Unsettling

15

Unsettling

    Sol had been dreading this day. He didn’t know how Polly felt about Dan Carter but he did know she was pretty well used to what, frankly, could only be called male adulation, and to come back home after something like two and half months away, what with the Australian trip and then Christmas, and find that the guy that was one of her greatest admirers hereabouts had taken advantage of her absence to vanish into the wild blue yonder… Ugh.

    But as it happened he didn’t have to break the bad news after all, because gee, somewheres along the line, back fourteen years or so, him and Michaela had gone and produced Big Mouth of the Century.

    “Hey, Dan’s gone, didja know?” she came out with, leaning on the store’s counter and eating an apple juicily.

    Sol cringed. He had to suppress a cowardly desire to dive right down below the counter and do something real necessary with them boxes of sinkers and kids’ fishing lines, y’know?

    “Has he?” replied Polly without interest.

    Grace swallowed apple noisily. “Yeah. Before Christmas. You were away. He told Col James—ya know him, eh? Yeah. He runs Jolly Jim Carriers. He told him he wasn’t gonna work for him any more. Col came up here to get some rope off Dad and told him all about it, eh, Dad? He said if he’d known he was gonna be that unreliable he’d never of given him the job and it was right in the middle of his busy season and what was he gonna do about all the Christmas deliveries.” She panted, and took another sustaining bite of apple. “Uh ’en ’e—”

    “Chew. Swallow,” croaked Sol, not daring to meet Polly’s eye.

    Grace chewed and swallowed. “And then he packed up his stuff and said Dad could do what he liked with that furniture, it was junk, and went. Dad reckons he’s got itchy feet, eh, Dad?”

    “Uh—yeah. Guess so,” he croaked.

    “It’s his age, I expect,” said Polly without interest. “Male menopause. I’m just going down to Kowhai Bay to see Jill and Gretchen, Sol, and Jill said to ask you if you’ve got anything suitable for mending the chook run. She thinks there’s one demented hen that keeps attacking the wire netting, but she hasn’t managed to catch it at it.”

    “Uh—right,” he said, more or less coming out of his state of suspended animation. “Wal, my advice’d be to put another piece of chicken wire over it, Polly.”

    “Wire netting, Dad,” the offspring corrected him. “We don’t sell that, Polly.”

    “No,” he agreed limply. “I could let you have some wire, if she plans on weaving it  in and out of the meshes. No, well,” he realised, “she’ll need it anyroad if she’s planning on putting a new piece in. Okay, I’ll fetch it.” He hurried down in back. Jesus! He was wringing wet, and it wasn’t the North Auckland humidity, neither!

    Jill Davis poured tea, looking dry. “Gretchen’s thinking of taking off for Bonn,” she reported.

    Polly goggled at her. “Not—not permanently, Jill?”

    Jill looked drier than ever. “Don’t the famous They, capital T, say that they all go home eventually? No, well, it isn’t that,” she said heavily. “Her sister’s not well. And she’s had enough of the bloody German Department now that Hans has retired.”

    “You don’t mean she’s taking early retirement?” gasped Polly. Jill was a few years older then she was, and Gretchen a few years older than that, but she must be a good five years off retirement age, surely?

    At this point Jill’s housemate herself appeared in the sitting-room doorway. “Ja, that tit Brewster iss insubbortaple,” she noted sourly. “Also, they are offering very good packages, so I decided to take advantage off it, vhy not?” –Gretchen had an excellent gasp of the vernacular but no ear for, as Jill put it, furrin’ languages.

    It was still only January: after an exhausting session with her sisters-in-law Marilyn and Vonnie and her middle brother, Bert, down at the farm, it had been decided that as Mum just wasn’t coping any more, Polly would get her into Glen Osmonde, the old folks’ home up here in Puriri township. Marilyn, of course, hated imposing her will on anyone, Bert was incapable of taking a decision and besides had been accustomed all his married life to let his wife make the decisions for him, and Vonnie was more than capable of organising everyone but reluctant to upset them. God! If only her eldest brother, Vic, hadn’t died early. He’d have settled their hashes.—He’d only been in his sixties, but he’d had rheumatic fever when he was a little boy and evidently, though no-one in the family had been aware of this until it was far too late, it sometimes weakened the heart.—Anyway, it was finally decided. Whether Mum understood it all was a moot point, but she’d agreed she’d like to live closer to dear Polly, so that at least was a plus. Now all Polly had to do was blackmail Matron at Glen Osmonde with a reminder of her husband’s substantial endowments… So she’d come down to Jill and Gretchen’s place in Kowhai Bay for a bit of—well, not sympathy, exactly. More like bracing up. And certainly understanding: they’d met her relatives.

    Now Gretchen added, sitting down and accepting a cup of tea with the vernacular “Ta”: “Jill hass it fixed in her head that I am emigrating, but I’m doing no sudge thing. I can’t take the Bonn vinters.”

    “It is winter there,” noted Jill sourly. “And you’re off next week.”

    “On a permanent basis, I meant,” she replied mildly. “If you came, too, you could check up on Joel.”

    Since she pronounced this last name with the Germanic yod, there was a moment’s pause. Then the penny dropped: she was talking about Jill’s English cousin, Joel Thring. And Polly said: “Yes, you could, Jill. How’s he getting on in that old actors’ home?”

    Jill scratched her short grey hair. “As well as could be expected, I think’s the only way of putting it, Polly. Well, at least he’s with other people from the same profession, they’ve got that in common.”

    “Those that aren’t vegetables, yes,” agreed Gretchen heavily.

    Jill sighed. “Mm. –Have a gingernut, Polly.”

