Going Steadily Downhill

42

Going Steadily Downhill

    Jack had come home after not quite a week in hospital without letting anyone know. Impartial observers, though there were few of those in the environs of Carter’s Bay, might have said this was an omen. Beth was in the kitchen getting the lunch when he arrived; as it was the week after Easter it was Murray’s mid-semester break. When Thomas had discovered that Mrs Manning was due to vanish with her kids on their own holidays that week, he had insisted that Beth take leave. She could call it compassionate leave or whatever she liked, but it wouldn’t come off her official paid holiday allocation.

    “Hi,” said a voice from the doorway just as she was getting a carton of eggs out of the giant Perkins fridge.

    Beth screamed, and threw the eggs in the air.

    “Shit,” said Jack numbly, looking at the mess.

    “How did you get here?” she gasped.

    Jack leaned heavily on his crutches. “Taxi. Boy, these things sure are Hell to manage, those shots on the weepies where the crippled hero hops round nimbly like a frog sure got it wrong. That or all soap actors are strong as horses and fit as fleas. Sorry, but I better sit, I’m under strict orders from Smith not to put any weight on this leg.” He sank onto a chair, panting slightly.

    “I suppose what you mean is,” said Beth on a very weak note—none of this was how she had envisaged Jack’s homecoming: “that he ordered you to go straight to bed the moment you got home, and only let you out of hospital because—”

    “Because I was being such a pain in the ass,” finished Jack cheerfully.

    “No!” she gulped, going scarlet. “Because you promised to obey his orders.”

    “Yeah, well, that, too. You better clean that up.”

    “Yes.” Numbly Beth fetched the plastic sponge from the bench.

    “Not with that: it’s not a floor cloth, Beth!”

    “Oh.”

    “Use the paper towels. Haven’t you ever seen those ads?”

    “No.” Beth looked dubiously at the fancy paper-towel dispenser on Jack’s kitchen wall. “They’re terribly expensive.”

    “Rubbish. Use them.”

    Feebly Beth mopped up broken eggs with wads of expensive paper towels. Throwing the mess into the kitchen tidy before Jack could even gasp: “That garbage bin isn’t lined!”

    “What?” she said feebly.

    “That garb—uh, kitchen tidy isn’t lined,” he repeated. “Lined. Didn’t you find the liner bags?”

    “No. They’ll be in a plastic packet marked ‘Kitchen Tidy Liner Bags,’ will they?”

    “Yeah. That drawer, there.”

    Beth looked in it. It contained a huge selection of plastic bags, all in their packets. There were, and the packet was. She removed all the rubbish from the tidy and put it into the bag. Then, saying nothing, she went through to the laundry, where she rinsed the tidy in the tub, pursued by Jack’s yell of: “Cold water first, Beth!”

    “Fussy,” she said sourly under her breath, making a ferocious face out of the laundry’s small window.

    “What were you making?” he asked peaceably as she came back and put the tidy-bag full of rubbish into the bin.

    “I was gonna make a quiche. Hah, hah,” replied Beth grimly.

    “Can you?”

    “Not very well, no. But Murray doesn’t seem to mind that I’m a rotten cook.”

    “No, well, so was Nancy. You can buy real nice frozen pastry these days.”

    “Yes,” said Beth with a sigh. “That’s what I was gonna use. Avon’s tried to teach me how to do a sort of quiche-y thing using that filo pastry stuff, only it runs all over the place, for me.”

    “Huh?”

    “The filling. Hers always turns out like a sort of big friendly bundle, a bit like a cabbage, with the egg sitting nicely in the middle of it. I can’t make it work.”

    Jack thought about it. “Guess the secret would be, to use enough of the pastry sheets, and not too much egg. Not to be mean with the pastry, you see.”

    “Mm,” said Beth, biting her lip. “It is awfully—”

    “Expensive. Well, not for me. But I dunno that Rab and Avon should be throwing their dough away on that sorta stuff.”

    “No, that’s what I thought. But she only does it for a treat.”

    “Uh-huh. Maybe you better make bacon and egg pie instead with that last couple of eggs.”

    “I don’t know how.”

    Jack thought about it. “Dunno that I do, exactly, either. Mum’s featured pastry top and bottom. Think she just broke the eggs right into it, and dropped the bacon in. Real easy.”

    “Y— Buh-but how long do you cook it?” she faltered.

    “Dunno. Tell ya what, I’ll call Kathleen!”

    “Your sister? Jack, Invercargill’s a toll-call!” she gasped.

    “Yeah, well, it’s guys like me that subsidise the phone company.” Jack wrinkled his nose at her. “The Post Office,” he said in the local vernacular.

    “They don’t call themselves that any more,” said Beth very weakly indeed, as her tummy did something very peculiar and her knees shook.

    “No, I know.” Jack had pulled a chair over to the bench near the door, right by the phone, so he simply picked it up and dialled. Beth listened to the subsequent conversation numbly. Kathleen dragged all the details about his medical condition out of him—just as well, Beth was very glad to know them, and she didn’t imagine she could have made him tell her. Also giving him very detailed instructions about the pie which he made Beth write down on the telephone pad, using the special red plastic pen with its wiggly red plastic wire that was attached to the wall by the pad.

    “We’ll ignore the fact that no-one in the Perkins family has ever eaten one hot, huh?” he said with a laugh, hanging up. “Think you can make it?”

    “Well, I’ll follow the instructions.”

    “Sure, blame Kathleen if it fails, huh? Turn the oven on first, I guess, Beth,” he said mildly.

    Very flustered, Beth went to do so.

    “Where’s Murray?” he asked mildly as she rolled out the pastry.

    “Him and Pierre are in the den, watching a video.”

