7
Grass-Roots Stuff
“This was a mistake,” groaned Dr Davis as she and her blonde Aryan friend struggled feebly, flies in amber came to mind, amidst the seething morass of Saturday-morning supermarket shoppers. Or possibly the morass of seething Saturday-morning supermarket shoppers.
Gretchen merely bellowed over their laden trolley, the laden trolley belonging to someone else that had managed to insert itself between them, and the heads of two small kids that didn’t belong to them: “Ve need yoghurt!”
“Nobody needs yoghurt,” muttered Jill sourly. “Yoghurt is a purely notional need-to-consume of the brainwashed or possibly lobotomised middle classes, the original purpose not to say taste of which is no longer clear to even point nought, nought, nought one percent of the population. –Over THERE!” she bellowed, signalling frantically.
Quite some time later she was able to gasp in her Aryan friend’s ear: “Look!”
“I am looking,” said Gretchen, putting the yoghurt back, “and this use-by date vas last Friday.”
“No! See that dim, green-lighted cavern where they keep the lettuces and capsicums?”
“Vhat off it?”
Jill stood on tiptoe and peered. “I’m going barmy,” she reported.
“Yes. But vhat off it?”
Jill ruffled her short fawn hair. “I thought I saw the Iceman.”
“In the Puriri supermarkets on a Saturday morning?” she croaked.
“You’re right, it was a barmy idea.”
“Surely he’s the type that would merely order Dorothy’s nice pink woman to get on down here and do the shopping?”
“Mm.” Jill tiptoed and peered. “Either I have gone barmy or Captain Picard that they can’t pronounce is out here. –Look!”
“Vhere? Oh, ja. Vell, pigs vill fly,” she said placidly.
“Gretchen, he’s pushing a bloody supermarket trolley!”
“Also he hass an ankle-biter vith him. And the pink woman. So?”
“Possibly his icy brain’s become addled, I can’t think of any other explanation,” she said grimly.
“Hormones,” said Gretchen briefly.
“Pardon?”
“The explanation is hormones.”
Jill looked thoughtfully at the very flushed Catherine. Admittedly it was very warm, very warm indeed, amidst the seething morass of Saturday-morning supermarket shoppers. “Hers is, yeah.”
The Aryan mind elaborated: “He vill be one off those hard men, actually I think the relationship off Mike and Molly Collingwood from The Blue Heron is not dissimilar, who fall, no-one can say vhy, for a fluffy, silly little woman. Who can cook.”
“Molly Collingwood’s one of those, all right,” she conceded.
“Ja.” They watched numbly as the Iceman, apparently explaining in a condescending but not altogether unkindly manner why it was unsuitable, removed a rockmelon from the pink woman’s hands and returned it to its pyramid. They continued to watch numbly as he sniffed several more before one struck the right olfactory note. And as the pink woman obediently sniffed it after him.
Finally Jill said glumly: “The woman’s got ‘Wendy Briggs’ written all over her.”
“Ja. Does this say milligrams or micrograms off salt?”
“I don’t care. Put it back.”
Gretchen put the yoghurt back. “As you vell know, no-one can rescue people from the consequences off their own folly.”
“I wasn’t thinking of it, I don’t even know the woman, and put that BACK, it’s full of SUGAR!” shouted Jill.
Resignedly Gretchen put another yoghurt back.
“We’ll go to The Deli,” decided Jill. “They’ll be five times the price but at least they may not be instantaneously carcinogenic.”
Resignedly Gretchen accompanied her. The trouble with Jill was, she had this compulsive need to try to rescue people from the consequences of their own folly.
“My treat,” said Dorothy Perkins firmly. “Sit.”
Looking wary, Hilary McLeod Takagaki of the Pacific Institute of Political Studies edged into a bright yellow booth in The Primrose Café. “Dorothy, I only popped in for a coffee: I’m supposed to be pickin’ Ken up from wor—”
“Rubbish. Eating for two, aren’t you? Have a nice cream doughnut,” said Dorothy ingratiatingly, forgetting that Hilary had been born in climes where the good old New Zild cream doughnut was possibly not native fare.
“Och, no, they’re disgustin’!” said Hilary in astonishment.
“Er—strawberry tart?” said Dorothy ingratiatingly.
“Aye, well, I won’t say no, but that doesna mean that I’m ready to be pumped,” warned the red-headed Hilary firmly.
“And two cappuccinos,” decided Dorothy, going off to the counter looking frightfully innocent.
Hilary sighed. Ken wouldn’t be too pleased if he knew she’d been gossiping about his new boss. Not that she knew anything, really.
“When’s it due?” asked Dorothy with a smile, coming back with a laden tray.
“A couple of months. Or put it like this: after Ken’s mother gets here. It wouldna dare to be born earlier than that.”
“Just don’t have it in here: if it turned out to be a girl you’d have to call it Primrose Charlene,” said Dorothy with a twinkle in her eye. “Not that young Charlene looks as if she’d be much use in an obstetrical emergency.”
Hilary smiled a little, glancing at the yellow-uniformed Charlene, with the bright pink non-uniform belt, behind the Primrose Café’s counter. “I think you’re wrong. She’s got a wee boy of her own.”
“Oh, yes,” said Dorothy in a hollow voice. “Little Clinton.”
Hilary grinned. “Aye, well, at least it wasna a girl.”
“Hilary’s not bad,” said Dorothy kindly. “Better than Dorothy.”
“June Takagaki?” said Hilary experimentally.
Jumping slightly, Dorothy said: “Oh! For the new baby! Um, well, your little Micky’s got a European handle, I suppose they should match. June’s a pretty name.”
“Aye, it’s no’ bad. Ken likes it. I canna decide.” She took a strawberry tart. “–Go on, Dorothy.”
Gulping slightly, Dorothy admitted: “I did want to ask you something, actually.”
“Aye?” she said warily.
“Uh—do you know Catherine Burchett?” she said on a weak note. “No? She’s our Monday and Thursday morning shelver. Late thirties? Harmless-looking, blonde? Normally wears a pink tracksuit?”
“Oh! I know! She looked after Micky one awful morning when I had to leave him at the library: Play Group and the campus crèche were both closed because of the measles epidemic and I had lectures. Um—well,” said Hilary hurriedly, recalling that Dorothy was the pink-tracksuited woman’s boss, “I just left him with her until Cynthia got there and started Children’s Corner.”
Cynthia was the Puriri County Children’s Librarian. Very good at her job, but she had two drawbacks: she was hopeless at story-telling and was not naturally an early riser. “Don’t elaborate,” said Dorothy with a sigh.
“Aye, well!” said Hilary with a shy laugh. “Um, what about her?”
Gloomily Dorothy explained about Catherine’s having landed herself in the clutches of Ken Takagaki’s new boss.
Hilary looked at her weakly. “I just canna imagine it, Dorothy! That nice body from your library and Dr Kincaid?”
Dorothy sighed gustily. “And so say all of us,” she muttered.
Hilary looked at her doubtfully. “We dined with him and Inoue at the Carranos’ just the other day, and she wasna with him. It was pretty formal. I’m certain Polly Carrano would have asked him whether he wanted to bring a partner.”
“Have another strawberry tart,” suggested Dorothy heavily. “In fact, I’ll join you.”
When they were having them she admitted heavily: “Actually I don’t know which I was hoping most not to hear: that he’s dragging Catherine along to formal social occasions or that’s he not admitting to the fact of her existence.”
“Och, Dorothy, you know verra well,” she said with smile.
“Yes, well, at least admitting he’s involved with her would be a start!”
Hilary bit her lip. “Is he?” she said uncertainly. “I mean, if she’s looking after his house…”
“I haven’t asked her in so many words. All I can say is, she’s got that besotted look.”
Hilary winced.
Dorothy pounced. “Who did Polly Carrano dredge up for him at this pretty formal dinner?”
Hilary produced a Scottish sound indicative of a Scottish person wriggling under interrogation. “E-er… One of the women execs from the Group. Um, they seemed to be getting on verra well… Ken said there was nothing in it, and she’s like that,” she ended miserably.
“So, it appears, is he,” she noted grimly.
“Aye, well, Polly Carrano thinks he is,” she said faintly.
And she was certainly the expert. Dorothy closed her eyes in agony.
“It looks wonderful,” said Catherine shyly to Mr Goode. “You’re making tremendous progress.”
“Not bad, yeah,” agreed Barry modestly, not revealing to Mrs Burchett that the reason him and young Nev and Jonno and Tama were making such good progress was that they didn’t have any other jobs on the books at the moment. “Roof’s all done, see?”
She nodded. “And you’ve done the floor of the extension, and everything,” she said admiringly.
“Uh—yeah. Well, these days we generally put the floor in first. Not like in the old days, eh? Those kauri floors you’ve got are really something.”
Catherine nodded again. “Mm. Um, is the electricity back on, Mr Goode?”
“Yeah, sure. You wanna go in? You can use the front door, we’ve fixed it.”
