Easter Parade

35

Easter Parade

    “We’re having it,” announced Penny grimly.

    Barry gave up trying to point out that some people liked to go away for Easter and agreed glumly that he’d give her a hand to get the notices out to everybody. Somehow he seemed to have got appointed unofficial secretary to the Carter’s Bay Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Probably it had something to do with Kevin’s having donated the ancient photocopier to him before he’d taken off for Oz. This was because Barry still (unquote) hadn’t bought a computer, and instead of generating his invoices, not to say his invoice reminders, automatically in quintuplicate or whatever, had been typing them laboriously on the little portable typewriter he’d had since his student days, and duplicating them with the aid of smudgy carbon paper that these days quite a lot of the stationery shops had given up selling. True, some of them still sold invoice booklets with carbon copies, but they still cost and arm and a leg. Especially if your niece got at them with a ball-point pen and did “writing” all over them before anyone realised what she was up to. The recycling business did own a computer, it was a recycled one but, according to Kev, still good: he’d added some blah-blah to its innards and loaded a Blah-Blah program for his accounts. Words to that effect. Surprisingly enough Rab and Avon seemed to be coping with the thing.

    Barry had been afraid that when Kev took off for the great Aussie Outback he’d be left to prop up Avon and Rab, but astonishingly enough this hadn’t happened. Well, they’d made a few blues with the books and he’d given them a bit of a hand to sort things out, but since then they appeared to be coping very well. The customers seemed to like Rab—in fact a lot of them didn’t seem to realise he wasn’t Kevin—and Avon appeared to be actually enjoying using the computer program and managing the petty cash and so forth. Barry had reflected it was a pity it hadn’t dawned on her earlier that she had a bent in this direction, because she might have been able to take some of the pressure off him. Never mind, not having those two extra mouths to feed was making an enormous difference to his budget. Not to mention having all that work from Dr Kincaid.

    The stables looked bloody good, if he did say so himself, and now Kincaid was making noises about extensions to the house. Mrs B—Mrs Kincaid didn’t seem so keen, but on past form Barry probably wouldn’t need to offer anyone as much as two guesses who was gonna win that one. And, wonder of wonders, Rog Pinkerton had actually made his mind up about that pink rendered monstrosity on the Point. Blast the lot off ’er, was the word. He reckoned Barry could do this, no sweat, while him and Mrs were over in Bali, leaving just before Easter and getting back round about two weeks after Easter. Nice work for them as could get it. Barry hadn’t pointed out that in the first place he’d have to hire special gear and in the second place Nev and Jonno were going bush (unquote) this Easter. Probably it wouldn’t amount to anything more than getting pissed out of their tiny minds on crates of beer with a pack of like-minded cretins in a caravan park, but what the Hell, good luck to them, you were only that young and dumb once. Tama would be around the place but funnily enough his wife seemed to expect that at least part of the public holiday would be spent with her and the kids. That left Barry, if ya could count. Just him and a couple of giant hired machines out on the Point blasting pink muck to Kingdom Come all the long weekend… Oh, well. Better than sitting at home watching TVNZ’s idea of Easter fare. Charlton Heston, what else. It’d be either The Ten Commandments or, if that had finally worn all the way through, which it had looked like it was gonna do any minute now last Easter, Ben-Hur. Barry had read the book, it was sort of his period, and so he was qualified to say that apart from the actual race, which was bloody good in glorious Technicolor but very short by the actual digital watch, the book—while still not being great literature, in his humble opinion—was streets ahead of the film. Streets. The same went for The Ten Commandments, actually.

    The Quays’ back door was opened by old Jacko Te Hana in probably the oldest pair of jeans still living, and a bright red jumper with a strange black stain on it that Barry had a vague idea he’d seen young Adrian wearing around the place. He didn’t speak, but on the whole it would have shocked Barry Goode out of ten years’ growth if he had done.

    “Hullo, Jacko. I’ve got a message for Dorothy and Leigh. Can I get through this way or do I have to go through that poncy front hall?”

    Jacko sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “Ya better come in," he produced.

    “Ta,” said Barry gratefully, coming in.

    In the kitchen Anna was sitting at a big old table, chopping something, and Adrian was at the stove. Martin was over at the bench whipping something in a big industrial-size mixer with great concentration.

    “Hullo,” croaked Barry inanely.

    “Hullo, Barry!” said Anna, beaming at him.

    “Gidday. I’ve gotta concentrate on this sauce, ask Anna if ya want anything,” said Adrian, not turning his head.

    “Me, too,” said Martin loudly over the noise of the mixer.

    “Uh—yeah. Oh, well, yeah, I better give you a notice, too,” recognised Barry, handing one to Anna.

    “‘Dress rehearsal’?” she read out limply.

    “Yeah. According to Penny we’re all getting slack.”

    “‘Got’,” corrected Adrian solemnly into his sauce.

    “Yeah, right. All right for you: you got a legitimate excuse to get out of it, but some of us don’t nominally work all night. When she imagines I do my ruddy books— Oh, well. Anyway, slack’s the word, and Easter Monday’s the appointed time.”

    “We’re open on Monday night,” said Adrian into his sauce.

    “It’s in the afternoon,” reported Anna glumly.

    “We do have quite a few bookings for Monday lunch,” he noted.

    “Um, I won’t be able to come!” said Martin loudly over the noise of the mixer.

    “You could throw a sickie, Anna,” noted Jacko mildly.

    Anna sighed. “If I did, what’s the betting that Penny’d see me going for a walk?”

    “Yeah,” agreed Barry sourly. “She’d’ve stepped out for a breather the very moment your misguided form heaved into sight of the bloody school prefab.”

    “It’s not in there again, is it?” groaned Adrian. “It’ll be cold as charity!”

    “Don’t go,” said Jacko stolidly.

    “I can’t ruddy well go, I’ve got lunch bookings! I was thinking of Anna. For God’s sake wear a warm jumper,” he ordered her.

    “Yes, I will,” she said, blushing and smiling. “Barry, would you like some tea?”

    Barry swallowed hard. “No, I’m right, ta,” he lied valiantly.

    “He’ll do you a steak, soon as that sauce is okay,” said Jacko.

    “Mm,” agreed Adrian. “Why not nip upstairs with the good news for Dorothy and Leigh? Then I’ll do you something when you come down.”

    “No, um— I mean, ta very much, but it’s your business,” said Barry awkwardly. “Don’t want to eat up all your profits.

    At this Adrian turned his head and smiled at him. “Alone of Carter’s Bay,” he murmured.

    “No, of Puriri County!” said Anna fervently.

    “Yeah, right. We can afford one steak, Barry, in fact it would be my pleasure,” said Adrian firmly. “Unless you’d prefer boeuf à la mode? We’re serving it hot tonight.”

    Barry looked blank.

    “In the big pot,” said Jacko, chopping industriously.

    Anna got up. “I’ll show you. It’s not ready for serving just yet.” She showed him.

    Admittedly it smelled wonderful, but— “What are all those lumpy things?” he said feebly.

    “Pig’s trotters and pork skin, mainly,” said Adrian.

    Barry blenched.

    “There’s a double quantity there, you see: we’ll serve some hot tonight and the rest cold tomorrow!” said Martin loudly.

    “The sauce turns into a sort of jelly,” explained Anna. “The trotters make it jell; that’s right, isn’t it, Adrian?”

    “Mm,” he said into his sauce. “I’ll take the meat out and degrease it in a mo’.”

    Anna nodded brightly at Barry.

    “Um—no, ta,” he said feebly.

    “It tastes all right,” noted Jacko stolidly.

    “Um—yeah. I never knew smart restaurants did stuff like pigs’ trotters. My Gran used to cook those,” he said feebly.

    “Adrian’s recipes are real food, you see!” said Martin loudly.

    “Yeah.”

    “Steak’s real food, too, of course!” said Anna with a smile. “Come on, I’ll show you the back stairs.”

    Gratefully Barry escaped with her.

    “Here’s ya notice,” he said to Dorothy.

    “What?” she shrieked.

    “Shoot me, I’m the messenger,” he invited sourly.

    Dorothy grinned. “Come in: you want a gin?”

    It wasn’t Barry’s usual tipple, but— And then, although he was driving, the steak’d sop it up. “Well, yeah, I wouldn’t mind, ta.”

    Dorothy sat him down on her sofa and got out the gin. “There’s a choice of pink, tonic or water to go in it. Or nothing, of course.”

    “Tonic, thanks,” he said feebly.

    She poured him a gin and tonic, heavy on the gin, and herself a large gin into which she shook one drop of pink stuff.

    Barry watched with his face contorted in a wince as she took a swig of the result.

