite probably, given that he’d set up their trust funds the minute they’d found out the foetus wasn’t one, it was two.

    “Anyway, he’s doing very well, now. Well, running part of the old pub in Carter’s Bay as an actual pub helps,” Polly added.

    Mm. This facility had once been a real pub, on the waterfront in the then remote Carter’s Bay in Puriri County, north of Auckland. Now, with motorways all the way from the city, or at least from the Auckland Harbour Bridge, the area was no longer remote and the word “pub” was a misnomer for Adrian Revill’s domain. It did include a public bar, technically the former side bar of the old waterfront pub, but most of the ground floor was now occupied by the ultra-fashionable Revill’s restaurant, and the less expensive but very nearly as fashionable second restaurant that Jan couldn’t remember the name of. True, you could also drink outside in the courtyard, if it was a nice day. Which given the North Auckland weather wasn’t all that often. Though the courtyard was reasonably sheltered from the wind off the bay. Oh, well, the whole of the greater Carter’s Bay area was now infested with the comfortably-off middle class who were too nice to drink in ordinary pubs, the very comfortably-off retirees who’d always been ditto and were now even more so, and the ultra-rich who could afford mansions in nearby Kingfisher Bay and marina slots at its marina, all built by Guess Who? Rumour said (a) that Jake’s bulldozers had scraped the entire so-called Kingfisher Bay out of the shore of peaceful Carter’s Inlet where no bay had previously existed and (b) that a slot in the bloody marina cost more than the average New Zealander’s annual income, and Jan Harper for one saw no reason to doubt either story. That sort of inhabitant did not want to patronise yer scungy old pub that had been there since the days of the railway, the waterside warehouses and the kauri timber trade, just getting naturally scungier and scungier as time wore on...

    “Well, as a sort of pub,” Polly added very drily indeed. “Twenty-first century version.”

    Jan jumped. “Yeah! Just what I was thinking!” she gasped.

    “I really like the old Carter’s Bay pub,” said Polly on a wistful note.

    Jan had, under orders, recuperated from her op in the gracious Carrano mansion on the cliff top in Pohutukawa Bay, some distance further south of Carter’s Bay, but still in in Puriri County, and during that time she had actually managed to visit this establishment. Well, put it like this: Jake had been at work and Polly had driven her and Pete up there. True, the regulars had possibly not expected to see a vision in tight designer jeans, a genuine Cashmere jumper and an “old” brown mink jacket, gulp, knocking back a glass of lager in their public bar round about lunchtime, but no-one had overtly reacted: it was that sort of old EnZed pub. Well, a couple of hefty blokes in lurid plastic jackets and grimy overalls, pretty obviously off one of the building sites where yet more pretentious twenty-first century Gloria Soames were going up, had looked sideways at her more than once, yeah, but given the P. Carrano curves, it hadn’t been the expensive gear that had caught their attention.

    “Yeah, me, too,” Jan agreed. “A real old pub.”

    “Mm. Are there any left down in Taupo, these days, Jan?” she asked wistfully.

    “Aw, Hell, yeah! Well, one or two have tried to be trendy. But they mostly leave that sort of shit to the big tourist hotels.”

    Polly sighed. “We should’ve got down there more often.”

    Jan entirely agreed, actually. Though the Carranos did have friends all over the world, it wasn't as if their lives had been all enforced socialising with his business mates.

    “I wanted to last Christmas,” Polly added. “But Jake was keen to go down to the farm, and Mum’s pretty frail, these days.”

    “Yes, of course,” sad Jan kindly. Davey Carrano, who was the more ebullient of the twins, very like his father in both looks and temperament but unfortunately without Jake’s brains, had opted to take over his late Uncle Vic’s farm, which was Polly’s dad’s old farm, once it became clear that Vic’s boys weren’t interested. His grandmother, who’d be in her late eighties, was still living in the old farmhouse with him, and presumably, frail though she was, still running the house her way. Davey’s girlfriend was there, too, but she was a very sweet, easy-going girl, not the sort either to tell Maureen Mitchell to keep her nose out or, thank goodness, to want to. Um... June Something—well, Jan couldn’t remember but it was the Maori family from a neighbouring farm. Jake hadn’t been too pleased that Davey hadn’t wanted to come into the business but had recognised ruefully that if the kid didn’t have the urge, it was NBG.

    “Johnny’s just started his Master’s,” Polly added.