    “Thanks,” she replied, taking one and dunking it in her tea. “Why not go, Jill? Someone else could take over for you in Enrolment Week, surely?”

    Jill had at last made it to HOD: she was now Auckland’s Professor of French and currently (it being a rotating post) Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics. “Look, if I do, Ken the Kea will stage a palace coup!”

    “Should not haff appointed him,” noted Gretchen somewhat indistinctly through a gingernut.

    Crossly Jill retorted: “It was a choice between the predatory kea and a pudding-like kakapo, as you very well know!”

    “Ja… But many academics are puddings, would a kakapo haff been that bad?”

    “Yes. We’ve had too much dead wood in the Department for too long.”

    “Help, yes, remember Madeleine Defarge?” said Polly with a shudder.

    “Vividly,” agreed Jill sourly.

    “The cow sent her a postcard from Paris at Christmas. One off those so-called vintage ones that one buys on the quays,” said Gretchen.

    “Dirty?” fumbled Polly. That didn’t sound like the ultra-genteel large lady whom the French Department had unanimously dubbed “Defarge”.

    “No!” they both scoffed.

    “Boring and inabbrobriate,” explained Gretchen.

    “It showed a bit of Paris,” said Jill fairly.

    “Ja, in 1921 or thereabouts!” she retorted swiftly.

    “The Sacré Coeur is still the Sacré Coeur. –We came to the conclusion, Polly, that she possibly meant well but it was far more likely she was rubbing my nose in the fact that I was stuck here for Christmas when she was over there.”

    “That sounds like her,” Polly agreed. “But, um, seriously, can Ken the Kea do any real harm? I mean, he hasn’t got the power, has he?”

    “He can fiddle,” replied Jill grimly.

    “Vhat would you do, Polly?” asked Gretchen unexpectedly.

    Polly blinked but replied seriously: “I’d go. People matter more than stupid departmental infights.”

    Jill bit her lip. “You’re right. Couldn’t see the wood for the trees, kind of thing. Okay, Gretchen, I’ll come.”

    “Good. I book you an electronic ticket, okay?” With this she went out, looking determined—if one clutching a chocolate-coated Digestive in the fist could be said to look determined.

    “I thought you didn’t like the chocolate ones, Jill?” said Polly, apropos.

    “I don’t. They were a mistake. Staggered into the Superette in Puriri after a gruelling day trying to stop the Kea from reorganising the entire French language labs timetable, grabbed something that said ‘Digestive’ and a pot of marg, let Kylie Tonks foist a packet of saline-solution-injected pressed pig meat scraps on me, and just managed to drive home without going off the cliff.”

    “You can’t know it’s pig, without a forensic examination,” noted Polly detachedly.

    “How true. I should have said ‘pig-flavoured scraps of dubious protein substance’.”

    “Yep. Did you eat it?”

    Jill sighed. “Yes. Put it in the sandwiches for our lunches with enough of old Mrs Tonks’s chutney to completely disguise the taste.”

    “Which one?” asked Polly eagerly.

    “Er… Well, chutney, Polly. Hang on, she’ll know.” She went over to the door and yelled down the passage: “Hoy, Gretchen! Das war der chutney von wat, von Frau Tonks, mit der Gans?” She came and sat down again, winking at Polly.

    Gretchen reappeared. “Your Cherman iss awful,” she noted.

    Promptly Polly and Jill collapsed in sniggers.

    “Ja, hah, hah,” she said without animus. “If this is the superb chutney that you used to disguise that pressed so-callt ham you bought, it vas plum and apple, vith those excellent special raisins that are her secret ingredient. I haff booked your ticket.”

    Jill wiped her eyes. “Already?”

    “Ja, I bookmark the site. I print it out now, okay?” She vanished again.

    “Muscatels,” said Jill, smiling.

    “Eh?”

    “The raisins. They’re muscatels. These days they’re generally labelled something else in the supermarkets, I think. They used to come in whole dried bunches, seeds and all, in nice little boxes, usually available at Christmas—dunno why, I don’t think we of the North have managed to inculcate the nuts and raisins Yuletide thing, have we?”

    Jill was English but she’d been out here for over thirty years, so Polly merely replied very mildly to this: “Not so’s I’ve noticed. Some people do have nuts, though. After the puddings. It gives the macho men the opportunity to crack them with their bare hands. Or not,” she added thoughtfully. “Ever seen one of the idiots try to crack a Brazil?”

    Jill shook slightly. “No, but I’d like to!”

    “Mm. They get awfully red in the face. Then their aged father gets up, sighing heavily, takes the thing out to the shed and bashes it with the hammer,” she said reminiscently.

    Jill collapsed in sniggers.

    Gretchen reappeared. “I haff printed it out and put it in my wallet vith mine so that ve do not lose track off it.” She sat down and poured herself another cup of tea.

    “Gretchen, that’ll be stewed,” warned Polly.

    “I don’t mind. So vhat’s the yoke?”

    Jill wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Polly’s description of her dad flattening one of her idiot brothers’ macho efforts to crack a”—her voice shook—“a Brazil, with his bare hands. –Took it out to the shed and bashed it with a h’implement,” she explained.

    “Ja? My dad, also. He goes out to the kitchen vith it and hits it vith that shtupid meat hammer that Gerhard buys Mutti and she neffer needs to use.”

    “Was it Gerhard that tried to crack it?” asked Polly eagerly.

    “No, it vas Friedrich.”

    “Pity,” admitted Jill, grinning.

    Polly was now frowning over something. “Vhat is it?” asked Gretchen, taking a gingernut and dunking it in her tepid, stewed tea.