    “Uh-huh. Den?”

    “Um, where the electronic gear is. I’ve decided to call it that,” said Beth, turning puce.

    Jack looked at her with a tiny smile. “Uh-huh. Rab had got him calling it the wee troll’s hoose, had he?”

    “Him and Dorothy, yes! I think it’s really mean!” said Beth fiercely.

    “Yeah,” he said, smiling.

    “Um, I put some cushions and—and things in there,” she admitted.

    “Oh, yeah? Make it more homey—less coldly masculine?”

    “Um, I did put a bunch of flowers in there. Well, leaves, really.”

    “Good,” said Jack mildly. “Where’d the cushions come from?”

    Beth bit her lip. “Um, well, Mrs Manning—”

    “Honey, the woman’s got no taste!”

    “No, um, the thing is, she’d got all these—um—I don’t know what you call them. Cushion innards?” said Beth dubiously.

    “Uh—like a pillow? Shit, you haven’t been fooling around with the dreaded kapok, have you, Beth?” said Jack with a laugh in his voice.

    “I don’t even know what it is. I suppose I do mean like a pillow, only shaped like a cushion.”

    “Right.”

    “And I know you all think I’ve got no skills—”

    “Beth, honey, I never so much as thought it, let alone uttering it, let alone uttering it in front of you!”

    “No—um—didn’t you? No, well,” said Beth, terrifically flustered, and chopping the bacon far smaller than the K. Perkins edict had laid down it should be chopped, “my family all does. Only I can crochet, Sally taught me; her old aunty taught her. And Jane does lovely crochet, and she sort of encouraged me to take it up again. She had lots of bits of wool left over. I only bought a little bit," she said on a plaintive note.

    “Sure. Oh, you spent the housekeeping on a few balls of yarn? Well, sure—”

    “No! Of course not!”

    “Uh—not your own money?”

    “It was only a few balls and they were on special. And I’ve been eating your food. So I made some cushion covers,” said Beth quickly. “Sort of—sort of the right style for your house, I think.”

    Smiling, Jack got up and painfully hippity-hopped his way into the “den”. They were Southwestern-style granny squares, all rightee. Deep brown or burnt orange backgrounds, with cream shading through to apricot on the one hand, and through to lilac on the other. Mm-mmm: the desert at sunset! After Murray and Pierre had both examined the crutches in depth, he was able to return to the kitchen. “They’re real delightful, Beth; I can’t thank you enough.”

    “Do you really like them?” she gasped, turning puce.

    “I sure do! You just caught the shades of the desert at sunset! No, well, just before sunset, maybe: you’ve avoided those flaming pinks that look real good in nature but real strange in a den!” he said with a laugh.

    Beth smiled shakily. “I looked at some of your books. –They do wonderful pottery, don’t they?”

    “The Pueblo Indians? Sure do. All those crafts of that general area are fascinating. I got a couple of good books on the Hopi, too. Extraordinary silver work with turquoise, is their speciality.”

    Beth nodded. She then explained apologetically that she’d let Michaela come and look at his books but by now Jack knew her well enough not to be actually taken aback at this one.

    The pie was quite a success, much to Jack’s relief. He was not, though of course his many critics would have denied this hotly, entirely insensitive.

    After lunch he explained apologetically that Bruce Smith had forbidden him absolutely to try the stairs, and if Beth wouldn’t mind giving him a hand—? Beth made him sit on the sofa while she got Rab’s old room ready for him. Truth to tell, what with the stress of coming home to find Beth in his kitchen and holding himself back in the matter of leaping on her, crutches and all, not to say what with the strain of his first real day up, Jack was quite glad to hobble in there and lie on the bed.

    “This room’s awful dull, too, I guess. Never mind, it’s only temporary. Maybe you could take a look at my room, see if you can brighten it up some? What’s up?” he said as she blushed.

    “Um—I thought you knew! I mean, I thought Murray told you! I’m sleeping in there, he wanted me to!” she gasped.

    “Yeah? Well, good.” Jack yawned. “Bunches of leaves, most especially in M. Daniels pots that I haven’t paid for, would be real welcome in there any old time, Beth. Likewise Southwestern-style granny cushions. Hey, could you make an afghan, do you think?”

    “Um, yes; well, Jane said I might as well. I’ve only got a horrid duvet on my own bed, so I thought the afghan could do instead of a bedspread.”

    Jack yawned. “Sure. Make it good and big, honey.”

    Beth was very red. She looked at him doubtfully, but Jack’s eyes were closed. “Yes, well, I’ll leave you in peace,” she said awkwardly. “Just call out if you need anything.”

    Jack murmured: “Sure,” with his eyes closed, so she crept out and left him to sleep.

    Jack opened his eyes and smiled. “Sure,” he murmured.

    After this not wholly inauspicious beginning things went along very well for the rest of April and right through May. Jack managed not to criticise Beth too much, so she managed the cooking quite well. When the holidays ended Wallis took up her after-school baby-sitting duties again, though now going home to The Quays at night, and so Beth was able to combine her job and the management of Jack’s household quite easily. Much to her relief, nice Mrs Manning was entirely conscientious about the housekeeping and didn’t need to be told what to do, let alone to be told to do it better.

