Karaka Grove Sees Some Changes

22

Karaka Grove Sees Some Changes

    “What do you MEAN, that woman’s coming out here?” shouted Armand in his native language, turning purple.

    “She is. She’s got a work permit and everything.”

    “Ne dis PAS ‘et tout et tout’!” he screamed.

    Simone shrugged. “Bof.”

    “You will NOT see her,” he said through his teeth. “I forbid it. She’s an evil influence.”

    Simone went over to the door. “Rubbish. I’m going to the airport to meet her.”

    “WHAT?” he screamed.

    Ignoring this, Simone said: “I don’t know when I’ll be back. You’ll have to get your own lunch. Sheryl’s got the kids.”

    Armand listened unbelievingly to the sound of his wife’s footsteps going composedly downstairs. He listened unbelievingly to the sound of Simone getting her car out of the garage. Too late, he gathered himself together and rushed out onto the balcony. He was just in time to see Simone disappear down Karaka Grove.

    He rushed back into the sitting-room, threw himself onto the huge, pudgy black leather sofa which he had chosen at Forrest Furnishings in Puriri and to which Simone referred unrelentingly as “l’homme Michelin”, and burst into tears. There was absolutely no doubt that he had the worst wife in the world. She was—she was irrational and—and incompetent and—and unmanageable!

    After quite some time he sat up, sniffing. Yes: unmanageable was the word for Simone. And to think he’d thought that New Zealand might actually improve her—shake her out of her rut, show her that she could do things and be as competent as anyone else’s wife!

    New Zealand, of course, had done precisely that; but Armand Gautier was in no mood to admit that to himself. Unfortunately for him, Simone had learned such things as that she could get along without him telling her what to do every moment of her day, that she might not be super-competent but there were a lot of things she could manage okay, if left to do them in her own way, and that, astoundingly, she did have a saleable skill: Tricksie’s had for some months now been avidly taking all the little frocks and romper suits she and Anna together could make, and begging them for more.

    The big modern New Zealand house did not take very much looking after: it was fully carpeted apart from the service areas, and once Sheryl and her mum together had explained what those outlets in the wall were, and shown her how to use the system, Simone had no trouble in running the magic vacuum-cleaner hose over the carpets and making the dust magically vanish into the walls. Armand had decided it was not economical to bring most of their old furniture out, so most of the carved sideboards and occasional tables that had been the bane of her existence had not reappeared, and there was very little dusting to do. The kitchen and bathrooms were so very modern and streamlined that they were a breeze to keep clean. Downstairs, Sheryl had speedily seen to it that a suitably large automatic washing-machine got installed next to the fixed tub, plus a matching drier. Simone hadn’t argued, because Sheryl seemed to assume that one just did have a drier, instead of taking everything to the blanchisserie on wet days. And Bryce Carew had made sure that Simone bought a dishwasher well before Armand arrived on the scene. If the bloke assumed it was a fixture, so much the better. Shopping was streamlined because they always did it in Puriri at the supermarkets: Simone and Sheryl now had their set days for going down to Puriri together.

    So Simone really had quite a lot of time on her hands, and she was finding more and more that although she still did a lot of the actual smocking, she was very much enjoying the design part of her children’s dressmaking venture, and putting more of her time and energies into that. Anna was very happy to do the lion’s share of the sewing and thrilled to be taught Simone’s smocking techniques. At one point several on-the-ball local grannies had virtually shanghaied Simone into producing garments for their grandkids at cut rates but Sheryl had speedily spotted that one and put a stop to it. If the old bags from Kingfisher Bay wanted fancy frocks for their grandkids they could pay through the nose for them like everybody else! And if old Mrs Fein really wanted something special for Martina Fein to wear at her brother’s birthday party, though personally Sheryl couldn’t see what was so special about a blimming boy’s birthday party, then Simone could do her one, but at more than she charged Tricksie’s. Yeah! ’Cos see, Tricksie’s added their overheads and then their profit to what Simone charged them! Simone saw.

    In the big modern house at Kingfisher Bay Armand sulked for some time. Then he looked in the fridge. Nothing! The mean cow! The fridge featured a large package of steak but even Armand Gautier in a bad mood did not have the guts to eat the steak that his wife obviously intended for dinner. It also featured a bowl of bean salad but Armand had previously declared cold cooked dried beans to be fit only for fattening pigs, even if they did have a nice sauce vinaigrette on them, and incidentally how much had she spent on the olive oil? So he obviously couldn’t eat that. He opened the huge freezer compartment. Packaged supermarket foods, how many times had he told her that was not economical! Added to which it was junk: over-salted, tasteless junk. He slammed the freezer door shut on the one- and two-serve microwave-ready lasagnas and spaghettis. The cupboard featured tins of junk. Peas which were NOT des petits pois, how many times had he told her? And tinned fruit? They never ate tinned fruit! How much of his hard-earned salary had she—? And just where, by the by, was the cheese? He opened and shut cupboard doors furiously but there was no cheese. He did, however, discover various crimes of his wife’s. Packets of English-style chocolate biscuits? Mais merde! Instant BREAD MIX? His mother would have fit at the very idea! Bon dieu, this was instant slimy English pudding mix! Furiously he hurled the Edmond’s Custard Powder into the bin, unaware that it had been lurking right at the back of the cupboard because it had been a bad buy and Simone had regretted, having followed the instructions religiously and discovered the slimy result, ever letting Sheryl talk her into this stand-by of the New Zealand housewife. And what in God’s name… After quite some time struggling with the words on the label, Armand deduced it was a tin of an English-style chocolate children’s drink. No wonder Pierre was refusing to drink his milk, if this was the sort of— He would speak to Simone the instant she returned! In the meantime, he supposed there must be bread… Gritty sliced whole-grain, English-style, of course, and white sliced English-style. Grimly Armand began re-searching the cupboards for the butter. There was NO BUTTER! Mais merde de merde de merde!

    After quite some period had passed in heavy breathing, he recollected that his wife had said something about the kids. Mais merde! They were not going to spend the day with cette sacrée Sheryl Carew being fed on white English bread! He marched next-door.

    “Oh, hi,” said Sheryl without interest.

    “Good morning, Sheryl. I have come for my keeds, h’if you please,” said Armand, carefully polite.

    “Aw, have ya? They’re okay: Dad came round, he’s taken them all down the boatyard to see Euan,” said Sheryl.

    “To— ’Ow ’as he taken them?” gasped Armand.

    “Eh?”

