Speculation

18

Speculation

    “Take a look at these,” said Thomas the Tank Engine to his wife, handing her a pile of bumf. “See what you think.”

    Dorothy riffled through it dazedly. “Oy, isn’t this all highly confidential?” she said to Sir George Grey University’s Dean of Environmental Resources.

    “Yes. On the other hand, who are you going to tell who’d be interested?”

    “Very funny,” she sighed. “Uh, well, I’ve assessed enough bloody CVs in my time, but you do know that as far as geology’s concerned, I know noth-thing, don’tcha?”

    “Considerably less than nothing, I’d have said,” replied Thomas mildly in his fruity Oxbridge.

    Raising her eyebrows slightly, Dorothy began looking through the résumés. “Nope,” she murmured, laying one aside. “Um… nope.” She laid another one aside. She read on… “Thomas, don’t you know never to accept applications from flaming Indian universities?” she groaned, discarding another.

    “Isn’t that the chap who seems to have done his Ph.D. at Cambridge?”

    “Cambridge wot never taught him to spell ‘correspondence’,” replied Dorothy flatly.

    Looking cross, Thomas picked it up. The man had spelled it ‘–ance’. “Must’ve had his spell checker turned off that day,” he conceded weakly. “I would have checked up on him, you know.”

    “You mean you’d’ve got Beth or that poor girl you’ve hired to help her in the office to check up on him.”

    “Rubbish. One phone call to old Charlie Cartwri—”

    “Yeah, yeah.”

    “And what do you mean, poor girl?” he demanded rather heatedly.

    Dorothy sighed and laid down the pile of bumf. “Young Lainie Turner. I was in Sprouts the other day desperately seeking something edible for lunch not made by me, don’t tell me that’s tautologous, thanks, and Mrs Pettinger from Gilbert Street—just a couple of doors up from Mrs Adler’s old place—was in there wondering if sun-dried tomato would be hard to chew.”

    “Yes,” he stated succinctly.

    “Quite. Anyway, turns out she’s Lainie Turner’s aunty and apparently, the mum having long since retired to a nice spot over near Warkworth somewhere—the dad had a huge win on the Melbourne Cup one year—um, anyway, Lainie’s fallen back on her as chief sympathetic ear.”

    “And?”

    “Have you tried that sandwich mixture with the cashew-nut paste as well as the avocado?”

    “No. Wouldn’t it be rather squashy?”

    “Yes, it was,” she admitted gloomily.

    “Well, go on,” he sighed.

    “Um… yeah. According to Ma P., the girl burst into tears and wailed something about all hard words and that database hates her. And I must say, if the said database is something that you or Jack Perkins dreamed up—severally or together—I’m not surprised. Who the Hell did you imagine was gonna have to use it, Baranski?”

    Thomas bit his lip. “Darling, please don’t call me Baranski. You are my wife, after all.”

    “Did I? Sorry, it’s these CVs: must have reverted to a former persona. I didn’t mean anything by it,” Dorothy ended on an uncertain note.

    “No, I see.”

    “I’ll try not to do it again. Anyway, what about this database that poor Lainie appears to be stuck with?”

    Thomas was about to ask “Stuck in what sense?” and thought better of it. “Uh—the problem’s never cropped up before. Beth’s got quite a decent degree, you see.”

    “Yes, and is very intelligent into the bargain.”

    “Mm. Well, that software’s very easy to manipulate—it’s database-building software, not a turnkey system: allows you to make more or less any changes you please. Jack despises it, far from having a finger in the pie: it’s not part of his mighty IT empire, at all. I’d better run some look-up lists behind some of the fields… Mm.”

    “Yeah. What’s it a database of, for God’s sake? The University does require you to have all your admin stuff on the system, Thomas.”

    “Yes, of course. This is just an index of useful articles.”

    “No wonder the poor kid’s flummoxed!”

    “Look, the majority of the journals list the keywords, all she has to do is copy— No, okay, look-up lists it will be.”

    “Good.”

    “That reminds me: I’ve been meaning to ask you: where the Hell did the name ‘Lainie’ come from?”

    “The flaming media,” replied his helpmeet heavily, returning to the CVs.

    “Of course. –Fancy a cuppa?”

    “Make it a stiff gin and pink, thanks,” replied Dorothy, wincing as she discarded a CV enclosed in a pink plastic cover without reading it.

    “Dorothy, that one was a Scandinavian woman with a damn’ good degree and a reference from—”

    “Thomas: pink? Don’t you know a warning light when you see one?”

    “Er—very well, if you say so, darling.”

    “It was you that hired Kym the lady forester,” she reminded him.

    The tone had been entirely mild, but Thomas eyed her warily. To be strictly accurate, he had hired the lady in question and then done her. It had been back well before he and Dorothy had been an item, true, but some time after they’d met and he’d expressed interest. “Think she’s been quite an asset to her department, Dorothy,” he ventured cautiously.

    “I know. At the same time she’s managed to break up—well, their names are Legion. The latest is she’s dumped one of Jack’s IT boys—forget which, they’ve come and gone so often over the years, mostly gone—anyway, dumped one, and has her sights set on,”—she eyed him mockingly—“the new CEO.”

    This position was equal to what in staider, more old-fashioned institutions was that of Vice-Chancellor. At Sir George Grey, whatever might have been the case elsewhere, the person holding it was pretty much tantamount to God. Thomas gulped. “Thought they hadn’t even announced the appointment, yet?”’

