Home, Sweet Home

10

Home, Sweet Home

    Jane Vincent had got one of the Sir George Grey University’s Ornithological Research Fellowships. So far it hadn’t done her much good. The terrifying Dr Kincaid had expressed himself pleased with the news that she could start in the New Year: Jane hadn’t revealed, during the awful interview, that she could have started tomorrow, she was pretty well stony-broke. It was true that when the money started to come in, it would be good money: much, much more than a post-graduate scholarship: in fact, so much more that Jane thought she’d misheard, when Dr Kincaid revealed the sum. She would be expected to do some teaching, but Jane didn’t mind that. Nor did she mind that, because of her lack of working experience, she would not be heading what Dr Kincaid described as “the research team”. The Senior Fellow was a Dr Curtis: she had, in fact, been on the interview panel, though she wasn’t starting until the New Year, either.

    Jane had packed her meagre belongings, and optimistically come north straight away, to look for a place to live. Only to find that prices were far, far dearer up here, and that even in Puriri County she couldn’t afford anything with three bedrooms.

    “No,” she said firmly. The mansion in Kowhai Bay was two-storeyed: most of them were, round here. Incredibly plutey: fake English-style, with fake lead-lighted, small-paned windows. It had a magnificent garden: most of them did, round here. Undeterred, the land agent urged her to admire the three-car garage…

    “Hullo!” said an amused contralto. “It’s Jane Vincent, isn’t it?”

    Jumping a foot, Jane gasped: “Yes! Oh—hullo, Dr Curtis,” she said limply.

    Moana smiled at her. “Call me Moana. House-hunting, too, are you?”

    “Yes. All these places,” said Jane with a sigh, “are way, way beyond my budget.”

    “Mm: me, too. But they won’t be told, will they?” Moana then ascertained that Jane had seen enough, revealed that she had, too, explained that she was going up to Carter’s Bay to look at real houses, got Jane’s agreement that she’d like to come, ascertained that Jane had no transport, and bundled her efficiently into her own little hire-car. First stop, The Primrose Café in Puriri.

    Jane sat down limply amidst yellow vinyl, yellow Formica and yellow uniforms, and let Moana buy her a cappuccino. Moana then ascertained, with due horror, that Jane was staying at Wenderholm, on Motel Row, the dearest motel in Puriri. Feebly Jane explained that everything else had been booked out for the summer season. And agreed that the sooner she bought a house, the better. And, um, actually she didn’t own a car. She was thinking about a bike. To her astonishment, Moana Curtis greeted this announcement with cries of approval. And decided she’d get a bike, too: much better for the environment, and good exercise!

    “Bloody awful coffee, eh?” she then added cheerfully.

    “I think it’s quite nice,” said Jane feebly. “Actually I hardly ever have cappuccino.”

    “I supposed I got used to decent coffee over in Oz.” Moana made a wry face. “Boy, it’s a relief to be able to say that without being told off for ‘insulting our hosts’!”

    Jane just looked at her blankly.

    “Oz. –Wayne,” said Moana, wrinkling her straight nose. “Stuffed-Shirt was his middle name.” Rapidly she told Jane a lot about Wayne, and the row they’d had when she had got a Research Fellowship and Wayne hadn’t. He hadn’t considered for one moment giving up his job to come with her! But if it had been him that had got one of the fellowships, it would have been a different story!

    Jane nodded sympathetically. “Most men are still like that.”

    “You can say that again!” Moana then revealed that she was staying in Carter’s Bay with Aunty Di and Uncle Joe: it was pretty much of a Maori house, y’know? Bit of a relief, really, after yuppie Queensland and yuppie Wayne! Jane Vincent drew several conclusions from this speech, one of which was that Moana, under the breezy manner, was pretty upset about splitting up with Wayne—naturally enough, after twelve years; and another of which was that in her more natural state, once she’d got over the break-up, Moana Curtis would not in fact find a “Maori house” all that appealing. As, indeed, her house-hunting outfit indicated: smart, dark jeans, a narrow silver belt which matched the dangly silver earrings, and a loose white silk blouse, tied in a big knot at her slim waist. With oval-lensed, gold-rimmed, khaki-coloured sunglasses that looked so weird and old-fashioned to Jane Vincent that they absolutely must be the trendiest of the trendy.

    During the drive up to Carter’s Bay Moana told Jane a lot more about herself and, by dint of simply asking, found out a lot about Jane. Jane didn’t really mind being asked: she could see that there was no malice in Moana Curtis. And that it wasn’t nosiness, it was just friendliness. She could also see that Moana was one of those persons, very common in modern academic circles, who had almost no education outside their own narrow little field. It was particularly common amongst scientists, and Jane was pretty much used to it, by now. Though it was always a bit of a disappointment to find that you couldn’t really hold a conversation with the person concerned. Moana Curtis, typically of the breed. was unaware that what they were having was not a conversation, and continued to chat all the way to Carter’s Bay.

    … “No, really!” said Jane with a weak laugh.

    Moana looked longingly up at the almost bare boards of the old waterfront pub. “No. It’s lovely, though… It’d be an investment, if you had the capital: all this is gonna take off, ya know,” she said, waving a hand, “when the uni gets going.”

    Jane swallowed, looking at the broken-down jetty and the old grey warehouses, which were what Moana was waving at.

    Moana looked at her face. “No, honest! Uncle Joe says Carrano Development’s bought up all that site. They’re gonna pull the old warehouses down and build townhouses. Sea views!”

    Jane looked dubiously at the view. Carter’s Bay was a shallow scoop out of the coast, facing somewhat north of east. Where they were standing now, outside the old pub, was at the innermost end of the southerly side of the bay. Directly in front of them was a short stretch of mud, and then the jetty. The warehouses, further along the seafront, didn’t face east, to the open sea: they looked towards the northern side of the bay that now, with the tide a fair way out, was edged with a wide expanse of mud that was backed by a broad stretch of mangroves. On that side of the bay, over to the far left, the construction site of the new road bridge was just visible.

    Moana turned her back on the silted-up bay, and stared up at the pub again. “You don’t see this style over here, so much,” she said with a sigh.

    The old pub was on a corner site, the front door being placed right in the angle of the corner. It featured a balcony over a verandah, both of them edged with Sydney lace. The latter was very much in need of repair. “Not now, no,” agreed Jane drily. “Every country town had at least two, when I was a kid.”

    “Mm. But I think the Aussies tend to go in more for this style, eh? With the balcony, y’know? They’ve restored a lot of theirs: why haven’t we?” she added grimly.

    “I don’t know, Moana,” said Jane with a sigh.

    They looked wistfully up at the lovely old pub.

    “Great, isn’t it?” said a cheerful tenor voice.

    Jumping, Jane and Moana agreed: “Yes,” and turned to smile at the young man who’d come up silently behind them. They gulped. Even Jane was able to recognise him as looking just like that film star, Whatsisname, wasn’t he an Aussie? And Moana thought limply: Help: a Mel Gibson clone.

    The Mel Gibson clone smiled a shatteringly attractive smile and said: “Thinking of grabbing it before Carrano Development gets their hooks into it, are ya?”

    “Dreaming of it, more like,” said Moana sourly.

    “It’d be a good investment. Prices are set to skyrocket around here.” The young man turned and looked thoughtfully at the warehouses. “All that lot’s gonna be turned into Yuppie Heaven, ya know.”

    “Mm,” said Jane. He was pretty much of a yuppie himself: his sunglasses were very like Moana’s, and he was wearing baggy pale cream slacks, tightly belted over a loose blouse featuring a very pale blue background and cream flowers. His hair was a light brown, cut very short around the ears and at the back but allowed to curl at the front, and this front bit was sort of lightly frosted: Jane would have taken her oath he’d had it done. He had two small gold earrings, one a stud and one a hoop, in the same ear; but these days of course that didn’t mean anything.

    “Well, if you’re really not in the market,” he said with a smile, “I’ll tell you what I was thinking. Retain half of the downstairs as a pub—it’d be dumb to miss out on the white wine market from Yuppie Heaven—and turn the other half into a decent restaurant. Maybe put in a courtyard round the back. Then upstairs, you could have your own living accommodation and maybe a couple of small flats. Whaddaya think?”

    “Heavenly!” said Jane with a laugh. “I’ll have one of the flats!”

    “Yeah: I’ll have the other,” agreed Moana, grinning.

    “Done!” he replied cheerfully. “Wanna take a look?” Grinning, he produced a key.

    Not unexpectedly the old pub was absolutely filthy inside and to boot smelled dampish: a bad sign, reflected Jane silently. But the young man, with great enthusiasm, discovered all sorts of treasures, ranging from the original bar counters all in situ through odd bits and pieces of stained glass, piles of original old tables and chairs, and a very, very old stove—Jane shuddered and recoiled—to an exquisite, heavy old staircase which he was sure was genuine kauri under the filth and the very dark brown varnish. Some broken-down bedsteads and a genuine old flaking enamel bath with legs were revealed upstairs.

    “Well,” he concluded with a sigh, when they were outside in the sunlight again, blinking, “it’ll take a fortune that I haven’t got, to do it up. But I might be able to find a backer. And so far the only other option seems to be to take one of those poky little shops at Kingfisher Marina: next to the crafts place, do ya know it? Or the old post office, if—”

    “That’d be great!” cried Moana.

    “I was gonna say,” he said grimly, “if the flaming Sir George Grey Enterprise Corp hadn’t got in first and grabbed it for offices.”

