Cold Comfort Farm

3

Cold Comfort Farm

    Eventually realising he must have missed the turnoff to the farm, Alan turned the car with some difficulty, and retraced his steps. It was spring out here and Grey’s Beach road was dotted with wild apple trees in flower. The turnoff was almost veiled by a gnarled oak, its branches sweeping low over the road, and an apple amidst shrubby clumps of something he couldn’t identify on the other corner. He turned down it cautiously. Hell: ruts down the middle and then some! Keeping a wary eye out for the reputed Mr Fermour and his reputed truck, not to say wandering cows, he drove on.

    The small cage by the roadside was undoubtedly the bobby-calf pen. Next to it was an array of strange little structures on stilts. After a moment he drew the car nearer, pulled up, and looked at them, frowning. Letterboxes, undoubtedly. One was quite large and white-painted: box-like, rather like a modern beehive. It had “FERMOUR” and “RD” lettered on it very large in black. A small but very bright yellow and black notice under the “RD” announced “Herald”. It looked almost like an AA sign. No, it couldn’t be. Next to the white box was an unidentifiable rusting brownish something that looked dead. Next to that again was another rusting brown thing, possibly made of corrugated iron. Barrel-shaped. Its flat front was partly rusted away but he could discern, in flakes of pale paint, “incai” in lower-case letters. Next to that again was a small modern suburban letterbox, wooden but unpainted. It was stained greenish: this was not mould of any kind but an indication, he realised, that the wood had been treated in some way. Its gabled roof was adorned with a small rusty metal flag which at the moment pointed in the direction of down. On its front, in careful, childish red lettering were the names: “Kincaid, Burchett C + R.” Looking closely, Alan could see that this lettering had been done with a felt-tip pen over the top of some previous lettering which had not, he rather thought, featured the final initials. Under the slot for the letters a different hand had painted neatly, in the same style as that of the large white box and the same black paint, “RD”. For some reason Alan Kincaid chewed rather hard on his lip before driving carefully down the track.

    Fermours’ Farm was reached without mishap. There was a sign which said “Eggs” but it looked as if someone had hung it out there some time since—last summer, possibly—and forgotten about it. There was no sign of life. He drove on cautiously, bearing slightly right under low branches. The surface was appalling: if Mr Swadling hadn’t described it as a road he would have thought he was crossing a field. There were ruts, yes, but they were scarcely discernible to the naked eye for the grass which grew knee-high in, between, and to each side of them. Alan drove very slowly, wincing, even though the thing he was driving was not his but a hire car supplied by the Sir George Grey Enterprise Corporation. The travesty of a road seemed to go on forever, but eventually he reached a point where there was a visible gap in the hedgerow to the left and he could see a tumbledown, low-roofed wooden bungalow across a wide, muddy field. He got out, and looked at the loop of wire and the chain that secured the stranded fence to the one gatepost.

    “Hullo,” said a squeaky little voice.

    Alan jumped. “Hullo,” he said feebly to the little boy who’d emerged from the bushes on the inner side of the gate. “Er—shouldn’t you be at school, sonny?”

    “Neh! It’s mid-semester break!” he replied scornfully.

    “Oh.”

    Another little boy, brown-skinned, so perhaps he was a Maori, also emerged from the bushes and stared solemnly at Alan. After a moment this child ventured: “That’s a Mitsubishi, eh?”

    “Er—yes. So it is.”

    The boys stared solemnly at Alan and the grey Mitsubishi. Alan looked at the fence which served as a gate and the huge pool of mud in the gateway, and grimaced.

    “You could drive in,” offered the first boy.

    “Yes,” he agreed grimly. He detached the loop on the top of the gatepost, unwound the chain from the middle of the gatepost, and peeled six feet of fencing containing considerable amounts of barbed wire carefully back. Then he got into the car and drove through. The little boys prudently retired to a safe distance from the mud. Alan was as careful as possible but when he got out again he could see the car was splashed.

    This was all well and good, but it was not over, not by half. And, indeed, the first little boy now edged up within speaking distance, saying: “Mum’ll go mad if ya don’t close the gate.”

    “So I’d heard.”

    The little boy looked up at him expectantly.

    “Look, sonny,” said Alan Kincaid on a desperate note: he was wearing handmade boots: “would you do it for me?”

    “We’re not supposed to go in the mud,” explained the other little boy, coming up to the first one’s elbow.

    Alan was about to descend to offering them a bribe, when they both suddenly made a dash for the muddy gateway. There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to this sudden action, at all. Did they feel that having explained the prohibition currently in force they were freed from observing it?

    “Thank you both very much,” he said sincerely when the gate was once more secured and the boys stood panting slightly and beaming before him. They were both in Wellingtons and though admittedly the boots were now very muddy they didn’t seem to have suffered any other damage. The boys grinned, but looked longingly at the car.

    Alan felt bloody mean. But there was no way he was going to let two kids off a damned dairy farm with mud and doubtless worse on their boots into the car he’d have to drive for the foreseeable future. He got back in. The boys watched sadly. Ignoring them, Alan drove carefully up what might have passed for a drive once, and parked near the verandahed wooden bungalow. It didn’t look as if it had seen a lick of paint in fifty years. What an inheritance! He smiled suddenly, remembering the tales old Great-Aunt Mary Kincaid back in Edinburgh used to tell of “our station in New Zealand”. Fairy tales, he now recognised. He got out but then remembered the chocolates, and had to unlock the car and retrieve them.

    “Mum’s round the back!” offered the first little boy, panting.

    Alan was almost sure his cousin, second or third, whatever she was, had no children of that age. He knew she had a grown-up daughter. In fact, come to think of it, the Swadlings had mentioned her. “Er—yes. That is Catherine Burchett, is it?” he said cautiously.

    “Yeah. She’s round the back,” he repeated.

    The other little boy edged towards the far right. Light dawned, and Alan followed them silently. There was no path. The grass was very damp, though not quite in the category of liquid mud.

    Between the house and the road he had noticed a large fenced area containing a cow and a calf: pretty things: they were Jerseys, somehow he hadn’t expected that. Doubtless the famous Buttercup of three-legged fame. Cold Comfort Farm! thought Alan Kincaid, feeling an hysterical lump of laughter rising in his throat. He swallowed hurriedly. But God, it was just so apt, though! The bungalow’s roof was corrugated iron and looked about as old as Uncle Bob Kincaid had been, and the trek “round the back” was now revealing a selection of unpainted, broken-down wooden outhouses with even rustier sheets of iron half off their roofs. Christ.

    The sun had come out and because there was thick new grass everywhere and, beyond a large, bumpy, unmown back lawn, what was obviously a kitchen garden run riot and an orchard with apple trees in bloom, the view was not completely hideous. But it was rundown, all right. Shocking condition. Why the Christ Uncle Bob’s bloody lawyers hadn’t said—! “Prime agricultural land” was one of the phrases they’d used. Huh. Prime swamp, more like. “In an ideal position for development”. Mm. Well, it was on the coast: the house must have a delightful view, at least from the side they were now passing, which looked east. But no proper road access? Was the road actually a private one, the property of the unseen Fermours? wondered Alan silently. Hell, that’d lower the resale value of the place— Nicely.

    “Good morning,” he said limply to the woman sitting in the pale sun on the back step.

    Catherine often sat on the back step: the kitchen opened right onto the back garden. Originally there had been a porch but Uncle Bob had knocked it off, the boards had got dry rot in them. You got a good view of the old outside dunny but Catherine didn’t mind, she trained sweet-peas and runner beans up it. The beans would take off later, but the sweet-pea vines were already starting to climb. Edible peas would have been more practical but Catherine loved sweet-peas. And there was plenty of room in the vege garden for ordinary peas.

    “Hullo,” she said in a tiny voice, blinking up at him.

    “I’m Alan Kincaid. I take it you’re my cousin, Catherine Burchett?”

    “Yes,” said Catherine in a tiny voice. “You look just luh-like him.”

    “Like whom? Like Uncle Bob Kincaid?” said Alan in astonishment. “Do I?”

    “Mm!” she said, nodding hard.

    “He doesn’t, Mum!” cried the paler small boy.

    “You only saw him as a wrinkled old man, Dicky,” she said, sniffing.

    “Well, he was.”

    “Yeah, he was, Mrs Burchett,” offered the other child. “He was awfully old, nearly a hundred.”

    “Ninety-three,” said Catherine, sniffing.

    “Ye-ah!” he breathed.

    “Well, you do,” she said to Alan Kincaid. “Same cheekbones and jaw.” She sniffed hard. “And nose. His was blobbier, because he was old. But basically the same.”

    Alan had high, wide cheekbones, and a wide winged jaw, narrowing to a rather pointed chin with a little dint in it that, to his relief, was not a dimple. He had hated it during his boyhood but then had discovered, round about his early twenties, that impressionable maidens went all weak at the mere sight of it. Apparently it moved slightly when he spoke or smiled. Most people’s chins did, surely? Oh, well. It would not be true to say he’d exploited it since, but he was certainly aware of it as an asset. The nose was rather large, and reasonably straight, like his father’s, but apart from that he didn’t look like any of his other Scottish relatives, and he was rather intrigued to find he apparently looked like Great-Uncle Robert.