    “My spies are everywhere,” replied Dorothy airily.

    “Jesus.”

    “Right. Avoid anything that even looks like turning into a man-trap in future,” she advised. “Discrimination or not.”

    Thomas got up and groped his way to the sideboard. “I shall!” he promised fervently. He poured himself a large Scotch and took a gulp of it, then recalling that his helpmeet had asked for a gin and pink, and kindly providing her with one.

    “Ta,” she said absently, reading a CV. “An odd gap here. –What sex is it? Oh. Well, in the benighted 21st century ‘L,E,S,L,I,E’ could be any sex but ‘Leslie John’ seems fairly definite. Not sprogging, then. Clink?” She put it on the pile of discards.

    Thomas picked it up, frowning. She was right, of course: that was a five-year gap in the applicant’s employment record. He read through the covering letter but the answer was a lemon. “Damn. Thought he was a possible.”

    “Start a new pile. Improbable possibles,” suggested Dorothy, not looking up. “Did you put any pink in this?”

    ‘You’re becoming addicted to that stuff,” he warned, nevertheless getting up and adding more bitters to her glass. “That better?”

    Dorothy swigged. “Aah! Much better, thanks. Here’s an odd one. Why on earth is he applying?”

    Thomas eyed her sideways but she was concentrating on the CV. “Um, covering letter?” he suggested.

    “Mm.” Dorothy read it carefully. “Curiouser and curiouser,” she concluded. “Do you remember him?”

    “Yes, quite well.”

    “And?” she demanded, staring at him.

    He rubbed his chin. “A very competent chap. Got on very well with him, as a matter of fact.”

    “I see. So he’s not slinging you a line?”

    “What?” he fumbled. “I don’t think he’s under the impression I’m in dire need of rescue by a geologist who hasn’t worked in the discipline for years, is he?”

    Dorothy was re-reading the CV. She lowered it and stared at him. “What are you on about?”

    “I don’t need to be slung a lifeline, do I?”

    “You don’t need— Jesus, Pom!”

    Thomas glared at her, baffled. “Now what?”

    “It’s an Americanism. You must have heard it before, Thomas, surely? Even in that marine geoling ivory tower of yours!”

    “One doesn’t marine geol in—you’ve got me saying it now, Goddammit! One doesn’t carry out marine geology in a tower, ivory or otherwise.”

    “Carry out, eh?” replied Dorothy with some some relish. “I was wondering if you’d find an appropriate verb. Other than ‘do’,” she explained kindly.

    “‘Do mar—’ Look, just stop it! What did you mean?”

    “To sling someone a line is to tell them a convincing story which is either a downright lie or not quite true.”

    “That does not make sense!”

    “No, it doesn’t, when you think about it, eh? –Do not race off and look it up on the Internet!” she warned.

    Thomas subsided back into his armchair. “Very well. It’s all American, anyway.”

    “True…” Dorothy re-read the applicant’s covering letter. “Cripes, ‘Stanislaus Gorski’, poor bugger! –At least he’s not a crawler.”

    “No: for a covering letter reminding one of a long-gone period of working together in the hope of being awarded a job, that is not a crawling effort,” he agreed.

    “No. But what the Hell has he been doing for the last umpteen years?” she demanded.

    He shrugged. “Odd jobs, apparently.”

    “Where? Uh—hang on, this is only a PO box. Has he given a home address?”

    “Mm: somewhere in Sydney.”

    “Oh, yeah. But no references from whoever employed him to do these odd jobs there?”

    “He doesn’t actually say,” said Thomas slowly, “that the odd jobs were in Sydney.”

    Dorothy checked both the letter and the CV carefully. “No, you’re right. Well, junk him?”

    “Uh—I thought not. He was very good with the younger fellows on the team.”

    “Well, it’s your budget: if you want to get him over for an interview and he turns out to have become a complete nutter in the thirty years or so since you knew him, so be it.”

    “Not quite my budget: Madam Medes and Persians, our respected Acting CEO, has decreed that expenses extra to the day-to-day running, not the phrase, of one’s faculty will come out of a separate budget. Not the phrase. The word ‘line’ came into it somewhere. Didn’t think money could be linear, myself, but all is possible in Admin-Speak, apparently.”

    “Budget line? –No, forget it!” said Dorothy with a laugh. “At least you’ll be rid of her when the new bloke takes over!”

    “Thank God,” Thomas agreed. “It’ll stretch to a cheap flight across the Tasman, don’t worry.”

    “And accommodation?”

    “Madam Medes and Persians has made an arrangement with the Kingfisher Motel in Kingfisher Bay—so long as the interviewees arrive in their off-season, naturally.”

    “Is that the one with air conditioning?” she croaked.

    “Yes.”

    Dorothy sagged slightly. “That’s a blessing. Well, I’d say there’s a handful here who look more promising, but why not give the bloke a chance?”

    Thomas smiled at her. “Thank you, darling. Actually, I’d quite like to work with him again—though of course we’ve never worked together in an academic institution. But unless he has become a nutter it might work out quite well. At least he wasn’t a bloody vegetarian like that frightful Canadian who was wished on us for that project! When we were at sea the diet consisted of whatever we could catch interspersed with tins of bully beef, Spam and baked beans, eked out with boiled rice. In his case, of baked beans and boiled rice, period.”

    “Ugh! Wouldn’t that have let him in for scurvy?”