“Really?” she said with a smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it open. Oh—yes, one very dry summer we did manage to open it.”
Probably when they’d managed to bust one of its hinges, noted Barry Goode silently. He led her round to the front of the house. “Dr Kincaid mentioned he was thinking of extending the verandah all along the western side,” he said casually.
“He doesn’t realise how hot the western side of the house can get in the afternoons in summer,” said Catherine placidly.
Scrub that one, then, thought Barry on a certain resigned note. “Yeah. –See?” He opened and shut the front door for her.
“Yes. Thank you,” she said politely.
Barry noticed she was eyeing the pink primer dubiously. “We had to replace a bit of the wood, here: ya see? This can all be painted any shade you decide on.”
“Ye-es… Alan hasn’t said, yet.”
“I see,” said Barry neutrally. Oh, well, it was legally the bloke’s house, wasn’t it? They went inside.
“Help!” said Catherine with a laugh as the new ensuite bathroom was revealed. “That’s wonderful!”
“The Purple Palladium’s supplying the fittings, that right?”
“Yes. That very smart place in Puriri.”
“Right. Well, soon as you decide on what sort of vanity unit you want, we can put it in for you. The window’s not done yet: my brother’s found some nice stained glass he thought you might be interested in, if you’d like to pop down to the yard some time.”
“Stained glass for the bathroom?”
“Yeah. Very popular look, for these done-up villas. The window he’s found, it’s got an edging of that pretty white glass, dunno if you know it, gives a kind of lacy effect, and some ruby panels. same effect, and then squares of green and so forth in the middle.”
“It sounds lovely!”
Let’s hope she said it like that when she saw the thing, and in front of the bloody cousin or whatever he was, thought Barry. “Yeah: pretty.”
They returned to the passage and she went eagerly down to the kitchen before Barry could warn her.
“Where’s the stove?” she gasped
“Dr Kincaid told me to rip it out.”
Catherine looked limply at him.
Hurriedly Barry opened the folding louvered doors which now formed the end of the kitchen nearest the door, the heavy old dresser with the dirty cream paint having been bodily removed to Kevin’s yard for stripping and eventual installation in the dining-room. “Whaddaya think?”
Catherine looked at the pretty pale yellow laundry, the brand-new stainless steel tub, the brand-new automatic washing-machine and the clothes drier, and blinked rapidly. “It’s sort of like Paradise, actually, Mr Goode.”
Barry could believe that. The thing she’d been using had had a wringer attached, admittedly. That was as far as it went, though. The laundry tub had been, guess what, solid kauri. Kev had volunteered to recycle it, but Dr Kincaid had spotted that one and it was now installed just outside the back door, ready to be planted with herbs, next to where the new patio with the crazy paving would be fitted in, in the angle formed by the extension and the kitchen. The lean-to laundry had been pretty big: they hadn’t needed to build out very far at all to make a new bedroom.
He waited for her to ask when it’d all be finished but she didn’t. Instead she said: “Do you think we ought to have polished floorboards in the passage, Mr Goode?”
Barry conceded that’d look good.
“Alan keeps talking about Persian rugs,” she said dubiously. “Aren’t they awfully dear?”
“Uh—yeah. Too right. Unless you’ve got ’em in the family?” he said cautiously.
“I certainly haven’t!” said Catherine with a laugh.
Barry smiled at her. “Me neither, actually.”
“I suppose Alan might, back in Edinburgh. But I think he meant he’d buy some.”
Just like that: yeah, well. Barry refrained from saying Nice work if ya could get it. “I see. Well, that’ll look very nice with the kauri floors.”
“Yes. Um—shall I make a cup of tea, or something?” she offered, going very pink.
“We’ve just had a smoko, thanks, Mrs Burchett.”
“Oh.”
There was a short silence.
“I haven’t got anything to do!” she burst out.
Cripes, thought Barry Goode limply. “Uh—right. Lessee.” What the fuck could she do that was within her capabilities, and wouldn’t do him and the boys out of their rightful, not to say gainful, employment? “Uh, well, ya wanna make a start on stripping that cream muck off the woodwork in the dining-room, maybe?”
“I’m not sure how.”
Barry led her into the dining-room, and got her the stripper, a couple of old brushes, a pile of old newspapers and the scraper. Adding by the way not to worry if she got muck on the floorboards, it’d all come off when they sanded it. But she might want to put something on over her clothes, he added hurriedly as she opened the stripper.
“Oh, yes,” she said, looking down at the pink tracksuit. Barry Goode blinked slightly as she peeled the jacket off, to reveal a pair of the nicest he’d ever seen, encased solely in, if he was any judge, though mind you it had been so long he’d more or less forgotten, a pale pink tee-shirt. “I’ll put an apron on,” she said, smiling.
Barry didn’t express his thought that it would be a crime to cover those up with an apron. He just tottered back out to help Nev with the actual carpentry of your real windowsills: Kincaid had decreed the style of the extension had to match the rest the house. Barry was all for that. But it had taken Nev a while to get used to the notion that windows did not have to come prefabricated, ready to be fitted into prefabricated holes in prefabricated walls.
Nev had got a glimpse of the pale pink pair of them as they’d come through to the kitchen in search of an apron. He made the appropriate gesture in front of his own skinny chest, rolling his eyes and licking his lips.
“Filthy young bugger,” replied Barry automatically.
Sniggering happily, Nev pointed to his handiwork. “Whaddaya think?”
“Uh—yeah. I think we’d better invest in a big tube of Plastic Wood; that’s a fair gap you’ve got there, Nev.”
“I measured it up like you said!”
Yeah. Right. Him and his prefabricated plastic ruler. Barry got on with it, trying without much success to drag his thoughts away from the contemplation of such points as: What the Hell was a nice woman like her doing mixed up with a creep like him? And: What the Hell was the situation, anyway, if they were sleeping in separate bedrooms? And: Thirty-six, make that thirty-eight, D, or he was a Dutchman. And: How old was she, anyway? And: What chance, frankly, did a small-time jobbing builder have in comparison with an up-himself Pommy bastard that could buy her ceramic-topped stoves and automatic washing-machines at the drop of a hat; and: If the bloke was a good ten years his elder, that had never been known to count yet with women, added to which Ms Avon Goode, aged barely twenty, had given it as her considered opinion that That Horrible Man was Dead Sexy. And don’t be dumb, Barry, being bald made it better! –Quote, unquote.
Barry Goode in his youth, which was now very much past, had been considerably better-looking than his younger brother Kevin, with a head of the same bright gold curls. They were now very much receded, and less gold, more silver. Or greyish, if you were being strictly accurate. His eyes were not bright blue, like Kevin’s, but a mild blue-grey. In the old days he’d had a tan which had been as deep as young Euan Knox’s but rather on the red-gold side, not Euan’s almost café au lait shade. He’d been into surfing, wind-surfing, all that bit.
His mum had had ambitions for him and, not with anything Dad had ever coughed up, though admittedly the old joker had paid up the maintenance for all of them regular as clockwork, but with what she’d chiselled out of her dad, had sent him to a nayce school. St Ethelred’s. Nominally Presbyterian but they didn’t care what you were so long as you paid the fees. Barry Goode had hated it at first but eventually had done respectably on the academic side and had been Captain of the First Eleven, and a prefect: all that sort of crap. A right up-himself little prick, in fact. Mum had decided he ought to be a lawyer, so the up-himself little prick had started an LL.B. During it, at a dance, not a varsity hop but some bloody twenty-first some similarly-minded but richer little prick had thrown, he had met Mandy.
Sometimes Barry looked back on his Mandy period as if it had happened to someone else. Because he couldn’t, now, get himself to believe that it had ever been him. Mandy had been spoilt and pretty: bright enough, but bone lazy. Daddy was a judge and he thought a girl should have, sweet fucking Christ, a liberal education, so Mandy was doing a B.A. Barry had been too innocent, in spite of St Ethelred’s, to realise that as the family was a very old-established legal one, Mandy’s uncles on both sides being senior partners in the stuffiest of the stuffy downtown legal firms, there was no way, decent degree or not, that a mere yob like him was going to be allowed to marry Mandy. He proposed after finals—they had, of course, been sleeping together for well over a year by this time—and was accepted. The next day Barry received a summons. The Judge himself kept out of it but Mandy’s two older brothers and two of her uncles were present. It wasn’t put so crudely but it was more or less on the lines of, which would he rather have, Mandy or a career in the law in New Zealand?
Barry responded to their ultimatum with self-righteous fury and phoned Mandy at home so as she could share his self-righteous fury. Mandy wasn’t there. It took him nearly a month to discover that she and Mummy had taken off on a trip to Europe. Barry followed them. Fortunately he had a passport: he and some like-minded little pricks had recently been across to Sidders to see some fuck-witted musical. Nearly twenty years on Barry couldn’t even remember what it had been. He scraped up the cash for the fare and took off. He did manage to catch up with them: Mandy’s mother was the sort that visits New Zealand House expressly to write her name, and incidentally address, in the book. An older and much more cynical Barry sincerely doubted whether Mandy would ever have done anything about him if he hadn’t followed her. However, as it was she greeted him with rapture and came home with him and married him straight away.