    “Only he usually needed a shave,” she said, sniffing.

    Alan realised in dismay she was near tears. “I’m sorry,” he said lamely.

    “Don’t be: that was how he liked it!” she said with a weak laugh.

    “Yes. Um—I’ve brought you these,” he said feebly, holding out the chocolates.

    “Me?” she said, going very pink.

    “Yes. I’m afraid they’re nothing very much.”

    “We never have chocolates,” said Catherine in a trembling voice.

    “Well, you do now!” said Alan with a laugh, very off-balance.

    To his horror, she burst into tears.

    “Don’t cry, Mum! It’s chocolates!” cried her little boy anxiously.

    “Yeah: chocolates, Mrs Burchett!” urged the other little boy.

    “Silly,” said Catherine faintly, wiping her eyes desperately on the corner of her old flowered apron. Made out of a dress Noelle had grown out of when she was fifteen, so it had seen good service. “I’m sorry,” she said to Alan Kincaid.

    “No; I am. I should have let you know I was coming.”

    “You did,” she said, sniffing, and feeling in the pocket of the pink tracksuit she was wearing under the apron. “Noelle put the letter somewhere safe. Only I’ve forgotten where.”

    “Er—yes. I think that would have been the letter I wrote you from England, though. I mean I should have phoned you or dropped you a line to say I was here.”

    Catherine was still sniffing and groping in her pocket.

    Alan produced a pristine handkerchief from his coat pocket. “Please—use mine.”

    She looked at it in horror.

    Alan looked limply from her face to his handkerchief for a moment. What on earth—? Oh. Suddenly he knelt down beside her on the cracked slab of misshapen concrete that did duty for a back step. “What in God’s name have you done to your hands?”

    “It’s rhubarb,” she gulped.

    Alan could see that, immediately, it was rhubarb: she was slicing it into a large, shallow, enamelled bowl. With plenty of chips in its rim. But underneath the red juice the tips of the neat little fingers were stained black. He registered with automatic approval that though she had small hands they were not plump: Alan disliked plump hands and mistrusted the women who had them. It was not a rational thing: he recognised this, but he was incapable of doing anything about it.

    “Rhubarb,” repeated Catherine, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Chopping it… yesterday… too.”

    “Mm.” He put the handkerchief gently into her right hand and closed the fingers over it. “Please use it.”

    Sniffing, Catherine wiped her eyes, and then blew her nose juicily. “Ta,” she said, handing it back to him.

    “Er—no, keep it,” he said, blenching.

    “I’ll wash it for you,” she decided. “But—um—rhubarb makes an awful stain.” She looked at him guiltily. “Bad as blackberry.”

    “I’ve got plenty of handkerchiefs: don’t bother about giving it back to me,” he said with a faint smile, rising. She just looked up at him, so he said: “Shall we go inside?”

    “Oh! Yes! I’m sorry: I often sit out here when the sun’s come out. It faces north, you see!” she gasped, scrambling up.

    Alan put a hand under her elbow. “Yes, of course: north is the sunny side out here, isn’t it?”

    “Yes. –Thanks,” said Catherine faintly. “Yes, in English books they always talk about south-facing sunny walls and stuff, don’t they?”

    He couldn’t recall any specific instances of it, but he was sure they must, if it had struck his quaint, awkward little cousin from Downunder. –She was little: he was not a particularly tall man, just on five foot eleven, but she came barely to his shoulder. She had abandoned a pile of rhubarb stalks and discarded leaves on a sheet of newspaper and the bowl of chopped pieces as well as the chocolates when she got up: he said to the boys: “Pick those up, will you, boys?”

    The little European boy grabbed the chocolates and as an afterthought the bowl: this left the newspaper with its pile of rhubarb to the little brown boy. Presumably he was a Maori, though Alan had seen such a variety of Polynesian faces in the streets of the city that he wasn’t at all sure which variety was what, or if they were all variations of the same race.

    “No, it’s all right, Shane,” said Catherine faintly as he struggled to roll it up.

    “Neh! I can do it!” he gasped.

    “Come in,” she said, stepping past him.

    Rather feebly Alan stepped in after her, leaving the little boy to his struggles.

    He was appalled. Frankly appalled. The kitchen floor was plain unvarnished boards. They looked as if someone scrubbed them from time to time but they were pretty stained. There was a small rag mat at the sinkbench but it was pretty stained, too. He had expected—well—a traditional European stone-flagged, white-washed farm kitchen with gleaming copperware hanging from beams? Something along those lines, yes. Undoubtedly the picture must have had something to do with old Great-Aunt Mary’s maunderings about “our station” but— God. He looked round limply.

    The kitchen was long and narrow. The far wall was occupied by the sinkbench under a window, looking east. A workbench and the stove were against the back wall, and after them, just to his left as he stood in the doorway, was a large dresser which might once have been varnished but which had certainly never been polished in its life. It sheltered such irreplaceable artefacts as chipped enamel mugs, a mug in the shape of Mickey Mouse’s head, and a pile of old assorted dinner plates. A tiny, narrow window that didn’t look as if it had been opened since the house was built was crammed between the back door and the right-hand wall. This wall featured another dresser, larger, heavier and, as to its lines, handsomer than the first. However, it was slathered in a grimy dark cream paint: a very dark cream, almost a tan. The entire kitchen was painted in this unlovely shade. Its interior lining, Alan saw, blinking, was narrow vertical wooden boards. Directly opposite the back door was another door, which was open: he could see it led to a passage and thence the front door. Against that wall stood a large wooden table, scrubbed but well stained as to its top, and painted in a flaking light green as to its legs. Three battered, mismatched wooden chairs stood around this table but it could have taken several more. Then came a high-shouldered old refrigerator in a slightly lighter shade of cream, and that took you back to the sinkbench. Possibly there had once been some attempt at interior decor, for the window frames were painted in the same flaking light green as the table legs.

    Alan Kincaid did not realise that for a New Zealand farm kitchen of its vintage it was remarkably well-sited and well-lighted: the sink not only had double windows above it looking east, it had a small window to the right which gave onto the side verandah; then on the north wall there was another double window, set above the extension of the bench. It was a good work area and Catherine usually felt quietly happy working in it.

    “Um—sit down,” she said shyly. “We were going to have lunch in a bit, would you like some?”

    Alan sat down limply at the awful kitchen table, unbuttoning his greatcoat. “Well, yes, thank you.” –It couldn’t be that late, surely? There was no clock visible in the awful kitchen: he looked at his watch.

    “What is the time?” she asked.

    “One fourteen point two,” said the paler little boy instantly, consulting the immense piece of machinery on his minute wrist.

    “Yes, it is a quarter past one,” murmured Alan.

    “Help, I didn’t realise it was that late!” she gasped.

    “Mu-um! We’ll miss the bus!” wailed the little boy.

    “You’re the one with the watch, you should have kept an eye on the time,” she replied placidly. “Never mind, we can walk, the sun’s come out.”

    Her own little boy looked satisfied but his friend gasped: “All the way into Carter’s Bay?”

    “We often do,” she said placidly.

    “Yeah: it’s not that far!” said her son scornfully.

    Alan could see that this was bravado. For an adult, it was a more than decent walk, it would stretch you nicely. But for two objects that size? At around this point in time it occurred forcibly to Alan Kincaid to wonder what his second or third cousin Catherine was living off. “I’ll drive you in,” he said firmly.

    “All the way to Kingfisher Bay?” asked her little boy eagerly.

    “Dicky!” Catherine looked apologetically at Alan. “That’s very kind of you. But—um—are you heading back that way this afternoon?”

    “Yes, of course,” said Alan, not having thought about it one way or the other. “Do you have to be anywhere at any particular time? Cinema?” he said, smiling a little.

    “Do you mean the pictures? There’s no picture theatre up here.”

    “We’re going to Kingfisher Bay,” said Dicky loudly and scornfully.

    “There’s certainly no picture theatre there,” agreed Alan drily.

    “We’re gonna go to Sol’s, eh, Shane?” he said on an eager note.

    “Yeah!” agreed Shane, equally eager.

    “Oh? Oh, I think l know: the boating-supplies place?”

    “Yes. Dicky likes it, and the man who runs it, that’s Mr Winkelmann, he’s an American, well, he’s very nice and he doesn’t seem to mind being infested by small boys during the school holidays,” said Catherine, smiling. “And I look in the shop next-door, it’s lovely!” she added fervently.

    “The crafts shop? Mm, there were some remarkable pieces of pottery in the window,” he recalled.

    “That’s his wife,” said Shane helpfully.

    Alan looked helplessly at Catherine.

    “Yes,” she said, pinkening and smiling shyly. “We don’t know her, really.”

    “We do, Mum!”

    “So do we,” agreed Shane.