    “Unfortunately, no. –We did take on plenty of fresh stuff when we were in port, but it doesn’t last well in the tropics, even in the fridge.”

    “No, of course not,” replied Dorothy nicely, wondering silently whether the more than two decades that had elapsed since Thomas and this type with the Polish name had worked together in the Timor Sea had included the type’s becoming a vegetarian nutter. Well, if he hadn’t, the thought did occur that maybe he’d be the sort that Polly had recommended, that would be up for—not just grogging binges, was it? No: macho binges, that was right! Macho binges with Thomas!

    “Did he drink?”

    Thomas jumped. “Huh? The bloody Canadian? Of course not!”

    “No, this other guy.”

    “Oh: certainly. Completely normal.”

    That sounded promising. “Good,” said Dorothy mildly.

    Apart from Dorothy and Polly, of course, there was no-one with sufficient intelligence with whom Thomas might discuss the oddness of the sudden resurgence of an almost-forgotten colleague from nigh on thirty years back, except Sol Winkelmann. Well, Jack Perkins, who held the position at Sir George Grey University of Director, Engineering and Information Technology Science and Applications, was highly intelligent, but he was also highly focussed, task-oriented, and definitely not interested in gossip or speculation relating to personalities. Given that his brain had of itself begun to make certain vague connections and form certain—well, deductions wasn’t quite the right word, since there was little or no evidence—suspicions, perhaps, which Thomas rather thought would disturb Dorothy, he wasn’t going to discuss it further with her. And there was no way, in view of these same suspicions, that he was going to breathe a word to Polly.

    In the wake of her recent retirement Dorothy had got quite keen on gardening, though admitting cheerfully that she didn’t have a green thumb, she had a black one, so he cunningly waited until she’d driven off to the Puriri Garden Centre in order to brood over their lovely selection of plants that she could kill, and then took his runabout down Carter’s Inlet to Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies in Kingfisher Bay. Unfortunately Sol had never been allowed to put in a set of steps or a mooring ramp at the foot of the low seawall just opposite the shop, so he had to tie up at the marina, further round the curve of the artificial bay that Carrano Development’s bulldozers had scooped out of the mangroves quite some decades before the word Green, capital G, had ever been heard in New Zealand. Slots at the marina of course cost an arm and both legs, only the owners of the plutier modern mansions on the slope of exclusive little Kingfisher Bay being able to afford them, but as one short stretch of the boardwalk’s otherwise pristine white edging was labelled “SOL’S” in rather wobbly navy-blue paint, he tied up there.

    “Didn’t come down in the launch, did you?” Sol greeted him glumly as he came into the shop and the doorbell, which had been through several metamorphoses over the dozen or so years that Thomas had known it, uttered a loud: “Clonk!”

    “No, the runabout,” he replied somewhat weakly.

    “I knew it,” he said glumly. “See, just for a moment, there, I had this glorious vision that she might need complete stripping, and refitting into the bargain—like what Euan and me could work on over to the boatyard for, say, the next three months? Like that.”

    “Er—business been slow, then?” said Thomas.

    “Not over summer, no, we been real busy, thank the Lord. Just lookin’ ahead to the doldrums of the winter season. You know, Thomas: June through October,” he elaborated sadly.

    “Rubbish. June to August, possibly. But they’ll all need their hulls scraped, won’t they? One of our chaps at work read an article about some damned marine worms you have in these sub-tropical climes that get into the woodwork of the piers and infest the northern New Zealand marinas.”

    Sol eyed him moodily. “Baranski, I got three syllables for you. Fi-ber-glass,” he enunciated slowly.

    For a moment the American accent threw Thomas and he looked at him blankly. “Oh!” he said with a laugh. “Fibreglass! I get you! No, no, old chap: evidently these particular marine worms will cling to anything. Look, get up a flier to the effect that the boatyard specialises in antifouling measures! I’m pretty sure that article said that these particular worms—uh, fanworms, I think our chap said, but I can’t remember the scientific name—some form of Polychaeta, doubtless—that they’re a designated pest species.”

    Sol smiled at him. “Pest species, huh? Gee, we don’t want none of them round here.” He looked thoughtfully out of his front window.

    Thomas turned round. He grinned. Two youngish men in spanking-clean designer jeans, horizontally striped navy and white tee-shirts, no kidding, and sharply peaked yachting caps, no kidding, were having what appeared to be a heated discussion over by the seawall. One of them was so agitated he actually removed the appallingly trendy dark glasses in order to emphasise his point. “Who in God’s name are they?”

    “Them there,” replied Sol with relish, “is the new owners of Number 34 Kahikatea Boulevard. Brooke Evans and—get this—Ann-toine Deb-yew-court.”

    “Er… Antoine Debucourt, surely?” replied Thomas limply.

    “Uh-uh. Wal, his aunty, she pronounces it like that, but then, she’s been to Paris, France. Nup, the Deb-yew-courts been out here for three generations, Thomas.”

    Since one of the keywords had come over, of course, as “anti”, Thomas had had to blink, but for once the man wasn’t taking the Mick. “As a matter of fact I find that fascinating, Sol,” he admitted.

    Sol smiled slowly. “Yeah, I found it so, too. Nobody else I’ve mentioned it to hasn’t, though, ’ceptin’ for Polly. Not even Michaela,” he added sadly.

    Thomas’s eyes began to twinkle. “What did she say?”

    “‘They always do,’” reported Sol sadly.

    “Yeah!” he gasped, breaking down in a roar of laughter. “Don’t they, though!”

