It Rained And It Rained And It Rained...

20

It Rained And It Rained And It Rained…

    The winter wore on. Everybody seemed to be the same as usual only more so. Possibly in some instances this was the result of stress—certainly in Jack’s case, recognised his sister with a certain sourness. Why was it that males were allowed to indulge themselves in Stress whereas females were expected merely to get on with it and shut up? Oh, well, same old story, ’nuff said. He had thrown himself into his house-building project with horrible enthusiasm, had geared up not one but three responsible females to baby-sit Murray on demand, with poor Beth as a back-up, and on Rab’s proving incapable of getting past the interview stage, had found a job for the unfortunate lad and bullied him into taking it.

    As jobs went it was so-so: helping out Sid Ching at the famous Ching’s All-Nite Takeaways on the waterfront at Puriri. Sid’s brother, Lenny, was now running a branch at Brown’s Bay, the Ching brothers having successfully bought out the famous Brown’s Bay Chinese which had been there forever, and none of their kids had gone into the business. Sid Ching, though known for making his helpers work like stink, was a decent bloke, so Dorothy felt little sympathy when Rab came round on his one day off, and moaned at her. And didn’t bother to hide it. Personally she didn’t care if his clothes and hair stank of fried food, he was lucky to be employed at all. Rab had flung off in the expected temper. Good: one less mouth to share those two meagre lamb chops she intended to singe for tea.

    The skeleton of Jack’s house, despite the usual pouring rain, was now up and he was forcing the builders to put the roof on before the floors. Apparently this technique was unheard of in the New Zild of the Nineties, and he was stomping round breathing fire and brimstone on account of it, but Dorothy didn’t want to know, ta. Nor was she interested in whether he proposed flooring the dump with cedar, knotty pine, recycled kauri, or ruddy chipboard like the rest of the flaming country. Jack had flung off in the expected temper. Sucks to him, anyway. Hyperactive idiot.

    Thomas had actually made up the mighty brain to build. And had bought a section. Or two. Two giant sections (wot in Dorothy’s day was a ten-acre lot) right up the far end of the Inlet between, according to Leigh, the Sir G.G. site and the bird sanctuary. And Dorothy was right, Leigh had agreed: he would be unbelievably well placed there to be as bloody-mindedly obstructive as was possible within the laws of Newtonian or possibly Einsteinian physics should Sir G.G. wish to expand in the direction of the said bird sanctuary. Thomas all over, in short.

    Leigh himself was rather fed up with commuting to and from Puriri every day, with not having a place of his own to be messy in if he felt like it—the thought of nice Molly Collingwood having to tidy up any mess he made was not an inducement to mess—and with bloody Thomas. And with not having found anybody really suitable for his senior lecturers. Kincaid’s leaving it up to the deans to sort out the numbers and levels of staffing they needed had at first seemed like Earthly Paradise to Leigh. Now it didn’t. Well, he still felt that he needed three senior lecturers and three junior lecturers in ESL, plus a clutch of tutors—but where the Hell were they all to come from?

    The other senior appointments in the School of Languages had kept Leigh pretty busy, but at least they were more or less sorted out now. The Professor of Japanese was due to start in September: a pleasant, capable, middle-aged Japanese woman with a face like a boot. She had lived in Australia for many years where, reading between the lines, her Australian diplomat husband had let her have a career on sufferance, still demanding a full-time service as housekeeper, nanny and hostess from her, naturally, and had eventually dumped both her and the diplomatic service and accepted a lucrative post as a director of a large chain of hotels, the which required taking up semi-permanent residence in Fiji. Him and the yacht and the very young bird. Hanae Armstrong had put the two youngest kids that Mr Armstrong seemed to have forgotten he’d ever had through secondary school and university, and gone determinedly on with her career. Rising to the level of senior lecturer and there hitting an immovable glass ceiling. Which explained why she had applied for the job at Sir G.G. When Leigh had asked her if she had any further questions about her responsibilities she had wanted to know who would be in charge of the faculty when he was overseas. Leigh had gaped at her. Akiko had explained helpfully that Dr Gore would perhaps be away for the odd conference or so, but that was all they envisaged. Or did she mean study leave? After a certain amount of talking at cross-purposes Leigh had perceived that they were talking at cross-purposes and, certain glowing examples at certain British institutions bright in his mind, said: “I think I see what you mean. When I was a junior lecturer I once worked for an H.O.D. whom the students called ‘the Ghost’, because he was never there: he was on innumerable committees and affiliated to this, that, and the other, all of which entailed his travelling overseas at someone else’s expense while we junior hacks had to take the classes he was paid to teach. I can assure you I don’t intend to follow his example.”

    Alan had merely sat by quietly during this part of the interview. At his point he said mildly: “It is not our policy to pay academics for classes they don’t teach, Dr Armstrong.”

    “I see,” she said dazedly.

    “Would you be prepared to take over my administrative duties, should I have to be away?” Leigh then asked with a concealed twinkle in his eye.

    Dr Armstrong hastily assured them she would do so if required and detailed all her administrative experience.

    When the panel met later to discuss the applicants, Hanae Armstrong was the unanimous choice. Though perhaps not for the same reasons. Alan, though making the point that the ultimate choice was Leigh’s, expressed the thought that she seemed entirely capable and had published a very sound practical text. They all silently concluded he had read the bloody thing—help. Akiko underlined the fact that Dr Armstrong had had the administrative experience of a professor even if she had not had the title before. Dorothy said mildly that she thought Dr Armstrong seemed both capable and practical and seemed to have a realistic grasp of the level at which she’d be expected to teach. And the seconded academic from points south, an earnest Japanese gentleman about whom some of those present had been reserving judgement, had said firmly that she had a very sound academic reputation, had delivered an excellent paper at a conference in Australia last year, and was known to have been the mainstay of her department any time these last ten years. And that in his opinion if they appointed Dr Mishima from America, who was certainly known as a coming man in his field, he would see the appointment merely as a stepping-stone in his career, the which he would of course put first. But if they wanted someone who would commit to the job, and work to make a fine department, and put the university first—? In spite of the fact that the expression “commit to the job" set his teeth on edge, Leigh had taken Professor Yamada to dinner at The Blue Heron instead of the Chez Basil as he had tentatively planned.

    With Dr Armstrong’s agreement they had appointed Dr Mishima as Senior Lecturer: of course he’d move on, but in the meantime they would have the advantage of having an American academic who was making a name for himself. The rest of the Japanese staff would be appointed in September, when Hanae would be on deck to do it. So that was Japanese pretty well sewn up. Just as well: they’d already received several hundred applications from would-be students of Business Japanese.

    Chinese was also proving quite popular with the would-be student body; though it was true that most of them didn’t seem to know whether they wanted to do Mandarin or Cantonese, let alone why. Dr David Lee, who was a local, had got the chair. He seemed a pleasant fellow, had a good reputation, and while he was young enough to put his back into the job, was old enough to have children whose secondary-school careers would be best not disturbed: unlikely to use the job as a stepping-stone, quite. Added to which he was keen to move up to Carter’s Bay: he lived in one of the southern suburbs and clearly couldn’t wait to be within a stone’s throw of the water. This had emerged during one of those pseudo-post-interview chats of which Alan Kincaid was a master: Leigh had watched with a certain grudging admiration as Alan had made quite certain that David Lee was not one of those academics, even commoner out here than at home, whose true careers lay outside the institutions that employed them. Most of the ones Leigh and Thomas had known had been almost-full-time golfers, telly dons or company directors rather than sailors, but the principle held good whatever geography might dictate about its precise manifestation.

    They had been flooded with applications from Hong Kong for the Chinese positions, but Dr Lee was now capably winnowing these out: apparently in his weekends, as he certainly seemed to be doing his current job whenever Leigh rang him there. A good omen. Well, he'd be pretty stupid not to be on his best behaviour at this stage, but Leigh had known them as wouldn’t have bothered. Talking of which…

    “Why are you going back?” he had groaned as Thomas, with a super-casual-air, had revealed this fact.

    “Oh, just to look around,” he said airily.

    “Thomas, if you want to make a commitment here, running back home the minute things don’t go right for you is not the way to do it.”

    “I am not!”

    “Much.”

    “If you must know, bloody Posy’s got herself up the spout. Don’t say ‘At her age?’”

    “I was under the impression she’d already had three abortions?”

    “No, well, she has got shot of it, but that cretin Bingo Woods has written that she’s pretty down about it.”

    “Who?”

    “One of Posy’s hangers-on. Half her age: they all seem to be, these days.”

    “Was he the father?”

    “No idea. He’s sort of living with her, or sharing the flat—anyway, it’s irrelevant. He's written to say she’s really down.”

    “Seeing you will make it all so much better, will it?”

    “No, well, I think she’s broke again, reading between the lines,” he said, flushing slightly.

    Leigh sighed, though looking at him with a certain sympathy. “I see. Um—I shouldn’t think the authorities here will let her in, if that’s your plan; hasn’t she got a police record as long as your arm?”

    “Only for pot and stuff. Oh, she did bash a cop at Greenham Common, but that was donkey’s ages back.”

    “The long arm of the law won’t have forgotten, however,” noted Leigh drily.

    “No, well, I expect they’ll let her in for a holiday. But she may not want to come. Anyway, just thought I’d see. Well, Bingo’s a cretin and the rest of them seem to have vanished into the sunset, reading between the lines. And she’s not getting any younger.”

    Posy Baranski had never seemed much more than nineteen to Leigh. Nineteen and irresponsible with it. “I suppose she isn’t, no. Uh—Christ, fortyish, would she be?”

    “Forty-two. Ten years younger than me. Um—I had a message from Jordana, too. She’s been to London, some documentary thing she was working on, and seen Posy. Well, if she’s bad enough to worry Jordana, Leigh—”

    “Yes, yes: go, go,” he groaned.

    “I don’t need your permission, but thanks anyway,” said Thomas with his irresistible sidelong smile.

    Leigh smiled reluctantly. “Mm.”

    “I may buy a car,” he added carelessly.

    “Oh, for Christ’s sake! Is that what all this coyness is about?”

    “I wasn’t aware I was being coy.”

    “Well, you were. In Sammi Wolfe’s words, I’ll tell you that free, gratis and for nothing.”

    “That reminds me, Inoue’s wife is apparently very ill.”