    This was possibly the most irritating of all expressions used in daily New Zealand intercourse, Armand had now discovered. It had more nuances than could be counted but it was particularly used—especially in the mouths of such as Sheryl Carew—to express total incomprehension combined with total lack of interest. And it was the more irritating in that it appeared nowhere—nowhere!—in all his phrase-books and dictionaries.

    “’Ow ’as he taken them—the leetle ones?” he repeated grimly.

    “Eh? Aw: ya mean, did they walk? Nah, he's got the car.”

    “Dhere h’ees no road to dhuh boat’ouse!” shouted Armand.

    “Eh? Aw: I getcha. Nah, he’s taken them up the top of the hill in the car; at least, he said he was gonna.”

    The expression “gonna” also appeared nowhere in Armand’s textbooks but he had by now worked out laboriously, not with any help from Simone, naturally, that in New Zealand English “gonna”, that is, the auxiliary form “going to,” used without an infinitive, though his expensive English grammar assured him it was not so used, meant, more or less, “aller faire (quoi que ce soit)”. Usually in the sense of “avoir l’intention de”. In this instance what Sheryl meant was “he intended to take the children in the car.” Would it have killed the cow to say so? She must know how irritating she was, surely? Or was she just too stupid to realise it?

    He gave her a bitter look, unaware of the fact that she was as sublimely unaware of her habits of speech as any ordinary French housewife, and said: “I see. I ’ope h’eet weell not be too much for dhuh leetle Billee.”

    “Eh? Nah: Dad’ll carry him if he gets tired. He said he’d give them their lunch.”

    That meant junk food from Swadlings’. Armand took a deep breath, managed to thank her politely, and withdrew.

    Sheryl ran her tongue round her top teeth, shrugged very, very slightly and went back inside. Fortunately not back to the kitchen, but into the front room, so she didn't miss what happened next.

    Armand was seen to retreat to the footpath. He was seen to hesitate, visibly clenching his fists and biting his lip. Then he was seen to square his slim shoulders—he did have quite a nice figure, if you liked them skinny, recognised Sheryl grudgingly—and head determinedly over the road to Sammi’s. Sheryl watched avidly.

    Unlike Armand’s wife, Sammi was not slopping around in a dressing-gown at eleven-forty in the morning.—Simone never did so these days but this had not yet percolated to Armand’s consciousness.—Unlike Armand’s wife’s neighbour and best friend, Sammi did not have her hair done up in frightful pink plastic curlers under a frightful blue plastic net. It was a beautiful fine morning, but not particularly warm, with a brisk breeze and lots of high cloud whirling very fast in a bright blue sky. Sammi was very suitably dressed for it in a spotless grey tracksuit, with spotless white sneakers. Rolled-down fluffy scarlet towelling socks showed above these, and she wore a matching scarlet fluffy towelling sweatband. Her face shone with good health and an excellent tan. “Hi, Armand!” she smiled.

    “Hi, Sammi,” replied Armand, carefully responding with a matching turn of phrase. “May I ’ope that you are free for leunch today?”

    Sammi blinked. “Lunch?”

    “Simone ’as gone to meet a friend at the h’airport," explained Armand. “And Sheryl ’as the keeds—or more exactly, her father h’ees most kaindly intending to geeve them their lunch.”

    “Yes, I passed his car earlier, when I was coming back from my run,” she agreed. “Of course I’m free for lunch. Come along in.”

    “Eugh—eet ees a leetle airlay,” said Armand, belatedly looking at his watch and realising it wasn’t yet twelve. “Per’aps eef I fetch some of my notes on the records management software—okay?”

    “Okay, fine! We can have a working lunch here, then. It won't be anything fancy,” said Sammi with a frank grin.

    “I should laike that vairy much. Thank you. So long!” he said brightly.

    “Fifteen minutes: okay?” cried Sammi as he pattered briskly down her short path to the footpath.

    “Faine! So long!” he repeated, with a little wave.

    From behind her Venetians Sheryl watched sourly as Armand, looking terribly fit and athletic all of a sudden, jogged back over the road and jogged into his own house. “Huh!” she concluded.

    … “I’m not much of a cook,” said Sammi cheerfully, half an hour later.

    Armand assured her this was not so and that it all looked delicious. It certainly did: although she knew she wasn’t much of a cook Sammi had several tricks of the trade which she used whenever she had guests, most particularly male guests, and she was using some of them now. The microwaved single-serve lasagnas were served up carefully on attractive all-white plates which featured a moulded edging in a charming little garland pattern. The plates were each decorated with a frilly leaf of gourmet lettuce, some fanned-out raw carrot strips, and three black olives. Next to each white dinner plate stood a small wooden bowl, at the moment empty, for the side salad. The salad itself was in a matching large wooden bowl. It did not feature the extortionately expensive gourmet lettuce, for which Sammi had other plans, but a hurriedly put together bean salad: one tin of three-bean mix, a quarter of a tin of chickpeas, which Sammi was convinced were up-market and which at the price the Puriri supermarkets charged for them certainly should have been, and one small tin of sliced green beans, which Sammi actively disliked but which brightened up the look of the salad. The dressing was partly the juice of the three-bean mix, which was quite tasty, and partly a good dollop of Paul Newman’s. The centre of this offering was decorated with a posy of more carrot slivers and two more black olives. Sammi bought a lot of black olives but she rarely ate them: she actively disliked them, too.

    “I usually just have a salad for lunch, but it’s a bit chilly, today, isn’t it? And I have been for my run!” she said happily, passing a small raffia basket in which reposed two small, gritty, whole-grain rolls on a delightfully frivolous twirl of green and gold paper napkin which matched the paper napkins at either side of her white plates.

    “Yes, one feels that today one deserves some pasta!” agreed Armand, taking a roll. He then remarked how fresh and charming her table looked and Sammi, aware that it did so, accepted the compliment graciously. And waited for him to praise the meal. Which he did do, quite sincerely. It was true that he did not look at his motives for doing so or wonder why he was actually enjoying pig fattener and over-salted, tasteless supermarket junk. But then—though Sheryl Carew might have contested this—he was only human.

    Simone and Annick, the rapturous greetings over, were just gathering up Annick’s luggage and looking round for the exit when a friendly voice said: “Hullo. You’re Simone, aren’t you?”

    Simone blinked, and looked doubtfully at the middle-aged, slim, blondish lady in the neat blue slacks and plain pale blue short-sleeved tricot—jumper. “Yes, I am Simone Gautier.”