    Sol leaned on his counter grinning. “Uh-huh. Sure do.”

    “That was Brooke with an E, was it?” added Thomas suspiciously.

    Taken unawares, Sol broke down in a fit of helpless sniggers, nodding madly. “Yeah,” he admitted limply at last, wiping his eyes. “Yo, boy: ya had me, there, Thomas! So, if it ain’t the complete refit job today, what can I do for you?”

    “You’d better serve this lady first, I think,” realised Thomas, smiling politely at a young woman in the customary faded saggy jeans and unspeakably horrid washed-out black baggy tee-shirt who was now hesitating about a yard back from the counter.

    “Um, you were first,” she growled.

    “No, please, I’m just here to gossip,” said Thomas in his nicest tones.

    Throwing him a wary, sideways glance and avoiding his eye, she growled: “Um, ta.” She then put in a perfectly competent request for the precise type of marine-grade paint that she required.

    Thomas retreated to the back of the shop, swallowing a sigh. Sometimes, he reflected, it was only the fact of Dorothy—and come to think of it, Sol himself, and certainly Polly—that could persuade him into remaining in this benighted country at all. Why were Kiwis so incredibly devoid of even the simplest social skills? But they were all like that, in all walks of life, and all situations. You occasionally met a more educated one who at least knew to shake hands on being introduced—but these were few and far between. The usual greeting, whether or not they knew your name, and whether or not on first acquaintance, was an inane “Hullo.” Back around the time of the venture in the Timor Sea on which he’d met his new job applicant with the frightful Polish name, he’d spent quite a lot of time in Australia, and he’d unconsciously expected that like the Australians, the New Zealanders on being introduced would thrust out a hand and say “How are you, So-and-So?”—using one’s name, quite. But no. Oh, dear. The young woman customer was, alas, entirely typical of the informal encounter. As was the vernacular “ta”. Not to say the vernacular “um”.

    When she’d gone he wandered back to the counter and said with a sigh: “Sol, don’t you sometimes feel—well, the only word that really covers it is the French dépaysé—don’t you sometimes feel that, out here?”

    “Uh-huh. Like a fish out of water, huh?” agreed Sol, unmoved.

    Thomas smiled reluctantly. “Quite. Has anyone ever offered to shake hands with you?”

    “You mean a Kiwi? Uh… yup. One. Jake Carrano.”

    Thomas had to swallow. “I think that proves my point.”

    “Uh-huh. You thinking of heading back to Britain when you retire, then, Thomas?”

    “No, I think Dorothy would hate it. And I like my house and the lifestyle here—on the Inlet, I mean. I think it’ll see me out, but God knows what the place’ll be like in another twenty years.”

    “Yeah. Wal, lessen someone persuades Polly to buy up all the rest of them stretches along the inlet what she don’t already own, courtesy of Jake, and leave them in her will as a nature reserve.”

    “Wouldn’t work: some cretinous government would come along and repossess them in the name of something polysyllabic and build another damned motorway.”

    “Yuh. Ya know, when I first come out, the drive from the Auckland International Airport took at least twice as long as it does these days.”

    Thomas smiled a little. “Mm. Leigh and I came out together: we got hopelessly lost on our first attempt. The road signs were utterly confusing, too—not just the ones when you come off the Harbour Bridge—that one that points the way to bloody Whangarei was still there, last time I looked—but all the way, really! I seem to recall that the only indications that we were coming into Puriri township were a couple of hand-written signs that said ‘Tomatoes’ and one that said ‘Eggs’.”

    “Ye-ah…” he sighed. “Them were the days. You know old Jacko Te Hana, huh? –Yeah. He was telling me he can recall back before the Harbour Bridge was built, all the roads on the North Shore were shocking—this was back before anyone dreamed of calling Takapuna a city and before Forrest Hill even existed, mind—” Thomas blinked: it was a well-established suburb. “Yeah,” acknowledged Sol with some satisfaction. “Wal, old Jacko was saying they had regular harbour ferries, not just to Devonport like that last remaining one, but to Bayswater and Northcote as well, and even the occasional one to Birkenhead. Oh: and there was a Stanley Bay one, but it just made the two trips a day: one to collect the workers first thing, and one to bring ’em home around five. Then to get anywheres further north you hadda take a bus, and from the Devonport or Bayswater wharves it’d be a good hour to get to Torbay.” He looked bland.

    “What?”

    “Yeah. –That was the farthest end of the run. Only the express buses went there. Took over two hours to get up to Puriri in them days, say from the Devonport wharf where the vehicular ferry woulda let off you and your Humber car.” His eyes twinkled.

    Thomas swallowed. “Did you go to that so-called Vintage Car Fair last month— You did. Right. I can just remember Dad driving a Humber when I was about… seven, I think. His was pale grey. I believe they also came in black.”

    “Uh-huh. Not pastel Aston-Martin blue, then?” returned Sol, poker-face.

    “No. –I can’t laugh, really,” Thomas confessed.

    “It was bad, all rightee,” he conceded. “So, did you come down to gossip about anything specific? Or just life in general in this here Kiwi exemplar of Outer Woop-Woop?”

    Thomas’s jaw dropped. “The last time I heard that expression I was in the Timor S— Where the Hell did you get it from?”

    “Polly. Her friends from the big university in Canberra—”

    “ANU,” said Thomas automatically.