    Rab came round the first Monday Mrs Manning was back and shouted at her over polishing the stairs. Jack and Murray had already gone, but as Thomas had an early meeting in town that day he’d told Beth to take some time off to make up for her innumerable working lunch-hours. So she was still home, and when poor Mrs Manning burst into tears was able to shout angrily at Rab and send him packing. Another woman might have done this consciously, in order to get Jack’s cleaning lady on her side; but Beth did it because it was her nature to do so, never thinking twice about it. Velda Manning might not have been an educated woman nor one much given to analysis, but she was certainly sharp enough to size nice Beth Martin up correctly. She let her make her a cup of tea and gave her a lot of unsolicited information about her own gynaecological status and the problems her youngest had been having at school. Had the two not had the personalities they did, Mrs Manning might have become Beth’s devoted slave from that moment on: but of course she didn’t. On the one hand, she patronised her kindly but relentlessly, not that that hadn’t been pretty much her attitude from the word “go”, and on the other, she became one of the strongest pro-Beth (and ipso facto anti-Jack) protagonists in the huddles that went on over May Swadling’s counter and anywhere else two or more Carter’s Bay matrons were gathered together.

    It was May; the days were shortening, but the weather, by and large, was holding. Thomas had done his damnedest to hold back, since his causal invitation to Dorothy to move in with him hadn’t resulted in anything. But there was, after all, only so much a chap could take, and she’d seemed very much softened towards him since the Mayli episode, and— Why not? He did not precisely think over his next move, he just went and did it. Which was, perhaps, a pity.

    “You could move in with me this month,” he said in a careless voice, coming up behind Dorothy just when she believed herself to be blissfully alone, free of trendy Deputies, Faculty Liaisons, and blitheringly thick academic staff, in her private spot down by the Inlet, huddled into her non-executive purple and turquoise parka over her executive suiting.

    She gasped, and leapt ten feet.

    Thomas sat down beside her, apparently unmoved. “Lunch?”

    “No, I commonly take a sandwich or two in the middle of the day for purely medicinal reasons.”

    “Witty.” He investigated Dorothy’s pile of sandwiches with interest and took one before she could stop him. “Mm! Adrian make these for you?” he said through it.

    “No, I am capable of making my own sandwiches. Though I admit I don’t often have the time or the inclination.”

    “What’s this funny lettuce?”

    “Rocket. Don’t look at me, Adrian had piles of it: he urged some on me, I shoved it in the sandwiches with the tasty cheese from Mr Woolworth’s emporium and the home-made chutney.”

    “You make your own chutney?” he asked with terrific interest.

    “No. So don’t hope for hand-outs.”

    Thomas was unabashed. “Who made it, then?”

    Dorothy sighed. “A friend from Puriri. You don’t know her.”

    “I might. Who?”

    Rolling her eyes to High Heaven, Dorothy replied: “Old Mrs Tonks: it’s probably in return for all those times I got the Mobile Library driver to give her a lift home, my spies tell me the new County Librarian has discontinued the practice. It’s tomato, apple, and raisin. The last-named is her secret ingredient and all the chutney-makers of Puriri who have tried to emulate the recipe tell me that unless you use the nicest and most expensive sort of raisin, it won’t work. That is the full story. Satisfied?”

    “Yes. Thanks,” he said, unabashed. “Muscatel.”

    “Uh—yeah. I think that was the technical term, yeah.”

    “Mm. You could move in with me this month,” repeated Thomas, patting her thigh.

    Dorothy removed the hand. “Why?”

    “For fun, largely,” he said insouciantly, stealing another sandwich.

    Dorothy had gone very red. “Isn’t there a bit more to it than that? Neither of us is exactly a spring chicken any more, shouldn’t we talk a decision like that over rationally?”

    “No, because if we did, we’d be wasting our time. No-one makes decisions like that rationally, even though some of the over-educated ones may think they do. Well, persons like Sammi Wolfe probably actually believe they do, I grant you that.”

    Dorothy waited but he didn’t produce any protestations of undying devotion. Or even of fidelity, the which might have been acceptable, at a pinch.

    “I don’t make decisions like that on the spur of the moment,” she said grimly.

    “Pooh. Don’t kid yourself.”

    Dorothy took a deep breath. “Don’t kid yourself that I’m going to give up everything I’ve worked for and chance my luck on you just because you feel like lifting your little finger!”

    “Lifting my—? Oh. I get it,” he said quickly.

    Dorothy was now too angry with him to notice it, but Thomas was looking even bluer than the heavy beard normally made him look. “I need a few good reasons for making a radical change in my life like that, and although you haven’t noticed, so does most of the rest of humanity. At the moment I can’t see any good reasons.”

    “Not reasons, no, I suppose you’re right,” he said sadly. “I just thought we could have— ”

    “Fun,” said Dorothy acidly, scrambling up. “This was going to be a bit of peace before I have to face Hanae Armstrong with the news that giving persons at lecturer level the power to okay book orders has meant that unless she moves very, very, very soon half her budget will go on paperback Vietnamese books that will cost the other arm and leg to get onto the catalogue because no-one in the entire world appears to catalogue in Vietnamese. Well, not us, the Library of Congress, the Canadians, the Aussies, or the Singapore National Library.”

    “What about the British Library?” he said eagerly.

    “English cataloguing is the worst in the entire world bar none, as I would have thought would have been obvious to anyone with half a brain that had lived through Thatcherism, or were you going round with your eyes and ears closed to what the rest of the universe was doing back then, too?” replied Dorothy acidly, walking away from him.

    Thomas looked sadly at the deserted pile of sandwiches. “Bugger. Wrong tack,” he muttered to himself.

    … “Dorothy, the poor man was nervous!” cried Polly in horror. “Can’t you see that?”

    “Rubbish!” replied Dorothy angrily. “I might have known you’d be on his side. I’m sorry I told you, now.”

    Polly looked at her sadly. “Oh, Dorothy.”

