Ballads, Songs And Snatches

46

Ballads, Songs And Snatches

    “I thought you might like to know, Polly,” said a male voice at the other end of the phone line at two minutes past eight of a damp September morning, “that Catherine’s had her baby. A boy.”

    “Alan! I’m so pleased! –Jake! COME BACK!” she screamed.

    The unfortunate entrepreneur shot back into the kitchen, his face a strange bluish colour. “What’s up?”

    “Catherine’s had her baby! It’s a boy! –How is she?” she said eagerly to the phone.

    Sir Jacob stumbled over to a kitchen chair and sank onto it, his limbs trembling.

    Mother and baby were doing splendidly, and they weren’t going to call it Hamish, because Catherine had said it looked like an Alec!

    Sir Jacob took this almost without a blink and admitted he was pleased. Adding tolerantly: “Nice little woman.”

    “He’s bursting with pride. You’ll see, it’ll be the making of him!” she predicted sunnily.

    In Sir Jacob’s opinion brats bawling and sicking all over his pristine house were not gonna be the making of an up-himself Pommy bloke like him, but he grunted tolerantly. And eventually managed to get off to work.

    As he went he reflected sourly that there were three possible scenarios: (a) Catherine was gonna give in and let Kincaid foist a nanny on her and banish the brat and the nanny to the far end of his ruddy extension and at least they’d get some sleep at night so everything might be hunky-dory, with a bit of luck: that was, if she didn’t turn back to her cake-making and lose interest in him and he didn’t lose interest in a wife that had lost interest, in which case the divorce would be all J. Carrano’s fault, you could betcha bottom dollar; (b) she was gonna dig her toes in and the brat would bawl all night and he’d never get any sleep, and whether she insisted on keeping on with the cake-making crap and drove herself into the ground or he insisted she hadda give it up and alienated her forever and a day, they’d end up splitting up, which would all be J. Carrano’s fault; or (c) they’d drag on for a bit, gradually nagging each other to desperation until he came to his icy senses and dumped the woman and the kid and escaped back to Pongo and a much better job in some poncy Pommy university that didn’t rely on the bloody shaky Japanese economy to supply it with a large part of its bloody client base. That’d be J. Carrano’s fault, sure as eggs.

    Eventually the amiable Bob Grey, his driver, noticed the strange silence and asked him what was up. At which Sir Jacob broke down and admitted he should never have eaten all that bloody rich pudding last night on top of that bloody poncy thing with the cream sauce on it. Calmly Bob produced a packet of indigestion tablets from the glove drawer. Sir Jacob took two and was then able to admit that Kincaid had been the right appointment and the bloke was doing a bloody good job but if they lost him, they’d never get another bloke of his calibre, out here!

    “Ya won’t lose him,” said Bob Grey calmly. “Starting up a palomino stud, isn’t he? Dare say he’ll run your country club for you, ten years down the track.”

    The entrepreneur had to swallow. “Uh—yeah. She told you about that, did she?” he added, rallying slightly,

    “That’s right,” agreed his driver mildly.

    Janet had asked Dorothy to lunch. Not in Puriri: at home. On a working day. Dorothy eyed her dubiously. “You taking leave, or something?”

    “No,” she said, looking smug. “That’s tuna-fish casserole, Dorothy. One of Hal’s favourites.” Actually it was macaroni all mushed up with tinned tuna, but on second thoughts it probably was what Yanks called tuna-fish casserole. It was certainly in one of Janet’s pretty casserole dishes. Resignedly Dorothy took some.

    After a short interval during which Janet put the bloody cat out before it could actually leap on the table, Dorothy asked cautiously: “You are keeping quite well, are you, Janet?”

    “I’ve been a bit off-colour, actually,” she said, looking smug.

    “What’s the problem?” asked Dorothy anxiously.

    “It’s not a problem!” she said, grinning smugly.

    Dorothy gave her a puzzled stare.

    “Have some broccoli; Hal likes it done like that: you microwave it first, and then you just mix up some breadcrumbs with a sprinkling of herbs and olive oil, and pop it under the grill for a few minutes.”

    Resignedly Dorothy took some broccoli. By her calculations, that would quadruple the time required to prepare microwaved broccoli: in fact, if you included the time needed for the grill to heat, multiply it tenfold. Oh, well.

    Janet ate tuna-fish casserole and crumbed broccoli composedly. “Actually,” she said, looking smug, “I’ve started a baby.”

    Dorothy choked on her crumbed broccoli.

    Quite some time later, after Janet had bashed her on the back and fetched her a glass of water, fussing terrifically and not quite offering to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre, though Dorothy was in no doubt that by now Hal would’ve taught her how to, she managed to croak: “Congratulations, Janet.”

    “Thanks,” she said smugly. “We thought there was no point in waiting. My biological clock’s ticking, you know.”

    “Mm. Um—when’s it due?”

    It was due in late May, which meant they must have decided to try for it just after The Mikado. In fact, about the next night after it. Oh, well, Janet always had been one for plans, timetables, and lists. And it was flattering that she was the first person they’d told.

    Over pudding, an apple crumble which Dorothy’s mum wouldn’t have disowned, Dorothy ventured to ask what about the house? Wouldn’t it be a bit small for a family? But Hal had “been into all that”—pushed by Guess Who—and they had got permission to build a wing out the back, so long as it didn’t disrupt the natural roof line or some such crap. Jolly good show. After the coffee Janet proudly showed her the plans.

    “Hal thinks I might as well give up the job,” she said smugly, folding the papers up neatly.

