Widows

11

Widows

    Phyllis Harding laughed. “I’m much, much better now, Polly, dear!"

    She certainly looked it. Her face, which had always been slightly sallow and extremely discontented, at least over the twenty-odd years Polly had known her, was a little plumper and distinctly pinker. The hair, which for some time had been dyed a particularly offensive shade of yellow, and worn in a style that was about as close to a cockatoo’s crest as was acceptable in her social circle—kind of a cross between a cockatoo and the C. Eastwood pompadour in its heyday, really—was now a glowing silver, still pompadourish on top, very short back and sides—smart as paint! And she was actually looking cheerful. Well, thank God! Polly hadn’t been looking forward to another funeral. Not that they’d ever been really close, but Phyllis didn’t have many real friends and, well, you couldn’t help feeling sorry for a person who was that... resourceless, really, was the only way of putting it. If you could imagine the Julie Christie rôle in Darling in later life—that was Phyllis, Lady Harding.

    Sir John Harding had been a disappointment to her—an amiable wimp, second-generation rich: his dad had been Harding’s spaghetti, at one time the richest man in the country. The business was long since out of the family’s hands, taken over by National Foods or something—one of the big multinationals, anyway. Phyllis still had the house in Paratai Drive, read Millionaires’ Row, and it was paid off—Jake, trust him, had made it his business to find out when old John went—but Polly rather thought that Phyllis’s way of life was sustained almost entirely by her son Alan’s trust fund, set up by his very sensible grandfather. And maybe partly by Sir John’s insurance—yes. Alan had also been a disappointment, in that he’d married the very sensible, down-to-earth Susan Shapiro and settled down to orcharding up in Puriri County instead of marrying some Phyllis-approved brainless Gentile bimbo of a Dio alumna and settling down to business, divorce and discontent. But actually she’d more or less come round on that one. She saw a fair bit of them. Well, given that Alan’s only sister had been divorced twice from Phyllis-approved EnZed business gents and was now living in Sydney on course for the divorce from an Aussie business gent—! Phyllis’s main interests in life were bridge and complaining. There was a fair of it about, in her circles.

    Some time back Phyllis had had a hysterectomy, and it had taken her a while to recover from it, but she had seemed better for a bit. Only then she’d seemed to go downhill, and Polly had been really worried about her. Now she announced happily that Polly would never guess what the trouble had been! Not waiting for her to guess, she told her proudly it had been the mercury in her teeth, would Polly believe? This wonderful new dentist had taken all the fillings out and replaced them, and honestly, she felt like a new woman! Beaming smile, which more than showed the teeth off. She then proceeded, unprompted, to explain that the new fillings were all ceramic, the practice never used mercury, and she could recommend them without reservation!

    Polly had always had excellent teeth. Phyllis wasn’t the same generation—she was a lot younger than Mum, but she’d be in her seventies, now: so more than likely she did belong to the last generation of New Zealanders to be born before fluoride, as she was now explaining—yes.

    “Um, yes. Well, I’ve only got one filling. One of the small ones next to the eyeteeth—here,” she said, making the requisite grimace. “Jake reckoned they’re usually the first to go, though mind you, he had teeth like a rock, himself.”

    Phyllis peered. “Ceramic!” she discovered, visibly sagging. “Thank goodness! I’ve tried to persuade Joan to give up that frightful man she goes to and switch to darling Simon—everyone calls him that,” she added carelessly, “though by rights it should be Doctor Green, he’s got a London doctorate in dental surgery!”—Proud titter.—“It was Melanie Sawyer who put me onto him—Jan Aylward’s girl, I don’t know that you’d have met her, quite a young thing. Joan talked me into joining her book club, you see, and Melanie’s the convener.”

    “I see,” said Polly faintly. She’d always believed that both Joan Hutchins and Phyllis Harding were functionally illiterate.

    “Of course, I’m not a reader!” said Phyllis with a coy titter.

    Help! What did she expect her to say? Phew, nothing, apparently, because she was carrying on blithely: “But there are so many lovely BBC versions these days, aren’t there, and Susan’s put me onto a lovely website where you can order them—well, it was something about our region, but I didn’t quite get that, but anyway, Susan says these ones’ll be fine, and you can nearly always find a DVD of it! And the club isn’t really all that intellectual, to tell you the truth!” Another titter. “It wouldn’t do for your varsity friends, of course—”

    “Phyllis, I’m not a literary bod,” said Polly faintly.

    “No, of course not, dear, that’s why I thought you might like to join us!”

    Oh, God, why hadn’t she seen that one coming? It wasn’t just the dentist, after all!