    “I thought so! I’m Angie Michaels: we met at that engagement party Polly Carrano threw for Catherine and Alan,” said Angie, beaming. “I’ve just landed a job at Sir G.G.—ESL, with Leigh Gore.”

    “Oh! But of course, yes! ’Ow naice to see you again, Angie!” Forgetting she was in New Zealand, Simone held out her hand, and Angie, looking mildly surprised, shook it. And allowed Annick to be introduced.

    Angie had assumed that the older woman with the short, very smart yellow hair must be a relative—Simone’s mum, even. A friend? Oh, well, why not: showed the French were less narrow-minded than our lot, that was for sure. She smiled very nicely at Annick and, considerably not attempting to communicate with her, explained to Simone that she had just been seeing her husband off on a year’s sabbatical.

    “I’m so sorry: I don’t understand that word, Angie!” said Simone with a laugh.

    Reflecting silently that if Polly Carrano’s story about young Euan Knox was true, that wide smile of Simone’s that lit up her rather undistinguished little face like a beacon was certainly one reason for it, not to say that nice little French figure, Angie replied: “Sorry. Study leave, I suppose.”

    “Oh, yes, I know! He will be away for a year?”

    “Yes, and good riddance,” said Angie heartlessly. “Well, we’ve been married for over thirty years and all I seem to have done is feed his great fat face. While he’s nurtured his career along nicely, so that now he’s Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, and at the stage where he can confidently invite himself to MIT for a couple of semesters! Um, sorry, Simone, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: it’s sort of an—an icon, in engineering circles, I suppose,” said Angie a bit weakly, reminding herself that she probably should be using her “basic English for foreigners” techniques here, not your good old Michaels-speak, as the macho twit called it.

    “Oh, yes! Of course I ’ave heard of that!” Rapidly Simone translated for Annick, who nodded and said something in reply. Something sour and male-related, or Angie Michaels didn’t know the signs.

    “Annick is reminding me,” said Simone carefully, “that my husband Armand once ’ad the ambition to go there. It is also an icon in computer science circles.”

    Angie grinned. “I just bet it is! Yes, well, Bill wanted me to come with him regardless of the fact that I’ve only just landed the only decent job I’ve ever had.”

    Simone began to translate but Annick was nodding hard. “I stay eef I am you,” she said.

    “Yeah, me too,” said Simone in the local accent. “Especially if I am married for so long; I theenk it is your turn, now?” she added with a smile.

    Angie laughed and admitted that was exactly what she felt, too, and they all made their way to the exit, Angie helping carry some of the luggage that wouldn’t fit on Annick’s trolley.

    At the exit Angie was just asking Simone if was right that she lived in Karaka Grove when a slim, very blond young man wandered up and said indifferently: “There you are.”

    “Where have you BEEN?” shouted Angie terribly, forgetting all about impressions that unfortunate foreigners might be getting.

    Col shrugged. “The heap broke down. Abandoned it in the middle of Mangere Bridge.”

    “Your father’s just gone to AMERICA!” shouted Angie terribly.

    “So? I notice bloody Mark’s conspicuous by his absence,” he drawled.

    “He’s on duty at the hospital, as you very well know!” snapped the driven Angie. “And if it’s in the middle of Mangere Bridge, how did you get here?”

    He looked virtuous. “Buffy and Chuck gave me a lift, of course. –That’s them, over there,” he drawled, pointing to a very obviously American couple struggling towards the far-distant baggage check-in. He waved vigorously. The apricot-haired Buffy spotted him, tugged at her escort’s arm and waved frantically back. The words “Bye-ee, Sweedie!” might have been discerned on the muggy airport air. The blue-rinsed, snakeskin-booted Chuck also waved.

    Angie sighed. “I suppose you imagine I’m gonna drive you back?”

    “Yeah.”

    She sighed again. “I’ve got to get up to Carter’s Bay, I’m due to look at a unit.”

    “You chose the job, Mother mine. –Aren’t you going to introduce us?’ he said, eyeing up Simone.

    “This horrible object is my younger son, Col. Simone Gautier and her friend Annick Pic,” said Angie grimly. “Annick doesn’t speak much English,” she added without hope: Col’s subject was French. He was currently only a tutor but due to start as a junior lecturer next year. Sure enough, the offspring made a charming speech of greeting, helpfully took two smallish bags which Annick’s trolley was coping with perfectly well on its own, and very evidently completely won her over. Typical.

    Col then remarked, as they headed for the carpark and the desperate search for where the cars had been left: “Simone? Oh, yes: you’re a friend of Euan Knox’s, aren’t you?”

    Poor Simone turned the colour of a boiled beetroot and gasped: “Eugh—yes, I know heem vairy slaightlay, ’e ’as been vairy kind to me and my keeds!”

    Angie could have cheerfully have strangled her bloody offspring: though it was no more that she’d expected of him. He forced her to phone the AA on her mobile phone without offering to pay her back for the call and then forced her to drive him to where the heap had collapsed and wait for the AA man regardless of her appointment with a Puriri land agent forty-odd miles away. When the AA man had got the heap going, kindly advising Col that the best thing he could do with it was sell it for scrap, he got into it without thanking his mother and drove off without even suggesting that she might fancy lunch at his expense; but that was no more than she’d expected of him, too. He didn’t bother to wave or even look back but that was just as well because if he had done the shock of it would have killed Angela Michaels.

    Having looked on with great interest while Simone competently started her car, negotiated her way out of the carpark, managing the automatic gate without even seeming to notice it, and while she competently negotiated them out of the airport precincts and onto the exit road, Annick began to conclude that the New Zealand venture had greatly improved her young friend. Or, put it this way: being without Armand for several months had. The impression was confirmed as, driving on the left-hand side of the road without even seeming to notice it, Simone confidently navigated them through a bewildering mix of countryside, semi-industrial area, and miles of garden suburb, into the downtown area and into a parking—which in France she had regularly refused to go anywhere near—and parked. Subsequently composedly guiding Annick through the mysteries of a New Zealand lunch. It was all serve-yourself and strange salads without sauce vinaigrette and very strange breads… Limply Annick let Simone choose for her.

    As Simone then confidently navigated them through a clutter of downtown traffic and onto a motorway which led to a bridge over an astoundingly blue harbour, she advised cheerfully: “You’d better wear your sunglasses, Annick. The sun’s brighter out here, or there’s more ultra-violet, or something.”

    “Is that what Armand says, or actually true?”

    “True.”

    “Then I will,” she said mildly, adjusting them on her nose.