    “Um, you once said your mother made superb schnitzels, Gretchen. Couldn’t she have used the meat hammer for those? I mean, don’t they usually flatten the veal?”

    Ignoring the fact that Jill was now rolling her eyes to High Heaven, Gretchen replied composedly: “Ja, but for thirty years Mutti had been bashing her veal vith the old marble rolling-pin, Polly: vhy would she stop vhen it did such a good job?”

    “Goddit!” she conceded, grinning.

    Jill sighed. “Exactitude. The academic mind. –Two of them,” she noted, looking hard at her housemate.

    “You haff alvays known that,” replied Gretchen calmly.

    “True, true, oh King… Um, look, Polly,” she said, making up her mind to it, “we could pop down to Glen Osmonde with you if you want some back-up when you tackle Matron. Well, Gretchen’ll probably lurk in the car—”

    “No, I come in,” she said mildly.

    Polly was now very red. “No! I mean, thanks very much, both of you, but it might make it worse if we looked as if we were ganging up on her.”

    “This iss true,” noted Gretchen. “Okay, just hint that you vill cancel those generous donations—”

    “Shut up, you Aryan idiot,” groaned Jill.

    “Er—it is the obvious thing, surely—”

    “It’s too obvious, you’ve let your passion for exactitude and flaming Ordnung run away with you again!” cried Jill, getting heated. “She doesn’t need to hint, all she needs to do is turn up!”

    “Um, yes,” admitted Polly, very flushed.

    “You’re right,” Gretchen decided without animus. “Okay, ve come vith you anyway, Polly, and lurk in the car. Vhen do you go?”

    “I was sort of planning to go around eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

    Jill opened her mouth to protest she had to be in at work looking at the numbers of those pre-enrolled for French Three and if necessary re-allocating subjects amongst her teaching staff and juggling the flaming timetable yet again. She thought better of it. They had both known Polly since she was the brightest undergrad the Department had had for many a long year, and in spite of the “pretty Polly” thing that had taken them all in for a while, had, after topping successive years without seeming effort, been Senior Scholar. People first, Davis! she adjured herself silently.

    “Right, that’s settled,” she decided briskly. “Better break out that carrot cake, eh?’

    “Vhat?” cried Gretchen. “You Scrooge! You mean there iss carrot cake?”

    Jill got up, looking sheepish. “It’s one of old Mrs Tonks’s very own—she’s not baking for June Blake Cakes any more, she forced it on me when I gave her a lift the other day. It’s got that special cream-cheese icing of her—”

    “Get it!” she shouted.

    Looking very sheepish, Jill hurried out.

    “I apologise for her, Polly,” said Gretchen formally.

    Polly had to swallow. “That’s all right, Gretchen.”

    “She iss more worried over Yoel than she likes to admit, I think.”

    Polly looked at her with great liking. “Mm. Well, apart from being very nice for his own sake, he’s the last link with her past, really, isn’t he?”

    “Ja, you’re right. Ve did think maybe ve could bring him out: there iss plenty of room here, and then, there iss alvays Glen Osmonde, off course. But ve decided he would pine.”

    “Yes, he’s very Northcentric, isn’t he?” she replied with her typical placidity. “He had fun when he was out here that time to do that play, but I think he found it all very foreign.”

    “Ja. ‘Exoteek’,” quoted Gretchen with a sad little smile.

    “Mm,” she agreed sympathetically.

    Jill came back with the superbly-iced carrot cake at that moment, so they just exchanged smiles and said no more.

    Later, however, as she showed Polly formally to the car—Jill groaning in the background: “My God, she’s going into her Bonn manners thing!”—Gretchen admitted: “Betveen you and me, Polly, I think, efen apart from the Yoel factor, Jill’s very glad of an excuse to go back to England. She hass had itchy feet for a vhile now.”

    Polly looked at her in dismay. “Gretchen, she surely isn’t thinking of going back for good? Um, when she reaches retirement age, or something?”

    “Vell, I wouldn’t like to say for sure… But I think, if she comes back now she vill find there iss nothing for her there. Britain has changed a lot in the last thirty years. And she and Yoel agreed to sell their old Aunty Emmy’s house in Bognor, you know, as he didn’t vish to live there.”

    “Mm.”

    “I think,” said Gretchen thoughtfully, “I shall inculcate a desire to do the conventional retirement trip, you know?” Her shrewd grey eyes twinkled. “She hass alvays said she would like to see Japan. Maybe ve go there.”

    “That’d be nice. But do you want to see Japan, Gretchen?”

    She shrugged. “Not particularly. But a trip would be nice. Not that I care for flying. But the cruise ships sound intolerable, ja? I should like to go to Hawaii, vhere it’s nice and warm, and see the volcanoes, actually.”

    “You could do that easily from here!” said Polly eagerly. “And if you’re interested in volcanoes, Iceland is said to be very interesting!”

    “You’re getting carried avay,” replied Gretchen with a smile. “But vhat do you think off the Japan idea?”

    “Yes, excellent.”

    “You could come vith us, if it appealed,” she said cautiously.

    “Thanks, Gretchen. But…” Polly sighed. “It’s too far ahead. I can’t really plan, at the moment, everything seems so… fluid. Unsettled, really.”

    “Off course. Okay, ve see you tomorrow, and ve all go to Glen Osmonde.” Gretchen waved her off and returned slowly to the house, looking very thoughtful.

    “Ja, und?” asked Jill nastily.

    “You disgrace yourself ofer that carrot cake,” replied Gretchen severely.

    “All right, mea culpa,” she sighed. “But the woman can afford any bloody carrot cake she likes, whenever she likes!”