    Phyllis plunged into it. Dear Joan, of course, had been a widow for quite some years, now. And she knew Lesley James, didn’t she— Oh. No, well (coyly), not in dear Jake’s income bracket, of course—as Phyllis had been genuinely fond of Jake, Polly just nodded kindly—but Andrew James had been quite well-to-do, a pleasant house in Parnell. Packaging. Wood pulp, Polly, dear? Um, no, she didn’t think... Well, boxes, anyway! Only the one girl, and she was living in New York. Not married, the partner was some sort of a photographer—well, he called himself an artist, but he did it all in the computer, she personally wouldn’t call that— Where was she?

    Polly didn’t know: she looked at her limply.

    “Oh, yes! Melanie!”—Eh? Hadn’t that been half an hour back?—“Well, there is a husband, of course, but he might as well not be there at all! I mean, half the time—more than half the time—he’s overseas, he does some sort of engineering, don’t ask me what, exactly: you know I’ve never had a mechanical bent!”—coy titter—“but I think she said he’s in Dubai, this time. I said to Joan: ‘My dear, the poor girl’s a grass widow,’ and she quite agreed!”

    “I see, it’s all ladies without partners,” said Polly limply.

    “Well, virtually, dear, yes. And I will say this for my poor dear John, he might have had the boat, and his silly golf, but at least he wasn’t out of the country for years at a time! The man didn’t even come home last Christmas!”

    “Phyllis, they’re not Christians in Dubai, his employers might not have—”

    “He’s a consultant, I’m quite sure John would have said he could negotiate his holidays!”

    This was possibly true, but it was also possibly true that the guy had been given a deadline. In fact, depending on just what project in Dubai it might be, very possibly a very strict deadline indeed. In which case holidays would have to go by the board. And presumably his consultancy work was keeping this Melanie woman in comfort in her Parnell house—or was that the other dame? Whatever. In comfort—no, luxury. No point in saying it, though.

    “Mm,” she murmured.

    Phyllis’s indignant flush died down. “The next meeting’s next Tuesday—well, Joan can’t manage Wednesdays at all, because of bridge, and then, Thursday is Lesley’s mah-jong day—I have been several times, but they’re all such demons, and I can’t really get my head round it, to tell you the truth! And everybody’s busy on Mondays and Fridays, aren’t they?”

    Doing what? None of these women worked, and Joan was certainly Phyllis’s age or more, and it sounded as if the Lesley dame was about that age, too— Forget it. Possibly they all did their laundry on Mondays, because back in the long ago their mums had always boiled up the copper that day? God knew, but it wasn’t an uncommon syndrome. Well, Teddi Bates, like most of her generation, had given it up, she was a working mum, but Gail Bates, her mum, still religiously did hers every Monday. Sure, she had a big automatic washing-machine and a drier, but there was a rotary clothesline out the back, too right. And unless it was actually pouring, every Monday it would be decorated with Gail’s washing. And quite often, if she’d swooped on Teddi before she bunged hers in the machine on Saturday morning, with Teddi’s as well. And two of Polly’s sisters-in-law still did theirs religiously on Mondays, too. And Fridays? Fridays you did your weekend grocery shopping, of course, even though most of the big supermarkets opened on Saturdays and had done so for thirty years...

    In Phyllis’s socio-economic bracket you’d get in the Volvo and triple-park it in Remmers to do the shopping, true, but Friday ’ud be when you’d do it, all right!

    “Um, next Tuesday? Well, actually, my sister-in-law, Marilyn,”—talking of Monday wash-day, yes—“is coming up next Monday and—”

    “Bring her too, dear! The more the merrier! We’re only reading Jane Austen at the moment, and I’m sure she must have seen that lovely—”

    Polly’s head suddenly felt as if it was gonna burst. The Jane Austen Book Club? Surely Phyllis—the cockatoo effect was diminished since the silver rinse and the new cut, but from certain angles she still looked remarkably psittacine—surely she couldn’t imagine that she or any of her bloody bridge-playing cronies or even the much younger Melanie could possibly attract a completely dishy, hetero young man— No, it must just be a mad coincidence!

    “What?” she said very faintly indeed. “Marilyn? Um, yeah, I think she has got the DVD. And of Bridget Jones’s Diary,” she added, rallying slightly.

    “Of course! He was in that, too!” She was off again.

    Yeah. Well, it didn’t sound as if this so-called book club was gonna be very intellectual—no. And possibly Marilyn would—not enjoy it, no, she was a very pleasant, sensible sort of woman with no pretensions about her. Be able to support it with equanimity? Something like that. And she had said she’d like to see a bit of big city life. With a laugh, fortunately! And she was a widow, too, they’d have something in common. It did give you a sense of solidarity, Polly silently acknowledged, allowing Phyllis to foist a new tea on her accompanied by some genuine little Italian biscuits she’d bought at the nice little supermarket in Remuera. –Probably, nay, undoubtedly the only suburb in the country where the phrase “nice little” could be applied to anything that called itself a supermarket—yep.