    “My innards are inured to firewater,” she explained blandly.

    “They must be!”

    “I won’t ask,” said Dorothy, this time taking a moderate sort of swig and sighing deeply after it, “why the misguided woman has decided on the holiday weekend for this blasted so-called dress rehearsal.”

    “No, don’t,” he agreed mildly.

    “I suppose it’s preferable to watching blurred Charlton Heston,” she noted heavily.

    Twitching slightly, Barry allowed: “Yeah. Um—which one?”

    “Any. Depends whether that recycled second-hand tape that TNVZ taped The Ten Commandments onto thirty years back has actually worn through yet,” she said dispassionately.

    At this Barry broke down and grinned. “Yeah. My thought exactly!” He took a swallow of his drink. If you overlooked the taste it wasn’t entirely bad. “Um, ’ve you read the book of Ben-Hur?” he ventured cautiously.

    Dorothy eyed him sardonically. “Why, can you lend it to me if I haven’t, Barry?”

    Barry grinned sheepishly, remembering their encounter at the school fair last year. “I’ve got it, yeah.”

    Relenting, she admitted: “Actually, I have read it. Quite interesting, in its third-rate way.”

    “Second.”

    “Well, in comparison to the tripe that gets published these days— Yeah, all right. Second. Good-try level,” she conceded.

    “Yeah. Well, apart from the chariot race,” said Barry, deciding the only way to handle gin and tonic was to swallow it in one gulp, and doing so, “I reckon the book’s better than the film, whadda you think?”

    “I entirely agree. The book of The Ten Commandments is better, too,” she said blandly.

    Barry choked violently.

    Dorothy watched him sardonically. “I geddit, you thought you were the only living being in the Known Universe to have thought of that one, didn’t ya?”

    “Yeah!” he gasped, bashing himself on the chest. “Oof! –Sorry.”

    Dorothy merely returned mildly: “How’s the Decline and Fall going?”

    “Pretty good, given that I don’t get that much time for reading.”

    “Mm,” she said, nodding.

    Barry waited but greatly to his relief she didn’t solicit any literary comment on it. “I better go, got to drop off Leigh’s notice and then I got a million more to deliver. Mind you, Adrian said he’d do me a bit of steak, can’t be all bad, eh?”

    “No. Ask him for some of that crunchy mustard,” said Dorothy, smiling.

    “Uh—right. Crunchy mustard,” he agreed foggily.

    Leigh opened his door looking very blurred. There was a smudge of red ink on his nose and streaks of it on his pale fawn jumper. And the pen itself in his hand.

    “Notice for ya. Penny’s called a rehearsal for Easter Monday arvo,” said Barry briefly.

    “What?” he groaned.

    Barry didn’t know the bloke at all, really, though he’d struck him as a pretty decent joker. He might not have said anything without Dorothy’s idea of a drink inside him, but as it was he offered: “Well, you got a choice out here over Easter. Charlton Heston on TV, a fight with the family over which bug-house in town you’re gonna watch mindless violence in, supposing you’re a family man, or Penny’s ruddy rehearsal.”

    “Just like home, then,” admitted Leigh resignedly, though with a twinkle in his eye. “Though we sometimes were offered a very elderly Easter Parade with Fred Astaire, as an alternative.”

    “Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about that one. We don’t get it so often as Charlton Heston,” Barry excused himself.

    Leigh grinned. “Come in for a drink?”

    “Uh—no, I better not, thanks, I only had a sandwich for lunch and I’ve just had Dorothy’s idea of a gin and tonic.”

    “A loaf of bread to sop it up?” he offered with a smile.

    “Well, actually Adrian’s doing me a steak, thanks all the same!” replied Barry with a laugh. “You look pretty busy, actually.”

    “Marking,” replied Leigh with a deep groan. “Why in God’s name I was cretinous enough to tell the little horrors they had to get them in this week instead of after the break—! No, well, if you let them hand them in just before the break you spend it marking the damn things, and if as a great concession you let them hand them in afterwards, you spend half the break thinking gloomily about the torture to come, and then never manage to get the bloody things back before the end of term assignments are due in. Or that at least is my considered opinion after thirty years in the teaching profession,” he explained with a grin.

    “Shit, and I thought I was badly off having to do me books of an evening!”

    “You ordinary mortals do not know the half of it. Think of my lifetime of ruined Bank Holiday weekends every time you see me sloping off early from my desk of an afternoon, Barry,” Leigh advised him heavily.

    Barry didn’t let on that they didn’t have Bank Holiday in these parts, or that, contrary-wise, he knew exactly what the bloke meant in spite of not having Bank Holiday. “Yeah, I will. Never seen you actually sloping off early, though,” he said pointedly.

    Leigh eyed him drily. “No, well, I don’t get much of a chance to. Added to which, if one doesn’t do the bloody work while sitting at one’s desk between approximately 9 and 5, it doesn’t miraculously do itself, does it?”

    “No.”

    “Though one has to attain adulthood to realise this,” said Leigh heavily. “Not to say, act upon the realisation. Talking of which, if you’re intending to drop off a notice at Thomas’s tonight, could you take him a parcel?”

    Barry grinned in spite of himself. “Yeah, sure.”

    “Are you sure? Because I could drop it off at the Post Office tomorrow.”

    “No, I’m going round there anyway.”

    “Thanks. –Come along in, Barry.”

    Barry came in, looking around with interest. He hadn’t seen the flat since he’d finished doing the renovations for him. “The place looks great,” he said a trifle awkwardly. It looked bloody fancy, actually. Upper-class English, y’know? Went with the way he talked, that was for sure. Sort of place you might expect to find—um—yeah, Wedgwood tea-sets and ladies taking tea. Not drinking tea, like us ordinary yobbos: “taking tea,” geddit? Earl Grey, probably. They’d all have accents like his or that pretty English cousin of Beth Martin’s. Barry had been down the back of Swadlings’ only this arvo, looking into the freezer in the hope of finding something different from frozen peas, when she’d come in for a carton of milk. No doubt she was, as May had claimed about two seconds after she’d left, a really nice girl, but talk about plums in the mouth! …Not to mention knowing how to handle bloody bone china cups of tea with bloody dinky spoons in their saucers plus and a cucumber sandwich on a plate. Effortlessly.

    Leigh reappeared with a large parcel, tied up in brown paper. “It’s heavy,” he warned.

    It was pretty heavy, yeah.

    “It’s from one of his daughters,” explained Leigh as he showed him out, having ascertained politely that he really didn’t want a drink. “Whether that means he hasn’t sent her his street address I wouldn’t know, but I should think it’s all too likely: they correspond by email.”

    “What?” said Barry blankly.

    “Email. You know, on the Internet,” said Leigh heavily.

    “Cripes. I suppose it’s better than not corresponding at all. –See ya, Leigh.”

    “At rehearsal, if not sooner. Thanks, Barry,” he agreed nicely.

    Barry headed for the back stairs, conscious of a certain feeling of depression that hadn’t been there—well, up until well after the gin, actually. That cousin of Beth’s was— Well, he’d seen her at rehearsal, of course, but he hadn’t always managed to get along, and then she’d missed, once or twice. But when she had been there he’d never really managed to get to talk to her. Well, hard to, with Penny continually screeching at everybody. Well, put it like this, he’d noticed her, yeah. Hard not to. Only, it hadn’t sort of struck him until only this arvo, with May’s beady eye on them, right, that she was (a) one Helluva gorgeous: really luscious type, ya know? and (b) one Hell—one Hell—of an up-market. She’d been wearing a pretty little brooch and May of course had grilled her unmercifully over hot coals until she’d admitted that it was real coral and real pearls and real gold and “Daddy” had given it to her for one of her birthdays—and she did have the earrings to match, but she thought the set was a bit much for day wear. Ruddy May of course had agreed, into the bargain pointing out that girls these days didn’t really understand what taste was, it was so refreshing to meet a girl with “lovely English taste.” Adding brightly, didn’t Barry agree? Barry had invited her to leave him out of it and retired down the freezers again. Well, she was Lady Carrano’s cousin, too, don’t let’s forget, folks, he told himself sourly, going cautiously down the ruddy precipitous back stairs of The Quays with the parcel for Thomas under one arm.