Surprisingly enough the mere fact of Barry Goode’s ring being on Mandy’s finger did not result in her relatives’ doing an immediate about-face. Barry got a job clerking for a solicitor. It paid almost nothing, but his employer, a mean-minded, mean-mouthed man, was aware that if he paid Barry a little more than he would have done a student, he could grind the work of a fully qualified lawyer out of him. During the next couple of years Barry duly discovered that all other doors in the legal profession were firmly closed to him.
Marriage to Barry Goode on these terms did not miraculously turn the spoilt, pretty Mandy into a devoted model wife. She refused to get a job, not that, in Barry’s opinion, she was qualified to do anything; but she didn’t do the housework, either. What she did do was complain almost unceasingly and spend his meagre income on trips to the hairdresser, clothes and shoes.
The marriage lasted three years. By that time Barry’s gold curls were a lot thinner on top and distinctly beginning to recede, and he’d lost his tan, not having much time for sunbathing, swimming, or surfing: during the weekends he worked in a service station on the petrol pump and most evenings he slung hash at a takeaway joint not a million miles from the grimy little flat they were living in.
One of Barry’s paternal uncles was a builder up in Puriri and when the marriage ended and Barry packed in the law, he offered him a job. During his varsity holidays Barry had worked for Uncle Vince as a builder’s labourer, but that didn’t mean that Vince Goode didn’t make him start at the bottom.
Barry Goode had never gone back to the law. Uncle Vince was a decent bloke, Barry liked the life, and if most of the types that worked for his uncle were pretty rough, at least they were relatively honest, relatively hard-working and had no pretensions about them. Vince Goode had retired four years back and Barry had taken over the business. Such as it was. Well, until he’d made the mistake of buying all that bloody blue slate and stuff for bloody Sykes’s house it hadn’t been doing too badly.
The blokes packed it in about fourish, you kept early hours in the building trade. Though they would have stayed on if Barry could have afforded overtime, which at this precise moment he couldn’t. He did about another hour himself, then went into the dining-room. She was still hard at it. “You need a lift, Mrs Burchett?”
“Oh,” said Catherine limply. “I’d forgotten I wasn’t living here.”
Barry was about to repeat his offer of a lift when the phone rang. Ruddy Kincaid. He’d collect her. Hooray. He went off morosely in his rattly little van. When he got home the house was full of smoke and Avon was in floods of tears. So was Fiorella, possibly out of sympathy. The fucking cookbook she’d borrowed off some local moo had said 350 degrees so Avon had put the casserole in at 350 degrees. The stove was a newish one, Barry didn’t believe in unnecessary martyrdom. It had gone over to Celsius with the rest of the country. Avon’s book hadn’t.
“Never mind,” said Barry, passing his hand over his receded hair. “Never MIND! Will ya stop BAWLING! Ya done ya best. We’ll go down The Tavern and have schnitzels, okay? And pick that kid UP, for Chrissakes!”
It really helped that as the van rattled its cautious way down the highway, with Fiorella whingeing non-stop, Kincaid’s shiny new Mitsubishi shot past them with her in the front seat next to him.
“There,” said Penny Bergen conspiratorially. “What do you think?”
“Looks like it,” said Kevin Goode cautiously.
The conspirators peered cautiously over old Mr Deakin’s back hedge.
“Yeah,” said Kevin finally: “for a hen-roost, that’s a bloody fine example of a genuine Victorian sideboard, Penny.”
Penny nodded excitedly.
“You’ll want a finder’s fee, I s’pose?”
“Don’t be mad!” she choked, startled into reverting to that foresworn vernacular of her childhood.
Kevin grinned.
“Now the only problem is getting him to sell it to you,” admitted Penny.
“Yeah.” Old Mr Deakin was pretty well the Scrooge of Carter’s Bay. “Does he like money?” asked Kevin dubiously.
“I don’t know of anyone that’s ever offered him any.”
“Mm.” Mrs Adler was beckoning conspiratorially from her back porch: they waved cautiously, and retreated to the house.
Over the genuine home-made fresh pikelets with real butter and the choice of home-made cape-gooseberry or apricot jam—Mrs Adler was about the same vintage as her grouchy neighbour but unlike him had mellowed with age—Kevin admitted: “Penny was right, Mrs Adler: it’s Victorian, all right. It’s not even warped, that corrugated-iron arrangement over it’s sheltered it nicely. It’ll take a lot of work to get it into decent condition, mind you. Only how can we persuade him to sell it?”
“We-ell… The hens like the cupboards, you see, dear.”
Kevin winced. “Mm. Could I build him some nice new nesting-boxes?”
Mrs Adler looked at him dubiously. “Do you know anything about chook-houses, though, Kevin, dear?”
“Uh—”
“I’ll get a book from the Puriri Library!” said Penny eagerly.
Mrs Adler smiled tolerantly. “You won’t find out anything from books, dear. No, with hens it’s psychological, you see.”
Her guests blinked. Penny tried to smile politely: Kevin could see she was unconvinced. For his part, he’d have taken a bet the old girl knew what she was talking about. Well, the minute Penny had mentioned the word “sideboard” to her, apparently she’d been off and running. Not to the extent of selling them her own genuine blonded oak, perfectly preserved, miraculous late Thirties stuff, true. Kevin knew of at least thirty yuppies that’d take it off his hands before he could turn round. Original Bakelite handles and all.
Mrs Adler explained a lot about the psychology of chooks. By the end of it even the sophisticated Mrs Bergen was starting to look convinced.
“Say I offer him twenty dollars and a whole new chook-house?” said Kevin.
“I think he’d be suspicious, dear. He’d gazump you,” said Mrs Adler serenely.
Gotcha. Right.
“What I’d do…” said Mrs Adler, narrowing her sharp little eyes.
“Yes?” they both said eagerly.
Mrs Adler, in Kevin’s shoes, would pretend she had a nice second-hand chook-house she needed someone to take off her hands, and after she’d let Mr Deakin beat her down to half the original price, she’d offer to cart away the old one…
“You’ve gotta admit it,” said Kevin limply as they tottered out to the ute. “That old bird’s got what it takes. Why isn’t she a millionaire?” he said fiercely.
“Ssh!” Penny smiled and waved to Mrs Adler, who was waving from her front door. “Because she’s never wanted to be!” she hissed.
“That’ll be it,” said Kevin heavily, getting into the ute. “Because if she had wanted to be, she’d be up there with Jake Carrano by now!”
“Yes,” said Penny on an odd note.
Kevin waved to Mrs Adler, tooted breezily, and drove off. “What?”
“He came into the shop just the other day and ordered new saddles for all three of their kiddies,” she admitted.
“There you are,” said Kevin sourly.
“Mm.”
They’d reached Kevin’s place of business, aka the old bus barn, and were turning onto the huge space of pitted asphalt that had once been the bus depot, well before their time, and which these days came to life only as a Sunday market, when he said cautiously: “Listen, don’t run away with the idea that doing up old furniture’s a sinecure, will you?”
“No!’“ said Penny angrily.
“Sorry. But there’s a Helluva lot of hard yacker in it. You don’t get back the time you put into it.”
“Maybe not,” she said, scowling. “But if we can get away with paying twenty dollars or less for that sideboard and then we do it up to look really good, we can charge Dr Kincaid something like three thousand for it!”
“No,” said Kevin mildly.
“What?” she cried. “Why not?”
“Hop out,” he said, getting out. “If you’re serious about this part-time job, there’s fifteen old kitchen chairs in there that need the treatment. –We’re not charging anybody, Kincaid or not, that sort of money for restored furniture. If it had the original French polish I’d come at it. Maybe. So long as it had the original handles, and no nasty bits of pine in it. And no nails where some helpful cretin’s thought he’d mend it.”
This last was a reference to a small bedside cabinet that Penny had mistakenly rhapsodised over. She scowled, but said nothing.
“Those chairs won’t strip themselves,” said Kevin mildly.
“The distressed look’s quite popular, these days.”
“No.”
Penny went into the old bus barn and started on a chair. Okay, it was Kevin’s business and she was only a very part-time employee. But she’d get at least five of these done before lunchtime, that’d show him! …Very dark brown varnish on old Windsor chairs, she discovered, was almost impossible to shift, even though it looked as if it ought to come off if you merely sneezed at it.
Kevin mooched over to his piles of seasoned timber and looked at them moodily. Fake up a “second-hand” chook-house? Find a mug that wanted a chook-house carted away?
“Penny for ’em!” said a familiar voice. “Or a penny for the lot of it, actually.”
“There’s some good st—”
“–stuff here!” finished Euan with a laugh. “We know that, Kev.”
Kevin goggled at Euan Knox and the cutest little Japanese doll he’d ever laid eyes on. One of those really cute little smiling faces and a long sweep of pitch-black, straight hair—wow!