    ... Green melon tea. Yes, Phyllis, really unusual!

    Marilyn Mitchell gulped. “Won’t they all be gussied up to the nines, though, Polly?”

    This thought had honestly never occurred. “Um, yeah—well, you’ve met Phyllis before, eh? She always is.”

    Marilyn nodded hard. “I remember that outfit she wore at your wedding...” she said faintly.

    Once seen, never forgotten—right. She’d just gone into the cockatoo-look—well, late Eighties? GIANT puffed sleeves abaft the GIANT shoulder pads? Phyllis was not a tall woman. Mini-skirt, of course—a suit, of course. The Joan Collins run-riot look. A screaming royal blue? Something like that. Satin? Something like that.

    “It won’t be that bad,” said Polly fairly. “Um, well, Katie Maureen wouldn’t let me give all my clothes away, I’ve still got some of the stuff Jake made me buy, you can borrow something, if there’s anything you fancy. Have a look in the wardrobe in your room first, I’ve put the more bearable stuff in there. The rest’ll be a bit crushed, it’s all in suitcases in the shed—the garage, I mean.”

    “Thanks, Polly. Um, have you got an iron?” she ventured.

    Polly grinned. “Fair question! Well, if I haven’t we can get down to Beth’s place and borrow hers. But I think there’s one somewhere.”

    The wardrobe was in the bach’s tiny bedroom that once upon a time had sheltered two little bunk beds for the little boys. It now held one narrow single bed, a very pretty little occasional table, shiny black with a lovely pattern of coloured flowers on it, and a narrow built-in wardrobe, the sort with a handy drawer underneath it. Marilyn looked limply at the clothes hanging in the wardrobe. She was a fair-skinned woman whose curly hair had once been naturally blonde and was now quite a pretty pale silver. Polly’s skin was more of a peachy shade, she took a tan really well. She’d never worn blue, but Marilyn was very fond of it—in fact she was in a blue-grey jumper and navy slacks now. Her sister-in-law, by contrast, was in skin-tight dark violet stretch-velvet slacks with a very pale green, fine-knit lacy jumper of the sort that Marilyn, who was in her sixties, could just remember her mother wearing when she was a very little girl. And they had the black-and-white box Brownie snaps in the family album to prove it. The things in the wardrobe were pretty much more of the same. Polly had hung several pairs of jeans on hangers—well, she’d’ve been used to having loads of wardrobe space, she’d had a gigantic walk-in wardrobe, more a little room, really, at the house. Marilyn and Vic’s house had been quite roomy, Vic’s dad had built it as the new farmhouse when Vic and her decided to get married, only then his mum had burst into tears and refused to move from the old place, so Vic and her had had it—thank goodness! It had nice built-in wardrobes, enough for an average family, but what with both their clothes, things like jeans had had to go in drawers. And now, the retirement unit was quite spacious, really, but it did have limited wardrobe space... Help, Polly had even put her jumpers on hangers!

    Marilyn hated to criticise people, but... “Um, Polly, dear, you do know putting your jumpers on hangers might make them sag?”

    “I had to, the drawer’s got linen in it,” said Polly.

    Marilyn had a look. Yes—bursting with it. Maybe Katie Maureen had made her bring a decent amount up here from the house? Or, come to think of it, more likely Jake had filled the drawer with linen specially for the bach... Um, yes, given the amount of sheets and towels Polly had sent down to her, and to her mum at the farm, and to Vonnie and Bert on the next-door property that had been Bert’s share of the old farm. And come to think of it, Bob’s wife, Bet, had rung to say Polly had given her piles of linen and did Marilyn need any towels? Because there was only her and Bob and even if it rained all winter they wouldn’t get through them!

    “What, dear? Ugh, black ones? Yes, I’d of thrown them out, too,” she agreed sympathetically. “It was his décor, was it, Polly, dear?”

    “Yeah. It looked smart but it was pretty depressing to sleep in.”

    “I should think so,” she agreed kindly.

    “Try this dress on, Jake once said it was a cocktaily sort of dress, I think it might be the sort of thing Phyllis’s cronies might wear to a book-club afternoon,” said Polly with a smile.

    Marilyn looked at it in dismay. Polly was a bit taller then her, but they were about the same size in the hips and bust, it’d fit all right, but it was a kind of orangey-red, she never wore those shades! Flame-coloured, that was it. One of those lovely cross-over tops, y’know? And a kind of softly draped skirt. Tightish.

    “I did wear it to a cocktaily thing at the Art Gallery, once,” said Polly hazily. “I think. Um, and once to lunch at the Golden Lamb, that’s right, Jake said of course it’d be okay for lunch and I was talking through that little hole in the back of my neck again!” She grinned.