    “Um—there are lots of empty shops,” ventured Jane.

    “Yeah, but they’re scheduled to be torn down. That block the Wrightson’s is in is officially condemned, did you know that?”—They shook their heads numbly.—”Have you seen the town plan?”—They shook their heads numbly. “Well, you know that block further along, opposite the video shop? I mean the old BNZ: menopause-pink building,” he explained as Jane was looking blank. “That’s gonna have a supermarket dumped on it.”

    “Not really?” said Moana in horror.

    “Yeah. Once the new university gets going the whole of Carter’s Bay’ll take off.”

    “Mm,” they agreed.

    “So—are you really looking for somewhere to live?” he said.

    “Yes. We’re with the new uni, actually,” said Moana. “Ornithology. We’re hoping to do some decent work, aren’t we, Jane? The risk is that the powers that be’ll want us to spend all our time developing a cost-effective edible pukeko with a high egg yield.”

    Jane gave a startled laugh, and the young man went into a positive paroxysm. “Yeah! Too right!” he gasped.

    Moana grinned, and revealed that she had to go: an appointment to see a flat in the big condo out on the point. Would Jane like to come, or was she all right to make her own way back? Jane hadn’t planned on making her own way back, exactly, but she discovered that although she liked her, she’d be quite glad to be free of Moana’s company for the rest of the day. And just wander quietly round run-down Carter’s Bay, before it got Developed off the face of the planet. So she said she’d make her own way back, thanks.

    That left Jane and the young man who looked like a film star, standing outside the old waterfront pub at around two-ish of a fine December afternoon.

    “Have you had lunch?” he asked abruptly.

    “Um—no.”

    “Well,” he said, scratching the fashionable hairdo, “there’s nowhere to eat around here, which is partly why I’m thinking of opening a place. See that launch? The old guy that owns it it’ll do you a fresh fish lunch at the drop of a hat, provided he knows you. Wanna try it?”

    “Um—yes. Um—does he know you?”

    “Yes,” he said, smiling, and holding out his hand. “Adrian Revill.”

    “I’m Jane Vincent,” said Jane thankfully, shaking hands.

    “Come on, Jane.” They walked slowly down to the jetty. “Is it you or your mate that’s the top ornithological honcho?” asked Adrian.

    “Mm? Oh! Her. I was a mature student, I’ve just finished my Ph.D.”

    “Uh-huh. Thought she had ‘boss-lady’ written all over her. Pretty much the limited scientific type, is she?”

    Jane swallowed. “Um—more or less, yes. Though I don’t know her very well.”

    “I doubt if there’d be very much to know. It goes like this, doesn’t it?” he said with a twinkle. “School to Seventh Form: top of the class, maths and sciences all the way, having dropped anything smacking faintly of Litracha at age fourteen. Bursary and Schol., then B.Sc., straight on to M.Sc., first-class Hons., straight on to Ph.D., straight on to a lecturing or research job in a glass tower surrounded by those of similar scientific bent.”

    “Yes. How about you?” replied Jane on an annoyed note. Not that she hadn’t herself summed Moana up in very much the same— But not that brutally, horrid little twerp!

    The horrid little twerp replied smoothly: “School to Seventh Form: but very much on the Litracha side, I’m afraid; and Head Boy, to boot. Bursary and Schol., and then the deepest disappointment of my parents’ lives: dropped out during my last summer hols and became an apprentice chef. Then several years slaving for the worst slave-driver in the country, though admittedly in the best kitchen in the southern hemisphere; a year’s abject slavery in France getting my comeuppance just when I thought I knew something; back home duly chastened, and allowed very, very occasionally to cook something when my chef’s in a good mood!”

    Jane gulped. “I see.”

    “You won’t have heard of it: L’Oie Qui Rit, in town.”

    “You’re right, I haven’t.”

    “No. It is the best restaurant in the southern hemisphere,” he said sadly, as they walked slowly down the creaking old jetty, “but Madame—the owner and chef—is retiring: going home to France. So I’m on me ownsome. Or will be, in a month or two.”

    “I see. Don’t you want to try your wings?” said Jane, giving him a curious glance.

    “Of course I do!” he said with a laugh. “But I’ll miss her like Hell, the old bag! She’s one of the very few people I know out here who’ve got any notion at all of what the word ‘standards’ means. Hey: JACKO!” he suddenly bellowed.

    Jane blinked, and blinked again, as a grimy, wrinkled old Maori man emerged from the pretty little boat’s cabin. “Gidday,” he said unemotionally. “Want something, didja?”

    “I’ve come to learn how to cook flounder, Jacko!” said Adrian, grinning.

    He sniffed. “You’re out of luck, then, matey.”

    Jane began in a flurried voice: “Oh, well, in that case—”

    “Wait,” said Adrian, smiling.

    “Might do you a couplea crays, I s’pose.”

    “You’re on!” he said enthusiastically. “Ta, Jacko!”

    Jacko sniffed slightly. “No sweat. –This your mum, is it?”

    “No,” said Adrian, smiling. “This is Jane Vincent. I think I sort of wish she was, though: Mum’s okay, but she suffers from the closed-mind syndrome: y’know?”

    Old Jacko ignored this. “Pleased to meet ya, Jane.”

    Back in the days when she was an executive wife, Jane hadn’t thought she much liked crayfish. “That was incredibly good!” she said, as the three of them sat around digesting amidst a litter of crayfish shells.

    “Yeah,” agreed Adrian. “Fresh, you see. Doesn’t need to be mucked around. Jacko and me have got an agreement: he’s gonna supply me with all my fish.”

    “I should think so!” agreed Jane strongly.

    “Yeah,” agreed the old man stolidly. “I offered to supply the Royal K, when they opened up.”

    “That’s the big tourist hotel in Kingfisher Bay,” Adrian explained.

    “Oh, yes, I know! What did they say, Jacko?”

    The old man sniffed. “Well, I never got to see the chef—shows ya what sorta place it is, eh? This executive type in a zoot-suit swans up to me and says they got their regular suppliers. So I says: ‘Oh, yeah, frozen hoki and them dyed fake crabsticks and tinned Jap oysters, is it?’ And he says: ‘That’s what our clientèle expects.’ So I says, ‘I bet it is, matey, and good luck to ’em!’” He shrugged.

    “There’ll be no competition from that direction, then, Adrian!” said Jane, laughing,

    “No,” he agreed.

    Jane looked at him cautiously.

    “Say it,” he said drily.

    “Um—well… Will there be a market for really good food?” she said weakly.

    “Probably not. I’m gonna give it a go, though.”

    “He can always do poncy lunches for yuppies and grandmas to turn a fast buck,” explained Jacko.

    Even though she was herself a grandmother, Jane laughed and said: “Of course!”

    “And ya don’t wanna go thinking you’re licked before you even start,” said the old man firmly.

    Jane Vincent looked at scruffy old Jacko Te Hana and pretty young Adrian Revill and smiled. “No, exactly! I’d have been stuck in Wellington with no future but being a grandma and unpaid baby-sitter, if I’d thought that!”

    After this encounter, though she couldn’t exactly have said how or why, Jane found she’d decided definitely against trying to get a huge mortgage to buy a yuppie hutch. She’d keep on looking, in spite of land agents, until she found something different. Something that was her.

    Therefore, a couple of days later, the following conversation took place in the little A-frame structure on the southern shore of Carter’s Inlet:

    “I saw a lady in Next-door Cove, today,” said Mrs Winkelmann on her husband’s return from his boating-supplies shop. “I think she might buy it.”

    “Uh-huh? She say so, honey?”

    “No-o…. She didn’t say anything.”

    “That’s a good start,” said Sol Winkelmann unemotionally. Michaela didn’t like people what said a lot. Not being that way herself.

    “She looked nice,” said Mrs Winkelmann definitely.

    Her husband dropped a kiss on the thick auburn waves. “Good. We’ll let her baby-sit Grace, nights, when I’m winin’ and dinin’ you at Adrian Revill’s restaurant.” He waited while a slow smile spread over Michaela’s wide, placid features.

    All she said, however, was: “You wait. I bet I’m right.”

    Sol wouldn’t have bet against it. Michaela didn’t often say anything definite. When she did, though, she was generally right. Didn’t do it by anything that most folks woulda called intelligence: instinct, you mighta said. Well, fingers crossed: Sol’s Cove didn’t need no talkative, nosy neighbours, that was for sure. He hesitated: May Swadling had reported that “quite a few” people had been into the shop enquiring about properties up this way. Then he said: “She the only person you’ve seen sniffing around this side of the Inlet, honey?”

    “Um, yes. Well, I wasn’t really looking,” she said in a vague voice. “I was thinking about my slab pots… I might not do any more, for a bit,” she said with a frown.

    “Uh-huh. Wal, if you’ve lost the impetus, honey, it’s no use forcing yourself, with pots,” he agreed seriously. “I—uh—I didn’t mean just today,” he said, rubbing his chin uneasily.

    “I saw that man with the dark greeny-blue shiny car again.”

    “The guy from Kingfisher Development Company, wholly owned and operated by Carrano Development: right,” he identified, shuddering.

    “May told me,” said Michaela suddenly, “that she thinks they’ll look in Karaka Grove first. Those houses are finished.”

    He blinked. She had actually absorbed some of that gossip what come out of May Swadling’s mouth in a never-ending stream?

    “I’m not quite sure where it is,” she added vaguely.

    Sol’s long mouth twitched. “Off of Rata Boulevard. You go straight up Matai Close. It’s the top street.”