    Out on the Point, about five thousand notices later, Davina Parkinson invited him in warmly for a cuppa. It still wasn’t exactly supper-time, but it was getting on that way— What the Hell. Barry tottered inside and sank gratefully into the palatial warmth and softness of Davina’s expensive sofa. Old Norm had recently taken up the construction of model schooners and came in from the shed expressly to give him an earful on the subject, but what the Hell. At least neither of them made pointed remarks about his lonely bachelor state now that Avon and Fiorella had moved out (he was no more and no less a bachelor than he had been before, but this hadn’t seemed to strike the joint minds of Carter’s Bay), or, and he’d had this from a few, yes, about how the Kincaids seemed to be getting on all right but it was early days, yet. Had it not been for the pointedness Barry might have agreed with this latter, but Jesus Christ! As it was, he had been forced to look blankly indifferent. Talk about not being able to call your soul your own.

    Davina, instead, merely chatted mildly about the grandkids and the costumes for The Mikado. Throwing in a casual invitation to tea for the Easter Sunday if he wasn’t doing anything more interesting. Apparently the in-laws were slated for the grandkids that evening, apart from the lot that were going down lock, stock, and giant campervan to Dargaville to that lot of in-laws for the long weekend. And Norm, of course, merely chatted mildly about his model schooners and the grandkids. It was bloody restful, actually. After a bit Barry remembered the old boy was a shit-hot gardener and asked him about the garden, but good old Norm looked at him with a twinkle in his bloodshot, bulging blue eye and said the garden was good, ta, but he wouldn’t give him the gruesome details, because he knew he, Barry, wasn’t a gardener.

    After that he more or less had the strength to drive on back to the highway and head north over the bridge to Thomas’s place.—Incidentally, how he’d wangled getting that side road tar-sealed out past Sir George Grey all the way to his place was a mystery but it had happened, Barry wasn’t dreaming.—The outside lights were on and so were the lights in that so-called games room of his that was large enough to house three average families, and very, very, very loud music was pouring, or maybe steaming was a better word, steaming forth from all pores of the thing. Barry dithered, then approached cautiously. The games room’s giant folding double doors, big enough to fit a good-sized garage, were closed: he knocked but nothing happened, so he tried the handle. The doors weren’t locked: Barry entered cautiously. Cripes, he’d got his billiard table, then. That musta set him back a bob or two! Admittedly Dad had one: but you’d have to be in at least his income-bracket to even think of it. And even he, easy-going though he was, threw ten thousand fits if bloody Avon or Fiorella came anywhere near—

    “HULLO!” he bellowed above the din. Not only the music, it was now revealed that Baranski was drilling something.

    Thomas sat back on his heels, grinning, and switched the drill off. “HULLO!” he shouted.

    Barry nodded and waved his hands a bit.

    “EH?” shouted Thomas.

    “Could you— Could you switch the music off?” screamed Barry.

    Grinning, Thomas picked up an electronic gizzmo and pressed something. The music stopped.

    “Shit, is it all remote controlled?” said Barry feebly into the ringing silence.

    “Why not? Hal Gorman gave me a hand. Controlled through the computer.”

    Barry looked around. He couldn’t see a computer. There were plenty of polyurethaned flat-sided logs as to the lower parts of the walls, and quite a lot of polyurethaned cupboards, not panelled, but— Hard to describe them, really, without getting technical. He’d given Thomas a hand with those. What he’d chosen, see, was actual timber. Pegged, what was more, even if was only radiata pine. Vertical boards, pegged. The edges had been done with the router: not too poncy, mind you. Then Kev had found these old iron hinges, took up half the width of the doors. It had taken Sim and Wallis untold hours to get enough of the rust off them for Kevin to treat them with his rust-proofing muck and paint them matte black, but the result was pretty good, actually. Well, in here it looked real good, but Barry had reservations about the kitchen. Well, if you liked that sort of homespun look in a kitchen, yeah. And they’d made a decent job of them. But— Well, probably just as well Baranski didn’t have a wife, because what they liked, far as Barry could see, was either all pastel or white Melamine as far as the eye could see, or all horrible dinky panels with curly bits of moulding and those modern brass doorknobs that they put the plastic spray muck on. After about fifteen months of warm, sticky hands on them in a warm, sticky kitchen it started to wear off. Unevenly. Never mind, Goode as Olde did a real nice line in re-polishing and re-sealing modern brass doo-hickeys.

    “The computer’s in that cupboard,” explained Thomas. “That was Wagner,” he added helpfully. “The only way to listen to it is to swim in it.”

    “Oh,” said Barry feebly. It had been nothing like Gilbert and Sullivan, that was for sure. “Um, I got a notice for you—don’t blame me, it was all Penny’s idea; and Leigh asked me to drop off this parcel.”

    Thomas got up off the floor. “Thanks, Barry. Take a pew.”

    Barry could now see that he’d been drilling some sort of metal frame. He sat down in one of the huge armchairs with which the room was liberally provided. La-Z-Boy, or whatever they were called, the sort with leg rests. They were covered in dark green tartan that matched the curtains and actually they looked really good. Dad had one but Chloe had had it covered in some bloody floral English linen to match the suite and it looked flaming ridiculous. “Whatcha working on?”

    Thomas sat down in another armchair and investigated his parcel. “Shark cage.”

    Barry gulped.

    “Not to keep sharks in, but to keep them out,” he explained with his sidelong smile, glancing up from his parcel. “The intrepid diver gets into the cage, you see.”

    “I see,” said Barry weakly. “Just as well you made that doorway the size you did, then.”

    “Mm? Oh, yes: well, I thought I might be using this room to build things— Ah!” Thomas uncovered the object.

    Barry eyed it dubiously. “Our waters are too cold to attract the big sharks, really.”

    “Mm? Oh, yes, I know. The cage is for when we get up into the tropics,” he said in a vague voice. “This is from my daughter, Jordana,” he explained.

    That would explain why it looked like an electronic gizzmo, presumably, would it? Then Barry remembered he had mentioned that one of his daughters did something technical in TV. “Yeah. What is it?”

    Thomas smiled his sidelong smile again. “A small sonar device, Barry.”

    Barry gulped. “For you, personally?”

    “No, no, I paid for it out of the faculty budget. None of the cretinous firms in this corner of the galaxy could promise to get one to me before the mid-term break, or in some cases, Christmas, so I got on to Jordana.”

    Trying not to wonder exactly how this purchase had figured in the Sir G.G. books, Barry nodded and smiled weakly.

    “Fancy a drink?”

    Barry had now realised that when Pommy types with upper-class accents like Baranski’s said this they didn’t mean to include any non-alcoholic beverage in the offer, so he returned cautiously: “Thanks, just a small one, I’m driving.”

    This led Thomas to provide him with a huge tumblerful of neat Scotch but Barry now knew him well enough to be ready for this. “Half that, thanks,” he said firmly.

    “You could stay on, get mildly pissed listening to Wagner, join me in the bacon and eggs I’m planning for around twelve-thirtyish, and spend the night,” offered Thomas.

    “This’d be educational for me, would it?” returned Barry drily.

    Thomas scratched his untidy greying dark curls. “Depends whether you’re already a Wagner fan.”

    “No. Don’t think I’ve ever heard anything by him.”

    Looking dry, Thomas hummed.

    Barry gulped. “Yeah, I suppose everybody’s heard that. I never knew it was him, though.”

    “No. –That was Die Meistersinger, just then,” he explained.

    Barry looked blank.

    “Think you’d find large stretches of it boring. Well, they are. And the whole idea’s mind-bogglingly silly, of course.”

    “You’ve lost me, there,” said Barry politely.

    “Sorry.” Thomas gave him a dry look. “It’s about a pack of dim-witted villagers in, vaguely, the later Middle Ages, and their local, so to speak, choral society.”

    Barry’s jaw dropped.

    “True. They have this singing competition, you see. Shows human nature hasn’t changed much, doesn’t it?”

    Barry went into a choking fit.

    Thomas grinned. “There’s a good one with a dragon in it, though: it roars and everything,” he said on a hopeful note.

    “In an opera?” ventured Barry feebly.

    “Yes, certainly. He wrote it with complete stage directions, too: the dragon’s supposed to speak through some kind of a speaking-trumpet.”

    “Uh—” Barry had finished his current volume of Gibbon and it was due to go back to the university library before the Easter break. So the alternative was to go back home and watch something mindless on TV, probably a choice between tennis from overseas and a repeat of anything pseudo-macho featuring a long-haired nancy-boy in leather gear with a five-o’clock shadow, with a fast car or a Harley that the stunt man drove or rode for him in every shot where the thing was actually moving. Preferably not dating earlier than 1980 because it wouldn’t do to risk re-showing anything that was actually a classic and worth seeing again.

    “Er—not if you’d rather not, of course,” said Thomas mildly as the silence lengthened.

    Barry jumped. “Sorry, I was just wishing they’d show Rawhide again. Um, sorry, Thomas. Yeah, I would like to give it a go.”