    “I see, dear,” said Marilyn thankfully. Vonnie had come over to her nice little retirement unit in Napier and they’d had a confab over whether she ought to come up this month, because of course it was the anniversary of Jake’s death. Vonnie was a very good-natured woman, but she’d come right out and said: “I think you ought to, Marilyn. I know dratted Katie Maureen’s gone to America, but what’s the odds she’ll be ringing her up and telling her to buck up or something? The kid’s got no tact. Know who she reminds me of? Old Aunty Vi, that’s who! She’ll be bulldozing poor Polly into goodness-knows-what, mark my words.” Marilyn wouldn’t have thought of it for herself, Katie Maureen was such a pretty little thing, and of course she had the Macdonald red hair that Miss Violet Macdonald had missed out on: but she was right! They weren’t alike in looks—though Aunty Vi had been a little person, too—but temperamentally—!

    So she’d come—in fear and trembling, actually. When Polly had come down to Napier earlier in the year she hadn’t mentioned Jake’s name once. And Vonnie said she’d been just the same at the farm. And then she’d taken off for Europe without warning— Well! It was understandable, of course, poor thing, but what sort of state was she gonna be in? It was a huge relief to hear her talking about Jake quite casually.

    “I usually just wear a nice skirt and jumper if I’m going out in the afternoon,” she murmured, once in the frock, looking dubiously at herself in the long mirror on the wardrobe door. She twisted to get the back view. Help!

    “Gets in under the bum,” said Polly in that detached voice of hers. Well—it was just her way, of course.

    “Um, it does a bit,” said Marilyn faintly. She could just hear her mother’s voice in her head—though it was some years, now, since poor old Mum had left them. Nice girls did not wear skirts like that. Nor, of course, did they say “bum.”

    “I think it looks great on you. Jill would definitely say it’s an asset underliner,” said Polly, this time with a smile in her voice.

    Vic had always maintained that Polly’s varsity friend Jill Davis was a Lesbian. Well, “dyed in the wool Les from way back,” was how he’d put it, but—mm. And Vonnie, though admitting that in person she was actually very nice, and she’d always stood by Polly, ’specially that awful time before her and Jake got engaged when there’d been that murder on his patio, had once said that her influence was making Polly very hard.

    “Your friend Jill Davis from the varsity? So you still see something of her, do you, dear?”

    “Of course,” replied Polly, looking puzzled. “Kowhai Bay’s less than an hour’s drive from here.”

    “Mm. Um, I really don’t think it’s me, Polly,” she said limply.

    “Okay, then, nice skirts and jumpers it is!” replied Polly cheerfully.

    Marilyn smiled weakly. Did that mean she was intending to wear a skirt and jumper, too?

    ... Yes. Sort of. Marilyn just wore her nice light tweed skirt, shades of soft blue and grey, with her best plain thin-knit blue jumper—well, the Auckland wind could still be very cutting in October—but Polly was in a skin-tight flecked oatmeal tweed skirt that came to about four inches above her ankles and most definitely got in under the bum, in fact could she even sit down in it? With very high-heeled brown shoes that Marilyn tried silently to convince herself, without success, were not real crocodile, and a pale apricot knit thing that on its hangar looked quite modest, with a high neck and long sleeves, but once on didn’t.

    “Pure wool. Shrunk in the wash. So much for Paris,” said Polly with a shrug.

    “It does look a bit tight, dear!” she gasped.

    “Phyllis won’t notice, she’ll be looking at these,” replied her sister-in-law drily, fastening a string of large, creamy pearls round her neck.

    “Real?” said Marilyn faintly, though there wasn’t much doubt, Jake hadn’t liked her to wear junk jewellery.

    “Too right. Dig this.” She fished in the, oh dear, shoebox that the pearls had come out of, and produced something which she fastened to the pearls at the front. Marilyn swallowed.

    “These bronzy shades just go with the tweed skirt, eh?” said Polly, admiring the effect in front of the mirror.

    “What is it?” she gulped.

    “You may well ask. Well, admittedly my bet woulda been something that Napoleon gave Josephine in his besotted phase, but actually these are those new Australian diamonds—I think Jake muttered something about the Queen being presented with a brooch of them. I forget the technical name for the colour. Brownish shades, see? The pearls are Australian, too.” She made a face at her. “Only cultured.”

    “Only!”

    Polly looked dreamily into the mirror. “Did you ever see the genuine Josephine necklace he went mad and bought me? It had earrings, as well. Yellow diamonds. Well, mixed with white ones. Set in gold, of course. Ghastly. I sold it.”

    Marilyn swallowed.

    Polly turned round and smiled at her. “He didn’t kick up: it was at the time of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. Though he did point out that any amount of money wouldn’t make those ruddy charities pull their fingers out. I think this thing might’ve been meant to be a consolation prize. It started off as a brooch but the minute Phyllis laid eyes on it—she wasn’t very well, and we’d popped in to see how she was—she decided it would make the most gorgeous clip for the pearls.”