    “Oh, yes. On the slope. There’s no good clay up there,” said the potter in tones of relief.

    “Uh-huh. There a view?”

    “Well, from the top,” she said dubiously.

    “Then let’s just hope all them professors and so forth that May tells me Kincaid is appointing right, left and sideways buy up there, and we can have this side of the Inlet to ourselves a bit longer!” he said with considerable feeling.

    Simone had, after much use of the dictionary—and not until there had been a phone call to Armand, consisting of floods of tears at her end and a lot of shouting, mainly about what the call was costing, at his end—managed to contact a land agent. After that, she hadn’t had to do anything. Young Mr Taylor had shown her all the huge mansions that were for sale in the whole of Puriri County.

    She had discovered, after a good night’s sleep, that her English wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it was at the jet-lagged tail-end of a journey halfway round the world. But she still found it very, very difficult to make sense of anything the locals said. They ran all their words together, and swallowed all the ends of all the words—and they used so much slang! From what she had learned at school, Simone hadn’t thought that English was a language that used much slang—not like French. There seemed to be a proper word for everything. The American media had done their best to suggest otherwise, of course, but Simone hated pop music, and although she and Armand had gone to a lot of V.O. English-language films in Paris they hadn’t been the sort that used much slang. In fact they had tended to be English rather than American. But in New Zealand everyone used slang all the time! Even pleasant young Mr Taylor, who was the sort of nicely-dressed, polite young man of whom Simone’s Maman would have approved.

    Bev from the motel unit next but one to theirs at the Pink Manuka Motel had volunteered to take the kids today, so at least Simone was free of their whining presences. At the moment, whining and sunburnt: they had refused to wear their hats for the walk from the Pink Manuka Motel, which did not serve meals apart from strange English breakfasts, around to the Royal Kingfisher Hotel, which had two dining-rooms, the cheaper of which sold expensive, flat, tough pizzas and strange slimy English puddings. There was nowhere else in the whole of shiny, up-market Kingfisher Bay where you could buy food: the nearest shop was in Carter’s Bay, about five kilometres away. With no form of public transport at all to get you there and back. Armand’s dreaded list of things she was to do had “hire-car” on it but Simone hadn’t yet dared to try to find one. She had got as far as trying to translate the phrase, but her dictionary didn’t seem to have the English expression. Added to which, they drove on the wrong side of the road! Had Armand realised that?

    Bev looked at first sight like a retired prostitute: she was a large, very florid woman who habitually wore a lot of highly coloured make-up. Her hair was short but very, very curled, and a very bright yellow. Her clothes matched: shiny, loose, wide-shouldered, and tremendously bright. She was not, however, a retired anything, but a widow and grandmother who had spent the last forty years of her life bringing up her kids and looking after her house and husband. The kids had all moved to places that Simone had never heard of but which turned out to be in Australia and Canada, so Bev was on her own. She liked the Pink Manuka: this was the third summer she’d come up here. Well, it was a change, dear, wasn’t it? Got you out of your rut. And she was booked into the Royal Kingfisher for Christmas dinner, they always put on a good spread, and there was generally a good crowd there. She had discovered with horror that Simone hadn’t done anything about Christmas dinner. But alas, it was far too late to get her into the Royal Kingfisher: they were booked up months in advance.

    The forceful Bev had more or less taken one look at Simone and her two pale, skinny children and taken them over. She did, however, have some engagements of her own, mainly for bridge with like-minded ladies of her own age, retirees settled in Kingfisher Bay. And she’d booked herself on several day-tours: if you didn’t do that, dear, you spent your holiday vegetating, didn’t you? On the days when she was free, she seemed just as keen to take the kids and go off with them as she was to help Simone house-hunt. Simone was very grateful for this mercy: well-meaning and kind-hearted though Bev was, she was very hard to take: she talked incessantly, and a very great deal of it was criticism. Helpful criticism, no doubt, and had Simone followed her advice from the word “go” she would now very probably be installed in a suitably priced house in a suitable area. With a car to match. There was the small point that Simone hadn’t actually known Bev from the word “go”, so perhaps there was some excuse for her still being incarcerated in the Pink Manuka, at the mercy of its horrible English breakfasts and the helpful Bev.

    She looked limply up at another huge wedding cake of a mansion in Kingfisher Bay. She really had thought that Mr Taylor had shown her everything In Kingfisher Bay! The settlement was not that big: a semicircle of shaven greensward rising quite steeply from the still, greenish waters of the tiny bay, half-filled with rows of boats, all parked in an exceedingly orderly fashion at what Simone had now realised was a marina. All the houses were huge and very, very new. They were all built with their main windows looking out over Kingfisher Bay and Carter’s Inlet. They all had at least a double garage, and some a triple. Mostly these giant garages were the main feature of the road frontages of the houses: certainly of the more expensive ones. These ultra-desirable ones were built on the bay side of their “crescents” and “groves”. Because the bay faced north, all of their enormous sitting-room and family-room and master-bedroom windows had had to be artfully shielded—at, Mr Taylor had made it quite clear, great expense—from the blistering afternoon sun. There were straight awnings and curved awnings, and tinted glass, and monster exterior blinds that descended at the crank of a handle or the flick of a switch. One very strange, ultra-modern white house had an arrangement of white canvas sails. Although the sea was very near, all of the largest houses featured swimming-pools. Built into the slope at great expense, Mr Taylor made it quite clear. The pools were not all very big, but that was all you could say in their defence. They came in a great variety of shapes: one or two of the larger ones were merely oblong, but there were innumerable versions of the kidney shape, and clover leaves, and simple circles and what Mr Taylor described as “free-form”; and one house which had a lot of pink inside featured a heart-shaped pool outside. The pool colours were all in the turquoise-to-hideous range: Simone found this very puzzling; if she’d owned a pool she’d have had a nice soothing pale green. Maybe with pretty little tiles. –This thought was not connected with reality in any way, and Simone never for an instant seriously envisaged owning a pool.

    “It ees really too beeg, Mr Taylor,” she faltered. “And too expensive.”

    Mr Taylor went into his usual spiel concerning the desirability of the property and its immense suitability for Simone, Armand and their two children—the words “family-room”, “pool” and “study” as usual featuring largely—but Simone, as usual, didn’t listen. He unlocked the door but warned her that they were waiting for another lady. This quite often happened: Simone had now gathered that there were only Mr Taylor, Mr Taylor’s dad, who was semi-retired, Mr Pritchard, who was semi-retired, and Mrs Andrews, who was new, in Pritchard & Taylor’s land agency. They were based in Puriri, but Mr Taylor (Junior) thought it would be a good idea to open up an office in Carter’s Bay once the new varsity got going: what did Mrs Gautier think? Simone had agreed: she always did.

    Mr Taylor had just decided that Mrs Gautier might like to see the kitchen straight away—Simone didn’t think she would, the front hall was terrifyingly high-tech enough—when a shiny silver car drew up behind Mr Taylor’s shiny silver car and a very, very smart lady in a bright green pants suit and hideous sun-glasses that were just like Armand’s new ones got out. Simone hadn’t expected much else in a lady that was seriously looking at mansions in Kingfisher Bay; nevertheless her heart sank.

    Mr Taylor, who had very nice manners, introduced the two ladies.

    Sammi Wolfe smiled, shaking hands briskly. “Mrs Gautier? I think you must be Armand Gautier’s wife, is that right?”

    “Yes,” said Simone numbly.

    Sammi explained that she would be the Senior Administrator: that was, the registrar—and would be working quite closely with him at Sir George Grey University. Of course! realised Simone. The lady that Armand had reported, without approval, was the registrar! She looked entirely capable of managing any number of universities with both hands tied behind her.

    Telling her briskly to call her Sammi, and briskly ascertaining that her name was Simone, Sammi then took over the whole thing. All Simone had to do was follow her, agreeing with everything she said.

    Some of the things that Sammi said were that the house was much too big: she’d told Mr Taylor, nothing with more than three bedrooms; and that she most certainly wouldn’t need a triple garage; and that ceramic-topped stoves were all very well but scarcely a selling-point, when it came to the crunch, were they? With a lot of New Zealand ladies they were, and nice young Mr Taylor’s face fell.

    “But they weell take dhuh stove?” said Simone in bewilderment.

    “No, it’s the New Zealand custom to leave it. In fact, there’s a legal requirement to do so. –It’s the law,” said Sammi with a kind smile. Little Mrs Gautier was pretty inept, even allowing for the language difficulty!

    “Really? I see, yes: one buys weeth dhuh stove,” said Simone nicely to Mr Taylor.

    Mr Taylor smiled weakly. He’d spent two weeks showing off lovely ceramic-topped stoves and eye-level ovens to Mrs Gautier.

    Sammi then inspected the pool briskly—a huge oblong one, with the usual clinical surround, and as usual taking up virtually all of the yard—passed unfavourable judgement on the lack of changing-rooms, and passed on to the triple garages, where to Simone’s bewilderment she inspected the underneath parts of the house narrowly.

    “It really isn’t damp, Ms Wolfe,” said Mr Taylor weakly.

    Sammi just sniffed slightly, and said that if Simone agreed, they’d seen enough.—Simone agreed.—And could they see some smaller places, please? Hadn’t he said those new places up on the hill were ready for inspection?

    Limply Mr Taylor led the way to Karaka Grove.