    “I see. So she runs the crafts shop?”

    Catherine shook her head. “No. She’s a potter. Another lady runs the shop.”

    “Mrs Grey,” said Dicky without interest. “Shall I get the bread out?”

    “No, wash your ha— Dicky!” she gasped, looking in horror at his boots and the tracks they’d left on the wooden floor. And at Shane’s boots. And his tracks.

    Alan got up hurriedly. “I’m terribly sorry, that’s my fault, they very kindly closed the gate for me.”

    “He asked us to!” said Dicky defiantly.

    “Yes, I did, and they did explain they’d been told to keep away from the mud; I’m sorry, I— Hell,” he said as she suddenly put her hands over her face and burst into tears again.

    “It’s not my fault.” muttered Dicky, very red. No-one responded and he shouted: “It’s not my FAULT!”

    “No,” said Alan grimly: “it’s mine. Get those boots off immediately. You, too, Shane.”

    “Yeah— Um, we’re not supposed to leave them on the floor,” said Dicky lamely, eyeing his sobbing mother warily.

    “DO IT!” shouted Alan.

    The boys sat down an the floor and began tugging at their Wellingtons.

    “Don’t,” said Alan, biting his lip, to his sobbing cousin. No response. He put a hand tentatively on her shoulder. “Look, for Heaven’s sake don’t cry, I’ll mop the bloody floor myself!”

    “Not—that—really!” sobbed Catherine.

    “No,” he said with a sigh. “I gather it isn’t.”

    She sobbed for some time. Alan patted her shoulder, looking out of the corner of his eye at the kids. When their horrible hairy grey socks were revealed, he said loudly: “Right. Now, you, Dicky, go and get some newspaper and put all the boots on it. Several sheets thick, please,” he added hurriedly. “And Shane, some of the rhubarb’s fallen onto the floor: pick it up, please, and put it on the table with the rest of it. –Don’t cry,” he said to Catherine, biting his lip again.

    “Sorry!” she gasped, still sobbing.

    “Don’t apologise,” said Alan, sighing, and patting her shoulder again. Dicky was putting the boots on a positive wad of newspaper. “Right,” he said: “now go and get whatever it is that your mother washes the floor with when you’ve tracked mud in.” Dicky scurried off.

    “Do you know where the bathroom is, Shane?” said Alan grimly as the little boy finished neatening the rhubarb. Shane nodded mutely. “Good. Go and wash your hands before lunch, then. Oh: and if you need to have a piss,” he said, not bothering to stop and ask himself if that was polite usage in New Zealand: “do it. Before the hand-washing, get it?”

    “Yeah!” he gasped, scarpering.

    “Thanks,” said Catherine faintly.

    “I was a boy once, myself,” said Alan with a sigh. “Should I have mentioned hot water and soap?”

    She gulped and sniffed and gave a watery smile. “Probably.”

    “Mm. Have another handkerchief,” said Alan with a little smile, producing one from his jacket pocket. This time she took it and blew her nose without raising objections.

    Dicky had come in with a galvanised bucket and a large cotton-headed mop and was making an appalling clattering noise, not to say a mess, but Alan didn’t comment. “Come and sit down,” he said to his cousin.

    “I’m all right,” she said, sniffing. “I’m just a bit shook-up. I didn’t expect you to arrive so soon. Um—we haven’t found a place to rent, yet.”

    “What?” said Alan, frowning.

    “A house. Well, there aren’t any flats, really, in Carter’s Bay,” said Catherine faintly. “Puriri’s too expensive.”

    “I’m not asking you to move out immediately,” he said, frowning, leading her over to the table. He pulled out a chair for her. Limply Catherine sat down.

    “I’m not sure what I want to do, yet,” he said.

    “Oh.”

    “Did I explain in my letter that I’ve—uh—got a job out here?”

    “No. You said you had to come out here anyway so you’d tuh-take the opportunity—”

    “Mm,” he said, gripping her shoulder hard. “I decided to take the job.”

    “So will you live here?” asked Catherine faintly.

    “I don’t know. As I say, I’m not sure what I want to do.”

    “It’s an awful road, Noelle’s always going on about it,” said Dicky on a hopeful note, coming over to the table.

    “Don’t, Dicky,” said Catherine faintly.

    “I’ve done the floor!” he said virtuously.

    “Yes. Thanks,” she said, smiling wanly.

    “I could put the soup on!” he volunteered.

    “I’ll do that,” said Alan, hiding a smile as she winced. “Go and put the bucket and mop away, Dicky, and then wash your hands.”

    “And go to the toilet,” said Catherine with a faint smile. “Before you wash your hands.”

    Shane had come back, looking virtuous. “Yeah,” he agreed smugly.

    “I don’t need to!” said Dicky crossly.

    “Go anyway,” drawled Alan laconically.

    Dicky gave him a look of loathing, but gathered up the bucket and mop and vanished into the passage.

    “I was under the impression that you only had a daughter: I seem to have got it wrong,” said Alan.

    “What? Oh. No, that’s right.”

    “She’s not Dicky’s real mum,” explained Shane helpfully.

    “No. My sister Saskia’s his mother, but he’s always lived with me; I suppose I’ve sort of adopted him,” said Catherine on a dubious note.

    “Saskia, she sends him ace presents,” contributed Shane.

    “She lives in England,” said Catherine. “Sometimes they won’t work with our electricity.”

    “Y— Uh—never mind that,” said Alan, pulling out a wooden chair and sitting on it heavily. He passed a hand over his bald head. “Look, when I wrote to you after Uncle Bob died, I specifically asked you whether you had any children. And you said you had one grown-up daughter.”

    “Yes. Noelle,” she said, nodding.

    Alan took a deep breath. “Quite. Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me you had a dependant child?”

    Catherine looked at him in bewilderment. “We just explained.”

    “Yeah: she isn’t really Dicky’s mum,” repeated Shane, as to a semi-deaf illiterate coming down with Alzheimer’s.

    “Oh, my God!” said Alan Kincaid in a high, unnatural voice. “The literal mind!” He goggled at his second or third cousin.

    Catherine looked back at him timidly. “Do you mean me?”

    “Well, both of you, but he’s got some excuse, he hasn’t reached puberty! –Shane, if you know where the soup spoons and the plates are, go and get them, please,” he said clearly.

    “Yeah! Righto!” beamed Shane, scampering off to do so.

    “I asked you whether you had any children because I wanted to know whether you needed to be able to support a family,” said Alan, gradually going very red, as this sentence didn’t seem to be coming out as smoothly as he’d planned: “because I didn’t want to charge you a rent you couldn’t afford to pay!”

    “Oh,” said Catherine weakly.

    Alan looked round him grimly. “What have you been living on, dare I ask?”

    Dicky had returned. He came up to the table looking cross. “Saskia, she sends us money!” he said defiantly.

    Hm, no flies on you, son, thought Alan Kincaid with a certain grudging admiration. “Yes. It doesn’t appear to be enough.”

    “There’s the Benefit,” said Catherine in a trembling voice, “and Dicky’s Child Allowance. But we have to think of Dicky’s future. What if he wants to go to university? Noelle says that Bursary doesn’t go anywhere, these days.”

    “Clarify this for me, if you would,” said Alan grimly. “You receive some sort of—I presume it’s a social welfare payment?”—She nodded.—“Plus an extra allowance for Dicky?”—She nodded again.—“Yes. And in addition, his biological mother sends you money for him?”

    “Yes. We have to put most of that into his savings account.”

    “I see. I think, a little later today, you’d better write down for me exactly what you receive, per week. –Can’t you do that?” he said, as she looked terrified.

    “No!” she gulped. “It isn’t all weekly!”

    “Ah. Then you write down the actual sums you receive and whether they’re weekly, fortnightly or monthly, whatever: and I’ll work out your weekly income, okay?”

    Catherine nodded. “There’s my shelving job, too.”

    Alan got up, stripped his overcoat off, and laid it on the chair. “Yes. Write down everything you earn, whether or not the bloody taxman knows about it. Okay?”

    “Milk money!” hissed Dicky.

    Catherine pinkened and smiled and nodded. “All right,” she said obediently.

    “Good.” Alan went over to the stove. There was a very large saucepan on it. He lifted the lid. “Is this the soup?”

    “Yes; it just needs to be heated up; I can—”

    The stove was an electric one. Undoubtedly one of the first electric stoves ever made. Dark cream enamel, for a change—with a pale green trim that echoed the shade of the table legs. Four burners. The top was relatively clean but not in good condition. He checked which switch was which and turned the correct one to “High”.

    Dicky came up to his elbow. “Ya gotta watch it if it’s on ‘High’, see, ’cos if ya don’t, it boils over.”

    “I’m not that thick, thanks,” said Alan witheringly. “Take a look at what Shane’s done with the plates and so forth, would you? And once you’ve put him right, get the bread out, and anything else we need.”

    “There’s some cider,” said Catherine suddenly.

    Alan turned round and smiled at her. “Is there, indeed?”