    Thomas just nodded and fiddled with his remote control. Looking up to say: “Most of my stuff’s on CDs now, though I still do have quite a few of the original LPs as well. Sit back: relax. –No, hang on,” he said, getting up abruptly. “Forgot. It’s in German. I have got an English version but it’s bathetic. Want the libretto?”

    “Y— Um, yeah, if you—”

    Thomas went and ferreted in a cupboard, producing a dog-eared book with fawn paper covers which he chucked casually at Barry. At first Barry thought it was all in German; then he realised it had the English, too.

    “If you want to follow the score—”

    “No, ta, this’ll be fine," said Barry hurriedly.

    Thomas smiled at him. “But you do read music, don’t you?”

    “A bit, yeah. Not scores, though.”

    “I’ve got some lovely versions, with the leitmotivs— Never mind, let’s see if you like it, shall we, before trying to turn you into a fanatic!” He sat down again, and punched buttons.

    The noise started up. Barry tried to smile, but as Baranski wasn’t looking at him, in fact was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed and his whisky glass in his fist, gave up the effort.

    … “Well?” said Thomas, his face all twinkles, as the act ended and his guest looked at him dazedly.

    “It’s fantastic,” said Barry dazedly. “And—and it’s fun!”

    “Yeah,” he agreed smugly, heaving himself up. “Want a coffee? Then I’ll put the next act on.”

    After a visit to the bog, just as well the games room had one, saved tramping for five miles to one of the upstairs ones in the main part of the house, they settled down with their coffees and a drop more whisky…

    Thomas didn’t even have to mention “the next one” more than once as he made bacon and eggs around midnight: Barry leapt on the suggestion.

    They finally got to bed around fourish, admitting that as it was a working day tomorrow it probably would not be a good idea to start the whole cycle at the beginning so as Barry could hear it properly: not tonight, no. Over Easter? Thomas had only planned to potter in his boat.

    “Well, um, I gotta blast pink muck off Rog Pinkerton’s house at least a part of the time,” recollected Barry on a guilty note. “And Sunday night I’m having tea with the Parkinsons.”

    Thomas scratched his chin. “Say we start Friday afternoon, you could work in the morning. Yes, that’d work out: come to lunch. If we listen to it over Friday and Saturday, that’ll leave you all Sunday free. And by the Monday afternoon possibly the Bergen Mikado won’t come as quite such a shock to your system. Well, you won’t actually run screaming from the room with your hands over your ears,” he finished with a grin.

    “I’ll only want to: right. Yeah, great! Um, I could bring—”

    “Rubbish. Well, by all means bring some beer, if that’s the correct male peer group behaviour, Barry,” he said in his frightfully upper-class English accent, sounding horribly detached, “but don’t worry about food, I earn enough to feed a small army, and as certain persons not a million miles from the Carter’s Bay waterfront may possibly have pointed out to you, I lead a completely selfish life: no-one but myself to spend it on. The freezer’s full of steak. Oh, and there’s some crayfish, if you like seafood.”

    By this time Barry was feeling so bloody good, what with discovering Wagner, and the whisky, not to mention two meals of protein in the last nine hours or so, that he merely grinned and said: “All right: you’re on!” And went happily to bed in one of Thomas’s spare rooms without even noticing that the bed covering was a brand-new duck-down duvet of the most expensive kind or that the pale blue ensuite, with its gold taps, grey-blue slate floor, and, pièce de résistance, its matched marbled navy Aakronite basin and bog, could with some justice have been classed as completely poncy.

    Good Friday dawned fine and clear. Not very warm, but much nicer than the weather they’d been having all month. Dorothy woke up much earlier than she’d intended to, given that it was a long weekend, not to say given the amount of gin she’d put away last night. She did her best to stay comfortably in bed, preferably snoozing off again, but it didn’t work. Bum. Was this because she was getting old, or what? True, she’d actually slept right through the night, for the first time in about ten years—well, she had after the initial half hour of getting crosser and crosser and finally giving in and going to have a pee. Did this mean she was over the bloody menopause at last? Too much to hope for, probably. She got up and put on her very old candlewick dressing-gown and a pair of fuzzy sheepskin slippers that were guaranteed to create instant disorientation, and, opening the bedroom’s French doors, shuffled out onto the balcony. The bay shimmered in silvered green placidity under a pale sky dotted with tiny fluffy clouds. It looked like Paradise on earth, and what she ought to be doing was counting her blessings. Especially since she had four whole days to look forward to without any trendy Deputies or Faculty Liaisons in ’em, not to mention cretinous academic staff that still hadn’t worked out that in the first place Dorothy was not their mother hen and did not give a fuck what they spent their budgets on, and that in the second place, the amount the Library’s acquisitions system reported they had committed on learning resources was what they had committed. Period.

    What in God’s name was she going to do with herself all weekend? She had conquered her female stereotypical brainwashing to the extent of having nice Velda Manning come in two days a week to scour the flat, so there was no housework, either to do or to feel guilty over not doing. Everything at work was going splendidly and there was no work she ought to be getting on with. She’d had a working fit last weekend and had finished off that bloody paper for the bloody New Zealand Library Journal, so there wasn’t even that to feel guilty over. And since her change of job had meant that she’d changed from membership of the Public to the Academic NZLA group, thus putting herself so far down in the pecking order as to be blessedly out of contention for anything that even looked like a position of responsibility on a committee let alone a chair, there was nothing of that sort to be done, either. Hooray.

    Dorothy leaned on her balcony railing and gloomed at the bay…

    Bloody Janet, of course, was completely occupied with her blessed Hal, these days. Well, good on her, and thank God it had happened at last, and so forth. And she didn’t begrudge her any of it, not for a moment. But it had been a bit hard to take when, on ringing Janet more or less on the spur of the moment to see if she’d like to nip out for lunch in the old haunts this last Wednesday, she’d got a cautious silence in her receiver.

    “Um, not if you’re making up time at work, or anything, Janet,” Dorothy had found herself saying weakly.

    The receiver had then gone into a terrific tizz, which finally resolved itself into the fact that Janet wasn’t exactly making up time, but Denny—Dorothy had blinked and then realised this was the new boss—Denny had said that she could get off early on the Thursday if— Because her and Hal were planning a nice little dinner for “some friends” that night! And although of course you could do a lot of the preparation beforehand— Yeah, yeah. Dorothy hadn’t asked who the friends were but Janet had volunteered it anyway. Never-heard-of-him from Hal’s department and one of Jack’s programmers and their wives. Three young couples together, right. But Janet (very kindly) thought she could manage a quick coffee, if Dorothy was coming down to Puriri anyway. Dorothy had lied in her teeth and said she was, and so they had met in The Primrose Café. Not a success: Janet had glanced at her watch approximately every two seconds, her every utterance had been completely disjointed, and she had finally gasped that she had to go, and dashed out, leaving her cappuccino half consumed. She had, however, managed to impart the information that on the Friday they were planning to go to church—Dorothy had blinked: Janet, in spite of her primness and undoubted genuine goodness was not, to her knowledge, a practising anything; and they’d booked themselves in for two days up at the Bay of Islands! Just for a wee treat: Hal hadn’t been up there yet, and even if it rained it was lovely up there, wasn’t it? This last without the least sign of innuendo about her, and Dorothy indeed was in very little doubt that if it was left up to Janet they’d spend the holiday driving conscientiously about the historic Bay of Islands area looking at old stone stores and Treaty Houses and similar crap in the rain. She was also in very little doubt that it would not, in fact, be left up to Janet and that Hal Gorman, never mind if he was, as Angie Michaels claimed, the teddy-bear type, would see to it that they stayed in their cabin doing much more interesting things than look at historic buildings. If it rained or not, very probably—yes.

    Dorothy leaned on her balcony, glooming, and tried very hard not to remember that bloody dirty weekend in an obscure motel just out of Huntly (ye gods), where He had been sure no-one that knew him or his bloody wife would be likely to— Oh, well. It was twenty years back—more. And the he in question was probably long since pushing up daisies, he’d been more than twenty years her elder. She hadn’t bothered to keep track of him, in the wake of its finally dawning that he was never gonna dump the bloody wife, even though declaring he hated her guts and vice versa: he was either just too set in his ways or too bloody chicken, or, like the vast majority of New Zealand males, both. Sod him.

    … All the same, it had been bloody humiliating to find bloody Janet taking that kindly but nonetheless superior, married-woman tone with her! Shit.