    The residential portion of Kingfisher Bay was limited on the left, as you looked at it from the waterfront, by the curve of the road going up to join the main road to Carter’s Bay at the top of the rise. To the left of this road there was only the row of three small shops on the waterfront, with some way above them and to their rear a dead-end street that led up to the three motels, the Pink Manuka, the White Manuka, and the Kingfisher Motel, perched halfway up the shallow rise, and thence to a golf course owned by the Royal Kingfisher Hotel. If you carried on along the waterfront past the three shops, at the far left you reached the tall glass slab that was the hotel, at the end of the little point. On the right, the settlement was limited by another point, featuring a low cliff at the water’s edge, and a steep hillside further back. The cliff top and higher part of this hillside, all along the back of the settlement, were designated greenbelt, according to Mr Taylor, and the very new Karaka Grove was to be the last street before the greenbelt. Only twenty-four properties in it: quite exclusive, really!

    Karaka Grove was vaguely crescent-shaped, set slightly askew on the slope, facing more or less north-east. Simone had looked up the dictionary definition of “grove” without illumination, but had by now realised that it was used in New Zealand as a version of “street”. There were some small, discouraged-looking bushes planted along its very new grass verges, but these hardly justified the sylvan name. One advantage was that “Karaka” was relatively easy to pronounce. And another advantage was that it was not “Kaka.” Simone had not allowed her brain to register one detail of the house that had been for sale in Kaka Drive. It was unthinkable. Not with two kids. And Armand would have claimed she’d done it on purpose. She looked dubiously at the new, still-scarred face of Karaka Grove, blissfully unaware that those stunted bushes adorning its verges were commonly known as kaka-beaks.

    “Er—these smaller places lower down were built as second homes, Ms Wolfe. Holiday homes,” murmured Mr Taylor, as Sammi looked critically up and down the street.

    “I see.”

    “Er—none of the houses in Karaka Grove have marina slots,” he murmured.

    “We do not ’.ave h’a boat,” stated Simone.

    “No, I don’t have a boat, either!” agreed Sammi with a laugh. “They seem to be selling, don’t they?”

    Simone agreed: outside the stepped white blocks of Karaka Grove many red “SOLD” signs could be discerned, plastered across the large “FOR SALE” notices. One of the large houses was evidently occupied: on the higher side of the street, a place with a short driveway edged with slender saplings planted in bare clay. There was a child’s plastic tricycle on the clay, and a young woman was about to drive a shiny four-wheel-drive vehicle into the double garage.

    “Well?” said Sammi to Mr Taylor.

    Jumping slightly. Mr Taylor asked her which she would like to see. All of them? Mr Taylor led the way into the first. Once Sammi had ascertained that Numbers 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 were all alike, she decided to skip the rest of those. Ditto 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. Too poky. What about the ones at the top? Mr Taylor led the way to the top.

    Number 24, which dominated the turning circle at the top of the street, was not for sale. It was hideous, anyway: two-storeyed, and barn-like, with high gables and fake Tudor beams. Neither Sammi nor Simone would have wanted it. Its neighbour, Number 23, was set slightly lower, but had the advantage of being on the bay side and, though overlooked from the street, not overlooked by anything at all on its other side. It was very unlike Number 24 in style, and in fact Mr Taylor revealed that Number 24 had been built to order. Number 23, said Mr Taylor proudly, had been designed as part of the Development! Like the whole of Karaka Grove, it was white. It featured several levels, many little white-walled balconies, and a high white garden wall arching over its two garden gates. Mr Taylor mentioned that the ladies might realise that it was very like the style of the townhouses planned for Casa Meridionale on the waterfront at Carter’s Bay? They could scarcely fail to do so: he had already forced copies of the Casa Meridionale illustrated brochures on both of them, ignoring Sammi’s point that she wanted something detached and was not looking for an investment at this juncture and Simone’s that she needed something that she could move into before February.

    It was clear to Simone that Sammi had immediately fallen for Number 23. Nevertheless she checked many points very thoroughly with Mr Taylor before she made an offer, subject to a great many technical things that Simone would never have thought of and in fact had never heard of. They weren’t on Armand’s list, either. Which just showed that he wasn’t as up with the play as he thought he was!

    Simone herself quite liked Number 22, on the other side of 24, but it was too big: four bedrooms plus a study. And a giant “games room”, actually more a sort of concrete cellar: what on earth would they do with that? She also quite liked Number 21, on the other side of Sammi’s, but on the whole she didn’t think Armand would want to be right next-door to the female registrar. Mr Taylor, obviously burning to see Sammi back to his office and get the papers signed, then suggested that Mrs Gautier might like to look around for herself, gave her a bunch of keys, and hurried off. Simone stood limply in up-market Karaka Grove, looking at the keys to the kingdom. He hadn’t even said when he wanted them back!

    After a few moments a friendly voice said: “Hullo.”

    Simone jumped, and swung round. “’Ullo!” she gasped.

    The young woman from the place with the plastic tricycle in its front yard was crossing the street, smiling. “Are you buying this one?” she asked.

    “No!” gasped Simone. “Eet ees too expensive! The othair lady, she buys eet!”

    “The lady that was with you? Has she got kids?”

    “No: she ees not married,” said Simone. This had emerged very clearly in the course of the morning’s house inspections.

    The young woman sighed. “That’s a pity; they’re mostly retirees or second-homers, round here: aren’t they, Billy?” she said to the little boy in her arms.

    “That hees ’is name? Beellee? That ees vairy pretty,” approved Simone. “And ’e h’ees ’ow old?”

    “Eighteen months,” she said, kissing his rosy cheek. “Aren’tcha, Billy? –There’s just no other young families round here!” she said to Simone on an exasperated note. “When we looked at the place, there were kids everywhere; only I think they must’ve been people’s grandkids, or from the time-shares or something: anyway, none of them seem to live here!”

    Not all of this was clear to Simone, but sufficient was: so she nodded and said seriously: “Yes. Thees ees not a suburb of young families.”

    “No,” agreed the girl glumly. “See that awful place? Number 24? The people that built it are a retired couple in their seventies. I ask you! It’s got six bedrooms! Whadda they want six bedrooms for? And a triple garage!”

    “They have each dhuh car, no? Dhuh husband and dhuh wife. And then their oldest son, he parks ’is car een dhuh third garage. And the four other sons and daughters, they park een dhuh street, but they ’elp to use dhuh five bedrooms,” said Simone with a twinkle in her eye. It was the longest speech she had yet made in English.

    The young woman laughed very much, so she obviously, to Simone’s terrific relief, grasped all its implications. “Yeah! Too right! You’re gonna look at some of them, are you?”

    “Oh!” said Simone, looking at her the clutch of keys. “Yes, that ees right. I am looking for h’a ’ouse weeth three bedrooms, one may be a steudee.” It came out quite smoothly, she’d said it so often.

    “Let’s have a look at Number 18, that’s next to us, we’re Number 16. –I’m Sheryl, by the way,” she said. “Sheryl Carew.”

    “I am Simone. Simone Gautier. I am vairy pleased to meet you, Sheryl.”

    “Likewise!” Sheryl and Billy led the way to Number 18. It was on the higher side of the street, and Simone at first thought that it would have a view of nothing but the large houses opposite: but this was not so. Its downstairs front was composed entirely of its double garage and its front door. Directly inside the door was a short passage with stairs going straight up. All the living area was on the first and second floors, and there was a splendid view of the bay and the inlet. The house was quite different in design from Sheryl’s, and Sheryl revealed wistfully that she and Bryce would have loved it, it was a miles more interesting layout: but it had been beyond their price-range.

    It was quite interesting inside, once you got used to the fact that it was perched above the garages. Like the house Sammi was buying, it was painted white both inside and out: all the houses were concrete, Sheryl revealed cheerfully. Some had brick bits, but they were just stuck on: y’know: façades? Simone agreed she knew what “façades” meant. Sammi’s house, however, was terrifically modernistic: all steps and stairs and funny little rooms that were not simply square but cuboid. Number 18 was more traditional as to the proportions of its rooms, which was good, cubes would not have appealed to Armand.

    The first floor contained a giant living-room and giant dining-room, the two being thrown into one if you folded back the giant white louvered panels that separated them. Both of these huge rooms faced directly out across the bay. Behind them was a huge kitchen. With a stove, of course. Adjoining the kitchen was a “breakfast nook.” Actually a whole room, with its own door. This “nook” was bigger than Simone’s whole kitchen at home. Sheryl pointed out it would get the morning sun. And did Simone like this look, or did she prefer open-plan?

    Simone had now grasped both what “open-plan” was and that it was a preferred style in New Zealand. Though not why anybody would volunteer to expose their dining-room to all the clutter of preparation in the kitchen. Not to say expose their sitting-room! She replied thankfully that she did not care for open-plan. Sheryl then revealed glumly that Bryce liked it, but she was having second thoughts, actually: Billy was such a messy eater; and once you’d used the food-processor for the little messes that he ate, there was a Helluva mess in the kitchen, eh? Simone by this time was so much in agreement with the subject matter that she forgot to listen to the accent or the way the words ran together, and nodded in whole-hearted agreement.

    Sheryl then abruptly abandoned the kitchen, noting that this blue slate was awfully pretty, but it cost a bomb and Mum reckoned it was cold underfoot in winter, and wandered out to the balcony which ran right along the whole length of both sitting-room and dining-room. The balcony was also floored in blue slate but Sheryl did not pass any pejorative comments on it, just sighed deeply and said: “I love these balconies!”