    Simone sighed. “Yes. –I’m so glad you’re here!”

    Simone’s letters hadn’t said very much about Armand but Annick had read between the lines easily enough. “I thought—well, Maman and I both did—that being two foreigners in a strange land might bring you closer together.”

    “No. Well, possibly it might have if I hadn’t come out first. But I’ve had time to get used to everything, you see, and my English has improved a lot, and Armand—eugh—resents it, I suppose.”

    “Yes, he wouldn’t like seeing you doing anything better than him,” agreed Annick thoughtfully.

    “No… But it’s only because I’ve been here longer! I’ve tried telling him that but he just dismisses every word I say.”

    “When didn’t he?” replied Annick.

    “You’re right. Also,” said Simone slowly, “I don’t think he realised how very foreign it would be.”

    “As foreign as England?” said Annick cautiously. She herself had been on a bus trip to the Tower of London, but that was about it; but she knew that Armand in his student days had gone there during his vacations several times.

    “Much more so; well, I’ve never been there, but even the English people here have trouble adjusting, so it must be. And it’s very, very different from France.”

    “Yes,” said Annick rather faintly as Simone sped up onto the bridge. It seemed horribly high in the air. Not like crossing a river, at all. “They drive on the wrong side of the road.”

    “Of course, yes; hadn’t you realised?” she said composedly. “I was terrified at first, but Sheryl and Bryce seemed to take it for granted that I’d be driving.”

    Annick looked at her doubtfully: so had Armand. It hadn’t noticeably resulted in Simone’s becoming more competent.

    “I don’t think I put that very well!” said Simone, laughing. “It never occurred to them that maybe I couldn’t do it; so I suppose I began to think that perhaps I could. And then, when Sheryl found out that I was nervous about driving on the wrong side of the road, she—eugh—wasn’t critical, is what I mean, I think. She—eugh—she accepted it as normal that I should be nervous, and didn’t fuss over it or—or try to hurry me up or insist I should be doing better than I was. Do you see what I mean?”

    “Yes, exactly.”

    “It’s not that she’s particularly intelligent,” said Simone thoughtfully. “I’m not claiming that she realised that if she didn’t hassle me, I’d do better. I suppose it’s just her nature.”

    “Whereas it’s Armand’s to criticise your every move and hassle you to death, in spite of his much-vaunted brains?” said Annick with a sniff. “Ouais,” she answered herself sourly.

    “Ouais. I'm a disappointment to him. But the thing is, when he nags me, I get worse.”

    “Yes, I know. He’s an idiot,” said Annick, scowling. “If he ever gave you a bit of appreciation, he might find you wouldn’t need to be nagged at!”

    “Maybe, yes. But because he makes me worse, there’s never anything to appreciate.”

    Annick understood this: she sighed, and nodded.

    The rest of the drive was spent talking about the Pic family and mutual friends from back home, and about Simone’s sewing venture. Annick, who had all the canniness of the typical French petite-bourgeoise, did not mention that old Oncle Maurice, whom Simone knew had died recently at the age of ninety-seven, had left her a very nice little nest-egg, which she was thinking of investing in the sewing venture. Or in something very similar, but larger: perhaps a little shop of their own? It was too soon to suggest any such thing: what if she hated New Zealand? A possibility that, decided Annick grimly, wondering if the combination of damp black bread and salad vegetables without a sauce vinaigrette was about to disagree with her digestion, so far seemed all too likely!

    “This is it,” said Angie with a nervous laugh. “Bit of a guinea-pig hutch really, I suppose!”

    Eagerly Dorothy and Polly followed her up the tiny garden path—“garden” being a misnomer—of Number 6 Karaka Grove: one of the “second homes” or “single units” or various other trendy misnomers for guinea-pig hutches that had, after the initial flush of consumer enthusiasm had worn off, been hanging fire, rather, in Karaka Grove, Kingfisher Bay.

    “It’s the Mediterranean look,” she explained, “and don’t anyone mention her husband’s bloody Casa Merry-Christmas-and-Good-Luck-to-You in Carter’s Bay, ta.”

    “That’s right, victimise me!” retorted Lady Carrano swiftly. “At least it’s got a downstairs.”

    “Ye-es… This could be a games room or family room,” Angie said uneasily as they came in and looked at its vast white concrete spaces in silence.

    Eventually Dorothy noted cordially: “So it could. Considering it was originally designed as a garage."

    “I like it,” replied Angie defiantly.

    “Pooh,” responded Lady Carrano immediately.

    “Um—well, actually I don’t like this room," she admitted weakly. “And the kitchen and everything’s upstairs. And… I dunno. I've always lived in a single-storeyed house…”

    “Vil-la,” mouthed Dorothy at Polly. Polly nodded vigorously.

    “…but somehow this seems exposed.”

    “It would do: no trees, no garden, and that one over the road what’s exactly the same design as this one, looks right into it,” noted Dorothy.

    “They’ve shrouded their plate-glass in one of those funny new soft not-Venetians that are completely see-through: see?” said Lady Carrano. “Pass-telle but see-through,” she explained.

    They peered. She was right: so they had.

    “Um, well, come upstairs,” said Angie rather weakly. “It’s nicer.”

    They followed her upstairs. Upstairs featured another possible living room, or possible living-dining-room, a breakfast bar which would more or less wall off the mess in the kitchen from the gaze of the dinner guests but as Lady Carrano immediately pointed out, not enough: designed by A Man—and one bedroom with ensuite.

    “Lumme,” said Dorothy.

    “I didn’t choose those bathroom fittings,” responded Angie.

    “Eh? Oh! Not them, though I must admit pale grey would not be my first choice: how can you tell if it’s grimy? Um—isn’t it a bit small, Angie?”

    “There’s only me.”

    “Uh—yeah.”

    “I’ll let the great engineering birk share it with me on condition he clears up any mess he makes," she explained, grinning.

    “Oh, good!” they said as one woman.

    Angie looked at them with affection. “Culturally brainwashed.”

    “Sex-stereotyped,” agreed Lady Carrano.

    “I might have known you’d bring sex into it somehow!” said Angie with a loud laugh. “It’ll be a breeze to keep clean: look, it’s got those thingy-whatsits in the walls: the whole street has, evidently.”

    “Don’t let Bill near it, then,” recommended Polly, shuddering. “We’ve got a system, too, and it took the fat-headed cretin approximately ten minutes to decide he had to find the disposal outlet.”