    Dorothy’s jaw dropped. “Janet, it’ll be a tremendous change: you’ve been working ever since Library School!”

    “Well, longer, really: I was only part-time at varsity, you know. I’m not going to be silly and make a sudden change when the baby comes: I think that’s where a lot of first-time mothers go wrong,” she said seriously. “I’m going to start to tail off. Well, I’ve started, really. I’m only doing twenty-five hours a week, now. After Christmas I’ll only be doing three half-days. Then I’ll stop altogether just before Easter.” She looked smug.

    Dorothy nodded numbly.

    “It’s not as if I was a career-girl, you know!” said Janet with a laugh.

    Numbly Dorothy managed to agree, to reiterate her congratulations, and to thank her for the lunch. Strewth. Well, it had to come, presumably. They had been living together for a while. But— Strewth. She was so shaken that it wasn’t until that evening, when she was gnawing a solitary cheese-on-toast in front of the heater, that she consciously realised that at least Janet had, for once, refrained from dropping heavy hints about her and Thomas. Oddly enough this didn’t cheer her up as much as it should have done.

    Leigh had seen for some time that relations between Dorothy and Thomas were, if not worsening, at least at a stalemate. He was not really convinced he could do anything about it, but he’d made a start by asking him to dinner.

    “Very chichi, thanks so much,” said Thomas on a grim note, as Leigh collected up their pudding plates.

    “For God’s sake! We won’t bloody well ask you again, if that’s going to be your attitude!”

    “If chichi means what I think it does, I agree with him, actually,” said Moana calmly.

    “All right, next time I’ll slam down tinned custard and prunes in front of the pair of you,” replied Leigh promptly.

    “Don’t be a clot, it tasted great. It just looked chichi. –How do you spell that?” Moana demanded of Thomas.

    Gulping slightly, he spelled it for her.

    “I believe you, thousands wouldn’t!” she said with a laugh. “The thing is, he’s been reading Adrian’s cookery books. Especially the illustrated ones that Adrian pretends he despises.”

    “He does despise them,” said Leigh firmly, returning from the kitchen. “Anyone fancy a coffee or would that be too chichi for you two exemplars of the great unwashed?”

    “No, it’ll give me burps all night,” responded Moana glumly.

    “That chichi enough for you?” said Leigh with a grin to his old friend.

    “Yeah,” admitted Thomas sheepishly, getting up. “I’ll give you a hand. Why not have cocoa, instead?” he said kindly to Moana.

    “Well, I usually have that just before bed,” she said with a smile. “I wouldn’t mind a nice weak cup of tea, actually.”

    “Okay.” Thomas ambled out to the kitchen in Leigh’s wake. “Sorry,” he said abruptly.

    “Oh, that’s all right: I did get the idea for the decorations on the puddings from a book of Adrian’s, and I quite agree: the result was entirely chichi.”

    “Not that. Everything,” said Thomas gloomily.

    “Er—what?” replied Leigh cautiously.

    “That bloody stupid row, back— When was it? Forget. Before the bloody production of the cretinous Mikado, anyway. When Beth was threatening to go home and Moana tore a much-deserved strip off me,” he reminded him.

    “That? That was ages ago: we’d both forgotten all about it!” said Leigh in amaze.

    “Oh. Thought you were—um—avoiding me, or something,” he said gloomily.

    “No, you fool! Well, possibly I did sulk for a while, I admit that. But we’ve simply been swamped, what with the cretinous Mikado on top of piles of marking and Moana’s morning sickness—if it was only in the mornings it’d be easier to cope with, poor darling, but it means we can’t plan anything, much, we never know when it’ll strike—and, well, thinking about a new house and so forth.”

    “Oh. Well, I’m glad you weren’t mortally offended. Um, what new house?”

    “Well, we can’t live here, with an infant. In the first place the stairs’d be a bit bloody much, and although Adrian has said we’re welcome to leave the pram downstairs, we can’t really clutter up their back passage. And then, his patrons won’t want to be disturbed by babies bawling all day and night. It’d ruin the ambience!” said Leigh with a laugh. “No, well, seriously, we’d like a house. We’re thinking of taking the section next to Jack’s.”

    “Leigh, you’ll be letting yourself in for an enormous amount of gardening,” he said feebly.

    “Could always let it go wild, like your dump!” he said with a laugh. “No, well, Moana’s itching to get out and get her hands into the soil. Apparently the egregious Wayne,” he said, lowering his voice—though there was no need, Moana must have put on a CD, because loud strains of Mozart were now filling the flat—“would never let her do any. He was a plant geneticist, thought he knew it all. She even gave up on houseplants, poor darling, because he kept telling her she was doing it all wrong!”

    “Oh. Didn’t know you could, with houseplants. Um—thought Gerhard had bought that section?”

    “No, no, his is next but one to Jack.”

    “I see. I really thought you were settled, here. This flat seems very much you, Leigh,” he said uncertainly.

    “Mm, but we want a place that’s very much us!” said Leigh, smiling at him.

    “Yes,” agreed Thomas glumly.

    Leigh licked his lips. “Um, look, if you just tried to re-establish neutral relations with Dorothy—”

    “No. Shut up,” he said grimly.

    Leigh sighed, but shut up.