    “Yes. One could have plants,” said Simone dubiously, thinking of her geranium that had died.

    “Yeah. And the walls are nice and high,” said Sheryl, leaning her elbows on the wall as she spoke: “Safe for the kids.”

    “Yes. Also one tells them not to climb.”

    “Too right. On pain of death!” she said, laughing.

    “Yes!” Even though Sheryl was dressed in what had at first struck Simone as very odd garments, Simone decided that she liked her very, very much. Armand would probably have stigmatised Sheryl’s garments as tarty. Starting from the feet, they consisted of bright pink strappy sandals in, figurez-vous, see-through plastic! Rather chunky soles and heels, so perhaps they were very In: according to Annick platform soles had been coming back. On her slim legs and small, firm bottom she was wearing a thing that Simone would have called tights if it had had feet in it, but it didn’t. A stretch-knit fabric, leaving nothing to the imagination. It might have been suitable for doing jazzercize or aerobics, inside a gymnasium. Even Simone had to admit that it did not strike as suitable street-wear. It was a pale grey as to its background, with a pattern of large, white-edged black splotches. The effect was of some horrible skin disease. Above it, a loose white shirt failed to cover the buttocks: Armand would have had ten fits. The shirt-sleeves were loosely rolled up above the elbows. Over the shirt was, firstly, a loose bright yellow cotton-knit singlet: comme le maillot jaune, oui. Shorter than the shirt. Then, over that, and worn open, was a loose waistcoat. Its back was a dark grey satin, and its front was scrolls of bright pink thread. Perhaps in crochet? More or less under this, well, between it and the yellow singlet, was a very long, floaty gauze scarf in shades of pink, mauve and grey, with bits of white. Sheryl’s hair was a pale marigold shade, very fluffy, and pulled right up on top of her head with a black plastic butterfly clip. Her neat, small ears featured three small silver hoops in each, and one delicate pink ribbon bow. The colour co-ordination indicated unmistakably that the whole thing was an outfit. Though Armand would not have believed it for an instant.

    On the top floor of Number 18 the master bedroom occupied almost the entire length of the frontage—that was, if you counted its giant walk-in wardrobes. They were really like two extra small rooms. It had floor-length sliding windows onto another balcony. Adjoining this bedroom was what Sheryl, like Mr Taylor, called “an ongsweet”. It had taken Simone a while, but she was now using this term almost to the manner born. The ensuite, Sheryl revealed with relish, also had floor-length windows that opened onto the balcony, and its end of the balcony featured a spa. At the moment it was empty, but it was another of the desirable facilities that Simone had very soon learned about from Mr Taylor. This upper balcony had enclosed ends, but even so, the houses opposite would have a fair view of you stepping out into your spa. Sheryl noted that if it was hers, she’d put up a trellis. Simone nodded feelingly: if it was hers, she’d put up a trellis and never use the thing.

    At the rear were two small bedrooms, reached by way of a narrow passage, and another bathroom. After questioning Simone narrowly about her children, Sheryl decided cheerfully that it would be just the thing! And there was an excellent drying area. Simone was not quite sure what this might be, but she was not left long in doubt: Sheryl led her all the way downstairs, took her through the echoing garages and a giant concrete games-room, showed her the laundry, fully lined in cream Formica and already featuring a tub—was there a law about those, too?—and led her outside. The back of the house was on pillars, and under them was an area that would be ideal for hanging up the washing that one had done in the laundry. But if it didn’t look like rain, there was a nice drying-green—see? Sheryl demonstrated the extendible clothes-line. Simone blinked. And look: over there, you could have a barbie!

    “Or you could put in a pool: Number 20’s got one. Wanna look?” Sheryl dragged her over to the high white concrete garden wall. Simone tip-toed, and peered. So it did. Empty, at the moment. Bright turquoise. Kidney-shaped, but occupying most of the oblong yard. “Vairy nice, yes.”

    Sheryl then showed her her yard. With a barbie. Simone’s knees went all weak. So that was what it was!

    After that it wasn’t very long at all before Simone and Sheryl were sitting cosily in Sheryl’s kitchen, drinking cups of milky tea while they decided whether Simone and Armand could afford Number 18. Nah, don’t offer them their price, Simone! Simone agreed humbly that that would be stupid. Sheryl stood over her, breathing heavily, while she rang Mr Taylor and offered him fifteen thousand dollars less than the asking price, quite sure that this would not be accepted. Mr Taylor took the number and said he’d get back to her.

    Sheryl, Billy and Simone had lunch while they waited for his call. Even though Sheryl had manifestly been returning from doing her shopping when Simone and Sammi arrived that morning, it was a very sketchy, spur-of-the-moment sort of lunch: just toasts with margarine and a salty brown substance. Followed by pots of yoghurt—the pots a lot bigger than the French ones and the yoghurt much, much sweeter and more brightly coloured. During lunch Sheryl switched on the portable TV set which stood on the counter that sort of separated the kitchen from the dining area of her open-plan home. They were still sitting in the kitchen, mind you. The TV programme was, Simone thought uncertainly, an American soapie. She couldn’t understand much of it. Sheryl seemed quite happy to chatter through it. Then Mr Taylor rang back with an acceptance of Simone’s offer!

    Simone looked numbly at Sheryl.

    “Heck, we coulda offered him twenty thou’ under the asking price!” she hissed.

    Simone nodded numbly.

    Rapidly Sheryl decided that Billy needn’t go down for his nap: she’d run Simone in to Puriri to sign the papers!

    Simone looked at Sheryl’s excited, shining eyes and reflected that however huge and peculiar the house was, she couldn’t do better than Sheryl for a neighbour. And all New Zealand homes seemed to be huge, space-wasting and peculiar: this one was no worse than the rest. And at least it was new: there couldn’t be much wrong for Armand to discover and blame her for. And the price was ten thousand less than Armand’s upper limit. So she accepted Sheryl’s kind offer, remarking that Bev and the kids wouldn’t be back for hours. And they went downstairs into Sheryl and Bryce’s double garage, bundled themselves and Billy into the four-wheel-drive, and took off.

    It did take a little longer than that, of course. The final papers had to go to France so that Armand could sign as well as Simone. But there were no complications and no predatory rival buyers came along at the last moment to gazump them.

    Simone, Anne-Louise and Pierre moved in the moment the final papers were signed. Naturally Simone did not have any furniture, but that didn’t matter: with the willing cooperation of Sheryl’s mum and Bryce’s mum and dad, a bed for Simone, two little stretcher-beds for the kids and a small table and three chairs were found. And a barbecue, it was an old one of Bryce’s dad’s: they had a big gas-driven one now, but this one was still good! Simone looked feebly at the strange metal saucer on legs and thanked Mr Carew nicely.

    Simone’s not yet having managed to buy a car didn’t matter, either: Bryce and his dad between them were Puriri Motors. At the moment they jointly ran a huge, shiny showroom in Puriri itself, but they were planning to open up in Carter’s Bay: right next to a new supermarket, an excellent site. Bryce would run that branch. Simone wouldn’t want a four-wheel-drive or a station-waggon until she was used to driving on the left. A nice little Toyota, four-door, would be just the thing. As Bryce and his Dad were Toyota dealers, anyone but Simone might have realised that this choice was a foregone conclusion. But Simone was happy with her shiny new red Toyota, and Bryce and his dad were happy with the sale. So it couldn’t have worked out better, really.

    “Mais il n’y a rien à manger!” wailed Pierre, as their first dinnertime in their house approached.

    “We go next-door,” she said in English. “For a barbie. Okay?”

    Once she’d translated it he agreed, staring: “D’ac!”

    “Mais tu n’aimes pas les pique-niques, Maman!” gasped Anne-Louise.

    “Speak English, Anne-Louise. This ees not a pique-nique. This ees a barbie.”

    Anne-Louise began to whine, but Simone shrugged, and said: “Come h’or stay, ça m’est égal.” She took Pierre’s hand and they walked out.

    Anne-Louise sat there, snivelling. After quite some time it dawned that no-one was going to come back for her.

    Anne-Louise went to the barbecue.

    “You can’t leave straight after Christmas!” gasped Janet, turning a strange unlovely mottled puce.

    “Technically, no,” agreed Dorothy, looking judicious. “However, as your mate and mine, our respected town clerk, has pointed out, I do have a certain amount of Long Service Leave accrued.”

    “I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” said Janet faintly.

    “All right: County Manager. Anyway, I’ve got it coming, and if I don’t take it as leave, I’ll have to fight him for every last drop of blood in his scrawny— Sorry, for every last red cent of it. So I’m taking it. Which means that I won’t actually be at work. Though not technically left.”

    “Don’t be awful,” said Janet, her lip quivering.

    Dorothy sighed. She wasn’t being particularly awful: in fact she was letting Janet know before all the other staff. “Apply for the job,” she said without hope.

    “I don’t want it!”

    Dorothy sighed again. Quite.

    “Actually,” said Janet, the lip quivering, “I thought I might put in for Carter’s Bay Branch.”

    “Janet, it’ll be fifteen years at least before they build an actual branch at Carter’s Bay. What they will do is—possibly—give them a van service. If there’s a positive public outcry.”

    “Well, there will be, because what about all those young families from the new university!” she said crossly.

    “Yeah.” From what Dorothy had seen of today’s young families, it was immaterial whether your mum or your dad or both was a working Ph.D., your house still didn’t have any books in it, because what books were, see, they were the working tools of your working Ph.D. and resided in his/her office in the said university. Barring, of course, Business Studies, Maths, and all Science types: they only used computers. And the Computer Studies types didn’t even know what books were.