    Dorothy took a determined breath and went determinedly back inside. She had a big jar of home-made muesli, completely fat-free except for a sprinkling of nourishing and healthful sunflower seeds, on the bench. Ignoring it, she opened the fridge. In the fridge she had all the ingredients for a tasty and very slimming salad, so she fried up the two well-sized, carefully chosen and inordinately expensive tomatoes in lots of olive oil and ate the result well salted and peppered, poured over wholemeal toast, washing it down with very milky but strong coffee with two spoonfuls of sugar in it. Per cup. After that she felt a bit better but most unfortunately her thoughts had, of their own accord, wandered round to contemplating the notion that relentless discouraging of Thomas was possibly a bit bloody stupid given her age and the complete unlikelihood of anyone else’s ever offering. Bugger. Bugger and damn, in fact.

    Scowling, Dorothy took the dishes through into the kitchen and washed them up fiercely. No, ta. Once was enough. Well, more than once, if one was being strictly accurate, but the point was, she was too bloody old—and tired, yes—to want to get involved in something that would turn out to be a bloody great mistake not to say disaster, with a bloke that was not only a known womaniser but would quite undoubtedly get sick of the whole idea once he’d consummated it. Well, in say three months, but the principle held good. No way. She didn’t have the emotional stamina to cope, any more.

    Over the past few months Beth had become aware of an unworthy feeling of relief that Gerhard didn’t have any relatives out here apart from Gretchen. It was bad enough having to socialise with the friends he seemed to have made since he got here: she was sure she could never have coped with what she had now realised was his up-market, sophisticated, and well-off family. Beth herself hadn’t really made any new friends except for Clara, Akiko, Posy and the Winkelmanns: well, not that you could call friends, as such. And Clara, Michaela and Sol were all relations, or at least relations by marriage, and she’d met Akiko through work. But Gerhard hadn’t been at Sir G.G. as long as her and he seemed to know millions of people already, and lots of them not through work at all! He was the sort of person that not only enjoyed socialising in other people’s up-market houses—the which to Beth was nothing short of torture—but who went out of his way to go and meet people there was absolutely no need for him ever to contact! For instance, he’d had a letter from a fellow economist in Germany in early February, and in spite of the fact that his embryo department had just moved to the new site and he was supposed to be placing three job advertisements and ordering incredible numbers of economics books and journals, he had made the time to find out the phone number of this other person that this German economist had mentioned in the most casual way, ring him, and arrange to have lunch with him in town: which meant well over four hours out of the middle of his working day, what with the trip there and back and having to find a place to park. And then into the bargain he’d agreed that he and Beth would love to have dinner with him and his wife! And this wasn’t unusual, he did this sort of thing all the time. It wasn’t even an effort for him. Beth had once managed to ask him about it and had got the explanation that he enjoyed meeting new people. Help. Meeting new people to Beth was on about a par with going to the dentist. It was at this point that, although she had had glimmerings of it before, the idea that she could not possibly cope with a long-term relationship with Gerhard Sachs occurred most clearly and forcibly to Beth Martin.

    This Easter he’d arranged to have dinner on the Saturday with a man who was a friend of Jake’s. Rory Something. According to Gerhard he was a very pleasant fellow, and his wife was a very pleasant woman. Beth had heard this sort of remark before and she now knew it didn’t mean anything. They didn’t dare to be less than pleasant to Gerhard: he was not only very charming, he was also, it had now dawned on Beth, very eminent in his field and miles cleverer and better educated than the lot of them. He knew all about European politics, which perhaps you might have expected; but more than that, he understood lots of things about international politics: like why the Americans had their knives into Iraq, and so forth. Beth had just trustingly accepted the media’s word on everything to do with the recent conflict in Kuwait: the word “oil” had not so much as floated to the surface of her consciousness, let alone connected itself to the concept that possibly the Americans in this instance were not the wholly disinterested White Knights that “everybody” said they were. She had not used the expression “everybody says” to Gerhard in this context: in the first place, he had earlier explained to her, lightly but firmly, just why it was inadvisable to use the expression at all; and in the second place, he had given his opinion of the relationship between the Iraqis and the Americans at a large dinner party at which she’d been too terrified to utter a word, up to and including a request for the salt.

    Beth didn’t really mind Gerhard telling her that only morons (he hadn’t called them that) said “everybody says” or “they say”, because he always put his remarks so nicely; and she was really quite grateful to be learning so much about things like world affairs and the right sort of perfume to wear, and when and where very high-heeled shoes were acceptable, and when they weren’t, and the right colours to wear together, and what good modern art was (he had some lovely books), and which modern authors were worth reading and why the local papers weren’t. Beth had known they weren’t, but she had never been able to justify this knowledge to herself, let alone to anyone else, so she had absorbed Gerhard’s comments gratefully. Though she had been unable to classify the precise tone he had used. You could have summed up his attitude as “scathing condemnation”, if a person could be scathing without sounding anything but lightly indifferent and very, very mildly amused. Help. He himself got a lot of newspapers sent to him airmail. In four languages. Help, again.

    Nevertheless, although she knew she was learning a terrific lot from him, she was more convinced, not less, that she would never be able to live his sort of life.

    “Rory Who?” she echoed weakly.

    “Rory Ferguson. Darling, you can’t have forgotten it was this Saturday!”

    “N— Um, I sort of didn’t think it would be so soon… I mean, is he the man that lives in Remuera?” stumbled Beth.

    “No, I think you’re confusing him with Bill Niles, or maybe Ken Armitage,” he said kindly. “Rory and Jacqueline live in Paratai Drive: overlooking the—”

    “That’s Millionaires’ Row!” gasped Beth in horror.

    “Ja? I have not heard it called that,” he said with interest. “Who did you get it from?”

    Beth swallowed. “Polly,” she admitted, reddening.

    Gerhard’s eyes twinkled. “Off course: I think that is the place where she refused to live, when they were thinking of moving from Jake’s old house, ja?”

    “Um, haven’t they always lived in Pohutukawa Bay?” replied Beth in confusion.

    Gerhard promptly clarified this one for her. The house on the cliff was the second house Jake had had in Pohutukawa Bay: the first house had been turned into the Community Centre. The Carranos would, he thought, have moved into the new house around the time of the twins’ first birthday. Beth just looked at him numbly: they were her relations, after all, but she hadn’t known all that.

    “Are you wondering how I manage to retain such trivia?” he said lightly.

    “No. Social people do,” replied Beth glumly, without thinking.

    “Ah.” Gerhard eyed her narrowly. “I see. Don’t come to the Fergusons’ tomorrow if you would rather not, my dear.”

    “But won’t it upset her table? Um, it’s not a buffet, is it?” croaked Beth.

    “I shouldn’t think so. Vell, shall I ring her and tell her you will not be able to make it?” he said mildly.

    Beth licked her lips uneasily.

    “It’s entirely up to you,” said Gerhard mildly.

    “Um, what does he do?” she said feebly.

    Since the answer was “corporate re-engineering”, she just looked at him numbly.

    “They have two teenagers, and one older boy who is at university,” he said mildly.

    “Just an ordinary family, in other words,” replied Beth grimly. “I won’t come, if I don’t have to.”

    “You most certainly do not have to, and I hope you realise, my dear, that I would never make you do anything you do not wish to do," he replied courteously.

    Beth took a deep breath. “No. I mean yes. Sometimes I think it’d be much easier to cope with you, Gerhard, if you’d lose your temper like ordinary people!”

    “But I’m not angry,” he said mildly.

    “No, of course you’re not angry: you’re too sensible and rational and grown-up to be angry!” cried Beth furiously, tears starting to her eyes. “All right, I know I’m in the wrong and I said I’d go, and I’m going back on my word; but I don’t want to, I hate those social ladies that look down their noses at me!”

    Gerhard merely replied politely: “Then I’d better ring Jacqueline at once.”

    “I suppose she pronounces it like that, too!” shouted Beth angrily.

    “What?” he said, blinking.

    “‘Jackerlin’!” shouted Beth furiously. “Us ordinary slobs just say ‘Jack-kwuh-leen’, only she’d be too up-market to!”

    He bit his lip. “Now you’re being silly.”

    “YES!” shouted Beth furiously. “I am silly, and I can’t live up to your standards. And what’s more, I don’t want to! Go AWAY!”

    Gerhard hesitated. “Look, I shall leave you to cool down, okay? Don’t feel guilty about not coming to the dinner party—”

    “The point is, I DO! Stop being so blimmin’ superior! And go AWAY!” shouted Beth.

    “Ja, maybe it is best I go,” he murmured.

    Beth merely glared at him furiously, so he went.

    Naturally Beth immediately burst into tears, rushed into her bedroom, threw herself on the bed, and sobbed and sobbed.