    “Uncle Bob liked it,” she said on a hopeful note.

    “Then it runs in the family!” he said with a laugh.

    “Oh, good: I’ll get it. It’s not worth opening a bottle just for me, I get awfully tiddly and it goes flat before I can drink it all.” She hurried out.

    Alan opened drawers, found a long-handled spoon, and returned to the soup, smiling.

    It was the most wonderful soup he had ever tasted. Very like Great-Aunt Mary’s, in fact, dimly remembered from his rare childhood visits, before her helpful relatives removed the old lady from her home of seventy-odd years and put her in an antiseptic box in an antiseptic old folks’ home. Alan found he was telling Catherine Burchett all this, and more, as they ate the mutton and barley broth with the crusty home-made bread and the wonderful fresh butter. From Buttercup, of course.

    “We let Daisy share,” she admitted, blushing, as he admired the butter.

    “Buttercup’s milk?” he said with a twinkle.

    “Yes. Well, she’s got a lot, Jerseys are great producers. With a very high butterfat content.”

    “Yeah. Mr Fermour, he says we’re mad,” said Dicky thickly.

    “Mm,” said Catherine, still very pink. “But Daisy’s the first girl-calf Buttercup’s had for ages.”

    “Yeah: she usually has bobby calves, see, an’—”

    “Dicky, I don’t think Mr Kincaid wants to know,” said Catherine feebly, as Dicky detailed with relish the customary fate of bobby calves.

    “No, it’s interesting,” said Alan, smiling. “I don’t know anything at all about farm life.”

    “See!” said Dicky loudly.

    Ignoring that, Alan said: “And not ‘Mr Kincaid.’”

    “Oh,” said Catherine. looking disconcerted. “Oh, are you— What do you do?” she said, very pink. “Are you a doctor?”

    “N—” Alan broke off. “I’m certainly not a doctor of medicine, no. I do have a Ph.D.”

    “That means you have to call him ‘Dr Kincaid’,” explained Catherine laboriously to the two little boys. “Like… um…”

    “Dr Aitken,” said Dicky.

    “Who?” she said blankly.

    “Mu-um! You know! Sol’s friend! John!”

    “Yeah, he’s a doctor, eh?” agreed Shane.

    Catherine gaped at them. “Not the man with the beard?”

    “Yeah. –He talks funny, too,” said Dicky, looking sideways at Alan.

    “Don’t say that, Dicky,” she said, blushing like a peony. “I think you’ve got a lovely voice,” she said shyly to Alan.

    Alan Kincaid smiled. He did have a pleasant speaking voice, actually: a little deeper than a tenor, not quite a baritone. It had been much admired in its time by various elegant ladies who would have died sooner than set a single elegant toe within the precincts of grubby Cold Comfort Farm. “Thank you; but I suppose I’ll have to get used to being a weird foreigner,” he murmured.

    “Mm,” said Catherine, biting her lip.

    “So Dr Aitken isn’t a medical doctor?” said Alan to Dicky.

    “Nah, he does something up the varsity,” he said without interest.

    “Dicky, are you sure?” said Catherine.

    “Yeah! I asked him, an’ he tole me!” he retorted indignantly.

    “I suppose I’ve only seen him in his holiday clothes,” said Catherine.—Alan’s shoulders shook silently.—“Um, well, Dr Kincaid’s that sort of doctor, boys.”

    “Yes. But I was trying to say,” said Alan with a grin: “call me Alan.”

    Catherine looked at him limply and was overcome by his sheer masculinity. He was impressive enough when he wasn’t smiling, and terribly good-looking, though sometimes that didn’t count, she’d met very handsome men that didn’t strike you as masculine at all; but when he grinned like that—! Curiously enough, he did not appear handsomer: less, in fact: he had quite large teeth and though the top ones were straight enough the bottom ones were very crooked. But he did appear incredibly masculine; and not only that, his cheeks creased in a way that made him look… little-boyish at the same time? Something like that. Irresistible. Oh, dear.

    She didn’t answer him: Alan said desperately: “Is that not done, out here? Would you rather the boys didn’t?”

    “What? No,” she said faintly. “It’s all first names, these days, not like when I was a kid.”

    Alan had thought it might be: he nodded.

    “We always call John ‘John’,” agreed Dicky. “Is there any pudding?”

    “No, since when did you get pudding for lunch?” she retorted indignantly.

    Dicky didn’t reply. He looked fixedly at the chocolates.

    “Can we open the chocolates?” said Catherine in a longing voice to Alan.

    “Er—yes. Certainly.”

    She opened the chocolates eagerly and urged them on all of them, not that the boys needed urging. Alan refused but said: “I’d rather have a cup of coffee, if I may.”

    “There’s only brown dust.”

    “Instant?” he said, smiling. She nodded, and he said: “In that case, I’ll finish the cider.”

    “Yes, do,” said Catherine, handing him the bottle.

    Alan poured the remaining cider into his glass: she didn’t want any more, and he ignored the boys’ offers to help finish it. It packed a real wallop: he said idly, as the label had come off the bottle: “It is a local brand, is it?”

    “What? Oh! No, it’s home-made.”

    He gaped at her. “You made it?”

    “Mm,” she said, nodding. “Uncle Bob taught me. We make it from apples off our own trees. He said it was a bit like making beer. You have to be scrupulously clean.”

    Alan didn’t ask how the Devil she managed that, and manfully refrained from glancing round the dingy kitchen.

    “That could count as money,” said Dicky suddenly.

    Catherine blushed. “Yes.” She explained to Alan: “Gerry Fermour usually wants some when I make it and he always insists on paying me for it. But it isn’t fair, really, because he won’t take any money for milk if Buttercup goes dry before his cows do.”

    “He sounds like a very nice fellow,” he said, smiling.

    “Mm,” she said, nodding hard, blushing again. “He is. He does too much for us, really.”

    Alan Kincaid was swept by a sudden wave of hot, irrational jealousy of the unknown Mr Fermour. He sat back on his hard wooden chair, very shaken, and looked weakly at his second or third cousin.

    Catherine was, as he’d already noticed, quite short: about five foot three. It was hard to tell exactly because of the faded pink tracksuit with the apron over it, but she also seemed quite plump. Certainly her face was round and plump-cheeked, the chin being not nearly a double chin but distinctly plump and fleshy undern… Alan had to swallow hard. He buried his nose in the wonderful home-made cider. How old would she be? She was so naïve in manner that it was damned difficult to tell. At least… Well, shy was a better word. Gauche? Yes, she was that, all right.

    She had wide grey-green eyes that were very like his cousin Isabel McIntosh’s, but where Isabel’s face was angular, pale and cat-like, Catherine’s was round, pink, and soft. Had Isabel’s hair been in its natural state it would have been very like Catherine’s: hers was about chin-length, very curly, and the sort of streaked blonde, every shade imaginable in it, that Isabel’s had once been. Isabel as a girl had had white streaks over the ears where the hair had always been worn clipped back: Catherine didn’t have those but there were very pale cream strands in the untidy, chrysanthemum-like mop.

    After a moment he became aware that he was staring: she had gone pinker than ever. “Does your daughter look like you?” he said quickly.

    “No. She looks like Mum and Saskia. Dark brown hair and brown eyes. And she’s very slim, I seem to be the only one in the family that’s naturally fat; I don’t know who I get it from,” she said gloomily.

    “You’re not fat,” said Alan, his lips twitching.

    “I think so,” she murmured.

    “You’re not as fat as Mrs Broome, Mum!”

    Catherine blenched. “Um—no; I think that’s glandular, Dicky.”

    “She belies her name, then?” murmured Alan.

    “What? Oh!” Suddenly she went into a gale of giggles. “Yes!” she gasped. “She’s like Jack Spratt’s wife!”

    “Yeah, an’ Mr Broome, he’s thin, eh?” contributed Dicky.

    “Yes. Don’t you dare go repeating that round school,” she said without hope.

    Dicky looked lofty.

    “What colour— No,” said Catherine, turning purple.

    Alan looked at her with considerable amusement. “My hair?”

    “I’m sorry!” she gasped.

    “I’ve been without it for about twenty years. It was about the same colour as yours. Well, as your darker bits: fawnish. I was blond when I was a little kid, then it darkened. Our Cousin Isabel’s got the same sort of hair as yours, but when last seen it was a hideous sort of purplish-red. She’d be older than you, I think.”

    “I’m thirty-eight,” she said simply.

    Alan swallowed a smile. “Isabel’s five years younger than me, so she’d be forty-seven.”

    “He’s fifty-two,” stated the brilliant Shane.

    “Yes,” agreed Alan calmly.

    “I never knew I had a Cousin Isabel,” said Catherine naïvely.