    “Not old Mrs Tonks’ special cake vith the superb icing,” she said severely.

    “True. All right. Sorry. Did you get anything more out of her?”

    “No-o… Except that she does not feel she can plan ahead at all at this juncture. Vell, I suggest maybe an overseas trip, perhaps vhen you retire. One would haff plenty off time to plan it properly. But she feels she cannot plan that far ahead.”

    “Uh, well, it is over five years. No, well, her mum’s pretty frail: I suppose it’s natural.”

    “I think it iss more than that.” Gretchen went over to the sideboard. “Fancy a gin?”

    Jill heroically managed to overlook the fact that that had come out, more or less, as “chin”, and said: “Well, yeah. But is this a celebration or a wake?”

    “Neither. It’s a buck-you-up-o.”

    Jill gulped. “Who’d ya get that one off?”

    “I think it’s one of Polly’s, actually. I’ve heard that useless youngest brother Bob of hers say it, too. –I am sure, though I haff no credible supporting evidence for this, that there iss something preying on Polly’s mind and it iss more than just Mrs Mitchell’s health. After all, she hass been very frail for some time.”

    “Er… true,” said Jill dubiously, scratching her head. “Well, I must admit I had the same feeling…”

    “There you are.” She handed her a large gin and tonic and sat down with her own.

    Jill wasn’t too sure whether the “there you are” referred to the drink or to Polly’s state of mind. She just lifted the glass and said: “Oh, well. Bung-ho.”

    “Down the hadge,” agreed Gretchen serenely, drinking.

    Jill’s “all she needs to do is turn up!” would have been perfectly correct, had it not been for the joint facts that Meriel Long on Reception at Glen Osmonde had known Polly for years and that the former matron, who had known her ditto, had recently retired. Deserting her post, Meriel shot into Matron’s office all flushed and excited, panting: “Matron, it’s Polly to see you!”

    Matron looked up from a giant pile of correspondence. Not that the home hadn't been run extremely efficiently, but it still generated piles of paperwork. She looked at her receptionist’s flushed face and swallowed a sigh. Undoubtedly some friend or relation with an unreasonable request—yet again—that she’d have to refuse. She couldn’t magic up places for moribund friends and relatives, nor could she possibly take on completely unqualified, inexperienced staff just because they happened to need a job. Oh, well. “Show her in, then, Meriel,” she said resignedly.

    Beaming, Meriel shot out to tell Polly she could go straight in.

    Matron looked at the very pretty woman who’d be in perhaps her late forties and decided resignedly it was probably yet another elderly parent with Alzheimer’s that the family couldn’t cope with any more. She listened very nicely and sympathetically to the woman’s somewhat faltering explanation—the mother wasn’t even from Puriri County, she lived somewhere down on the East Coast, for Heaven’s sake! And then produced her usual kindly but tactful refusal.

    “I see,” said her visitor in a stifled voice. “Thank you, Matron.” And with that she want away, mercifully without bursting into tears.

    Matron sighed and returned to her paperwork.

    In the car Jill Davis went very red. “Rubbish!”

    “But—”

    “Did you tell the bloody woman who you are?”

    “Um, I don’t think… Well, Meriel told her I was there—”

    “That hen! Wait here.” Jill got out, looking determined.

    “Oh, help,” said Polly limply to Gretchen.

    “Here. Wipe your eyes.”

    Meekly she accepted Gretchen’s hanky. “But if they’re full up, they’re full up.”

    “Quatsch.”

    They waited, Polly sneakily mopping her eyes from time to time and Gretchen merely looking grim.

    Jill came back looking even grimmer. She bent down to Polly’s window. “Matron’s sincere apologies, Lady Carrano. She had no idea who you were. She’s sure something can be arranged, and would you care to step in again?”

    Gretchen exploded in sniggers.

    Polly was incapable of speech. She just gaped at her.

    Jill nodded grimly. “See? Come on, we’ll both come in with you this time.”

    “Ja,” agreed Gretchen, getting out of the car. “Safety in numbers.”

    “I think she might have misapplied that idiom,” Jill noted, opening Polly’s door and hauling her out, since she seemed to be turned to stone, “but it’s nevertheless true. Got any powder or muck?”

    “What?”

    “Do your face.” She opened Polly’s little boxy emerald handbag, noting by the by: “If this thing isn’t a protected species, I’m a monkey’s uncle. –Um, powder compact?” she groped, holding one up. “Thought they went out with the Ark.”

    “It’s solid powder, not loose.”

    “Uh-uh. Jake buy this lot?”

    “Mm. Separately,” said Polly, sniffing slightly but obediently peering at her face in the compact’s mirror.

    “They tone beautifully, though,” she noted drily.

    “Mm. That’s machining under enamel. The compact I liked better was prettier but the rim had a tiny chip in it,” she said heavily.

    “Of course. Go on, put some lippy on.”

    Meekly Polly obeyed.

    Jill looked dubiously at the hair, which was looped back behind one ear but draped over the other and sort of hoiked up in a big untidy bunch at the neck, decided that it was possibly a do, and let discretion be the better part. “Come on. But do pray enlighten my sartorial ignorance,” she said affably, taking her arm in an iron grip, just in case she was going to bolt, and leading her inexorably on, “as to why you felt that pale green pedal-pushers were gonna be appropriate for a visit to Matron?”

    “They look vell vith the pink frilly blouse and pink high-heeled sandals,” said Gretchen kindly, ranging alongside and taking her other arm.

    “There’s no need to drag me,” said Polly with a sigh. “It’s summer, and it’s a warm day. And all my suits are in cases in the shed and horribly creased and I haven’t got an iron at the bach.”