    “Mm.” And thereby hung a row or two! Stop daydreaming, come into the real world, you’ve got the brains, boy, why don’t you use them? No, well, poor old Jake, the second of his boys not wanting to follow him into the business had been a real blow. But while it was true Johnny had the brains—topped the country when he sat Schol, though as he was only in the first-year Sixth he hadn’t been allowed to actually get a scholarship—all right, the whole world was barmy, why shouldn’t New Zealand have its share? But his family could more than afford to send him to university, in fact Jake could have bought the whole bloody place, professors’ salaries and all, and never noticed it. But the subjects Johnny had wanted to do had been a real bone of contention, oh, dear! His mother, though you’d never have thought it to look at her, was a statistical linguist, but he hadn’t inherited her mathematical ability, so it wasn’t that. No: comparative linguistics, which these days apparently entailed learning not only Japanese—which Jake was quite keen on, he did a lot of business with Japan and had a number of Japanese friends—but Arabic. Jake had gone ropeable. Goodness knew why: the family wasn’t Jewish. At least, no-one knew what his background was, he’d been left on the convent doorstep when he was about three weeks old, though he was obviously at least half Maori—dark skin, thick black curls in his younger days, a definitely Polynesian mouth and jaw, and that typical round head, but grey eyes and a very European straight nose. But Polly’s lot were lapsed, um, Presbyterians, was it? Oh, and one old aunty, long since passed over, had been grimly Anglican. So what on earth Jake had had against the Arabs— Um, well, 9/11, yes, but he’d had more sense than to let the acts of a few madmen influence his attitude to a whole culture.

    “What the Hell did Jake have against the kid learning Arabic, Polly?”

    “I dunno. Well, 9/11 really shook him, some of the Head Office boys bought it when the World Trade Center went,” she said, swallowing hard. “A couple of the older execs that he was really close to, and three younger ones he was bringing on.”

    Jan stared at her in dismay. “Polly, I didn’t realise! I’m so sorry!’

    “That’s all right. A lot of business people have connections who were affected by 9/11. People forget,” she said with a little twisted smile.

    Jan nodded numbly.

    “But I don’t think it was that. Um, well, back when I first knew him there was a frightful to-do over some business about Arab bribes. Not taking bribes from Arabs, bribing contacts in, um, Dubai, was it, back then? I’m not sure. Saudi Arabia, maybe. Um, it was in the papers, Jan.”

    Uh... “Oh, yeah: I remember, there was a huge row in the Puriri Council Chambers, that it?” Her eye fell on one of the ponciest guests at the wake. The mayor, maybe they didn’t call the office that any more, of Puriri County, here ex officio, one could only presume.

    “Yes, that was it. –The County Manager,” said Polly dully.

    “Oh, yes, of course; I was trying to think of the trendy— Um, yeah.”

    “Mm.”

    Jan frowned over it. “Yeah, but wasn’t it a fizzer? I mean, no-one got prosecuted or anything, did they?”

    “No, there was no proof. Well, I agree, Jan: it doesn’t explain it, but these things aren’t logical, are they? I think Johnny opting for an academic career was just the last straw, after Davey choosing farming, really,” she concluded in the detached tone that was characteristic of her.

    “Mm.”

    “The funny thing is,” said Polly, still detached, “he’s finding the Arabic a real struggle.”

    Jan bit her lip, but perhaps fortunately yet another female relation swanned up and this time bore Polly firmly away before she could actually laugh. Not that Polly would have minded, but she was bloody sure the assembled multitude would have found it unseemly.

    … “Here—wash it down with this, Jan,” said Polly kindly some time later, holding out the bottle that had been nestling warmly in her left hand.

    Ooh, tepid champagne: Jan was up for that! Only she’d mislaid her glass, help!

    Polly looked round blankly. “Uh... Oh, blow it! Come on, I know there’s some glasses in the dining-room.”

    She meant the formal dining-room. Jan followed her numbly. She’d been privileged to eat in there once. Not because Polly thought her and Pete didn’t merit it, because Polly thought, quite correctly, that on the whole they’d both rather have their right hands cut off than be exposed to the sort of guest that the Carranos had to entertain in the formal dining-room.

    Not that it wasn’t a lovely room. Shades of dark green with touches of gold, mainly. And genuine antique wood. Polly shut the door to the adjacent drawing-room firmly behind her and then turned the key in the lock. Jan gulped, but didn’t say anything. Then she went over to a beautiful antique sideboard and opened its cupboard. Er—yes, there were glasses in there, all right.

    “Polly,” croaked Jan, allowing her to force one into her enfeebled hand, “isn’t this his Waterford crystal?”