    “Anyway, I wouldn’t mind driving the van!” said Janet viciously.

    Dorothy sighed. It was the sort of job that was generally given to keen young types just out of Library School. Because it was odd hours, and—well, just generally odd. And entailed getting a Heavy Vehicle licence and learning to manoeuvre the gigantic mobile library in and out of the very tight spots grudgingly allocated as its official stops by the said County Manager. And carting hugely heavy cartons of books to and from the said mobile library.

    Janet looked sulky. After a moment she said: “You’ll need staff at your new library, surely?”

    “Yes. But we will be fully automated,” she said cautiously.

    “Well, I’m used to an automated system!”

    “Janet, this will be a giant circulation system with umpteen variant loan periods, and when it goes wrong—which I freely admit it will do—we’ll need someone with high-level computer skills, in fact very probably actual programming knowledge, to sort it out. And much though I hate to mention it, you couldn’t even figure out that Mercy didn’t have the wand plugged in properly the other day.”

    Janet went very red. “I wasn’t thinking of Circulation! Um, what about Reference?”

    Yeah, her and a million others. There were about a dozen really good reference librarians in the country, and almost no openings, but ninety-nine percent of each year’s superfluous output from the Library School wanted to do it, reckoned (inaccurately) they could do it, and applied for it.

    “Mm. It’ll be very largely online work. Which I intend to make, if not precisely cost-effective, at least not a huge drain on the university’s resources.”

    Janet stuck out her lip defiantly. “You’ll still need people on the inquiry desk!”

    “Well, yes. They will have to have a very good knowledge of all the electronic resources offered, and point dim little First-Years, not to say semi-literate Ph.D.s, in the right direction.”

    “All right, be like that!”

    “Janet, I’m not being deliberately horrible, I’m just being realistic. Those are the facts of life in a modern tertiary institution library.”

    “The varsity library in town’s not like—”

    “It is,” said Dorothy heavily. “When did you last go into it?”

    Janet glared.

    “All their card catalogues have long since vanished. They’re networking towers of CD-ROMs. They’re not only integrating their own catalogue with a host of other services with one user-friendly interface, they’re contemplating, if the joint national libraries thingy actually gets off the ground, letting the little monsters sign on to Canberra to use NZBN and ABN and God-Knows-What-N: for all I know,” said Dorothy on a note of finality, standing up, “via coin-in-the-slot terminals. If you think you can hack it in the high-tech world of the virtually real university of the last decade of the twentieth century, not to mention the doubtless even more computerised twenty-first century, by all means give it a go. In fact, I’d like to think that you really will apply. And that before you do, you’ll go on a few courses to help you get your act together.”

    “Very funny,” she said with a scowl. “I could learn to use that new thingy. Anyway, I could always go back to tech. services!”

    “Yeah, you could. But they’re almost completely automated these days.” She ignored Janet’s glare. “But on the other hand, the whole bit may well be irrelevant, because,” she said sweetly, “I’m thinking of outsourcing all my tech. services anyway. –I’ve gotta go, sorry: I’ve got an appointment. See ya!” She hurried out.

    Janet looked limply at a litter of cappuccino cups, sticky quiche plates and yellow paper serviettes, amidst the swamping yellow Formica and vinyl of The Primrose Café. Her lip trembled.

    “Hi, Janet!” said a breathless voice.

    Janet looked up with a jump, and tried to pull herself together. “Hullo, Avon. Hullo, Fiorella: how are you?”

    Avon sat down, panting. “Phew! The supermarkets are horrible!”

    “Mm.”

    Avon gave her a sharp look. “What’s up?”

    “It’s Dorothy. She’s being—” Janet paused. “Well,” she said honestly: “it isn’t her, really, it’s me. She’s just told me she won’t be back in the New Year, because she’s got a lot of leave they’re making her take. And I can’t do any of the things that she’ll want her staff to do at her new library. It’s all high-tech.”

    “You can do that!” Avon encouraged her.

    “No,” said Janet dully. “I haven’t got the knack, somehow.” Dully she recounted how she’d panicked over the circulation system apparently going down, and never thought to check to see if Mercy had the wand plugged in properly. Well, it had never come loose before!

    “There you are, then: everyone learns by their mistakes: you’ll know next time, eh?” She looked at the dirty plates. “What did you have for lunch?”

    “Oh—quiche. It wasn’t very exciting.”

    “Better than I can make! –Can you keep an eye on her? Yes, Fiorella: strawberry cakey!” she promised blithely, getting up.

    Janet smiled weakly. That was Avon all over: what if there weren’t any strawberry tartlets left? They were terribly popular: about the best thing that The Primrose Café did. Fiorella, however, distracted her by saying solemnly: “We been a shops, Janet.”

    Janet’s heart did the sort of flip it always did in her neat bosom when the solemn little voice addressed her, and she smiled and said: “Have you, Fiorella? What did you buy? Did your Mummy buy lots of groceries?” And so on. Fiorella’s replies were not exactly logical or coherent but they satisfied Janet.

    Avon duly returned with a laden tray. “Nummy! Eggy!” she said, putting a slice of quiche in front of Fiorella.

    Janet looked at the tray with foreboding. No sign of a strawberry tartlet. “What about the S,T,R,A,W—”

    “They were all gone. Never mind, she can have this marshmallow thingy, instead.” She embarked hungrily on her quiche and coleslaw, noting thickly: “All refine’ sugar, buh hoo had.”

    Janet nodded. “It’s not all that big,” she murmured.

    Avon agreed thickly: “Ri’.” When the first pangs were satisfied, she sighed deeply and said: “Barry reckons he’s found you a place to live.”

    Janet went bright pink. “Really?”

    Not registering this pinkness as the pinkness of one who thought her big brother was wonderful, Avon agreed sunnily: “Yeah. You know Mrs Adler?”—Janet shook her head.—“Yes, ya do, Janet: she’s the old lady that Akiko’s staying with!”

    Janet didn’t know Akiko very well, either, but she nodded obediently.

    “Yeah, well, it’s down the road from her.” Avon hesitated. “It’s only a small place.”

    “Oh, that’s fine! I don’t want a big place!”

    “No. Um—it has got a garden. Um—well, the thing is, Barry’s checked the town plan carefully for ya, and he reckons it’s the last house that’s not gonna be torn down, before the new Development.”

    Janet looked blank, so Avon explained that the end of Mrs Adler’s street was due to be torn down and redeveloped by Carrano Development. The last house to be left on the other side was old Mr Deakin’s, Janet didn’t wanna have anything to do with him.

    “Chookies!” shouted Fiorella at this point.

    “Yeah. Hush. –He’s got brown chooks, they lay brown eggs, but he never gives any away. There’s only him to feed, mean ole sod. And Mrs Adler, well, she looked after him for yonks when he busted his leg. But he still doesn’t give her any eggs. –Yeah, googgy-eggs,” she said tolerantly to Fiorella’s interjection. She shovelled in quiche busily, and added: “Barry reckons it’s actually a historic house. What I mean is, they haven’t declared it one of those National Thingies, but it’s real old, y’know?”

    “Ye-es…”

    Avon swallowed. “An’ he reckons they would, if they knew about it! –Don’tcha want this nice crust, Fiorella? Okay, I’ll eat it. Here, have ya marshmallow thingy: look, like a little snowman, eh?” Avon engulfed Fiorella’s quiche crust. “Wanna go up an’ see it? Are you free this arvo?”

    “Yes, it’s my afternoon off, I worked last Thursday night and they’ve stopped offering us time and a half, we have to take time in lieu. I’d love to, if you’ve finished your shopping?”

    “We been shopping!” echoed Fiorella proudly.

    Janet agreed with her, smiling, even though they’d already had that conversation, as Avon said: “I’ve done all I’m going to, I can tell ya. The supermarkets are just awful! Why do they all go mad at Christmas?”

    Janet didn’t know: she shook her head.

    “Mm,” said Avon, swallowing thickly. “’Minds me. You doing anything for Christmas?”

    “Um—not exactly. Um, Mum and Aunty Robyn have gone to Queensland,” Janet reminded her. Avon nodded: some time ago the two widows had combined their not particularly meagre resources, and upped stakes permanently for warmer climes across the Tasman. According to the last letter Janet had had they had just installed ducted air-conditioning—on top of the ceiling fans the place had already had in every room—but then, as Avon said, Whatever turned you on. “Bobby and me thought we’d just have a quiet day. I might do a duck.

    “Ya better get in quick, then, the poultry section in Woolie’s was empty! –No, I got a better idea. Come and have it with us.”

    “Buh-but aren’t you going to your mother’s, Avon?”

    “Nah. Her and Dad have decided to go to Fiji.” She shrugged. “First-class. Chucking away megabucks on a hotel suite, too, all of the cheaper places were booked out months back. Oh, well, whatever turns you on.”

    Janet nodded numbly.

    “So will ya?”

    “Oh! Yes, I’d really love to, Avon!” she beamed. “Are you sure?”

    “Yeah. Well, Barry said, ask you if you know how to cook turkey, but that was a joke.”

    Janet bit her lip. “They are awfully big. Um—don’t you just go by the pop-out timer?”

    “Don’t worry, we’re not gonna have one: they’re full of hormones.” Avon assisted Fiorella with her pineapple juice.

    “Funny juish!” she gasped, coming up for air.