    It was a Friday afternoon. The weekly Deans’ Meeting had been all that Alan’s meetings usually were, even though Jack and Leigh were now, of course, both in terrifically good moods. In fact, in a way this was making things worse: Leigh was rather vague with it, and Jack was offensively cheerful. Dorothy tottered into the side bar and asked Wallis for a very stiff anything, the more alcoholic, the better—double. No, triple. Proudly Wallis produced something that she claimed was called a Scott’s Pick: she knew, she claimed, how to make them, now! Dorothy didn’t ask, she just grasped it in a desperate fist and peered desperately through the seething mass of trendies in the side bar for a seat. There was a spare one at Angie’s table so she fought her way to it and collapsed into it.

    “They’re getting quite busy,” said Angie mildly.

    “Yeah,” she groaned, tasting it.

    Angie watched with bulging eyes as half of it disappeared in two swallows. “Isn’t that a Scott’s Pick?”

    “Apparently. So?”

    “Um—nothing.”

     Dorothy sipped, and sighed. “Fancy having tea at The Quarter Deck?”

    Angie cleared her throat. “Um, I’ve got a hubby to prepare hot meals for, these days, Dorothy.”

    “Oh—yeah. Have another?” said Dorothy, draining her glass.

    “Um—no, ta. I think I had better go home and make the great male oaf a hot dinner,” she said in a weak voice. “He’s agreed to sell the draught-attracter in Narrowneck, did I say?”

    “Uh—don’t think so, Angie. Well, good show,” said Dorothy with a visible effort.

    Angie nodded and smiled guiltily, and got up and left her.

    The sounds of conviviality mixed with the sounds of Mozart were coming from Leigh’s flat. Looking pleased, Thomas rang the smart brass bell.

    “Oh,” said Leigh limply, opening the door to him.

    “Hullo. Didn’t realise it was a party.”

    “Um—look, you really wouldn’t— I mean, it’s not that Moana and I aren’t pleased to see you whenever you fancy dropping in—”

    “What? You invited me!” he said loudly and angrily. “I’ve even brought this for Moana!” He brandished a pot-plant wrapped in pink florist’s paper at him.

    “Um—Hell,” muttered Leigh. “No, not for tonight, old man: tomorrow.”

    “Bullshit, Leigh! You said Saturday!”

    “No, Sunday,” said Leigh.

    “Very well, then, I’ll be off!” he said angrily.

    “No, of course you mustn’t do that, not when you’ve brought flowers, and everything.”

    “Look, Leigh, it’s written all over you that you’ve got some very nayce guests in there along the lines of Mummy and Daddy Throsby from bloody Surbiton. And that you’ve cooked precisely the number of chops to go round.”

    “Cutlets, actually,” said Leigh weakly. “At least come in for a drink.”

    “No, I don’t want to meet New Zealand’s answer to Mummy and Daddy Throsby, thanks all the same. I’ll see you tomorrow, if that’s when you’re expecting me.” He thrust the pot-plant at him and stomped off.

    Leigh shook his head slowly, and slowly closed his door.

    Thomas got to the top of the stairs. Then he hesitated. Then he went over to Dorothy’s front door and tapped.

    It was opened by Murray, looking extremely solemn. He didn’t speak.

    “Hullo, Murray,” said Thomas inanely.

    “Hullo,” he replied cautiously.

    As the kid had only opened the door a crack—leaving, in fact, the chain on—Thomas couldn’t see much of Dorothy’s sitting-room. “Is Dorothy in?” he said inanely.

    “Yeah, but you can’t come to tea!” he said aggressively in the local vernacular.

    “Why?” replied Thomas languidly, giving up on the unnaturally-kind-to-the-younger-generation bit. “Are there only enough chops for the two of you?”

    “’Tisn’t chops, it’s poies,” he said in the local vernacular.

    “Delightful,” replied Thomas with distaste. “May I speak to Dorothy, please?”

    “I’ll ask her,” he said. Before Thomas could bellow at him not to, he’d shut the door carefully in his face.

    Thomas glared, but stayed where he was.

    After an appreciable period, the door was opened—properly, this time—by Dorothy. She was swathed in a large plastic apron featuring a picture of Minnie Mouse brandishing what was possibly a soup ladle, and looked very hot and bothered indeed. “Look, whaddaya want?” she snarled. “I’m in the middle of getting tea!”

    “Poies, so I am told,” he replied airily.

    “Yes, and if ya want the full gruesome details, I made the mistake of trying to make the bloody things from scratch, using a recipe that little twerp Martin Wolfe— Look, whaddaya want?”

    “I did wonder if you might be free for dinner,” he said with his nicest smile.

    “No! We’ve got our evening all planned out!”

    “Aye,” said Murray, suddenly popping up at her elbow—like, Thomas was in very little doubt, the evil genie of this particular tale. Which, take note, he reflected sourly, was getting Grimmer by the minute. “We’re not gaein’ to have any veges at all, are we, Aunty Dorothy? Just the pies. With real tomato sauce out of a bottle. And we’re gaein’ to watch a video.”

    “Yes. You wouldn’t like it,” said Dorothy definitely, beginning to close the door.

    Thomas stuck his foot in it. “But I might! What is it? Ooh, more Doctor Who?”

    “If we let him, he might buy the pudding again,” noted Murray thoughtfully.

    “Absolutely!” agreed Thomas, beaming.

    “It isn’t Doctor Who, it’s a John Candy movie of the most fatuous kind, I use the word advisedly. And I’ve bought the puddings: they’re in the freezer. Two of them. Thanks all the same,” said Dorothy sweetly, pushing the door very hard against his foot. “If we let him in, he’ll drink up all your share of the Coke,” she said to Murray.

    “We won’t let him in, then, will we, Aunty Dorothy?”

