Grand Openings

Part III. Implementation

26

Grand Openings

    When Simone and Annick had gone, Beth just sagged limply in the doorway of the empty Shop 3. She hadn’t even realised Simone wanted to open a shop! And moving into Shop 3 on Friday? Apparently they had been planning it for months, right down to the clothes racks from Kevin’s recycling yard which they were going to paint turquoise, and the name: Kidstuff. Well, of course Annick was frighteningly efficient, it stuck out all over her—but still!

    It was getting on for teatime, and Beth should have efficiently locked up and done something about food, but instead she wandered through Shop 3 and opened its back door. It gave a lovely view of the extensive grassy patch which was too muddy for people to park their cars on, and, over to the right, some rougher ground and scruffy bushes, which faced onto the road up the hill to the main Inlet road. Sol had pointed out a million times that if you chopped down those bushes and cleared the site properly, you could build a nice little corner dairy, which was what Kingfisher Bay was crying out for. Beth agreed with him in a way, but actually she rather liked that patch of stunted scrub. It and the patch opposite it on the other side of the road were  the only things left in the whole of Kingfisher Bay that reminded you that there was life outside the shiny consumerist ethic, she thought now, scowling. Presumably the muddy grass wasn’t long for this world: Annick had said something grim about making sure the landlord agreed to put in a carpark before she signed the lease of Shop 3. Beth sighed, locked up very slowly, and went slowly back upstairs to her brand-new, paint-smelling, attractive and commodious flat. Everything seemed to be changing, all of a sudden…

    Euan approached the door of Kidstuff with a sinking feeling in his flat middle. The feeling didn’t go away when he actually ventured in and saw the place was stuffed with grannies, all yacking their heads off. Uh—not all grannies, he realised. “Hullo, Polly,” he said limply. “Here for something for Katie Maureen, are you?”

    Polly turned her head and smiled. “Hi, Euan. No, I’m looking for Christmas presents for my cousins’ kids. Katie Maureen doesn’t need me to buy her clothes, she’s got a Doting Daddy.”

    Wincing slightly, Euan conceded: “Goddit. I’m under orders from Mum to get something for my nieces, Samantha and Shannon. Five and three,” he explained glumly.

    Lady Carrano replied without emotion: “I see. From you?”

    Immediately grasping the sense of this arcane utterance, he replied gloomily: “Yeah. Well, put it like this, Mum thinks they oughta be in my price bracket. She hasn’t realised how meagre my price bracket is, because I chickened out on telling her.”

    “The one that’s three would probably prefer a simple set of wooden building-blocks that you could knock up out of scraps from the boatyard, Euan,” she said kindly.

    “Look, I’ve long since stopped arguing with them!”

    Polly smiled a little. “Mm. Um… how conventional are your Mum and sister?” she asked, looking at a rack of small garments.

    “How conventional can ya get, Polly?” he returned sourly.

    Polly laughed and took his arm. “I get it! I was going to say the black ones with the red and white smocking are adorable and very French-looking, but they do require—um, an acquaintance with the clichés of cultures other than our own,” she said, clearing her throat.

    “Yeah!” He grinned at her, and she laughed up at him.

    The crush of grannies had now cleared sufficiently for Simone, wedged behind the recycled table which was doing duty as their counter, to catch this exchange. A wave of hot, sick jealousy rushed right through her; she swayed a little, and grabbed the edge of the table.

    “Are you all right?” hissed Annick in French.

    “Mais oui. Ah—yes, Mrs Meiklejohn, this leetle romper suit weell fit a boy of two,” she said hurriedly. “The lemon is pretty, no? But we have it also in pale blue. –Là, tu vois, Annick?” she hissed, pointing out Lady Carrano.

    Annick shot out from behind the counter, beaming. “Good morning, Lady Carrano! ’Ow may we ’elp you thees morning?”

    “Bonjour, madame,” replied Polly amiably in the correct tone.

    Annick’s jaw dropped but she made a quick recover and continued the conversation in French. Polly had a list of names and sizes: most of them were her cousins’ children, but this one, she said with a sigh, was her eldest brother’s first grandchild, and if there was ever anything calculated to make you feel old, it was waking up to realise you were a great-aunt! Annick, of course, agreed with this: she’d have agreed with anything Lady Carrano said.

    Euan wandered off into a corner and looked dismally at a turquoise rack hung with pink things. Samantha was as fair as he was: was pink all right for blonde kids?

    “Hullo, Euan, dear!” said a comfortable grandmotherly voice.

    “Uh—oh, hi, Davina,” said Euan limply. The voluminous Mrs Parkinson, wife of that Norm who had spun the platters at the Environmental Watch Committee’s hop, was a well-known and popular figure in Carter’s Bay. Euan was fairly used to her extravagant outfits, but today’s took the cake: maybe she was headed for lunch at the Royal K? Sort of Queen Mum-ish in inspiration, but bright with it. Tropical flowers and—uh, cripes, fruit as well, in a splashy bright print that was incredibly bloused, draped and frilled, with dangly bits hanging off it here and there. The hat was trimmed with more of the same and she was wearing immensely high-heeled bright blue shoes with a matching handbag that was, Euan had no doubt at all, fitted to cleave a path for her through the average crowd coming out of Eden Park after New Zealand had won the Test series.

    Davina was looking for something a bit different for the grandkids, but she was more than ready to help Euan. Having competently ascertained Samantha’s and Shannon’s ages and colouring from him, she sorted out a selection of sweet wee frocks, and, noting that they’d just check the measurements his mother had given him with Simone, and gathering up the garments she’d chosen for her own relatives, led the shrinking Euan firmly up to the counter.

    Simone smiled valiantly at a departing customer, and tried not to look at him.

    “Hullo, dear, it’s nice to see you’re doing so well!” beamed Davina.

    “Hullo, Davina, ’ow are you? Yes, we are doing vairy well. Good morning, Euan,” said Simone in a voice that shook a little.

    “Hullo, Simone,” said Euan hoarsely, reddening to the roots of the very fair hair.

    “Now, you serve Euan, dear: I’m in no hurry, I’m meeting up with Hedda Stevenson and Joy Parker for lunch at the Royal K,”—thought so, registered Euan automatically—“and I’m a wee bit early, I thought I’d give myself plenty of time for a nice browse! Just show her your measurements, Euan, dear.”

    “Oh—yeah,” he said, jumping slightly. “Um—here. These are my nieces’ measurements.”

    Simone duly assured him that the frocks would fit and that he could bring them back and exchange them if they didn’t.

    “If the little one’s a bit long her mother can always put a tuck in it; they grow so quickly at that age,” said Davina on something between a smile and a sigh.

    “Yeah. Um—how are your two, Simone?” asked Euan hoarsely.

    “Good, thanks,” said Simone in the vernacular, starting to gift-wrap the larger frock.

    “That’s right, dear: wrap them separately,” approved Mrs Parkinson. “They’ll be looking forward to the holidays, I suppose?”

    “Oh, yes, they are looking forward to the ’olidays,” agreed Simone without much enthusiasm.

    Davina immediately asked how she was going to manage having them looked after.

    “Eugh—well, that is a problem, it’s true, Davina,” said Simone on an anxious note. “I put a spotted bow, non?” she said to Euan.

    “Ta,” he agreed huskily. Somehow the way she said “spotted” was just so cute!

    Simone put a white bow with pale pink spots on Kidstuff’s turquoise and white striped wrapping paper.

    “What about your hubby, dear?” Davina was pursuing. “Would he be free to look after them part of the time?”

    Reddening, Simone replied: “He says it is my responsibilitay. And he has much work to do. Some of the Sir G.G. personnel weell move into the new buildings in February, and the computer systems must be all ready by then.”

    “I see, dear: yes, that’ll keep him busy. But what a pity, his first Christmas out here!”

    “Yes,” said Simone limply, thinking of that picnic up the Inlet last Christmas.

    “Maybe picnics up the Inlet aren’t his bag,” said Euan huskily.

    “No,” she agreed, flushing brightly and smiling tremulously.

    “I often think about that,” said Euan huskily, not caring if good old Davina took in every word.

    “Me, too,” said Simone in a small voice.

    They smiled tremulously into each others’ eyes.

    Concealing her tremendous interest, Mrs Parkinson superintended the gift-wrapping of Shannon’s wee frock, approved the pink bow with the white spots, waited while Euan paid, and then handed over her own armful of purchases.

    “Um—ta, Simone. See ya,” said Euan lamely. “Thanks for the help, Davina.”

    “Thank you, Euan. Good-bye,” said Simone weakly.

    “That’s quite all right, dear: and just remember to tell your sister that if they don’t fit, she can always exchange them!” carolled Davina.

    “Um—yeah, ta. See ya,” he said lamely, stumbling out.

    Beth’s distant cousin Clara Macdonald drank tea in Beth’s new flat, which she was now sharing, looking very calm. “I’m making a fresh start. In fact, it would be fair to say, I’m a remittance woman,” she explained mildly to the company.

    Beth choked into her tea.

    “The thing is, I can’t pick men,” confided Clara, wrinkling up her charming oval face horribly.

    “Darling, who can?” cried Posy Baranski pleasedly.

    “Some women seem to do it very competently. –I’m very sorry, Akiko, I didn’t mean to make you feel excluded by being obscure.” Rapidly Clara explained in Japanese about remittance men.

    Akiko nodded thoughtfully. “I see. Thank-ah you, Cuh-lara.”

    Clara Macdonald was very pretty: rather in the style of her distant relation Polly Carrano: big limpid grey-green eyes, a sweet oval face, and quantities of shiny, curling brown hair streaked quite naturally with gold. She didn’t look as if she’d have any trouble attracting men: in fact she looked as if she’d have to beat them off with a stick. So Beth said dubiously: “I wouldn’t think you’d have any problems with men.”

    “It depends what you mean by problems. My trouble is that I always attract the wrong type. Or perhaps I merely fall for the wrong type? Well, whichever it is, it always works out disastrously.”

    Clara was related to Beth’s mother on the Macdonald side. She was not a New Zealander: she had grown up in Hong Kong, and gone to school in England. Her grandfather had married twice, his first wife being an Englishwoman and the second Japanese. Her father worked for a merchant bank: Renwick, Thwaites, not large but solid. He had married the granddaughter of one of the then senior partners. The Thwaites family had not precisely been prepared to welcome obscure Donald Macdonald with open arms, but Julie Thwaites had all the obstinacy and determination that characterised her family, and she had had him in the end. Their children had been born in Hong Kong. Then Donald had been transferred to the London office, and the family had quite a long spell back in England. Later, however, Julie and Donald had returned to Hong Kong: Julie had decided that they’d have ten or fifteen years there, before the Red Chinese took over, and then get out.