    “Oh, Hell, yes! She’d be exactly the same relationship to you as I am, we’re both grandchildren of Alan Kincaid. –I’m sorry: it’s driving me mad, I’ll have to work it out!” He produced his pocket diary and a pen. They all watched with interest, so eventually he turned it round and showed them the tree. “See? Alan, Robert and James Kincaid were brothers, and Mary and Annie were their sisters. James was your grandfather, and Dicky’s great-grandfather. Alan was my grandfather: he had two children, Hamish, who was my father, and Elspeth, who’s my aunt.” He winced slightly. “Isabel’s her daughter.”

    “I see: there’s Saskia and me, and you and Isabel, we’re all on the same level,” said Catherine, nodding.

    “Me and Noelle are down here,” said Dicky with satisfaction, coming to breathe heavily by Alan’s elbow. Shane followed him as a matter of course.

    “Yes: you’re the sole representatives of the younger generation,” agreed Alan.

    “Oh, dear: haven’t you got any children?” said Catherine in a dismayed voice.

    “No. Why?”

    “Well, I—”

    Alan silently wrote beside his own name on the family tree “=Candice.” He then crossed this out viciously, got a sight of his cousin’s horrified face and said: “Uh—no. Divorced.” He wrote “(divorced)” next to Candice’s name.

    “Oh,” said Catherine limply. “l see. So you and her never had any kids?”

    “No. Why are you so concerned about my lack of issue?”

    “The farm. I thought—” She broke off.

    “We thought you’d leave it to your son. Then it’d always be a Kincaid farm,” said Dicky, breathing stertorously over the tree.

    Alan passed his hand over his bald pate. “I see. –We’re second cousins,” he said limply to Catherine.

    “Are we?”

    “Uh-huh. Look, your mother and my father were cousins, see?”

    “Um—yes. Oh, yes; I see!”

    “Is your mother still living?” he asked cautiously.

    “She’s gone to Queensland,” volunteered Dicky immediately. “She doesn’t like us.”

    Alan looked dubiously at Catherine.

    “She doesn’t approve of us.”

    “Mm. Why Queensland; isn’t that in Australia?”

    “’Course!” said Dicky, goggling at him.

    “I don’t know why. It sounds humid and horrible to me,” said Catherine frankly. “But lots of well-off New Zealanders retire there. Saskia’s been there, she hated it. She said you dripped with perspiration all the time.”

    Alan made a face.

    “Like February over here, I suppose,” she said calmly.

    “Really?” he croaked.

    “Yes. Well, it can be very humid in December and January, too.”

    “Last Christmas it rained,” said Dicky helpfully.

    “Yeah, it poured. Uncle Bill, he got his car stuck in a ditch,” volunteered Shane. “He was wild. He hadda ring the AA: they took three hours.”

    “On Christmas Day? He was bloody lucky they came at all!” replied Alan with feeling.

    “That’s what Dad said,” he agreed placidly.

    “Yes,” said Catherine with a nervous glance at Alan. She got up and began taking plates over to the sink. He rose and gave her a hand, rather naturally assuming they were going to do the dishes. But she piled them in the sink and said in a vague voice: “Leave these.”

    “Shouldn’t we do them?”

    “They won’t go away,” said Catherine, still in the vague voice.

    Manifestly not, no, There were already some dishes in the sink which hadn’t gone away, either: presumably their breakfast dishes. What had she been doing all morning? Well—besides gathering and chopping rhubarb and churning fresh butter. “If you say so.”

    “The kids want to go,” she said.

    In Alan’s considered opinion if kids didn’t learn discipline at that age, they never did. But he didn’t argue: it was her household, not his. “Very well, then. But could the mud be washed off the boots before they get into the car?”

    “Yes. Put your sneakers on, Dicky, and wash them at the outside tap.”

    “I’ll use the hose, I—”

    “Just the TAP!” said Catherine loudly.

    Dicky exited in search of his sneakers, closely followed by Shane.

    “Did I say something wrong, back then?” said Alan on a grim note.

    “N— Uh— When?” she said feebly.

    “Round about the time we were discussing the bloody AA.”

    “Oh!” she said, pinkening. “No, um— Well, I don’t think Lucy would mind, really. And I’ve heard Steve Tamehana say it, often enough. Only… Sort of not like you do. Not—um—casually.”

    After a moment Alan said weakly: “You mean ‘bloody’?”

    “Mm.”

    “It may be used as an imprecation but not as a casual adjective in popular speech, is that it?”

    “Um—only in certain circles, I think. Um—have you read that thing about U and non-U?”

    “Yes. How is that relevant?”

    “Out here,” said Catherine, swallowing, “nice people sort of say everything that’s non-U.”

    After a moment Alan said weakly: “I doubt if I’m capable of guarding my tongue to that extent. Er—the habits of a lifetime?” he added apologetically.

    “Yes. I was just warning you,” she said miserably.

    “Thanks.”

    Catherine looked up at him unhappily.

    “Now do I dare ask where the little boys’ room is?” he said sardonically.

    She swallowed again. “Most people will understand you if you say that, I think. But—um—not everyone.”

    “Even though they hear it every other day on the American products on the box?”

    “They don’t listen, I don’t think.”

    “You’re damn right!” he said with a laugh. “Where is it?”

    “I’m sorry!” she gasped. “Just out the door and to your right.”

    So it was, off a tiny back passage. Undoubtedly it was the only bathroom in the place.

    “Is that the only bathroom?” he asked, strolling back into the kitchen.

    “Yes, of course.”

    Dicky’s head appeared at the back door. “There’s the old—”

    “Yes.” said Catherine quickly. “He doesn’t want to know, Dicky. Are those boots clean?”

    For answer Dicky brought the very wet boots inside.

    “Good. You can put them on, then.”

    The two boys sat on the floor and began struggling into their Wellingtons. First gravely checking inside them to see which said “R. Burchett” and which “S. Tamehana.”

    “They have to have their names in them for school.”

    Alan had guessed that: he nodded, in some amusement, but said: “Haven’t you got a coat?”

    “I’ll get my parka.” She produced a faded green anorak but hesitated and said: “I’ll just go to the bathroom.”

    “Bathroom” in ultra-polite circles, then, registered Alan in some amusement.

    “Shall we go in?” he suggested, some time later.

    Catherine had had her nose pressed to the window of the crafts shop in Kingfisher Bay for a while. “It always seems so mean, when you’re not going to buy anything.”

    “Rubbish, it’s a shop, they have to allow browsers.”

    She allowed him to usher her in.

    “Hullo, dear! How are you today?” said a motherly-looking woman in a twinset who was arranging some small items on a stand.

    “Fine, thanks,” said Catherine shyly.

    Nodding and smiling, the woman turned back to the stand she was arranging.

    Alan wandered round the small shop with interest. Some not half bad glassware. Coffee mugs: quite decent. A varied selection of casseroles: they must be popular, in New Zealand. Well, perhaps Catherine wasn’t the only woman who actually cooked, as opposed to re-heating muck in the microwave. Some really excellent turned wooden bowls: heavy but nice. He picked up a big one.

    “That’s black beech: it’s an interesting wood, isn’t?” said the saleswoman. “You don’t see much of it.”

    “Mm, nice,” agreed Alan. “And this wood?” He picked up a wide, shallow bowl.

    “That’s kauri, it’s perhaps the best known of the New Zealand hardwoods. It was used a great deal during the last century. That golden shade and the faint deckle in the grain are characteristic.”

    “They used it originally for masts and spars: the trees grow very tall and straight,” added Catherine, coming up to his elbow. “I think it’s illegal to cut it down, now. There aren’t any real kauri forests left.”

    “No. This is all recycled, of course,” agreed Ida Grey, wondering who on earth the man was, and where on earth she’d found him.

    “I see. Recycled from what, may I ask?” he said politely.

    Mrs Grey replied smoothly: “These particular bowls came from a set of beams from an old office block in the city that was pulled down about three years back.”

    “I see,” he said politely.

    The placid Mrs Grey was conscious of a desire to shriek loudly at him: “We’re not trying to sell you contraband kauri!” Murmuring quietly: “I’ll leave you to it, shall I? But do ask, if there’s anything you’d like to know,” she moved away. Honestly! Of course, you saw all sorts, working in a shop, especially with all the tourists from the Royal K, just up the road. But how on earth that nice Mrs Whatsit had ever got mixed up with him—!

    The larger ceramic pots were the outstanding pieces the place had to offer. The rest was just crafty stuff, really: nice enough, in its way. The big pots were art. Alan frowned over them. Then he looked cautiously at the price stickers on their bottoms. Yes, well, someone had some vague glimmering of a notion of what they had, here. Would they suit the house, though? He rubbed his chin slowly.

    “I like them,” his cousin said shyly.

    “I adore them,” said Alan, abruptly making up his mind. He wandered over to the casseroles again. Catherine followed him. “Do you like these?” he said.

    “Yes, they’re nice, aren’t they?”

    “Mm. Choose two that would actually be suitable for cooking, would you?”

    “Okay,” she agreed obediently.

    Alan returned to his contemplation of the large and wonderful pots. After a while the saleswoman came up to him. “These are by Michaela Daniels.”