    “No. If necessary, we will even,” said Dorothy, giving Thomas a very nasty look indeed, “summon assistance in order to ensure—”

    “I’m going!” he said hastily, withdrawing his foot. “But mark my words, you’ll—”

    Dorothy shut the door on him.

   “—hate every moment of it!” he cried loudly to the closed door. “Oh, bugger the woman!” he said loudly, stomping off.

    In the kitchen, Murray inspected the freezing compartment of Dorothy’s fridge, ascertained there were, indeed, only two puddings, and noted solemnly: “It’s just as well we didna let him in.”

    “Mm?” said Dorothy, jumping. For some reason or other she had gone over to her little sink-bench and was peering out of the small window over it, which provided one with quite a good view of the area of The Esplanade directly in front of The Quays. “Oh! Yeah. Just as well.”

    “Hey, guy!” said Hal with a grin as Thomas appeared in the Sir G.G. staff common-room, looking ruffled. “You been looking at your building?”

    “Yes. What are you doing here?”

    “Been looking at our building!” he said with a laugh. “No, well, our offices are ready, so Jack thinks we might as well move into them, not wait until the New Year.”

    “Not that. Thought you were on your honeymoon?”

    “Yeah, we were. We’re back,” he replied, unmoved.

    “How was Hawaii?” said Thomas without interest.

    “Oh, warm, pleasant—y’know?”

    “Yes,” he said sourly.

    “Want a coffee?”

    “What? Oh—thanks,” said Thomas lamely as Hal poured him a coffee. They moved over to a couple of armchairs by the window and, Hal then asking how his building was, Thomas gave him chapter and verse.

    “It could be worse, Thomas!” he said cheerfully.

    “The bastards are holding out for triple time over the Christmas break,” he replied sourly.

    “Yeah, I guess; but aren’t they sub-contracted to one of Sir Jake Carrano’s companies? Can you see him letting them get away with that?”

    “Uh—no. Well, hope not.”

    “No. So, guess we’ll see you at Jack’s hooley, huh?”

    “This is the first I’ve heard about Jack’s holding any hooley.”

    “Gee, I made sure he’d have asked you, Thomas: sounded right up your alley,” he said lamely.

    “I’m sure,” replied Thomas in a bored tone, draining his coffee. “I’ve got to get back. So long.” He wandered out, hands in pockets, looking bored.

    Akiko’s office was, as usual, neat, pretty and stylish. So was Akiko, of course. Up until the moment when Dorothy asked her casually what this do of Janet’s was. At which point a horrible scowl came over her pretty little face. “I not-ah go, it all couples,” she said shortly.

    “Er—yeah, she has gone that way, of course. Well, that would explain why I’m not invited.”

    “Not invite’?” said Akiko, her jaw dropping.

    “No. That’s all right, I’m not up for—”

    “But she must-ah invite-ah you, Dorothy! She invite-ah me, but I make excuse, not want-ah be-ah gooseberry!”

    “Quite,” said Dorothy somewhat feebly. “You never know, she might have dredged up an eligible young man for you.”

    “I no want-ah erigibuh young man. Prease, may we get on with it?”

    “Uh—yeah. Sorry, Akiko. You can bring up your budget on the system any time, as you know. The new routine will allow you to incorporate learning resource expenditure and committals into your total departmental budget statement. Or such is Armand’s claim.”

    “Yes, but it no work when I try. So I send him message with copy to you. I did not expect-ah you to come yourself, Dorothy,” she said on an uncomfortable note.

    Dorothy didn’t point out that she’d come in order to pump her about Janet’s party. She merely said: “I thought it might be easier for me to show you. Here…”

    “You do realise, don’t you,” said Thomas plaintively, encountering Dorothy in her library in what he rather hoped looked an accidental way, “that we’re the only two human beings on the face of the planet not invited to—”

    “No!” she snarled.

    “—either Janet’s little wing-ding or Jack’s hooley with the Chinese lanterns. It’ll be because, alone on the planet, neither of us is part of a couple,” he said, trying to smile and look plaintive simultaneously.

    Dorothy didn’t list the many unattached persons employed at their own organisation, she just walked away from him.

    People were making Christmas plans already, apparently. Well, Janet certainly was: she’d asked Dorothy to tea—the famous crumbed broccoli featuring largely—and then as they sat in the sitting-room afterwards with cups of decaffeinated coffee cautiously broached the subject.

    “I’m certainly not going to South America with the Carranos, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Dorothy with a sigh.

    “What do you mean?

    “Didn’t I mention it? She asked me if I’d like to go.”

    “Dorothy! To Argentina?” she cried. “Why on earth didn’t you accept?”

    “In the first place it costs an arm and a leg which I haven’t got; in the second place, before you say anything, she did offer to pay the fares; and in the third place, I didn’t fancy it. It’s halfway round the world, if you look at the globe.”

    “I’d say it was only the other side of the Pacific,” said Hal mildly.

    “Yes: halfway round the world. Added to which their friends sound like horsey people with a load of kids, and I want a peaceful Christmas with my feet up and no hassles from relatives. And unless Jack busts his other leg and breaks up with Beth, I might just get it, this year. Fingers crossed.”

    “Um, yes,” said Janet on an uneasy note, glancing at her husband.

    “Yeah. Uh—well, my brother David really liked it here when he was out for the wedding, and although Mom couldn’t make it then, they do close the store over Christmas,”—Dorothy nodded feebly: she did now know that Hal’s mother worked in a sporting-goods store—“and this year, they reckon they can manage without her over the Christmas rush because their married daughter, she’s coming down from Montana, and she’ll give them a hand— Well, anyroad, David’s persuaded her to come on out. So, uh, guess we’ll just be a family party,” he finished on an uncomfortable note.