    By that time Clara had been in her late teens; during her school holidays she was able to make the acquaintance of her Grandfather Macdonald and his second family in Japan. There discovering that Grandma Macdonald, a neat, bustling little Japanese woman, in appearance as unlike the two tall, willowy blonde, senior Thwaites women, Julie and her mother, as could be imagined, was horribly and exactly like them in temperament. Bossy as all get out, totally determined and obstinate, and ruled Grandpa Macdonald and all their family with a rod of iron in exactly the same way as Grandma Thwaites ruled Grandpa and all his household. And as Mummy ruled Daddy and theirs.

    Clara had found Japan fascinating, but she didn’t find she had very much in common with her own generation, be they Macdonald descendants or otherwise. She had quickly started to learn Japanese: she had a facility for languages and having had a Chinese amah in her formative years had picked up Cantonese more as her first language than her second, really. School in England had featured the obligatory French and German but Julie Thwaites had grown up with a wider view of the world, and insisted that Clara should make good use of her holidays by studying Japanese seriously. Some teenage girls would have balked, but Clara was biddable and besides, had the sort of brain that needed intellectual occupation. By the time she was ready for university her Japanese was really quite good.

    She might have just done Oriental Languages and gone into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and disappeared quietly forever, but Julie had other plans. So Clara was sent, at her father’s expense, to live with Grandma and Grandpa Macdonald in Japan for three years. By the end of that period her Japanese was excellent, as much as a gaijin’s could be, and she had had several years’ practical experience in coaching in English: this latter had all been managed by Grandma Macdonald but there had most certainly been no opposition to the idea from Julie Thwaites Macdonald.

    She explained some of this background rapidly, and added: “My Japanese grandmother disapproved as much as Mummy could possibly have done of all of my Japanese boyfriends. So for a while Mummy had me back under her wing in Hong Kong, but that didn’t work out: first old Mr Wu wanted to turn me into Fourth Wife. He sent First Wife to see Mummy and put it to her delicately: Mummy had ten fits and had to fall back on saying ‘No sex, please, we’re British.’”

    At this, Beth and Posy and even Akiko all screamed with laughter, so there was no need to explain the phrase. Clara drank tea and twinkled at them over the mug.

    “Who was-ah nex’, after Mr Wu?” gasped Akiko, blowing her nose.

    “Jimmy Chong: not really next, more simultaneous. He was just a few years older than me, but of course he wouldn’t do, he was merely charming, well educated, and able to support me in the style to which Mummy thought I should be accustomed.”

    “Hai!” said Akiko, laughing. “On-lee, Chinese, eh?”

    “Quite,” said Clara drily.

    Nobody pointed out that she must have been old enough by that time to do what she wanted, rather than what her mother wanted; they just looked at her sympathetically and Beth asked kindly: “Were you very disappointed?”

    Clara sighed. “Well, I bawled my eyes out. But underneath, I was relieved. Jimmy was a lovely chap, but very conventional. Well, the usual ambitions: nice flat, nice kids, nice car…”

    “Hai: you were not ur-ready for that, at-ah that stage,” said Akiko shrewdly.

    “No. The silly thing was, if I had married him, I’d have had exactly the sort of life that Mummy wanted for me!”

    The ladies collapsed in ecstatic giggles, nodding frantically.

    After which, a fresh pot having been made, Akiko urged Clara unaffectedly to tell more about her unsuitable boyfriends.

    Clara smiled. “Well, Mummy decided if I could only attract Chinese men, I’d better go off to university. She didn’t know about Harry Johnson, that was just as well: he was a crony of Daddy’s and already married three times.” Her audience choked. “So I was sent off to England. To the School of Oriental Languages, in London.” Her audience choked again. “No, well, I didn’t get into the sort of trouble you might think. Mummy found a lovely family for me to live with. There was Mr and Mrs, Mrs having been at school with Mummy, plus Sonny at home. Have you seen The Good Life?” They all had, even Akiko. “Yes, well, not like the Goods, like their neighbours. Mummy, of course, sent me to them with the inner conviction that Sonny only needed to set eyes on me to set me up in a clone of his parents’ house.”

    “And?” croaked Posy.

    “It was not Mr, was-ah it, Cuh-lara?” croaked Akiko.

    Beth had had this awful thought, too. She stared at her cousin numbly.

    “No, only a cousin of Mrs’s. Married, of course.”

    “Darling, they all are!” cried Posy with vivid sympathy.

    “So I was beginning to discover, Posy: yes. He’d probably have just quietly dumped me, but we went to a family wedding. Not together, of course. All of his lot were there, as well as Mr and Mrs and their lot, plus his wife, naturally, not to mention his grown-up kids; and he got stinking drunk and so did I, and the pair of us were caught in a compromising position in a coat cupboard by the grandmother of the bride. Don’t tell me it’s like something out of Cousin Cousine: it was like something out of all the nightmare-ish weddings that ever did or could take place, on celluloid or otherwise, rolled into one. Heap big scene; and he then crept back to Wifey, promising to be a good boy from now on, and Mr and Mrs and Sonny virtuously threw me out of the house.”

    “Lucky you!” said Posy with a gurgle.

    “Go on, Clara,” said Beth eagerly, being now sufficiently relaxed to be able to say this without wondering whether she should or shouldn’t. “What happened next?”

    “I actually got my degree.”—They choked.—“But by the time I graduated I had attracted,” she said, looking impossibly prim, “a highly suitable young man.”

    They looked puzzled. After a moment Akiko ventured: “You find-ah out he was ur-gay?”

    “No.”

    “The wrong colour?” ventured Posy.

    “No. Highly suitable in every way: washed-out pale pink.”

    They choked slightly, but nodded.

    “Um—he didn’t want to get married?” ventured Beth.

    “On the contrary. He was very keen. Had the ring all picked out. And the flat. He was a rising young stockbroker, in a firm with which Daddy’s bank did business.”

    “Ah!” cried Akiko. “I know! You did not want-ah to marry-ah him!”

    “Exactly. I’d almost persuaded myself I did; you know?” Akiko nodded feelingly. “Hai,” said Clara. “Only I woke up one morning and found I couldn’t possibly.”

    “Ugh: your mother must have been pleased,” croaked Beth.

    “Delirious.”

    Julie Thwaites Macdonald, returning angrily to England for the purpose, had first—after it was clear that Clara was adamant about not marrying the suitable young man—tried to force Clara to accept a post at the F.O. and then, when she’d dug her toes in, declared angrily that she’d better go into teaching, it was obviously all she was fit for. Clara didn’t think she was, but Julie found her a post at a nice girls’ public school within easy reach of Grandma and Grandpa Thwaites.

    Clara was pretty much of a disaster as a disciplinarian, and after a couple of years’ struggle the headmistress suggested to her that if she would like just to take the senior class, she could fix her up with some coaching for the nearby redbrick as well. Clara accepted thankfully. After that things went along very much better for a couple of years and eventually, a tutorship falling vacant at the redbrick, Clara’s contacts there encouraged her to apply. She got it, and might have stayed there in happy obscurity for the rest of her working life.

    “What went wrong?” gasped Beth avidly.

    Clara pulled a face. “Mr Obrusky.”

    They gulped.

    “I knew he was a sleaze: anybody could have told that within two seconds of setting eyes on him; and besides, he called himself a ‘Public Speaker and Facilitator’.”

    They gulped again.

    “Devastatingly good-looking: Irish looks: dark hair, lots of it, white skin, big smudgy blue eyes, a voice like Pierce Brosnan and Sean Connery all rolled into one.”

    “I’d have gone for it, frankly, dear!” said Posy with a giggle.

    Clara nodded. “I knew it was stupid: I could see myself doing it; but I thought, what the Hell. A person like me wasn’t ever going to get anywhere near the real Pierce Brosnan or Sean Connery, and I’d better settle for Mr Obrusky. So I did.”

    After a moment Beth said faintly: “‘Mr’?”

    “He insisted on it with people like the local garage mechanic, Beth.”

    Beth nodded feebly.

    The involvement with Mr Obrusky lasted three years, by the end of which time her relatives discovered that Clara had let him move into her flat, supported him entirely, as far as rent, food and drink went, and had been unaware until crunch-time of (a) his strings of other women all round the country, (b) what exactly he facilitated and (c) his propensity for signing other people’s names on cheques. The law eventually caught up with Mr Obrusky and at that time Clara discovered that there was nothing left in her bank account: one of the names he’d signed had been hers. Very fortunately Grandma Thwaites was at hand to sort it all out, sort Clara out, tell Julie not to bother to come home, dear, she would manage, and decide that Clara should have a complete change of scene. Naturally Julie did come home: she was very sure that Mummy wouldn’t, for one thing, think to have Clara checked out by a sensible doctor. Clara was duly checked out under Julie’s grim supervision and after a slight case of thrush had been competently dealt with and after Julie and the doctor, jointly and severally, had told her how lucky she was not to have AIDS and VD as well, Clara was pronounced fit again. And Mummy and Grandma looked round determinedly for a nice new job for her that would give her a fresh start.

    Clara did not reveal all of these gruesome details to her new-found friends: but enough.

    “Dire!” concluded Posy, sighing deeply. “Even worse than my thing for the Sheik. He wasn’t, dears, he was from some totally obscure family in Saudi Arabia, and his father was a waiter in Manchester, not even the owner of the restaurant where he worked. I knew he was fake from beginning to end, but I sort of closed my eyes…” She sighed. “He looked like Dr Zhivago in his youth.”

    “Wholly understandable, then, Posy!” said Clara with a laugh.

    “Mm. –I’m sorry, Clara: do go on!”

    “Well, that was it, really.” Clara had thus found herself on her way to the Antipodes for a fresh start at the age of thirty-three. She hadn’t for a moment thought that Professor Armstrong, who bore many of the earmarks of both of her grandmothers, would want her in her department, so she hadn’t really tried very hard at the interview with her and the grim-faced Dr Kincaid. Possibly this was what had got her the job, as she now admitted: when she tried, she was hopeless! Beth expressed perfect understanding of this sentiment and ventured the opinion that Professor Armstrong wanted someone who could mediate between the Japanese staff and the English-speaking students.

    “That explains it. I think I can manage that!”

    “Um—I didn’t actually mean ‘mediate,’” she gulped.

    Clara, who had perfectly grasped that, nodded and smiled.