    “Uh-huh: they said it, quite as a commonplace. She was particularly intrigued because the Kiwis have got the expression ‘wop-wops’—you don’t hear it so much these days,” he allowed as Thomas frowned over it—“while the corresponding Aussie one of course is ‘woop-woops.’ Kinda means the back of nowhere,” he explained.

    “I think I got that… Look, do you remember that a few weeks back we had a conversation in which the words ‘geologist’ and ‘fish’ figured largely?”

    “Uh-huh. The word ‘Polly’ came into it, too, as I recall. And we kinda concluded it might be interesting to wait see what applicants you got for all them geologists’ positions what you was advertisin’.”

    “Yes, exactly. We-ell…” Thomas rumpled his untidy iron-grey mop. “This may just be a mad coincidence. But Polly was in Australia not long ago… Did she tell you where these friends had their holiday home?”

    “Nothing specific, no. On the east coast somewheres.”

    “She didn’t say anything specific to me, either. I don’t think she mentioned the actual location to Dorothy, but I don’t want to ask her, she’ll start imagining God knows what.”

    “Yeah. Well, the east coast covers a fair amount of ground. Uh… according to one of them reports filtered through auburn fluff, the sand was very hot and the friends’ son went surfing.”

    “That’d probably cut out Tasmania and the southernmost stretches of Victoria,” replied Thomas drily. “Leaving a stretch of something like three thousand kilometres.”

    “What I thought. So, you’ve had an application from an Australian geologist that’s a keen fisherman?”

    “At that level—and this may surprise you, given the amount of ludicrously polysyllabic blather churned out by the average university administrative bureaucracy—one is not required to list one’s hobbies!” replied Thomas tartly.

    “Pity,” returned Sol stolidly.

    Thomas bit his lip. “Yes. Sorry, Sol.”

    “That’s okay; guess all her friends are worried about Polly.”

    “Mm. Well, this fellow is an Australian, yes. His covering letter reminded me that we worked together something like twenty-five years back on a damned converted trawler in the Timor Sea. Prospecting disguised as research—the buggers had got some bloody grant, but most of the funding came from a very large mining company. I’d long since lost track of him—well, I stuck it out in industry for a bit, then went back to Academia. According to his CV he had a considerable stint with BHP, then chucked it in. That was quite some years back. Nothing much since apart from some bloody daft Australian technological aid venture in China, don’t laugh, presumably passing on all his skills. Over the last few years he’s only been doing odd jobs. His address for correspondence is a PO box, but there is a physical address—in Sydney.”

    “That is on the east coast,” said Sol temperately.

    “Mm.” Thomas looked wry. “I googled it. The address is that of a flat. It appears to be in a retirement complex.”

    Sol stared at him. “How old is this guy?”

    He shrugged. “Mid-fifties. I—uh—I checked up on the firm that runs the complex—seems to be quite a big charity organisation—well, charity for tax purposes, I’d say, judging by what they must have spent on their website. You’re not eligible for one of their flats until you’re sixty.”

    “Was there a copy of his birth certificate?”

    “Yes; it looked completely above-board. Likewise the photocopy of his passport.” Sol’s eyebrows went up at that, and Thomas explained: “There was a case of an Indian fellow who applied for a job with Madam Medes and Persians when she was running the Registry: used someone else’s birth certificate. So, presumably on the assumption that it’d take real cunning to borrow both a birth certificate and a passport—” Sol was already choking helplessly, so he stopped.

    “The bureaucratic mind,” the American concluded limply, wiping his eyes. “Wal—uh—gee, that is odd, Thomas.”

    “Yes. I haven’t told Dorothy: she’d take it as immediate grounds for ruling him out of contention.”

    “Could maybe be his old mother’s address?”

    “That’s a possibility, mm.”

    “’Specially if he was moving around a lot with his odd jobs. Did he say what they were?”

    “No.”

    Sol rubbed his narrow jaw. “I guess if they weren’t relevant to the position he was applying for…”

    “Yes, but that sort of huge gap in one’s résumé without explanation is a no-no.”

    “Yuh. Wal, lots of explanations do spring to mind, ranging from a breakdown through prison, to some physical illness that took a while to recover from, to sex-change what he hadda have corrected when he changed his mi— Sorry. Or—uh—house-husband?”

    “Yes, but it’s perfectly acceptable to put that, these days!”

    “Yeah. I guess if ya wanna know you’re gonna have to ask him, Thomas. How did he strike you back when you worked with him?”

    “A very likeable chap: very easy to get on with, very good with the younger chaps and eminently sane,” replied Thomas drily.

    “Was he a fisherman?”

    “Thanks.”

    “No, seriously.”

    “Oh—sorry, old man. Well, the topic of sports fishing didn’t come up: we all fished for the pot—except the execrable Canadian, of course. –Vegetarian. Probably what they call vegan these days.”

    “Jesus. Why take him on at all?”

    “He was an experienced sonar operator,” replied Thomas sourly.

    “I geddit. What the Hell did he eat?

    “I thought I said? Oh, no, sorry: told Dorothy. Tinned baked beans and boiled rice.”

    Sol shook slightly. “Goddit!”