“You remember Akiko, eh?” said Euan gracefully.
“Um—no,” replied Kevin stupidly, still goggling.
“She’s grown her hair since last time she was out here,” explained Euan.
“Yes, but-ah this does not-ah mean we have ur-met, Eu-an!” said Akiko, giggling terrifically.
“Oh, right. This is Akiko Takagaki, and this is Kevin Goode. He owns this dump,” he explained gracefully, waving at the Goode as Olde recycling yard.
“How do you do, Kevin-ah?” she said carefully, holding out a hand.
Kevin took it gingerly in his paw. Cripes, like a little bird’s foot, or something!
“She’s tougher than she looks,” drawled Euan laconically.
Kevin gave him a look of dislike and smiled at the little Japanese doll. “So, what are you doing out here, Akiko? Holiday, is it?”
“No. I am-ah here to work-uh.”
“You know: she used to help out the Carrano’s Nanny,” explained Euan illuminatingly.
“Yes. I was Nanny’s help. This time I am with-ah the Sir George-ah Guh-rey University,” she explained.
Kevin rolled a frantic eye at Euan.
Euan said smoothly: “Her uncle’s Inoue Takagaki. Executive Director or something, isn’t he, Akiko?”
“Yes. My Uncle Inoue is-ah Executive-ah Director of Sir George-ah Guh-rey Enterprise Corporation-ah.”
Euan sucked his teeth, eyeing Kevin drily. “Yeah.”
“I see,” said Kevin limply. “So—um—what’s your job, Akiko?”
“Liaison officer to Japanese-ah education-ah system. My father’s cousin-ah, he is high official in Japanese-ah Ministuh-ree of Education.”
“I get ya,” said Kevin feebly.
“But I am not start-ah job-ah just yet; first I have a little holiday!” she said happily.
Yeah, you and Knox both: very nice, thought Kevin sourly. “Good show,” he said with an effort.
“Showing her the sights of Carter’s Bay,” said Euan, poker-face.
“It has-ah not-ah change’ ver-ree much!” squeaked Akiko, going into a terrific giggling fit.
“No,” said Kevin with a feeble smile. “I’m sure it hasn’t.”
“Few bulldozers over on the other side of the Inlet, now, though,” noted Euan airily.
Kevin nodded grimly.
“And I did hear that someone’s thinking of turning the old post office into a coffee shop.”
“That wouldn’t be bad. I’m pretty sick of Big Ben pies from Swadlings’ for lunch,” he admitted.
“May’ll do you a filled roll if you ask her.”
“Yeah, tinned beetroot with a bit of lettuce and tomato. Thanks.”
“I do not ur-rike New Zealand-ah beet-ah-root,” stated Akiko solemnly.
“’S good,” objected Euan in surprise. “’Specially in a nice salad with a bit of home-made dressing. You know: Highlander Condensed Milk with vinegar,” he said meanly to Kevin. “With chopped lettuce and hard-boiled egg. Real good. Turns the salad-dressing all pink, if you’re really lucky, Akiko,” he explained.
She nodded, giggling helplessly. “I know-ah this, Eu-an!”
“How do you know?” said Kevin feebly.
“Polly Carrano’s old-ah aunty, she-ah makes that-ah sarrad!” she squeaked.
“Old Miss Macdonald,” explained Euan. “Hundred and two, and tough as old boots. Does you a bonzer afternoon tea, mind.
“Ah,” said Akiko, nodding. “Chocu-rate-ah cake-uh!”
“And how. Mind you, her scones are corker, too, eh?”
Kevin was driven at this point to tell them about old Mrs Adler’s wonderful pikelets. And home-made jam. Unfortunately Akiko then asked what a cape-gooseberry was and bloody Knox went into hysterics as he tried to explain.
“Well,” Euan then admitted, blowing his nose on a hanky with a horrible black stain on it, “I’d try Mrs Adler first, if you want board locally, Akiko.”
“Um—she’s pretty ancient, actually,” said Kevin uneasily.
“Akiko won’t be any trouble round the house: very domesticated, Japanese women are.”
Kevin eyed her cautiously. “Um—yeah. Um, won’t you be working in town, though, Akiko? It is a bit of a drive.”
“Yeah. But she has her reasons for not wanting to live down in Puriri. And she likes the Bay.” said Euan stolidly.
“My ur-reason is, my-ah Aunt Masako is ur-stay in-nah Puriri with my cousin-ah Ken and wife for new-ah baby to come,” explained Akiko, her English deteriorating somewhat.
“Battle-axe,” explained Euan stolidly. “Runs the whole family with both hands tied behind her.”
“Al-uh-so she does not approve of my boy-fuh-riends. She is of generation which-ah does no-ah berieve in-ah sex-ah before ur-marriage-ah,” said Akiko, scowling.
For some reason or another Kevin’s ears were sort of glowing, at this point. “Right,” he croaked.
“So take it for all in all, Akiko thought she’d stay up here and keep out of her way as much as possible,” summed up Euan stolidly.
“Yeah. Um… Well—dunno. We could ask Mrs Adler.”
“If I board-ah in-nah house for ur-while, it he’ps-ah my English,” she explained.
“Instead of flatting,” said Euan stolidly.
“Yeah. Your English is pretty good already, Akiko,” said Kevin feebly. “Um—I’ll try and think of some more people that might want a boarder.”
“Thank you-ah ver-ree much-ah, Kevin!” she beamed.
Kevin smiled weakly. Why was it that bloody Knox had all the luck, not to say all the birds?
They pushed off after that. Kevin went moodily indoors and stared moodily at the phone. He supposed he’d better ring Mrs Adler. Knox had plenty of room in that boathouse of his; if they were that cosy, why wasn’t she— Oh, forget it.
“It’s only half done. You can’t possibly move back in, Mum,” said Noelle definitely.
“No,” agreed Catherine meekly.
…”It’s not really habitable, Catherine. You’re all right at the motel, aren’t you?” said Jenny Fermour briskly.
“Mm.”
“Well, then!” said Jenny bracingly.
Catherine smiled meekly.
… “I’ve booked you in for a further month,” said Alan firmly.
“A month?” she quavered.
“What about the school fair?” cried Dicky.
“I’ll be back in time for that.”
“But we thought you weren’t going till after,” said Catherine in a bewildered voice.
“That isn’t the way it’s worked out,” he said firmly.
After a moment she asked limply: “So when do you leave?”
“Saturday.”
Today was Thursday. Catherine gasped: “You don’t mean this Saturday?”
“Certainly. It’ll take me no time to pack.”
“C’n we come to the airport?”
Alan sighed. “How will you get back, Dicky?”
“On the bus,” said Dicky, scowling.
There was a sort of an airport bus service, true. Its vehicles looked more like vans. Smallish vans. Would Catherine even be able to identify one as a bus? And the service was very infrequent. Added to which, it dumped you at the downtown Air New Zealand office. From where it was at least forty minutes’ drive, supposing you left immediately, up to Puriri. And there was no hope of their finding any bus that would leave immediately. The fact that its shops stayed open all day on Saturdays was one of Puriri’s featured attractions. Nevertheless there were only three buses that went there from the city on a Saturday. In most cities there would be huge taxi ranks, impossible to miss, just outside the downtown air terminal, but Alan was aware that here there weren’t.
“Yes: we could get the airport bus into town and then get the Puriri bus,” said Catherine.
“After a wait of five hours? No. It wouldn’t be sensible.”
“I think I’ve got a timetable somewhere—”
“NO!”
“But I wanna come to the air-yuh-port!” wailed Dicky.
“SHUT UP!” roared Alan terribly. “You are not coming! And that’s that!”
There was a cowed silence.
“Shuh-shall we have tea?” said Catherine in a trembling voice.
Avoiding her eye, Alan replied: “I can’t, I’m afraid. I have a dinner engagement tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He went out quickly, avoiding her eye.
Behind him Dicky shouted: “I don’t wanna go to the stupid ole airport ANYWAY!”
“No,” said Catherine wanly.
There was a short pause.
“C’n we have fish an’ chips?” asked Dicky hopefully.
There was another short pause.
“Wait till he’s gone,” said Catherine guiltily.
Dicky beamed, and nodded. They waited until he’d gone.
“So?” said Jill Davis, leaning on the Enquiries counter.
The Puriri County Librarian shrugged a little. “She came in to do her shelving as usual on Monday.”
“And?”
Dorothy shrugged again.
“Well, has she mentioned him, Dorothy?” said Jill weakly.
“No. In fact, she hasn’t voluntarily mentioned him once, to my knowledge. –No, I tell a lie. She did mention him sort of half-voluntarily, back when Janet dragged it out of her what she was looking for in the 700s. –Books about doing up old houses. For him.”
“She hasn’t mentioned him since?” said Jill limply.
“Nope,” replied the Puriri County Librarian succinctly.
“This get-together’s getting us a lot forrarder, then,” noted Jill. “Dunno why I came in.”
Dorothy looked at her drily. “Have a book?”