    “Oh, I see, dear!”

    Polly rather thought she did—mm. “Come on, lambs to the slaughter. And just remember that however ignorant we might be of literature, Phyllis’s crowd’ll be miles more!”

    Smiling weakly, Marilyn let her help her on with her good navy gabardine raincoat, didn’t say anything when Polly grabbed up her full-length brown mink, and let herself be led off to the old Mercedes. And let’s hope it’d break down on the way!

    ... No. The teas—there were three, would you believe—were the most peculiar Marilyn had ever tasted, especially the one that called itself white tea. (White tea? She could just hear Vic’s reaction to that one!) And the biscuits—all bought ones, of course—were really, really odd. The other ladies seemed to recognise them but she couldn’t tell if Polly did or not. Nobody actually ate much, but maybe they were all on diets—they were certainly all very slim. The meeting started off very business-like, the younger lady who was in charge of it was very organised—but it gradually dawned that most of them hadn’t read the book, either, they’d only seen the video, like her. Phew! Well, maybe Polly had read it, ’cos a very peculiar expression came over her face a couple of times. And the convener lady—or was she a chairperson? She’d read it, because she had a copy and she kept turning to the right page. But after a bit they all kind of wandered off the subject and started talking about clothes. Well, the clothes in the series, first, and then something else that one of them had seen, maybe it was based on a book by the same lady, because one of them said she thought it was a very bad adaptation and it was impossible to imagine some lady being blonde, but then just clothes. They all shopped regularly in Sydney, though one of them was wearing a really lovely jersey-knit dress she’d got in Italy. And gorgeous shoes. That was, all their shoes were gorgeous but the Italian ones were really gorgeous.

    “What was wrong with Mr Darcy diving into the lake, Polly?” she murmured when they were driving home at last. The Auckland traffic was dreadful and it was getting dark, the thing had gone on for ages.

    “Eh? Oh! That!” said Polly with a loud laugh. “Not in the book! The people in the English Department at varsity were rabid about it when the series first came out! See, according to them it was one of the bits that Jane Austen deliberately left out.”

    “Oh. I thought it was good,” said Marilyn limply.

    “Yep, generally agreed by the hetero women of the world that the young Colin Whatsisname in his wet shirt was bloody good value!”

    Marilyn pinkened, smiling weakly. “Mm, he was lovely.”

    They were well up the motorway, way past the Takapuna turnoff and the weird bit that said “Motorway Ends” and then “Motorway Begins” before you’d even had time to blink, when Polly said: “I don’t think there’s anything for tea.”

    Marilyn was awfully hungry: those peculiar biscuits hadn’t seemed to have any actual nourishment in them. “Um, mousetraps or cheese on toast?” she suggested weakly.

    “No cheese. And no eggs, come to think of it. Tell you what, let’s go to The Quays!”

    This was the old waterfront pub at Carter’s Bay. It had been done up beautifully, but… “Polly, not the fancy restaurant?” she quavered.

    “Revill’s? We could if you like, but it’ll probably be full of pseuds. Plus and Ralph Overdale, most likely,” she added with a smile in her voice.

    Marilyn thought he was an awful man. She couldn’t see why Polly liked him. And his wife was terrifying, she’d been a headmistress and then a professor! “No,” she said faintly.

    “I meant The Quarter Deck, the more down-home one, actually,” Polly admitted.

    Marilyn sagged. Mind you, she wouldn’t of called it down-home, by any means. But at least it didn’t have its menus all written in French! Not to mention without prices on them! That time Jake had insisted on taking them to Revill’s for Bob and Bet’s anniversary had been terrible. Well, the food had been very nice, actually, though none of them had ever heard of the pink bird Jake had said her and Bet would like—well, it was yummy, but you expected poultry to be white, didn’t you? Afterwards Polly had said that Jake’s menu would have had the prices on it, because he was the host. Which hadn’t actually made it better. They must’ve been astronomical! And the cutlery! You never saw anything like it! Vic had said you could start a scrap metal yard with it—deliberately, of course, drat him, he knew that was how Jake had got his start, dealing in scrap metal, but Jake had only laughed: he’d been the most good-natured man you could imagine... Fortunately the waiter had come and taken most of it away once they’d ordered. Not the glasses, though.

    “Um, yes, dear, The Quarter Deck would be nice,” she agreed thankfully. “Um, but we haven’t booked.”

    “If they won’t let us in I’ll threaten to foreclose on his mortgage,” replied Polly calmly.

    “Polly!”

    “It was a joke, silly!” she said with a laugh.

