Erewhon

2

Erewhon

    Contrary to popular opinion, Sir Jake Carrano had not personally hand-picked Alan Kincaid for the job of CEO and Vice-Chancellor of Sir George Grey University. In fact, he’d had nothing directly to do with his appointment at all. He did, however, make it his business to have him met at the airport and settled into the nice suite at the Royal Kingfisher Hotel in Kingfisher Bay on Carter’s Inlet that the Board of Directors of the Sir George Grey Enterprise Corporation had booked him into. And he did make it his business to go up there and meet the joker, and to force his wife, who was still tee-ed off because she was sure it was all a deep-laid plot in his solid curly head and because he’d sprung it on her, to invite him to dinner. Now the amiable entrepreneur felt uneasily, standing silently beside Alan Kincaid on the windswept, swampy plain that was the site of the new university, that it had been a bloody awful mistake. The bloke was as cold as a fish and about as approachable as a white pointer.

    “Silent upon a peak in Darien, eh?” he said with an uneasy grin.

    “What? Oh—yes,” replied Alan Kincaid with a polite smile.

    Inwardly Jake sighed. “Um—well, there’s plenty of room,” he said in a would-be rallying tone, waving his hand expansively.

    “Yes. Will this need draining?”

    “Uh—yeah. Right. But not to worry, the Development Company’s had a lot of experience draining swamps in Malaysia and that: this’ll be like falling off a log, to them!” he said quickly.

    “Mm.” Kincaid turned and looked across the inlet to a distant view of the tall slab of the Royal Kingfisher Hotel on the point of the little bay. “I can see the site from my window.”

    “Uh—good,” said Jake limply. “Uh—well, told them to see they gave you one of the best rooms!” he added bracingly.

    Alan Kincaid had already determined that one of the entrepreneur’s companies owned the hotel. “Yes. Thank you,” he replied politely.

    There was a short and on Jake Carrano’s side, agonised pause. Alan Kincaid looked thoughtfully at the dull olive-green vegetation that started more or less at their feet and stretched for about fifty feet into the greenish-grey waters of the inlet. “What is this?”

    “Eh?” said Jake limply.

    “These—er—bushes.”

    Fuck me, thought the New Zealander limply. “Uh—those are mangroves,” he croaked.

    “I see.”

    There was another short pause, during which Jake Carrano began to wonder if the bloody man was taking the Mick. He was used to the climate and he was wearing solid sheepskin-lined boots and a heavy sheepskin jacket over his suit: nevertheless he hugged himself and shivered a little and wished the bloody joker’d say he’d seen enough. Well, there wasn’t anything to see, for cripes’ sake!

    “I was wondering about a Department of Environmental Resources,” Kincaid murmured.

    Jake jumped. “Uh—yeah. Sounds good to me. Well, the environment: In thing, eh? And calling it ‘Resources’, that’d draw in the Indonesians and them, they’re getting into mining and forestry in a big way. Fisheries, too, got some interesting new investigative ventures under way in that direction. Gotta watch out for the Aussies, though: they’re into Indonesia, boots and all. Send their aid types in: you know; and before ya know it BHP or someone’s in there—or one of the subsidiaries, but what the fuck, it’s all the same—and the whole thing’s sewn up.”

    “Yes. It might be wise,” he said slowly, “to make that appointment rather early.”

    “Well, all that’s up to you, mate!” said Jake, too heartily. He looked limply at bloody Carter’s Inlet and tried not to think about his frozen feet, and lunch. And absolutely not about whether bloody Polly was gonna behave herself tonight at dinner.

    “Mm. I was talking,” said Alan Kincaid slowly, “to an interesting fellow at the little corner shop in Carter’s Bay.”

    Thanks to years of exposure to Coronation Street Jake Carrano was able to translate “corner shop” swiftly into “dairy”. He cringed all over. Gawdelpus: Jack Swadling, the driest and most unimpressionable personality in the known universe. “Yeah?” he croaked.

    “He said,” said Alan Kincaid carefully, “that when you bulldozed out Kingfisher Bay the environmentalists kicked up a considerable fuss, but as that was some years back, when they hadn’t yet got into their stride, they made no impression. I seem to recall that he added something about it’s being ‘only mangroves’ that didn’t entirely make sense at the time.”

    It wouldn’t have, no, not if the driest and most unimpressionable personality in the known universe had been on form. Which Jake, who had had a beach house up Carter’s Inlet for over twenty-five years, had never known him not to be. “No,” he muttered. The joker was looking at him expectantly. “Oh!” he said in huge enlightenment. “Right! Get one of ’em on our side, eh? Yeah, good one!”

    “Well, if not precisely one of them, one who can certainly speak their language. And if possible, predict their moves.”

    “Right! Pre-emptive strike!” approved Jake, beaming. He might have bashed almost any other man approvingly on the back at this point, for the move was right up his alley, but with Alan Kincaid he wasn’t even tempted to.

    “What is the local feeling about ‘only mangroves’?” murmured Kincaid.

    “Uh—local as in round Carter’s Bay way?” said Jake cautiously.

    “No, as in in New Zealand as a whole. But I’d quite like to know what we’re taking on here, too.”

    “Well, lemme see.” The entrepreneur scratched his silvered dark curls. “In general the vocal leftie lot have long since latched onto the fact that the mangroves are part of the sacred Environment. They’re the minority, the majority still doesn’t give a fuck, but that doesn’t count, because for one thing, there’s no compulsory voting here. Added to which, this proportional representation shit’s making ’em even more vocal than they used to be.”

    “Yes. What’s their power base?”

    “The media love ’em, mate!” replied Jake with feeling. “Even if the most of them weren’t lefties anyway, which they are, they adore having a go at the government. And this government’s not too keen on the environmental lot, ya see. –A party’s only got to get into power, here, to become the media’s enemy instantly. More or less overnight: you can chart it.”

    “Very like home, then. I’ve always maintained it was the idiot leftist press who brought down the Wilson government,” he said tranquilly.

    Gulping a bit, Jake conceded: “Yeah. Well, that and their general ineptitude: yeah.”

    “Do the environmentalists have a power base, though, joking apart?”