    “I won’t even tell Bill it exists; he’ll never know! –Come and have a cuppa: I brought some stuff up the other day.” Angie led them into the minute kitchenette and opened and shut cupboards busily. “I bought a new jug, there didn’t seem to be much point in bringing the old one from home. It’s gone bang three times, now; I reckon it doesn’t owe us a thing, but He always reckons he can fix it.”

    They were familiar with that syndrome: they groaned.

    When the tea was made there was nowhere to have it except sitting on the pale oatmeal body-carpet of the sitting-dining-room, so they did that.

    “Why do they always have oatmeal carpets?” wondered Angie.

    “Dunno. It’s a law of yuppiedom?” hazarded Dorothy.

    “The architects have all accepted bribes from Feltex or Axminster,” said Polly darkly.

    “Or at least the developers,” said Dorothy on snide note.

    “I am NOT responsible for Casa Meridionale!” she cried.

    They agreed kindly, and Angie explained she thought she’d keep it all white inside. After Polly had offered several alternatives, all costly, they agreed she might as well keep it all white inside.

    Dorothy, who was on her lunch-hour, then had to dash back to work, and duly dashed.

    “What are you looking at me sideways for?” demanded Angie.

    Polly smiled apologetically. “Um—well, it’s just that it’ll be a big change for you, Angie.”

    “Yes, eating fish and chips on me tod while I watch the TV programmes that I wanna watch, instead of eating fish and chips on me tod in the kitchen of that huge dust-gatherer in Narrowneck because the kids have all left home and the great engineering birk’s in the sitting-room with his fish and chips and the bloody cricket!”

    “Oops,” said Polly, grimacing horribly.

    Angie sighed. “We’ve been married for well over thirty years, Polly. I know he's only a bit younger than Jake, but I’m a lot older than you; and once the kids leave the nest… I dunno. You’ve still got all your hormones,” she said, looking at her glumly.

    “I read a book that said you still have, too.”

    “Did it? Written by a man. Or a very young female gynaecologist,” she said with loathing. “Uh—no, well, it’s the enthusiasm that’s lacking. I don’t just mean sex—actually we can still work up a flicker, the trouble is we don’t always manage to work ’em up at the same time—um, no, it’s the enthusiasm for getting tea every night of the week, and doing the bloody grocery shopping unendingly, and running a bloody great wooden house full of awkward corners, and original taps mixed with fake original taps that all seem to keep dripping no matter how much the great engineering spanner thinks it’s fixed them, and old, old, sash windows that rattle all night, and a bloody great colour-steel roof that cost a fortune and clongs like buggery when bloody next-door’s cats run over it. –We had a possum last winter, did I say? Musta got lost, there’s yuppies galore round our way, these days… Go on, laugh.”

    Polly did laugh, a little, but admitted: “I do see what you mean.”

    “Yeah. You can’t live life in your fifties at the same level as you did when you were in your thirties. And more than that… I want to do something different,” explained Angie awkwardly. “Bill can’t understand, poor old sod: though he has been pretty decent about it.”

    “Mm. Lots of blokes wouldn’t be. But he is very broad-minded, Angie.” Their eyes met. “For one of Them!” finished Polly, laughing.

    “How is Dorothy?” asked Angie cautiously over their second cuppa.

    “We-ell… Bearing up. Shiva’s death was a shock to her, but she’s taken it better than Jack has, I think. The relationship with Thomas hasn’t got anywhere, largely because she still isn’t letting it be a relationship. My spies tell me he’s behaving himself, but he’s in a filthy mood.”

    “That’s only to be expected.”

    “Yeah, but she doesn’t understand anything about men.”

    “Added to which she’s got an iron will, herself,” said Angie drily. “That sort of person can never understand that other people may just be naturally weaker, and no amount of good, clean, Christian buck-you-up-manship will make them pull their socks up, because they just can’t!”

    “I’ve always thought that,” agreed Polly tranquilly.

    “Um—how is Inoue, Polly?”

    Polly smiled a little. “Talking of the iron-willed, you mean? We think he’s all right. Jake’s taken him out on a couple of binges. It does seem to be the Japanese male answer to emotional stress of any kind as well as the Good Keen Man’s answer, so we think it was the right thing to do.”

    “Good. Has he made any decision about whether he’ll settle out here permanently?”

    “No, he’s far too intelligent to make decisions at a time of emotional stress; unlike the rest of the known universe!” said Polly with a smile. “Added to which, he’s iron-willed enough not to let himself.”

    Angie nodded silently.

    “We don’t know whether the thing with Sammi Wolfe is on or off,” reported Polly on a mournful note. “Mind you, she lives just up your road: you’ll be able to monitor it!” she finished, brightening.

    “Yeah,” said Angie in a hollow voice.

    “Come on, I’ll show you her house.”

    Numbly Angie followed Lady Carrano out into Karaka Grove.

    After she had fought off Polly’s offer of a complete bedroom suite that the Carranos never used, and humbly accepted Polly’s offer of those multi-coloured modern-looking sofas and chairs that they’d had in the family-room and that Jake had hated, they went on down to Pohutukawa Bay and looked at them. They were in the Carranos’ spacious, nay echoing, storage cellar. Polly then, with an evil look in her eye, led Angie into Jake’s wine cellar and forced a case of white and a case of red on her. Angie didn’t even put up a token protest: Jake had pots, he had been known to go all the way to France merely to buy wine, and grog had been going to be, on due consideration of the joint bank account, one of her economies until she'd got enough of her Sir G.G. salary into said account for the engineering brain not to explode on sighting the bank statement.

    After that Angie of course would have been stymied, the brawn being overseas with the engineering brain, about how to actually get it all up to Kingfisher Bay; but Lady Carrano, explaining graciously that if you called a carrier they would never give you a specific time and made you stay home all day in case they came and then turned up at seven fifty-nine in the morning while you were still in the shower, merely picked up the internal phone—since they were by now in the spacious Carrano kitchen—and said: “Oh, hi, Bob, it’s Polly. Yes, I know it wouldn’t be anyone else, never mind! Um, do you know anyone that could take some of those old easy chairs up to the Inlet for us? –Not the bach, they’re for Angie, she’s got a townhouse in Karaka Grove. –Kingfisher Bay. …Ooh, ta, Bob! Yeah, ’course she’s here, we’re gonna have a cuppa, you want one? Righto!” She hung up, beaming, and reported: “Bob knows some students that have got an old Bedford; they’re quite reliable, and he’ll go up with them anyway. He can come back with Ida.”

    Angie nodded: Bob Grey was the husband of Ida who ran Galerie 2. “Are you sure?” she said feebly.