    “Thanks, Polly, that iss very clear, but ass it’s none of her business, you did not haff to tell her,” said Gretchen grimly.

    Polly laughed suddenly. “Of course I did!”

    And they went in to tackle the suitably chastened Matron, smiling.

    Back in the car, Polly said shakily: “Thanks,” and Jill said grimly: “Don’t dare to bawl.” And Gretchen said firmly: “Now ve get an ice cream and sit mindlessly on the waterfront looking at the sea.”

    So they did that. It was something they’d been doing every summer for—well, not over thirty years, no. None of them had been living up here, then, and Polly of course hadn’t even met Jake. But for over twenty, certainly. The Puriri waterfront hadn’t changed, though behind them the little town had greatly expanded and there were motorway by-passes and God-knew-what. The main road still edged the beach; there was still a large grassy stretch before the beach proper; the old wooden benches, devoid of shade, were still there, though periodically various Councils decided they needed repainting… They were currently a very environmental dark green, but theirs not to reason why. The sea hadn’t changed, it was still gloriously blue on a fine day like this. And since they were just at the very tip of the Gulf, that out there was the wide Pacific…

    They sat there contentedly in complete silence for quite some time.

    Polly’s old friend Dorothy, now married to Thomas Baranski, Sir George Grey University’s Dean of Environmental Resources, had once been the Puriri County Librarian and after that librarian at Sir George Grey until she retired. She was the one who’d tracked down Jenny Mayhew online. She and Thomas lived across the Inlet, which was great, it meant Polly could see a fair bit of them: they’d always got on very well.

    “Have you heard,” said Dorothy cautiously, handing her a sherry, “that Janet and Hal are taking off for the States next month for a year?”

    “What?” she gasped. Certainly Janet, the Deputy back when Dorothy was Puriri County Librarian, was married to an American, but everyone had assumed they were settled in their dear little old historic cottage in Carter’s Bay. They had had to get permission to build on for the kids’ rooms but they’d managed that, and there was now an unobtrusive wing at the back in the same wooden “clapboard” style, as Hal put it. Their children were about twelve and ten, Polly thought: she’d lost track a bit over the intervening years.

    “Mm. I don’t know the technical ins and outs of it, but it’s counting as his sabbatical leave year. One of the kids was sick the year he should have gone, I think. Anyway, it’s all official. Janet’s been itching to go for years, but of course they didn’t have much capital behind them.”

    “But Dorothy, what about the children?” she croaked.

    “All worked out. They stay with Hal’s brother in California, the kids go to school in between sampling the delights of Disneyland, Janet window-shops in Rodeo Drive while Hal buries himself with some engineering mates at Stanford until she hauls him out, then it’s the U.S. long vacation—lucky kids, eh?—and they take off for Jellystone together with half the population of the continental U.S. Janet’s looking forward to it like anything. They’re gonna hire a Winnebago, Hal’s got his brother onto that already.”

    “I always thought Janet was the homebody personified,” she said dazedly. “I mean, she couldn’t wait to grab that dinky little cottage, back when there was just her and the cat, and then she, um—”

    “Couldn’t wait to grab Hal,” said Dorothy, grinning, “and set up a wee nest with him. Well, yeah. The rest of Carter’s Bay and district is by and large of your opinion. Or so the goss’ over May Swadling’s counter goes.”

    For years—as far back as Polly had known the district—May and Jack Swadling had run the Carter’s Bay dairy. They’d then expanded their vast empire by acquiring the new diary in Kingfisher Bay and putting in a manager at the old one.

    “I thought May and Jack had decided to give it away, at long last, and let someone else run the Kingfisher Bay dairy for them?” she said limply.

    “Well, yeah, they have. A bit later on. Round about,” said Dorothy dreamily, “cherry blossom time in Japan…”

    “The Swadlings?” gasped Polly. “Going to Japan?”

    “Why not? Those two shops of theirs are real earners.”

    “Dorothy, the farthest they’ve ever been is the Hokianga!” she gasped.

    “That right? Well, you’ve known them a lot longer than I have. Um, wouldn’t they have gone to Rotorua like the rest of the population? Taken the kids, and so forth?”

    “No, you nit,” said Polly heavily to Sir George Grey University’s recently retired Librarian. “The school holidays are when the dairies make most of their money.”

    “Oh—of course.”

    “The Swadlings! Going on an overseas trip!”

    “Yeah. Well, kids off their hands, retirement age, presumably they’ve got the itchy feet syndrome like most. Drink that up,” said Dorothy kindly, “and I’ll get you another.”

    “Ta.” Polly drank sherry numbly. Only when it had vanished did she come to and note: “This is lovely sherry, Dorothy.”

    “Yep. I decided, back when I got the job at Sir George Grey, that I could stop buying New Zealand muck for the benefit of the sweet sherry drinkers amongst my acquaintance, and since I was always expected to partake, buy something that I could get past the palate without gagging. Harvey’s Bristol Cream,” she elaborated kindly, as her guest was looking completely flummoxed.

    “But isn’t this Amontillado?” she groped.

    “Yeah. This,” said Dorothy heavily as it came inside with its face and hands filthy and its hair all over the place, “enlightened my ignorance about real English sherry and revealed that Mr Harvey imports more than just the sweet stuff. So I buy that for Janet, and the Amontillado for us.”

    “Plus sometimes a fino for me, though I usually get Tio Pepe,” said her burly husband, grinning.

    “Don’t touch anything!” shouted Dorothy as he made a move towards them.

    “Oh.” Thomas looked down at his hands. “No. Well, good evening, Polly; forgive my not shaking hands.”