    For about six weeks Jack avoided the stairs, which meant he couldn’t disappear into his study of an evening; though certainly he managed to get some work done on his laptop. He discovered that Murray, who had lately developed a fierce independence in the matter of being bathed by Grandpa, was letting Beth bath him—or at least help, it seemed to involve a lot of laughter and splashing and Beth carolling some song about “Rubber Ducky” which reliably reduced Murray to gurgling hysterics. He said nothing, just let them get on with it.

    Murray evinced terrible disappointment when it dawned that Grandpa couldn’t manage the stairs to read him his bedtime story. So they got into the habit of bringing him downstairs after his bath, well swaddled in his fuzzy red dressing-gown. He seemed to think Beth should sit beside him while Grandpa read it him: well, good. Jack was reading Treasure Island: to his entertainment, he discovered that Beth had never read it. She seemed to enjoy it just as much as the little boy did. Jack had been skipping the harder passages, for Murray’s benefit; now he began to put them back.

    Once Murray had been put to bed Beth would come back down and quietly take up her crochet. Jack discovered to his horror that she knew almost nothing about music, so he began to get into the habit of playing something for her in the evenings. Sometimes they listened seriously, other times they chatted mildly as the music formed a pleasant background. Some nights they watched television; not in the “den”, as Jack had overheard Beth telling Wallis she found it claustrophobic; but in the sitting-room. The TV was on a wheeled trolley, it was easy enough to shift it back and forth. To his relief Jack discovered that Beth disliked all of the American shows, rejecting with shudders such prize offerings as Chicago Hope, Seinfeld, and anything even approaching a chat show. She also disliked The Simpsons intensely, but as it was on early and Murray loved it, they let him watch it in the den. Jack explained weakly at one point that he was sure the kid wasn’t getting five hundred percent of the references, and maybe he ought watch it with him and explain some of them, only he really couldn’t stomach it. To which Beth replied fiercely: “Good!”

    Very naturally Jack didn’t always feel as peacefully domestic about Beth as the spectacle of their cosy evenings together might have suggested. He had, however, embarked on a deliberate strategy with Beth, which might more or less have been described as creeping up on the prey slowly, while it became lulled into a false sense of security. This strategy was the easier to implement as returning to full-time employment far too soon after his accident was proving far more tiring than he’d anticipated and he felt pretty well shagged out in the evenings. Once or twice he fell asleep in his big chair, and Beth had to wake him and send him off to bed.

    Gradually Jack discovered that the evenings weren’t so hard to take—though mind you, there were times with her sitting opposite him wearing a fuzzy sweater and looking just so cuddly and sweet, he coulda leapt on her—well, these moments apart, the evenings weren’t so trying—but the mornings, weekends, were sheer torture. During the week it wasn’t so bad, they were all very busy getting off to work or school. Jack couldn’t drive with the leg in plaster and he had found it very difficult to get into a boat, so Jane Vincent had very kindly volunteered to drive his car for him. So any thoughts he might have had about creeping up on Beth from behind as she made toast, weekdays, had to be put on hold. But in the weekends there was no Jane, and as Jack was by nature an early riser, not to say one that had always enjoyed morning sex, he was usually up bright and early, in all senses of the phrase, and the sight of Beth in the kitchen in her faded old jeans, and a selection of faded tee-shirts or sweaters, including one that was Jack’s absolute favourite, an ancient greyish-cream cardigan in a very thin knit that she wore buttoned to the neck and that looked as if she mighta bought it when she was two sizes smaller— Wow. It was agony. Nevertheless, he held off.

    When Jack had just turned up at home without warning Beth had been too startled to think anything very much, let alone to ponder her own reactions. When she did get round to thinking about what she really felt, which wasn’t for several weeks, she decided that she was very relieved that he wasn’t being silly. Because she couldn’t have coped with that; and she felt she needed time to think about what she really felt about him.

    Because, let’s face it: he was quite a hard person to get on with, wasn’t he? Never mind that he was, of course, awfully attractive, and very fond of his little grandson and, in spite of the initial row, had been very generous to Rab and Avon. (Beth had discovered that Rab had let his father give him a considerable sum of money towards setting up house, which Avon had prudently made him put in a term deposit account.) And they didn’t really have all that much in common. Though after her experience with Gerhard, Beth was beginning to think that maybe she had a lot more in common with Jack Perkins than she had at first assumed. Well, at least their backgrounds were the same, if he was awfully Americanised! Beth had been quite shaken to discover that the sight of her eating peanut butter on toast had reduced Gerhard to laughing shudders. She had demanded crossly what it was in his cupboard for, then, and had been reduced to utter silence by his smiling explanation that it was for satay sauces, of course: he was fond of Indonesian food. Jack might have got used to eating his with “jelly,” but at least he recognised it as a spread! The first morning she’d seen him eating it on toast without jam Beth had felt her knees go all wobbly and had had to sit down hurriedly. He also understood, wonder of wonders, that she didn’t like her coffee pitch-black and so strong a spoon could stand upright in it. And, in fact, seemed to think it was quite normal for her to have lots of milk with it. Though keenly offering to heat the said milk for her in a little wee pot. Well, that was just Jack! He also liked boiled eggs with dippers for the occasional breakfast—thank God! Because Murray loved them and although they didn’t really have time in the mornings for him to have one during the week, he usually wanted one on Saturdays. Gerhard’s idea of Saturday breakfast had been a piece of very up-market fruit, the more exotic and out of season the better, a roll or croissant, and the pitch-black coffee. He had described the sort of giant breakfasts they had had in his childhood, with strange German sausages and all sorts of things Beth had only vaguely heard of, explaining, with his nice smile, that he had long since got over the hankering for all that cholesterol at the beginning of the day! After that Beth hadn’t dared to say she could sometimes just fancy a boiled egg; eggs were full of cholesterol. So Beth began to feel, really, much more at ease with Jack, in spite of his faults, than she had ever done with pleasant, polite, caring Gerhard.