    “Mm… He was a troublemaker, too,” Thomas remembered. “Had a go at one of the kids—don’t know what about, but by the time I got there the boy was in tears. Only a Masters student: we had three students, all spewing their hearts out for most of the voyage, poor little buggers. –Free labour, you see,” he explained drily. “Unfortunately the bloody Canadian was twice his weight and about six inches taller into the bargain—in fact he was heftier than anybody aboard except me, and nobody that he had a go at fancied tackling him, though they all loathed him. I’d have flattened the bastard myself, but I only came in for the end of it: this Stan chappie floored him. Beautiful, it was. Out cold. Bashed the back of his head on the deck, too, serve him right. When he came round he threatened to sue, but that would’ve been difficult without any witnesses.”

    Sol grinned. “Glad to hear it. So this guy—did you say his name was Stan?”

    “Well, we all called him that. Stanislaus Gorski. Polish extraction, presumably.”

    “Uh-huh. This Stan guy, he could box?”

    Thomas grinned. “And how! After that we used to spar regularly in the mornings. Well, I was a good three stone heavier than him—always been a heavyweight, and he’d have probably made welterweight until the fish diet took effect—we all lost a lot of weight that trip, did us good—but he could box, all right!”

    “Uh-huh. A good guy, then?”

    “I’d have said so, yes.”

    “Ye-ah…” Sol thought it over. Finally he said: “Okay, Thomas: you’ve gotten an application from an Australian geologist that was a good guy way back when but hasn’t worked in your field for years. He’s given a real unlikely address in a city on the east coast of Australia and Polly recently stayed over there somewheres warm by the sea, we presume on the east coast. Plus and she’s been blushing at the words ‘geologist’ and ‘fish’. –That a fair summation of the position?”

    “Very fair,” Thomas acknowledged wryly.

    “Ye-ah…” Several scenarios were now running through Sol’s mind. He repressed an impulse to clear his throat. “You familiar with the Australian government’s position on refugees, Thomas?”

    “I think you mean successive Australian governments’ rooted antipathy towards the unfortunates whom they’ve labelled as ‘asylum seekers’, don’t you?” replied Thomas with infinite distaste.

    “Yeah.” He scratched his chin. “Given this Stan guy’s familiarity with the coastal waters of northern Australia… And the way he stood up for the kid on your boat…” He made a lugubrious face. “People smuggling?”

    “Er—your Florida background may be prejudicing you here, Sol… Jesus, though, I can just see it!” Thomas admitted in some awe. “He’d have the guts for it, no question.”

    “Uh-huh. Wal, he must have been doing something with all those years what he’s left blank on his résumé. Don’t see how you’re ever gonna get it out of him, though, if it was that.”

    Thomas was about to retort hotly that he’d get it out of him, all right. He opened his mouth. Than he shut it again. “No, well, almost any other chap… But no, you’re right. Well, if it’s that, it shows, er, that he’s still a good guy, I suppose. But— Well, speaking for myself, I wouldn’t care to see Polly mixed up with some fellow who may be extradited by the bloody racist Australian government at any moment.”

    “Me, neither. Though I guess we’re being previous, here, Thomas,” Sol admitted ruefully.

    “Yes. But it could have been anything bloody fishy… Sorry, that wasn’t a pun,” he added lamely.

    “No, didn’t think it was. So, whaddaya think?”

    Thomas rumpled his mop of iron-grey curls, scowling. “Look, I can see the man I knew being mixed up in something illegal if he’d decided it was the right thing to do, on any sort of grounds, humanitarian or otherwise. But I can’t see him having anything to do with anything—well, evil, if that doesn’t sound too puerile.”

    Sol replied seriously: “That’s a recommendation. You knew him that well, then?”

    “Being cooped up for months at very close quarters with no way of escape is a very good recipe for getting to know a man’s character. He was the only man on board who never grumbled, never indulged in any form of back-biting, and always, under any circumstances, however foul—a gale in the Timor Sea that could turn into a cyclone at any moment is no joke—always pulled his weight and never panicked.”

    Sol smiled a little. “The only man on board save one, I guess,” he murmured.

    Thomas shrugged. “I was in charge.”

    What else? Sol looked at him with immense liking. “Sure. Wal, even over a good many years a guy’s character can’t change fundamentally. I’d give you real good odds he’s still a good guy.”

    “Mm. Nevertheless he could be a good guy who’s got on the wrong side of the law.”

    “Yup.”

    They looked at each other limply.

    “Coffee?” suggested Sol at last.

    “If it’s the real stuff, yes, I will, thanks.”

    “Yes, it is. Trent won’t have gotten down on it, he only drinks brown dust.”

    “Where is he?” asked Thomas as, no more customers having appeared, Sol strolled down to the back of the shop.

    “Driven in to the wholesalers’ to collect some more rope, cleats and nails. They’re having trouble delivering, being as how,” he noted drily, “they was depending on Jolly Jim Carriers, in other words goddamned Dan Carter, to deliver their stuff up this way.”

    “Ouch.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “What happened? Lost his nerve?” drawled Thomas.

    “Puts it well,” acknowledged Sol sourly. “That and, frankly, the guy wasn’t up to Polly’s intellectual weight.”

    “Few guys are,” noted the Englishman drily.

    “Right. Think this Stan guy of yours might be?”

    Thomas rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It’s not just a matter of brains, is it?”

    “Nope. Jack Perkins cain’t take her in anything but small doses, neither.”

    “Noticed that. Well, the Stan I recall could stand up to anything, intellectually, but I frankly don’t know about the feminine thing.”

    “Yeah, it’s the combination that gets to them.”