    “Of course. Well, I’m very pleased!” said Dorothy with a smile.

    Smiling terrifically relieved smiles, the Gormans then explained in chorus at just which motels David, his two teenage offspring by his divorced wife, Hal’s mother and Hal’s mother’s “boyfriend” would stay. Dorothy certainly didn’t need to have the point made that the little cottage would be bursting at the seams for Christmas dinner, but they made it anyway.

    “Listen, Dot—” said Jack in an awkward voice.

    Dorothy had been wondering why he and Beth had asked her to lunch at Revill’s. Well, actually she’d been wondering if they were about to announce their engagement. But it wasn’t that—quite. “Christchurch for Christmas. I see,” she said limply.

    “Thing is, we thought Beth’s family had better meet me.”

    “Yes. Have you booked? All the planes’ll be—”

    He had booked, yes. And arranged for a hire car, and then a campervan: they would go on down to Invercargill to see Kathleen, and take in some of the scenic sights on the way there and back. Maybe get over to the Franz Josef Glacier—would Dorothy believe Beth had never seen it? Given what Beth had let slip about Jan Martin, not to say Polly’s horror tales, Dorothy would, yes. She noted apropos: “You’d better find some way of warning Beth’s mother before the actual event that Murray’s Black. Well, brown. But you know what I mean.” And concentrated on her excellent lunch.

    The edict had come down from on high that people had to take leave in the leave year in which it was due. At first, examining the printout headed “Sir George Grey University Administration. Personnel Section. Consolidated Annual Leave, Sick Leave, Accrued Leave and Long Service Leave Report from UNICON”, Dorothy had thought they’d made a mistake in their figures. Then she’d had second thoughts and asked her secretary, Helen, to fish out her contract. Helen had tottered in with it looking very sick and bleating: “Dorothy, you’re not thinking of leaving, are you?” Flattering, in a way. Dorothy had replied she wasn’t: she was just checking how many weeks’ annual leave she was entitled to. It was four. Dorothy stared blankly at the contract. She had never in her life before been in a job where you were entitled to four weeks’ annual leave. In fact she had only comparatively recently got to the point where it was three instead of a meagre two. Granted three now seemed to be the norm… Helpfully Helen told her that her Sean, who was living in Perth, said that everybody in Australia got four weeks! Dorothy did not correct this to everybody who was employed and in a strong union or with a favourable negotiated contract, she just nodded numbly. The form was right. Helpfully Helen came to look over her shoulder and explained that see, that was accrued leave, and that notice they’d got from Admin, that meant that she had to take it!

    Conceding Helen’s point that if you were able to take some of your leave before Christmas, then you had time for all those last-minute jobs, Dorothy took a couple of days, though she didn’t actually have any last-minute jobs. This had always been a hectic time at the Puriri County Library, with hundreds of cretins realising they’d be stuck with nothing to read until around January 3rd unless they shot into the library and took out some nice junk that they seemed to imagine no other cretins would also be wanting to take out at that very— Yes, well.

    In spite of the racket that was going on down below, she managed to sort of almost have a lie-in on the 23rd. She would then have had a quiet breakfast of Sarah Lee cherry pie on her balcony, admiring the view of the bay under what promised to be a shimmering cloud of humidity later in the day but which was as yet just a sort of mist above the blue-green, but there was this Goddawful racket—

    She gave in and marched out onto the balcony in her truly frightful summer housecoat that dated from about 1968 and, having been a gift from Kathleen, was so solidly made and untrendy and, alas, colourfast, that it was still as good as new. Large navy blue, royal blue, and emerald cabbage roses.

    “What in God’s name are you doing?” she groaned, leaning over the railing.

    Martin straightened, and mopped his brow. “Adrian’s finally got Council permission to put tables and chairs out here. Just for the casual trade.”

    “On the footpath?” she croaked.

    “Yes. They’ll have umbrellas, of course.”

    She could see that: those trendy white square-ish ones, Sim was already heaving one into position. They would of course reflect the sun right up onto her balcony.

    “Does the strata-title agreement give him the right to do that?” she snapped angrily.

    “Yes, of course,” said Martin immediately.

    “Martin, are people going to be smoking down there?” said Dorothy angrily.

    “I suppose the smokers will be, yes. Why?”

    “It’s right underneath my windows, that’s why!”

    “Yes, but by mid-afternoon it’ll be too hot on this side of the building, on most days,” he said kindly.

    “What about the other side?” said Dorothy angrily.

    “Yes, we’re putting some out there, too, it’s really handy for the side bar. Though we have to be careful not to block the exit, of course. Leigh doesn’t mind: they’ll be away for the holidays and then, of course they’re moving anyway, eh, Sim?”

    “Yes!” panted Sim, heaving another monster umbrella into place.

    Angrily Dorothy retreated, shutting her French door with a bang.

    … Boy, it was all go in Carter’s Bay on a warm December 23rd! Dorothy parked her car in the echoing spaces of the brand-new carpark outside the new supermarket, due to open, typically of EnZed commercial enterprise, not for the Christmas rush, but in February next year, and mooched down past the shiny Toyota yard, ignoring Bryce Carew leaning on a shiny Toyota, to the dairy.

    May wasn’t there. Dorothy goggled feebly at the pleasant-looking young Maori man behind May’s counter.

    “Hi; can I help you?” he said, smiling.

    “Yuh— Uh—Where’s May?” she gulped.