    “I dunno that I was joking. The media’s a powerful force in shaping popular opinion, and on top of that for the last two generations our kids have been taught by thicko teachers imbued with the popular version of Sixties idealism: love is all you need, economy’s a dirty word, and whales are more important than people. –I’m not against whales but I’d sooner see the lot of ’em pass on to the hereafter than see a villageful of little Black kids starve,” he said mildly. “Though unfortunately no-one’s proposed that as the alternative, yet.”

    “No,” said Alan Kincaid unemotionally.

    Jake looked sideways at him for a moment: it was impossible to tell if the bloke agreed or disagreed with a word he’d said; but he continued smoothly enough: “I suppose the trouble is that most of the academics are on the side of the environmentalists, in fact most of ’em are in the movement, boots and all. And they’re bloody vocal, and some of them aren’t too bad at pulling political strings. And the media don’t actually object to using yours truly as a whipping boy,” he added, pulling a face.

    “I see.”

    They both stared silently at the mangroves.

    “I think the Kingfisher Bay lot’ll be all right,” said Jake slowly. “They’re mostly second-homers, or retirees. But mind you, there’ll be the usual syndrome of ‘We’re all right, Jack, but we don’t want any more dirty Developing done up here, ta.’”

    “Yes.”

    He scratched his silvered curls again. “Most of Carter’s Bay’ll be only too glad to see some employment coming into the district. They won’t kick up. Well, the new people that’ve taken over the old saddlery, they’re trendy lefties, ya wanna watch out for them. Mind you, Nineties’ version trendy lefties: don’t half mind making a fast buck out of their trendy leather gear while they preach vegetarianism and the virtues of organic farming,” he noted drily. “Dunno which way Jack Swadling’ll jump: he’s the guy that you spoke to, that owns the dairy. Got a lot of influence. But he’s pretty good at sitting on the fence. And he’s got enough common sense to see that nothing else is going to generate jobs in this neck of the woods.”

    “Hm. So there’ll be no strong local protest?”

    “No. What we’ll see are the trendies from down the Big Smoke. Not till summer, mind you: no-one ever did any tree-squatting in winter, ask the Franklin River lot over in Tazzie if ya don’t believe me.”

    Alan Kincaid smiled just a little and murmured: “I don’t think Carter’s Inlet is on quite the scale of that magnificent wilderness area.”

    “No. Well, very little out here is. And what is, is so bloody sheer and inaccessible that it wouldn’t be economic to even think of it logging it. Or mining it.”

    “Mm.”

    Jake sighed. “Well, if you can find an environmentalist to come out loud and clear on our side, I don’t deny it could make things go a lot smoother—to start with, anyway.”

    “I’ll get onto it.” Alan Kincaid turned his back on the grey-green stretches of inlet and the olive-green stretches of mangrove, and said, gesturing at the dark, lowish, steel-blue growth that now lay to his left, further inland on the northern shore of the inlet: “And what’s that?”

    Jake winced. “You’ve already asked, haven’t you?”

    “No,” he said simply.

    “Jack Swadling dropped a hint?”

    “No. What is it, Carrano?” he said on a grim note.

    “It’s a ruddy bird sanctuary,” admitted Sir Jacob, swallowing.

     There was a considerable pause.

    “Look, Kincaid,” he said, starting to sweat in spite of the cool, damp weather: “I’ve been trying for nearly twenty years to get my mitts on it: the only things that nest round there are ruddy pukekos down by the shore and fourteen million sparrows; no-one’s even seen a bloody native pigeon round these parts for the last hundred and fifty years, the Maoris ate ’em all!”

    Alan Kincaid looked at Jake Carrano’s wide brown face and said nothing.

    Even although he wasn’t looking enquiring or expectant, or anything at all, really, Jake said heavily: “Nobody knows who my parents were: I was dumped at an orphanage when I was about three weeks old. Obviously I’ve got Maori blood, but I must be a mixture: grey eyes, see?”

    Kincaid nodded silently. It was not a Polynesian nose, either: straight, but not flattened.

    “I might be one of them but I am capable of admitting the truth about their treatment of the bloody ethnic flora and fauna,” he said on a sour note.

    “Yes, of course: I beg your pardon, I certainly didn’t intend to imply anything, Carrano.”

    “You didn’t,” he said heavily. “Where were we?”

    “Birds. Swadling mentioned fantails and too-ees,” he said carefully.

    “Tuis my arse! The only tuis up Carter’s Inlet are the ones hanging on the sitting-room wall in my bach, and Jack Swadling knows it!”

    Kincaid looked at him expressionlessly.

    “I suppose most of that was Greek to you,” said Jake ruefully. “It’s a painting. ‘Tui, Carter’s Inlet’. Plural: you don’t add S in Maori. Um, a bach is a holiday house. Down in the south of the South Island they call ’em something else—it’s Scotch, only I’ve forgotten what it is,” he confessed.

    “I think the word is probably crib,” said Kincaid unemotionally.

    “Uh—yeah. Are you Scotch, then?” asked the millionaire baldly.

    “My family is, yes. My father was a dentist in Edinburgh. My mother’s family is English and one of her uncles sent me to an English prep school.—She died when I was three, and my father was only too glad to accept Uncle Peter’s offer.—Then when I was older I won a scholarship to another English school—I think you’d call it a private school. I spent most of my holidays with Uncle Peter. I suppose I’d lost the accent entirely before I was in my teens.”

    “That explains why you sound English, then.”

    “Yes. Fantails?”

    “Uh—oh. Well, ya see a few of them fluttering round the reserve, I suppose; but they’re common as muck. Don’t like the populated areas so much, but there’s still millions of ’em lurking in any and every scrubby bit of wasteland.”

    “Possibly the environmentalists are concerned that the scrubby bits of wasteland may all disappear, and the fantails with them,” he said without emotion.

    Jake smiled a little. “Mm.”

    “What is it?” said Alan Kincaid in some surprise.

    “Oh—nothing. Well, all this here,” he said, turning to wave at the neat slope of the little settlement of Kingfisher Bay off in the distance on the other side of the inlet, with its neat second homes on its neat artificial hillocks of shaven green: “this isn’t the real country, ya know!”

    “No?” said Alan Kincaid politely.

    “No. You get down into cow-cocky country, down the Waikato—or down the King Country!” he said with a little choke of laughter, “and you’ll realise that it’ll be a bloody long time before all the scruffy bits of wasteland disappear from these here shores, matey! Forget all these shiny new-age, Nineties-Generation kids ya keep falling over in the cities: they’re one percent of the population. I grant you eighty percent of the population lives in middle-class suburbia where any blade of grass that dares to raise its head gets nipped off with the whipper-snipper. But out in the real countryside, you realise that Scruffy’s our middle name!” He laughed. “’Specially us brown ones!”