    “I know, Mitsuko told me, and don’t change the subject. What are you planning, yellow Rolls Royce to spite Kincaid or an even shinier, even newer model Jag than his to spite him and not make a monkey of yourself?” said Leigh smoothly.

    Thomas replied smoothly: “Yeah.” And went out before Leigh could find anything to throw at him.

    Leigh sighed. He wasn’t all bad. But unless his sister Posy was at death’s door—which she couldn’t be, if the level-headed Jordana hadn’t said so—the rescuing could have been done by way of a big fat cheque. It had always worked in the past and Leigh frankly saw no reason to suppose that it would fail this time. Though forty-two did give you pause to reflect, just a little. Posy had always believed she was immortal, as far as he could see.

    Well, there was nothing against Thomas’s going, in theory. But would he come back? Leigh was conscious of an impulse to discuss the Posy thing with Dorothy, but even more conscious of a cowardly impulse to avoid Dorothy like the plague until bloody Thomas came back. Or forever, if he didn’t.

    “I suppose,” said Janet, blushing, “Lady Carrano invited me to the engagement party because she knows I know Catherine.”

    Avon sighed enviously. “What’ll you wear?”

    “My new pink dress, I suppose.”

    Avon smiled gamely and nodded. Refraining from bursting out until she was safely home.

    Barry looked at her dryly. “She wouldn’t be Elle MacPherson, whatever she wore.”

    “You’re a PIG, Barry Goode!” shouted his little sister.

    “Eh? All I said was—”

    “I know what you meant!” she said fiercely. “You can give Fiorella her tea, I’m going round to Mrs Adler’s.”

    “I can’t, I’ve got to go and see—”

    “All right, I’ll take her with me. –Come on, Fiorella, you can have your waterproof all-in-oney on again, eh?”

    “Not if she’s pissed in it first time round, I wouldn’t advise.”

    “Shut UP! She has not, she’s potty-trained!” she screamed, fiercely if not entirely accurately.

    “I been on my potty,” said Fiorella, sticking out her lower lip horribly.

    Right, and he was a horrible pig of an uncle: Barry got that, ta. “Yeah,” he said glumly. “Good on ya, Fiorella.”

    Zipping her infant fiercely into her waterproof again, Avon resumed her own raincoat and gumboots, and, putting the raincoat’s hood up, trudged off fiercely into the rain.

    Barry sighed. It wasn’t far. And a bit of fresh air wouldn’t hurt either of them. He did have to go out, he had to see Jack Perkins, who had had an almighty row with his builder, which anyone but an Americanised nong like him mighta realised woulda been the result of hiring Swaynton & Swaynton in the first place: certainly they did an excellent job, but they were notorious all over the North Island for starting your house and then leaving it for six months because they had too many other jobs on their books. He should be so lucky. Well, if he could convince Perkins he could finish the job, he’d be sitting pretty. It was a pity the bloke wanted to see him at teatime, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Words to that effect. Barry checked his watch, shrugged himself into his grungy parka, checked his watch again, and went out and got into the van. Should he bring some sketches or something? No, Perkins didn't look the type to be convinced by sketches. He supposed he could say he’d done that work for Dr Kincaid. He checked his watch again. If he drove really slowly he’d get there at about the appointed time— Oh, get on with it! He let the clutch in and drove slowly off into the rain.

    “Thirty-foot cabin cruiser, was it?” said Sol Winkelmann when he got to Kingfisher Parade—far too early.

    “Hah, hah. Why haven’t you packed up and gone home for tea?” returned Barry morosely.

    “On the watch for the last lone customer for one tube of Selley’s. –Do you want that, Mick?” he shouted.

    A burly, red-cheeked, middle-aged man in a heavy overcoat over a dark business suit emerged from the shelves, clutching a tube. “Dunno. Will it do bathrooms, do ya reckon?”

    Sol scratched his narrow jaw. “What part of bathrooms in particular, Mick?”

    “She reckons there’s this gap round the base of the toilet where the vinyl doesn’t quite meet it.”

    “Thought they put the vinyl down these days before they screwed the toilet in?” said Sol with friendly interest.

    “Don’t ask me. All I know is, every time she goes into the bathroom she comes out whinging. –Ensuite,” he corrected himself sourly.

    “Ask Barry, here: he’s a builder,” said Sol.

    Looking hopeful, Mick gave Barry the now quite warm tube of Selley’s and reiterated the details about the bathroom, adding even more details.

    “It is suitable for wet surfaces,” noted Sol.

    “Yeah, it should do ya,” Barry agreed. “Well, it’ll look like a gap you’ve filled with Selley’s.”

    “That seems to be what she wants,” he said heavily. He paid Sol and went out, looking gloomy.

    “Senior exec with CohenCorp,” explained Sol kindly. “Making it in the higher echelons of the corporate world don’t seem to let you off, do it?”

    Barry smiled reluctantly. “No. Lives round here, does he?”

    “Yeah. That pale yellow palace in Pipiroa Plaza, the one with the giant bumble-bees over the windows.”

    “Eh?”

    “Them giant custom-designed curved awnings. His are brown and yellow stripes. –I can do you a nice fibreglass fifteen-footer, if you’re not on for a cabin cruiser,” he offered.

    “Eh? Oh. I’m looking for Perkins. It all seems to be locked up next-door.”

    “It would be, Ida went home to get Bob’s tea half an hour since. You try the back door?”

    “No, I flaming didn’t, and why don’t you get a path put in?” replied Barry with perhaps pardonable irritation.

    “Because for I don’t own the freehold of that land.”

    “Uh—no, I s’pose ya don’t. Who does?”

    “The Kingfisher Development Company. –All of, it right back up to the main road, including them three motels on the rise, plus and the bit over to the other side of Kingfisher Parade, on its corner with what’s technically Kingfisher Parade West, though ya won’t hear it called that by any of the locals.”

    Barry sighed. “How do I get hold of him, then?”

    “Usually we just stand in the street and holler ‘Jack’ till he answers. I could call him up, if you’re particular.”

    “It is a business appointment,” said Barry on an uneasy note. He was pretty well used to Sol Winkelmann by now, but sometimes you didn’t know if the bloke was kidding or not. How that nice Michaela stood it was beyond him.

    “Sure, no sweat,” he said easily, picking up the phone.

    Barry swallowed a sigh. The bloke hadn’t been kidding and it had been a genuine offer. Was he just dim, or was it the weather?

    Sol spoke, and hung up with an odd look on his thin face. “He’ll be down in two shakes. Uh—maybe I oughta warn you.”

    “What?”

    “He—uh—for the last week, about, he’s had this bird living with him. Very up-market.”

    “I won’t be shocked,” said Barry dully.

    “Not that. She—uh—might try to stick her oar in, if you’re here to talk about his house.”

    “Oh,” said Barry blankly.

    Sol pulled his ear slowly. “Guess you’re used to that, dealing with husbands and wives what have been fighting over how they want the renovations and if they want the renovations for the last fifteen years, huh?”

    “Uh—more or less, yeah. It can be quite tricky, mind you. You have to judge—uh—”

    “Which of ’em has the upper hand—uh-huh. Thing is, she’s been tellin’ him what's what ever since she got here—did I say it was about a week back?—and I think it’s begun to—uh—pall.” He eyed him blandly.

    Barry swallowed. “Right. Got it. Thanks for the warning.”

    “Any time. You expected back, or anything?”

    “Uh—no, Avon’s gone round to Mrs Adler’s.”

    “Then come on back when you’ve finished and we’ll go home to a fish supper, huh?”

    Barry reddened. “Thanks, Sol, I’d like to. But I may be some time. He might want to go out to the site.”

    “That’s okay. That’s right next-door to us. If you finish up there, just go on over and tell Michaela to call me, huh? I’ll be here. Stocktaking,” he said glumly.

    Barry smiled. “Ouch! Okay, then. Thanks, Sol.”

    “Any time. Oh, and if he should happen to mention the inconvenience of driving up the Inlet road, you might do me a favour and drop the word ‘runabout’ in his shell-like. Business,” said Sol mournfully, leaning on his counter, “is real slow.”

    “Tell us about it!” agreed Barry with feeling.

    The bird’s name was Angela and she was very tall and blonde and smoothly tanned and clad in what even Barry Goode’s innocent eye perceived must be designer jeans, with a tooled leather waistcoat open over what was in all likelihood not an old skivvy she’d picked up at the Carter’s Bay School Fair or a seconds bin at the Puriri Emporium—no. Barry would have said that its colour was sort of dingy khaki but that probably showed he wasn’t up with the play. She was wearing several fine gold bangles mixed up with a fine gold chain on one wrist: they didn’t jangle like Avon’s collection of bangles did and after some time it dawned that this was because they were Real Gold. She had a lot to say about the desirability of open-plan kitchen-dining rooms and although Perkins didn’t argue with her or contradict her Barry could tell he was pretty narked. When they went out to the site Angela came, too, her up-market body swathed in a giant fake-fur leopard pattern coat. Barry woulda said they were the nadir of popular taste of thirty years back but clearly he was wrong and they were In again. It was sort of car-coat length so that must be In again, too.

    “Shit,” he said numbly as the howling wilderness of Jack’s embryo house was revealed by the wavering light of Jack’s torch.

    “Yeah. If you can come round Saturday you’ll get a better idea,” said Jack grimly.

    “I can do that, no problem.”

    “I told you it’d be too dark to see anything, Jack!” said Angela loudly.

    “He can see there are no walls.”

    “Yeah. Um—were they proposing to put well-seasoned recycled kauri into that?” asked Barry cautiously.

    “Floors? Yeah. Why?”

    “Uh—it is easier without the walls, you just slam the boards down and level off the edges with the old hand-held circular saw. And kauri is bloody tough. But I wouldn't recommend it, myself.”

    “What would you recommend?” said Jack grimly.

    “Uh—it’ll cost you more, because you’ll have to have a proper joinery job done on the floors. But if you really want something decent and you don’t want to spend the next three months waiting for it to dry out and watching to see if it’s gonna shrink or warp,” said Barry, clearing his throat, “I’d strongly recommend getting the walls up, first.”

    “I told you!” said Angela loudly.

    “Yeah, right," agreed Jack sourly. “Okay, Barry, can you give me a quote?”

    “Uh—yeah. I’ll need more details. Or shall I just quote for the labour?”

    “That man’s charging him through the nose for the kauri,” explained Angela.