    “Eh? Oh. It’s not orange juice: it’s a new juice: pineapple juice. Different, see? Nice, eh?”

    The poor little face had turned sort of purple. “Nice juish!” she gasped, as her mother’s iron hand held the glass to her rosebud lips again.

    “Avon, isn’t it a bit A,C,I,D?” said Janet cautiously.

    “Uh—oh. Oh, well, she’s drinking it! And heck, we might as well take advantage of it, we do live in the South Pacific!”

    That didn’t stop pineapple juice being very expensive at the supermarkets. Though it was true that at The Primrose Café it was the same price as the orange juice. “Mm.”

    “Anyway, we’re gonna have a barbie,” said Avon definitely.

    “What? Oh! For Christmas dinner? That’s a good idea!”

    “Yeah. Barry thought we might go up the Inlet: whaddaya think?”

    “Yes, that would be nice.”

    “Good, we’ll do it!”

    Janet’s jaw sagged: surely Avon hadn’t been waiting for her approval? After a moment she said cautiously: “I’ll bring something.”

    “Okay. Only nothing fancy: Barry says the whole point is, we wanna take it easy.”

    “Yes. Um—well, something salady? Potato salad?”

    “Yeah: good. Don’t worry about sausages and stuff: Barry’s jacking all that up.”

    “Righto, then,” she said dubiously.

    Some persons might have reflected, as Avon and Fiorella with all their shopping bundled happily into Janet’s neat little Mazda, that Avon had been so keen on taking Janet up to look at a putative historic house that was reputedly for sale because she wanted a ride home to Carter’s Bay. But Janet Wilson did not have that sort of mind. And Avon Goode was not in fact that cunning. And if she had thought of it, would have scorned to stoop to it. There was a little house for sale just down the road from Mrs Adler’s. It had a tiny front garden, which was very unkempt. Janet thought she could get it into order easily enough. Avon agreed sunnily.

    The house was manifestly very old, and in urgent need of a coat of paint. And very possibly of a new roof. Avon revealed that some students had been living in it at one stage but it had been empty for a while. It looked it. It also looked, though Janet, in spite of her knowledgeability in the matter of “bungalows” versus “villas”, did not realise this, as if it really was very old for a New Zealand house. It consisted of two rooms, one on each side of a narrow hall, with a lean-to kitchen and bathroom. The floorboards appeared sound enough, and the fact that the bedroom had been painted black all over—undoubtedly by the students—was immaterial. The shallow verandah across its frontage was, however, in very bad repair.

    “Barry’ll fix that for ya!” said Avon breezily.

    Janet went very red. “I’d pay him, of course!” she gasped.

    “Yeah, well, we’ll fix something up,” said Avon, wandering out to the kitchen. “You’ll wanna get rid of that,” she noted, glancing at the stove.

    It was electric, true. It had two burners only. Way back in her early flatting days Janet had had stoves like that. Mean landlords specialised in them. They were the sort that made the overload switch on the fuse box go “bang” if you tried to run anything like the iron at the same time. She agreed feebly, wondering how much the house was going to be. Because she’d have to get a mortgage, and it didn’t look like the sort of place that banks lent money on, and then if she had to pay for repairs and a new stove…

    Avon then, with a very airy expression on her face, opened the back door, which led directly into the kitchen, to reveal—

    “Oh!” gasped Janet. “It’s a real old orchard! It’s wonderful!” she cried, running out into it.

    Raising her eyebrows slightly, and not allowing her tremendous relief to show, Avon picked up Fiorella, ignoring the screams of: “Wanna WALK! Wanna WALK! Me WALK!” and followed her.

    The trees were very old, and very gnarled, and very licheny. Nevertheless many green plums and greener apples and pears were discovered. And one tree was covered in ripe plums!

    “Christmas plums,” said Avon casually, picking one. “Don’t taste of anything, much. Wait: stone,” she said loudly to Fiorella. She bit into the plum, extracted the stone with her fingernails, and gave the fruit to Fiorella. “May Swadling’s got a tree. She gave us a bagful last week, and that clot Barry let Fiorella into them. The stones went right through her.”

    Janet gulped.

    Avon picked a plum for herself. “Ya like it, then?”

    “Oh, yes! It’s wonderful!” she gasped.

    “Good. Um—the thing is,” said Avon, coughing slightly, “Barry’s found out that it’s actually been bought up by Carrano Development. See all that empty land next-door? He reckons they hadda buy the house to get hold of the land. They’re gonna turn that into a sort of playground. Well, kind of a little park, with swings: it’ll be a selling-point, ya see. Um—well, the thing is, Barry said to tell you the financing’s being done through them. Um, well, it’s technically Buttercup Meadows Finance Corp or something, but it’s all Carrano Development.”

    “Um—ye-es.”

    Avon cleared her throat. “So you’d have to—um—get your mortgage through them. A take-it-or-leave-it deal.”

    Janet goggled at her. “You mean they’ll lend me the money?”

    “Yeah. Barry asked the type in their office—they’ve opened up an office in the old shop next to Wrightson’s, didja know? They’ve got two offers going on this old place. They’ll do it up themselves—for a price, mind you—or they’ll sell it to you with the proviso that you do it up. Only ya gotta promise to preserve its character. They’ve made it a feature of their ads, ya see.”

    “Really?” she said dazedly. “It seems too good to be true.”

    “Um—yeah. Well, not that many people want a one-bedroomed place. And it is in pretty bad nick. Um—the bathroom’s awful,” she said awkwardly.

    “Yes, I expect it is,” said Janet, looking dreamily up at the old trees.

    … “It is all kauri, said Barry, quite some time later, as they finished a large meal of fish and chips.

    Janet nodded hard.

    “And I can fix the verandah for you, no sweat.”

    “Thank you,” she said timidly.

    Barry rubbed his chin. “The roof’ll be the big job.”

    Kevin and his helpers had turned up at Barry’s in time for tea, so Barry had made them fetch the fish and chips on the strength of it. They were now participating eagerly in the plans to do up the cottage. “Rats!” cried Kevin. “Couplea sheets of colour-steel: get it on in no time!”

    “Mm. Well, the rafters are sound as a bell,” he conceded. “Solid kauri.”

    “There you are,” said Kevin. “We can get the roof done in a morning, easy,” he said to Janet. “Do it on a Wednesday, eh?” he said to his helpers. “That’s always a pretty slow day.”

    Martin and Sim nodded eagerly.

    “I was thinking of a Sunday,” said Barry.

    “No: that’s one of my busy days,” said Kevin firmly.

    “Oh all right, then. Wednesday.”

    “Yes—um—I haven’t bought it yet!” gasped Janet, laughing a little.

    “No, but you are going to!” urged Avon.

    “Um—well, if I can get finance, yes,” she murmured.

    “It has got charm,” said Martin hoarsely.

     Janet smiled at him. “Yes, it has.”

    “She wants a really old-fashioned wallpaper: like, English country-style: y’know?” said Avon. “Roses or something.”

    Janet went very red and protested: “That makes it sound awful! Um—well, something restrained but pretty.”

    “Or you could do it out in whitewash,” offered Sim. “Like your brother’s place,” he said to Martin.

    “Cretin! That’s a sixteenth-century farm labourer’s cottage!”

    The New Zealanders gulped.

    “Tell ya what, we’ll go to MOTAT: get some ideas from the wee pioneer cottages,” said Barry pacifically.

    The boys had never heard of the Museum of Transport and Technology, so they had to be told all about it. The topics of vintage cars, genuine old planes from the War, and working steam engines did then rather tend to take over from that of sweet wee pioneer cottages, but Janet didn’t mind. She sat back and fell into a daydream about her new house. Oh—if only it could come true!

    “That’s it: with the bright green and yellow window display. Goddawful, eh?” said Barry, next day.

    Janet nodded dazedly. It was a bit much: Buttercup Meadows had completely filled the window of the shop next to the Wrightson’s with posters for itself. The posters showed a tiny pioneer cottage in the foreground, surrounded by very green grass, and very yellow buttercups, and winding into the distance a sort of rustic (but neatly paved) street with vaguer shapes of, presumably, new houses, though with a pioneer look: finials, but they had garages. Actually the finials were on the garages, too. “Why are they calling it ‘Buttercup’ Meadows?” she ventured.

    “Dunno. All that ground next to your place is covered in wild turnip, eh?”

    Janet nodded limply.

    “Me spies tell me that Sir Jake Carrano likes to name ’em himself. It’ll be one of his,” decided Barry. “Come on, then.”

    “Wait! Do I look all right?” she hissed.

    Barry smiled a little. Janet’s slim, neat little person was clad in a neat little short-sleeved checked summer suit. The light-weight fabric was a mixture of a soft greyish fawn and a dusty greyish pink. “Subfusc” was not a word that Barry Goode had much occasion to use, in the course of his daily existence, but it came forcibly to mind at this moment. Her dark hair was in its usual neat, short waves, close to her head, and, as usual, her meek, small-featured face sported no make-up except for a little bit of lipstick. Her sandals were white and lowish heeled. If he’d been the Buttercup Meadows Finance Corp he’d have given her a mortgage on the spot. “Yeah, you look fine.”