    Alan Kincaid smiled a little but said: “But isn’t that the sort of popular myth that does inevitably lead to the degradation of the environment?”

    “That’s right,” replied Jake Carrano genially. “–Come on. Me feet are frozen: not as young as I was, though don’t tell me wife I said so! I need my lunch.”

    “Of course.” Alan Kincaid followed him back to the large silver Mercedes which, there being no roads approaching the site of Sir George Grey University, the billionaire had simply driven over the scruffy wasteland for a couple of miles. “I think we’d better institute a couple of ornithological research fellowships immediately,” he said smoothly.

    Jake’s heavy shoulders shook. “That’d do it!” he gasped. “Pre-emptive strike, eh?”

    “You agree, then?” said the new Vice-Chancellor as they reached the car.

    “It’s not up to me, Kincaid!”

    Alan Kincaid was very, very sure it was: he looked at him expressionlessly.

    “But yeah, I’d say, do it. Advertise ’em before the buggers can draw breath to squawk about their bloody birds. –Oh, and if anybody mentions terns, they very occasionally come inland,” he said, unlocking the car, “at this time of year, but otherwise you never see ’em as far up the Inlet as the sanctuary. –Get in.”

    They bumped slowly along for two miles, heading for the rough dirt track that eventually would rejoin the main road about half a mile north of the little cracked concrete bridge that spanned Carter’s Inlet near its mouth at Carter’s Bay. Each man experienced a sort of grudging respect for the other that was yet very far from liking or anything approaching friendship. Alan Kincaid had decided he could work with Sir Jake. Jake Carrano had decided that there was more to the bloke than met the eye, but first impressions hadn’t been far wrong: he was a bloody cool customer. And about as approachable as a white pointer.

    Catherine Burchett blew her nose and looked apologetically at Dorothy Perkins. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bawl.”

    “That’s all right. I’d bawl too, if someone proposed wrenching my home out from under me,” the Puriri County Librarian replied sympathetically to their part-time shelver. “You’ve got no legal redress, then?”

    “No.” said Catherine, sniffing and putting her hanky in her smock pocket. “Noelle asked a friend of a friend of hers who’s a lawyer.”

    Dorothy nodded sympathetically. “Well,” she said, pushing a pencil into the short grey frizz that did not exactly flatter her long, amiable, brownish, horse-like face, “fancy a cuppa?”

    Catherine scrambled to her feet in dismay. “I ought to be getting on with my work!”

    “Bullshit, we hired you as a human shelver, not as a mechanical shelver. –Me spies tell me,” said Dorothy dreamily, grabbing her elbow and steering her out of the small cubbyhole of an office allotted to the Puriri County Librarian by the Powers that Were and their cretin of an architect, and towards the cubbyhole of a kitchen that featured no room to sit and nowhere to put one’s bum when bending down to the fridge, which was positioned in the only possible place the architect had left for a fridge, “that in the National Library of Australia, they’ve got these automatic—um—book trolleys, I suppose you’d have to call them,” she admitted, dodging a laden one and eyeing it with dislike—”OY! Jillian! What are all these large-print books doing still in here when Mrs Potter’s on the job out there?—Sorry: as I was saying,” she said, steering Catherine in the direction of the Instant, “the National Library of Australia’s got these miraculous trolleys that follow unseen tracks in the floor and come up si-lent-ly behind you,”—she leered at her—”and suddenly beep at you.”

    “Help,” said Catherine feebly. “Do they have nerves of steel, then, the Australian librarians?”

    Very pleased indeed with this reply, Dorothy shook gently all over her bony frame. “Either that or they’re all heading for nervous breakdowns!” she gasped.

    “Yes.” Catherine smiled at her and wondered if she ought to tell her there was a smudge of green felt-tip on her chin.

    “That must have put a few little men in brown cotton coats out of work,” said Dorothy dreamily, tapping the Zip. The water level on the indicator did not respond to this gesture and she stuck her head out into the workroom and cried: “OY! Who forgot to fill the Zip AGAIN? –As if I need to ask,” she muttered, withdrawing her head and turning taps briskly.

    “It’s that new film,” murmured Catherine excusingly. Today was Thursday and Thursday was always Bridie’s day for doing the Zip. “She’s gone all funny over it. Um, I’ve forgotten its name. You know, it’s got that actor in it that she likes. Um, I’ve forgotten his name, too.”

    Alone of the movie-going world. Dorothy looked at her with affection and said only: “Mm. How do you like your Instant?”

    “If there’s enough milk,” said Catherine cautiously, “quite milky and very weak, please.”

    “Uh-huh.” Dorothy, who was very tall, endeavoured to remove the milk from the bottom compartment of the fridge door where some CRETIN had placed it, without bending at the waist. “What cretin put the milk down here?” she gasped as her knee-joints cracked loudly. She poured, and replaced the milk in the correct place, to wit within the interior of the fridge proper, on the higher shelf. “What I shall do,” she said thoughtfully, “is meditate ways and means to take that bloody bottom door-compartment right out.”

    “Ye-es… It’s all plastic, though, isn’t it?”

    “Mm. If necessary I’ll simply break it. Accidentally-on-purpose.” Dorothy winked one bright brown eye.

    Catherine went into a terrific giggling fit, so Dorothy concluded she was over it. Well, for the moment, poor cow. This Cousin Whatsisname sounded a right shit. She saw a goodly proportion of the pale brown, Instant-flavoured milk and water safely inside Catherine before wandering gently back to her own cubbyhole. The trolley-load of large-print books had mysteriously vanished, but Dorothy, who was even more in charge of her library than she appeared to be, was not surprised.

    Catherine finished her coffee quickly and went off to shelve the 000s and 600s. They always let her do them, there were lots of them because of all the little boys in Puriri County that were interested in aeroplanes and motorbikes and computers and that sort of thing.

    … “How is she?” asked Janet, the Deputy, later in the morning. Catherine in her pale blue library smock over her faded pink track-suit could now be observed kneeling in the 621s.

    “Bloody: how would you be if your house was about to be sold out from under you?” replied her boss genially.

    Janet folded Overdues carefully. “You’ve got green felt-tip on your chin.”