    “Mm. Don’t think I ever saw him with a woman—not a decent one, that is. I’ve seen him give as good as he got with any number of tough barmaids in northern Australia—and come to think of it, seen him drag one of our dim students out of the clutches of a tart in a very tasty joint in Broome!” he added, his hefty shoulders shaking. “She was a pretty little thing: gave the kid the full sob story—not to mention the eye. Cut no ice whatsoever with Stan.”

    Sol just made coffee, replying noncommittally: “Uh-huh.”

    Thomas propped his shoulders against the wall. “He may not be the man in question at all.”

    “True.”

    “Added to which, the whole fisherman-geologist thing may be a figment of my imagination,” he concluded sourly.

    “Yup. Two sugars?”

    “Make it three, thanks,” replied Thomas heavily.

    After the coffee he was able to admit: “Well, I’ll get the blighter over here for an interview and do my best to screw the truth out of him. Then, if he seems okay… Well, invite him and Polly to dinner? Might as well know the worst, not much point in putting it off.”

    “Ye-uh.” Sol turned over various possible outcomes of such an encounter in his mind, but as he realised that Thomas must be perfectly well aware of the lot he didn’t bother to voice them. “Yeah. Iffen your nerves can take it—sure, why not?”

    Thomas the Tank Engine just shrugged his burly shoulders, so he concluded the guy’s nerves could take it. Sheesh!

    Two days later, Polly having come home from the visit to her friends in Taupo, when Grace suggested eagerly that they could ask her to tea Sol agreed, but said why didn’t he take the Sunday afternoon off and all of them go somewheres nice and have a meal out?

    “The Tavern in Puriri?” suggested Michaela.

    Sol smiled a little. It was only a family restaurant attached to the pub of the same name, but he knew she liked it because of its large schnitzels. Its burgers weren’t bad, neither, ’ceptin’ they seemed to have gotten a new cook with a tendency to provide poached eggs with everything. Boy, Sol sure did loathe poached eggs, they just sat there and looked at you all kinda plump, wet and about to ooze…

    “You don’t have to have anything with eggs,” said Michaela kindly, reading his  expression without difficulty.

    “No,” he agreed faintly. “But I was thinking more along the lines of maybe a sit-down Chinese meal? Ching’s at Brown’s Bay, maybe?”

    “Ooh, yes!” cried Grace.

    “What do you think, honey?” he asked Michaela.

    “That sounds good: we haven’t had a Chinese meal for ages, have we?”

    “Great. Well, if the weather holds maybe we could all go for a swim beforehand, huh? Set off in good time? Them who might find the water too cold could just sit on the sands, huh?”

    “Or on the rug,” said Michaela seriously.

    “Yes, Polly was saying the sand in Australia was absolutely burning, and one year, her friend’s son, he burnt his feet on it!” revealed Grace breathlessly.

    “Yeah, wal, it won’t be that hot, but a rug’s always nice, sure, with ladies in the party,” replied Sol mildly. “Where’bouts was that again, Pumpkin?”

    “Dad, you never listen! I just said: Australia!”

    “Y— Uh, yeah, sure. But where in Australia would it have been, Grace?”

    “The place where her friends have got their beach house. I said was it a bach and she said no, it was a proper house, but they don’t call it a beach house, they call it a weekender! Even though they don’t usually go there just for the weekend, they go for the holidays! Funny, eh?”

    Hilarious, yeah. “Uh-huh. This place got a name?”

    “Um… She said the little settlement had a funny name, only the beach house, it was further along the coast.”

    “Why do you want to know?” said Michaela out of the blue.

    Sol jumped. “Uh—no special reason, honey. Wal, some real odd place names in Australia, though I guess no odder than some of our American ones, only I’m more used to them.”

    “Do you mean Aboriginal names?” asked Michaela.

    “In Australia?” he replied weakly. “I guess. Well, maybe more what English tongues have done to the Aboriginal words.”

    “Ooh, like what, Dad?”

    Sol’s mind was a blank. A perfect blank. “Well, uh, fetch the big atlas, honey.”

    Eagerly Grace fetched his big Times Atlas, now more than somewhat out of date as to political divisions in places like Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Africa, but still okay otherwise. And some considerable time was spent in poring over the map of Australia. Plenty of strange place names were discovered, but, alas, Sol The Great Detective got no nearer to discovering the name of the place where Polly had stayed. No matter how much nudging he did in the direction of Australia’s east coast.

    Polly was gracing Brown’s Bay beach in a kind of beach coatee thing that as to its general lines woulda done credit to a Hollywood colour movie of the Fifties, though the bright, splashy pattern of its fabric dated from much, much later in the 20th century. It was at the moment open over a jade-green bikini of the sort whose shoe-string straps only jest held ’em up, couldn’t’ve been said to support ’em, heh, heh. True, there was some jade green discernible in amongst every other colour of the spectrum in the coatee thing, so the two might have been said to be an outfit. Except that the Winkelmanns had seen the bikini before—though Sol still enjoyed it as much as ever—but they hadn’t seen the jacket.

    “This beach jacket a souvenir of your trip round the Sydney boutiques with Lady Harding?” he asked.

    “What? Oh—no. I wish it had been: it would have come in useful at the Mayhews’ beach house. No, I found it at the bach, wedged at the back of the drawer in the bottom of the wardrobe when I was clearing out that horrible black and dark grey linen Jake bought for our bed.”

    “Yes, it was horrible, eh?” Grace agreed sympathetically.

    Sol eyed them tolerantly. Yeah, sure. Only with a pale Lady Carrano stretched out on it—her skin was lovely, though it didn’t have that pink pearly look of Michaela’s: now, that woulda been real stunning on that there linen… “Huh?”