    “Swaynton? He's not one of the real rip-off artists. It's just that he’s at the up-market end of the market," said Barry uneasily.

    Angela explained at great length just how much it had cost her brother and his wife to do up their villa—musta been the last unrenovated villa in the Grammar Zone suburbs—with a short thesis on the virtues of recycled kauri with provenance.

    “Uh—yeah. Don't think George Swaynton’s into chopping down sections of national parks,” said Barry.

    Jack gave a short crack of laughter. “No. Quote for the labour, Barry; I’ll think about the rest. Depends how much he's ordered in for me. I don’t want to see him lose on it. But finishing it’s out: he’s clearly broken our agreement on time-frames; I told him, when I sign anything, I mean it.”

    “He wouldn’t have believed you,” agreed Barry.

    “He thought he had him over a barrel," explained Angela redundantly.

    “Added to which, there’s no such thing as time-frames in the building trade, out here,” added Barry.

    “I hope you don’t mean that,” said Jack grimly.

    “No. Ask Kincaid, if ya want a reference. Barring acts of God, I’ll finish it for you within a reasonable agreed time-frame. But if you change your mind and suddenly decide you want imported Carrara marble in the guest ensuite, that’ll take longer,” said Barry on a dry note.

    “I won’t change my mind.”

    “Mum’s got a marble bench, now: it’s wonderful for pastry. They had it put in when the house was done up,” explained Angela.

    “It and the steel girders reinforcing the kitchen floor,” explained Jack.

    “Yeah,” said Barry weakly, avoiding the up-market Angela’s eye.

    … “So?” said Sol with a grin, forcing a frosted can into Barry’s limp hand.

    Barry sat back on the Winkelmanns’ old sofa with a sigh. “Ta. Well, like I was telling Michaela, it’s pretty much of a disaster area, but what can you expect, in this weather, and with Swaynton’s being Swaynton’s? They’ll do a good job but nobody ever said they’ll do it fast.”

    “And?”

    “He wants me to put in a quote for the labour.”

    “Sounds okay.”

    “Yeah. Fingers crossed,” agreed Barry. He drank deeply. “Dr Kincaid seems to have put in a good word for me,” he admitted.

    “Cain’t be all bad, then, can he?” drawled Sol.

    “No,” Barry conceded.

    Sol got up. “You want me to broil them fish steaks, honey?”

    “Yes, you’d better. I turned those last ones to charcoal, remember?”

    “So ya did,” he acknowledged, retreating to the kitchenette area.

    “Anyway,” said Michaela comfortably, resuming the last conversation but three, “if you do come out on Saturday, Barry, you could come to lunch. Bring Avon and Fiorella, if you like.”

    “Uh—yeah. Ta, Michaela. If you’re sure?” said Barry limply.

    “Yes. But it’ll be Sol’s baked beans. He puts sweet stuff in them, I’ve forgotten what it’s called again. Not everybody likes it.”

    “MOLASSES!” shouted Sol.

    It all sounded pretty weird to Barry Goode. But on Michaela’s assuring him it was yummy and sometimes Sol put a bit of meat in it, she’d forgotten what—“SALT PORK!”—he replied that they’d love to come. Reflecting somewhat guiltily that while Michaela was very even-tempered, she was just a bit hard to take, as part of normal life, wasn’t she? So maybe if he could put up with her and she could put up with him— They were hard to take in different ways. Uh—complementary ways? More or less, yeah.

    … “Thinks we’re a pair of crazies,” summed up Sol, as the Winkelmanns prepared for bed.

    “Most people do,” replied Michaela tranquilly,

    Sol gulped. “Uh—I guess," he said feebly.

    “Would Beth do for him?” she said dubiously.

    Sol grinned. “Wal, Mrs Matchmaker, what do you rackon?”

    “I know he’s got a degree and everything. And he is nice. Um… I don’t know. Hasn’t he sort of left all that behind him?

    “You mean education, or abstract thought?” he murmured.

    “Both, I think,” she said serenely.

    He'd set himself up for that one, sure ’nuff. “I think maybe you’re right, honey. And Beth isn’t—well, we could say old enough, or mature enough, it don’t matter—to see that that doesn’t necessarily count.”

    “Yes. I think she might be bored if she had to live with him,” she said seriously.

    Sol smiled. “Yeah.”

    Dr Davis had given in to the call of vulgar curiosity and turned up at Polly’s bloody engagement wing-ding for the Iceman and the unfortunate pink woman. Slightly influenced by the fact that Gretchen’s brother, Gerhard Sachs, having just arrived in the country, and Gretchen having chickened out, he had volunteered to escort her. He was an extremely handsome, very hetero blond man of around her own age. Divorced. Sammi Wolfe, to name only one, had already looked daggers at her. Heh, heh.

    It was a buffet dinner, so that people would be forced to circulate, quote unquote. Possibly this was a mistake. It had certainly allowed little Janet Wilson to escape to a corner with Mitsuko Takagaki and a fubsy-faced female whose name Jill couldn't recall five seconds after introductions. What Mitsuko was doing in that huddle Jill couldn’t for the life of her figure out: she’d been under the impression that the pretty little Japanese doll had nothing against the male half of the human race. She asked Gerhard for his expert opinion and he smoothly assured her that the male half of the human race had nothing against the little doll in question, either.

    On a purely technical level, it was, of course, all going very smoothly. Given that Polly could afford any help in the kitchen she wanted and in fact had hired Adrian Revill to do the catering. As for the emotional level… Well, the Iceman was being coolly gracious, meanwhile hanging onto his fiancée’s arm with a visible grip of steel. The pink woman was looking terrified and had not been heard to utter more than “Hullo” and “Thank you”. Her dress was pale blue and with her skin she could actually wear pale blue, but it was pretty disastrous all the same: gave the vague impression that it had been made for someone with much wider shoulders and much narrower hips. Her eyes were reddish.

    Her sister, Saskia, just arrived in the country, was looking tight-lipped and furious about—well, possibly not about the whole thing. It must at least ensure her sister’s material well-being. But on the other hand, possibly about the whole thing. Saskia was terrifyingly smart in a long, tight black velvet skirt topped by a beaded black blouse, and had so far managed within Jill’s and Gerhard’s hearing to say all the right things to five of Jake’s corporate mates, three visiting academic administrators, and two eminent academics. Not to the third, however: it had been Bill Michaels and on hearing which bank she worked for he had said with friendly interest: “Oh, yeah? They ever work out what went wrong that time that new system they were trialling issued all their invoices as credit notes?” Saskia had turned scarlet and made a sort of gobbling noise and Angie Michaels had dragged him away.

    Catherine’s daughter, Noelle, though somewhat over-awed by the Carrano mansion, was very visibly putting a bright face on it. While not managing to hide the fact that she could not stand Alan Kincaid. Her wet-looking boyfriend was looking miserable but given that someone had crammed him into a white tux for the evening that was hardly surprising.

    Gerhard was being terribly gentlemanly so Jill let him refill her champagne glass with Jake’s decent Bollinger and pointed out that Dorothy was sitting in a corner with her drippy semi-male Liaison Librarian and they needn’t join them, ta.

    It was about ten years since Gerhard had been in these parts. Nevertheless he said: “I think Putzi and I met her when we were out here on holiday, ja? It vas the day ve came up to see Polly, before ve went to Rotorua.”

    “Roto-wat,” corrected Jill kindly. She quite liked old Gerhard. He had a few brains and he was not a macho tit like some. Like most, this side of the Tropic of Capricorn.

    “Ja!” he said with a startled laugh. “You remember that, huh? –She found us a most interesting book on geology.”

    “Light holiday reading, mm. Well, she would, yes: she’s an excellent librarian. Or was.”

    “Now don’t go into a gloom, Jill: ve’re here to perve!” he said with a laugh.

    “Cor, an educated Hun,” said an interested voice.

    Reddening, Jill replied: “Take that back, Michaels, you sod.”

    “I only meant that he’s picked up the local vernacular pretty quick,” said Bill in an injured voice.

    “And the rest!” retorted Jill heatedly.

    “Hullo. I’m Bill Michaels,” said Bill to Gerhard.

    “Colleague. Engineering. This is Gretchen’s brother, Gerhard Sachs,” admitted Jill with a sigh.

    “Ve did meet, Bill, about ten years back. You let me look at your computer!” said Gerhard with his pleasant laugh.

    “Oh, yeah, I think I remember. You on holiday again?”

    “No, I’m here for a job interview at Sir G.G. Professor of Economics.”

    “Good luck, mate, if that’s what turns you on.”

    Gerhard shrugged a little. “Mid-life crisis, you know? Plus the usual: broken marriage, and so forth. Added to which I’m rather fed up with the European winters. And New Zealand is quite relevant to my field: agricultural economics.”

    Jill waited but to her annoyance Bill didn’t set himself up for a put-down by remarking on the pun: he merely poured hospitably from the bottle in his fist. “Good, isn’t it?” he said as they sipped.

    Gerhard nodded innocently but Jill warned: “Watch it. He doesn’t mean Jake’s fizz.”

    “Not altogether, no,” he admitted. “See that burly bloke with the curls and the pink satin bow-tie?” he said to Gerhardt.

    “The one vith the blue velvet smoking-jacket? Hard to miss him.”

    “Yeah, him. He’s the one that Dorothy fancies dead rotten, and is, or should I say was,” he said, eyeing Jill sideways, “reputed to reciprocate. He’s a Pom, just got back from— Eh? Oh! Sorry, Gerhard: vernacular,” he said, as Jill breathed fire and brimstone all over him. “English. Just got back from a trip back to Pong— All right! Britain!”

    “Vith bird?” asked Gerhard.

    “He’s not slow,” noted Bill approvingly. “The one with the black bird’s-nest on her head is his sister—forty if she’s a day,” he said, eyeing Posy Baranski in her skin-tight minute mini-skirt consideringly; “but the other one is certifiable bird—yep.”

    The other one was red-headed, very curvaceous, about five-ten, and in a green satin thing that was definitely an asset-underliner. “Who in God’s name is she?” sighed Jill.

    “She’s one of his new forestry fellows, believe me or believe me not. Several years’ experience in Indonesia. –Was it? Well, them parts, anyway. You can just see her in one of them safari outfits, eh?” he said, screwing up his eyes horribly. “Pockets over the ti—”

    “Shut—up,” said Jill clearly.

    “If Dorothy wanted him she shoulda grabbed him,” he said, shaking his head.