    “I know. Indelible green felt-tip.”

    “Can we give her more to do?” asked Janet, folding.

    “Yeah, she could fold Overdues instead of them whose vastly inflated salaries over-qualify ’em for it,” replied Dorothy instantly. She leaned on the part of the loans counter that constituted the Overdues Desk and began helping Janet to fold overdue notices. “The only trouble is, sensible and cost-effective though such a move might be, it won’t balance the books, staff-numbers-wise.”

    “No,” agreed Janet simply.

    “Might manage another half-day for her, though.”

    “Good.”

    “She needs a decent job,” said Dorothy, after a few dozen more Overdues had been laboriously folded and inserted into window-envelopes with the printed names and addresses in the window. Quite a trick to it: the library’s computer program, which did actual library jobs quite well, Dorothy had chosen it, did not like standard New Zealand window-envelopes.

    “Yes, but can she do anything? I mean, is she qualified?” asked Janet. “She had a baby straight after school, didn’t she?”

    “Mm. That was twenty-one years agone.”

    “So?”

    “You’ve got a point. Uh—well, yes, she has got a degree, actually, Janet. Done laboriously part-time, I gather. Straight C’s. She said that she used to throw up all night before her exams. Failed all the actual exams, got straight A’s for her assignments.”

    “What? When did they introduce Continuous Assessment?” said Janet in confusion.

    “Early enough,” she groaned.

    “Oh. I see what you mean. Yes. –What in?”

    “B.A., with some botany thrown in for good measure.”

    “Oh. That’s not much use. What about other skills? Word-processing?”

    “Don’t think she knows the difference between a TV and a computer. And can’t drive either of ’em.”

    “Oh. That reminds me, are you going to the demo of the new joint national libraries thingy?”

    “No: it won’t be a demo, they’re still only in the planning stage that they have actually dared to call Stage Zero—probably because their computer starts counting from nought: don’t say it,” she warned; Janet swallowed a smile. “And I’m not interested in bloody IBM SP2 parallel processors sited in Canberra; what I wanna see is our interloan system improved to the stage where we can get a book up from town—an hour away on the motorway,”—she noted evilly, “in under a week!”

    “We can, if we have to,” said Janet mildly.

    “Yeah: one of us drives in and gets it!”

    “Service with a smile!” concluded Janet, laughing. “–Ooh, here’s one for Lady Carrano!” she squeaked in dismay.

    “Burn it!” hissed Dorothy, cowering and looking over her shoulder in horror.

    “She was in last week. She said that all he’s interested in is this blimming new user-pays university of his. I think she’s really cross about it.”

    “Mm. But surely even she can’t have envisaged that he’d not only set up a brand-new university, he’d pay the kids to go to it?” said Dorothy with a twinkle in her clever brown eye.

    Janet missed the twinkle, she was tearing Lady Carrano’s overdue notice up into tiny, tiny pieces. “No. What she was hoping for was that he’d pay for the kids that want to go to the existing universities.”

    “Yeah,” said Dorothy with a sigh. “Well, that’s charity. Building great big, new user-pays universities is encouraging the development of the economic infrastructure or some such mind-melting crap.”

    “Ye-es. Don’t you mean mind-bending?”

    “Mind-melting,” said Dorothy firmly, striding off.

    “We could offer you another half-day’s shelving,” she said kindly to Catherine.

    “Thanks!” she gasped, very pink—Dorothy couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or gratification. “But would it be on a different day?”

    “Uh… Choose your day,” offered Dorothy, scratching the frizz with the pencil.

    “It’s the travelling, you see,” said Catherine apologetically.

    Wincing, the Puriri County Librarian agreed she’d overlooked that. Sixteen dollars’ worth of shelving money didn’t go all that far when you had to shell out six dollars for the bus, did it? “Well, do Monday afternoons for us!” she said breezily.

    Catherine went very red, this time clearly with embarrassment. “There won’t be enough!”

    “Only because you do too good a job for us in the mornings!” said Dorothy with a laugh. “The last Monday-morning shelver we had seemed to consider the job finished at ten-thirty.”

    “But that’s when a lot of them start coming in,” said Catherine, genuinely puzzled.

    “Right! No, seriously, we can use you on Monday afternoon: there’ll be shelf-tidying if we run out of shelving.”

    “Well, okay: if you’re sure?” said Catherine shyly, smiling.

    Lying in her teeth, Dorothy assured her she was sure, and returned to Janet’s side. “I’ve given her Monday arvos.”

    “Good,” said Janet placidly. “She hasn’t had her tea-break,” she noted.

    “No, that’ll be because I made her knock off for a cuppa after she’d burst into tears,” said Dorothy with a groan. “Unique amongst shelvers,” she added deeply.

    “Well, yes!” Janet folded Overdues carefully. Automatically Dorothy began to help her. “Dorothy, you know what you said about those IBM parallel P.S. thingies?”

    “Mm?” returned Dorothy neutrally. Many librarians were very computer-literate. Janet wasn’t one of them.

    “Um—I’m almost sure Lady Carrano said they were having some of them at Sir George Grey. Well, she said Sir Jake was going on about them.”

    “Really?” Her eyes narrowed. “That’s interesting news.”

    Janet looked up at her hopefully. “Do you think Jack might come back?”

    Dorothy’s brother Jack was a bright boy, he didn’t play with ’em, he built ’em. But his second marriage had busted up a couple of years back, and— Well, no harm in getting all the gen. “I’ll give her a ring.”

    Janet nodded pleasedly as her boss hurried off.

    She was back in ten minutes looking glum.

    “Weren’t they those parallel thingies, after all?” asked Janet sympathetically.

    “Huh? Oh: yeah. I’ll let Jack know.” She looked gloomily at Catherine over in the 600s. “Polly Carrano can’t think of anyone at all that needs someone to do housework, and of course down here there’d be the bloody bus fares anyway, and her spies reckon there’s three Carter’s Bay ladies that have got Kingfisher Bay sewn up, plus that wedding-cake condo thing Sir J.’s put on the Point at Carter’s Bay. They fill in for one another when they’re sick and are reputed within a ninety-nine point nine percent chance of probability,” she said, her eyes narrowing as young Terry Potter wandered up to the glass case sheltering their priceless reproduction copies of copies, “to be good at selling themselves.”

    “Well, blow!” said Janet crossly.