    “When I got back from my walk she was still crying,” explained Clara awkwardly. “She—well, what she said didn’t make all that much sense, I suppose.”

    Sol eyed her somewhat ironically. “But you understood it, anyroad?”

    “Well, yes. I could see from the outset the sort of life he’d be likely to prefer.”

    “Oh, sure: me, too. Well, French champagne, and them hand-sewn sandals of his? Not to mention them hand-sewn lapels on every coat he owns.”

    “Mm.”

    “And the way he talks,” agreed Michaela.

    Sol blinked at her. “Huh? He cain’t help that accent, honey.”

    “Don’t be silly,” she said placidly. “He is nice, but you can tell he’s used to a fancy sort of life.”

    “Yeah, well, that’s true enough. Wal, if you couldn’t before, you certainly can now he’s brought that BMW out,” he agreed drily.

    “I think it’s hideous,” said Michaela mildly. “Snouty.”

    “Uh-huh. Up-market, though. Now, you planning to stay for lunch, Clara?” he asked cheerfully.

    Blushing, Clara replied shyly: “If it’s all right.”

    “Sure,” he said vaguely. “Eat us outa house and home, any time.”

    “She’s brought some ham,” said Michaela, glaring at him.

    “Wal, great, only you didn’t have to, Clara, honey, you know you’re welcome. Uh—how did you get here?” he said in confusion.

    “You’re not listening. –He’s got things on his mind,” explained Michaela. “She walked.”

    “All the way?” he croaked.

    “It’s not that far,” replied Clara. “And it is a lovely day.”

    “Uh-huh,” he said vaguely.

    “Go on, Sol, you’d better tell her,” prompted Michaela.

    “Um, yeah. Wal, thing is,” he said, scratching his lean jaw, “you know how Kincaid suggested to Jack Swadling he’d maybe like to take over the franchise for the Sir G.G. cafeteria and May’s been— Yeah, sure you do, whole of Puriri County does. Wal, thing is, Jake was down here with his corporate hat on last week and he put forward a counter-proposal. Don’t ask me if Polly knew what he was up to, but if I was you I wouldn’t mention it lessen she does.”

    “You’re wandering,” warned Michaela placidly.

    “Huh? Oh. Sorry. Wal, the point is, Jake suggested Jack and May might like to invest in opening a dairy in Kingfisher Bay: not necessarily run it, maybe put in a manager, y’know? Using that site where all them bushes are, just on the corner near to the store: not our side, the opposite side.”

    “I see! Just where you always thought they ought to put a dairy, Sol!” she approved, smiling.

    “Yeah, but that ain’t the point, Clara. Point is— Wal, first off, Jack and May might not actually have agreed as yet, but they’re going to, the pair of them was positively billing and cooing last time I was in there. –Now, don’t tell me I’m wandering, Michaela, honey, when you been brought up to the art of yarn-spinnin’ you jest have to put in all the interestin’ bits. Uh, shit, where was I?”

    When his female connections had ceased laughing themselves sick, he continued sheepishly: “Anyroad, they’re going to accept, and I guess that’s good, only for it to happen the site’ll have to be levelled and that means bulldozers, dirt and noise; and then the building will have to go up, and that means more noise. You and Beth’ll be real well placed to get the lot, and when the wind’s in the west them nice new washing-lines that Annick’s let you put up in back of her carpark will get the dust and grime from the building site.”

    “It usually is in the west,” added Michaela helpfully.

    “I suppose we’ll be able to bear it,” replied Clara with a smile “You weren’t nervous about telling me that, were you, Sol?”

    “Wal, some,” he said, grimacing.

    “I said it was silly,” noted Michaela placidly.

    “Silly ole Daddy,” agreed Grace, staggering up to his knee.

    “Grace, don’t say that,” reproved Michaela mildly.

    “Silly ole DADDY!” she shouted.

    Michaela rose, plucked her up, and dumped her bodily into her playpen. “I said, don’t say that,” she repeated firmly.

    Grace burst into loud screams of rage.

    “She’s at the stroppy stage,” Michaela explained over the noise, sitting down again.

    “Mm!” agreed Clara, shuddering and laughing.

    After the lunch, consisting of a large pot of vegetable soup and home-made wholemeal bread, plus Clara’s sliced ham, Clara thought she’d better go, but Sol explained that after Grace had had her nap (“Don’ WANT to!”)—after that, they’d planned to go pipi-ing over to Pipi Beach and she was real welcome to come.

    “I’d really love to, if you’re going.”

    Sure they were. And they might see Euan and Simone and the kids once they got there.

    “Depending on whether Euan can find it!” said Michaela with a loud laugh.

    “It sounds a perfect way to spend Good Friday afternoon,” admitted Clara.

    They smiled at her and agreed.

    … “Hi!” gasped Euan, about two hours later.

    Sol ceased grovelling knee- and elbow-deep in not very warm water, and looked up, grinning. “Hi. You found it, then.”

    “Yeah,” he said, looking tolerantly at the spluttering Michaela and Clara. “That time I couldn’t find it, that was years back, when I first started helping Sol out, but the elephant never forgets,” he explained without animus.

    “In—dubit—ably!” agreed Clara, going off in fresh paroxysms.

    “Found any yet?” he asked, unmoved.

    Their bucket was empty. Sol gave him a real mean look.

    Euan collapsed in paroxysms. When he’d recovered he admitted: “I think you might have more luck over here: look, just there, you can seeing them blowing bubbles when the waves run back.”

    “I said we ought to look for bubbles,” said Michaela with satisfaction, grabbing the bucket and walking off.

    “Last time she said we oughta look for weed,” complained Sol.

    “Yeah. Weed and bubbles. Weed is where they might be, bubbles is where they definitely are,” replied Euan cruelly, walking off.

    “I guess we jest creep in his wake, huh?” said Sol mournfully to the spluttering Clara.

    “Yes!” she gasped. “Hold on: where are Simone and the children?”

    “Dunno; maybe he’s drowned ’em already. Hey, EUAN!”

    Euan obligingly stopped and waited for them. “Yeah?”

    “Where’s Simone and the kids?”

    He winked. “Just on the other side of what she reckons isn’t anything like a sand-dune: evidently on the Atlantic coast of France they have real sand-dunes.”

    “Uh-huh. This-all don’t mean any of ’em knows beans about getting up them, huh?” he drawled.

    Euan collapsed in splutters, gasping: “You said it !”

    “Oh! You’re too mean!” cried Clara in outrage, running off in the indicated direction.

    “She all right?” asked Euan cautiously, recovering in remarkably quick time from the splutters.

    “Ye-ah. Wal, better, anyroad. Her and Michaela, they seem to have had a confab out in the yard, only I ain’t gotten it out of her yet about what, exactly. –Hey, honey,” he said, joining her at the patch of bubbles—and undoubted pipis, the bucket was rapidly filling with them: “iffen you can wrench your mind off of all this hunter-gatherer activity for a split second,”—Euan grinned in spite of himself—“you-all want to let on to us mere males what went on between you and Clara way down yonder in the vege patch?”

    Michaela looked at him thoughtfully. Sol, much to his friend and partner’s delight, was seen to squirm. After quite some time she said: “It might have been in confidence. Though she didn’t make me promise or anything.”

    “You could tell me,” he said feebly.

    “Shall I push off?” asked Euan meekly.

    “No, you’re all right. Only he tells people things.”

    “I’d noticed,” agreed Euan drily.

    “I don’t if ordered not to,” said Sol weakly.

    “Order him, Michaela,” suggested Euan with a smile.

    “Yes. All right. Don’t tell anyone, it isn’t their business. I don’t know that I can explain it. Um… She said she just wants an ordinary life,” she revealed, frowning over it.

    “Like ours?” ventured Sol.

    “I think so. She thinks Gerhard’s much too posh,” she explained earnestly to Euan.

    “Uh—oh.” Gallantly Euan refrained from looking at his business partner. “I see. No point in hoping they might get together: that it?”

    “Yes.” The discussion was apparently over: Michaela bent to her pipi-ing again.

    Sol and Euan looked at each other limply.

    “Pipi-ing?” suggested Sol feebly.

    Might as well,” agreed Euan feebly.

    They got on with it.

    Akiko liked Angie Michaels very much, but this didn’t mean she particularly wanted to spend the Easter break with her rather than with a nice man. Unfortunately no nice men were offering. Mitsuko had disappeared in the direction of Col’s flat at approximately three-thirty on the Thursday afternoon: Leigh, of course, had soft-heartedly let her go early. Angie had been having a cup of coffee in the very pleasant staff tea-room in the large building which now housed their faculty and the Library, when Akiko had come in for her afternoon tea, and so she had been able to report this. She had then asked very nicely about Akiko’s plans for Easter: and it was at that point that Akiko, naturally a very truthful person and to boot coming from a family that was very strict about such things, had found herself telling nice Angie Michaels a great big whopper. No: a lie.