    “You can be one of the standard bearers,” decided Penny, as the exhausted cast of The Mikado took a break and she was able to look round at the new recruits. All three of them: Moana Curtis, Clara Macdonald and Hal Gorman. Enthusiasm for the G&S Society was rapidly and very visibly waning with the approach of the Christmas season and the summer holidays. Well, Posy was also relatively new but she’d already decided what to do with her: front row of the chorus on Mitsuko’s side, in fact at Mitsuko’s side and since she was a professional she could make it her job to stop Mitsuko from giggling all the time. No-one had yet pointed out that this incessant giggling was culturally correct, but some of them were working themselves up to it.

    “Sure,” said Hal placidly. “Where is it?”

    “Where is what?” returned Penny impatiently.

    “My standard.”

    “What?”

    “To bear,” the giant American said meekly.

    “T— We’re not at that stage: just pretend!” she snarled.

    “Okay; sure,” he said, looking puzzled.

    Penny took a deep breath and looked round for someone to tell him what to do. Sol was in a sniggering male huddle with Gerry Fermour and several like-minded idiots including Tim, she’d have a word with him tonight when they got home. Jack Perkins was over at the far side of the room doing what he’d been told to, which was, coaching Martin Wolfe and Jimmy Burton into singing the actual notes. Leigh Gore was helping him: good, maybe the stupid little sods would actually pay attention. All the other males in sight were hopeless except for old Norm Parkinson, who could at least sing in tune and move on stage as if his underpants weren’t crippling him. But he was helping little Wallis with her part, she wouldn’t interrupt them: Wallis would have a lovely voice if she’d keep practising and learn to project it, and Penny was already revolving plans for using her in the next production, regardless of the fact that all the leading contralto parts had been written for commanding ladies in their middle years. “Janet, come here,” she ordered.

    Janet obediently came.

    “This is Hal, he’s going to be one of the Mikado’s standard-bearers. He can sing quite well, but we can’t possibly put him in the chorus, he’d stand out like a sore thumb.”

    Janet looked up meekly at the bulk of Hal Gorman, and blushed and smiled apologetically.

    Penny swept on regardless: “He’ll have to hold the banner and sing. You know that scene where the Mikado’s procession enters?” Janet nodded obediently. “Tell him what to do in it,” ordered Penny with calm finality, walking off.

    Janet looked up at Hal in meek apology.

    “Hi, I’m Hal Gorman,” he said, holding out a large hand.

    Timidly Janet put hers into it, hoping very much it wouldn’t be one of those awful male handshakes that crushed your hand like a vice. “Hullo! I’m Janet Wilson!” she gasped.

    It wasn’t: his warm hand squeezed hers very gently. “I’m real pleased to meet you, Janet. I’ve never been in a show before, so I guess if you could just put me into the swing of things gently, I’d be real grateful!” He twinkled down at her.

    Very pink, Janet looked up at him and smiled shyly.

    “Left hand down a bit!” said Leigh with a chuckle.

    “Very funny!” panted Adrian crossly. “Give us a hand!”

    “How heavy is it?” replied Leigh cautiously, not moving.

    “Eh? Oh.” Adrian straightened, wiping sweat from his perfect brow. “It’d be lighter with two. You got a bad back, Leigh?”

    “Mm. Put it out; some years ago, now, but—”

    “Then don’t for God’s sake try to shift this,” he said, sighing. “MARTIN! SIM!” he bellowed.

    “I don’t think either of them is strong enough to make much difference,” said Leigh cautiously, eyeing the giant potted palm in its giant brass pot.

    “Both,” replied Adrian simply.

    Leigh’s eyes twinkled. “I see. Since I’m here, could I set out chairs, perhaps?”

    “Thanks, Leigh. Just along the walls: we’ll need plenty of floor space for the Grand Opening. Somebody,” said Adrian, eyeing the piled-up chairs in his new main dining-room (and erstwhile lounge bar) balefully, “shoved those two small tables together for the bar and then lost interest.”

    “God,” said Leigh, cringing. “Who?”

    “Bloody Martin, that’s who: he’s taken it into his head that he doesn’t want to go to varsity after all, he wants to learn to cook, so he pushed off into the kitchen. I know it’s what I did at his age, and I know I’m beginning to sound like me mum,” he said with a sheepish grin, “but funnily enough it’s different once you’ve got a few years under your belt, isn’t it?”

    “It is, rather!” Leigh had already removed his jacket: it was a very warm day, though not particularly sunny; he therefore, putting it and his briefcase neatly on a lonely-looking two-person table, began to set chairs along the walls. Adrian, sighing, abandoned the giant potted palm in its giant brass pot and came to help him.

    After some time of this activity, a contralto voice said rather shyly: “Hi. The door was open, so I just came in.”

    “Hullo, Moana,” said Leigh in some surprise, smiling at Thomas’s Senior Ornithological Fellow. It wasn’t like her to be shy: she was a forthright, simple sort of creature. Not that he’d seen very much of her: she was in a different faculty, of course, and then, she and Jane seemed to spend over ninety percent of their working hours actually out in the field. “Oh; do you know Adrian Revill?”

    “Yeah, sort of,” said Adrian, flashing his perfect teeth at her. “Seen you at the Environmental Watch Committee does and that. And we met that first day I came over here with the key—’member?”

    “Yeah: it seems like a lifetime ago!” said Moana with a laugh. “Jane and I fell hopelessly in love with this place but there was no way we could have afforded it,” she said to Leigh.

    “I see. You didn’t think of taking one of the upstairs flats?”

    “No; couldn’t wait. Well, couldn’t afford to wait, really, and I’d got sick of living out of suitcases. Though as it turned out, Casa Wishbone took just about as long.”

    “Wishbone?” asked Leigh with interest.

    Moana smiled. “Sorry, that just slipped out: it’s a private joke me and Jane have about Casa Meridionale.”

    “We love private jokes, here,” explained Leigh, his eyes twinkling. “If you’d care to reveal it?”

    “Um—well, another name for a bird’s wishbone is merrythought.”

    “It’s splendiferous,” said Leigh in awe, as Adrian choked.

    “Yeah,” said Moana, giving him a relieved smile. “Jane thought it was pretty good, too. We always use it, now.”

    “So you thought it up?” said Adrian. Moana nodded and he said, smiling at her. “Can we help you? We’re not open yet, you know, but I can unofficially give you a drink.”

    “No—um—your side door was open and I did call out… Um, well, I’ve just finished a report, I’m at bit of a loose end… ”

    Adrian just looked at her mildly.

    “Do you need a hand? Is there anything I could do?” said Moana on a wistful note.

    “Move that?” suggested Leigh, nodding at the potted palm.

    Moana looked at it uneasily.

    “Sorry, Moana. He has got two other helpers who are reputedly strong enough in tandem to form—well, not one strong man. One average man?”

    She smiled but said firmly: “I’m as strong as an average man.”

    Leigh looked at lovely, tall, dark-skinned Moana, in a bright red blouse with a frill down its front, dark designer jeans, and high-heeled tan sandals that matched the leather belt round her slender waist, and smiled a little. “Yes, but none of us require you to prove it, Moana.”

    “Leigh’s been helping me put out chairs; if you could give him a hand with that,” said Adrian kindly, “I’ll go and see what those two young cretins are up to.”

    “Yes: fine!” she said with a relieved laugh.

    Adrian smiled nicely and went out, refraining from raising his eyebrows very high until he was in the now spotless and gleaming front hall. In the kitchen he reported to Anna, who was unpacking crates of glassware: “Moana Curtis has just turned up: the lovely Maori woman who’s the senior ornithologist.” Anna nodded, looking at him enquiringly. “Seems to be at a loose end, wants to give us a hand. Um… reading between the lines, not a few of us mighta made some unwarranted assumptions, there.”

    “Yes?” said Anna mildly.

    Adrian sighed, and ran his hand through his short curls. “Like, because she’s a native in both senses of the word, she must be quite at home here. Likewise not be lonely and friendless?” He grimaced.

    “Oh, dear!” cried Anna in distress.

    Adrian wrinkled his perfect nose. “Yeah. Shoulda guessed she wasn’t all bad: Jane gets on really well with her… Shit. I wish we’d asked her over, all those times we had Jane to tea.”

    “Ye-es… Jane could have suggested it. I think perhaps she wanted to keep us—well, you, really—to herself,” said Anna shrewdly.

    “Uh—could be right. Well, wanted something a bit special that could just be hers, eh?”

    Anna nodded.

    “Mm. Natural enough: she’s completely uprooted herself, it’s all new territory to her, too. Oh, well. No use crying over spilt milk. I told Moana she could give Leigh a hand with the chairs. By the way, he’s got a bad back, so don’t for Chrissakes ever ask him to lift anything heavy, will ya?”

    “No,” agreed Anna, looking at him in horror.

    “You can’t have done, Anna, he isn’t showing any ill effects,” said Adrian mildly.

    “No! Um—him and Moana could maybe give me a hand with these glasses, after?”

    “Yeah, sure. ’Cos they sure as Hell aren’t gonna give me a hand to shift that bloody great palm tree Polly Carrano donated. And guess who is?” he said evilly. “Where the fuck are they?”

    “They’re in the courtyard, rearranging the plastic tables and chairs.”

    “AGAIN?” he shouted.

    “Well, Sim does seem to have adopted it as his baby.”

    Breathing heavily, Adrian strode over to the back door.

    Anna got on with unpacking glassware, looking quite unperturbed.

    … “It all looks great!” beamed Moana, as the workers relaxed over cold beers at one of the white plastic tables in the courtyard of The Quays. There had been months of discussion over the pub’s name. Suggestions such as “The Port and Lemon” (Leigh), or “The Pig and Whistle” (Dorothy) had been dismissed out of hand. Anna had been very tempted by “The Cat and Fiddle” but Adrian hadn’t. For a while everyone had favoured “The Jolly Tar” but then had gone off it. It would have been all right for just a pub, but not if they were running a restaurant in it. Jacko had thought, scratching his head, that the old pub never used to have a name; much detective effort hadn’t resulted in anything that had proved him wrong. Eventually they had decided that the restaurant proper should just be “Revill’s”: according to Anna, it had the right ambience. It had been Leigh who had suggested, somewhat desperately, “The Quays.” Which had been unanimously approved.

    Sim burst into impassioned speech in re the disposition of the tables in the courtyard, the style and height of the white trellis-work which was a feature of the courtyard, the style of the large terracotta pots, the charm of the recycled bricks obtained at cost off Kevin for the paving… After quite some time Moana managed to say: “Yes, it’s super. Not just the courtyard, though, Sim: the whole place.”