“Can’t see any here,” replied Jill brutally.
Affecting to ignore this slur on her book-stock, Dorothy responded sweetly: “Why are we taking such an interest in Catherine’s private life?”
Jill rubbed her nose. “Social conditioning?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Or possibly we’re ghoulishly waiting for the disaster that some of us have a feeling is lurking just around the corner,” she added grimly.
“Are we?” said Dorothy limply. “Couldn’t we just be waiting hopefully for the happy ending?”
“Not in this instance. Well, if you’ve got no gossip and no books, I’ll be off. –Unless my name’s got to the top of the list for the latest Dick Francis?” she added without hope.
“Dream on,” replied the Puriri County Librarian graciously.
Scowling, Dr Davis exited.
It was a warm afternoon. There were no adult customers in except old Mr Potter, nodding at the magazines table. Over in Children’s Corner it sounded as if the children were cutting very small pieces off Cynthia, but who cared, Children’s Corner was entirely Cynthia’s responsibility. Shrugging, Dorothy produced the newest Dick Francis from under the counter and got on with it.
“There’s crowds here,” said Gretchen dazedly in the vernacular.
Struggling to maintain her balance in the midst of the seething morass of Carter’s Bay Primary School Fair attendees, Jill replied brazenly: “What do you expect?”
“I expect to go vhere your vulgar curiosity about Dorothy’s pink woman vill instantly be satisfied. Then I expect to go and sit qvietly on a beach and do nothing.”
Jill ignored this and set off in quest of the cake stall. Resignedly Gretchen followed.
Catherine had been roped in to help Jenny Fermour at the egg and poultry stall. Because of the still-rural nature of Carter’s Bay and environs, there still was an egg and poultry stall, but every year its voluntary contributors got fewer and fewer. This year, in fact, there had only been three: Jenny herself and Catherine, both of whom admittedly still had kids at the school, and May Swadling, whose kids were at secondary school. One or two people on the Carter’s Bay Primary School Fair Committee had suggested Jenny should ask old Mr Deakin for a contribution, his Rhode Island Reds were famous for their plump condition and their lovely brown, slightly speckled eggs, but Jenny had retorted that if they were that keen they could ask him themselves. A certain amount of scouting round the place had produced a few solicited contributions: a cross-looking drake from Jim Bright, who’d admitted that if they’d prefer it dead, he’d love to wring its neck, only not in front of the kids; a magnificent rooster from Angela Gregory from the Point, who’d admitted that those pigs in the wedding-cake condo that Sir Jake Carrano had built on the top of the rise just behind them had threatened to sue her for infringement of the noise regulations, and his name was Roger Rooster, and please could they (tearfully) see he went to a good home; two moth-eaten banties from a harried Deirdre Rangiata, who admitted that it had been a mistake buying them at last year’s school fair—the kids had sworn they’d look after them but of course they never had and the things had never laid; half a dozen magnificent duck eggs presented secretly by Ted Turner behind his wife’s back in return for a bottle of Catherine’s home-made cider; a dozen hen’s eggs presented ditto by Lysle Watson in return for ditto; and a clutch of half-grown so-called pullets from a misguided yuppie couple from Kingfisher Bay who had made the mistake of believing (a) that any fool could raise chooks, (b) that they could tell the difference between a capon and a hen, and (c) that the poultry farmer who sold them to them wouldn’t gyp them.
“Look, this change isn’t right,” said the fat lady menacingly.
“I’m sorry!” gasped Catherine in dismay. “Whuh-what should it be?”
A cool voice from the fat lady’s elbow said: “Forty-five cents. That is right: that five-cent piece is a bit discoloured, that’s all.”
The fat lady re-checked the five-cent piece, admitted it was, and took herself and her half-dozen eggs off.
The lady who had been standing at her elbow smiled at Catherine and said: “Are these real free-range duck eggs?”
“Yes. Um—don’t use them in anything raw!” gasped Catherine.
“It’s all right, I won’t: I grew up on a farm.”
“Oh,” said Catherine in relief. “A lot of people don’t know, these days.”
“No.” The lady, who was a very pretty lady, with long, shiny brown hair in a big fat plait—not exactly young, though: she was probably in her mid-thirties—smiled again and looked with interest at the dressed ducks. “Farm ducks?”
“Um—not from a poultry farm,” said Catherine on a dubious note.
“Goody, I’ll take two. No, hang on, we’ve got guests coming; better make it four.”
“Four ducks?” gasped Catherine, belatedly recognising the lady as Dr Mitchell from the university.
“Yes, please. Unless you’ve reserved them for someone?”
“No,” said Catherine numbly. Carefully she added up the price of the four ducks and half a dozen duck eggs on Dicky’s calculator.
Dr Mitchell gave her a fifty-dollar note! Catherine gaped at it in horror, belatedly realising that of course, Dr Mitchell was really Lady Carrano.
“I’m awfully sorry, I used up all my change at the jam stall,” she said.
Catherine could see she must have, she was carrying a lovely wicker basket, one of those sort of squarish ones, and it was full of pots of jam. Lady Carrano told Catherine what the change was. She watched calmly as Catherine did it on the calculator. She was right. Catherine gave her the change and she put it in her purse without counting it, smiled, picked up the plastic bag Catherine had put the ducks in, laid the eggs carefully on top of the jam, smiled again, said: “Bye-bye,” and went away.
… “Well?” said a sepulchral voice,
Lady Carrano tried not to jump. “Well, what?”
“Wasn’t that her? Dorothy’s pink woman?” demanded Jill.
Polly cleared her throat and tried to assume the expression of a woman who had duck-eating guests coming to dinner very shortly. “I think it was, yes.”
“Well?”
She licked her lips. “Jill, I know your theory is that it’s another case of Mike and Molly Collingwood—well, maybe it was Gretchen’s theory,” she said quickly as Jill opened her mouth, “but honestly, I just can’t see her with him!”
“Quite. –Have you seen him, by the by?”
“Not so far,” admitted Lady Carrano.
“Me neither. Maybe he hasn’t come.”
“Quite. Which reminds me, where’s Gretchen? Or did she chicken out?”
“She wandered off to shy at coconuts,” said Jill with a sigh.
“Let’s go, Jake’ll be there, too,” she said glumly.
“I thought you liked these local hoolies, Polly?” said Jill with a laugh in her voice as they began to force their way through the struggling morass of school fair attendees, not to say the streaming humidity.
“I do. Only then we get stuck with umpteen coconuts and the bargains he’s bought at the second-hand stalls!”
Jill went into an awful sniggering fit. Lady Carrano smiled weakly.
When they got there, Sir Jacob was in proud possession of a really good goldfish bowl, a genuine old-fashioned pressure-cooker that only needed a new rubber ring to be good as gold, and a great bundle of comics, none of which looked like classic issues or anything near it. And five coconuts. But Jill was unable to laugh: her housemate was in proud possession of a cartonful of cabbages, a small stool with a wobbly leg, two coconuts, and a live fowl. Smallish. Probably a capon.
“What?” she groaned.
“I spotted the pink woman at the egg and poultry stall, so I pretended I vished to buy something from her!”
“Gretchen, the cats’ll eat it,” she groaned.
“Oh, vell, I giff it to Jake. –You haff hens,” she stated.
Sir Jacob winked at Jill. “Yep; it’ll go in our hen-run, no sweat. The hens’ll peck it to death if they don’t like it, of course, but that’s Nature for ya, eh?”
“Jake!” cried his wife.
Jake looked bland. He took the capon off Gretchen. “Well?”
“Just stop winning coconuts,” said Polly feebly.
He winked, and negligently tossed a ball. “Bingo,” he said mildly.
“Look, don’t let him have any more throws, he’s a dead-eye Dick!” said his wife agitatedly to the man in charge of the coconut shy.
“But he’s paid for the balls,” he replied numbly.
“Never mind,” said Polly darkly. She grabbed her husband’s arm and dragged him forcibly away. Their three children, who had been with him, picked up their father’s coconuts and scampered after them.
Jill raised her eyebrows, looking dry. Gretchen shrugged. They were both aware that Jake was twice Polly’s weight and there was no way she could have dragged him bodily anywhere if he hadn’t been willing to be dragged.
“Shall ve go?”
“Have you seen the Iceman, yet?” returned Jill grimly.
“No. But very probably he hass had the sense not to come.”
“I’m not leaving yet,” she said firmly.
Gretchen groaned, but hefted the carton of cabbages.
“Tell me those aren’t for sauerkraut,” begged Jill
Looking smug, Gretchen ignored her.
… “Hullo, Mrs Swadling,” said Alan, smiling. “Sort of a busman’s holiday for you, isn’t it?”
May, in spite of the fact that her kids were now at secondary school, was in charge of the pie stall. Some places, of course, combined the pies with the cakes, but it was a tradition at Carter’s Bay Primary School that there should be a separate pie stall. It sold not only a range of family-size pies, tarts, quiches and flans, but also small, one-person pies. Sometimes these were donated by one or another of the pie factories, in which case the stall was obliged to display a large sign advertising this charitable activity. This year, however, they’d had to supply them themselves.