    “I said, it is Australian, it’ll have been one of the Ken Done things Jake bought me.”

    “Oh, sure!” he agreed.

    “Yes, that’s a typical Ken Done design, all right,” agreed Michaela.

    Right. Was the moment for asking casually just where was that beach house of her friends’ gone, or— Yes, gone, unfortunately: Polly had launched into a description of the horrors of the shopping trip with Phyllis Harding. Damn.

    Grace then announced her ice cream had “sunk”, so she was going for another swim. And urged them to come in, too. Sol groaned and closed his eyes under his sunglasses.

    “Come on, Mum! Come on, Polly!”

    “You go, we’re not as energetic as you, we’re all getting old,” said Polly with a smile.

    “I’ll say!” On this note of scorn she belted for the water.

    Sol raised himself on an elbow groaning, and peered.

    “She’s all right,” said Michaela placidly.

    “Apparently, yeah. Why didn’t they warn me it’d never stop?” he sighed.

    “I think some of them tried to, Sol!” replied Polly with a laugh.

    “Musta had beans in my ears,” he groaned, lying back and closing his eyes definitively.

    Over the Chinese meal, admittedly delicious, he tried to introduce the topic of the funny Australian names in the big atlas, but although Grace contributed her mite, and Polly placidly corrected their pronunciation what time Michaela silently ate her way through the plate of fried dim-sims, still the mystery of where exactly Polly had stayed remained unresolved, let alone the much greater mystery of whether she had actually met a geologist who was a keen fisherman.

    Sol sighed and reached for a dim-s— “Who’s been eating these?” he gasped.

    “Me,” replied his wife calmly. “Thought they were there for eating.”

    Oddly, both his daughter and his wife’s cousin collapsed in giggles at this point.

    “Order another lot,” suggested Michaela kindly.

    “Okay, I will!” When that was over he sighed and said baldly: “‘Look, Polly, about the only place we could find on the map with a funny name where you mighta stayed—that was, if you were in New South Wales—was Wollongong.”

    Placidly correcting his pronunciation of the first syllable of this name to “Wool”, Polly allowed that it hadn’t been all that far from there, but getting onto the main road from the Mayhews’ place was really tricky. She didn’t think their little beach had a name—well, there hadn’t been any signposts.

    “So is this Woll—uh, Wool-ong-gong—boy, is that peculiar or is that peculiar—is that the nearest town, then? I mean, was there a village where you could do a bit of shopping?”

    “It was something with a funny name, you said,” Grace reminded her helpfully.

    “Mm. It was so small it wouldn’t have been in your atlas, Grace,” she said kindly. “It was south of Wollongong”—here Sol muttered under his breath, frowning, but she managed to ignore him—“and it was called Gorski Bay.”

    Fortunately Grace’s cry of: “Ooh, that is a funny name!” drowned the fact that Sol had choked on a piece of sweet and sour cabbage from the sweet and sour pork out of which someone had eaten all the pork when he wasn’t looking.

    “Well, not all that funny,” replied Polly calmly. “I think it’s probably Polish. –Are you all right, Sol?” she asked, as he’d now turned purple and was gasping for breath.

    Kindly Michaela administered a glass of water. “Thanks!” he gasped, eyes streaming. “Piece of cabbage went down the wrong way,” he explained limply. “You did say Gorski?” he croaked.

    “Yes.”

    “The—the place, not—not a person?” he croaked.

    “Well, it could have been named after a person. Like Mount Kosciuszko,” said Polly, with a twinkle.

    “That’s in Australia, too!” spotted Grace.

    “Mm,” Polly agreed.

    “But I thought it was an Aboriginal name.”

    Polly winced. “No. Polish.”

    “You’d better look it up on the Internet when you get home,” said Michaela calmly, swallowing the last bit of the last chicken wing.

    Sol began: “Y— Where’s all the food?” he demanded aggrievedly.

    “We’ve eaten it,” replied Grace blankly as the waiter came up with the refill of fried dim-sims.

    “You guys have, you mean!” he retorted bitterly. “Right, you’re not getting these!”

    … And?” said Thomas next day to his bitter telephone report.

    “They was all so full that they jest sat there and watched me eat the dad-blamed things!”

    “Er—yes. Was there any point to this story, apart from that, Sol? Because I’ve still got a huge pile of CVs to check through—”

    “Uh—gee, I’m Helluva sorry, Thomas. Yes, there is a point.” He cleared his throat uneasily. “You—uh—you did say your Aussie geologist-guy’s name was Gorski, didn’t you?”

    “That’s right.”

    Sol took a deep breath. “Well, I finally got out of Polly that the nearest village to her friends’ beach house is a tiny place called Gorski Bay.”

    The phone was silent.

    Finally Sol said weakly: “Thomas?”

    “I’m still here… The possibilities,” he noted grimly, “are infinite.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Sol gratefully.

    “Short of a forensic examination of that birth certificate…”

    “Yup.”

    “Er… did she blush when she came out with the name?”

    “Nup.”

    Thomas was heard to take a deep breath. “Right. Thanks very much for letting me know, old chap. Forewarned,” he noted grimly, “is fore-bloody-armed.” With that he hung up.

    Sol set his receiver down shakily, swallowing. Help.

Next chapter:

https://anothercountry-apuririchronicle.blogspot.com/2023/08/erewhon.html