    Of course it had been, but you didn’t joke about that sort of thing, couldn’t she see that? Oh, dear! Vic would have flattened her, of course, and so would their father.

    “I know that, dear, but, um... Well, think what your dad would have said,” said Marilyn in a voice that shook a little.

    “Marilyn, he wouldn’t have given a stuff, he’d’ve told me off because he knew Mum thought he ought to!”

    “I don’t think so,” replied Marilyn firmly, putting her plump chin defiantly in the air. “Dad had—had standards.”

    After a bit Polly replied in a squashed voice: “Yeah, you’re right, he did. Okay, I take that back.”

    “Good,” said Marilyn limply.

    “Nobody has standards these days,” she added in a horribly grim voice. “Especially not men.”

    Marilyn looked at her timidly. She was scowling ahead at the road. “I’m sure Sol does. And Jack,” she added bravely.

    Marilyn was terrified of the sardonic Jack Perkins! Polly swallowed a sigh. “No, well, you’re right. And so does Thomas Baranski—Dorothy’s husband.”

    “Yes, of course! There you are, see?”

    “Mm.”

    After a bit it dawned: they were all their generation, of course! “Polly, the children have got standards,” she said very firmly.

    “What? Oh. Maybe.”

    Firmly Marilyn told her about Davey and the man from the MAF who’d tried to persuade him to chop down the old macrocarpas, something about the ground getting sour, but Davey had refused to hear of it, those trees had been there in his grandfather’s day.

    “What?” said Polly in a vague voice. “Oh—yes. The maggies like the macrocarpas.”

    Had she taken in anything at all? Marilyn swallowed a sigh, reminding herself that you had to make allowances, it was only just a year since Jake had left them...

    “Hullo,” said Adrian Revill mildly as Polly came into his kitchen some time after she and her guest had been served their main course. “The food okay?”

    “Yes, of course, Martin’s meat pies are always yummy!” she replied, smiling at the sous-chef.

    “And?” murmured Adrian, stirring his sauce.

    Polly peered at it. “Ugh, green?”

    “Pandanus leaf. Something new for dessert. It’s for Revill’s but you can have it if you like.”

    “No, I’ve had pandanus loads of times in K.L. and Singapore,” she said glumly. “Hey, what would you say if I said you’ve gotta let me in the restaurant ’cos if you don’t I’ll foreclose on ya?”

    “I’d say,” replied the chef, not turning a hair, “that that’s why we let you in the restaurant.”

    Promptly Martin and his assistant collapsed in giggles.

    “Yeah!” said Polly, grinning. “’Course you would! Oh, dear!”

    Adrian looked at her with a little smile on his handsome face. “Put your foot in it, did you? That’s one of your sisters-in-law with you, isn’t it?”

    “Yes—Marilyn.”

    “She’s a very conventionally-minded woman,” he murmured.

    “Yeah. Um, I don’t s’pose you remember that time we came here for my brother Bob’s anniversary: Jake insisted on Revill’s. Vic and Marilyn had come up for the week.”

    “Not specially, Polly,” he murmured.

    “Table for six...” said Martin slowly.

    “Cripes, he can count!” choked his assistant.

    “Shuddup. Chop those veges,” ordered Martin, grinning. “Um, hang on! Wasn’t that the night we had a new hors d’oeuvre, Adrian?”

    “John Evelyn’s melon soup!” choked the assistant, going into a paroxysm.

    “No, ya nana. That was yonks ago, you weren’t even working here then!”

    “Still at school,” murmured Adrian, stirring. “It’s entered into The Quays’ folklore.”

    “Was that that muck Jake liked, at lunchtime on a very cold, miserable day?” asked Polly.

    “Yes. Everyone was ordering Martin’s meat pies instead,” said Adrian in an evil voice.

    Suddenly his sous-chef and the assistant were very, very busy with their work.

    “Joke, you pair of dills,” he sighed.

    Martin was rather red. He grinned sheepishly. “Yeah. Anyway, the starter that time you had your sister-in-law with you was Beignets de courgettes, Polly.”

    “Um, I think we might’ve had those, yeah,” Polly admitted. “Just bare?”

    Adrian rolled an eye frantically at his sous-chef.

    “Not garnished, I think she means.”

    “Oh!” he said, taking his pan off the heat. “Not bare, no, Polly, not for Revill’s. On a small oval plate, garnished lightly with a purée of peas—Saint Germain—and a few tufts of baby cress. Or possibly purée Vichy—carrots—depending.”

    “Depending on whether someone had let us have kilos of carrots really cheap,” explained Martin kindly.

    “Or even both, if was Jake’s party,” added Adrian with a laugh in his voice.

    “Oh, yeah! He said it was decorative but redundant!” remembered Polly, beaming at him. “That was pretty crockery, too.”