    Angie popped up at his elbow. “That’ll do.”

    The statement was not, however, made with quite the coldness one would have expected. Jill eyed her closely. It might just be the rum punch Polly had served: Angie was known for her partiality for Polly’s rum punch. On the other hand… “Good news?” she said cautiously.

    “She's sounding cautious ’cos if it's yer bloody kids producing bloody grandkids for yer, she doesn’t wanna know,” explained Bill tolerantly to his spouse.

    “Shut up! Honestly!” said Angie, going very red. “It isn’t. No, it’s the ESL job at Sir George Grey: I’ve got it!” she beamed.

    “Congrats, Angie,” said Jill, refraining with a huge effort from looking at Bill. Poor bugger. Mind you, after thirty years of having three hot meals a day put before his ruddy great maw he probably deserved to be left to fend for himself… Angie was explaining happily that they hadn’t worked out yet how they were going to manage it, but there was stacks of time, wasn’t there? Jill refrained from looking at Bill throughout. Well, after all he wasn’t entirely bad and she had known him most of her working life.

    “So vhat’s wrong?” murmured Gerhardt as Angie considerately dragged her husband away.

    “I dunno how much you remember of the geography of these parts, but—” Jill explained the distance between the lovely old Michaels villa in Narrowneck and the far side of Carter’s Inlet. Not to say the impossibility of traveling between them by public transport in less than half a day.

    “Oh, dear. That sounds very like me and Elsa, when she got that job in Brussels,” he said mildly.

    Jill shook in her medium-heeled best navy pumps. In spite of his casual reference to it, Gerhard’s marriage had busted up very painfully, with Elsa going off to Italy with an Italian Common-Marketeer she’d met when on the job in Brussels, taking the two little kids with her. Gerhard had eventually, after a very long fight in the courts of several countries, been awarded joint custody, but it was very difficult to attain joint custody when your children were living in Milan and you were living in Bonn.

    “Yes,” she said faintly.

    “Ve were younger, of course. I had the stupid idea that my so-called career mattered more than my marriage or my children.”

    Jill cast a horrified glance over her shoulder but fortunately the Iceman was too far distant to hear this heresy: he had now been absorbed into a group with Jake, Inoue and some corporate mates. He still had hold of the pink woman’s elbow, though. “Would you act differently, these days?” she said faintly.

    “Oh, ja. I think I would pack the job in and just take care of the house and the kids. Hind-sight, mm?” He shrugged.

    Jill looked at him with considerable liking. “Yes. Now, ya wanna meet some bird?”

    “No, no, my dear Jill, they are all young, stupid and boring! I would much rather stand here with you having an intelligent conversation!” he said with a laugh.

    “Semi-intelligent, given that I've been out here for— Never mind. Polly’s all right: brains as well as beauty.”

    “And S.A. I know: I remember her very well. And?”

    “Uh—well, Bill has got brains, though he manages to hide it fairly well. And he does read.”

    “I think I gathered both of those points, ja. Und?”

    “If these was other times, we could go over and have an intelligent chat to Dorothy.”

    “Gretchen wrote she had gone over to the other side: ja.”

    “Not quite,” said Jill, reddening in spite of herself. “Um… Blimey,” she muttered, looking round the room. “Half of them are Jake’s corporate mates, you see, and most of the rest are the Sir G.G lot: they’re either Admin types,” she said, looking hard at Sammi Wolfe being very bright and with-it to one of Jake’s dimmer corporate mates while less than two yards away Saskia Burchett was being likewise to a clone of the mate—God, they were competing!—“or something frightfully pragmatic like ESL or applied this, that and the other. Well, the ESL chap’s okay. Wanna meet him?”

    “Vhy not?

    They went over and talked peacefully to Leigh.

    Before the party Armand had given Simone the speech about her duty as an executive wife, and told her what to wear. This evening he’d told her to wipe off that lipstick, it made her look like a tart, and inexorably dragged her along. Deaf to her faint objections that she didn’t even know Sir Jake and Lady Carrano. He didn't either, of course, and he was observed to quail when, having negotiated the huge front gates and the long front drive efficiently, they emerged onto the huge gravel sweep and saw the size of the giant modern mansion. Naturally he didn't admit for a second he was nervous as she was; he merely ordered her grimly to get out of the car, and to be sure to smile when she was introduced. And to speak English at all times.

    “This is vairy delicious,” she ventured timidly as Armand engulfed roast beef, scowling.

    He swallowed hurriedly. “Ne dis pas ‘vairy delicious,’ ‘vairy’ ne qualifie nullement le mot ‘delicious’, lequel—” He broke off abruptly as the skinny fawn-headed woman in the boring navy-blue dress helping herself to pork at his other elbow said to her companion: “Mais le porc est très délicieux, tu trouves pas?” and the companion collapsed in sniggers.

    Simone gave a crow of laughter which she tried unavailingly to turn into a cough.

    “Salut,” said the fawn-headed women round Armand. “T’es Simone, n’est-ce pas?” Rapidly she introduced herself and her escort. Armand acknowledged the introductions coldly and on Jill’s cosily introducing the topic of nannies, escaped to the company of Saskia Burchett and a fat man whom Simone knew she ought to remember, she'd met him at another horrible do. He was something important from the other university.

    “We can stop talking about nannies now, if you like,” said Jill cheerfully, still in French.

    “Yes! I mean, I can’t afford a nanny!” gasped Simone.

    “I didn’t think you could. In fact I don’t know anybody but Polly who can. –There is a nanny school quite near here, in Pohutukawa Bay, but their graduates all go overseas and get jobs in America or Britain.”

    “I know of one who’s got a job in Germany,” said Gerhard mildly.

    “Et voilà!” returned Jill with a horribly Gallic shrug.

    Although her French was very idiomatic and the accent was very good for an English person, nevertheless there was a definite accent and for some strange reason Simone found she had collapsed in an awful fit of the giggles. Somehow it didn't seem to matter, for this nice Jill just grinned at her and helped her to some gravy. Simone politely didn’t say she didn’t care for English sauces. The good-looking Gerhard then kindly found them some chairs: ooh, wonderful! Simone sat down with a sigh. “I feel as if I've been standing for hours,” she confessed.

    “You have. Well, you were standing when I got here, and that was over two hours ago,” said Jill.

    “Yes, and I certainly haven’t noticed you sitting down since!” agreed Gerhard.

    Simone found she was giggling again.

    … “This is Kim. Kim Foster the Forester,” explained Thomas with a horrible leer, backing Leigh hard up against the table on which the vegetable dishes were laid out.

    Hypocritically Leigh expressed his pleasure at meeting Kim and at the news she would be joining them at Sir G.G.—after all, none of it was her fault, poor girl. And asked her if she’d like some vegetables.

    “Real food,” explained Thomas, elbowing her aside. He inspected the contents of a covered dish. “Ah!” Greedily he helped himself.

    “What are they?” said Dr Foster faintly.

    “Look like anaemic pricks, don’t they?” he said happily. “Uncircumcised ones, of course.”

    “Ignore him, Kim, that’s one of his favourite lines,” said Leigh as the poor girl choked slightly and tried not to meet anyone’s eye. “Chicory. I think they call them something else out here. I advise against them—horribly bitter.”

    “Sh’poszhe uh be,” said Thomas thickly through one.

    Hurriedly Leigh offered Kim some dear little potatoes, he thought they might have been shaped like that and done in butter, he’d only ever had them once like that—

    “Tour d’Ar’ent," said Thomas thickly through one. “Clashic. Nobbad.”

    “Rubbish, I’ve never been to the Tour d’Argent in my life,” said Leigh mildly. “I had them at a very obscure little restaurant in Beaune, as I was making my fuddled way round the vineyards on a wine-tasting tour,” he said to Kim.

    “I see,” she said politely. “No, I won’t, thanks, I’m trying to avoid fried food.”

    “These aren’t fried, woman!” said Thomas loudly.

    “Of course they are: fried in butter, the worst sort of cholesterol. There’s some nice carrots here, Kim,” offered Leigh.

    Politely Kim took a very small helping of beautifully turned carrots.

    “Done with honey and a squeeze of lemon juice, but basically in butter,” explained Thomas.

    “Don’t you find these foodie types a dead bore, Kim?” said Leigh with a twinkle.

    “Um—not really!” she gasped.

    Oops. Poor, poor girl. In spite of those really quite stunning looks, it was very clear that Thomas was about to chew her up and spit her out. Spit her out good an’ proper. Though he knew it was cowardly, Leigh simply chickened out. He took his plate and went off to sit beside Posy Baranski. Thomas hadn't bothered to introduce her to a soul, of course.

    “He’s victimising that poor stupid girl,” she said grimly.

    “Yes. About to chew her up into very small pieces and spit them out. Just like Caroline. Remember her?”

    Posy wrinkled her brow. “Did she have red hair, too?”

    “No. Brown and glossy. Sloane Ranger type.”

    “Oh, yes! Yes, he was bloody to her. Well, he only took up with her because that frightful Martin Chester bet him five hundred quid he’d never make it to first base with her.”

    “I can well believe it,” said Leigh grimly. “Got enough nosh, there, have you, Posy?”

    “Yes: stacks, thanks,” said Posy, grinning her urchin grin. She ate pork with apple sauce hungrily and said: “I’m starving. I suppose I’ve been off my nosh, a bit. And Thomas was bloody unbearable on the flight out.”

    “Makes you wish you’d never agreed to come with him, doesn’t he?”

    She gave a startled laugh. “Yes!”

    Leigh ate hungrily but after a while ventured: “Has he mentioned Dorothy?”

    “No,” she said blankly. “Is that another one?”

    “No. Very much not,” said Leigh with a sigh. “God, I’d suppose I'd better tell you before you put your foot in it. –Hang on, I think it rates a glass of something. Fizz?”

    “Yummy; please!”

    She always had said that, when she was in a good mood. Which she generally had been, for as long as Leigh had known her: one of the bouncers-back of this world, was Posy Baranski. Well, let’s hope she’d bounce back from this little lot. Leigh went off in search of fizz, unaware that he was frowning a little. There were dark shadows under her eyes and, though she had always been slim, and was quite a little person, she was very, very thin. Though recognising he was being alarmist, he made a mental note to keep an eye out in case she ate like a horse and then dashed off to the loo. Bulimia they did not need.