    She was quite sure about all of it. Weakly Angie accepted, not allowing herself to wonder for an instant what Bill would say.

    “These are kinda small, Hal,” said Jack uneasily to his offsider.

    “I don’t want a giant apartment, Jack. Who’d keep it clean?” replied Hal mildly.

    “Not you,” agreed Jack, with a vivid recollection of that dump he’d had in Honolulu. Well, it had been a decent apartment, sure. “Get a cleaning lady,” he said briskly.

    “Huh? Well, okay… Who, though?”

    “I have found one, her name is Velda Manning, and she is worth her weight, no, double her weight, in gold, and she does not, before you ask, belong to the cabal that’s keeping the cleaning prices inflated for the whole of Puriri County. It only took me since the time I got here to find her, too.”

    “Gee, I’d be humbly grateful to be able to borrow five minutes of her time, in that case, Jack.”

    “Yeah,” said Jack, grinning. “I’ll give you her number. –Get out of the car.”

    “Huh? They look okay.”

    “Yes, and we’re going to inspect them before you buy one: get OUT, Hal!” shouted Jack.

    Looking resigned, Hal heaved his beefy person out of the Caddy.

    “I love it,” he said with a pout, looking down at the Caddy.

    “You can’t have it, and get off the road!” said Jack loudly.

    “Huh? Oh: sure.” Hal wandered off Karaka Grove and came to stand beside Jack on the sidewalk. “Didn’t you tell me the Wicked Witch of the West lives up here some place?” he said in Jack’s ear.

    “Yes! Don’t spit! Yeah, Sammi lives further up this very Karaka Grove, but you do not have to have anything to do with her on that account, Hal,” he said carefully.

    “That’s good,” he said mildly.

    Jack sighed. “It’s this one: Number 8.”

    “Uh-huh. –Hi, there,” he said to the slim woman in a fuzzy sweater and neat blue woollen slacks—by the calendar it was spring, by the weather it was damned chilly—who’d just come out of Number 6 and was looking in apparent despair at the clay surface of her small front yard.

    “Hullo,” she said, giving him a puzzled look.

    Jack came over to them hurriedly. “Hi, Angie. This is Hal Gorman, my offsider.”

    “Oh, hullo, Jack,” said Angie weakly. “Yes, I think I’ve seen you at the Sir G.G. offices,” she said weakly to Hal.

    “Angie’s Bill’s wife,” explained Jack clearly.

    “Hey, no kidding?” Hal’s beefy hand engulfed Angie’s small one. “Real pleasure, Angie,” he said showing the teeth. –Jack repressed a sigh. Hal had wonderful teeth. Wonderful. Entirely natural, nary a filling in ’em, what was more.

    “Nice to meet you, Hal,” said Angie limply. “Have you started at Sir G.G., then?”

    “Nominally,” noted Jack.

    “Oh, sure, I’m on the payroll,” he said amiably, displaying the teeth again.

    “He sneaks in at crack of dawn through the back door, which Yvonne usually unlocks for him just before crack of dawn, in order to avoid Kincaid,” explained Jack.

    “Gross exaggeration,” said Hal solemnly. “No, actually I've been working in at your husband’s department, using their facilities for a bit. –Don’t mean I’m not shit-scared of Kincaid, though!” he explained cheerfully.

    “Y— Um, you did clear it with Bill before he left, did you?” she said faintly.

    “Yes,” said Jack hurriedly, seeing Hal was about to claim ignorance. “We’ve jacked up a reciprocal agreement.”

    “The SP2’s,” recognised Angie, shutting her eyes for a moment. “I might have known!”

    “Sure, something like that. We’re hoping that the guys at MIT’ll show him how to handle theirs, before he gets let loose on ours!” said Jack with a laugh.

    “Right. Um—would you like to come in for a coffee?” said Angie feebly. After all, they were engineers.

    Hal accepted eagerly but Jack, taking his muscular elbow in a grip of steel, explained: “We just gotta inspect this next-door apartment, Angie, then we’d love to come on over.”

    “I’m buying it,” explained Hal.

    “You’re buying it if it’s SUITABLE!” shouted Jack.

    “Yours is okay, is it?” said Hal to Angie.

    “Yes, fine. –Number 8? Isn’t that occupied?” she said as Jack produced the keys.

    “Yeah, but for reasons unspecified they’re selling, Angie,” he said on a grim note. “Haven’t been able to get a word of sense out of the agent. Could be termites or ghosts, for all we know.”

    “Mrs Buckman over the road will know," replied Angie definitely, though in a lowered voice.

    Jack grinned, opened the door of Number 8, and pushed at his large friend. “Go in. –Won’t be long, just gotta check out the foundations for rising damp, test the load-bearing capacities of each wall, and run a few seismic surveys,” he said, winking.

    “Right,” acknowledged Angie. She tottered inside again, forgetting that she’d been about to poke a trowel into her clay to see if it really was, all the way through. That other man looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger! Well, Arnie run to seed a bit, perhaps, but… He was huge!

    In the minute downstairs passage of Number 8 Jack looked rather weakly at his huge friend. He’d forgotten how big Hal actually was. “Uh—guy, this place is a bit small.”

    “No, it’s okay,” he said vaguely. He wandered through into the room to the right of the front door. “Look, they got a home gymnasium!” he said pleasedly.

    Jack looked. Jesus, so they had. A really decent-looking exercise-bike— “Don't touch that!” he screamed.

    Hal’s hand retreated from the exercise bike. He wandered over to some barbells that were lying against the wall, and hefted them in a vague manner.

    “Put those down gently,” said Jack, shutting his eyes. He waited for the crash but it didn’t come, so he opened his eyes. Hal now had the barbells in one hand, Jesus God, and with the other was leafing through a magazine that lay on the little table by the far wall. “Muscle Beach boys,” he reported.

    “Huh? Oh, well, maybe they’re gay,” said Jack without interest.

    “Yeah. If you took all this junk out, this room would be quite big.”

    “Yeah, and if you purchased some just like it, maybe you’d get fit!”

    “Uh-huh,” he said vaguely.

    “Hal, you got all that muscle: why are you letting it go to flab?” groaned Jack.

    “No motivation, I guess,” he said vaguely.

    “True. Look, you could wear your Walkman and listen to classical music while you were cycling—”

    “Pedalling,” he corrected without interest. “Lousy sound-quality.”

    “Buy a good one,” said Jack through his teeth. “Or Hell, build yourself a good one!”