    “The side bar’s awful!” burst out Wallis.

    “No, I think it looks good, Wallis,” she said kindly.

    Some time back Wallis had proposed, seconded and accepted herself to do up the side bar, in toto. The rest of them had thought it entirely beyond her capacities, but only Sim and Martin had been silly enough to say so. Thus making her even more determined to do it. True, Jacko had unobtrusively helped her with the carpentering side of things, so the bar was at least functional.

    “It’s not bad,” said Martin tolerantly. “A bit dark.”

    “You shouldn’t’ve used all those old dark panels,” noted Sim.

    “They’re mahogany and they were going to waste!” she retorted fiercely.

    “It looks fine, Wallis,” said Adrian soothingly.

    “It doesn’t!” she shouted. “Stop patronising me!” She got up and rushed inside.

    “The actual work’s all right,” offered Martin uneasily. “I mean, Jacko did a lot of that, of course.”

    “Where is Jacko?” asked Leigh idly.

    Sim gave Adrian a darkling look: in spite of being very pleased with the effect of his courtyard he hadn’t forgiven him for having given him, Sim, a rocket. “Well out of it.”

    “He’s taken a party of Yanks from the Royal K over to Kawau on a fishing trip; dare say they won’t catch a thing, but they’ll imagine they’ve had a genuine Kiwi experience,” said Adrian unemotionally. “In order to earn cash money, which in case you little cretins haven’t noticed,” he elaborated, getting considerably more emotional: “I haven’t been able to pay him for all the hard yacker he’s put in round here—without, if I may mention it, a word of complaint!”

    Sim and Martin began: “I didn’t—” and: “I never—” respectively, but Adrian, noting grimly, “I’d better go and calm Wallis down,” got up and stalked inside.

    “He’s a bit cranky; don’t take any notice of him,” said Anna to the table at large. “It’s just that he’s very nervous about the Grand Opening.”

    Sim and Martin opened their fat mouths but Leigh said hastily: “Of course, we all realise that, don’t we? He’s very sweet-natured, actually,” he said to Moana,

    “I see,” she said awkwardly.

    “Oh; sorry. Think that was the wrong vernacular.”

    “No,” she growled. “I mean, that’s all right. You don’t need to—to pretend, or anything, with me, Leigh.”

    There was a short silence.

    “So you’ve noticed me pretending at work, have you?” he said limply.

    Moana looked at him apologetically. “Well, just a bit. I mean, everybody does it, more or less. Um—when you’re talking to Juliette or Yvonne and them.”

    “Mm. I apologise, Moana. Um—look, would you like to come and see my flat?”

    “I’d love to. It might give me some ideas about what to do with my birdcage, too. It’s a bit sterile, y’know?”

    Even though Leigh had hitherto believed himself thoroughly to loathe the American interrogative “y’know?” he found himself smiling warmly at her and—for after all they didn’t really know each other and he didn’t want to give the girl the wrong impression—having to suppress an impulse to take her arm. Upstairs he warned as he showed her in: “You may find it a bit too traditional; well, old-fashioned—English. I am old-fashioned.”

    “No, it’s lovely!” Moana beamed at his tiny front lobby. It was really only the end of the original upstairs corridor, and only big enough to contain a door and a hat-stand, which, to Leigh’s astonishment, Dorothy had donated as a house-warming present: curlicued brass, it looked lovely with his dark green walls, white skirting boards, and, of course, shining kauri floors.

    “The floors are all original: kauri. But my walls had to be done from scratch: the corridor walls were all in dreadful condition. That archway,” he said with a smile, nodding at it, “isn’t original; Barry Goode put it in to make my passage look less like a hotel corridor! –The rooms are all strung out in a row, you see.”

    Moana nodded. “I see. So you’ve just got the left-hand side?”

    “Yes. The hotel looks like a solid block from the road, but it’s actually composed of two large wings.”

    “I get it!” she said with her cheerful smile.

    “Mm. I couldn’t decide on a wallpaper so we eventually had these walls painted. But they’ve come up quite well, don’t you think?”

    “Yes,” said Moana, looking at the sporting prints on the dark green wall, and smiling.

    “Martin and Sim gave me those,” said Leigh a trifle limply. “I’m not really into that sort of thing.”

    “They go well with this colour scheme, though.”

    “Yes. Well, now: the main room is through here, you see. The dining-room leads off it.”

    “I see. It’s quite a simple layout, really,” she said mildly.

    “Good,” said Leigh feebly. He ushered her into his sitting-room, which now contained, besides the very pleasant white-painted bookcases which Barry had made for him, considerately not building them in, just in case Leigh ever wanted to move, one glowing crimson rug from a Parnell rug shop for which Leigh had, as he now explained, mortgaged his immortal soul.

    “Its wonderful,” said Moana in awe. “That red’s so deep…”

    “Yes: I fell in love with it, I freely admit it,” said Leigh with a sigh. “It was completely daft of me, of course: now I can’t afford any furniture!”

    “You’d only need one chair, you could sit in it and contemplate this carpet. Is it Persian?”

    “Oh, Lord, yes!” Leigh fell to his knees, turned up the corner of the rug and bored on, he realised with horror, for some time. “My God, I’m sorry: you must be bored to tears!” he said, hurriedly scrambling up.

    Moana rose a lot more gracefully. “No, it was really interesting; I always like listening to experts,” she said simply.

    Leigh sagged a bit. “So do I, actually. One of the few things Thomas and I have in common!” he admitted with a laugh.

    “Ye-es… You’re such good friends, though,” she murmured.

    “God knows why! Um—attraction of opposites?” She nodded, smiling, and Leigh ventured, though not neglecting to lead her over to his French windows and his wonderful balcony: “Are you managing to get along with him, Moana?”

    “Yes. I like him. He’s very intelligent: you only have to explain something once. And his mind works… um, I don’t know that I can explain it. It’s very clear. Analytical?”

    “Uh—yes. It’s that, all right. I admit that that’s important, it’s Hell to have to work with a fuzzy-minded supervisor, and I’ve had a few of those, in my time!” Leigh wandered out and leaned on his marvellous balcony railing. “I suppose I meant, though, can you take his personality? Lots of people find it too much.”

    “I know. I don’t mind. My dad and uncles are all pretty macho… Well, I don’t know why, and I can see that a lot of that eccentricity’s just put on, but I like him,” she said with her wide smile. “I know some of the staff feel he’s a bit of a bully, but he doesn’t worry me: I can give as good as I get. And mostly it isn’t bullying, it’s just that he’s impatient with people who can’t see his point of view.”

    At this point a blinding light struck Leigh Gore. Moana Curtis for Thomas the Tank Engine! The thought had occurred before, but then so much had intervened… But why not? She was a lovely girl, she had the sort of tall, long-legged, busty looks he’d always admired, and she could stand his bulldozer of a personality! And she was bright enough, if not precisely—er—educated; but at least she was capable of appreciating the quality of Thomas’s very fine mind! And the thing with Dorothy was going nowhere at all: if Thomas had addressed more than five words to her in the last few months, barring those words he was obliged to address to her in staff meetings, Leigh most certainly wasn’t aware of it. And as Yvonne and Juliette, not to say the rest of the Admin ladies, weren’t aware of it either, it manifestly hadn’t happened. Yes: Moana for Thomas!

    It was, therefore, this fell scheme that caused Leigh, after she’d duly admired his view, pointing out that you could see her birdcage in Casa Wishbone from here, and had come inside again and said naïvely: “You’ve got loads of books. These wouldn’t all be for your work, would they?” not to dismiss Moana Curtis with a mental shrug and a mental cringe.

    “No, I’m quite a reader.”

    “Lots of novels,” said Moana uncertainly.

    “Mm, mostly English, though I read a bit in French. I’ve got some Vietnamese novels in French; either translations or originally written in French; the French were in Southeast Asia for a long time, of course.”

    “Were they? I never knew that!”

    Leigh again suppressed a mental cringe. How could she, after all? She was too young, had undoubtedly dropped anything smacking vaguely of history or literature at the age of fourteen in order to concentrate on maths and science, and would, like the rest of her generation, have got nothing from the bloody media except the association with America. “Yes. A couple of generations of upper-class Southeast Asians would have grown up speaking French as their language of choice. There are still excellent Vietnamese restaurants in Paris; and a large Southeast Asian population in France.”

    “I see,” she said uncertainly.

    “I speak a very little Vietnamese, myself: one of the reasons why I got this job, I think. I’m hoping to take it up again, once the tutor arrives.”

    Moana smiled. “Good on you!”

    There was a little pause. Then she ventured: “Um—I don’t even speak any Maori, much. Well, we never did at home. Dad reckoned that when he was a kid, you got the strap for speaking it at school instead of English.” Not realising that Leigh was trying not to show his horror and outrage at this revelation, she continued simply: “My old gran, she was my great-grandmother really, she used to speak it a bit. They started introducing it in the primary schools when I was at secondary school, but I just missed out.”

    “I see. Sim and Martin mentioned it’s a subject that you can sit for your university entrance examination.”

    “Yes, that’s right. I did all science subjects at uni, though. –Sorry, I got used to saying that in Australia. Varsity,” she corrected herself.

    “Mm.”

    “Ooh, you’ve got some videos!” she discovered.

    “Er—yes.” Leigh just waited.

    “I’ve never heard of any… They are feature films, are they?”

    “Mm. I got a lot of them through a supplier who had my old department on his books. But they reflect my own interests, not my work.”

    “There’s a lot of Japanese ones,” she said numbly.

    “Yes: all sub-titled, I only know a few words of the language!” said Leigh cheerfully. “I’m very fond of Japanese cinema. It can be very heavy: quite as tedious as German cinema at its most turgid, alas!” he said with a smile, coming up to her elbow, and reflecting that he might as well make a start, if she was ever going to be fit for Thomas to deign to notice; “but some of the comedies are very funny indeed. Social comment, but with quite a light touch. And unlike the Americans they avoid both bathos and slapstick. And to be fair, they avoid both vulgarity and slapstick, unlike the British. Now, this one’s very well known: A Taxing Woman. About a lady tax inspector: very funny, and very suspenseful. No?”

    Moana shook her head dubiously. “No-o… I think that mighta been on TV in Oz. One of the ladies at work said it was really good. I think that was it. I was gonna watch it but Wayne wanted to watch the cricket.”

    “I see.”

    “I suppose in your terms,” she said with a frown on her beautiful wide forehead, “I’m just a yob.”