    “Good evening, Thomas!” replied Polly with a loud giggle. –Thomas’s wife looked at her with a sort of wild resignation in her eye. How come the bugger always reduced the feminine sort—and there was no doubt Polly was one of those—to giggles?

    “How is the barbecue?” Dorothy then enquired grimly. “Expired, we can but hope?”

    “No, of course not!”

    She groaned and got up, groping her way to the sideboard, muttering: “Sherry, sherry.”

    “Are we having a barbecue tonight, Thomas?” asked Polly uneasily.

    “No, I’ve been cleaning it, merely. Excuse me, I think I’d better go and clean myself,” he added as Dorothy swung round and gave him a glare.

    “I would!” Polly admitted with another loud giggle, as he went out.

    Dorothy sighed and came to sit heavily in an armchair. “Only Thomas— God, that’s better!” she sighed, taking a huge gulp of Amontillado which grievously insulted the wine. “Only Thomas the Tank Engine would decide to clean the bloody barbecue half an hour before a dinner guest is due!” she finished feelingly.

    “Rubbish, Dorothy, they’re all like that!” replied Polly, smiling very much.

    “All what?” she said sourly.

    “I was gonna say husbands, but not the little grey meek sort, of course. The macho men!”

    Another contralto gurgle of laughter. Dorothy looked at her sourly. “Yeah. Hilarious. Try being married to one!”

    “I was,” replied Polly in astonishment.

    Poor Dorothy had gone very, very red. “Oh, God! I’m Helluva sorry, Polly!”

    “Don’t be, silly one,” replied Polly affectionately, smiling at her.

    “It’s just— The effort of being on one’s guard all the time, I suppose,” she sighed.

    “Mm. He really needs to have a mate that he goes on binges with. Not necessarily grogging binges, but macho binges,” she said thoughtfully. “Jake had several. Well, Inoue, of course, when he was in Japan.”

    Inoue Takagaki was more or less the epitome of the poker-faced, button-down-collared, intensely respectable Japanese businessman, but as Dorothy had heard that one before, she merely nodded. Sake alternated with Japanese whisky, mostly, it had been, evidently. “Who else?”

    “Pete McLeod and Wal Briggs, down in Taupo. Macho hunting,” said Polly with a grimace. “Pig, singular. You get pig in the Kaimanawas, still, Dorothy—and of course deer. With my brother Vic, down the farm, too. And José and his son Erik in Argentina, though I’m not sure what they hunted.”

    Dorothy looked at her with a wild surmise, thinking of all those David Attenborough programmes. Er… Capibara? All those inoffensive camelids, um, llamas, and, um, them others?

    “I refrained from asking, actually,” Polly admitted. “Ditto with his mate João, in Brazil.”

    “Got it,” she sighed.

    “I can’t think of anyone for Thomas, really,” said Polly thoughtfully. “His friend Leigh isn’t the macho type at all, is he?”

    “No. Lovely fellow, but macho’s the last word,” agreed Dorothy, smiling. “Um, well, how did you cope without going insane, Polly?”

    “Well, Jake was away a lot, of course,” replied Polly with her typical detachment.

    Dorothy had to bite her lip. “Mm.”

    “I find it rather appealing, really,” she admitted. “If he got too bad I just told him he was overdoing it. He was never a sulker, thank goodness!” she ended with her lovely smile.

    “No. My God, that’d be the living end, being married to a sulker!” Dorothy discovered.

    “Yes. So I’d cut Thomas some slack, if I was you.”

    “I’m trying. –You know it’s been over ten years now?”

    Dorothy and Thomas had both been in their early fifties when they’d got married, but really, for the most part, Polly knew, they’d worked it out very well, if Dorothy did sometimes need to blow off steam. He had his workshop to do his macho hobbies in, so Dorothy didn’t have to bear the brunt of those.

    “Help. I suppose it is,” Polly conceded. “Sometimes it seems like yesterday that Jake was stamping round shouting at the wankers in Development to pull their fingers out and get his precious university up, and they’d only just started thinking about advertising the senior positions…”

    Dorothy nodded. “Yeah. And I was convinced I’d be stuck at Puriri Bloody Public Library at the mercy of the ruddy Town Clerk’s penny-pinching and rabid anti-intellectualism until I retired… Never even dreamed there might be a job going at Sir George Grey that I could apply for, let alone that I’d get! And Thomas was in the middle of England somewhere. Crikey.”

    “Mm. Um, he’s having a break from work these holidays, is he?”

    “Well, apart from soldering up the occasional shark cage for the intrepid marine geologists to marine geol in, more or less, yes. Catching up on his reading, of course, but I’ve forbidden him on pain of death to go in to the office.”

    “Mm. Good,” said Polly in a small voice.

    Dorothy shot her a sharp look but made no remark, just passed her a plate of strange-looking crackers.

    “What are these?” asked Polly dubiously.

    “Dunno. I let him loose in the supermarkets down in Puriri,” replied Dorothy with a shrug.

    She took one cautiously. “Sweetish.”

    “Mm-hm.”

    “Oh! I know! See these sort of dark flecks?”

    “Yeah?” replied Dorothy with foreboding.

    “Seaweed. Didn’t you read the packet?” she asked, smiling.

    “I didn’t even see the packet, Polly, he’d taken charge. –Oy! Supermarket Man! What the fuck are these biscuits?” she asked as Thomas returned, looking much cleaner but with his thick iron-grey curls still in mad disarray.

    “Japanese rice crackers. Full of iodine.”

    “I’ve had them before,” admitted Polly.

    “Have they improved?” asked Dorothy clinically.

    “No.”

    “I rest my case,” she said heavily.