    “Yeah.”

    “There’s a teenager over by the gl—”

    “Terry Potter. Owns a shiny Swiss Army knife. Excuse me.”

    Janet watched with interest as Dorothy’s bony form came silently up behind Terry Potter as he operated on the glass case and apparently murmured something in his ear. Terry Potter jumped ten feet, turned beetroot and exited at a rapid shamble.

    “It’s not what she says, exactly, it’s how she says it,” murmured Janet with an admiring sigh. She got on with the Overdues, as Dorothy was seen to embark on a little tour of her domain.

    Catherine continued to shelve the 600s, quietly and methodically, unaware that her financial situation had recently occupied the joint minds of the Puriri County Librarian and the wife of Puriri’s local billionaire. As she shelved she thought about Mondays. Say she got up an hour earlier and say Jenny Fermour agreed to look after Dicky before school, then she could get the early bus from Carter’s Bay and start work an hour earlier. She’d have to have an hour for lunch—Dorothy made everybody take an hour, she said only old ladies like her were allowed to cheat on their stomachs: their digestions were past praying for. Would Dorothy let her do three hours instead of four in the afternoon? Because she could fit that in, just. Lucy Tamehana probably wouldn’t mind if Dicky went home with Shane just on Mondays, he wouldn’t be a nuisance, the two of them would just play quietly with the computer. That might work. Only she couldn’t repay Lucy: she never needed Shane looked after: she had three smaller ones so she was home all the time. Though maybe if she wanted to go into town Catherine could look after the littlies! So, say she worked until three and caught the five past three bus, then Lucy would have had him for just on an hour. That might be all right. Though it was an awful cheek to ask her.

    But she had to make some money somehow if they were going to have to rent a house, it was bad enough paying rent to Mr Kincaid. Gerry Fermour from the neighbouring farm said it was peanuts, agricultural land round their way was worth more than that even if the gorse was creeping back onto the property (glare: he was very hot on gorse, was Gerry). This was true, but nevertheless the rent ate up all Dicky’s child allowance and all the actual money that Catherine earned, and made inroads into her Benefit. If you earned too much the Social Security took your Benefit away, but Catherine had never yet been in nearly that position. In a way it was a pity that Daisy hadn’t been a bull calf, because she might have run him as a steer and eventually sold him, or eaten him. Though Gerry Fermour would pay them for Daisy’s milk once she had some. Catherine began to think about Uncle Bob’s boat. Krish reckoned he could get it going. If he could, could she possibly catch fish from it? She didn’t know anything about fish except that they were edible and they lived in the sea and were free if you could manage to catch them. On the other hand, where could she park a boat if they were thrown off Toetoe Bay Farm?

    Sniffing hard, Catherine got on resolutely with her shelving.

    Alan Kincaid had already discovered there were very few shops in Carter’s Bay. Though more than there were in the much more up-market Kingfisher Bay, which apart from the boutiques selling tat in the hotel lobby, featured only one small block of three stores overlooking the bay, one being a boating supplies establishment, one a crafts shop with some very interesting pottery in its window, and the third being empty.

    Carter’s Bay had once, possibly back in the 1920s but almost certainly no later than that, been a prosperous enough little country centre. It featured an imposing cream building with a short tower, inscribed over the portal with the date “1919”, and the words “Carter’s Bay Post Office”. Closer inspection revealed it was permanently closed. Further up the street towards what might once have been the central cross-roads of the small community was an almost equally imposing building of probably about the same vintage: very similar in style, but lacking a tower. It was rather unfortunately painted an offensive shade of pink. Closer inspection revealed that though it was liberally adorned with BNZ signs and had the words “Bank Of New Zealand” inscribed over its portal it was closed. That was, no banking functions were carried out there and the ground floor had been turned into a video-hire place. On the opposite side of the wide, steeply cambered main street there was a large white-goods store which also seemed to sell the odd piece of farm machinery: Wrightson’s. Modern, bright and cheerful-looking, though the two-storeyed building which sheltered its refrigerators and dishwashing machines behind large picture windows looked as if it belonged in a Western. Next to that was a butcher’s establishment, permanently closed. Then there was a gap, and then a block of small shops, mostly closed. The two which appeared to be in business were Swadling’s dairy, which Alan Kincaid was now beginning to realise was not customarily referred to in these climes as a corner shop, though that was what it was, and a saddlery.

    The saddlery looked quite interesting: it had a well polished old saddle in its window along with bits and pieces of clearly more recent date. It was a windy, cold, miserable sort of day with lowering clouds presaging rain, but Alan was used to much worse weather and he stood outside the saddlery for some time, contemplating the saddle. It was not an English saddle but Australian-style. Doubtless what was commonly used out here. Nevertheless… He was not unmindful of what Sir Jake had said about the new owners of the old saddlery. With certain mental reservations which did not all relate to the style of the newer artefacts in the window, he went in.

    The young woman behind the darkly oiled counter took him back abruptly over twenty years. She wore a purple-toned Indian silk scarf tied round her forehead, the which did not quite succeed in flattening her riotous ginger curls, which were chopped straight off at shoulder level. No make-up except some smudgy brown eye-shadow and a very pale lipstick. Her skin was very freckled. One long, heavy earring of antiqued silver metal dangled down her neck from her left ear. Her garments were a series of dark layers: from his side of the counter he couldn’t see whether she was wearing a skirt or slacks, but the upper layers consisted of a thin knit jumper in charcoal wool, under two waistcoats. The under and longer waistcoat, open over the charcoal wool, was of some dark brown, slightly crumpled cotton material. The second waistcoat, also worn open, was much shorter. It was heavy black cotton, with a wide embroidered edging of coarse black thread and tiny mirrors. Round her neck dangled an assortment of long necklaces: small lumps of pottery on a leather strip, small pieces of shell on a hairy rope, and tarnished silver beads. Another Indian scarf, this one in shades of dull blue and grey, was draped negligently about her shoulders. The total effect was entirely ghastly and Alan Kincaid found he was involuntarily asking himself whether the Indian gear of twenty-odd years back had given that ghastly, gloomy effect? He didn’t think so: he remembered it as very pretty, if also very silly. But no doubt he was getting old.

    “Can I help you?” she said politely.

    “I’m not sure. I may be looking for a saddle in the near future.”

    Immediately she showed him the ones they had in the shop. –It was a long skirt. A very dark brown wool.