    This feeling of ease lasted about two months. Then it began to be replaced by a sort of unease, as Jack neither said nor looked anything. Beth was not, of course, the sort of young woman who glances, involuntarily or not, at a guy’s pants when the said guy comes into the warm kitchen on a Saturday morning with his eyes very bright and a slight flush on his lean cheekbones: had she been, she might have realised that he certainly did look something.

    June. The weather was wet, and very much colder. Angie didn’t much care, her little unit was warm and cosy. They hadn’t managed to re-let the house in Narrowneck but in spite of Bill’s ever more frequent enquiries about its wellbeing, Angie didn’t give a stuff if the bloody monstrosity burned to the ground. In fact it would be welcome to do so, because then they would get the insurance money, and maybe they’d be able to afford a decent place up here! With a lovely view of the marina. Well, Bill parked his bloody boat at it, why not buy a property which owned a marina lease, stop paying a fortune for his current slot, and—and make the most of it? He didn’t have that many years to go until retirement! Angie spent increasing fruitless hours counting on her fingers and doing endless sums on little scraps of paper, the undersides of her lecture notes, and accidentally on the corners of student assignments, which she then had to rub out or, if the absent-mindedness had taken place in ball-point ink, humiliatingly white out and apologise for.

    “You’ll want to know the gossip from Sir G.G., of course,” she wrote. Bill groaned, but read on:

    Thomas has been breathing fire and brimstone for months because of the perceived lack of progress with the Environmental Sciences building. He attempted to bawl Alan out over dragging his feet with the contractors: heap big mistake. Alan was icily annoyed. He hasn’t been in too good a mood since Mayli deserted him for pastures new with Gerhard. Things got worse pretty fast because Alan then discovered that Thomas has put up a giant shed on that block on the Point Alan bought for him. Paid for out of his own funds, mind you, but off his own bat and without getting anything like Alan’s okay, let alone planning permission from the County Council. Technically a shed, he got the component parts from Mitre 10, and even more technically a shed in that it’s for boys to vanish into and play with their tools.

    Here Bill choked slightly but conceded: “I geddit.”

    It’s about the size of an aeroplane hanger and just as beautiful. Genuine aeroplane grey, too. This of course is after Alan paid megabucks—megabucks—for the bloody section in the first place. You can imagine the atmosphere, cutting with a knife isn’t in it.

    Bill shuddered and conceded he could. He read hopefully through the rest of the letter but there was nothing about putting the house on the market. Bugger. Did she want to, or didn’t she? Would it be totally putting his foot in it to suggest it, or… Bugger. You’d think she could give a bloke a hint! There was screeds about the new dairy that was being built just along a bit from Sol’s place: well, if she could blah on about that, you’d think she could at least— Well, Christ, just say casually that it would be quite convenient living in Kingfisher Bay once the dairy was open, or— Hang on. He read through that section again, very slowly and carefully, but there was no hint of a hint. “Well, bugger!” he concluded.

    Angie sipped cappuccino in The Primrose Café in Puriri on a pouring July afternoon. She had no classes, miraculously Leigh hadn’t scheduled a meeting and even more miraculously Ms Leah Barnard hadn’t demanded one. “And you thought it was all going splendidly,” she noted sardonically.

    “If you’re trying to tell us Dorothy still hasn’t got it together with Thomas, we know,” said Polly with a sigh.

    “Yeff,” agreed Jill through a gigantic slice of sponge cake laden with cream.

    “The cold-feet syndrome. Maidenly,” explained Polly.—Well though she knew her, Jill choked on the sponge cake.—“So what’s gone wrong, Angie?”

    “Uh—where do I start?” she muttered.

    “Thomas’s giant shed?” said Polly brightly.

    Angie winced. “Why not? Well, Alan did let him know he was bloody displeased about the shed—it’s plonked out on the Point, Jill, without Council permission—but he might have managed to ignore it, only he had about sixteen informal complaints from residents and then a formal complaint from the Council. Just when he was fondly imagining he had the County Manager in his pocket. So he spoke to Thomas.”

    The ladies winced.

    “The word is that he threatened to terminate his contract, he was absolutely ropeable. Not because of the shed as such: it was the way he shouted in his office—Alan’s, I mean—the day the Chancellor was on a semi-official visit. I got most of this from Suzanne, Alan’s new P.A., she isn’t a patch on Mayli for close-mouthedness. And if Alan isn’t aware that the moo gossips in the staff-room with the rest of us moos, my name isn’t Angela Michaels, B.A., Dip.ESL, and F.A.T.” She ate cake, and sighed. “Yes, well, you could say that was Grate Thomas Row Number 1. –Wait for it,” she warned. “Thomas then went back to his office and reduced Beth to tears. So Moana, who’d come in to get him to sign something, or something—well, he is her nominal boss—tore a strip off him. Naturally she then told Leigh the whole and Leigh apparently, though I don’t have this verbatim, told him he was a selfish bastard and he ought to be ashamed of himself, and ordered him to apologise to Beth. So then Thomas shouted some frightful things at the top of his lungs—this bit’s more or less verbatim, the whole of the old Post Office was in the corridor outside his office by this time—and Leigh walked out. Um, well, it was about him and Moana and their sex-life, largely,” she said, swallowing. “Plus some very old gossip from the past, with reference to Leigh’s and his ex’s sex-life.”

    “Christ,” said Jill numbly. “The—the idiots! For God’s sake, they came out to these strange Colonial shores together; the whole or Puriri County thought they were the best of friends!”

    “Well, they’re not now,” said Angie gloomily.