    “A local potter?” She nodded, and Alan said, thinking of Dicky and Shane thundering round the house at Toetoe Bay, and suppressing a wince: “I haven’t anywhere to store them at the moment. Could you store them for me?”

    “Of course.”

    “Good. Then I’ll take these three,” said Alan briskly.

    Concealing her shock, Ida Grey sold him the three most expensive pots in the store. And he wasn’t even an American! She then discovered that he also wanted two casserole dishes and a set of coffee mugs. The mugs and one of the casseroles were in a similar style: a dark brown, heavy glaze with a few sooty streaks of black in it, over-glazed casually with a blue-grey which was allowed to spread, apparently haphazardly, into a paler grey area dotted with tiny white speckles. The raw, warm, terracotta base showed at the bottoms of both casserole and mugs. The other casserole was plainer: shiny brown and black, higher and rounder in shape, with a ball handle to its lid. Both of the lids fitted well: Ida Grey had seen nice Mrs Whatsit checking that.

    “They’re rather nice, aren’t they?” she said, wrapping them for him. “The mugs and this casserole with the blue are more of Michaela Daniels’s work. She doesn’t do her domestic ware in the same style as her more serious work, of course.”

    “No. I’ll make a note of her name. Are you her sole outlet?” he asked with a little smile.

    “We are in New Zealand, yes. She’s beginning to sell some of her serious stuff in America, and a little in Japan.”

    “Japan?” said Alan faintly.

    “Yes. She worked there for a year. She has several potter friends there.” Mrs Grey handed him a small pamphlet which advertised, in English and Japanese, a potters’ convention in Japan at which Michaela Daniels had been Visiting Potter.

    Alan raised his eyebrows slightly. “I see. I think I’ve got a bargain, then.”

    “Yes, you have. These are the last of her pieces that we’ll be selling at the old prices.”

    When the grey Mitsubishi had vanished in the direction of the main road, Ida shot next-door to Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies. “Who on earth was that, Sol?”

    Mr Winkelmann was placidly coiling rope. The mid-semester spring break wasn’t exactly his busiest time of year any more than it was Ida’s. “Steve and Lucy Tamehana’s eldest, wasn’t it? And that little buddy of his, Dicky Something.”

    “Not them. Did you see the man that brought them?”

    “Uh—no. Weren’t they with Dicky’s mum, as usual?”

    “Yes, but she was with an Englishman in a terrifically expensive-looking overcoat who bought those three big pots of Michaela’s!”

    “Uh—we are talkin’ about that down-home lookin’ lady with the pink cheeks and the windcheater that’s a kinda cross between green and grunge, here?”

    “Yes!” said Mrs Grey, glaring at him, looking like a cross little robin.

    Sol Winkelmann grinned. “I’m sorry, Ida, I really got no idea. –Wait: May Swadling was sayin’… Jesus,” he said in a hollow voice.

    “Well?”

    “We-ell… This is circumstantial, mind you. But if she’s the lady I think she is and he’s the Englishman I think he is, then he’s the guy that owns Toetoe Bay Farm and into the bargain,” he said, swallowing, “the guy that’s the head honcho at this new college of Jake Carrano’s.”

    “University,” corrected Mrs Grey automatically, goggling at him.

    “Is she the lady what lives at Toetoe Bay?”

    “Yes!” she said impatiently. “Of course she is!”

    “Uh-huh. Did you say he bought those big pots of Michaela’s?”

    “All three of them, yes. Diner’s Club.”

    Michaela Daniels’s husband returned calmly: “Cain’t be all bad, then, huh?”

    Crossly Mrs Grey returned next-door.

    Grinning, Mr Winkelmann got on with coiling rope. But he raised a mental eyebrow or two.

    There was nowhere to have coffee in Carter’s Bay: Alan had overlooked that. However, Cokes for the boys and crisps with salt and vinegar for his cousin were managed from Swadlings’ shop. He was aware the blonde proprietress was in a state of shock as he and the boys exited, but gave a mental shrug. However, he thought a few things as he drove. Such as, what the Hell did he imagine he was doing, involving himself with the family affairs of his dim-witted New Zealand cousin?

    When they got back to the farm, however, he was so entranced by the sight of the fawn-like Daisy suckling that he almost let Dicky and Shane, who had volunteered to operate on the gate, back in the car with their boots on.

    “They’re lovely, aren’t they?” said Catherine timidly, following his glance.

    “Yes,” said Alan with a sigh. “Utterly entrancing.” He drove cautiously up to the house. “What other animals do you have?”

    “Um—none. We’ve got hens and ducks. Uncle Bob had a dog when I first came here, but he was very old, he died when Noelle was four. I’d like a cat, but we don’t eat much meat, I don’t think we’d be able to feed it. Tinned cat-food’s quite expensive.”

    “Yes. When we get inside,” said Alan, frowning, “you must write out that list of your earnings for me straight away. Well, after a cup of brown dust, perhaps!” he amended with a little smile.

    “Yes. Those crisps were salty,” said Catherine, wishing glumly that that little dint in his chin didn’t move like that when he talked or smiled, because it made your tummy go all swoopy and frankly she didn’t think her tummy could cope with it. “Um—only I’d better milk Buttercup, first.”

    To her surprise he came out to watch. He was quite useful, as she’d made him wear an old pair of Uncle Bob’s gumboots: he caught the bellowing Daisy and kept her from knocking the bucket over and then kept her from knocking Catherine and the bucket over as Catherine escaped with it.

    “What does she want?” he said as, instead of returning to her mother, the calf followed him to the gate, nudging him with her damp black muzzle.

    “Salt. She wants to lick your hand. Go on, let her.”

    Distastefully Alan peeled off his driving glove and held out his hand. Daisy’s tongue was not slobbery but warm and rough.

    Catherine looked at his surprised smile and said with a little laugh: “That’ll do, they’ve got a salt-lick. Come and taste the milk.”

    Alan came over to the gate, butted by the hopeful Daisy. He didn’t think he could get through it without her: he climbed over. Every stitch he had on would have to go to the cleaners tonight. At least he didn’t seem to have snagged his trousers, however.

    The milk was warm and spicy! He looked at his cousin in astonishment.

    “Yes,” she said, smiling. “Isn’t it lovely? It loses that spicy taste when it’s chilled. I don’t know why.”

    It was all very pastoral, really. Alan accompanied her back to the house smiling a little, even though his thoughts were running along the lines of: Pasteurisation? Sterilisation? And was it or was it not tuberculosis that could be passed on from cows?

    “We’re not dead yet,” said Catherine drily as they reached the back door.

    “No. I’m sorry.”

    “Buttercup has a regular check-up,” she said placidly, going inside.

    Mm-hm. Right. Alan removed the borrowed gumboots and went in, feeling like a fool.

    After the coffee he could see it was his cousin’s turn to feel like a fool. Especially as Dicky kept rushing in with ever-more helpful suggestions as to what Catherine might have made, or might in the future make money from. When it came to blackberries, and Catherine revealed sadly that the Council had sprayed all of Grey’s Beach road last year, he took a very deep breath and said: “Look, can’t you two go and watch television or something?”

    “No, we haven’t got one,” said Dicky.

    “They haven’t got one,” agreed Shane.

    “Well, go and do something equally mindless and if possible, electronic,” said Alan evilly.

    They went.

    Alan turned back to her list of income-producing sources and winced. “This is it, then, apart from blackberries?”

    “Mm. Oh, one year there were oodles of mushrooms over near Buttercup’s paddock, I sold some of them to—”

    “We’ll count occasional wild produce as generating an income of five cents per month, averaged over five years, and forget about it,” said Alan firmly.

    “Righto.”

    “Right.” He produced his pocket calculator.

    Catherine goggled at him as he did sums on it and wrote the result on the notepad. “Can you use one of those?”

    “Mm-hm. Oh: Saskia?”

    She nodded hard. “Dicky can’t make it do much.”

    “In order to do useful calculations on a pocket calculator, one has to understand some basic mathematical principles,” said Alan heavily. “Multiplication and division, for a start.”

    “It’ll do ‘times’,” she said dubiously.

    “But does he understand when ‘times’ is necessary?”

    “I see what you mean. Um, not really.”

    Alan sighed. “No. Well, this is your average weekly income.” She nodded meekly. “I’m damned if I know how you’ve been managing to live,” he muttered. He did a few calculations with varied rates of exchange but the result was always disastrous. “Do you have to put so much aside for Dicky’s— Yes. Well, you can stop paying me rent immediately.”

    “Thank you,” said Catherine weakly, wondering if they’d have to move out immediately, too. He didn’t say, and she was too scared to ask.

    Dicky reappeared. “When’s tea?”

    “What’s the time?” replied Catherine.

    Apparently it was six o’clock already.

    “Help,” she said limply.

    “When’s TEA?” he repeated aggrievedly.

    “Shut up,” said Alan brutally. “You have high tea, do you?” he said to her.

    At first she looked blank, then a pleased expression spread over her pink-cheeked face. “I never thought I’d actually hear anybody say that!”