    “These are the styles favoured locally, are they?” he said Alan politely.

    “Um—yes,” said Penny Bergen, very taken aback.

    “I see. Thank you so much for taking the trouble to show me.”

    “No, wait!” gasped Penny as the man with the posh English voice and the extremely expensive-looking heavy overcoat turned to go.

    “Yes?” he said politely.

    “Um—would you like to—um—talk to my husband?” gulped Penny, who was usually not in the habit of gulping, in fact more in the habit of being tolerantly superior towards the would-be pony clubbers towing their innocent mums or doting grandmas, and the middle-aged would-be trendy ladies who’d daringly decided they wanted an alternative to the tennis club, who were their main customers. “He makes them, you see!”

    “Makes them to order?” asked the man. His voice was very polite but somehow, whether it was the way he raised his eyebrows very slightly and almost smiled but not quite, Penny couldn’t have said, but she felt as if she’d been dipped in boiling oil and was now being turned very slowly over a nicely burning fire. With small devils with pitchforks poking at her tenderer parts to see if she was done. The fact that she could see clearly that he was a dish, even if he was bald and quite old, didn’t help one iota. Penny Bergen at this moment did not positively regret having been extremely tolerantly superior towards young Jimmy Burton from Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies at Kingfisher Bay who had a hopeless crush on her, but she did begin to veer towards a mood of almost fellow-feeling with the inept Jimmy. “Yes,” she said. “Well, if he’s asked.’

    “I see. I’m interested in an English saddle.”

    “Do you do dressage, then?” said Penny, trying to sound bright and with-it, and as if she knew what she was talking about. Which she did, that was the maddening part!

    “No. I ride English-style.”

    “Yes, of course, you would!” –Help, this was getting worse, not better! Everything she said sounded more inane than the last! “Um—Tim’s through here, if you’d like to come through!” she said on a gasp, opening the door to the back.

    Tim had given her strict instructions that if any customer wanted to talk to him—none had, so far—Penny was to give him a bell on the intercom. He looked up with a start.

    “I’m sorry, Tim,” said Penny lamely. “This—um—gentleman—um, is interested in English saddles. Um, do you want him in here?”

    Before Tim could answer the man had come in and was looking around him with a pleased smile, saying: “Please do want me in here! What a wonderful smell! It’s a real old saddlery, isn’t it?”

    “Yeah; we haven’t done anything to the back rooms,” admitted Tim, attempting to rise from his table-top.

    “No, please don’t get up!” said Alan Kincaid with a laugh. “It must be forty years since I saw a saddle-maker doing real hand stitching.”

    “Yeah, well, we do do a lot of it on the machines, these days,” said Tim with a grin.

    “Tim likes the handwork. Some of the Kingfisher Bay people ask for American-style tooled leather, he can do that, too. He puts far too much handwork into them, really,” said Penny on a disapproving note.

    Alan turned and smiled at her. “He couldn’t possibly put too much handwork into them, Mrs— I’m sorry, I don’t know your name?”

    “Tim and Penny Bergen,” said Tim quickly.

    Limply Penny shook hands with the man, not hearing who he said he was. Limply she watched as he shook hands with Tim. “Um—I’ll get back to the shop, shall I?” she said feebly.

    Tim was showing the man the piece he was working on; he didn’t look up. “Yeah, righto, love,” he said vaguely. “And a cup of coffee and a gingernut or two’d hit the spot round about now, eh?”

    “Righto,” said Penny feebly in the vernacular of her childhood which she’d long since forsworn, tottering out.

    As he was leaving, about an hour later, having ordered a hand-stitched English saddle made to measure, the man said: “Oh, by the way, I wonder if you can direct me to Toto Bay, Mrs Bergen?”

    Penny looked blank. “Um—no. Well, we haven’t been in the district all that long. Um—is it near Pipi Bay?” she added feebly.

    “I’ve no idea, I’m afraid.”

    “Um—ask at the dairy, they’ll know,” said Penny feebly.

    “I shall. And I’ll see you very soon,” he said with a smile that went right through Penny Bergen in an instant, descended to her knees, and turned them to jelly.

    “Yes! Righto!” she gasped. “Bye-bye, then!”

    Saying politely: “Good-bye, Mrs Bergen,” the man went out.

    Penny staggered limply into the back room. “Crikey Dick!” she said feelingly in the accents of her childhood.

    Tim was stitching again. He glanced up with a grin. “High-powered, i’n’ ’e?” He grabbed the last gingernut off the plate and carefully placed it, whole, in his mouth.

    “Don’t do that,” said Penny limply.

    Tim just winked.

    “Don’t tell me he’s one of those dim second-homers from Kingfisher Bay!” she said.

    Tim waited for her to say “with the Ralph Lauren sunglasses and the Porsche-clones” but she didn’t, for a wonder. He sucked the gingernut hard, waggling his eyebrows in an effort to intimate he was about to produce speech.

    “What?” said Penny crossly.

    Tim swallowed the remains of the gingernut and said: “New Vice-Chancellor. Kincaid.”

    After quite some time she said: “It wasn’t!”

    Tim merely raised his eyebrows.

    “It can’t have been,” said Penny in a shaken voice.

    “Yes: don’t you remember we saw him and Sir Jake Carrano on the News—um—about three nights back?”

    She obviously did, but she maintained feebly: “How could it have been?”

    “Easy, there isn’t anywhere else up here he coulda bought a saddle.”

    After a moment Penny said grimly: “That’s not funny!”

    “It was him. Dare say he likes riding.”

    “Tim, Carrano Development’s spies will have told him we’re opposed to the development of the northern shore of the Inlet!” she cried.

    “You are, you mean. No, all right: I’m pro-environment, too. But a nice, big, shiny university just over the way ’ud be handy when the kids grow up.”

    “They’re five and six!” she cried.

    “So?”

    Penny scowled. “It’s a—a ruse. To soften us up!”

    “Very likely, but I’m not turning work away. It’s not as if there’s all that much of it,” he said pointedly.

    Penny pouted. “It looks as if the Kingfisher Bay Pony Club’s going ahead.”

    “Yeah, maybe. It’d be going ahead a lot faster if Kingfisher Bay wasn’t full of grannies and weekenders.” Tim sucked the end of his thread. “Has it occurred to you if they build this new varsity there’ll be umpteen lecturers with young families looking for a place to settle within cooee of their work?”