    “Just a scientist, perhaps,” said Leigh as gently as he could.

    ‘Yes.” Moana swallowed hard. “If you knew—! A person like you could never understand. It’s not that I’m into the Roots thing. But I’m not ashamed of my tangata whenua, either!” she said fiercely.

    “I’m sorry?” said Leigh limply.

    “Oh. The Maori. ‘The people of the land’.”

    “Literally?” said Leigh with terrific interest.

    “Um—yeah. Um—a lot of ethnic peoples”—here Leigh refrained from wincing, after all, you heard the phrase every other day on the blessed media, in fact it was probably Standard Turdish—“are very close to the land, it’s sort of… almost physical,” she ended dubiously, eyeing him uncertainly.

    “Yes. I’m far too urbanised ever to hope to grasp that affectively, Moana, but intellectually, I do see what you mean.”

    “Yes. I don’t altogether see what you mean,” she said grimly, the handsome nostrils flaring, so that Leigh simultaneously both blenched a little and blinked admiringly. “I mean, I get your drift. But what exactly do you mean when you say affectively? Emotionally?”

    “As opposed to intellectually, certainly.”

    “Yes,” she said, still grim. “Um—well, your ancestors were reading books back when mine were still eating people. That’s not to put down the tangata whenua, it’s just a fact.”

    “Possibly the educated English were reading books: yes. I don’t think my actual ancestors were; I’m from the small shopkeeping class, directly, and a few generations back we were farm labourers.”

    “Oh,” she said uncertainly.

    “When you said I could never understand, I don’t think you meant entirely that, did you?” he said mildly.

    “No, but it’s part of it. Well, Dad did all right for himself, he was a milkman for years, and back then, a milk round was still worth something. We never had any books at home, though. Most of the people in our street called magazines ‘books’,” she said grimly.

    “Yes? That’s interesting.”

    “Don’t pretend!” she retorted fiercely.

    Leigh blinked. “I’m not pretending: I’m genuinely interested in linguistic usage. That still survives, you know: the women in the typing pool at work also call them books. I remember vividly the first time I heard Merri use it: I completely mistook her meaning.”

    “Oh, um—sorry. Um—well, Mum used to work in an office, but only on the adding machines, y’know? She gave it up after we came along. Then she got a job in a factory when I was about eight. Sewing. Most of the people we knew didn’t give much of a damn whether their kids did their homework or not, y’know? But Dad was quite strict. He said no kid of his was gonna grow up with an excuse for going on the dole. And Aunty Maude, she was a nurse, she’s Mum’s sister, well, she always used to say we could all make something of ourselves if we tried. None of us liked her, she was very strict, only she was right,” she said with a little sigh. “I suppose I was naturally bright: anyway, I always did well at school: top of the class, that sort of thing. Miss Hutchinson, she was my teacher in Form 2, she came to see Mum and Dad when I was due to go on to secondary school. I can see it clear as I can see you,” said handsome, elegant Moana glumly, staring right through Leigh Gore and his smart little flat. “She came at five o’clock, and we always had tea about ten past, not that Mum was a clock-watcher. Anyway, Mum had a big pan of chips on the stove, and Steve, that’s one of my brothers, he was sitting at the table doing the sprigs on his football boots—on a bit of newspaper, ’cos Mum had yelled at him. Mum had on purple tracksuit pants and a pink fuzzy jersey, and a flowery apron on top of that. She was the size of a house: a lot of Maori women get like that, it’s not only ignorance, it’s because the European diet doesn’t suit the Polynesian metabolism,” she said with a hard look at him. “And Kathleen, that’s one of my older sisters, she’d just done her nails and stunk the place out with that sort of pear-drop smell of the remover, y’know? And she was telling Mum a string of lies about not having a date with Dean Johnson that evening, and Mum was shouting at her. Added to which we had the TV on, and Dad was just yelling at the kids to turn it off so’s he could hear the racing results on the radio. And by that time, it had dawned on me that none of the pakeha houses round our way featured shabby old broken-down armchairs in the kitchen, like what Dad was sitting in. With his singlet on and his belt undone and a beer in his fist,” she noted grimly. “I could see Miss Hutchinson thinking it was a real Maori house, and what’s more, it was,” she said in a hard voice. “Dad was making more than anyone else in the street, mind you, and none of them have been able to afford to retire to Queensland, twenty years down the track. Only it didn’t show, that was for sure.”

    Leigh just nodded.

    “Miss Hutchinson was what you’d probably call a real lady,” said Moana grimly. “She pretended she hadn’t noticed a thing, only I could see she had. She talked really nicely to Mum and Dad about me sitting for a scholarship. Dad got ropeable because he thought she was implying he couldn’t afford to send his kids to secondary school. It was free, only the uniforms cost a bomb, and you had to cough up for books at the beginning of the year. Anyway, after a bit he calmed down enough to listen and she explained that if I got a scholarship I could go to one of the really good schools and not the local high school. Um—do you have zoning in England?”

    “I’m not sure what you mean,” replied Leigh cautiously.

    “I dunno if it’s still the same these days. We had zoning, and you had to go to the school in your area.”

    “I see.”

    “But some of the big grammar schools and the private schools, they had scholarships, you see?”

    Leigh nodded.

    “Miss Hutchinson explained all that. Mum thought she meant—um—the big secondary school that’s the famous Maori girls’ school here,” she explained carefully to the ignorant foreigner, “but she said if I wanted to go on with maths and science, it might be better to try for one of the others. Well, anyway, I did, and I ended up getting a scholarship to St. Ursie’s, and I know you’ve never heard of it, but it’s a real snob school, and the fees are incredible and of course they were all stuck-up little pakeha snobs—well, there was one Chinese girl in my class, Rachel Wong, she was okay—but I stuck it out. Because Kathleen got pregnant at sixteen and I decided," she said grimly, “that it was never gonna happen to me.”

    Leigh at this point got out his handkerchief and blew his nose hard.

    “Shit,” said Moana numbly, staring at him. “This is my success story, ya know!”

    “Yes,” said Leigh shakily, wiping his eyes. “I do beg your pardon; what a fool I am. You’ve done damned well for yourself. I was a scholarship boy, too: grammar school. But at least I came from a family where they expected you to have your head in a book most of the evening and— Well! My parents’ idea of culture was the efforts of the local Gilbert and Sullivan society with the occasional foray into a touring production of Charley’s Aunt, but I do have some idea of the difficulties you must have had.”

    “Yeah. Mum and Dad were good, really, once they saw I was serious about it. I couldn’t have the light on late in the bedroom because of Belinda and Kiri. So they put a desk in their room and let me work in there. It was years before it dawned on me that the year I sat Schol must have half killed poor old Dad: he had to get up about four: he never got to bed until after eleven because I’d always be working in there until Mum made Steve turn the TV off, ya see."

    “Mm. Moana,” said Leigh, trying very, very hard not to be patronising, “it doesn’t matter a damn if you don’t recognise my blessed foreign films or—or read any languages, or for that matter, read the self-indulgent navel-gazings that pass for the English novel, these days.”

    Moana swallowed hard. “Yes, it does. –It’s funny, ya know; I never gave that sort of thing a thought when we were living in Oz. I mean, heck: I was working at the uni, and most of the people we knew, they had degrees and good jobs, y’know? But they never talked about the sort of stuff that you and Jane can carry on about. And Thomas, and Jack, and even Alan, when he lets himself relax,” she said, gnawing on her lip. “I feel really dumb, all the time! And I have tried to tell myself that it doesn’t matter a damn; and if it was just the New Zealanders I probably wouldn’t care, only…”

    “Yes?” said Leigh gently.

    “You’re civilised!” burst out Moana. “I never knew what it was, before! I thought that novels and stuff were just a lot of intellectual crap and that it was nothing to do with me: European culture’s not my heritage!”

    Leigh replied thoughtfully: “I suppose you are living in a society based on the European model; but you’re right, it’s not your heritage, why should you care?”

    “I don’t want not to be me, but I want… possibilities,” said Moana tightly. “I want to—to expand my horizons. Do ya see?”

    Leigh did, indeed. Poor child.

    “You’re gonna say it’s like that bloody stupid Educating Rita movie and I want to turn myself into something unreal, only I don’t!” she said fiercely.

    “N—”

    “I don’t want to be a European lady, I just want to know!”

    “Of course.”

    Moana swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout. A lot of people would say I’m denying my cultural heritage anyway by following the European scientific tradition. But the way I see it…” She frowned over it. “It’s what I’m good at, and you can’t turn back time, can you? I’m all for giving the tangata whenua land rights and fishing rights. But you can’t reverse history: in some ways we have moved on: I’m a twentieth-century woman, I don’t want to live on the marae. –And anybody that thinks Maori women had it easy in the traditional life, needs their head read!”

    “Mm. I can’t think of any cultures where women traditionally have it easy. Um—look, I don’t want to patronise you, but is there any way I could help?”

    Moana gave a shaky laugh. “Shit, it is like Educating Rita!”

    All of a sudden it came back to Leigh what she meant. He’d seen the thing after one of the perpetual rows with Belinda, small wonder it hadn’t made much impression on him. “I hope I’m not like— That was Michael Caine with a damned beard, wasn’t it?”

    She nodded.

    “I hope I’m not like him!” said Leigh with a laugh and a shudder, feeling his smooth chin. Fairly smooth: it must now be around five o’clock, and though he didn’t have a heavy beard, he was human.

    “No, well, he was pretty much of a cliché, wasn’t he? I’ve known loads of lecturers, and even the English lit. ones weren’t that inept!” she said cheerfully.

    Leigh had known even more and very many of them were even more inept, though their subjects were not necessarily English literature. “I’d be happy to lend you any of my books, Moana.”

    “Ta. Um—it’s a Hell of an imposition, Leigh, but—um—could I talk to you about them?”

    “Of course. I enjoy talking about books. I’ll pick out a couple, shall I? If you hate them, don’t bother to finish them.”

    “If I hate them, they’ll be great literature,” predicted Moana. “St. Ursie’s makes you do English right to Seventh Form, even if you’re taking science subjects,”—Leigh sent up a silent prayer of thanks to St. Ursie’s—“but I never managed to get through any of the set texts. Half the girls raved about that Wuthering Heights thing, only I thought it was dumb,” she said, looking at him sideways out of one beautiful dark eye.

    “I entirely agree. Great English literature, if you like the wildly over-Romantic approach, which I don’t.” He looked up and down the bookshelves. “What else did you fail to get through?”

    “David Copperfield. –It’s a book: I don’t mean that dumb TV show.”