    “What sort of mood’s Leigh in?” asked Polly cautiously.

    “He’s just the same, at work. No, well, he has become rather shorter with Ms Leah Barnard, but no-one objects to that. And he’s obviously very happy in the relationship with Moana. She’s looking distinctly glowing, by way.” She looked significant.

    “Well, yes,” said Jill feebly.

    “Clot,” Polly informed her. “Is she?” she said eagerly to Angie.

    Angie’s eyes twinkled. “Young Wallis informed me that she was spewing her heart out the other morning, but it couldn’t have been the prawns, because they all had them. Her conclusion was that she was, so if a thing that age can conclude that, what do you think?”

    “Hooray!” she cried.

    Groaning, Jill said: “The human gene pool probably doesn’t need it, you know, but yes, hooray, provided it’s what he wants as well, the poor mug.”

    “He’s besotted about her, Jill, she could ask him to paint himself bright yellow and pose in the nuddy on a raft in the middle of Carter’s Inlet and he’d do it,” explained Angie kindly.

    “Er—yes,” she acknowledged feebly. “Well, good show. Er, how is Leigh apart from that?”

    “I think he’s pretty unhappy about the row with Thomas. But he seems to be waiting for him to apologise, rather than making overtures himself.”

    “That’ll be her influence,” conceded Polly. “Anything else?”

    “Yeah,” admitted Angie glumly. “Ms Free, Gratis and For Nothing is making the Admin staff’s life total Hell. Poor old Yvonne burst into tears in my office just the other day. –Those rumours that were going round that Sammi and Armand had got it together were totally wrong and not true,” she said pointedly to Polly.

    “Jake saw them in town at The Royal together,” she said numbly.

    “Yes. It was a business lunch, Polly. Sammi’s latest edict is that none of her staff are as fit as they should be, and they all have to do a weight chart and start on those Chinese things every morning.”

    “Dim-sims?” groped Jill.

    “No, you nana! Those potty exercises. On the lawn in front of the Admin block if it’s fine and in the gym if it’s pouring.”

    “Christ. That’d be enough to make any middle-aged lady receptionist burst into tears,” admitted Jill numbly.

    “Can’t Alan stop her?” asked Polly.

    “He could, but as he is reputed to jog sixteen miles before brekkers and ride his blimmin’ horse a brisk twenty miles after it, will he?” retorted Angie nastily.

    “Why the Hell doesn’t Sammi just ask the guy to move in with her?” wondered Jill.

    Angie grimaced. “Too soon after him splitting up with the wee wifey, doesn’t want to have the finger pointed as a home-wrecker, is the consensus. –If you’re getting more sponge cake, I’ll have a slice, ta.”

    Obediently Jill went up to the counter and asked Charlene for more sponge cake. Funnily enough, there wasn’t a huge queue in The Primrose Café on a pouring wet July afternoon. In her absence the two married ladies exchanged news and views on subjects of mutual interest, to wit, Angie’s Helen’s pregnancy and Angie’s Barbara’s continued obduracy in the matter of producing grandchildren.

    Jill duly refused to be reimbursed for the cake and cappuccinos, and explained, as Angie praised the cake, that it was a June Blake Cake. “The word is,” she added with a twinkle, “her cakes are making so much dough these days that she’s told bloody Cyril she’s taking off for a holiday in Japan with or without him, and if he wants to spend his remaining days burying his head in the sand like a turtle, he can! She probably meant ostrich, but all my spies inform me she definitely said turtle.” She then tried to tell them about old June’s greatly expanded market but they already knew. And that old Janet Ames from The Blue Heron had roped in her brother and some mates of his from Glen Osmonde that weren’t totally gaga like the rest of the inmates, and they were cutting out cake-boxes and stencilling ‘June Blake Cakes’ on them in bio-degradable food dye like nobody’s business—but they already knew that, too.

    Lady Carrano then put her foot in her mouth good and proper by licking her lips over the cake and noting: “Yum! It’s no wonder they’re doing so well, what with real cream and Catherine’s home-made passionfruit spread.” At which point it dawned that neither of them knew that Catherine Kincaid was part of June Blake Cakes!

    After a while Jill said numbly: “The Iceman is letting her do this cake-baking stuff? Hang on, is it only a couple a week for this joint?”

    “No, she makes about two dozen a day,” she admitted. “Those ones June supplies to Revill’s are hers, Jill. Actually Alan’s given them quite a bit of help with the financial side of things. Not that June isn’t very competent.”

    “I’m glad to hear it,” she said feebly.

    “He behaved very well over that business with Mayli, you know,” she murmured.

    “So he bloody well ought!” said Jill strongly, going very red. “Not that it could possibly make up for— All right,” she said with a sigh. “Being married to Catherine Burchett is rubbing some of the icy corners off him: those who claimed it would were right all along.”

    “I think I only hoped it might,” said Polly mildly.

    Jill sighed, and lifted her cappuccino cup. “Yes. Well, never mind him. Here’s to good old June Blake, bless her, and over-sixties female enterprise!”

    The ladies drank to that.

    “And old Cyril Blake looks exactly like a turtle, it will have been unconscious suggestion,” added Polly firmly, reverting to an earlier theme.

    Jill just looked at the remains of her slice of sponge cake and shook her head very, very slowly, trying to envisage the Iceman graciously allowing the pink woman to bake dozens and dozens…

    Angie looked sadly at where her cake had been. “Blow, it’s all gone. Don’t dare to offer me more: I’ve got to get into my new bathing-suit for Bill in a week’s time as ever was.”

    “Out of it, Angie!” corrected Polly with a laugh.