    “Please! Not crockery!” He grinned. “China. Mum insisted on donating it. We don’t let Diana wash it by hand, it’s much safer in the dishwasher.”

    “Yeah,” agreed the plump girl on duty at the sink, grinning cheerfully.

    “I think Jake had steak that night,” recalled Martin. “Oh, yes, it was Boeuf Wellington. That’s right, and you and one of your brothers had the filet de boeuf sauce Madère, Polly. Hey, I was reading about that wagyu beef—”

    Adrian sighed. “Full of fat, that’s what marbled is. It’s a fad.”

    “But they are starting to raise it—“

    “No. Talking of things Japanese, how’s Inoue Takagaki, Polly?”

    Polly smiled at him: Inoue was a very old friend of Jake’s who'd first been his righthand man in the Group’s Tokyo office, then an executive director in Sir George Grey University’s management structure. “He seems to be fine. Not that he’d let on if he wasn’t, but Posy rings me quite often.”

    “Good. And how’s she liking Japan?”

    Posy was English, categorised by many who knew her as a bimbo, and probably getting on for twenty years younger than the elderly Inoue. She was, however, as both Adrian and Polly were aware, devoted to him. “There’s no need to sound so neutral! She’s managing very well—well, of course he can afford a housekeeper, and he doesn’t mind if she has English-style breakfast every day, and sometimes a nice steak for dinner.”

    “Wagyu,” said Martin sadly to himself. “I can’t remember what your other guests had that evening, Polly.”

    “Marilyn said it was poultry, only pink. Quail or pintade, I suppose.”

    “That’s it! Pintade chasseur!” he cried. “I remember! It was the last of them, and Adrian said we hadda let your table have it and Sir Ralphie could—” He broke off.

    “—take a running,” finished the chef smoothly.

    “So it was guinea fowl!” said Polly pleasedly. “Who’s your supplier, Adrian?”

    “No-one,” he said sourly. “That really was the last of them.”

    “The people retired,” Martin explained sadly.

    “Blow, I was gonna contact them, I’m very fond of it.”

    “You could raise them, you’ve got plenty of room at the bach,” Martin suggested helpfully.

    “Honestly!” cried Diana, very flushed. “Ignore him, Lady Carrano!”

    “I am, Diana!” she said with a laugh. “And call me Polly, everyone does. Um, in that case, Adrian, I might know of someone who could supply you. Um, but they’d have to air-freight them up from Taupo, would that be all right?”

    “Dead or alive, Polly?” he replied, poker-face.

    “Uh—either, I should think. I mean, they do sell dressed poultry at their stall and I think they supply one or two restaurants in the Rotorua-Taupo area as well. But it doesn’t take long to fly up to Auckland, Dave Reilly sometimes does two trips a day.”

    “Mm. How long does it take to get from the airport all the way up here, though?” replied the chef drily.

    Her face fell. “I never thought of that.”

    “Um, we sometimes go down to the market, though,” said Martin cautiously.

    “It’d be another hour, at least, in the Auckland traffic, to get out to the airport. Work it out: it’s the best part of a working day, Martin!” he said impatiently.

    Martin glared. “What this dump needs is an air strip!”

    “Hah-hah. Uh...” Adrian stared at Polly, a large knife in his hand.

    “Anything, anything, only put that snickersnee down!” she gasped.

    “You’ve got a helicopter pad!” he cried.

    “Ooh!” cried Martin. “That’s right!”

    Polly swallowed. “Oh, yeah. Over the road from the bach—yeah.”

    “Yeah,” said Adrian with a silly grin, putting his knife down. “Sorry. Got a bit carried away, there.”

    “But heck, it’s ideal!” cried Martin. “Just up the Inlet!”

    Adrian was watching Polly’s face. “Well, it’d require a copter from Taupo, but theoretically—yes.”

    “Dave Reilly or his mate, Don McLeod. It—it could work, I think. But it’d be expensive, I’m afraid,” she admitted.

    “Hang on, there is an alternative!” cried Martin. “Dan Carter could drive out to the airport for us!”

    Polly’s face was now looking as if it might explode. Adrian cleared his throat. “Well, possible, mm, but he’s not his own master: the firm allocates his jobs.”

    “But if we had a regular delivery?”

    “Look, shut up, Martin. I’ll think about it. We’d better find out if these people can even supply us, first. Who are they, Polly?”

    “Taupo Organic Produce. It’s a permaculture place. They’d probably be able to send up lots of veges and stuff, too, if they were sending up guinea fowl. If you wanted them.”

    “We’ll see what they’ve got, certainly. Thanks, Polly.”

    “That’s okay. Um, they haven’t started raising them, yet.”

    “Eh?” cried Martin loudly.

    “Jan and me just thought maybe they could!” she gasped. “They’d need customers!”