    Young Mr Thorogood was very bored and rather hot. Some of them at CD had thought that it was far too bloody early yet to start flogging off Buttercup Meadows, because crikey, the foundations were barely in for the new varsity, yet! But word had come down from the top. The Very Top, or at least that was the word. Very fortunately Jimmy Bailey, who had been patting himself on the back ever since Nev Thorogood had been awarded the job that it wasn’t him that’d be stuck up Carter’s Bay in the Buttercup Meadows office all summer, had remembered in time to warn Nev that Sir Jake had a bach up that way. So Look Out. Nev was looking out. And wearing his suit jacket almost all the time. Well, heck, it was bloody hot and the Buttercup Meadows office didn’t have air conditioning!

    He struggled hastily into the jacket as the door opened and a man and a lady came in.

    “Oh—gidday,” he said, relaxing, as he realised that the man was only Barry Goode.

    “How’s it going, Nev?” replied Barry. “This is the lady I was telling you about, that might be interested in Number 11.”

    “Oh—right!” he said dazedly. “Uh—siddown, Mrs—uh—”

    “Miss Wilson,” said Barry, pulling out a chair for Janet and taking the one next to it. “This is Nev Thorogood, Janet. You can give her the bad news first, ta, Nev.”

    Mr Thorogood went very red. “There isn’t any—” He met Barry’s eye. “Um—well, the thing is, Miss Wilson—”

    Number 11 Gilbert Street, it turned out, was not a national treasure, nothing like it, but as a matterafack, it had been classified by the Historic Places Trust… What it amounted to was that Janet wouldn’t be allowed to knock it down: even the Carrano Group hadn’t been allowed to knock it down, which was why it was still standing; and she wouldn’t be allowed to alter its external appearance—Mr Thorogood added hurriedly that she could do it up to look like what it did in the old days, only not change stuff; and she wouldn’t be able to do alterations inside without Council permission. Barry translated this kindly as: “No poncy ensuites without their say-so.”

    “I don’t want one,” said Janet faintly.

    “No, but it’d be nice to be able to walk from your bedroom straight into your bathroom, eh?” he said kindly. “We’ll work something out!”

    Janet swallowed, and looked mutely at Mr Thorogood.

    “Yes,” he said, coughing. “Good. Um—now, about finance, Miss Wilson—”

    Barry interrupted ruthlessly: “Just a mo’. What’s the bottom line?”

    Looking very airy, Mr Thorogood named a figure. Janet gasped.

    “Bullshit,” said Barry briskly. “Two rooms, and she can’t turn round without permission from the Lord High Everything Else? Not to mention the minor fact that Carrano Development’s bulldozers are gonna be rumbling down that street for the next eighteen months. Not to mention the fact that it needs complete re-wiring: it’s a bloody death-trap as it stands. Now, look: she won’t kick up about any of the restrictions on it, she’s prepared to put up with only one bedroom, and she’s springing for repairs herself. Added to which, she’ll agree to have ruddy buttercups growing at the front gate.” He gave Mr Thorogood a steely look. “Weeds, is what they’re commonly known as in these parts, matey.”

    “That’s not in the contract, Barry,” he whinged.

    “No, but we all know what Sir Jake Carrano’s told you little people on the subject, don’t we?”

    Mr Thorogood went very red but didn’t say he hadn’t been told anything.

    “Half that,” said Barry flatly to Janet. “And at that you’re doing them a favour.”

    “N— Um—half?” she gasped.

    “Yeah.”

    Janet swallowed. “Yes, all right. Half. It will cost a lot to do up,” she said faintly to Mr Thorogood.

    Mr Thorogood smoothly made a counter-offer. Carrano Development—well, Buttercup Meadows, of course, he amended hurriedly, would do it up for her, at only two thousand more than the original asking price! All she’d have to do would be walk into it!

    “No,” said Barry flatly, before Janet could open her mouth. “She doesn’t want a bright buttercup-yellow pioneer cottage with a grass-green roof and trim, ta.”

    “They won’t let us do that!” he snapped, forgetting himself.

    “Hah, hah. –Janet, me and Kev can do the place up for you, as and when you can afford it, for miles less than that.”

    Mr Thorogood looked sulky, but didn’t protest that they couldn’t.

    “Um—yes. Well, I can manage with a microwave, really…” said Janet in a confused voice.

    “Roof, verandah, and paint the lot,” said Barry, ticking off points on his fingers.

    “Y— Um, I could paint some of the inside,” said Janet in a tiny voice.

    “Yeah, sure; I meant the exterior. And I can fix that garden gate, no sweat.”

    “Buttercup Meadows was envisaging a picket fence,” said Mr Thoroughgood on a weak note.

    “I know that, matey. But if Buttercup Meadows want a picket fence, they can spring for it!” retorted Barry swiftly.

    Muttering about consulting Head Office about that, Mr Thoroughgood did a few hasty sums on the back of a Buttercup Meadows brochure. “Er—yes. Well, in principle: yes,” he said to Janet. “If finance can be arranged, of course.”

    “You mean I’ve got it?” she faltered.

    “Certainly, Miss Wilson!” Looking very bright and cheerful all of a sudden, Mr Thorogood switched his computer on. “Now, if you’d like to look at our easy finance plan…”

    Barry didn’t actually laugh until he and Janet were sitting in her little car. Then he laughed until he almost cried.

    “Whuh-what’s the joke?” she faltered.

    He wiped his eyes. “That tit, Nev Thoroughgood, was drinking in the Brasserie Bar at the Royal K last night with a like-minded yuppie mate from Carrano Development, moaning about how Sir Jake Carrano’s been rampaging round the place telling those tits at Head Office to pull their fingers out, he wants Number 11 sold by the time the first bulldozers move into Gilbert Street!”

    “Ooh,” said Janet in awe.

    “Yeah. What Nev didn’t realise was that the joker behind the bar was Tony Peters. He was at school with my obbo, young Jonno. Jonno told me all about it, first thing this morning! –What in Christ are ya bawling for?” he gasped in horror as Janet dissolved into tears.

    “I don’t know!” she gulped. “Sorry! I’m just so happy! It’s all too good to be true.” She blew her nose and repeated: “Sorry. –If only I can sell my flat in Puriri!”

    “There’s usually plenty of buyers for anything in Puriri. And don’t worry: Buttercup Meadows has got bridging finance, ya know.”

    “Yes,” said Janet. “Only if that’s for more than a few days, it’ll be extortionate. I’ll have to have a firm offer before I sign the final papers with them.”

    Barry blinked slightly: he hadn’t thought she had that much nous. But acknowledged she would have to, yeah.

    “You’ve what?” gasped Dorothy, dropping a slice of cream-laden strawberry sponge on her good navy skirt. “Blast!” She scrubbed frantically with a tissue.

    Janet stuck out her chin. “Sold the flat. I’m moving to Carter’s Bay.”

    “She did say ages ago she was thinking of it,” said Cynthia feebly.

    The library staff were having an afternoon tea, courtesy of Janet. Until this moment no-one had been at all sure why Janet had brought in a cake: so close to Christmas, too.

    “Y— But when did you put it on the market?” croaked Dorothy.

    “I didn’t, really. I went into Pritchard & Taylor’s yesterday morning, and it was old Mr Taylor.”—Dorothy nodded numbly: Dick Taylor was about fifty-seven.—“And he said that Mr Potter—not old Mr Potter, his son—he was looking for an investment—”

    “Not Potter the Poltergeist?” gasped Cynthia in horror.

    “What? Oh: the chemist? No, his brother. Anyway, it doesn’t matter who buys it, really, does it, once you’ve gone?” she said in a vague voice. “He came round last evening after work and offered me cash. So I took it. And I’m going.”

    The library staff goggled at her.

    Finally Dorothy said feebly: “Where to?”

    “You wouldn’t know it,” replied Janet firmly.

    “Christ, Janet, you haven’t committed yourself to Casa Merry-Take-Your-Money, have you?” she gasped.

    “What? Oh, those guinea-pig hutches they’re going to build down by the waterfront! No, of course not!” said Janet with immense scorn. “This is a wee cottage. It’ll need a lot of doing up, but I’ve had it looked at: it’s basically very sound. Solid kauri. And I’m moving tomorrow.”

    “Tomorrow? Janet, it’s the twenty-third of December!” gasped Bridie.

    “So what? It’s just a day. And it’s my shopping day, I can use it how I like.”

    The library staff just gaped at her.

    Eventually Bridie noted numbly: “That’ll mean ole Potter’ll be able to let your flat over the holidays to unsuspecting tourists for megabucks.”

    “Yes. Once he’s put in a bit of furniture.” Calmly Janet passed the cake.

    When they’d all taken a second piece Dorothy found the strength to croak: “What’s the address?”

    Janet stuck her chin out. “It’s just before the new Buttercup Meadows development in Gilbert Street. That’s why I got it so cheap.”

    “What? Janet, it’ll be scheduled for demolition in a month or two!” she cried.

    “No, it isn’t, see. They can’t do anything to it, it’s a classified building. And I’m not that stupid, I checked everything. And Carrano Development’s gonna put in a new picket fence for me!” she said defiantly.

    “Well, good on ya,” said Cynthia hurriedly, seeing that their County Librarian was, for once, reduced to silence.

    “I’d love to see it,” said little Mercy shyly.

    Janet beamed upon her and invited her warmly to come up whenever she felt like it. In fact, would she like to come to tea the day after Boxing Day? Mercy accepted eagerly.

    The Puriri County Library staff waited, but no further invitations were immediately forthcoming.

    –Which, concluded Cynthia and Bridie privily, as their so-called County Librarian vanished for yet another meeting with the Sir George Grey lot in work time, served Dorothy jolly well right!

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/a-very-odd-christmas.html