Alan supported with equanimity Mrs Swadling’s over-enthusiastic reply to his greeting. He solicited her opinion as to whether he should let Dicky immediately consume a meat pie. May decided it would be all right: none of the kids ever had a proper lunch on Fair Day, did they? Dicky chose a pie and fell on it ravenously, just as if he had never consumed a sausage on a stick, smothered in bright yellow batter and dipped in tomato sauce, and which he claimed was a hot-dog, a bright red toffee-apple on a stick, a less traditional offering in the form of several pieces of barbecued meat on a stick interspersed with charred bits of onion and capsicum, and misnamed shishkebab, and two packets of home-made sweets of the sticky and filling variety. Alan himself had not eaten anything except a piece of fudge that Dicky had forced on him. He eyed the pies dubiously. Dicky assured him that they were ace. Mrs Swadling assured him they had real meat and gravy, real chicken, real meat curry or real—um, these ones were vegetarian.
Alan bought a real meat and gravy pie. Good Christ, it actually was!
They wandered on through the struggling, shrieking crowds. Alan actually began to feel marginally human: possibly it was the protein. After a while Dicky’s small, indescribably filthy and sticky paw grasped his hand. Alan let it stay there.
… “I’ll have this, thanks!” said Euan Knox loudly.
Penny Bergen was helping on the second-hand clothes stall in Room J.3-4. It was the usual scrimmage, and the room was, as usual, stiflingly hot. She raised a flushed, harried face. “What on earth do you want that for?”
“Tee-shirts make nice, soft polishing rags.”
Penny shrugged. She sold him an immense pink tee-shirt with a black stain down the front and an advertisement for the Puriri Cubs in flaky gold paint on the back. The Puriri Cubs were Puriri High School’s basketball team. They were quite lately formed and so far had never won a game. Euan rolled the tee-shirt up and tucked it under his arm. “Why Cubs?” he asked idly.
“I’ve no idea: my kids aren’t at secondary school,” snarled Penny. “There’s loads more of those tee-shirts, if you’re so interested. –Mary Anne Jackson, if you want that dress, buy it,” she said terribly, “or stop picking at it and go away!”
Mary Anne Jackson, who was about thirteen but wearing enough junk jewellery and make-up for three women three times her age, pouted, put the dress down, and disappeared.
“Kids!” said Penny exasperatedly to Euan. “–What? Uh: yes, sorry, Mrs—um—oh, yes, Mrs Adams, isn’t it? Size 4? Um—well, how old is your granddaughter?”
Raising his eyebrows only very slightly at the sight of one of the more up-market retirees from Kingfisher Bay prepared to purchase a bright violet second-hand tracksuit for her granddaughter—the sort of second-hand that featured those tiny, fuzzy balls all over it—Euan drifted away.
… “What’s this?” said Alan with interest.
“It’s the hangi, of course!’
In Dicky’s accent this came out as “Ut’s thuh heng-ee, uv course.” Alan was able to grasp those words which an earlier generation of linguists would have classed as non-notional. He looked at him helplessly.
“The hangi!” repeated Dicky loudly. “See, they put meat an’ stuff in it!”
Alan looked blankly at the huge, steaming hole in the one small, bumpy playing-field attached to Carter’s Bay Primary School.
One of the men who were apparently in charge of the hole looked up and said with a smile: “Hullo, Dicky. How’s it going?”‘
“Hullo, Mr Pyke!” squeaked Dicky, immediately going into a state of terrific excitement.
The man was about twenty-two. Well, possibly twenty-three. With a round, innocent-looking pinkish face, topped with a mop of blond curls. It was probably an actual hairdo, since it was very, very short above the ears, but then shelved out steeply to form the mop. He wore a small silver hoop earring in one ear but after years of practice Alan was able not to wince at this phenomenon. He knew that Dicky’s class teacher was an “a-ancient” Miss Grosvenor, though they had not yet encountered this elderly person; so he said cheerfully: “Hullo, there. Are you one of Dicky’s teachers, or just a friend?”
“A friend, I hope!” said the young man with a laugh, holding out a hand. “Shane Pyke. I’m the head teacher here.”
Either Alan was getting old or the New Zealand school system was even odder than he’d thought it was. He shook hands feebly with Dicky’s very young headmaster. “Alan Kincaid. Glad to meet you, Shane.”
“Alan’s a Kincaid, like Uncle Bob,” explained Dicky. “He done a family tree. Me and Noelle are on it, we’re the only repper-sentives of our generation!”
“A family tree, eh? That’s not a bad idea. We might get up a project,” said Shane Pyke, grinning. “A family tree for every family at the school. How about that, Dicky? We could do them on big sheets of paper and put them up in the hall.”
“Yeah! Ace!” gasped Dicky.
“That would certainly help to establish a sense of self-ship,” said Alan on a dry note.
Shane Pyke winked. “Reinforce it, in most cases. You gonna have some of the hangi, later?”
“Can we, Alan?” gasped Dicky, grabbing his hand again and jumping.
“Uh—well, I don’t know what it is,” said Alan lamely.
Grinning, Shane Pyke explained. Alan smiled limply, thanked him, assured Dicky that they could have some of the hangi, and tottered off limply just as a very wrinkled Maori man came up to the hole in the ground and started telling Shane Pyke and his two large, middle-aged helpers what they were doing wrong. Presumably he would know: certainly the helpers, like Mr Pyke, were very, very pale.
“Who was the Maori man, Dicky?” he asked cautiously when they were a safe distance away.
“Who?”
“Uh—the very old man who came up just then to the hangi,” said Alan, trying to pronounce it as Shane Pyke had during his explanation and not how either he or Dicky had pronounced it in the course of their normal conversational exchanges.
“Aw, him. Ole Mr Tamehana.”
“Oh? Is he a relation of Shane Tamehana’s?”
“Yeah. He’s not his real grandfather.”
“No?”
“Neh. He’s Mr Tamehana’s grandfather, only they all call him Grandpa.”
Shane Tamehana’s family tree was looking good, then. Alan nodded feebly and let Dicky drag him where he listed. Not even attempting to ask whether “Shane” was a very popular name in these parts.
… “Hullo,” said Kevin Goode with a silly grin.
Akiko and old Mrs Adler, who had happily become her landlady, were quietly having morning tea in the school hall. As quietly as was possible, given that they were surrounded by a crowd of struggling, sweating, shrieking fair attendees. They greeted him composedly. With about equal pleasure, as far as Kevin could tell. Whether that was a good sign or not he couldn’t have said. Mrs Adler then urged him to get himself some morning tea.
“The pike-uh-rets are no-ah so good-ah as Mrs Ad-duh-ler’s, Kevin!” warned Akiko with a giggle.
“I bet,” he agreed. “What about the scones?”
“They’re not bad, dear,” said Mrs Adler in a kind tone.
“She means-ah, but she is-ah too po-rite-ah to say, they are no-ah so good-ah, neither!” squeaked Akiko.
Mrs Adler smiled tolerantly.
“I’ll give them a go,” said Kevin, grinning. “Can I get you two anything else?”
They conceded fresh cups of tea would be nice. Kevin went off to join the huge, writhing queue which led to an infinitesimal hatch, through which all the orders had to be given. There was only room for one face at the hatch. Though beyond it you could dimly glimpse several bodies through clouds of steam.
“Whew!” he said, coming back with his tray at last. Not a real tray. Though he had seen some real trays. His was a cardboard box lid. Quickly he put it down before it could collapse. Akiko and Mrs Adler greeted the sight of his paper cup of coffee with dismay. Both on account of the paper cup, rapidly going soggy, and on account of the quality of the coffee. Kevin didn’t dare to ask them what they thought of the tea.
After a prolonged exchange of local news with Mrs Adler he was at last able to ask Akiko how the job was going. He had caught several glimpses of her over the past few weeks, but this was the very first time he’d managed to talk to her without bloody Knox being there.
Akiko reported that the job was going well: she had already made many contacts in Japan and now they were ready to set up arrangements at this end. Business Japanese for English-speakers, English as a Second Language for Japanese-speakers.
“Uh-huh. Um—what about the teachers?” said Kevin a trifle hazily.
Mrs Adler explained brightly that they were going to appoint the dean, first: Akiko would be on the interviewing panel!
“Really?” said Kevin weakly, looking at the neat little doll-like figure and wondering not for the first time how old she was. At the moment she looked about fifteen: she was in jeans and a bright pink singlet. With these delirious little bright pink and green painted wooden parrot earrings, y’know? No bra. She didn’t need one. Which didn’t mean she was flat, by any means.
Akiko told him about the applications they had so far received for Dean of the School of Languages, but it must be admitted, Kevin didn’t take much in.
Mrs Adler then attempted to leave them to it, but Akiko leapt up, saying she’d go with her: Mrs Adler was looking for a pumpkin, she explained. It would be too heavy for her. Mrs Adler objected but was overborne.