    Leigh didn’t ask. “No. Many teenagers can’t tackle Dickens. Lots of people grow into him later. Look, try this, it isn’t great literature, but it’s pretty solid, and it was a great success in its day. It’s part of a trilogy, but the second two aren’t nearly as good: the first volume’s more or less a white-hot distillation of his own experience,” he said, handing her A Kind Of Loving. “The background is working-class, but there are similarities with my own experience. Though I was never—” He broke off, his eyes twinkling. “I won’t give the plot away! Just let’s say I was at once more cowardly and more cautious than the hero. Try it, but if it sticks in your gullet, don’t finish it.”

    “I will finish it,” she promised grimly. “You’ve gotta make a start somewhere, don’t ya? Thanks, Leigh. Um—can I try that Taxing Woman video, too? –Thanks.”

    Leigh hesitated. “Look, I know there aren’t many cultural facilities here. Um… If you’re interested in Classical music, there is an excellent little Early Music group, and—um—we could always listen to some of my collection.”

    “Wayne wasn’t into that… I went to the symphony orchestra once, that was all right,” she said dubiously. “Aunty Maude had a lot of Kiri Te Kanawa’s records, I liked those.”

    That was a start, reflected Leigh. “The collection’s mostly in boxes in my study: come through.” They went into the study and Leigh explained that he was looking for a suitable cupboard in which to store his extensive collection of old LP’s, and very new CD’s. “Er—well, perhaps later in the month? After Adrian’s Grand Opening, perhaps: I think things are going to hectic around here, until then!”

    Moana nodded, looking around her with interest. “Okay, any time you say. You have got a computer,” she noted.

    “I don’t live entirely in the nineteenth century!” said Leigh with a laugh.

    She smiled at him. “No, you don’t. I always thought educated English people did. –I’d better go, I’ve got to go tea at Sammi’s tonight. I wish I’d never accepted the invitation, actually. The trouble is, when I first started at Sir G.G. I thought her sort of lifestyle was what I wanted. Um—well, you know: I thought she was the ideal rôle-model.”

    “Mm. She is impressive,” said Leigh neutrally.

    “She is incredibly boring,” replied Moana simply. “I got… dazzled, I suppose, by the clothes and the efficiency and that house of hers. But she only knows people like her, and they all talk about the same sort of crap, and when you try to talk to them about their work, that’s what they all do! None of them would appreciate my Wishbone joke,” she said awkwardly, with a little laugh.

    Leigh took her elbow very gently. “I entirely understand. Around about the time I finished my degree…” He took her downstairs, burbling gently about the era in which he’d seen himself as ESL’s coming man, and waved her off cheerfully on her way to Casa Wishbone. Then reporting to Wallis, as he wandered into the side bar, that she’d gone back to Casa Wishbone.

    “I’m gonna call it that in future,” said Wallis firmly.

    “Me, too!” said Leigh with a laugh.

    Wallis leaned on her bar counter, sighing. “Can you think of anything to do to brighten this place up, Leigh?”

    “Well, no. As you know, I can’t think in three dimensions.”

    “No. Blow, we should of asked her.”

    “Moana? Mm, well, we’ll no doubt be seeing her again,” said Leigh vaguely, smiling.

    Moana went back to her smart little modern flat feeling rather odd. She’d only intended to look in to see if they needed a hand. And to do something different from anything that Sammi Wolfe might dream up for them to do together, smart-young-executive-wise. She looked uncertainly at Leigh’s book. It was only a paperback, like anyone might own…

    After quite some time she went into her bedroom and laid the dog-eared paperback book very carefully on her bedside table next to the smart executive-type digital alarm clock that was the twin of Wayne’s: bought, at his insistence, as a fail-safe device. She would start on it tonight, there was never anything on late on TV and maybe it would take the taste of young upwardly mobile executive types out of her mouth!

    Moana had been feeling for some months, now, though she hadn’t bothered to analyse the feeling, that it had been out of the frying-pan into the fire with the move to Sir G.G., and that she might as well have stayed in bloody Queensland with Ma Mason from next-door always calling her “Mrs—oops, silly me” and the seven or eight solid months of humidity and the bloody unit chosen by yuppie Wayne. Now, all of a sudden, she felt happy, though she didn’t pause to ask herself precisely why. She went into the ensuite, turned the shower on, and got under it, humming. She would not have been able to tell anybody what the tune was, and she would perhaps not have recognised it herself as something she’d got off a very old record of Aunty Maude’s, but it was Voi che sapete. Moana hummed it for quite some time.

    The sun shone, the champagne flowed, and endless streams of people poured into The Quays for its Grand Opening. “Did we invite all these?” shouted Adrian to Anna above the racket.

    “Dunno!” she shouted back.

    Grinning, Adrian poured champagne, bellowing: “Never mind!”

   … “What are— What are these?” screeched Dorothy.

    “SMOKED SALMON!” bellowed Martin. “I MADE THEM!”

    “YUM!” she shouted.

    … “HULLO!” bellowed Moana.

    Leigh smiled. “HULLO! You MADE IT!” he shouted.

    Moana nodded madly.

    “Want a DRINK?”

    Moana nodded madly.

    Leigh forced his way through the crowds, and grabbed two glasses of champagne off Sim’s tray. “Your BOW-TIE’S CROOKED!” he shouted at him.

    “EH?” shouted Sim.

    “NEVER MIND!” Grinning, Leigh fought his way back to Moana’s side.

    She recoiled. “Is that—”

    Leigh shook his head madly, as of one with a severe case of water-in-the-ear.

    Moana approached her mouth very close to the said ear. “I don’t really like rosé!” she hooted breathily.

    Smiling very much, Leigh cried: “No! Pink champagne!”

    “EH?”

    Leigh approached his mouth, perforce, to her beautifully shaped café au lait ear. “Pink champagne! Courtesy of Sir Jake Carrano!”

    Grinning broadly, Moana held out her hand for a glass.

    … “Get this down yer, Beth!” shouted Jacko, grinning.

    Beth hadn’t really thought, up till this moment, that Mr Te Hana was aware of her existence. Let alone knowing her name. She smiled feebly. “Thanks.”

    “Eh?” he shouted, cupping a wrinkled hand behind his ear.

    “Thanks!” screeched Beth.

    Grinning and winking amiably, Jacko wandered off before Beth could say this was her cousin, Clara Macdonald.

    “What is it?” cried Clara.

    “I don’t know!”

    The cousins looked in some dismay at the fluid in Beth’s glass.

    … The senior Revills had been serving drinks more or less from the word “go”: Cameron at the makeshift bar in the main restaurant, and Monica in the side bar, in which she seemed to have developed a proprietorial interest. To the astonishment of all of The Quays’ occupants, she had arrived the week before the Grand Opening with a carload of pot-plants and a selection of lamps for the side bar. Each little table was now decorated with a glowing little Victorian-style lamp and a velvety gloxinia in a little brass pot. It had made, as the grateful Wallis had acknowledged, the side bar come alive.

    She had temporarily resigned the care of her bar to a helper, and come in to see how Cameron was getting on.

    “CROWDED, ISN’T IT?” he bellowed above the din.

    Very flushed and smiling, her Gucci blouse almost hidden by one of the delightful frilled broderie Anglaise aprons which had been Simone Gautier’s present to the new venture, Monica nodded madly and cried: “Who’s DRIVING?”

    “NOT ME!” shouted Cameron firmly, offering her a filled glass with one hand while at the same time draining his own glass, in the other hand. “Bottoms up!”

    Shrugging and smiling, Monica accepted a glass of champagne.

    The crowd thickened; the drinks circulated…

    “HEY, THERE!” bellowed Sol. “You just get here?”

    Simone and Annick smiled but looked horribly blank so he repeated: “You just get here?”

    “YES!” cried Simone. “What a crowd of people!”

    “Hullo, Sol! Hullo, Michaela!” cried Annick, smiling valiantly. “We are late?”

    “NUP! Plenny of hooch left!” cried Sol meanly.

    “Shut up,” said Michaela in her normal calm contralto. “I’ll get you a drink,” she boomed before Sol could open his mouth, let alone move. Forthwith she dumped her own glass on him and forged off to the bar. Sol watched limply as she got two glasses of something off of Adrian’s very up-market dad and returned with them. “Here,” she boomed.

    “Thank you, Michaela!” they cried.

    She grabbed her glass back off Sol. “Cheers!” she said brightly, holding it up.

    “Cheers!” beamed Simone and Annick, clearly very relieved to have someone give them a social lead. –Michaela? Giving anyone a social lead let alone two smartly-dressed foreign women, one of them with them clashing dinner-plate earrings? Sol could only conclude she must like ’em.

    “Stop shaking your head,” she said calmly in his ear.

    Jumping a foot, he croaked: “Yes, dear.”

    Michaela merely eyed him tolerantly.

    … “Ta,” said Angie as Arnie Schwarzenegger forced a third drink on her. The last two had been champagne and though that was nice this looked much more interesting. “What’s this, Hal?”

    “Pardon me?”

    “What is it?”

    “Suffering Bastard!” he yelled.

    Grinning, Angie screeched: “Yeah, but what is it?”

    Hal bent down and said in her ear: “See that middle-aged barman?”

    Angie looked. The row of tables pushed together was covered in bottles, glasses, discarded bits of pineapple, crumpled paper serviettes and half a dozen ice buckets, now bereft of their champagne bottles. There were three bodies behind this extempore bar: one was a grinning Kevin Goode, very flushed behind the curly golden beard, it was nice to see him looking interested in something for a change; one was middle-aged, but it was the wrong sex: Ida Grey from Galerie 2, Angie had not hitherto been aware that Ida was an expert cocktail waitress, one sweet sherry before dinner on Sundays was about her level, but so be it; and the other was a very ordinary-looking, grey-haired, shirt-sleeved man with an amiable grin and a pink carnation behind his ear.

    “That’s Adrian’s father: he’s a top exec with CohenCorp,” she said numbly.

    “Uh-huh.”

    “What’s in it— What’s in it?” she screeched.

    “Mostly brandy and gin. Lime mixer, colours it up. Lemon juice, sours it up just enough; Angostura bitters and fresh mint leaves. Add lemonade to taste. I asked him not to add too much: that okay?”

    “Perfect!” admitted Angie with a choke of laugher. She tasted it. “YES!” she cried.

    Grinning, Hal sipped his own, different drink. In one of those sharp-looking, triangular cocktail glasses: Angie knew what she meant. He whistled and cleared his throat. “Superb,” he said clinically. “The dry-ice version of Scott’s Pick,” he said in her ear. “Drop of Frangelico, drop of Curaçao, top up with very cold gin, stir with ice, pour and if you insist, add a twist.”