    “Her and Jack are over at the new dairy,” he explained. “In Kingfisher Bay,” he added kindly as she just stared blankly.

    “You don’t mean they’ve sold this place?” she croaked.

    “No, me and Shannon are managing it for them. –Wiremu Scott,” he explained, holding out a hand.

    Limply Dorothy shook it. “Nice to meet you, Wiremu. I’m Dorothy Perkins.” –He was, of course, of the generation of New Zealanders that was at once ethnically correct enough to use a Maori name if you were, and sufficiently devoid of a basic education not to realise that “Wiremu” was the 19th-century Colonialist Imperialist attempt to transliterate “William” for the natives. She bought a packet of biscuits and tottered out again, not even finding the strength to remark on the fact that they’d changed things round.

    Over the road, the bloody pastel “Moll” was, of course, open. No Carter’s Bay residents were pouring through its doors, however. Dorothy went in. The space where the Post Office agency would be still sported that bloody notice saying it wasn’t open yet. She gave it a look of loathing. One local inhabitant in a limp flowered frock and one bewildered Japanese gent were in evidence, queuing in front of the brand-new shiny ATM what the ANZ’s perky ads over the last three years had assured them brightly was not an ATM machine, because the M stood for machine! What the fuck the AT stood for Dorothy had no idea, and she was pretty sure the rest of the country didn’t, either. The more so as the things had always been called holes-in-the-wall on this side of the Tasman. As she watched, the woman in the floral frock pounded the bloody thing viciously with her fist and grabbed her card back from it. “It’s busted,” she said sourly to the Japanese, walking off. Dorothy watched silently as the bewildered foreigner tried to work it and discovered it was busted. Gee, that had been exciting. She wandered on…

    Books and Bits was still selling bits plus a few insignificant volumes, all paperback crap. Plus thousands of shiny magazines, of course, all of the crapulous kind. Evilly Dorothy went in and asked for a Country Life. They didn’t stock that. And as a matterafack (sic) she was the seccun (sic) person that had asked for that, this week!

    Three Kingfisher Bay ladies were observedly having their hair done and nice cups, well, probably nasty cups, of coffee in Hair 2020. Since they were seated behind the plate glass in full view of the pedestrian traffic of the Moll, Dorothy obligingly goggled at them. They didn’t appear to notice. She wandered on. Evangeline’s were showing matronly frocks and two-pieces in Christmas colours in their window. Ugh. The Home of the Body Shop (had there been some sort of copyright infringement do, there, or was she extrapolating?) was showing immensely skinny, headless, shiny black mannequins sporting tiny bits of lingerie that appeared to be made of wool jersey. Grey wool jersey. Good luck to ’em, if that was what turned the younger generation on, so be it, but there was obviously no point in going in there in search of a pretty summer housecoat. Dorothy wandered on… She didn’t want any fluorescent water-skiing, surfing, or snorkelling wear today, ta. Nor any mindless pop CDs and by the look of the depressed young man behind that counter, neither did anyone else. Since she knew where the carefully-hidden stairs were, she made for them, avoiding the bloody transparent-sided escalators. The travel agency upstairs had not yet opened. Short-sighted of them, wasn’t it? Nor had the plant shop, and what good they imagined they’d do themselves with the thriving Garden Centre just down the road—

    At ten-forty-five of a humid 23rd of December, Treasure Island, such was its unlikely name, and it had the artificial palm trees to prove it, was not doing a roaring trade. Two bewildered little Japanese women, drinking CocaCola, presumably that was the same word in any language, and one women with bouffant caramel-tinted hair who’d be either a Kingfisher Bay retiree or an American from the Royal K. Dorothy bought a piece of sponge cake but it hadn’t improved since her previous visit. She left most of it. After some thought she went up to the counter and asked to speak to the boss. The boss turned out to be the hairy character at the cappuccino machine. Cautiously Dorothy mentioned she knew of an excellent source of home-made cakes. Treasure Island had their “regular” suppliers, apparently. Their bad luck. She wandered out…

    After that, since it was a pleasant morning and still barely eleven-fifteen, she wandered into the saddlery.

    Penny wasn’t there. A strange young man was behind her counter. “Hullo, Dorothy,” he said mildly.

    Dorothy blinked, and looked again. Oh: Jimmy Burton’s younger brother. Uh—said to be sort of a bass-baritone, had been in The Mikado. “Hullo, uh—Harley,” she dredged up, not bothering to wonder for more than a second why they’d named the kid after a motorbike. And at that, the sort the bikies rode.

    Penny, it appeared, was very busy with the new stud-farm these days. Last time Dorothy heard of this venture, hadn’t it only been stabling for pony-clubbers with the promise, or threat, depending on your point of view, of palominos to come? Oh, don’t ask. How was Tim? she croaked. Good, replied Harley Burton in mild surprise. That was apparently that, then, and Dorothy tottered out again.

    She did venture into the Garden Centre but it appeared to be the one popular venue in Carter’s Bay today: choked with a mass of grim retirees. All of them looking as if they knew precisely what they wanted, how much it did oughta cost, and five versions of its botanical name into the bargain. Dorothy wanted a small pink hibiscus that would survive on her balcony and one of those things with fat but spiky leaves that made a pretty pattern, possibly a type of succulent. She chickened out and wandered slowly back to the car.

    Round in Kingfisher Bay Kidstuff was visibly almost sold out. Galerie 2 looked pretty empty, too. Dorothy didn’t venture in for a cosy chat with Ida Grey. Next-door in Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies Sol was leaning on his counter while Jimmy Burton sold a thick-looking fellow in extremely sharp black sunglasses a tin of what ninety to one would be the wrong paint.