    Thomas was pouring himself a whisky. “I did look for decent crackers, but the brands are all different here. Well, I found some Huntley and Palmers, but they still didn’t look familiar.” He came and took a handful of the rice crackers and sat down heavily in his big armchair. “Have you ever found any decent cheese in this country, Polly?”

    “No.”

    “Well, where did Jake get cheese from?” he asked crossly. “I’m sure I’ve eaten decent cheese at your place!”

    “Stilton, England. Roquefort, France. Places like that.”

    “How the Hell did he get it through Customs?” he demanded aggrievedly.

    “I don’t know.”

    Thomas glared at her, baffled.

    “Import licences?” suggested his spouse in a bored voice.

    Thomas merely glared, but Polly said detachedly: “All things are possible, if not likely.”

    “Mates in the business?” suggested Dorothy.

    “Well, that sounds more likely, but I honestly don’t know,” Polly admitted. “It’s no good trying to bring it in personally, I do know that. I tried to bring in some Camembert once, when I was coming home from a conference, but it got the chop. Boy, the ruddy Customs types must eat well! You should have seen what they had in their big barrel!”

    “I have!” replied Thomas savagely.

    “He had some milk chocolate. English milk chocolate,” said Dorothy. “The dame on duty saw the word ‘milk’ and that was all she wrote. Pommy chocolate was gonna give our cows foot and mouth, apparently.”

    “Bound to,” Polly agreed.

    Dorothy sighed. “Well, he’s decided that he can make do with some Danish blue stuff—”

    “Blue Castello. They make a decent soft white, too,” he put in.

    “Whatever. And he’ll accept Port Salut if nothing else is on offer.”

    Polly looked dubiously at Thomas’s wide-shouldered, burly, square figure which more than merited the appellation “Tank Engine”. Quite apart from the tank-like personality. “Um, it’s double fat or something. Very bad for your cholesterol level.”

    “Right, that’s off the menu!” Dorothy heaved her lanky length up. “I’d better go and tell that casserole not to burn itself. Try and think of some more stuff he didn’t oughta be eating, wouldja?” On that gracious note she exited.

    Polly looked dubiously at Thomas.

    “I eat a lot of fish,” he said mildly.

    She jumped and went very red, to his astonishment. “Good!” she gasped.

    “Um, don’t mind Dorothy,” he said cautiously. “She didn’t mean it, you know.”

    “What? Oh—that. No, I know.” She licked her lips uneasily. “Um, Dorothy was saying you’re not going in to the office, these holidays.”

    “No. Vetoed,” replied Thomas the Tank Engine mildly. “Have another strange rice cracker, iodine’s very good for you, you know.”

    “Um, yes; actually, the more iodine you can get out here, the better. They do put it in the salt and I think they have to put it in the bread as well, but that’s probably only the mass-produced stuff. Um, there used to be a terrible problem with goitre here, Thomas; New Zealand soil is notoriously short of iodine, you see.”

    “I know.” Polly stared at him in astonishment and he said mildly: “I am a geologist, you know.”

    “Yes!” she gasped, going scarlet. “Of course!”

    Thomas Baranski’s casual manner very much belied him: he was an extremely intelligent man with an intricate and analytical mind. He was now, though he didn’t betray the fact, very sure that something was up. He couldn’t figure out what the Hell it might be, but the keywords, or perhaps the triggers, seemed to be “fish” and “geologist”. Odd.

    He told her a very mild story about a fishing trip with Sol Winkelmann which had resulted in precisely one small sprat, not allowing any ulterior motive to show, but the very bright blue eyes watchful. Polly smiled in all the right places, not seeming disturbed at all. But she didn’t seem exactly herself, either.

    “They found anyone yet to replace you at the crafts place?” he asked.

    “Mm, my cousin Clara!” she beamed. “We should have thought of her before.”

    “Barry’s wife? Clara Goode? She’s certainly got delightful taste.”

    “Yes. She’s only part-time, but her little boys are both at school, so she can manage it quite well in term time.”

    “That’s good. She’d be an asset in the shop, I should think.” He twinkled at her. “Nice English manners, as May Swadling’s informed the whole of Carter’s Bay.”

    He waited but she didn’t say anything about the Swadlings’ plans for Japan, so he murmured: “Have you heard the Swadlings are planning a trip to Japan?”

    “Oh—yes, Dorothy was saying. It’s hard to imagine, but then, she’s right, they’re at the right age for it. The itchy feet syndrome, she called it,” she said indifferently.

    “Mm.” He took some more rice crackers and passed her the plate.

    “Thomas,” said Polly slowly, taking a cracker and not looking at him, “have you had any applications yet for those jobs you’ve been advertising?”

    “Apart from the usual five hundred from self-styled marine geologists at inland Indian and Pakistani universities? Well, a few. New Zealand’s a bit remote.”

    “Mm. Any—anybody possible?” she asked, still not looking at him.

    His senses were now very much on the alert but he replied calmly: “An American volcanologist who’s based in Seattle at the moment but is very keen to get a closer look at our volcanoes. Came out in March 2007 after Ruapehu’s big lahar.”

    “I see,” she said in a tiny voice.

    “There’s one of my ex-students from England who’s applied, but do I want something that’s still wet behind the ears himself teaching my wet-behind-the-ears kids basic geology?” he said lightly.

    “Um—I dunno!” she gasped, once again very red. “Do you?”

    He shrugged. “I’m waiting for a better offer.”