    Angie nodded hard to show she’d understood. “Who’s Scott?”

    “Huh? No: ya got the wrong end of the swizzle-stick, Angie. Scott’s Pick: it ain’t his choice, necessarily: ice-pick. Scott of the Antarctic? The explorer. Reference is to the way it—” He patted his giant chest, coughing slightly: “–hits ya.”

    “I’ll have something to eat, and then I’ll have one of those!” screamed Angie, entirely losing sight of what she had been about to say to him, which was: Why don’t you find a nice young thing to chat up?

    … “This is yummy!” shrieked May Swadling. “Jack reckons rosé wine’s putrid: he’s mad!”

    Amiably Adrian refilled her glass with Sir Jake’s pink champagne.

    … The crowd thickened, the champagne circulated, and when it didn’t circulate in the direction of Dorothy she managed to circulate in the direction of it.

    “I think Dorothy’s a bit drunk,” reported Janet cautiously.

    Akiko tiptoed and peered. “I can’t-ah see her, but I think-ah that is ver-ree rike-ree.”

    Mitsuko collapsed in giggles, nodding madly.

    Janet was not quite as naïve as she looked, and by now she knew the two Takagaki girls very well. “Help!” she gasped. “I thought you said these were peach nectar coolers? What’s in them?”

    Mrs Adler explained: “The girls were only going to drink fruit juice, dear: well, maybe just one glass of champagne, after all it is a party. That naughty Martin Wolfe made these. The girls said they tasted funny, and I thought, well, maybe it was just one of those things they put in cocktails: you know, dear: mixers, or something. But I asked Adrian, just to be on the safe side, and he said it’s a fancy cocktail, he calls it Italian Pacific Cooler. They’ve got vodka and Green Ginger in them. And something else—what was it, dears, can you remember?”

    “Some-ah thing-ah with a’-co-ho’!” squeaked Mitsuko.

    “Yes! We ask for no a’-co-ho’! Martin gives us ver-ree pret-tee duh-rink-ahs!” gasped Akiko, collapsing in renewed giggles. “He is ver-ree sirry boy!”

    “Ver-ree sirry boy!” confirmed Mitsuko, also collapsing again.

    Janet looked in some horror from the “peach nectar cooler”, half-consumed, in her own hand—no wonder it tasted so good!—to Mrs Adler.

    “It’s all right, dear, I’m only drinking fruit juice,” she said calmly.

    “Yes, but Mrs Adler, you don’t drive!” gasped Janet in dismay. Although Carter’s Bay was not really very big, and of course had a very small population, it was quite spread out: and Gilbert Street was at the other side of it, much nearer to the roundabout.

    “You-ah could pur-rease-ah duh-rive us, Jah-net!” gasped Mitsuko.

    “But I didn’t bring the car. Um—well, you get sick of never being able to have a drink, and it’s so close, I thought I’d walk home,” said Janet lamely.

    “That’s all right, dear: we can all walk,” said Mrs Adler comfortably.

    Janet here experienced a very strong urge to wrench that pinkish concoction off the old lady and rush off and analyse its chemical composition. If that little idiot Martin Wolfe had given it to her, it could be anything! “It’s a wee bit far for you, Mrs Adler, isn’t it?” she said feebly.

    Mrs Adler assured her placidly she was quite a walker. Janet smiled limply. Oh, dear! She looked round desperately. Everybody looked drunk: help!

    … The crowd was well-nigh impenetrable, the champagne had run out, but very fortunately other spirituous liquors hadn’t.

    “You’ll be interested in this cocktail— COME OVER HERE WHERE THE LORD HIGH EVERYTHING ELSE CAN’T HEAR US!” bellowed Thomas.

    Grinning, Mike Collingwood let him forge a path over to a relatively secluded corner of the main restaurant.

    “This is a genuine local cocktail: that middle-aged barman with the pink carnation behind his ear mixed it up specially for me,” explained Thomas. “According to him it’s a favourite at the bar of the Auckland Airport Travelodge Hotel. You start with crushed ice and blue Curaçao—”

    Mike shuddered.

    “If you’ve got ice. Otherwise don’t bother. Then it’s dry vermouth, Frangelico, goodly dollop of cream—”

    Mike recoiled.

    “—splash of sweet and sour if available, all well blended—he’s got an actual blender back there as well as several cocktail shakers—and some more blue to colour,” he said, adding a good belt from the bottle of blue Curaçao under his arm.

    Mike merely looked sick.

    Setting the bottle of Curaçao on a handy windowsill, Thomas continued, producing a smaller bottle from his pocket: “Lacking sweet and sour, a dash of bitters is said to brighten it up.”

    “That or kill it— Kill it stone dead!” shouted Mike.

    “It’s called BLUE NEON!” he bellowed, holding it out.

    “NO!” shouted Mike.

    “CHICKEN!” he bellowed.

    “YES!” agreed Mike.

    Grinning, Thomas tasted it. “Christ!” he gasped.

    “SUCKS!” shouted Mike.

    Grinning, Thomas drank it off.

    … “Hullo! Sorry we’re so late!” cried the tallish, thin, not old but not young lady in the smart navy pants suit. “Here! Congratulations and all that!” She thrust a large present done up in fancy paper with a giant spotted bow on it at Anna.

    Anna took it numbly. Who was she?

    “From both off us,” said the square-ish, blonde, not-young lady in the awful greenish linen pants suit at the other lady’s elbow. –Not awful in itself, in fact it was a beautiful suit: awful on her, registered Anna dazedly.

    The tallish, very handsome man who looked very like this second lady only funnily enough she wasn’t good-looking at all, corrected: “It’s from all three off us.”

    Who were they? “Um—thank you very much,” she quavered.

    … “So you did get here,” said Sol neutrally.

    Not pretending he couldn’t hear him, Euan just nodded.

    “The fizz has all gone,” said Michaela clearly.

    “I coulda stayed away, then,” he said with a reluctant smile.

    She nodded. “Ida’s kept some food for you, though. Want it?”

    “Yeah,” said Euan, smiling again. “Okay: ta.”

    Grasping him firmly by the arm, Michaela towed him off to where the middle-aged Ida Grey, still smiling perkily in her borrowed broderie Anglaise apron, was still on duty behind one of the bars. Sol just tottered limply in their wake.

    … “HULLO!” bellowed Jane Vincent.

    Lady Carrano’s face brightened. “JANE! You’re LATE!”

    “Yes: WATCH STOPPED!” bellowed Jane, pointing madly to her wrist.

    Nodding hard, Polly held up her private bottle, raising her eyebrows.

    Unashamedly Jane twisted it so as to be able to read its label. “YEAH!” she bellowed.

    “Get a glass!” screamed Polly.

    “WHERE?” shouted Jane frantically.

    “Over— NEVER MIND!” Hospitably Polly poured Veuve Clicquot into her own glass and gave it to Jane. “The alcohol will kill the GERMS!” she shouted.

    Jane nodded, and sipped. “Oo-ooh,” she groaned.

    Polly just nodded and smiled as it went down.

    “Where’s Jake? Is he here?” cried Jane, once her throat had been lubricated.

    “WHAT?”

    Jane grabbed her arm and tugged her over to a relatively clear space near a window. “Where’s Jake?”

    “Strasbourg, and I hope it chokes him.”

    “God, he didn’t make it?”

    “That’s right, Jane: Strasbourg is still in France.”

    Jane cringed.

    Polly had found a bottle on the windowsill. “Lend me that glass.”

    Obligingly Jane returned her Ladyship’s glass to her. And watched weakly as she filled the champagne coupe three-quarters full with blue muck and topped it up with Veuve Clicquot, muttering about bubbles. And drank the lot off.

    … Alan shook hands politely with Adrian, thanking him for the invitation, on behalf of all the staff of Sir George Grey. Abandoning completely any notion of asking him how Mrs Burchett was, which he’d thought he might do, somewhere round about his third glassful of pink fizz, Adrian let his hand be shaken, smiled limply and watched him escape.

    … “If you’re looking for champagne, Armand, don’t: it’s all gone!” said Sammi on a false note of cheer.

    “Eugh—non. No, I am not, thank you all the same, Sammi,” he said with an effort. “‘Ave you seen may waife?”

    “Not for a while, I’m afraid,” replied Sammi, carefully polite.

    Armand’s lips tightened.

    Sammi hesitated: she knew Armand’s car was in dock. “Look, if you need a lift—”

    “That is vairy kaind, Sammi. But I do not weesh to take you from the party.”

    Sammi was having a perfectly awful time. Awful. Mind you, she’d known it would be mostly Carter’s Bay personalities. She took a deep breath. “I’ve had enough, really. I suppose one has to come to these things.” She shrugged.

    Those were entirely Armand’s sentiments. He smiled gratefully. “Yes, indeed. In that case I would be so vairy grateful for a lift, Sammi.”

    There was no need to say it was all right to leave, as Alan had gone: they both realised that the other would have noticed this. “Good. Come on, then.”

    They looked round for Adrian but as there was no sign of him went firmly over to Anna, shook her hand firmly, thanked her nicely, and went.

    … People were gradually trickling away, but Angie was holding her ground. Just. “Thish ish Jim. He’sh a pleeshman,” she said solemnly to her large neighbour.

    “Pleased to meet you, Jim,” said Hal amiably, shaking hands.

    “If you’re norron duty, I can rec’mend the—uh—wharrare they, Hal?” asked Angie.

    “Scott’s Picks?”

    “Yeah! I can rec’mend them, Jim,” said Angie earnestly. “Ish thish on your beat?” she added before the unfortunate Sergeant Baxter could utter.

    “Yeah. So I can tell you officially, don’t drive. Where’s Bill?”

    “MIT, the shwine. Hic! Shwine.” She scowled horribly.

    “Yeah, right. Uh—look, who’s here that she knows?”

    “Me,” said Hal modestly.

    At about this point dawned that the huge Yank was as pickled as the rest of them. “Yeah. –Angie, you’re gonna have the father and mother of all hangovers, don’t drink any more,” he said without hope.

    “Doesn’ marrer! Don’ have to get his blurry breakfas’ or his blurry tea. ’Cos he’s at MIT! I’m a poet! An’ I’ve let the house,” she said earnestly.

    “Uh—oh. Has she?” he said without hope to the Yank.

    “Yeah, to a nice family for the whole of the Christmas period.”

    “So where’s she staying?”

    “Kingfisher Bay. Next place to mine.”