    Angie gave a silly smile. “Let’s hope so, yeah. Where was I? Oh, yes. You know Jack’s back on deck? Limping dreadfully, but he’s having physio, so possibly it’s just the result of being in plaster for three months and once his muscles tone up, he’ll be back to normal. No, well, he’s totally on Beth’s side over the Thomas thing, of course, but—um—”

    “What?” they cried.

    “They seem to have had a row, too,” said Angie sadly.

    “Not Jack and Beth?” cried Polly. “What’s gone wrong now?”

    By June Jack was managing the stairs okay, and reclaimed his room. To his tremendous relief Beth didn’t point out that with Mrs Manning coming every weekday and kind Jane just up the road, he could manage without her. She just moved into Rab’s old room. And sat by Murray’s bed listening as intently as he to the bedtime story. Phew.

    In spite of this huge relief Jack didn’t do anything about trying to approach Beth on a sexual level. He was more than aware by now that he came on too strong for a quiet girl like Beth, and he was determined that this time he wouldn’t scare her off. Without flattering himself, it was now quite clear to Jack that she must care, else why had she spent all that time at the hospital with him? It wasn’t just for Murray’s sake, he was positive. And gee, let’s face it, no woman makes cushions for your den because of a little boy! Whenever he looked at those cushions, which he did quite often, Jack felt real warm and happy. That afghan was coming along nicely, too. Big enough for a single bed, but she was still working on it. He calculated that maybe—maybe—the time the plaster came off would be the time to make a move.

    Very gradually Beth’s unease about their situation, as a dampish May waned into a very wet June, was replaced by a sort of cross grudging feeling. Why hadn’t Jack said or looked anything? Was he taking her presence in his house for granted? Did he look on her as just a sort of carer, or—or a kid of Wallis’s age, or what? Or had she just been imagining those other times—well, he hadn’t said anything specific, had he? Well, he had asked her out a couple of times but he’d never kissed her or… Maybe she had just been imagining them. Sex on the brain or something. If that was so, and he didn’t give a damn about her, and he thought she was just some sort of sexless home-help or something, what on earth was she doing in his house? Beth began to feel crosser and crosser.

    Jack, in his turn, as the effort of holding himself in began to take its toll, began to get edgier and edgier. He started to criticise Beth—not in anything major, just in little things, but as Beth was discovering this year, in life, or at least life under the same roof with another person, it was very largely the little things that counted; and what she categorised grimly to herself as “fussy nagging” did not go down at all well. The more so as he sounded exactly like her mother when he did it.

    Possibly things would have resolved themselves naturally, for Jack was starting to feel that he really couldn’t stand one more Saturday in the kitchen with her, he’d have to leap on her or burst, and had mentally planned to ask nice Simone and Euan to take Murray one weekend; but they had no chance to. Because the Saturday before the weekend that Jack had mentally resolved would be the weekend, Randi’s letter arrived.

    Unlike Belinda Throsby-Gore, Randi King Perkins did not announce her arrival a bare day before she descended upon her ex-spouse. Far from it. She was giving him plenty of warning: she and the girls would be out towards the end of July for their summer vacation: it was about time the girls saw something of their father.

    Before Jack’s accident he had always collected the mail himself: these days Murray had appointed himself to go up to the letterbox on a Saturday. So this morning he dashed in, beaming, waving a fistful of letters.

    “Bills, bills, bills,” groaned Jack. “Ugh, this one’s the Visa bill! Uh—lot of gas, here— Oh, yeah; Jane filled her up several times, I guess, on the way to work. –Beth, honey, you been using the card like I told you at the supermarket?”

    “Is it—is it too much?” said Beth nervously.

    “Hell, no, honey: I was wondering why it’s so low!”

    “Oh,” she said, sagging.

    “Beth bought me some Kit-Kats,” said Murray with a sideways look at his grandfather.

    “Yes, um, that was the day Simone gave us a lift, wasn’t it?” said Beth with a nervous laugh. “She said she thought they were the least of the evils. They’re only biscuits. Um—wee, thin chocolate biscuits.”

    “Sure, sure,” he said amiably. “Uh—did I… Oh, yeah, this’ll be these real loose jeans!”

    “Mm,” murmured Beth, looking sideways at him. By dint of slitting the cuff of the real loose jeans, Jack had managed to get them on over the reduced plaster bandaging he was now wearing. They were huge, and he had pulled them in round his slender waist with a belt, but all the same they looked ridiculous. Worse than Thomas’s awful plus-fours. Should she offer to take them in at the waist? Jeans were very hard to alter: they had all those flat-felled seams, and unexpected studs, and little belt-loops oversewn a million times, and so forth. Still, if she could manage to take her own in or out—usually in, if she bought them wide enough in the hips they bagged at the waist—she thought she could manage Jack’s. Only would it look too… pointed? Or would it only serve to reinforce the idea that she was some dumb sort of sexless carer? It was while she was chewing over this point that Jack discovered the letter from Randi.

    “Hey, a letter from Randi! Now we’ll hear how your aunties are doing, huh?” he said pleasedly to Murray.

    “Yes. –I’ve got lots of aunties, Beth!” Murray came to stand eagerly at his grandfather’s elbow. “Photos,” he discovered.

    “Yeah, some new Polaroids. Boy, aren’t they growing up?” Jack pointed out Murray’s aunties to him. Ending: “This one’s Randi, see, and I guess this is Pooch, he’s their new dog. Nice dog, huh? She’s changed her hairstyle yet again, trust Randi, never behind the times with the fashions! Looks a tad redder than it was, too. Suits her, I guess. Smart, huh?”

    “Aye, she’s a pretty lady, Grandpa.”