    He was, indeed, waiting. But Polly didn’t say anything. Hmm…

    Much later that evening, when they’d waved her off in her little runabout and waited until they saw the glow of the light from her little cabin further up the inlet, Dorothy said: “Polly seems very unsettled, more so than I thought she might be by this time. I think she’s pretty upset by all the changes that have been going on. Well, damned Dan Carter’s vanished into the blue, you know. And Jill and Gretchen are off for a quick visit to Europe before the new semester starts, and they’re planning a trip when Jill retires. And then, with Janet and Hal off to the States—not to say the Swadlings with the retirees’ itchy feet syndrome!”

    “Do you think that’s what’s unsettling her?” he replied neutrally.

    “Well, yes! Especially the Swadlings: they had that first dairy of theirs, the one in Carter’s Bay, way back when she first met Jake,” said Dorothy in surprise, staring at him. “Didn’t you get that impression?”

    “No. Come back inside before the mozzies get you.”

    They went inside and Dorothy said on a cross note: “I’m really surprised that you couldn’t see it, Thomas! There’s been all the fuss over her mother having to go into a home, too, that’s a Helluva change.”

    “I had the impression that it’s all settled, now.”

    “Um, well, yes…”

    “Did she mention the topics fish or geologists to you when I was out of the room?” he asked.

    “What? No! Unless you count asking whether you were going in to the office in your holidays like the maniac you are.”

    “Did she? Hmm. Interesting,”

     Dorothy goggled at him. “What is this?”

    “Dorothy,” said Thomas, taking her firmly by the shoulders: “does Polly know any geologist—any male geologist, that’d be—who’s mad on fishing?”

    “Stop manhandling me,” she said feebly. “As far as I know, no. Unless you’re talking about one of your dim lot.”

    “No. Definitely not. Someone who might be applying.”

    She goggled at him. “Not as far as I know, but I don’t know every bod she and Jake might have met overseas! What is all this? Or have you just got your blimming geology on the brain?”

    “No. In fact I was astounded when she brought the subject up.”

    “Geology?” she croaked.

    “Yes, while you were trying to mesmerize that casserole into cooking. Though not geology as such, that’s rather the point. She asked what job applications I’d had.”

    “Thomas, the woman was making polite conversation on a topic, God help us, that she thought would be close to your heart!”

    “I don’t think,” he said, sounding as horribly detached as Polly herself had ever managed to, “that anything close to my heart would cause her to blush like a peony.”

    She gaped at him.

    “Mm,” said Thomas the Tank Engine. “Fish and geologists.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

    Dorothy sighed. “Crap. I’m going to bed. You can come or stay. And if you come, you don’t have to come.”

    Grinning, Thomas replied: “I’ll take that as an invitation!” And ambled after her.

    The subsequent proceedings, enjoyable as they were, did not distract his mind from the point at issue. Or the two points. When he woke up next morning they were still there. Fish and geologists. Hmm…

    Sol rubbed his lean chin slowly. “Fish and geologists, huh? Nup. Never said a word to me on either topic, Thomas.”

    “No, well, try mentioning fish and see if she blushes like a peony.”

    “Uh… This is Polly Carrano we’re talkin’ about here, is it? Blushing over fish?”

    “Yes. I—er—well, I gather there were little bits on the side, off and on, but Dorothy doesn’t go in for that sort of gossip. Er…” Thomas ruffled his thick curls. “I’m not asking for details, Sol, but did they ever induce blushes?”

    Sol had to swallow. “Nup. Uh-uh. Took ’em in her stride. Never seen her blush over a guy at all, tell the truth. And just by the by, she was completely indifferent when Grace let it out that Dan Carter, that we all thought might be next in line, has taken off for good.”

    “Interesting,” he allowed. “Well, she went bright red at the word ‘geologist’.”

    “Okay: a geologist guy that must be something a lot more serious, then?”

    “Yes, I’d agree. Unless I’m on the wrong track entirely and it’s linked to one of Carrano’s dirty deals. Well: mineral exploitation, polluting some marine environment? It’s not unheard of,” he said drily.

    “No-o… Ya know,” said Sol, “I think she might blush over that sorta thing, but it’d be because she was real mad, and then she’d bust out with it all; wal, to people she trusts, like you and Dorothy.”

    “Mm… On balance, I agree… Okay, it’s some chap. But I’m damned if I can see how fish comes into it!” Thomas admitted with a weak laugh.

    Sol eyed the shop door cautiously but there was no sign of either customers or Grace. “You try mentioning fish or fishing in the context of that Australian trip of hers?”

    “Well, no,” said Thomas dubiously. “Wasn’t that a shopping trip with that frightful Harding woman?”

    “Oh, sure, but after that she stayed with some real laid-back friends that’ve got a holiday home on the coast somewheres. We gathered, though some of this is filtered through auburn fluff,” he warned, “that they hadda get on back to work but she stayed there on her ownsome for some time.”

    “Oh, ho!”

    “Yup; that’d explain the fish, I guess,” he allowed. “Geologists?”

    “Possibly the fishing chappie was a geologist, Sol,” said Thomas politely in his fruity Oxbridge accent.

    Sol’s eyes twinkled. Thomas Baranski was too forthright, some would have said too honest, to go down well with the locals, but that there accent was sure enough guaranteed to get up their noses, too. Fortunately he clearly didn’t give a damn what impression they had of him—which was, recognised Sol Winkelmann drily, another reason why they didn’t take to him.

    “Yuh,” he agreed. “Have I got this right? She blushed like a peony at the word ‘geologist’, too?”

    “Yes, that’s right. And then she asked me what applications I’ve had for the jobs at Sir G.G. that I’ve just advertised.”

    Sol pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows very high.

    “Mm,” said Thomas the Tank Engine. “It’ll be interesting to see what might turn up before applications close, won’t it?”

Next chapter:

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