    “Yes! That’s what I’ve been saying: it’s the thin end of the wedge!”

    “Nice upper-middle-class young families,” said Tim dreamily. “Prime pony-club material.”

    Penny glared.

    “Do you wanna make a go of this business, not to mention of this marriage, or do ya wanna gratify your ruddy parents’ dearest wish?” he said.

    “Tim, it means compromising our principles!” she cried.

    Tim sighed. “Have you actually looked closely at that scrubland over there that Sir Jake’s planning to whack his new university onto?”

    “N— Not that closely. That isn’t the point!”

    “No. But it’s part of the point.” He took up his work again and began to whistle.

    Penny marched out to the shop, scowling.

    Tim waggled his eyebrows a bit but didn’t cease whistling or working.

    In the little dairy, Alan Kincaid duly asked for directions. “I did ask Polly Carrano at dinner the other night,” he said with a cool smile, “but she said the name wasn’t familiar.”

    No, well, it wouldn’t be, mate, if you pronounced it “toto”, or “toe-toe” as she is wrote, thought Jack Swadling drily. He was pretty sure Polly Carrano had been taking the Mick: well into her thirties, she was still very much in the category of gorgeous bird, but she was also very much of a hard case. No doubt it took one to know one. Jack rubbed his narrow chin. “It is pretty obscure,” he admitted temperately.

    “I certainly couldn’t find it on the map,” agreed the enquirer.

    He gave him another cool smile but Jack wasn’t taken in by it for a single, solitary. It was one of them smiles what high-up what-nots that were so high up they didn’t have to bother about making themselves unpleasant to the little people favoured you with, meanwhile not actually seeing you at all: geddit? Not that they got much of that in Carter’s Bay: more the socially insecure from the triple-garaged holiday mansions in Kingfisher Bay, that were so busy patronising you they never noticed whether or not you were taking the Mick, so after a bit you gave up bothering.

    “It’s a bit north of Carter’s Bay. You go over the bridge,” he offered.

    “Yes?”

    “Uh—” Jack cleared his throat. Actually, it was bloody difficult to explain. “On your right as you go north. –Well, would be, the sea’s on that side,” he conceded.

    May came out of the back room, looking busy. Artificially busy, Jack could spot it a mile off with his eyes shut and both hands tied behind him. “Jack, just tell the poor man!” she said brightly. “Hullo, again. How are you this morning?” she said brightly to Mr Pommy Up-Himself with a terrifically bright smile that wouldn’t have deceived a purblind child of two with Down’s Syndrome.

    “Very well, thank you,” replied Mr Pommy Up-Himself politely.

    May took that without a blink and added brightly: “It was Toetoe Bay you wanted, wasn’t it? We pronounce it ‘toy-toy’,” she explained brightly.

    “The Maoris that can actually speak the lingo pronounce it toetoe,” drawled Jack.

    Ignoring that one superbly, May continued brightly: “You go over the bridge on the main north highway, and about two miles further on, no, I suppose it’s only four K, you turn off where the signpost points to Grey’s Beach.”

    “Grey’s Beach? Would that be after Governor Grey—Sir George Grey—I wonder?” he asked with polite interest.

    “No,” said Jack baldly.

    Looking only slightly disconcerted, May objected: “It could be, Jack.”

    “No. In Dad’s day the Greys still lived there. Had a pig farm, you could smell it for five miles down the highway in either direction, and right in Carter’s Bay itself in a northerly.”

    “I never heard that, Jack!” she objected.

    “No, well, old Mr Grey passed on when Dad was about sixteen, you wouldn’t have.”

    “I see,” said Alan Kincaid quickly before the owners of Carter’s Bay’s one little corner shop could actually come to blows. “So I head for Grey’s Beach, do I?”

    “Uh—no,” admitted Jack.

    “No: you only take the turn-off,” said May, bright again. “Then about half a mile in, you turn off at the back road, it used to be the old road,” she explained clearly. “That’s on your left. You can’t miss it. It’s the only turn-off on Grey’s Beach Road. Um—well, its name isn’t Grey’s Beach Road,” she said, becoming slightly flustered, “but—”

    “Yeah. It’s a dirt road, but wide enough for two cars,” said Jack.

    “I wouldn’t say that, Jack!”

    “No, well, the ruts go down the middle of it, I’ll grant ya: but I once met Gerry Fermour coming along it in his truck, and we managed to squeeze by each other.”

    “That’s all right, then!” said May brightly to Alan Kincaid.

    “Mm. Er—Is Toy-toy Bay sign-posted, then?” he said carefully.

    “No,” said Jack instantly.

    “Um—well, no-o… No, I think he’s right!” she said brightly. “You just turn off where it says ‘Fermour’ and you see the letterboxes.”

    “And the bobby-calf pen,” noted Jack laconically.

    “He won’t know what that is, Jack!”

    “It’s there, though.”

    “I see,” said Alan Kincaid hurriedly. “This turnoff is now on my right, would that be correct?”

    May looked at her hands in bewilderment. Jack merely looked on sardonically. “Right… Yee-uss... Yes, that’s right; you must have a good bump of locality!” she decided brightly. “You go down Fermours’ Road for about—um—would it be two K, Jack?”

    “Depends how far you mean.”

    “Jack! To the gate!”

    “Oh. Right. Yep, be about a mile to the gate. That’s on your left, five-barred. ’E’s put up a poncy notice on it: ‘Fermours’ Farm’, and sometimes they advertise eggs,” he added with a slight sniff.

    “Yes. And it sort of looks as if the road ends there,” said May on a cautious note, “and it’s kind of turned slightly to the—um—left: only it hasn’t!”

    “No. You don’t turn in at Fermours’ gate—’e goes ropeable, by the way, if you leave it open,” noted Jack: “No: you bear rightish and then carry on straight down. The road runs right down to the sea.”

    “Jack, he doesn’t want the beach!” said Mrs Swadling scornfully.

    Alan Kincaid was not aware he had mentioned in the hearing of either of them that he wanted the farm, not the bay. He was considerably taken aback, but did not allow this to show on his face.

    —More po-faced than ever, registered Jack Swadling: hasn’t dawned on him that everyone knows everyone else’s business in Carter’s Bay. “Is it the farm you’re looking for, then?” he said neutrally.

    “Yes. Toy-toy Bay Farm,” said Alan Kincaid, carefully polite.