    Posy did not have bulimia: she was merely suffering the after-effects of one abortion too many, far too many late nights and a full half-dozen futile affairs with men young enough to be her sons. And more generally she was suffering from being forty-two and unmarried in a society which still treated you as some sort of outcast if you were female and hadn’t been through at least one marriage by that age. Or more accurately, by the age of thirty. Unfortunately Posy had neither the brains nor the application—nor, indeed, the inclination—to take up a career which would be interesting enough for the rest not to matter. She was by nature a dabbler and had dabbled in countless professions, generally of the semi-literary or semi-artistic variety, without making much of a success of any of them. On her passport she called herself an actress but apart from a series of successful commercials for a floor cleaner about fourteen years back she hadn’t been in anything except a couple of comedy series, where she’d played such parts as Rowdy’s Girlfriend and Second Girl At Party. She had had great hopes a couple of years ago of a rôle as Crazee Carrot in a children’s serial but the new, thinner-look, accountable Beeb had canned it. Funny vegetables were old hat, it appeared.

    She was quite happy to be in New Zealand with Thomas, even though he was being bloody, and looking forward in a vague, unplanned way to doing something a bit different out here. At this specific moment she was mildly glad to see Leigh again—he was quite a decent old stick-in-the-mud—and very pleased indeed to find herself moving in what were clearly the best local circles. Most of the men were wearing dinner jackets, Sir Jake was very definitely wearing a dinner jacket, with a real gardenia in his buttonhole, his wife was beautifully dressed, the house was wonderful and in short, it was a lifestyle to which Posy Baranski had aspired for most of her forty-two years. So far she hadn’t been introduced to anyone who seemed likely to offer a permanent helping of it to her, but Posy was, as Leigh had recognised, the eternal optimist. The fuss over the last abortion was probably about as close to a real crisis as one of her temperament could ever come. She had been a bit anaemic, she had left it until almost the last moment, she had really thought that Danny would leave his cow of a wife and marry her… Posy always thought this about her men in spite of always being proven wrong. Bingo, the friend who had contacted Thomas, had been the one who had panicked: Posy had merely retired to bed for a fortnight—incidentally causing her employers to sack her, since she hadn’t bothered to call in sick.

    Once Thomas got there he had seen quite clearly that Bingo’s panic had been on account of he was scared shitless at the idea of ending up being responsible for Posy. He was about ten or twelve years younger than she, and it was the sort of relationship in which each fell back on the other when there was nothing more interesting in the offing. Bingo clearly hadn’t felt like being fallen back on permanently, after a fortnight of doing Posy’s shopping and trying to cheer Posy up. Thomas didn’t doubt his story that she’d had terrible crying jags: she always did, when she busted up with someone. Nor that she’d tried to overdose on paracetamol tablets—it hadn’t worked, she’d only had about eight or so, and she’d thrown them up. But when he got there she was sitting up in bed eating chocolates and watching an afternoon soapie.

    If asked, Thomas would have claimed that not interfering in other people’s lives was one of his firmest principles. Somehow he didn’t think of this at the sight of Posy, very thin and pale, eating chocolates in bed. He’d said grimly: “I gather you’ve been making a pest of yourself. If you’ve got a current passport you can pack your junk and come out to New Zealand with me. But I’m not sending you any more cheques: it doesn’t seem to work.”

    Naturally Posy had thrown her arms round him and accepted rapturously. Without thinking twice about it. Or even once.

    … Gavin Wiley, as Alan had not failed to remark, had been leering at Catherine all night, more or less. He had seized the opportunity of Alan’s attention’s being distracted by one of the executives from the Carrano Group to take her into a corner in order to concentrate on it. There was very little Alan could do about this, unfortunately, as Gavin was the Vice-Chancellor of Auckland University. The sole consolation was that Catherine was merely looking blank. Well, somewhat on the desperate side of blank, true. Alan continued to chat graciously, but underneath he seethed. Why didn’t she simply walk away from the creep? Well—no: too much to ask. Hell.

    … “Who’s the little Jap?” asked Posy in an idle tone.

    “Er—the pretty little girl in the pink?” replied Leigh.

    “No, silly,” she said tolerantly. “The little man with Sir Jake.”

    “Oh. Er—an Executive Director of the Sir George Grey Enterprise Corporation that set up the university and a member of the Board of Management that—um—runs the university, Posy,” said Leigh limply. Posy was not bad-looking, she had a nice little figure, and of course her family background was respectable; but good grief, surely she couldn’t imagine she was in Inoue Takagaki’s league? This evening, for instance, she was honouring the Carranos’ party with a hairdo that would scarcely have been suitable on a girl of eighteen: mad curved spikes. Quills upon the fretful porpentine, quite. It was accompanied by a small black dress. It was so short that it was barely decent when she sat, and was sleeveless and featured a strange arrangement of straps across the back and strange cut-out shapes over the bosom. It might have started off unadorned, though Leigh had his doots. Certainly as worn by Posy Baranski it featured four-inch-long silver spangles dangling from it here and there. One skinny wrist featured a great tangle of silver chains and baubles. The ears featured large—really large—silver stars, rather irregular in shape and in fact… Not galactic: starfish, decided Leigh with a satisfied sigh as it suddenly came to him.

    “What?” said Posy.

    “Nothing. Um—are those the earrings that Thomas got you in Spain that time?”

    “When he couldn’t get you there from Gibraltar?” said Posy with that urchin grin. “Yes, they are. Don’t change the subject. Tell me more,”—she rolled her eyes—“about the little Jap.”

    Leigh could have told her that Inoue wasn’t the type that fancied fortyish skinny ladies dressed up as eighteen-year-old tootsies. He refrained, and did his best to tell her what she wanted to know, unaware that he was using his tolerantly-kind-to-particularly-dim-student voice.

    … Jill had fled to the kitchen, where Adrian Revill and his helpers very kindly plied her with coffee and asked her if it was really that bad.

    “It depends on your definition of bad,” she admitted. “Our hostess is miffed because none of the plots she apparently had for tonight have come to fruition. –Don't ask,” she sighed. “Our host is miffed because she’s just bitten his ear off. Kincaid has been steadily getting more and more icily miffed all evening because our respected Vice-Chancellor’s been leering down Catherine Burchett’s bosom all evening. And now two of Jake’s corporate mates and that clot, Bob, our University Librarian, have joined him in a sort of dim cloud of vaguely testosterone-inspired vague lechery—the ‘would-if-they-dared-if-they-could’ type; and they are facing Catherine in a semi-circle,” she said with precision—Adrian spluttered—“and are all leering down her bosom.”

    Adrian and the boys collapsed in sniggers. Anna smiled weakly and offered Jill more coffee.

    Jill refused, noting that she was going to find her escort and leave, never mind if the thing wasn't officially over yet. The young people nodded and smiled uncertainly, so she tottered off and left them in peace. Young, that’s what they were: young.

    … “Wouldn’t say it was an entire disaster,” rumbled Sir Jacob as the Carranos prepared for bed, much, much later that night.

    “Shut up,” she warned.

    He scratched his chin. “Kincaid was peeved, with Wiley and those other twats drooling over Catherine’s tits all evening. So what, up to him to go and tell ’em to shove off, if he didn’t like it. Uh—can’t see what else went wrong. Well, Leigh Gore never so much as glanced at wee Janet, but ya knew that was never gonna work, it was all in ya head, love. Can’t see what else ya so steamed up about.”

    “Shut up, Jake!”

    “Pity Perkins had to drag that blonde bit along: never mind, dare say he wouldn't do for Beth. –That hair of hers is lovely, isn’t it? Mind you, he’s twice her age, and bloody Yankified with it. She’s a pretty typical Kiwi girl, ya know. Well, Christchurch type. Anything else go wrong? Oh, yeah: Baranski’s got a new bird, eh?”

    “Shut up!” screamed Polly.

    Sir Jacob shrugged, and desisted, for the nonce.

    The endemic New Zealand rains continued, as spring approached all too slowly. Possibly it was only Dorothy’s imagination, but things seemed to be going from bad to worse.

    “I sent Inoue a sympathy card. Dunno if it’s the right thing to do,” she admitted over the coffee cups in The Primrose Café in Puriri.

    Polly sighed. “Inoue will accept it in the spirit in which it was meant. He does understand things like cultural assumptions. We’re going to the funeral,” she added gloomily. “Flying out tonight. It’ll be just like that film. Jake’s looking forward to it tremendously.”

    “I see!”

    “Um, no, well, that is a bit of an exaggeration,” admitted Polly guiltily. “He was very fond of Masako. Well, we both were: I’ll really miss her. But you know what he is. Gregarious is his middle name. –Pope Jacob Gregarious,” she elaborated sourly.

    Dorothy choked slightly, but conceded: “Yeah.” She then tasted The Primrose Café’s carrot cake, which Charlene had advised earnestly was one of Mrs Blake’s: she, like, mixed in the icing sugar with the cream cheese for the topping, y’know? “Ooh! Yum! Is June Blake doing this for pocket money or to get her freedom from old Cyril?”

    “We hope. No, well,” said Polly, her eyes twinkling, “she’s decided that she’s going on an overseas trip—probably Canada with Betty Fergusson next time she goes to visit her grandchildren—and Cyril and the bloody Tennis Club and their bloody everlasting Saturday lunches can get choked. Though she did put it more nicely!” she added with a smothered laugh.

    Dorothy grinned. “Good on her. –Ya know, I’ve come to the conclusion that male hormones are weak,” she said thoughtfully, eating June’s marvellous cake.

    Polly goggled. “It’s taken ya how many years?”

    “No, well, some of us are slow!” she admitted with a laugh. “But honestly, Polly: how many of them lapse into some sort of vegetative state at— I was gonna say at fifty-odd, but actually, almost directly after marriage, and look forward to nothing but—”

    “Superannuation and death,” finished Lady Carrano serenely. “Ninety-nine point nine percent. If you find one that hasn’t, I’d advise you to hang onto him.”

    Dorothy was rather red. She protested feebly: “I was gonna say, electric lawnmowers and new Mitsubishis.”

    “Superannuation and death,” repeated Lady Carrano firmly.

    “You’re right.” Dorothy sipped cappuccino froth from her spoon. “Maybe it is hormonal. Um—they expend the drive very early and then—uh—nothing?”

    “I’ve always thought so,” she said serenely.