    “Heirloom—right. Stuff that.” She poured. “Bung-ho!” she urged, pouring one for herself.

    All right, she was doing it. Jan drank. “God, that’s better,” she sighed.

    “Yeah.” Polly pulled out a green-velvet-covered dining chair. “Siddown, Jan, take the weight off.”

    Jan sat down, sighing. “Ta, Polly.” She finished her warm champagne thirstily. “Why is it that you always have to stand at these bloody does?” she sighed. “Oh, shit! Sorry!”

    Polly sat down next to her. “Don’t be. Them’s my sentiments, too. Well, I dunno: it’s always seemed barmy to me, too. I’d rather just have had a few close friends and we could’ve sat round on the sofas in the family-room.”

    Exactly. Jan sighed deeply. “Yeah.”

    “Only Katie Maureen started making a list, and then Aunty Kay arrived, and that was all she wrote.”

    Yep, it would’ve been. Jan nodded sagely.

    Polly poured the last of the warm champagne, noting: “He’s got some really good brandy squirreled away in this flaming sideboard.”

    “Good.”

    Once they’d each got a good slug of V.S.O.P., Hugely-Expensive, Jan-Didn’t-Even-Reckernise-the-Label Cognac down them, Jan was able to gird her loins sufficiently to ask: “Are you coping, Polly?”

    Lady Carrano shrugged. “I’ve been on my feet through this do, so, yeah.”

    “Mm. Sleeping?”

    “Not much. Bruce actually gave in to the twenty-first century and prescribed sleeping pills, but they’re not helping much. Well, they make me doze off around threeish and wake up around sevenish feeling dazed, if that’s helping.”

    “The dazed probably is,” Jan acknowledged.

    “Yeah.”

    “So you’re still going to that nice Bruce Smith guy?”

    “Yes, of course. That cow Linda Burgess—sorry, Jan, you don’t know her, the husband’s with the Development Company—she actually implied he was being so nice to me ’cos he was hoping to get something out of the will!”

    Right—pretty typical of the corporate wives. Jan nodded grimly. “Got it.”

    Polly sighed. “Anything less like Bruce—! Oh, well, poor Linda. She’s got nothing in her life, really. Derek’s only interested in his bloody job, and their boy Jason’s a clone of him—he’s adopted, actually, but he’s still a clone. She can’t have kids, poor thing, and she’s never got over it. Jason’s working in New York, so she hardly ever sees him.”

    It was a hard life, in short. “Mm,” said Jan mildly, looking at her affectionately. Polly always had been able to see the best in everyone—quite possibly it went with that detachment of hers. Though while most people found the former an admirable trait, the majority, certainly the male majority, couldn’t take the latter. “What does she do with herself all day?”

    Polly replied literally: “Diets, goes to the gym, plays bridge—badly, I’m told. Oh, and mah-jong, she belongs to a very exclusive little mah-jong group.”

    “Exclusive,” said Jan Harper weakly. “Right. Goddit.”

    Polly leaned her elbows on the giant regimental dining-table—not mahogany, no, Western Australian jarrah—leaned her chin in her hands, and said reminiscently: “It’s exactly the sort of life I was afraid I’d be let in for when I married Jake.”

    Jan gulped. “But you had your lecturing job.”

    “Yeah. But I was afraid Jake wouldn’t want me to go on with it.”

    “Polly,” said Jan on a weak note, “I never met a man less likely than Jake to want his wife to be a wee-wifey, stay-at-home type. Nor a bridge-playing socialite, either!” she added strongly, rallying.

    Polly smiled her lovely smile at her. “No, of course not. I didn’t know him very well back then, you see... Sometimes it just seems like yesterday, Jan.”

    “I know,” said Jan very sympathetically indeed. “I was just thinking about when me and Pete got together and decided to turn the old fishing lodge into a so-called ecolodge...”

    “Mm...”

    They stared into space for some time, Jan absently filling their glasses again during it.

    Finally Polly said in a very small voice: “Um, Jan?”

    “Mm?”

    “Could I possibly come and stay with you and Pete for a bit? Not—not at the ecolodge, but—but with you?”

    “Yeah. Come any time, Polly.”

    “Good. Thanks,” she said, trying to smile and failing.

    Jan got up and put an arm round her shoulders as she dissolved in tears. Probably a good sign, who could say? Well, pop psychology would doubtless claim it was. She didn’t say anything to try to comfort her, because there was nothing to say, was there?

Next chapter:

https://anothercountry-apuririchronicle.blogspot.com/2023/08/ghosts-of-christmas-past.html