    “I see. Don’t drive,” said Jim sternly. “Either of you.” He walked off.

    “That was Sergeant Bashter,” said Angie earnestly.

    “Uh-huh, sure. You want another?”

    “No, acosh I shall fall down!” replied Angie with a loud giggle. “May frame ish not as large as thayne,” she explained daintily.

    “No, right,” he said, grinning. “How are we gonna get home?”

    “Ay may flay,” replied Angie dreamily.

    Jim Baxter had spotted Jill Davis a bit earlier in the side bar, so he went in there; not with much hope that she’d be sober, true. The more so as he now observed her to be propping up the actual bar with two empty glasses in front of her.

    “Sussing out the cast of characters?” she greeted him airily. “I don’t think there are any clues lying around today waiting to be picked up, actually, Jim.”

    “I’m not on duty!” he said crossly.

    “In that case, have a drink.”

    “No, I’m driving. Look, is it true that Angie Michaels is living in Kingfisher Bay?”

    “Yes.”

    “Glad to hear it. Who’s driving you?”

    “Gerhard is, poor soul, he got the short straw.”

    Nodding, Jim forged off again.

    “Thank goodness someone in this community has a sense of responsibility!” said Jill in a high, mad voice. “I’ll have another, ta,” she added to the up-market dame behind the bar. “Any cocktail you fancy—surprise me.”

    Very flushed and smiling, Monica Revill responded gaily: “Well, you probably shouldn’t, you know! But as it’s a party—!” Gaily she made her a Scott’s Pick.

    “Gor!” gasped Jill, bashing herself on her thin chest as it hit.

    “That’s what they all say!” agreed Monica proudly, giggling.

    … “Adrian, how are your parents going to get home?” said Anna in his ear.

    “Mum’s sloshed, is she?”

    Anna nodded hard. “And your father. Um—well, I wouldn’t call him sloshed, exactly…”

    “Geddoudavit: he’s been wearing a carnation behind his ear for the last three hours!”

    “Mm. He’s very… cheerful,” said Anna limply.

    “Yeah. It’s just as well we decided not to turn that end bedroom into anything like an ensuite for Sim and Martin, isn’t it?”

    Anna looked at him in horror. “It’s awfully small!”

    “Yeah, but there are two narrow little beds in it,” he said with relish.

    … Janet had looked and looked, and failed to find anybody sober enough to be entrusted with the task of driving Mrs Adler home. What on earth could she do? Oh, dear!

    “I think there is something the matter? May I be of help?” said a quiet voice in her ear.

    Janet gasped and leapt where she stood. “Mr Takagaki!”

    Inoue smiled at her, experiencing a sort of moderate approval which was very far from any kind of sexual interest. She was an admirable young woman: kind-hearted, hard-working and virtuous. She had been very, very kind to his nieces, and he was aware, too, that she did a lot, in an unobtrusive way, for their elderly landlady. “May I be of help, Miss Wilson?” he repeated courteously.

    Janet smiled weakly. After all, he was Akiko’s and Mitsuko’s uncle. “Um—the thing is, the girls didn’t realise that those peach cooler things were full of alcohol—”

    “Yes, I saw that Akiko and Mitsuko are both very drunk,” he said without approval.

    Cringing, Janet agreed weakly: “Yes. Um—it wasn’t their fault, Mr Takagaki: they asked for fruit juice and one of those silly boys put alcohol in it. Um—and I’ve only had three, but I haven’t got my car with me. I was going to walk home, you see. I was thinking I could go home and get it—”

    “For Akiko and Mitsuko? Certainly not,” he said grimly. “They can walk.”

    “Yes, but it’s not them! It’s Mrs Adler! Akiko was going to drive her!” gasped Janet.

    “Ah,” he said, sounding Japanese for the first time. “I see. In that case I would be very glad to drive you all home, Miss Wilson.”

    “Thank you very much, Mr Takagaki!” said Janet with heartfelt relief.

    —“Did you see that?” croaked Polly.

    Jack had rotated to her side, in spite of the “Keep Off the Grass” notices that Sir Jake had hung all over her. Well, he wasn’t here, was he? “Uh-uh: ‘I only have eyes for you’,” he said sweetly.

    “Where’s Dorothy?” she returned tersely, ignoring this completely.

    “Over there by the bar. Drunker even, I venture to suggest, than you or I.”

    “Good.” Polly headed determinedly for Dorothy’s side and grabbed her arm.

    “OW!” she yelped, leaping ten feet,

    “Did you see that?” she said tensely, ignoring this agony entirely.

    “Inoue giving Janet and the girls and Mrs A. a lift? Sho?” She coughed. “So?”

    “He went up to Janet, and offered!”

    Dorothy made a rude noise.

    “No, probably not,” admitted Polly sadly. “But he initiated it!”

    Jack had followed in Polly’s wake, though not in very much hope of achieving anything thereby. “If this is that dim little former off-sider of yours, Dot, doesn’t she live near the two Takagaki girls? He was probably just offering her a lift because he was taking them. It is on his way home: he’s at the Royal Kingfisher.”

    His sister responded elegantly: “Shut up, this is girl-talk. –Well?”

    “It didn’t look like that,” said Polly significantly.

    “Balls.”

    “Why not?” said Polly with a pout.

    “Polly: Janet after the Wicked Witch of the West?”

    Jack began incautiously: “If ya want my expert opinion—”

    “NO!” they both shouted.

    He shrugged, and retired. A wink was as good as a nod to a blind man. But they needn’t imagine that if the woman had given him the slightest encouragement—the slightest—he wouldn’t be up there like a ferret! Sir Jake or not.

    “Boy, that back’s got ‘sulk’ all over it,” noted his sister.

    “Yeah,” agreed Polly without interest. “Janet’d be just the thing for Inoue: she’s a serious woman, in his terms!”

    “Eh?”

    Polly began to list the women who in Inoue’s expressed opinion were not “serious” but Dorothy, becoming very, very bored, turned her attention to the carnation-decorated barman, who was now mixing up something very, very interesting-looking. Or put it like this: it had a base of gin, so it couldn’t be all bad, eh?

    … “By my count,” said Adrian solemnly, “that’s forty-two Sir G.G. personalities that have offered Polly Carrano a lift home and been brushed off.”

    Wallis, who had injudiciously accepted a “Ward Eight” from Cameron Revill—guaranteed to put you there, according to the members of his golf club—gave a loud guffaw.

    “Not forty-two, Adrian!” protested Anna with a giggle.

    “Really, dear,” said his mother tolerantly.

    “Did you see Baranski’s?” said Adrian dreamily. “It was real good. He comes up to her, see, and puts that ’orrible ’airy arm of his round her—”

    “Ugh!” cried Anna obligingly, shuddering.

    “Revolting,” agreed Monica deeply.

    “Yuck,” concurred Wallis.

    “Yeah. And leering all over his face, meanwhile addressing her as ‘Sweetness’, notes that they could make sweet music together if so be she’d accept a ride home in his chariot.”

    “What did she say?” asked Wallis avidly.

    “Told him without batting an eyelid that his metaphors were even more mixed than his drinks appeared to have been; I’ve never seen a bloke so thoroughly put out of countenance.”

    His female audience collapsed in mean sniggers.

    Eventually Monica, blowing her nose hard, conceded: “I must tell Daddy that one, dear: they’ll love it at his golf club.”

    Adrian eyed her tolerantly. “Yeah.” She’d given up trying to make them call him “Daddy” when he and Timothy were respectively about six and ten.

    “I thought I saw that giant American trying it on, dear,” Monica then ventured.

    Adrian sniggered. “He’s paralytic! Reasonably harmless, mind you; in fact he seems quite a decent joker. I think he merely asked her humbly if she needed a ride. Whereupon she took his car keys out of his nerveless hand and told him he wasn’t driving anyone!”

    “What about Angie? He was gonna take her!” gasped Wallis.

    “Well, actually, Wallis, she’s passed out on your bed,” said Adrian kindly.

    Wallis gulped.

    “Nev Thorogood from Buttercup Meadows offered Polly a lift, too: made a right tit of himself,” Adrian added.

    “He is a tit,” noted Wallis.

    “I heard that one: she told him,” Anna explained to Wallis and Monica, “that he was being very silly, and if he wanted to continue to be upwardly mobile in the Group he’d better learn that Sir Jake’s first rule was he made all the decisions and his second rule was that nobody in the Group but him had squatter’s rights on her. And that it wasn’t always easy to tell which of the rules came in first, and in fact it was sometimes a photo-finish. So did he really want to stick his neck out?”

    Wallis gulped.

    “She can be quite hard, in spite of those lovely looks,” said Monica hazily.

    Adrian didn’t explain that Polly had probably developed the hardness in self-defence against cretins assuming that the looks gave them the right to make unwanted passes; he just agreed kindly: “Yeah. –Think I might go and shut the front door: might give some of these the idea that the party’s over.”

    “But wait, dear! How is Polly getting home?” cried Monica. “Oh: is that lovely Bob driving her?”

    “No, she’s not down at the house, she’s at the bach. She’s arranged a lift with Jack and May Swadling. She is quite practical, in her own way,” he said, wandering off.

    After a moment Monica said to the two girls: “In a way, you know, Adrian’s a little like Polly Carrano. His father’s maintained it for years: of course he’s known Jake Carrano forever.”

    “She’s a lady, though!” said Wallis with an awkward laugh.

    “Oh, that doesn’t count, dear. It’s the lovely looks, and that charm—even I can see that,” she said mildly; “combined with the hardness and that awful, awful cleverness.”

    They gulped. “Yes,” agreed Anna faintly.

    “Jake once told Cameron—that was when she was being very naughty, dears, and the poor man was desperate—he told him that she was too bright for her own good. And I’ve always thought,” said Monica with a sigh, “that Adrian’s the same. We never could do anything with him, you know, dears. He sees through everything. No illusions at all.” She sighed gustily.

    The two young women, now very red, stared hard at the floor.

    “That’s why,” said Monica, cheering up and patting the startled Anna’s hand briskly, “we’re so very, very glad that he’s found you, Anna! He needs a steadying influence, you see!”

    There was a numb silence.

    After quite some time, Wallis ventured: “Is she rilly that clever, then, Lady Carrano?”

    “Oh, Heavens, yes, dear!” Smiling brightly, Monica launched into the full Carrano saga.

    Anna and Wallis listened numbly, not really taking much in. Not only had his mother just compared Adrian to a lady, without batting an eyelid: she’d actually expressed approval of Anna!

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/so-long-at-fair.html