    “I might,” he said super-vaguely.

    Jack sighed. “Yeah. Well, this room could be the games room or the living-room, whatever. Come on upstairs.”

    Hal followed him obediently.

    … “This kitchen’s not too big, Jack.”

    It certainly wasn’t, with him in it. “No-o… That good or bad?”

    “We-ell… There’s room for a decent-sized icebox,” he reported, opening it and looking in it with interest before Jack could tell him not to.

    “That’s true: there would be plenty of storage space for your cans of orange juice and coconut cream,” he said nastily.

    “Uh-huh. Gee. Think they’re into health food… Hey, can ya get tofu with mould in it?”

    “Uh—yeah, that Japanese stuff. Hal, leave the contents of these perfect strangers’ icebox alone, would ya?”

    He emerged from the huge industrial-style, steel refrigerator, grinning. “Tasteful, ain’t it? Maybe they are gays. –Perfect strangers’ perfectly strange icebox.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Jack weakly. “Well—uh—come on over here. Now, can you stand an uninterrupted view of your neighbours’ apartments?”

    “Huh?” he said blankly.

    “Hal, if you spent a lot more money and bought further on up the slope, or further round in one of those more expensive streets, you would get a view of the sea.”

    “It’s just down there, isn’t it?”

    “Yes.”

    “Then I can’t see why I’d need to look at it.”

    “Did you bring your boards?” said Jack without hope.

    “Huh? Oh. Well, they tell me the surf’s nothing much in this neck of the woods. I brought three. Well, I let Jack Ku— So?”

    “Your good boards? That Kualalofa creep? Hal, he was into you for how much?” he cried.

    “Uh—I forget. Great surfer.”

    “Great surfer and rotten engineer and great gambler except that he always LOSES!” shouted Jack.

    Hal shrugged. “It was only money.”

    “In that case, we better settle for a small apartment without a view. And there is surfing: not here, over on the other coast: Piha. Um—Piha Beach?” he said carefully in Hal’s vernacular.

    Hal shrugged.

    “Well, it has its good days,” conceded Jack. “Uh—now, try to imagine this room without their tasteful furniture, okay?”

    Hal screwed up his eyes. “Yeah?”

    “Uh—not with those dead rattan pieces of junk you used to have. Well—something plain, masculine-style?” said Jack without hope.

    “Uh—like, a good big couch?”

    “Right.”

    “Uh—yeah. I guess.”

    Jack took a deep breath and led him into the bedroom.

    … “Come out of their bathroom closet!” he screamed.

    “It ain’t. Small cupboard, merely. There’s a bath: tasteful. The shower’s over it: see?”

    “Uh-huh. That’s very common here, Hal.”

    “Plastic,” reported Hal.

    “Yes. They make it with those fake-marble swirls, ya see. Well, I guess if you like sort of khaki-coloured marbling, it’s not too bad. Uh… shit, these walls are real slate, musta cost a fortune, added to which it weighs a ton!”

    “Khaki slate?”

    “Of course! Where have you been living? –Don’t answer that. Now, the laundry facilities will be downstairs, and please do not say ‘laundromat’.”

    “I was gonna say ‘Belinda Ho’s’,” he replied mildly.

    “Oh—sure. How was she, when you left?”

    Happily Hal gave him the full story on Mrs Ho’s and her extended family’s physical, mental, and financial health. He didn’t appear interested in the fact that the townhouse’s owners might leave the washing-machine, for a price, and would definitely leave the stove. Jack then looked at the foundations and forced him to glance at the carport.

    “Yeah.”

    “It rains a lot, here, Hal.”

    “Those other places have all got carports, though.”

    “That is not the point.”

    “Could wall it in? Maybe grow a vine? –Shall we go have coffee with Angie, now?” he said hopefully.

    Jack gave in. “Yeah. Okay.”

    “We never saw much stuff,” reported Sheryl somewhat weakly.

    “I think that was all there was,” replied Angie.

    “Heck,” she said numbly.

    “He ’as more than me, when I moved in, Sheryl,” Simone reminded her.

    “Ye-ah… well, you never had a fridge,” she admitted. “But I never even saw a bed! Did you see a bed, Angie?”

    “No.” Angie waited while Simone translated rapidly; then as Annick shook her head, she said to her: “Pas de lit, n’est-ce pas?”

    “Aucun lit,” she agreed. She said something to Simone and Simone translated: “Annick thinks pair’aps he has dhuh… camping bag?”

    “Sleeping-bag,” said Angie kindly, seeing that Sheryl was merely looking blank. “Nope.” She shook her head at Annick, and shrugged. Annick also shrugged.

    “What’s he gonna sleep on, then?” wondered Sheryl.

    “The floor?” suggested Angie, thinking of the palatial oatmeal carpet in her own new residence.

    “Nah!” she scoffed.

    “He does look mad enough for anything, Sheryl,” said Angie cautiously. Obligingly Simone began to translate but Annick got this halfway through and agreed energetically. Even though she was agreeing in French, Angie and Sheryl got it.

    “Pair-aps he buys dhuh beeg bed, later," said Simone.

    “Yeah, he’ll go down Forrest’s and buy a huge one," said Sheryl neutrally.

    Their eyes met. Simone bit her lip.

    “It’ll have a huge great black padded leather headboard,” added Sheryl, even more neutrally.

    Simone collapsed in helpless splutters, trying to translate for Annick through them.

    “Lit,” said Angie helpfully. “Um… blow.”

    But Annick was nodding hard. “Dhuh bed of Armand and of Simone. Yais!”

    “Goddit,” agreed Sheryl, grinning. “Shall we have another cuppa coffee?”

    Even though it was technically Angie who was the hostess, they all agreed, and Sheryl got up to boil the jug. “What has he got, besides that fridge?” she asked.

    “Um… surfboards?” said Angie weakly.

    Sheryl giggled and nodded. “Saw those!”

    “There were some baggages,” said Simone.

    “She means suitcases.—Ya mean suitcases.—Yeah, we saw those.”

    “And some stereo gear,” added Angie.

    “Sorta weird-looking: yeah,” agreed Sheryl.

    “I saw a chair,” said Simone.

    “When?” retorted her neighbour fiercely.

    “After we theenk the show is over. He goes out, no? Then a bit later I come outside to see if Pierre ’as killed that plant that Armand planted by the letter-box.”

    “He has, eh? Flattened it with his skateboard,” said Sheryl detachedly.

    “Yes. It is vairy broken. I do not theenk it may be… brought to laife?”