    “A lie,” she said to herself sadly in Japanese the next morning over an early cuppa in Mrs Adler’s kitchen.

    “What was that, dear?”

    Akiko jumped. “Nothing! So sorry!” she gasped. “Now, if you ready I take you up-ah to Whangarei, okay?”

    Mrs Adler had long since lodged the customary protest at the suggestion that Akiko should drive her for about two hours on the main highway on a holiday on which she had nothing better to do, and had been overridden. Akiko would take her up to her relatives in Whangarei, where she would spend the weekend. Then, at her own insistence, she would catch the bus back home on the Monday evening. And Akiko would collect her from the bus stop on the highway. She was quite sure it wouldn’t be interfering with her plans: yes.

    By dint of driving back to Carter’s Bay very slowly she managed to waste the rest of the morning, all of what would have been lunchtime, and a small part of the afternoon. Everything was closed, of course, so there was nowhere she could go to waste time over a cuppa. She went back to the house and slowly made herself a pot of green tea. There was some boiled rice in the fridge, so as the old lady wasn’t there to have the shudders at the mere thought, she poured the tea over it and ate the result very slowly. Then she washed up meticulously.

    After that there were lots of things she could do. She could phone Uncle Inoue and Posy, who had had already invited her nicely to come to them any time she felt like it. Well, Posy had; Uncle Inoue had more or less ordered her to, but Akiko had some time since silently made up her mind that she was going to be really Westernised from now on and not take orders from stupid Men. Not even pretend to, like Mum and the aunties!

    “Not into sub-servi-ence-ah,” she said grimly under her breath in English.

    She could go over to Janet’s: Janet had warmly issued an invitation to pop over whenever she felt like it. That would give her the real big treat of seeing Janet and her big teddy bear happy as all get out together, in Janet’s little cottage.

    “Big-ah deal,” said Akiko sourly, not nearly so much under her breath. It wasn’t that she was jealous of Janet’s having Hal, at all! She most certainly did not want the teddy-bear type. Not that anyone would believe that for a moment, of course. Well, stupid Mitsuko certainly didn’t: in fact she had laughed her head off when Akiko had tried to explain she didn’t want Hal Gorman, as such. “I see you ur-guh-lued to Kindergarten Cop, you no fool-ah me!” was the way the story ran. Well, damn it, couldn’t a person watch a stupid film without being accused of being in love with a big dumb computer engineer on the strength of it?

    “Damn-ah it!” said Akiko, not under her breath at all. “What I do all day? Damn it, what can-ah I do all day?” she corrected herself loudly. “Stupid-ah Japanese-ah girl,” she added crossly.

    Polly and Jake were up the Inlet at their bach for the weekend: she knew that they’d welcome her warmly. So would the kids. In fact, she hadn’t seen the kids for some time: she really ought to… After sitting for a while in scowling silence she got up and rang the number of the bach. No reply. She let it ring for a long time, just so as she couldn’t accuse herself of only pretending to try to contact them, but they definitely must be out.

    Deirdre Carpenter wasn’t going away: she could ring her and they could get together over the costumes for The Mikado and Deirdre could help her practise her singing. But nice Deirdre shared a house with another nice teacher and a nice nurse, and it was just so all-girls-together that it made you want to cut your throat. The nurse did have a boyfriend but having met him, Akiko was silently of the opinion that it would never go anywhere, because he was too comfortable living with his mum. Deirdre didn’t have a boyfriend and the other teacher not only didn’t have a boyfriend, she had a hopeless crush on her headmaster, who was very married and had, according to all reports, never noticed she was alive. Nevertheless she was cheerful and busy and belonged to several clubs, mostly women’s clubs, and went regularly twice a week to dancing classes, the sort of dancing classes where there were twenty-five females to two dubious males; and so forth. Added to which she was a Brown Owl and really the only surprising thing was that she wasn’t off this weekend with a pack of guides and the bigger Brownies building campfires and using penknives competently and all that sort of nonsense. Akiko knew she wasn’t: she had been in Swadlings’ last Sunday and had warmly invited Akiko to lunch today, Friday, but Akiko had been able to say quite truthfully that she’d be driving Mrs Adler up to Whangarei today.

    She could always go round to see Sol and Michaela. But although she had never been in love with Sol, and was in fact very fond of them both, in the first place they were just so happy together and right for each other that it made her quite sick with jealousy to be in their company, and in the second place their house was real small and she wouldn’t want to intrude… No. Not today.

    She could go round to the bus barn and ask Avon and Rab if they’d heard from Kevin and how he was getting on in Aus— No. What a stupid idea. Just because he was pleasant, and tall, and had those yellow curls, and had obviously had a crush on her— Besides, she didn’t like beards, they were untidy. Well, Kevin’s certainly was. An untidy beard betrayed an untidy personality, she was almost sure. But a tidy beard was really horrid, she loathed them. …If he ever had been her boyfriend, maybe she could have got him to shave it off. But what if he’d been one of those chinless Caucasian men, underneath it? Ugh! That look was even worse! …This was stupid, she’d never really fancied him, and he wasn’t even very intelligent and he hadn’t had much education, he’d started a degree and failed most of his subjects the first year and all of his subjects the second year and given it up. True, he had made a success of his recycling business, but not a roaring success, given that after selling the house and letting that bitch of an ex-wife take half the proceeds, not that what was left after the mortgage was much, he hadn’t yet managed to buy another house. Or even put a proper bedroom into the bus barn: Avon and Rab were sleeping, apparently happily, on a second-hand bed, though Avon’s mum had made her dad give them a new mattress for it, behind a lot of not-yet recycled screens. Which Rab was quite prepared to sell to any customer that might be interested in a selection of cheap bamboo screens from the Philippines. Oh, well, they were young and in love… Lucky them.

    In any case, that was a stupid idea, she had never been really interested in Kevin, because he was too much of a teddy bear and had never worked up the guts to ask her out or anything! Just mooned after her mournfully, what sort of a man did that? Akiko did not answer this sourly with “New Zealand men”, but she did feel that it wouldn’t have been too much of an exaggeration to do so. …Besides, if she did ask them, Avon would jump, no, leap: leap to the wrong conclusion and then it would be all over the Bay. No.

    She could ring Dorothy, very probably Dorothy wasn’t doing anything this afternoon and would like to— Um, there was nowhere to go, everything was closed. Well, come for a drive? Akiko couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for this idea, even though she genuinely liked Dorothy and knew that she would not so much as hint at any question related to her, Akiko’s, love-life. At this moment, non-existent love-life, yeah.

    Or, say she went round to Barry’s place— No, he was living all on his own, she wouldn’t just go, she would make him some biscuits and take those! Akiko was quite thrilled with this brilliant thought, and sat there in a warm glow for about five minutes, mentally revising the easiest biscuit recipe that Mrs Adler had taught her. Then two points came forcibly to mind, and she scowled. Firstly, there was Yvonne’s famed visit to Armand’s flat, baking in hand. And secondly, there was the point that Barry was not stupid and there would be no way in which she could just casually enquire after Kevin and not be spotted. Not that there was anything to spot, which made it all the more maddening! She would just like to hear how he was getting on, that was all…

    She went into the sitting-room and switched the TV on. Ugh: sports. Boring and ultimately pointless. Not that everything wasn’t. She switched channels. Charlton Heston, his chest bare, in an abbreviated Egyptian skirt. Akiko swallowed hard in spite of herself. She had seen it before and as a matter of fact she had it on tape, and Mitsuko’s claim that he looked exactly like Kevin Goode, especially when he grew the beard—not when it got long, but when he decided he was a Jew and started to grow it—was completely unfounded. Completely. His hair was much darker than Kevin’s and— Crossly Akiko switched it off. Um, she could… Well, she could try Polly and Jake again…

    Eventually she made up her mind to it and went out to the passage where the telephone lived on a nice little table of its own. It was an old black telephone and Penny Bergen had recently dropped a hint that these were about to become very collectable and could Akiko possibly suggest tactfully that Mrs Adler might like to sell it? Or swap it? She was just stretching out her hand to it when it rang. Akiko jumped and gasped and then picked it up.

    “Hullo, Akiko,” said a shy voice. “It’s Anna Francis, here.”

    Akiko blinked, but greeted her with genuine pleasure.