    “Seen the new dairy?” Sol greeted her unemotionally.

    “From afar, yes,” replied Dorothy coldly.

    “Yeah, well, iffen you can fight your way in there through the heaving mass of kids wanting ice creams and them jelly-baby alligators, and idiot holidayers from the Pink and White Manukas what’ve only just realised that day after tomorrow’s Christmas Day and the motels don’t do breakfasts Christmas, not to say lunches nor dinners any time, you’ll see that May’s happy as Larry. As well as real busy.”

    “He’s never got over those alligators,” said Jimmy detachedly, having seen his customer on his way.

    “What you mean is, he pretends he hasn’t,” said Dorothy heavily.

    “Yeah,” agreed Jimmy, grinning.

    “Want something? Nice new runabout?” offered Sol.

    “No.” Dorothy leaned on the customer side of his counter, since it was there, and sighed. “Does anyone know why they had to build it in the style of a colonial store and call it ‘The Colonial Store’?” she said without hope.

    “Not for certain sure,” replied Sol cautiously.

    “‘Pooh!” cried Jimmy. “Ignore him,” he advised Dorothy. “Everybody knows it was Sir Jake Carrano,” he explained. “He said it hadda match the style of this place.”

    “Gables and finials, I’ll concede,” she conceded. “But it’s a got a verandah, Jimmy.” He looked blank, so she elaborated: “Actual shade. That went out in 1932.”

    “Don’t look at me,” said Jimmy cheerfully. “Ya know what’s next, don’tcha?”

    Dorothy eyed him warily. “No.”

    Jimmy looked bland. “My bet’s a blacksmith’s.”

    Even though the correct term was smithy, Dorothy choked.

    Smirking, Jimmy offered: “You want some lunch?”

    Dorothy was under the impression that Annick had taken over Beth’s old flat. She couldn’t see a rabid Frenchwoman, even one that had decided to settle out here, letting the pair of them wander into her kitchen and cook whatever muck it was they shoved down their gullets when Michaela wasn’t keeping an eye— “Oh, hi, Michaela,” she said sheepishly, as Michaela appeared from the back regions.

    “Hullo, Dorothy,” said Michaela placidly. “Sol’s got a new stove: wanna see?”

    “Cook-top,” drawled Sol as Dorothy joined Michaela in Kitchen. So it was. One burner. Recycled. Never mind, it appeared to work: there was a big pot of frankfurters on it. And a big bowl of coleslaw on the shelf next to it. Weakly Dorothy let the Winkelmanns and Jimmy force hot-dogs with coleslaw and pickles—oh, and American mustard, of course—on her for lunch.

    Since no customers were beating a path, they ate them sitting on the sea wall across the road from the shop. As they did so Michaela glumly volunteered the information that old Ada Corcoran had taken Grace, to make sure she got a proper lunch of baby food from, quote unquote, “a real tin”, but on the whole Dorothy was not astonished to hear it.

    “She lets them bully her,” explained Sol redundantly.

    “Not always,” said Michaela calmly. “Anyway, Grace learnt a rude word yesterday from a man that got his launch stuck on a sandbank. So with any luck she’ll say it. In fact with any luck she’ll call Ada it.”

    Dorothy choked on her hot-dog and coleslaw.

    That was the highlight of December the 23rd.

    Christmas Eve was even more exciting, with every pore of The Quays bursting with brunchers, drinkers, lunchers, more drinkers, late lunchers, more drinkers, early diners, left-over drinkers, diners, more drinkers, late diners, late drunks…  All of them yelling their heads off and slamming bloody car doors and smoking under her balcony from seven in the morning until two in the morning.

    Christmas Day, however, was very quiet. Very, very, very quiet. Dorothy did actually manage to sleep in; that took up most of the morning. The day was very humid, just for a change. She had a tasty if unconventional Christmas dinner of Sarah Lee cherry pie. –The thing was, in Dorothy’s far-off youth bought pies and cakes of any variety had been a Grate Perkins Sin. Why? Well, God knew. Except that they cost fifteen times what it cost to bake your own, not counting the hours sweating over an unreliable oven, not to mention sweating over the mixing bowl with a hand-held whisk. Not to mention the screaming at Dorothy, who was old enough to know better, and little Jack, who possibly wasn’t but did oughta been, initially to take their filthy fingers out of the bowl, and subsequently not to touch that/those, once it/they were out of the oven and the kitchen had settled down to a mere five hundred degrees Fahrenheit…

    There was something to be said for being a self-dependant spinster of not quite fifty-four in the bloody trendy Nineties: at least she was free of the Kiwi-mum martyrdom her mother’s generation had felt themselves obliged to indulge in. No, more than that: wallow in. Dad hadn’t been that broke: the occasional bought cake would not have broken the budget— Oh, well. What on earth would Mum have done with herself all day, once the kids were school age, if she hadn’t been able to slave over the housekeeping and the cooking? They’d had a washing-machine early on, and a vacuum cleaner, too, mused Dorothy, wandering out onto the balcony in her cotton housecoat with a monster slab of Sarah Lee in her paw. Used to vacuum the whole house every day, that was wot…