    “Revived,” said Angie.

    “Thank you, Angie. Revived. No, it will never be revived, for it is too broken.”

    “Yeah, I reckon it’s dead as a doornail," agreed Sheryl “Armand’ll be ropeable when he gets back from his blimmin’ conference, Simone,” she warned. “You got any biscuits, Angie?”

    “Oh—yes. Sorry.” Angie fetched the biscuits, reflecting it was just as well she’d popped into Swadlings’ and succumbed to them. So much for the liberated executive woman, eh? Kaffee klatches half the morning when she should be getting some reading done, was more like it.

    “Anyway, it was then that I saw him come back weeth a chair,” said Simone.

    “In his car?” demanded Sheryl keenly.

    “On the roof-rack: yeah,” she replied comfortably.

    “Kitchen or easy chair, Simone?” asked Angie with a laugh.

    “Yeah, ya can’t leave it at just ‘chair’!” agreed Sheryl, grinning.

    “An easy chair. Eugh… Scotch?” she ventured.

    “Eh?” they said. Technically Annick said “Hein?” but it didn’t sound much different.

    Simone consulted with her friend, to no avail. Annick flapped her hand helplessly. “Scotch,” she said, making it sound very French.

    “Scotch chair?” said Sheryl to Angie. Angie shook her head.

    “Like the Scotch skirts!” said Simone desperately.

    They looked blank.

    “Of the men!”

    “Uh—kilts,” said Angie limply.

    “Oh! I geddit!” cried Sheryl “She means it was tartan! Tartan, eh, Simone? The material, eh? Like—um, checks, all colours? Tartan. Like those little frocks with the white smocking you and Anna made for Tricksie’s. –Black Watch,” she explained to Angie. “They were neato.”

    “Tartan,” said Simone in relief. “Yes. Red. Vairy bright.”

    “A tartan chair?” croaked Sheryl, having visualised it.

    “Um—I did see in a fancy magazine that tartan was quite In, a couple of years back,” ventured Angie dubiously.

    “Not red, though!” she cried.

    “Um… well, not really bright colours, no.”

    “We’ll have to think up some excuse to get in there!” decided Sheryl.

    Simone translated but there was no need, Annick was agreeing before the words were out of her mouth.

    “I do sort of know him. I could ask him round for a coffee," said Angie limply.

    “Yeah, come on: we’ll come with you!” said Sheryl, standing up immediately.

    “D’ac. –Tu viens?” said Simone to her friend.

    “Yais,” agreed Annick, also standing up.

    Angie opened her mouth to say “What, now?” but thought better of it. “At least he won’t be off at that blimmin’ IT applications get-together.”

    “Conference,” corrected Sheryl.

    “It isn’t technically a conference, Sheryl, it’s something even weirder,” explained Angie as they trooped downstairs. “They call it a brain-storming session: they all get together and bounce ideas off each other.”

    “Ideas, eh?” said Sheryl, very grim.

    Angie didn’t dare to glance at Simone. “Mm,” she agreed limply. Sammi Wolfe was also at this long-weekend brain-storming session. Down, if you please, at Wairakei. The hotel there was reputedly one of the best conference venues in the country. Admittedly it would probably pour all weekend, this time of year, but really! A flaming brain-storming session in the middle of all those thermal pools?

    “Hullo: a bevy of beauty!” Hal Gorman greeted them brightly. Fairly brightly considering he hadn’t shaved and was pretty apparently clad only in a bright Hawaiian sarong. Gosh. Angie heard the younger two gulp: serve ’em right.

    “We came to ask you over for a cup of coffee,” she said limply.

    “Why not have one here?”

    “Uh—” Angie could feel the waves emanating from them. “Righto: ta,” she said feebly.

    They panted up the stairs after him. Personally Angie had an impulse to shut her eyes: possibly she was getting old. There was definitely nothing under that sarong.

    “He's got one of those blow-up mattresses,” she said limply as his sitting-dining-room was revealed in all its glory with the thing in the middle of it.

    “Sure,” he said amiably.

    “You’ll have had it rolled up in a bag—in a suitcase, eh?” said Angie, looking pointedly at Sheryl.

    “Sure, that’s right,” he agreed amiably. “You ladies like real coffee?”

    “Yes, please,” said Simone thankfully.

    “Yais, please,” echoed Annick.

    “Right. –I’m Hal Gorman,” he said amiably.

    “I’m sorry, Hal.” Hurriedly Angie introduced them. Explaining as she did so that Sheryl and her husband lived at Number 16, no use getting his hopes up; and that of course he probably had met Simone’s husband, who worked at Sir G.G. She didn’t feel that Annick need explaining, she was clearly out of Hal’s age-group, though judging by the look on her face at this precise moment it wouldn't have bothered her.

    … “Gee, he’s a hunk without his clothes on, eh?” said Sheryl simply as they tottered out of Number 8 at long last. If a single detail of Hal’s past life had gone unreported this morning it was certainly not through any doing of theirs.

    “A rather older version of Arnie Schwarzenegger, yes,” said Angie limply.

    “Yeah. Hairier, though.”

    “Yes,” said Angie limply.

    There was a ruminative silence.

    Eventually Simone said: “The chair was tartan.”

    “It sure was,” said Angie limply. “Pure wool, I’d say. And I’d take my dying oath that pattern was Stewart!”

    “Yeah,” agreed Sheryl “I used to be a marching girl," she explained as Angie goggled at her.

    “I see!”

    “No wonder he got it second-hand,” added Sheryl.

    “Yes—” Simone broke into excited speech in French. Annick agreed volubly.

    “I think they’re saying the French equivalent of they wouldn’t have it if you were giving it away with a bar of soap,” explained Angie.

    Sheryl collapsed in splutters, nodding helplessly.

    “Yes, for one can’t theenk of any possible room in which it could look good!” said Simone eagerly.

    “No, indeed,” agreed Angie, looking at her with considerable liking. “One certainly can’t.”

    Annick here interpolated something, and Simone blushed and laughed. “Yes: Annick says he is… The English word is ‘nice’, but that does not convey the exact meaning. “Il est sympa, non?” she said to her. “Vairy… likeable, is that a word?”

    “Yeah. That’d be right," said Sheryl sturdily, but nevertheless with something of a blush about her.

    Angie nodded. He was that, all right, was Hal Gorman. Well, it’d be all go at Karaka Grove, and then some, this coming year! And to think she’d actually thought she might get bored, with the great engineering clot off at his blessed MIT!

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/visiting-firemen.html