    “I can almost guarantee a poulterer in Remuera,” said Adrian thoughtfully. “And a butcher in Newmarket, I think. Look, I’ll suss the whole situation out, Polly.”

    “Good. It’s ages since I had pintade,” she said wistfully. “I thought it must’ve been that, that Marilyn had, only I couldn’t remember much about that evening at all. Um, what’s for pudding in The Quarter Deck?”

    They duly listed its puddings, plus Revill’s, and she chose Revill’s tamarillo pie, Adrian having explained that the filling was sort of inspired by the texture of Jane Grigson’s batatada. With cream, if she— Fine!

    “Yummy! Thanks, Adrian!” With this she went off, smiling happily.

    The kitchen staff of The Quays looked at one another limply.

    Finally Martin said in a low voice: “I don’t think she’s over Jake’s death yet.”

    There were only about seven years between the chef and his sous-chef, but sometimes it felt more like forty. Adrian took a deep breath. “No. No timelines for that sort of thing, old mate. And frankly, well-meaning though the sister-in-law undoubtedly is, I wouldn’t say she was the best medicine.”

    There was a short silence. Martin stirred blindly, his assistant tidied his workstation industriously, and Diana inspected the innards of the dishwashing machine very, very slowly.

    Eventually Martin said in a very small voice: “What would be the best medicine, Chef?”

    God, did he know? He was only in his mid-thirties, himself! Though, true, he had been running his own business for about a dozen years, now. “Well, dunno. Spending time with someone who’s more on her wavelength, I think.”

    “Mum says—” Diana broke off. “Nothing,” she muttered.

    Adrian sighed. “All right, Diana, a male someone who’s more on her wavelength, yes, very possibly.”

    To his surprise Martin put in sturdily: “Everyone says that, but I don’t reckon it counts for that much. Anyone that understands when she’s joking, ’ud do.”

    “And so say all of us!” Adrian agreed, turning and favouring him with the sparkling smile that made him look incredibly like Mel Gibson in his youth. –The sort of smile, reflected Diana the washer-up glumly, that her tummy couldn't actually cope with all that well, really. Oh, well. It was a good job, they were a nice crowd to work with, and you hadda have a crush on someone if you were only twenty, eh?

    “I s’pose she needs a change. That trip to Europe didn’t work, though,” Martin then noted.

    Adrian was now briskly beating cream. Possibly not the chef’s job, in a real kitchen, but however. “No, and I doubt if the next trip will, either. Anna popped into the crafts centre the other day and Polly told her that Phyllis Harding’s asked her to go to Sydney with her.”

    Martin dropped a knife. “Eh?”

    “Quite,” said Adrian drily.

    “Ya don’t mean Alan Harding’s mother? The parrot woman?” he choked.

    “Yes, and yes.”

    “Adrian, last time she was here for lunch she was talking about some ghastly ceviche thing she’d had in the Pacific somewhere, and asking why we didn’t have it on the menu!”

    “Se-vee-chay, Spanish, not suh-veesh, French,” replied the chef mildly.

    “Is it?”

    “I’m sure I heard it on TV, wasn’t it that Aussie cook, well, not in looks, but he went round the Pacific: you know,” offered Diana. “I’m sure they said suh-veesh on that.”

    “I’m sure they did, yes,” agreed Adrian smoothly.

    “Shuddup, ya nit, he trained in France!” hissed Martin’s assistant.

    Adrian relented slightly. “I dare say they do pronounce it suh-veesh in Tahiti. I’m sure that’s how Phyllis Harding pronounced it, too. Well, I’m merely the pianist, so don’t shoot me.”

    They all looked at him blankly, of course, in fact Martin offered: “You mean the messenger.”

    Mm. Okay, Martin was quite bright but he’d left school at eighteen without having distinguished himself in any subjects and gone straight into the kitchen. Not that Adrian hadn’t, himself but— Yeah. There was a fair bit of it about.

    Poor Polly. Someone compatible? Adrian Revill had a strong feeling she’d found him, twenty-odd years back. And how big was New Zealand’s population, again? Shit.

    Back in the restaurant, Marilyn happily chose the Black Forest Cake for pudding. Shades of Taupo Shores Ecolodge! As a matter of fact The Quays didn’t even make it themselves, it was bought in from a local firm, June Blake Cakes. Homemade, all their cakes were baked by local women in their own kitchens. Possibly Adrian might add a decoration or two to the top—chocolate shavings and so forth. Somehow the sight of Marilyn’s innocent smiling face above the Black Forest Cake made up Polly's mind for her. She wouldn’t ask her to come to Sydney with her and Phyllis. Marilyn would have considered it a tremendous treat, but— No. Not the two of them at the same time. She could cope with one sort or the other, just, but not the combination. Widows or not.

Next chapter:

https://anothercountry-apuririchronicle.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-wide-brown-land.html