    “Sure is, uh-huh… Well, now, listen to this!” said Jack with an excited laugh. “Randi’s gonna bring your aunties out for a holiday next month! Won’t that be great: you’ll get to see them!”

    “Yeah! I’ll see my aunties!” he cried. “Hey, Beth, my aunties are coming!”

    “Yes; um—July?” faltered Beth.

    “Sure, it’s their summer vacation,” said Jack vaguely, reading the rest of the letter.

    “Um, I know. But it’ll be freezing cold and probably pouring.”

    “Mm-hm,” he said, reading. “What? Well, yeah, I know that, Beth, and Randi knows, she’s not dumb, but I guess we’ll just have a cosy time catching up, maybe take the kids in to town to the movies and that, huh? Well, I couldn’t stomach living with her, but I guess I won’t mind seeing Randi again, she’s not all bad!” he said with an excited laugh. “Gee, better tell Velda to clear out that spare room, the girls are used to a room each. Those guestrooms sure aren’t suitable for little girls, though. Well, I guess some shopping’s on the agenda, huh? Maybe the girls would like to choose something pretty for the rooms as well. But I think we better replace those masculine-type drapes! And maybe… Well, we’ll see. But the house won’t be warm enough, that’s for sure. Well, guess we can always buy a nice duvet for Randi’s bed. And if we have the heating up higher for the duration? Yeah, never mind if it costs an arm and a leg, I guess I can afford it, it’s not every winter your aunties come, is it, Murray?” he said, putting his arm round him and hugging him. “Say, I better do something about that front drive in a hurry, though!” he said with a laugh. “Just as well they don’t have August holidays here no more, Murray’ll have his mid-year break the very time the girls are out here!”

    “Yay!” cried Murray.

    “Only Americans say ‘don’t no more,’” said Beth through trembling lips. “Well, that’s—that’s very nice. It’ll be nice for you to see the girls again.”

    “Yeah. Uh—what’s up?” said Jack, staring.

    “Nothing. I’m glad you’ll see your daughters. You’re right: the house won’t be warm enough for Americans.” Beth turned round and started doing the dishes blindly.

    “Beth, honey, use the dishwasher!”

    “No, it’s not worth it for just these few dishes,” said Beth into the sink.

    “Uh—you wanna go down the supermarkets, Beth? We can take the Caddy, I can manage okay with the automatic shift, now that Smith’s got me in this reduced plaster.”

    “No, he said you still had to take it easy.”

    “Beth, he said I could drive the Caddy! –Said he wished it was his, actually!” he said with a laugh, “Hey, Murray, you wanna fetch me the pad and pen? Let’s start making a list of the stuff we’ll need for Randi and the girls, huh?”

    Possibly—just possibly—Beth might have been able to stand it if Murray hadn’t then fetched his grandfather the phone pad and solemnly prompted: “Duvet, Grandpa.”

    And if Jack hadn’t given yet another excited laugh and said: “Yes, sure! Duvet, one: in real nice taste, huh?”

    “Um, I think I won’t come with you, if you don’t mind, Jack,” she said through trembling lips. “I’ve got things to do.”

    “You sure? We may be a while.”

    “That’s okay.”

    Jack could see she was a bit upset but he didn’t think much of it—after all, him and Randi were divorced, and if Beth was a wee bit jealous, maybe that was all to the good! So he made out a huge shopping list and drove off happily to Puriri with Murray.

    When he got back, Beth was gone.

    “Just do not say,” said Angie to the numbed silence in The Primrose Café, “that if Moana could settle Leigh’s hash over that bloody Belinda cow, why couldn’t Beth settle Jack’s over ruddy Randi? She is an entirely different kettle of fish. Wouldn’t know the word ‘pushy’ if she fell over it,” she clarified grimly.

    “Y— But in this day and age! That’s not merely non-assertive, it’s—” Words failed Jill.

    “Doormat-ish,” said Angie grimly.

    “Well, yes!”

    Polly hadn’t spoken, she was merely looking stunned. After a moment Angie said on a grim note to Jill: “These days, you wouldn’t credit it, but if you can cast your mind back that far, Someone was bloody nearly as bad, that time Jake busted up with her. Remember? She just let him. Didn’t say a word in her own defence.”

    Jill shuddered. “You’re right, by gosh and by golly. Must be in the genes.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Angie with a sigh. “Personally, I can’t even imagine it! I mean, why didn’t Beth up and say ‘It’s her or me,’ or ‘I’m not staying here with your ex-wife,’ or even ‘I’m going, and if you want me, you can come running;’ or— Well, something!”

    “She might have done. Who knows, we weren’t flies on the wall,” said Polly uneasily.

    “She didn’t,” replied Angie brutally. “She told Sol the lot, and he burst out with it to me.”

    “So—so has Jack done anything about it, Angie?”

    Angie sighed. “Not much, no. He did go round to her flat, but she wouldn’t let him in. He’s going round with a face like a thundercloud, biting everyone’s head off. And she’s not only bursting into tears at being bawled out by bloody Thomas, she’s threatening to resign—go home.”

    “What?” gasped Polly.

    “Yeah: back to your bloody Aunty Jan, that shows how bad it must be!” replied Angie with a certain satisfaction.

    Uncertainly Polly said: “But he does want her, doesn’t he?”

    “So we had all assumed,” said Angie heavily. “From the moment he laid eyes on her. Well, that’s the way Sol tells it, and when has he ever been wrong about that sort of thing?

    “Well, blow!” Polly got up slowly. “I can’t stay, I’ve got to go home and change for cocktails at Phyllis Harding’s. Has anyone talked to Jack?”

    Angie blenched slightly. “Don’t think so.”

    Polly said nothing. But she looked very thoughtful.

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/a-thing-of-shreds-and-patches.html