    Polly was not, in spite of the looks and the charm, a particularly demonstrative person, but as she took her leave of Dorothy in the carpark behind the supermarkets she kissed her cheek. Dorothy could only conclude that it was on account of Thomas and his female forester, the bugger. But being Polly, she wasn’t mentioning it unless she, Dorothy did. She also concluded that Polly was a lot more upset by Masako Takagaki’s death than she claimed to be. Added to which, surely her fortieth birthday was in sight? Dorothy did sums on her fingers as she waited for the lights at the bottom of Sir John Marshall Av’. Yes, well: intimations of mortality all round.

    She was about ten K north of Kowhai Bay on the highway before she remembered that she’d intended to take the new motorway. Old habits sure died hard. Oh, well: too ruddy bad, she wasn’t on a flaming hourly wage. And in any case it was highly likely that Alan would no longer be at work by the time she got back: he was due to fly out to Masako Takagaki’s funeral tonight, too.

    “What do you mean, he’s gone to Japan?” gasped Jenny Fermour.

    Catherine blew her nose. “Only for a few days. For a funeral. But he said he’d take the chance to—um—you know. Thingies.”

    Ignoring this last, Jenny protested: “But he promised he’d come with us up to Whangarei tomorrow!”

    Tomorrow was Saturday, and this was perfectly true: they had planned to leave Dicky in Gerry’s charge (in other words, glued to the TV with the Fermours’ three while Gerry got on with his normal jobs) and drive slowly north to Whangarei via any passing antique-cum-junk shops, scour Whangarei’s antique-cum-junk shops, and return declaredly in time for tea. Jenny had secretly been hoping that Dr Kincaid would shout them to a decent meal in Whangarei.

    “Yes,” said Catherine, blowing her nose again. “I know. But he said he couldn’t neglect—um—a courtesy, I think. He meant he had to go to the funeral.”

    “Whose funeral, for Heaven’s sake?”

    Catherine explained. As she had never mentioned Inoue Takagaki before, it took some time. “Alan says he's the person he works most closely with at his own level,” she finished.

    “He would!” said Jenny unguardedly.

    “Yes,” she said, blowing her nose again. “But I think he really likes him.”

    “Why don’t you have him round to tea, then?” asked Jenny cautiously. “You had Dorothy and that nice Englishman, didn't you? You managed that all right!” she encouraged her.

    “I couldn't cook for a Japanese man, don't be silly. And Alan says he’s very cultured,” she revealed gloomily.

    “Yikes,” agreed Jenny.

    “Mm.” Catherine sniffed, but put her hanky in her apron pocket.

    Jenny had been standing, not realising it was a dominant position or that she had been putting Catherine in the position of interrogatee and herself in that of interrogator. She now sighed, and sat down at the kitchen table. “What’s up? Did you have a row about it?”

    “Not exactly. He was wild because I haven’t got a passport.”

    “Help! Did he want you to go to Japan with him?” she gasped.

    Catherine nodded glumly.

    “I’d go!”

    “Yes, but that’s the point: they won’t let you unless you’ve got a passport.”

    “Yeah. And a visa, I suppose.”

    Catherine nodded vaguely. “Now he says I have to get one. And I don’t know how.”

    “Did he call you a hen again?” asked Jenny cautiously.

    “No. He just said that anyone can do it. People do it every day.”

    “Ye-es… When Mum and Dad went on their trip, I think they asked their travel agent, and he told them what to do. I think you have to—um—produce your ticket, or something. You know, when you apply.”

    “I haven’t got a ticket. Alan said that we muh-might have to guh-go on shuh-short notice, it was—um—some word like epidemic.”

    Jenny looked at her limply.

    “I’ve read it in a book only I never heard anyone say it before. I think he meant it was the nature of the beast,” said Catherine with a limp smile. “You know: the job calls for it.”

    “Yes, well, he quite often dashes off, doesn’t he? Interviewing and stuff. Um… Look, I could give Mum and Dad a ring. They’ll be able to start you off right, anyway.”

    Catherine nodded obediently and Jenny rang her mum. According to her it was quite easy and why didn’t she bring Catherine over to afternoon tea tomorrow, dear, since they weren’t going looking for antiques after all, and they could all have a nice chat. Jenny was aware that Mum was dying to get the low-down on Catherine’s relationship with Alan from the horse’s mouth but what the heck. They'd get a decent afternoon tea, and Dad was always complaining that he didn’t see enough of the boys. And if Gerry wanted to stay home and fix the roof of his blimming milking shed, let him. He’d miss out on Mum’s ginger cake, that was all! She duly relayed the invitation to Catherine, and Catherine accepted meekly.

    And Jenny went off home, since the boys were due home from school, feeling quite pleased with herself in spite of the trip to Whangarei’s being cancelled, in blissful ignorance of the facts (a) that Catherine was terrified of her mum, (b) that Mum was about to reveal that of course the passport office place was in town, dear, and (c) that Catherine did not have the wherewithal to get herself into town. Alan had been so annoyed by her not possessing a passport and the subsequent bout of bawling that he had completely forgotten to check whether she had enough money in her purse to get by until he came back from Japan.

    Of course, Catherine’s and Dicky’s needs were few and she usually had a plentiful stock of such standbys as lentils and dried beans in her cupboards, and they could have got by quite comfortably until Alan came back, under normal circumstances. There was plenty of flour and fortunately a jar of dried yeast from the last time she’d made bread, so when the sliced stuff from the Puriri supermarkets ran out Catherine just made some. Dicky was used to having school lunches that didn’t always look like everyone else’s and in any case he was quite an independent-minded little boy, so he raised no objection at having to eat something that looked quite different from what was being consumed by his peer group. But most unfortunately this was the week that the school sent home one of its dreaded notices.

    “Ten dollars!” gasped Catherine in horror.

    “It’s for a trip, Mum.”

    “Yes. When?”

    Breathing hard, Dicky pointed to it with a grimy finger. “Mr Pyke, he says—”

    Catherine didn’t really listen. She looked numbly at the date on the note. Today was Tuesday. The trip was on Thursday. This Thursday. “Dicky,” she said in a trembling voice: “do you have to go?”

    Dicky turned bright puce. “YES! It's to the ice cream factory, an’ Mr Pyke, he says—”

    Catherine could see that it would be highly unfair to make him miss out on a school trip that was actually to somewhere he wanted to go, instead of the Museum. Mr Pyke’s last effort, not a success: Shane Tamehana and Paul Field had disgraced themselves and the school by Shouting in the war memorial gallery and having to be spoken to by the Man, and Shannon Biddle, Betty Harris and Anne-Louise Gautier had disgraced themselves and the school by getting lost on the way to, or possibly from, the Museum’s ladies’ toilets and having to be hunted down and retrieved by the joint efforts of not only Miss Carpenter, Mrs Vasanji and Miss Bright, but also the Man. Added to which there had been some highly undesirable yodelling in the Maori Meeting House. And Dicky had reported sourly that the Egyptian mummy was “mingy.”

    “Ten dollars seems an awful lot,” she said faintly.

    “No! ’Cos see, there’s the bus, and we gotta have lunch, an’ Mr Pyke, he says we can all go to McDonald’s! The big one!”

    “Ye-es… Where is this ice cream factory?”

    Of course Dicky didn’t know. But he did report that Mr Pyke, he said they hadda go over the Harbour Bridge. Catherine gulped. It cost over fifteen dollars to go all the way in to town on the bus, unless you were a pensioner or a child. And even for a child it was about seven dollars. One way. Undoubtedly Mr Pyke would hire a whole bus, but even so, no wonder he wanted ten dollars from each child.

    “I haven’t got any money,” she said faintly.

    “Yes, you have, Mum!” Dicky ran and fetched her purse and emptied the contents onto the done-up kitchen table’s shiny polyurethane. It was all in small change. Almost four dollars. Definitely four dollars if that discoloured bent thing that Dicky claimed was a five-cent piece, actually was.

    Helpfully Dicky, no doubt recalling the incident of Alan’s fifty-dollar note, searched along the kitchen windowsill. One pot of chives which were coming on astoundingly well, considering it was only the end of August, one jam jar full of flowering weeds donated by little Harry Fermour, two old buttons, a knife handle, Catherine’s ten-trip Puriri bus ticket with one trip left on it, several shells, a key, a small piece of driftwood, a charmingly rustic pottery lidded jar bought by Alan at Galerie 2 in Kingfisher Bay containing nothing, a shopping list, an out-of-date notice from the Puriri Library about a Poetry Reading session, carefully weighed down by a small multicoloured stone, a saucer containing three marbles which Dicky reclaimed with an aggrieved cry, and King Peng-Cat. Dicky removed him and looked under him but he wasn’t sitting on anything.

    “Um… You could borrow from Mrs Fermour, Mum!”

    Catherine turned puce. “I could not! They’re not made of money!”

    “No, but Alan can pay her back!” he urged.

    “Um… How many classes are going?”

    Dicky plunged into involved explanation, but Catherine eventually worked out that the two elder Fermour boys would be going. Help: twenty dollars to shell out just like that: poor Jenny! “No,” she said firmly as Dicky again urged the idea of a loan.

    “I’ll ring up Noelle!” he declared fiercely, the lower lip protruding horribly.

    “All right,” said Catherine faintly.

    Dicky rushed into the passage and rang Noelle. There was no answer and, realising she must be at work, he rang there. Catherine merely looked on limply as Dicky had a capable conversation with Noelle’s friend Sharon on the switchboard, ascertained that this was the week that Noelle and Krish had gone down the mountain with Kirsty and Bri, and rang off.

    “I’d forgotten it was this week,” said Catherine faintly.

    “So had I,” agreed Dicky fairly.

    They looked at each other limply.

    “I know! I’ll look in Alan’s study!” He rushed in before Catherine could stop him.  She followed slowly. Alan had not made much progress with turning his old bedroom into a study. True, there was a desk in there, and the bed, her old single, had been pushed right back against the wall. And there was a computer on the desk. But Alan had declared that it wasn’t an ergonomic workstation and that he wanted a decent desk. It had taken some time to sort this statement out but she had eventually gathered that he was going to put the computer on the ergo-thingy, and buy an antique desk for writing at. The cancelled trip to Whangarei had been the first step in acquiring one. The current desk was a horrible pale grey plastic-looking thing, brand new.

    Dicky tugged at the drawers unavailingly, gradually turning puce. “It’s locked!” he gasped.