    Possibly after this she should have had an impulse to ring Kathleen and see how her day of Christmas martyrdom was going, but funnily enough, she didn’t have. Instead she wandered back inside and turned the TV on. Ugh, that was a mistake. …Was that Kirk Douglas in that weeny, weeny skirt? She never had been able to stand him, so she switched it off. She’d watch a nice video. Something soppy. The sort of thing that They never let the distaff side watch. Or at least not without vituperative and very rude comments. She’d got one at the video shop in Puriri last week, so she put it on. Doris Day and Cary Grant! …Oh, God, it was bad: it was bad. Why had she ever thought it was sophisticated and delightf— Actually, she hadn’t. Not even way back when. What she had thought it was, Dorothy now recalled very, very clearly, was bloody daft. True, she had not realised at the time that it was filmed in, perhaps not yer actual Todd AO, but VistaVision or some such that must have been the very latest thing, because the cinematographer had made fullest use of it, so that on the square screen, which was what this copy had been made for, if you could see the Grant profile—why did monkey glands spring relentlessly to mind?—all you saw of Doris was the tip of her famous upturned nose, and if you saw half of Doris’s face you couldn’t see him at all. Dorothy now recalled very clearly, even though she had been an unspoiled virgin at the time—even more so than Doris’s unlikely character, yep—being completely at a loss as to why a crop of regularly-spaced heat spots or similar on the face (very obviously lipstick painted on with a small brush), should prevent Doris from going to bed with the hunk with whom she had gone to tropic shores expressly for the porpoise; let alone why a case of ditto should subsequently prevent an able-bodied, not to say experienced man, to put it kindly, from going to bed with— Unless one was supposed to conclude that the things itched like mad, particularly on the private parts? The film, however, did not so much as hint at any such thing. Not so much as glance at a hint. Though Doris did appear with regularly-spaced calamine lotion over the spots on the face. Well, maybe if you were old enough to think it you thunk it; maybe that was the assumption, when it first came out. They ended up with twins, and the Tony Randall character, who confusingly was not played by Mr Randall in this epic but by a much sexier actor, was still there hanging around— Oh, forget it.

    If only she’d thought of it in time, she could have got some nice junk from the Puriri County Library. Too late; it’d be closed until January the 4th. Er—read something sane and cool and rational? Dorothy looked glumly at the row of Jane Austens on her shelves. Old, battered ones, not the new ones with covers featuring frightful stills from the frightfully overdone, de-Austenified trendy efforts you saw on TV or even on the big screen in glorious Technicolor, with all the bits that J.A. had deliberately left out put back in. …Er, no.

    She wandered out onto the balcony and looked blankly at the bay, grey-green in the humidity, shading to steel-blue out there where the shipping lanes were. No ships in them, of course: not on Christmas Day. Not even a yacht in sight. She could get her togs, and dash off to a beach and have a very healthy swim. Or even go up the Inlet… No, it was too shallow, and then, if Sol and Michaela spotted her they’d be sure to ask her over, and foisting yourself on kind people who had already fed you once this week was not on, especially not on Christmas Day. Um—the other side of the Inlet? If you went up past Sir G.G.— Um, no. If you went up there it might all look like nothing but it actually belonged to bloody Baranski. …What was he doing today, with Leigh off on the other side of the Tasman? Dorothy tried unavailingly to convince herself that he would have foisted himself on some unfortunate sucker such as Yvonne in order to ingest vast quantities of roast turkey at the sucker’s expense, and failed miserably. He wasn’t that bad. Just bloody irritating, and bloody self-centred, and incapable of perceiving what the other person might be— Yeah, well. Like the rest of them.

    There were a couple of nice beaches out on the Point but at this hour they’d probably be crammed with nice families who had digested their Christmas lunches. Blow. Um, well, Grey’s Beach? It’d be deserted, it always was. It’d take no time at all; ten minutes, max., in the car: grab her togs, throw a bottle of something interesting and the last slice of that meat pie she’d heated through yesterday in a bag, nip up there—

    She wandered back into the flat and turned the TV on again. Michael Douglas? They had already shown that thing twice, to her certain knowledge, in the last few  years. The only good thing about it was that the older lady exec got the plum job in the end, although its creators, alas, had not managed to make this unexpected dénouement seem in the least credible. And it was the opposite of festive, and entirely unsuitable for kids: why screen it at this hour on— Forget it, forget it, it was nearly finished, anyway. The opposition had a very blurred comedy with the laugh track so loud that you couldn’t hear the words, not that you’d want to. Of course, Leigh had said she must borrow any of his videos she fancied. A Taxing Woman was always good value. Very well acted, funny, clever, non-sentimental…

    Dorothy got up, determinedly poured herself a very large, very cold gin, waved the pink at it, and got out a good old standby. An early Dick Francis. And since the bed wasn’t made, took them off to it. She didn’t even attempt to see if there might be something soothing on the radio, she just immersed herself.

    … There was, however, some virtue in her, she recognised, coming to groggily after Dick’s hero’s usual nasty fight, the nastier bits of which she no longer had the stomach for, had of course resulted in victory for the Goodies, to realise it was now well after midnight and Christmas Day was over: at least she had not consciously dunnit because anything stronger than the mildest of sherries and “wasting a lovely day like this with your head in a book”, not to mention not making your bed before you got into it and messed it up again, were yet more Grate Perkins Sins. And whatever her subconscious might be up to, she was, thank God, not sufficiently brainwashed, in spite of all Mum’s efforts, to feel responsible for that!

    She went groggily out to the kitchen and drank some milk, not because she believed it would counteract the gin but because, oddly enough, her stomach seemed to be saying to her that it needed milk. Then she went groggily through to the ensuite, had a pee, skipped washing her face, skipped cleaning her teeth, and stumbled back to bed, yawning. Possibly she didn’t deserve to, but she thereupon went out like a light.

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/catherine-ex-machina.html