“Uh—I’ll come with you, shall I?” said Kevin on a feeble note. “I could carry stuff for you.”
“If you’re sure, Kevin, dear?”
Kevin was quite sure. To prove it, he hefted the shopping basket that Mrs Adler had already filled with purchases from the stalls and the green flax kit that Akiko had bought and then filled with purchases from the stalls. They went off in search of the vegetable stall, Kevin both looking and feeling very pleased with himself, Mrs Adler looking mildly pleased, and Akiko looking completely inscrutable. Though this last was not to dawn on Kevin Goode until quite some time later, when he was back at the recycling yard, waiting for customers that weren’t coming because they were all at the fair.
… “Sold anything yet?” asked Gerry Fermour blandly.
Tim Bergen glared. He’d let himself be suckered into doing the second-hand bookstall. This was a tactical error: the books never made money, only the comics did, and they were on another stall. Tim’s stall was covered in dog-eared paperbacks. Mostly Mills and Boons. As those who had donated the Mills and Boons were those who read the Mills and Boons, they weren’t selling.
Mikey Bergen, aged six, had volunteered himself as helper. “Yeah, we sold lots!” he piped.
“Lots of Mills and Boons?” said Gerry with a snigger.
“No,” replied Tim through his teeth.
“I told ya not to let yourself be suckered into this, mate!”
So he had. Tim gave him a bitter look.
“Jenny was telling me Kincaid bought back two of Catherine’s ducks,” he said blandly.
Tim smiled weakly. “Oh.”
“What?” spotted Gerry.
“Um—actually he was our only big customer. –The man who bought those funny old books, remember, Mikey?”
“Yeah. Dicky Burchett’s dad,” he said wisely, nodding.
“He’s not—” Tim broke off. He looked in a confused way at Gerry. Gerry looked super-bland. “He’s more like an uncle, really, Mikey,” said Tim feebly.
In the way of his kind, Mikey responded eagerly: “Dicky reckons he’s gonna buy him a boat!”
“That’ll get Sol Winkelmann and Euan Knox on his side, all right,” noted Gerry.
“Get out of here, Fermour,” he groaned. “–No, hang on: since you’re here, you can bloody well buy a book!”
Gerry gave the piles of Mills and Boons a sickened look. “No, ta.”
“Here’s a lovely Wilbur Smith,” said Tim grimly. He opened it. “Ooh, look, genuine ex-Puriri County Library! –You’re buying it,” he said in an iron voice. “Good cause. Cough up.”
“I’ve read the bloody thing! Shit, we support the school enough with all the flaming trips and extras and what-not— All, right, all right!” Gerry paid over forty-five cents for a second-hand, in fact probably stolen, Puriri County Library Wilbur Smith that he’d read.
Tim put the money in the tin, looking smug.
“How much we got now, Dad?” piped his optimistic offspring.
“Um—twenty-six dollars seventy,” he said limply.
“Gee!” breathed Mikey.
Tim smiled weakly. Twenty dollars of it were Kincaid’s. The old books had only been marked as fifty cents a bunch. And he’d only bought two of them. Well, at least he was supporting his local primary school. That or bribing the local populace with his filthy lucre, depending on how ya looked at it.
… “Hullo,” said Dr John Aitken blandly. “Seen the Iceman?”
His academic colleagues glared, especially Jill. “No,” she said sourly.
“Ve think he hass not come. He is probably too good for Carter’s Bay Primary School,” explained Gretchen.
“That’s possibly true, but he has come, actually. He’s over there by that little stall that just sells cactuses. –Not the plant stall, the cactus stall. There!”
They peered.
“Christ,” gulped Jill. “It is!”
“Ja, and vith the ankle-biter. Can ve go now?” said Gretchen in a bored voice.
“I suppose that proves something,” said Dr Aitken in a faraway tone. “If only that he can give quite a convincing imitation of immersion in the grass-roots thing.”
“Does your wife know you’re here, Aitken?” snarled Jill.
“Yes. She’s just gone to buy a dressed duck.” He looked thoughtfully at Alan and Dicky by the stall that sold only very small cactuses in pots. “Is he here on the little boy’s account, thus disproving the Cambridge theory; or in order to ingratiate himself with the mother, and if so will it all end in tears; or is it merely a ploy to ingratiate himself with Carter’s Bay as a whole and nip any rumblings of environmentalist protest in the bud?”
“I suppose all three are possible,” said Gretchen clinically. “Though in that case, the Cambridge theory iss not disproven.”
Winking at her, Dr Aitken ambled off.
“Don’t,” said Jill, pulling Gretchen to a halt as she took a step towards the cactus stall.
“So having spent the whole morning looking for him, now ve do not get closer in case he recognises you?” said Gretchen acidly.
“Something like that, yeah. What the Christ are they doing?” she muttered, peering.
Gretchen looked down her nose. “Sometimes I think you liff in another world! They’re choosing a cactus for his mother, off course!”
“He hasn’t got a mother, he sprang fully formed from the brow of— Oh, the kid’s mother.”
They watched numbly as the Iceman and the little boy chose a cactus. The two then moved off together, looking pleased.
Jill shook her head madly, rather as of one with water in the ear.
“Vell, vhether or not one or all of John’s theories are correct, he certainly looks qvite content at this moment. Not icy,” ventured Gretchen unwisely.
“Shut up.”
“Vhat now? Follow them to see if he vins a coconut for the child?” She waited but Jill said nothing. So she said heavily: “Vhateffer his motives, there’s nothing ve can do, one vay or another. And vhy are you so concerned, anyway?”
Jill sighed. “I think it’s because I’m the only person in the whole bloody country who knows what the Iceman’s really like.”
“No: I am very sure that Jake Carrano also knows vhat he’s really like; there are no flies on him.”
Instead of congratulating her Aryan friend on her use of the vernacular, Jill replied heatedly: “So? What’s he gonna put first, Dorothy’s nice pink woman’s happiness, not to mention that poor little squirt of a kid that apparently thinks the sun shines out of his ears, or his ruddy great user-pays, so-called university?”
Gretchen made a face.
“Come on,” said Jill heavily. “There’s a hangi over there; since we’re wallowing in the grass-roots thing, we might as well have some.”
Gretchen sighed, but said: “Okay. In any case, I could do vith a sit-down.”
They headed for the field.
… “Can I help?” said a very shy voice at Avon’s elbow, as she struggled to juggle the whingeing Fiorella, her purse, a large cracked meat plate that had probably once had a willow pattern on it, and was definitely almost valuable, a flax kit containing a nice young marrow and a huge bunch of radishes, and a green flax hat. Avon was still young enough not to have learned that you never bought green flax hats, because as the flax dried they went all horrible and misshapen.
“Ta!” she gasped, handing over Fiorella.
Janet Wilson from the Puriri County Library staggered slightly, very taken aback to have been given the little girl, but managed not to drop her.
Avon bought two pots of nectarine jam (May Swadling’s), a pot of cape-gooseberry jam (donated by Mrs Adler) and a pot of blackberry (Catherine’s). Before paying for them she briskly talked the young woman managing the stall into letting them go at a discount, for bulk. Janet watched this bargaining in awe.
“They’re full of refined sugar, of course, but my brothers have got infantile tastes,” said Avon cheerfully, stowing them in the flax kit. “What are cape-gooseberries, anyway?”
The stall-holder, who was actually that Miss Grosvenor who taught Dicky Burchett, explained competently. Avon looked blank.
“You know: like dear little gauzy bells,” said Janet shyly.
“Oh! Yeah! I know an old lady that’s got some of those in her garden!”
“Mrs Adler, I expect. She made this,” said Miss Grosvenor.
Ignoring her, Avon said to Janet: “Are you from around here?”
Janet had come up to Carter’s Bay for purely innocent motives. It was a lovely fine day, her little flat in Puriri was spotless, and Puriri on a Saturday, busy as it was, was very, very boring. In fact Puriri was very boring at any time, and Janet had decided that, handy to work though her flat was, it had been a mistake to buy there. She was wondering about moving up to Carter’s Bay. It would be a bit of a drive to and from work, but she didn’t mind that. And it had much more character than Puriri. Though there weren’t many home-units up that way. And a whole house would be too big for just her and Bobby. –Bobby was Janet’s grey cat. He was named after Bobby from Coronation Street, which Janet in her youth had watched with her addicted mother. Whether or not Minnie’s Bobby had been grey in actuality, he had certainly appeared so on Mrs Wilson’s black and white TV set.
Janet knew about the Carter’s Bay Primary School Fair because she had herself put up an advertisement for it on the notice-board at the library. She had decided it would be fun to go. And you never knew, sometimes you picked up a really interesting piece of pottery or an unusual piece of jewellery at these little local fairs. “No,” she said shyly to Avon, pinkening. “I live in Puriri, actually.”
“I thought you couldn’t be from the Bay: I know most of them. I’m Avon Goode. This is Fiorella.”