    “It would be. But I don’t think he keeps money in it, Dicky. ’Member what he said about keeping money in the house that time Saskia sent you all that funny foreign money?”

    “Um—yeah,” he said vaguely. “What about in here?” He investigated the horrible pale grey metal filing-cabinet. The bottom drawer held an enormous book. The middle and top drawers were locked. Dicky investigated the book. “This is a funny book.”

    “It's a dictionary. Don’t try to lift it out, Dicky, it looks horribly heavy.”

    Panting and straining, Dicky lifted it out forthwith. “Easy!” he gasped. He investigated further. “It’s not a dictionary, Mum!”

    “Of course it is.”

    “’Tis not! It hasn’t got real words!”

    “Oh. It’s a Latin dictionary.”

    “It’s not like your French dictionary," he said dubiously.

    “Um—what I mean is, it’s all in Latin,” said Catherine very limply indeed.

    “Then it can’t be a dictionary.” Dicky began flipping energetically through the pages. “Scott Fermour, he saw this ace program on TV, see—” It emerged that Scott had seen a thing in which some money had been hidden in a book and the detectives had gone through all the books…

    “No. Alan would have ten thousand fits. And only stupid people hide money in books,” said Catherine, very firmly indeed. “Come out.”

    They retreated to the kitchen.

    “Dicky, would Mr Pyke wait until Alan gets back for the money?”

    “No! He said everyone had to bring it tomorrow without fail!”

    “Mm.” Catherine got out her hanky and sneakily wiped her eyes. “The bus company will want the money straight away, I suppose.”

    “Yeah. An’ McDonald’s.” Dicky eyed her uneasily.

    “I don’t know what to do,” said Catherine dolefully.

    A horrible scowl came over Dicky’s thin, freckled countenance. “I’m gonna ring Alan’s lady.”

    “No!” gasped Catherine in horror.

    “Yeah. He said we hadda, any time anything went wrong.”

    “But we don’t even know her!”

    “Yes, we do, Mum!”

    “I’ve never even set eyes on her.”

    “I have. You know that time they had the teachers’ strike and you hadda go to the dentist and Mrs Fermour, she had the flu, and Mrs Tamehana, she was staying with her sister?”

    Catherine looked at him limply.

    “You remember, Mum! Me and Alan went to work,” he said importantly.

    “Yes, but—”

    “An’ his lady, she gimme a desk to do work at and everything, and at lunchtime, Alan, he had a meeting, and she got me a real bought lunch! A pie, and everything! And a thing has gone wrong.” He marched out.

    Catherine rushed after him, but too late, Dicky was dialling.

    “Hullo, this is Dicky Burchett,” he said firmly. Catherine watched in horror while the phone quacked at him.

    “Yeah, Alan, he’s gone to Japan,” he agreed. “–It’s the old lady!” he hissed at Catherine. “The one when ya go in! –Nah,” he said to the phone. “I just wanna speak to Alan’s lady.”

    “Ms Coffi,” corrected Catherine, very faintly.

    “Yeah, I couldn’t remember if it was Coffee or Tea,” he agreed pleasedly. “She’s putting me through. She showed me that, it’s ace. She’s got all these, like, buttons, ya see— Hullo, this is Dicky Burchett,” he said. “Did she? Yeah. …Not really. …Yeah, I know. Alan said we hadda ring you up— No, she’s good. …Nah, the electricity hasn’t gone bang!” he choked, evidently finding the suggestion a terrifically witty sally on Ms Coffi’s part. “Only we need ten dollars.” Evidently Ms Coffi then interrogated him narrowly, because he turned puce and shouted: “I am not! She does know!”

    “Maybe I’d better speak to her, Dicky.”

    “No, I’m dealing with it,” he said crossly.

    He sounded just like Alan. Catherine gulped.

    “It’s for a school trip. Alan, he never gave Mum any money. She doesn’t do work now,” he explained. “–She says she reckons he must of forgot,” he reported to Catherine. “Yeah, he must of, eh?” he said to the phone. “Um… dunno. Um, I could walk, it's not that far. …Can ya? Ooh, good! …Yeah, it’s raining here, too. Um… dunno. Pretty muddy, I s’pose.”

    “Dicky, does she want to know if—”

    But Dicky was ringing off. “See ya!” He hung up. “She’s gonna come round in her car and give us some money. And she says that her mum, well, she’s like sick, her legs don’t work, only Mrs Gordon, she lives next-door, she can give her her tea, ’cos it just has to go in the oven, and she’ll take us to The Tavern!” He beamed at her.

    “Dicky, we’ve got plenty to eat," said Catherine faintly.

    “Only beans and stuff, though. Can we?”

    “No, I don’t think Alan would like us to, Dicky.”

    “He would! This is an emergency!” he shouted.

    “Yes. Don’t shout.” Catherine sat down. “You dealt with it really well, Dicky.”

    “Did I?” he said, looking astounded.

    “Yes. Alan would be proud of you,” said Catherine with a sinking feeling in her tummy as she contemplated Alan’s probable reaction to her own inefficiency. Even if there was any hope of persuading Ms Coffi not to tell him, it would be impossible to stop Dicky.

    “So can we go to The Tavern?”

    “The thing is, it costs quite a lot of money.”

    “Yeah, but Alan’s lady, she’s got lots of money. She buys her lunch every day!”

    “Dicky, that’s the money that she earns. You know: he pays her to do work for him.”

    “I know!” he said scornfully.

    “Well, don't you see? It isn’t fair to ask her to spend her hard-earned money on feeding us.”

    Dicky thought about it. “We never asked her,” he pointed out.

    Catherine gave up. Maybe she could just say that it was very kind of Ms Coffi but they couldn’t possibly accept: she knew she had very good manners, Alan had said so; so maybe she wouldn’t argue.

    … “It’s very kind of you. We only need ten dollars,” she said faintly as the tall, incredibly beautiful Black woman urged a handful of notes on her. Why hadn't Alan told her she was Black? She couldn’t be a Maori, those weren’t Polynesian features: she looked more… Ethiopian?

    “She’s got a great car!” reported Dicky, jumping slightly.

    “Yes. ‘Ms Coffi’, not ‘she’,” said Catherine faintly.

    “Please, Mrs Burchett. I’m sure Dr Kincaid would say I mustn’t leave you with nothing.”

    “We have got four dollars,” reported Dicky honestly.

    “Then you must take it.”

    “No, it’s far too much. We’ve got plenty of bread and stuff. It’s just that the school needs ten dollars for the trip,” said Catherine faintly.

    Ms Coffi insisted, in the nicest possible way. Catherine objected she couldn’t possibly; what if Ms Coffi needed to pay for petrol?

    “She can get money from her work, Mum,” explained Dicky.

    Ms Coffi’s perfect, chiselled mouth twitched just a little and the very dark, slightly slanted eyes twinkled. “Yes. And from the hole in the wall.”

    “Alan gets money from the one in Puriri!” put in Dicky eagerly.

    “Yes, so do I,” she said tranquilly. “And most of the petrol stations take plastic money, don’t they?” she said to Catherine, smiling.

    “Um—ye-es… Alan often pays with his credit card.”

    “Of course. So, you see: there’s no problem!”

    Limply Catherine accepted two hundred dollars from Ms Coffi.

    After that Ms Coffi had no trouble whatsoever in whisking the pair of them off to Puriri to have tea at The Tavern. After an enormous meal of chips and schnitzels, she arranged competently to collect Catherine during her lunch hour the following day to go shopping, drove them competently home again, refused a cup of tea—explaining very nicely that her mother worried if she was too late—and drove off, with a toot of her horn.

    Catherine felt so weak that she let Dicky go to bed unwashed and herself crawled into bed the instant she’d switched his light out.

    Dorothy having hospitably passed her guests the chips and the red plonk and white plonk, a relatively peaceful interval ensued in which she, the Kowhai Bay housemates, and Leigh Gore all munched and drank. Judging thee former were sufficiently fortified, she then retailed the latest.

    “What?” croaked Jill.

    “Effen she did not think the Iceman would be neglecting the pink woman already,” explained Gretchen kindly.

    “You’re not wrong,” Jill admitted, grimacing.

    “One has to admit,” decided Gretchen solemnly, “that only a very silly woman would haff omitted to say that she did not haff any money before her provider vanished into the vild blue yonder.”

    Leigh nodded, but said: “But don’t you admit, Gretchen, that not asking the poor woman whether she needed anything before he took off was a bit on the nose?”

    “I might, but the expression ‘the poor woman’ iss prejudicing your argument,” she said detachedly.

    Leigh collapsed in delighted splutters, nodding helplessly.

    Jill then discovered aggrievedly that Gretchen had eaten the last scallop.

    “There is some tinned corned beef,” offered Dorothy hospitably. “Swadlings’ don’t stock Spam.”

    Jill gave a startled shudder. “Ugh! Uh—no, thanks, Dorothy. –God, I haven’t had Spam since I was an impoverished student in digs in Cambridge. Back when,” she noted darkly, “the Iceman was merely cold-shouldering the odd unfortunate groupie like poor old Wendy Briggs. Not proposing to actually marry one.”

    “Have some more chips,” said Dorothy kindly.

    Jill took some chips and gave in to Leigh’s urging to tell all.

    “Good God,” he said limply at the end of the Wendy Briggs-Alan Kincaid horror story.

    “Next time you’re cosying up to the bloody man hoping to cozen another junior lecturer’s salary or some such out of him, remember that,” advised Dorothy drily.

    “I don’t think I’ll be able to forget it,” he admitted frankly.

    Hospitably Dorothy refilled his glass with red plonk. “Hard to,” she agreed.

    … “Where the Hell was Jack tonight?” demanded Jill. As his hire-car was in dock, they were giving Leigh a lift down to The Blue Heron. Jill was driving—it was her heap, they wouldn’t have had room for him in Gretchen’s up-market sardine-tin.

    “Ja: ve expected to see him. Ve vere going to settle a bet related to the roots off his silver hairdo,” explained Gretchen muzzily from the back seat.

    “Shut up. –Where, Leigh?”

    “With his girlfriend, I presume. Angela,” said Leigh on an apologetic note. “Dorothy doesn’t dislike her, but I think she was hoping Jack and Beth might get together.”

    “This explains vhy she iss in such a foul mood,” discerned Gretchen.

    “That and bloody Thomas and his female forester,” said Leigh with a sigh.