    “Right. It’s the last property, on your left, right on the coast. Look for the old puriri, that’ll mean you’re nearly there. There isn’t a proper gate, just one gatepost, and the stretch of fence there’s looped onto it at the top with a bit of wire and halfway down there’s a chain looped round it.” He scratched his narrow jaw. “If her daughter’s been recently, you’ll see the tire marks going in.”

    “It can be rather muddy,” explained May.

    “I see. But—er—there is vehicle access?”

    “Oh, yes, you can drive right up to the house!” she assured him brightly.

    “I see.”

    “And for God’s sake close the gate after you,” said Jack heavily.

    “Of course.”

    “The thing is,” elaborated May: “Buttercup, that’s her cow, she got out onto the road once and wandered all the way up to the Fermours’ and there was this horrid man in one of those sports cars, he hit her and never even stopped! Only little Harry Fermour, he saw it and ran and got his dad. So Gerry got the vet straight away. She was horribly bruised, poor old girl, and she’d cracked a bone in her shin, and the vet said if it was anyone else’s cow he’d have put it down, but he put some plaster of Paris on her leg and she managed on three legs for ages, it didn’t worry her at all! –Not like horses, they shoot horses, don’t they?”

    Alan Kincaid blinked, but she was obviously totally sincere. “I believe that’s so.”

    “So Mrs Burchett’s always terribly anxious about her gate, even though now,” she said, giving him an artless look, “the paddock’s got that lovely new fence and gate, of course!”

    “He doesn’t want to know all that, May,” said Jack Swadling in a terrifically neutral voice.

    Alan returned with a completely straight face: “I gather a puriri is a tree?”

    The man actually blinked. “Uh—yeah. There’s hedges along most of that road, but—”

    “It’s very pretty, especially in spring!” interrupted May brightly.

    “Yeah. Trouble is, once you get down to Toetoe Bay Farm, there’s lots of trees mixed in with the hedges: old Bob Kincaid let the place go to seed in his later years. Well, who wants to milk fifty town-milk cows in their eighties?” he noted by the by. “Uh—you’d do better to watch out for a baldish bit of fence, with a piece of chain through it,” he added kindly.

    “Thank you, I shall.”

    “I don’t think you can miss it!” decided May brightly.

    “No. Thank you so much,” said Alan Kincaid with a polite smile.

    “Can we sell you anything today?” asked Jack, poker-face.

    “Yes, thank you. I wonder if you sell boxes of chocolates?”

    They did, though nothing much above the Cadbury’s Roses level. Limply Jack sold him a box of them.

    There was dead silence after his straight back in the expensive overcoat had disappeared through the shop door. They heard his car start up. And depart.

    Eventually May said with an effort: “I hope those chocolates are for her, that’s all!”

    “Uh—Mrs Burchett? Yeah, that’ll sweeten the pill!” he said sourly. “A whole box of Cadbury’s Roses!”

    May nodded sadly.

    Jack looked at her cautiously. Finally he said weakly: “What exactly did Polly Carrano say, when she was in earlier?”

    May swallowed. “She said if he came in, not to let him know on pain of death she was up the Inlet at their bach today.”

    Jack winced. “Understandable.”

    Silence fell again.

    The sky cleared a little and pale watery blue patches appeared in it as Alan Kincaid drove carefully north. The surface of the main north highway was quite acceptable, but the dip in the low bridge over Carter’s Inlet was nasty. Sir Jake had assured him a new bridge was about to go up and had pointed out the site for it. Today Alan could see that some heavy machinery had moved onto the place where the southern approach would be: good. He had had his doubts about Jake Carrano but there was nothing wrong with the paperwork setting up the new university and nothing wrong with the guarantors. Well, it was a gamble for him, but it was—provisionally—looking like a gamble that might pay off.

    He could have stayed in Britain and eventually been appointed as Vice-Chancellor of another, older university than the two he had already adorned in that position. Or there was a senior position as ministerial adviser. But Alan Kincaid, as well of course as distrusting them, disliked politicians intensely, though this had never been allowed to show in the days when he had been heavily involved in educational committee work; and then, there was only limited scope for a Vice-Chancellor of an older-established institution. Very possibly he could have put some of his theories into practice by the time he was due to retire, yes. But he was fifty-two, now: did he want to spend the next thirteen years in fighting the entrenched old guard of such an institution in order merely to make some slight progress which the next V-C would all too probably rescind less than a year after he stepped down? No, on the whole, he didn’t. It would have meant prestige and very possibly a knighthood and of course an extremely comfortable lifestyle. As Alan was not a married man he had not had to let such considerations weigh with him. He’d come out to this Godforsaken hole at the other side of the world because… Well, because it represented the only real challenge that had appeared on his horizon in the last ten years.

    And Godforsaken though it undoubtedly was, he reflected, turning with distaste off the decent surface of the main highway and onto the stony ruts and potholes of Grey’s Beach road—which appeared to have no name at all, merely an AA signpost indicating that it did indeed lead to Grey’s Beach—at least it didn’t have the glaring disadvantages of a vice-chancellorship in a third-world university, of which he had been offered not a few over the last ten years or so: powder-keg political situations. abysmal educational standards amongst both student body and academics alike, rotten teaching facilities, nothing that could be called a library, no access to electronic resources of any kind, and widespread corruption. He had spent a semester visiting third-world universities on a research project, during which he’d discovered that for the payment of only very small sums he could have made his research figures come out any way he desired them to. Of course every form of cheating known to humanity took place in examinations and term-papers. But that the local academics and administrators who had volunteered to assist him should take it as the norm that he would want to manipulate his results—! No. You could wear yourself out in a lifetime of vain struggle in that sort of environment, and Alan Kincaid was not the stuff of which martyrs were made. At least in New Zealand he’d be able to have an honest shot at the job. And after—?

    Alan Kincaid shrugged a little. Cambridge? The last five years before retirement? It was a nice idea but he didn’t think, in the course of a relatively successful career, he’d kissed quite the right arses for that one. Harvard? Dream on: they’d never let a Limey in, not at that level. Well, wait and see. Sir George Grey would be a useful stepping-stone, whilst offering a real opportunity to stretch his wings with very little interference or opposition. He smiled grimly, and jolted right past the turnoff that was the only approach to Toetoe Bay.

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/cold-comfort-farm.html