“I’m Janet Wilson,” said Janet, pinkening again and smiling at her over Fiorella’s head. “How old is she?”
“Two. She’s all right, though, aren’tcha, Fiorella?”
“Wan’ hat!” whinged Fiorella.
“It’s too big for ya, but wear it if ya must.” Avon put the green flax hat on her daughter’s little dark, curly head. There was a startled wall from under it as it engulfed her.
Avon removed it unemotionally. “See? Too big! –She’s talking quite good these days, it’s interesting.”
“Yes. Aren’t you a clever girl, Fiorella?” said Janet timidly.
“I s’pose she is quite clever,” admitted her mother as Fiorella decided she liked Janet and smiled an utterly captivating smile, displaying two perfect little pearly top teeth and taking over Janet’s heart, lock, stock and barrel. “Don’t tell her she’s P,R,E,T,T,Y, though, will ya? It reinforces undesirable stereotypes.”
“Um—yes. I mean, no, of course it does!” gasped Janet.
“Yeah,” said Avon, looking at her new acquaintance with undisguised approval. “’Ve you seen much, yet? You haven’t bought much,” she noted, looking unashamedly into Janet’s shopping basket. –A trendy wicker one, not unlike Lady Carrano’s.
Janet had bought a dear little greeting card with pressed flowers and ferns on it. She thought she might frame it. It would look very pretty on her dressing-table. It was in an envelope and wrapped in brown paper. Next to it was a bunch of carrots in a plastic bag. She was not particularly fond of carrots but they were a good standby, and the little boy that was helping look after that stall had looked at her sadly—and there had been an awful lot of carrots on the stall.
“No, um, there’s only me to feed. And Bobby, that’s my cat. I did think of buying a cake, only they were sold out.”
Avon eyed her tolerantly. “Yeah. They always sell out by about nine-forty. What it is, see, the moos that run the cake stall, they put all the best ones aside for themselves and their mates.”
“Ye— Um—didn’t it only start at nine-thirty, though?” said Janet in confusion.
“Yeah, exactly!” retorted Avon with immense satisfaction. “Where you going now?”
“Um—I don’t know, really. Have they got eggs, do you know?”
“Yeah, they always have eggs. There’s chooks this year, too. –Come on, Fiorella, wanna see a chooky? –It’s over here.” She set off.
Janet followed, clutching Fiorella as if she was made of pure gold. Which in the opinion of Miss Janet Wilson, spinster, of Unit 3, 14 Canary Grove, Puriri, she very nearly was.
“I had Mummy’s hat,” said Fiorella solemnly as they went.
“Yes,” said Janet, her heart almost bursting. “So you did, Fiorella!”
“Here: eggs. Hi, Jenny,” said Avon, when they got there.
“Hullo, Catherine,” said Janet, turning pink. “Um—this is Avon. And Fiorella.”
“I remember you: it was ages ago,” said Avon cheerfully. “Down in Puriri at the Medical Centre. Fiorella and me were there for her shots. She was bawling, she recognised the place from the last time. You got her to stop. Your little boy had a sore knee, it looked revolting.”
“Oh, yes,” said Catherine, smiling, but very pink. “Of course! Dicky’s knee was healed, and Dr Smith wouldn’t let him wear the bandage any more. But it was pretty awful-looking. It was all sort of pink and puckered and it still had the stitches in it.”
“Yeah.”
“Hasn’t your little girl grown?” beamed Catherine. “She reminds me of my Noelle when she was that age.”
Jenny Fermour agreed, smiling: “Yes, she looks just like that photo of Noelle in your sitting-room.”
“How’s it going, Jenny?” asked Avon.
Jenny sighed. “Not bad, I suppose. Considering all the stuff was donated. But most of them seem to expect something for nothing.”
Despite her recent behaviour over the jam, Avon nodded seriously. “Yeah. –You haven’t managed to get rid of Roger Rooster,” she noticed.
“No. They all want to know if he crows. One man did offer us three dollars, but then he said could we supply the stuffing as well.”
“Macho pig,” said Avon automatically. “Hullo, Roger!” she chirped. “Cock-a-doodle-doo! Look, Fiorella, big rooster!”
“Big chooky!” gurgled Fiorella, holding out her hands to it, what time Janet, Catherine and Jenny all looked at her with identical soppy expressions on their faces.
Avon then stated: “You live next to Jenny, then.”
“Yes,” Catherine admitted.
“That’s right,” agreed Jenny. “Toetoe Bay Farm.”
“Yeah. It’s my brother, Barry, that’s doing up your house. He won’t let us have Roger Rooster, eh, Fiorella? –Janet wants some eggs,” she said helpfully.
“Oh!” said Catherine, jumping. “Yes, of course, Janet, I’m sorry. How many?”
Janet bought half a dozen speckledy eggs from Catherine’s own hens. To her immense relief, Avon didn’t try to get a discount for her.
“You pop off, now Catherine,” said Jenny firmly. “Get your lunch. I’ll manage until Pauline turns up.”
“Well, I—”
“Look, there’s Alan and Dicky,” said Jenny firmly. She waved at a point over to their right.
“Oh,” said Catherine limply. “Yes, I suppose I’d better… Would you like to have lunch with us?” she said shyly to Janet and Avon.
“Yeah, great!” beamed Avon, as she then produced a picnic hamper from under the stall.
“I’d love to, thanks, Catherine, if you’re sure there’s enough?” said Janet shyly.
“Stacks. And Dicky probably won’t want much, he’ll be full of hot-dogs and stuff,” she said, as the crowd suddenly disgorged an indescribably grimy and sticky little boy and the tall, handsome, bald man whom Janet had now seen three times with Catherine. Including the first time he’d come to the library and she had been too shy to speak to him.
Jenny performed introductions competently, since Catherine didn’t seem to be about to, and packed them off competently in the direction of the field.
“We’ll choose a nice spot on the grass, and then I’ll get you all some hot food from the hangi,” said Alan firmly, as Dicky jumped up and down at his elbow reminding him loudly about it.
“Really? Oh, thank you, Alan,” said Catherine in terrific relief.
“Last year Mum never got any, ’cos there was this crowd, see, and she couldn’t make the man hear her!” explained Dicky loudly.
“Shut up,” said Alan, very firmly. “And what would your little girl like, Janet?”
“What? Oh!” gasped Janet, turning a fiery red. “She’s not mine, she’s Avon’s!”
“I stand corrected. What would she like, Avon?” said Alan, concealing his shock. The skinny little creature looked about fifteen.
“You don’t need to; me and Fiorella are used to fending for ourselves,” said Avon: not, however, with the feminist aggression that might have been expected.
Alan looked down at skinny little Avon—what a name—in her skimpy little tattered denim shorts and her skimpy little white knit top that ended about two inches above her skinny little waist, and smiled. “But men of my generation become completely at a loss if not allowed to carry out our traditional stereotypical male rôle in situations such as these, Avon. I insist.”
“Righto!” gasped Avon with a sudden loud laugh, turning crimson. “Well, anything’ll be okay for Fiorella. Just for once.”
“Muttonbird?” enquired Dicky clinically.
“Ugh, no!” gasped Janet.
“I don’t think there’ll be any, whatever it is,” said Alan firmly. “Chicken, pork, lamb, I was told. Plus potatoes, pumpkin, and—um—something with a Maori name,” he ended limply.
“Puha,” suggested Dicky clinically.
“Dicky, that’ll do!” cried his mother. “It’ll be kumara, Alan.”
“A sweet potato. A variety of Ipomoea,” said Janet, abruptly turning puce.
Alan smiled his nicest smile. “I see. Isn’t that a South American plant in origin?”
“No, it’s a New Zealand native!” said Avon crossly.
Alan smiled a little. He could see that the dark, quiet, serious Janet knew otherwise but was too polite to say so. “Mm. Well, we can try a little of everything.” He installed them on the bumpy field, made sure Catherine had a share of her own rug, and hurried off to where clouds of steam were now rising and a noisy crowd was gathering. Whistling.
It was probably, several persons were to decide later, a case of the meek inheriting the earth. Well, something like that. It was certainly not a case of “unto them that hath it shall be given,” for Lady Carrano, as certain persons were to point out acidly, had chickened out entirely on (a) introducing herself to the pink woman, (b) enquiring after the Iceman from the pink woman, and (c) the whole bit. Gretchen was to try to point out that she and Jill had sown assiduously, so it certainly wasn’t a case of “so shall ye reap”, but was to be shouted down bitterly. Largely but not entirely because of a certain confusing of the past tense of the verbs “to sow” and “to sew”. Dorothy was to try to point out that Janet, as was to be expected of Janet, had come away from the encounter with the fatuous impression that Alan Kincaid had got “charm”, and was “quite nice, really”, and no further facts whatsoever—only to be met immediately with the accusation that she hadn’t even been there!
Nor she had. She had, in fact, been doing something else entirely, that Saturday. But she didn’t immediately report to the anti-Kincaid faction what that had been.
Next chapter:
https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/executive-criteria.html
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