    “What, tell him to shut up?” he said drily.

    “No!” she choked. “No: ‘high tea’. We just have tea.” She gave him a sly look. “You’d call it dinner, talking of U and non-U.”

    “Mm,” said Alan, trying not to laugh. “And it’s past dinnertime, is it?”

    “Well, we usually have it about six, or a bit earlier.”

    “I see. Well, why don’t I take you all somewhere decent?”

    “No!” she gulped.

    Alan eyed her sardonically. “Very well, somewhere not decent.”

    Catherine bit her lip. “Well, that’s a better idea. But you’ve already taken us all the way into Kingfisher Bay and back, today.”

    “That’s what cars are for. Did Uncle Bob ever have one, by the way? “

    He had had a ute that Krish couldn’t get to go. Alan didn’t ask for clarification. After some argument they settled that Alan didn’t like fish and chips so they wouldn’t patronise the fish and chips establishment at Carter’s Bay even though Shane assured them it was ace; that Alan loathed what passed for pizza in English-speaking countries so they wouldn’t patronise the Hongi Heke Room at the Royal Kingfisher, to Catherine’s relief, news of its grossly inflated prices apparently having reached even Toetoe Bay; and that they would drive down to Puriri township and eat at The Tavern, which offered, according to Shane, ace “snitzles” as well as ace fish and chips and Dad had T-bone steak. Catherine warned that it took an hour to get there: at least, the bus took an hour.

    The grey Mitsubishi, discounting the arguments over gumboots, the front gate that didn’t keep any stock in, and so forth, did it in thirty-five minutes, easy. And that included the bloody bumps in Fermours’, or possibly Toetoe Bay, Road.

    “The Tavern” was actually called that. The restaurant was a rambling single-storeyed modern place in a yellowish brick, quite hideous. A strong smell of beer hung round it and it was clearly an adjunct to the pub of the same name. But it was full of shagged-out looking families in about the same state of disrepair and desperation as themselves, so it was obviously a suitable venue.

    After a while, the boys having chosen neither fish and chips nor hamburgers, to Alan’s astonishment, but “snitzles” like their elders, and large platters of the same, piping hot, having arrived within a remarkably short space of time, Alan said on an annoyed note which he hadn’t realised was going to be there until he heard it come out of his own mouth: “Who is that fellow?”

    “What?” Catherine replied vaguely.

    “Over there. He’s been trying to attract your attention for some time.” A burly, middle-aged fellow with a shock of pepper-and-salt curls, accompanied by a neat little blondish women, three large teenage boys and one little yellow-headed girl, was, indeed, waving vigorously at Catherine.

    Catherine looked up, smiled, and waved, going very pink. “I don’t know,” she said simply.

    “What?”

    She looked at his grim face and gasped: “I—I do sort of know him but I don’t know his name! He often comes into the library on Thursday mornings, first thing.”

    “What do you mean? What library?” he said, scowling.

    “Huh-here,” faltered Catherine. “I said. My shelving job.”

    “Oh: yes,” he said limply. “Would that be the municipal library?”

    “County. It’s—um…” Catherine squirmed round in her seat and finally pointed, though not looking very sure of herself. “Over there.”

    “And he’s a customer.”

    “Yes. He’s the man who always calls Dorothy, that’s the County Librarian, Big Banana.” Alan just stared at her and she said quickly: “When they have a children’s party she sometimes dresses up as a banana.”

    Alan glanced over at the family again. The man grinned, and waved madly at him. His wife visibly reproved him, and he waved even harder. Alan lifted a hand in reply and firmly turned his shoulder on the group. “And you’ve no idea of his name? He’s never introduced himself?”

    “No. People don’t,” said Catherine weakly.

    “Mm.” Alan ate chips without realising he was doing so. After quite some time he said grimly: “Do you have any friends?”

    “Um—no,” said Catherine, startled into telling the bald truth.

    He’d thought as much. He stared blankly at his plate.

    “We’ve got Noelle and Krish!” said Dicky defiantly. “And Mr an’ Mrs Fermour!”

    “And Shane’s a friend, of course,” said Catherine, smiling at his round brown face.

    “Yeah,” he agreed with visible relief, relaxing.

    “I’m sorry,” said Alan in a low voice as the boys suddenly began to chatter loudly.

    “They’re not deaf or stupid,” she murmured, “and they don’t live in their little peer group all the time.”

    “No,” he said, chewing his lip. After a moment he added: “What about the other people who work at the library?”

    “Um—well, I always have to rush off and catch the bus, you see. And they all live down here in Puriri. And the other shelvers are all students.”

    “Of course, there’s a campus of the university in Puriri, isn’t there?”

    “Yes. It’s a joint campus of the university and the Polytech. They run the big nursing courses there now,” said Catherine, very relieved to get off the subject of her personal life.

    He just asked her about the facilities up at the campus, and the Puriri shops and so forth, during the rest of the meal, not referring again to her personal life. She was unaware that such details as her enthusiasm over the Puriri Seconds Shop, her awed report that the newish Tudor-faced Puriri Pet Shoppe was now advertising a dog-shampooing service, and her reservations about the usefulness of the Puriri supermarkets told Alan a considerable deal not only about Puriri’s socio-economic status but also her own.

    What with the standard arguments over puddings—all of the slimy, over-sweet, artificial and horrid variety—they got home about nine-thirty. Somewhat to Alan’s relief she packed the boys straight off to bed.

    “Might I see the rest of the house?” he asked, as she seemed prepared to sit down in the kitchen for the remainder of the evening.

    “Oh!” said Catherine, reddening. “Yes, of course. Come on.”

    Uncle Bob Kincaid’s wooden bungalow was basically a square, with the kitchen being a lean-to added across the back. The square was divided down the middle by a wide passage, very space-wasting and, Alan recognised as he shivered in it, virtually impossible to heat. Needless to say the house did not feature central heating; and his second cousin had never heard of double-glazing.

    The décor, though such was a misnomer, dated largely from the Thirties, its main features being an all-pervasive wallpaper in a sort of faded tan with a pattern of orange-ish and brownish objects that might once have been flowers, and a threadbare fawn carpet that might once have had a pattern of orange-ish and brownish objects that might once ditto. Two large bedrooms were situated directly inside the front door. To the right as you entered was Uncle Bob’s room. Catherine switched the light on for him. Alan blinked. Like the passage, the room had the wallpaper and the carpet. The furniture was a mixed bag: a handsome tallboy and a matching dressing-table and wardrobe were perhaps contemporaries of the wallpaper: post-Art Deco. A marble-topped washstand featured a large enamel po on its shelf. The double bedstead was not a handsome wooden affair to match the bedroom furniture, but a sagging, white-painted iron arrangement. It was covered with a faded tan candlewick spread but was very obviously mattress-less.

    “Jenny Fermour and me burned the mattress. It was kapok,” ventured Catherine.

    “Well done,” replied Alan coldly.

    “Jenny knows a man that’d give us a lot of money for that wardrobe,” said Catherine dubiously.

    “Uh-huh.” The Thirties’ Art Deco look was not bad in itself—but all wrong for the high-ceilinged, gracious lines of the old house.

    The bedroom could have been a lovely room: it had two big sash windows opening onto the verandah; but it was icily cold.

    “That’s south,” murmured Catherine as he went to the window.

    “Mm.” There were no windows at all in the east-facing wall, against which the bed-head was set. “Has that fireplace had a fire in it in living memory?”

    “Not for the last two years,” replied Catherine cautiously. “Um, my room’s opposite.”

    Her room was about the same size but lacked a fireplace. Like Uncle Bob’s, it had twin sash windows opening onto the front verandah, curtained in faded and threadbare fawn brocade, like his. Her single bed had heavy, simple oak head- and footboards. The wardrobe in her room was tall, wobbly and slathered in dark cream paint. It had evidently once featured a mirror, which was no longer present. Her faded candlewick bedspread was greenish.

    Next to her room, Dicky and Shane were blissfully asleep amidst a welter of toy trains, abandoned socks and sneakers, and tangled electronic gear. This room was very narrow, with just enough space in it for the two single beds. Two-foot-six or less, was his guess. Under the window stood a small pine chest of drawers with a clutter of childish rubbish on it. The window itself was curtained in a bright red fabric. At first Alan thought it featured a print of planes and boats, but then he realised that it didn’t: they were stitched onto it. The wallpaper was the familiar faded one but it had been brightened up by some drawings that were obviously Dicky’s own and two posters. One advertised Children’s Book Week at Puriri Library and the other featured the solar system. He withdrew silently.

    “Where did the boats and planes on the curtains come from?” he asked, back in the cold passage.

    Catherine replied simply: “The boats came off a piece of material I got for twenty cents at the school fair and the planes were from a pair of pyjamas he grew out of. Well, the top, mostly, there wasn’t much left of the bottoms.”

    Alan nodded. “And this room?”

    The last room on the left-hand side as you came down the passage was Noelle’s old room. He blinked. There was no bed in it, but almost everything there was in it was slathered in pink roses.