    “We were tactfully not mentioning that,” explained Jill.

    “You can say what you like to me; I’m thoroughly fed up with him, stupid wanker!”

    “Good, then we’ll say that he’s a stupid wanker. Dorothy’s the salt of the earth. Though at one stage one of us was in a huff, I freely admit it, because of intimations that she’d gone over to the other side.”

    “Eh?” replied Leigh weakly.

    “All this corporate, user-pays shit.”

    “Oh—that. I don’t think she subscribes to the user-pays thing at all. Though she is all for us ivory-tower types being accountable for the moolah we chuck away on unlikely accretions to our empires," said Leigh with a smile in his voice .

    “You haff her," suggested Gretchen muzzily from the back seat.

    “Gretchen!” shouted Jill.

    “Sorry, Leigh. It just came out. I am rather pissed,” she explained carefully.

    “That’s all right, so am I. What was that stuff Dorothy was pouring so liberally?”

    “Red plonk and vhite plonk,” explained Gretchen.

    “Oh, so you have that out here, too?”

    Gretchen collapsed in splutters.

    They drove on in companionable silence for a while.

    “It must have been an oversight,” murmured Leigh.

    “No, she’ll have bought it at The Tavern’s bottle shop,” explained Jill kindly.

    “Mm? Oh, sorry, not the wine: I meant Alan’s leaving his fiancée stranded without any money.”

    “I dare say,” conceded Jill grimly. “But he must know what the woman’s like, surely? Wouldn’t a chap of any decent feeling that was mixed up with one of them make a point of checking up on practical matters like the amount of cash she had in her purse before flying off to furrin parts?”

    “Would you, Leigh?” asked Gretchen clinically.

    “I think I would try to, Gretchen!” said Leigh with a weak laugh.

    “There you are,” said Jill grimly. “It’s him all over. Doesn’t really care about anything that goes on outside his own icy brain. Hasn’t changed since the Wendy Briggs days.”

    Leigh didn’t argue. “I wonder what became of her?” he said idly.

    “Eh?” replied Jill weakly.

    “This unfortunate Wendy girl.”

    “Uh—she dropped her degree and went home.”

    “Yes. After that. Well, she must have had a life. Existence as such doesn’t automatically cease for those who give up Oxbridge," said Leigh drily.

    “Uh—no. Never really thought about it. Um… I suppose she found some other authority figure to latch onto. Well, that type does!” said Jill with an uncomfortable laugh.”

    “Mm. Well, you were all very young, weren’t you?” said Leigh kindly. Reading her mind, Jill perceived, with no difficulty whatsoever.

    “Yes,” she said guiltily. “I suppose we were.”

    Gretchen was not surprised the next morning when she said grimly over the breakfast table: “Leigh was right. I should have bloody checked up to see that poor bloody Wendy Briggs was all right.”

    “It vas ofer tventy years ago. Nearer tventy-five, ja? She’s probably a grandmother by now. You cannot know vhat became off her. And it’s pointless to worry.”

    Jill scowled, and didn’t reply. Though recognising that Gretchen was right.

    Gretchen was not, however, absolutely right: there was just a possibility that Jill might yet learn of Wendy Briggs’s fate, as the housemates might have realised had they been privileged to overhear the conversation between Mayli Coffi and her invalid mother on the evening of Mayli’s rescue of Catherine and Dicky.

    “So?” the invalid Mrs Coffi had said as they shared a sherry before bed.

    Mayli scowled. “He's victimising the poor woman, like we thought. Talk about a household slave! And honestly, Mum: waltzing off to Japan without even making sure she had change in the house, let alone enough to buy groceries!”

    “Him all over,” said Mrs Coffi grimly.

    “Yes.” Mayli stared into the electric heater. “If he stays away long enough… Do you think I could persuade her that he’s a brute and she’ll ruin her life if she does go and marry him?”

    “Well, she will!” said her mother energetically.

    “Mm… I suppose so. Well, she might be so much of a doormat that she’d actually enjoy it.”

    “Not twenty years of it, Mayli! He’s only in his early fifties, you know!”

    “Mm.”

    Mrs Coffi gave her a shrewd look. “Dear, does he actually want her?”

    “I think so. Of course the arrangement’s frightfully convenient for him,” she said with a curl of that well-modelled lip, “but I think he genuinely wants her, as well. And he does adore the little boy: it stuck out all over him that time he brought him in to the office for the day.”

    Mrs Coffi shook her head slowly. “I still can’t see it: Alan Kincaid bringing a scruffy little kid into work?”

    Mayli shrugged crossly.

    “Well,” said her mother, shifting herself a little in her wheelchair, “it shows he wants the boy, doesn’t it?”

    “Yes. Are you all right, Mum?”

    “Of course, dear," she said automatically.

    Mayli swallowed a sigh. She got her mother safely tucked up in bed and went into the kitchen to do the handful of dishes from Mrs Coffi’s tea, with an awful scowl on her handsome face. Catherine Burchett was a lovely woman—actually she reminded Mayli a bit of Mum, which when you came to think of it, wasn’t surprising, was it? And Dicky was a dear little boy—but even though she did believe Alan Kincaid was genuinely fond of him, would that mean he’d look after him properly, and put him before his work and his stupid university? Not on present showing—no. Added to which, did beastly Alan Kincaid deserve a lovely woman like Mrs Burchett and a dear little boy like Dicky? No, no, and no.

    Mayli stared grimly into the sink. Mum would have a fit if she knew what she was up to, but— It just wasn’t fair that people like Alan Kincaid never got their come-uppance and people like Mum and Mrs Burchett always had to suffer because of them! She didn’t know yet exactly what she’d do, but she was going to do something! Something that would put a spoke in his wheel and wipe that smirk off his self-satisfied face and—and pay him back! Mayli’s dark eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back furiously and got on with the washing up.

    It was a pure coincidence that Mrs Coffi and Mayli had ended up in the same country as Alan Kincaid. Mrs Coffi was English: as fair as Catherine Burchett, in fact: meeting her and Mayli together you would never have taken them for mother and daughter. The name was not Italian: Mayli’s father had been an African American and the name could have been anything, really. He had been one of those Americans stationed in Britain something over twenty years earlier, round about the time when persons like Posy Baranski were bashing cops at Greenham Common and getting arrested on the strength of it. Persons like Mayli’s mum, from rather different socio-economic backgrounds, were tending to get themselves up the spout by said Americans instead. Joe Coffi hadn’t married her: he already had a wife and family back in the States. Nevertheless she had determinedly taken his name. Joe had had a conscience, of sorts, and when he went back to America had given the mother of his illegitimate child a considerable sum of money. She had used this money to emigrate to New Zealand. She had got herself into a relationship there, quite soon; she was the sort of woman who usually had no trouble in attaching herself to a man. But she was also the sort who did have trouble keeping them.

    By the time Mayli was fifteen and the doctors had at last diagnosed her mother’s multiple sclerosis, Mrs Coffi had been through three more relationships and had two more girls. Georgette, now nineteen, was married and settled in a small country town with an amiable fellow who worked for the local county council: he had some fancy title but was what in Mrs Coffi's youth was known as the rat-catcher. They seemed happy enough, had a six-month-old infant and a smallholding of about ten acres, and were into self-sufficiency. Kitty Coffi was sixteen, quite bright, and still at school, where Mayli was grimly determined she would remain until seventh form: after which she would go on to university and get a good computing qualification and be able to make a really good living. Not all of the details of Mayli’s home life had been disclosed to her bosses at Sir George Grey.

    And most certainly not the crucial one. It was Mrs Coffi’s wont, on her good days, when she was up and about in her wheelchair, to read the Employment section of the paper with great attention; she was always on the look-out for a better job for Mayli, who had topped her class at school in her School Cert. year but then put herself resolutely through a keyboarding course and got herself a job in order to contribute to the family’s extremely meagre income. Alan Kincaid’s name had not actually been mentioned in the advertisement for the job as PA but on the very same day there had been an article about the new university in the business section of the paper, where his name had featured prominently. She had gasped, turned as white as a sheet, and looked as if she was about to pass out. Mayli, who had known about the man who had been the cause of Mum’s giving up her university studies all her life, had read the article with her lips very tight. And had ignored her mother’s faint representations that she wouldn’t want to work for him, dear; and had gone off and got the job. Not with any precise intent of paying Alan Kincaid back for ruining Mum’s life: but certainly with some vague notion at the back of her mind that it might give her the chance to do him an injury. Make him suffer—not as much as poor Mum had in her lifetime, that would hardly be possible. But at least make him pay!

    For Mrs Coffi was, of course, the former Wendy Briggs. The point that Alan had in no wise ruined her life and that perhaps no-one was to blame for Wendy’s having been born a groupie with an in-built attraction to men who emanated power, or for Alan’s not having been attracted to her, had never occurred to Mayli. And since, in spite of her cool competence, she was not much older than Jill Davis and Wendy Briggs had both been at the time it all happened, she had never considered the point that, unkind though Alan had been, he might have spoken to Wendy as he did because, underneath the coolly capable manner, he was as incapable of handling the situation as she was of handling her crush on him: plain embarrassment, inability to deal with raw emotions, fear of getting himself emotionally involved could all have been factors, rather than with a wish to be deliberately cruel.

    Nor had it occurred to her that her own obsession with the man whom she believed responsible for Mum’s fate was an illogical one and due in no small measure to the stress of having to be the emotional and financial mainstay of the family: the latter ever since ever since she was old enough to get an after-school job, but the former virtually all her life.

    There was no-one to tell her to stop brooding and to find a boyfriend and get on with her own life, let alone to see she did it: Mrs Coffi’s illness meant that her emotional reserves were now concentrated almost exclusively on herself. Kitty Coffi was too young to see Mayli as a person, and Georgette, not much older, accustomed all her life to thinking of Mayli as just her big sister, and in any case not much given to any sort of intellectual effort, had never given the situation a moment’s thought. Mrs Gordon next-door was well-meaning but incapable of any sort of analysis of the situation above the conventional one of it was so sad about poor Mrs Coffi and of course dear Mayli was devoted to her.

    Mayli Coffi could not have been said to have been mad, in anyone’s terms. But she was most certainly obsessed: as obsessed in her way with revenge on Alan Kincaid as Wendy Briggs had ever been with her hopeless passion for him.

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/posy-turns-up-trumps-and-hal-just-turns.html