    Anna then revealed very shyly that a friend had given Adrian a whole sackful of turnips and would she like some? Because someone had told them, she added hastily, that lots of Japanese people liked turnip pickle.

    “Michaela,” said a hoarse young voice in the background.

    “Um, yes, it was Michaela. She had it in Japan,” said Anna.

    Possibly there were worse things to do on a holiday afternoon than make jars of Grandmother Takagaki’s turnip pickle. Akiko thanked nice Anna very politely. She was about to offer to come and fetch the turnips, after all it would get her out of the house, but before she could speak Anna said that Martin would come round with them.

    Ten minutes later Martin arrived in Adrian’s very rattly and rusty old car. He greeted her breathlessly—the turnips were obviously heavy—and looked at her hopefully. Akiko smiled politely and accepted the turnips but Martin still went on looking at her hopefully.

    “Ah… you like nice cuppa tea?” she said kindly.

    “No, thanks frightfully, we’ve just had one,” he said in what Akiko, though she found accents very difficult in foreign languages, could now recognise as his posh English voice. Almost as posh as Thomas’s. “Um, I don’t suppose,” he said, blushing and standing on one leg, “I could help you with the pickles, could I?”

    “You wan’ he’p-ah me make my Grandmother Takagaki’ turnip pick-uh?” gulped Akiko.

    He agreed fervently that he did.

    That was that, then. Any faint idea that she might chicken out on making the damned turnip pickle—loathed and feared by all of Akiko’s generation of the family - withered and died. Akiko and Martin settled in to make jars and jars and jars of turnip pickle.

    The peace of the religious holiday afternoon descended on Carter’s Bay and environs. On the northern side of the Inlet, Thomas and Barry were settled in their big armchairs. The Ring was under way and cans of light beer were at their elbows.

    Up at Toetoe Bay, less intellectually, but much more athletically, Alan and Dicky were having a riding lesson. Alan on his horse and Dicky following on his pony: round and round the horse paddock which Alan had recently had fenced off between the low cliff top and the new stables. They were only slightly hampered by the fact that Normie Fermour was following them on Dicky’s bike. And not hampered at all by the fact that under a nearby tree, Catherine, Jenny and Gerry were sitting on a rug drinking Catherine’s home-made cider and giggling madly at the picture the three of them presented. The more so since Alan was in elderly but very well-cut riding breeches and a conservative blue tee-shirt, Dicky was in baggy jeans which Catherine had got two sizes two big on purpose, because he was growing so fast, and Normie was in the pair of jodhpurs which Saskia had ordered from England at vast expense for Dicky, and he had refused to wear. Normie was also wearing a pair of goggles and was pretty clearly Squadron-Leader Bigglesworth in person. Or, as his father had pointed out, Snoopy.

    Over in Gilbert Street Janet’s preparations for tea for two were well under way and she was giggling madly as Hal, standing very, very close behind her, even closer than the size of her minute kitchen dictated, was trying to persuade her that a large rum and pineapple would be appropriate after all that gardening. Ooh, stop it, Hal! (Mad giggle.) Um, well, she might. Since it was just them, tonight! (Mad giggle.)

    The dairy was closed, of course, and since it was such a lovely day May had given in to Jack’s suggestion that she needn’t fiddle about in the kitchen, what say they had a barbecue instead, eh? Jack was as of this moment fighting with the barbecue and May was sitting placidly in a plastic chair with a shandy in her hand, watching him. Down the back of the garden their kids were fighting, not in their tree house as they had done when they were little, but over whether they would, could or should destroy said tree house in favour of using its components parts to build a proper hut. It was doubtful if May and Jack even heard any of this palaver.

    “Come and have a drink, Jack,” said May peaceably as he swore violently and sucked his hand. “We can always grill those chops.”

    “Eh? No!” he said angrily. “I’m gonna—” He paused. “Beat this bloody thing if it kills me,” he said with a silly grin.

    For once May didn’t tell him not to say bloody, the boys copied him. “Yeah. Leave it for a minute. Want a shandy?”

    For once Jack didn’t point out that it was gnat’s piss and not a man’s drink. “Yeah. Ta.” He subsided onto the matching plastic chair next to hers with a sigh.

    “So, shall we?” said May cautiously, once the level in his glass had sunk dramatically and Jack had sighed and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

    Jack winked. “Not with the bloody kids just down the garden, May.”

    May gave a mad giggle.

    “Uh—well, yeah,” he said slowly. “Expand our empire, eh? Yeah, why not? We got the capital, might as well put it to some use.”

    “Yes. Good!” she beamed.

    “Uh—have to put a decent manager in,” he said cautiously.

    “Yes, of course,” agreed May comfortably.

    “Be a bit of change for us, being entrepreneurs, eh?” he said with a wink.

    “Mm!” said May, nodding madly.

    “Have to go all up-market, buy ourselves a blimmin’ white elephant up Kingfisher Bay,” he drawled.

    “Stop that, Jack,” said May without conviction.

    Jack looked at her sideways. “We oughta give up living behind the shop, ya know, at our ages. And the garden’s getting a bit much, really…”

    “The wilderness, you mean,” said May with a smothered sigh.

    “Yeah.”

    There was a short silence.

    “Well, um, maybe we could think about it,” she conceded.

    “Mm.” Jack sipped shandy. “Some nice new places going up down Gilbert Street," he murmured.

    “They’re for people with young families, Jack!”

    Jack just waited.

    “Um—Kingfisher Bay is nice,” said May on a guilty note.

    Jack grunted noncommittally.

    “Todd’ll be at varsity next year,” said May cautiously.

    “If he gets ruddy Bursary, ya mean. Well, yeah,” he conceded.

    “It is time to make a move, you know,” she murmured.

    “Kingfisher Bay costs an arm and both legs, though, May, ya know that,” he said mildly.

    “Yes, but not Karaka Grove, I mean, not all of it! Because— ”  May launched into a full-blown scheme for buying a poncy unit up there. In fact, Hal Gorman’s precise poncy unit was mentioned, because she was quite sure that it wouldn’t be long before him and Janet—

    Jack had been sure that something like this had been simmering for months. He let the noise die away and then said cautiously: “Well, yeah. Something like that’d be nice, eh? Not so much upkeep.”

    May breathed a stealthy sigh of relief. At least he’d accepted it as a suggestion. Now all she had to do was let it bubble away at the back of that male mind of his, and after a while he’d be thinking it was all his own idea! “Yes. Lovely,” she said placidly.

    Thin end of the wedge, thought Jack Swadling glumly, staring at his huge, untidy back yard and its reliable old plum tree and really decent nectarine tree that he’d put in himself. Oh, well. At least poncy units in Karaka Grove didn’t have giant back yards with grass that grew like billy-o in our climate and that kept ya chained to the ruddy motor-mower every flaming weekend. Better wait a while before he actually gave in, though: if he agreed right away, the shock’d probably kill good old May!

    The Swadlings sat peacefully by their half-assembled barbecue, drinking shandy and building castles in the air. Or at least, in Kingfisher Bay: slightly more attainable.

    It was too early for tea, really, but the pipi gatherers had unanimously declared that they deserved it. So Sol and Euan carefully built a fire and, the pipis having been duly soaked in sea water for at least half an hour—well, almost—boiled them up in a large pot. Not, Euan explained solemnly, a genuine billy: actually it was a proper stock pot, that Simone had had as a wedding present and that she didn’t make stock in. Simone added white wine to this pot instead of the intended bottled water before anyone realised what she was up to, but Sol assured them all that he’d had pipis Marinière before, Jake Carrano had once made ’em for him.

    Simone then produced a positive bundle of French bread, though admitting it was only from The Deli in Puriri, and Michaela produced a basket of her pumpkin scones with a packet of real butter and a jar of home-made blackberry jam. Blackberry and apple.

    Euan grabbed the jar and held it out to Simone and Clara, smiling. “Blackberry & Windfall”, was what it said on the label. In a cramped male hand.

    When everyone was over that Simone produced another bottle of wine for the adults, and a great big plastic bottle of Coke for the kids, and they all settled down to it. Fresh pipis Marinière, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, salty New Zealand butter, and ersatz French bread. Followed by home-made pumpkin scones with real blackberry and windfall jam on top of more of the salty butter. With a choice of Sol’s strong coffee in a thermos or Simone’s even stronger coffee in a thermos.

    “Paradise!” concluded Clara with a laugh.

    They beamed at her.

    “Yup,” conceded Sol.

    “Pretty near,” conceded Euan.

    The consensus was, they’d leave it at that. Provided that your idea of Paradise was pretty down-market, it was as near to Paradise as you could get on this earth, that was for sure.

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/rescue-mission.html