    “She did it herself,” said Catherine faintly. “Uncle Bob gave her a bit of money but she paid for most of it herself with her Saturday job.”

    “Mm.”

    “I put the bed in Dicky’s room, I thought the boys’d rather be together. But I took the pink cover off the quilt.”

    “Quite.” He closed the door on the pink nightmare. That side of the passage was shorter: between Noelle’s room and the kitchen was a large boot cupboard and the tiny back passage with the bathroom fitted in at its end.

    “This is the dining-room, but we never use it,” said Catherine, opening the end door on the other side.

    That was understandable: there was nothing in there except a set of threadbare fawn brocade curtains at its French windows. Plus the ubiquitous faded fawn wallpaper and carpet. It was not a large room, but it could have been a pleasant dining-room.

    Between the dining-room and Uncle Bob’s room was the sitting-room. It had a fireplace which backed onto the one in the old man’s room. And the wallpaper. Surprisingly, however, the carpet was discontinued: instead there was sea-grass matting, old and grimy, and a couple of faded fawnish rugs. By the fireplace, which held only ashes, were one large, sagging, high-backed armchair with a grey army blanket spread over it, and one smaller, lumpish, pale fawn armchair that might once have had a pattern of orange-ish and brownish objects that might once have been flowers. Set further back from the fireplace was a matching sofa and second armchair. The epitome of Thirties bad taste, frankly. Against the opposite wall was a large, heavy, glass-fronted sideboard of approximately the same vintage. It appeared to be filled with such priceless objets as mismatched Woolworth’s glass tumblers and a tarnished model vintage car that was probably a cigarette holder, but Alan did not look closely. The mantelpiece of the really very lovely fireplace was adorned with a chromium-plated model yacht about a foot high and a large coloured photograph of a laughing baby girl with pixie-like dark curls topped by a tiny pink bow.

    “Is this Noelle?”

    “Yes. She’s still very pretty. –Uncle Bob had it done. It cost an awful lot of money.”

    “Mm.” Alan stroked the wood of the fireplace surround. A warm, golden glow with a faint deckle in the fine grain. “Is this kauri?”

    “Yes. The whole house is kauri,” she said blithely.

    “What?”

    Catherine nodded serenely.

    “What was all that blather you and the woman in the bloody crafts boutique gave me about recycling and so forth, then? Or have I got the name wrong?”

    His second cousin replied calmly: “That’s why there aren’t any real kauri forests left. They used it for everything round about the turn of the century.”

    Alan passed his hand over his forehead. “Right.”

    “There is a kauri forest you can visit, it’s been sort of preserved. Up North.”

    “Yes,” he said with a sigh. “No doubt.”

    “Jenny Fermour says if we stripped the woodwork, it’d be really lovely.”

    “Mm.” All of the woodwork he’d seen so far, except the two fireplace surrounds, was slathered in dark cream paint. After a moment he bent and lifted the edge of the sea-grass matting nearest the hearth. “God!”

    “Um—yes. Gerry Fermour says only a moron would have put sea-grass matting on a kauri floor, he says it’ll have to be sanded.”

    “Yes, well, only a moron would have put this dark brown varnish on it to start with, but— Christ.” He sat dawn limply in the large armchair. “Have the Fermours, severally or in concert, given you an opinion on this chair?”

    “Jenny thinks it’s probably Victorian. Its springs have gone.”

    “I can feel that.”

    “She knows a man that could re-upholster it.”

    “I think you mean rebuild it.”

    “Mm.” She looked at him dubiously.

    Alan smiled suddenly. “It’s a lovely house, Catherine: what would it be, a twelve-foot stud? Lovely, gracious lines! But I can’t imagine anything much worse that could have been done to it.”

    “No. Jenny says if it was hers, she’d think about throwing the dining-room and sitting-room into one,”

    He looked up at the ceiling. “What, and lose the benefit of this delightful, rusty ceiling?”

    Catherine gulped. “Gerry says it’s moulded. But the roof leaks. You can get—um—I don’t know what they call them, but very good imitation ceiling thingies, these days.”

    “Good. Put double doors, perhaps glass doors, in that wall?” he said, nodding at the wall which separated the dining-room from the sitting-room.

    “That’s a good idea!”

    “Yes: the same style as the French windows…” The sitting-room as well as the dining-room featured French windows giving onto the side verandah, so why in Christ the master bedroom hadn’t been designed to the same pattern— Oh, well. “Do the dining-room out very trad., perhaps? Mahogany dining suite, dark crimson flocked wallpaper?” His cousin looked at him in unalloyed horror. Alan grinned. “Just an idea. There’s plenty of scope, that’s for sure. And something drastic needs to be done about bathrooms. How do you stand the trek down that hallway if you need to go in the middle of the night?”

    “I suppose I’ve got used to it.”

    “Mm.” He got up. “I’d better go. I’ve got a breakfast meeting tomorrow morning.”

    “Yes,” said Catherine limply, following him out.

    “I’ll see you very soon,” he said, shrugging on his overcoat in the kitchen. “In the meantime… When are you next due to do this shelving of yours? “

    It was Tuesday. Catherine said limply: “Thursday morning.”

    “Well, when you’re at the library, see if you can get hold of some books about restoring old houses of this vintage, okay?”

    She nodded obediently.

    “And—uh… I’ll have a proposition to put to you,” said Alan, frowning over it, “but it needs some thinking about. Let me see.” He consulted his diary. “I’ve nothing slated for Thursday afternoon; I’ll pick you up after your shelving, shall I? Then we can have lunch and discuss it. Jake Carrano tells me that there’s a place in Puriri called The Blue Heron which does an excellent lunch.”

    “That’s very fancy!” she gasped.

    “Good. What time do you finish your shelving?”

    “Five to twelve,” said Catherine limply.

    “Fine. I’ll pick you up at the Puriri Library at twelve, then.”

    “Ye— You don’t know where it is, though!” she gasped.

    “I’ll find it, I’m not helpless. –Oh: wait.” He scribbled down the telephone number of the hotel, his room number and the downtown number of the Sir George Grey Enterprise Corporation. “If you need to get hold of me before Thursday, you’ll reach me on one of those.”

    “Yes,” said Catherine limply.

    “Your number’s unlisted, isn’t it? What is it?” he said, pen poised.

    “Um—if it’s a real emergency,” replied Catherine cautiously, “you can leave a message with Jenny Fermour.”

    Alan took a deep breath and said with enormous restraint: “And what’s her number?”

    Catherine told him. He wrote it down.

    “See you on Thursday, then!” he said with a grin. “Good-night!”

    “Yes,” said Catherine limply. “Good-night, Alan.”

    He was aware as he started the car that her bedroom light had gone on and she was standing in the window. He was about to wave. Then he remembered: the bloody gate. Oh, shit. He hesitated, then got out.

    Catherine pushed her window up as he came onto the front verandah. “The front door sticks.”

    “I’m sure it does,” said Alan coldly. “Do you absolutely insist on your guests’ shutting that apology for a front g— You do. Very well.”

    “Um—borrow Uncle Bob’s gumboots and leave them down there,” said Catherine in a small voice.

    “Thank you.”

    “I’ll get them!” she gasped, hurrying out.

    She was back in a few moments with the large Wellingtons, which she passed through the window.

    “Thank you. –Does that window have a catch that locks?” asked Alan in spite of himself.

    “Um—no. There’s a wee bolt that Uncle Bob put on it, though.”

    “Good, use it. Good-night,” he said, departing.

    “Good-night,” said Catherine faintly to his back.

    It was not of course, very late when Alan got back to the Royal Kingfisher. He removed every stitch he had on, and put the lot into the laundry and dry-cleaning bags supplied by the hotel. As for his boots, even though he hadn’t walked in the mud by the gate— Alan poured himself a whisky. Then he cleaned his boots. Around the time he was at the polishing stage he found he was whistling. Shaking his head slightly, he finished the whisky and took a shower. Then he got into bed with the papers for the morrow’s meetings and his notes. Having conscientiously checked everything and made a few more notes, he was ready for sleep. …Inept, he decided, was the only word that got anywhere close to describing his second cousin Catherine. No telephone? Out there at the back of beyond with a child? Ye gods. He began to brood on his cousin’s sins of omission and general ineptitude…

    He woke at six with a full-blown scheme for remodelling Cold Comfort Farm all shiny and new in his mind. Somehow her room had become the master bedroom and Uncle Bob’s room had been turned into a spacious study and—

    Alan Kincaid got out of bed and went to the window of his palatial, centrally-heated bedroom at the Royal Kingfisher. A few pinkish streaks stained the sky to his right; the waters of Carter’s Inlet were a pale pewter.

    Rubbish.

    Well, offer her a post as housekeeper, at least? She was a damn’ good cook. And for Christ’s sake, he couldn’t turn her and the kid out of their home!

    Well, it might do. He had to live somewhere, after all, so why not in his own house?

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/a-considered-decision.html