More Mature Decision-Making

5

More Mature Decision-Making

    “I see,” said Belinda Throsby-Gore acidly. “This is what you call mature decision-making.”

    “No,” replied her husband with distaste. “It’s what you call mature decision-making. I’d cut my throat sooner than use the phrase. Ducky.”

    “All right, Leigh, go! But you can go without ME!” she shouted.

    “That’s an inducement.” Leigh Gore, as was his habit of a Sunday morning, was eating burnt toast, made by himself, with strawberry jam on it. In bed, while he read the journals and newspapers he never had time to look at during the week at his place of employment. He took a large bite. Pieces of burnt strawberry-jammed toast dropped down his front and into his pyjama jacket. “Damn,” he said, scrabbling for them with sticky fingers.

    “You’re MAD!” shouted Belinda. “And stop eating toast in BED!”

    “Why? You never get into it.”

    Partly on the score of his having put his back out five years since, partly on the score of the said toast-eating habit and, Leigh had a suspicion, partly because she’d never much enjoyed sex in the first place, Belinda had decided on twin beds. True, they had been married for twenty-one years. That was another of her excuses.

    “I have to make it,” she snapped. “Or apologise to Mrs Frazer, if the woman ever turns up, for it being full of disgusting crumbs.”

    “You don’t have to make it at all: it’s just your social conditioning that suggests to you that you should. Fight it,” he drawled.

    “Shut up.” It was Belinda’s habit to read the real Sunday papers in bed. She buried herself in The Observer.

    “You can chuck me the appointments section of that,” said Leigh, not looking up.

    “Get stuffed.”

    There was silence in the Throsby-Gores’, if you believed Belinda, and just the Gores’, if you didn’t, sufficiently palatial master bedroom. Apart from the crunching of burnt toast and the occasional expletive as it went down the pyjama front.

    “Sir George Grey…” said Leigh slowly, for the third time. Belinda ignored him. “Fuck me, that’s where Alan Kincaid’s gone!” he said numbly.

    “Good, go: with any luck he’ll have you thrown into an Australian jail this time.”

    “New Zealand, you fool. And it was hardly his fault.”

    Belinda actually lowered the paper to stare at him. “That’s not what you said at the time!”

    He shrugged. “He warned us publicly that any attempt to blockade the Department of Nuclear Sciences would result in the demonstrators going to clink. We done it. He done it. End of story.”

    “Except that you’ve got a police record!”

   Leigh didn’t bother to remind her that they’d never actually been prosecuted; he just replied: “True.”

    “He’d never appoint you, Leigh, you’re raving.”

    “I’ve run one of the best ESL departments in the country for the last ten years: why wouldn’t he?”

    “For one thing, the students at this Sir Whatsit dump will all be Maoris or something: you’ve never taught students that speak it.”

    Leigh sighed. “That’s irrelevant. And they won’t all be Maori. In fact I’ll eat my hat if any of them are Maori: this university is not for local consumption, it’s to draw in fee-paying students from abroad.”

    “Arab dollars: Alan Kincaid’s theme-song. Well, that’ll suit you right down to the ground,” she noted with heavy irony.

    “I doubt if they’ll be Arabs, in those parts.”

    “That’s what I’m SAYING: you’ve been teaching students that speak different LANGUAGES!” she shouted.

    “It’s the principles that matter,” said Leigh vaguely, re-reading the advertisement.

    “It won’t pay as much as you’re getting now,” she warned.

    “The climate will make up for that. I shall take up,” said Leigh dreamily, looking at the ceiling, “water-skiing”

    Belinda gave a crack of incredulous laughter.

    “All right, paddling,” he said mildly.

    “That I can see!”

    Silence again. Leigh finished his stone-cold coffee. Belinda sipped incredibly expensive American real orange juice.

    “It says here, in the appropriate Nineties-Generation Turdish language, that the salary packages are negotiable,” he said dreamily.

    Ignoring the expression “Turdish language”, which was one of her irritating husband’s favourites, Belinda merely replied: “Huh!”

    “Why not? I’ll just ask for what I’m getting here, translated into New Zealand dollars, plus say five thousand extra for dirt money. And moving expenses. Dare say they’ll offer those anyway.”

    “You can’t even negotiate a yoghurt with an unexpired use-by date!”

    This was true, but Leigh replied mildly: “I don’t like yoghurt.”

    “You don’t like money!” retorted his wife.

    Leigh emerged from the paper. “No, I don’t. And I realise that you do. So this is your last chance. If I get this New Zealand job at Alan Kincaid’s bloody Arab-dollars university, will you come?”

    “No.”

    “Fine,” he said mildly, retiring into the paper again.

    Belinda shrugged. She finished her juice, folded her paper neatly, and got up.

    Once she’d disappeared downstairs, Leigh got slowly out of bed, scratching his whiskers. “Why the Hell not?” he said mildly. He began to dress without bothering about such niceties as washing or shaving.

    Twenty minutes later he wandered into the kitchen looking vague. Belinda was anointing six grapefruit halves with minute portions of apricot jam. “If that’s for one of your bloody vegetarian Sunday lunches with the unspeakable Veneerings and bloody Don and Victoria, make it five grapefruit halves, I’m off.”

    “What?” said Belinda crossly.

    “I’m off. Good-bye, Belinda.”

    “You’re not going to go off to the pub and ruin my table!” she said angrily. “What’ll they think?”

    “Who gives a damn?”

    He was almost out the door when Belinda caught sight of the suitcase. “Where are you going with that?” she gasped.

    “I said: I’m off. Out of it. Goodbye, Belinda,” repeated Leigh clearly.

    “I see. This is one of your stupid jokes, because I didn’t pretend to be interested in stupid jobs in stupid Australia.”

    “It isn’t. Give my love to Surbiton and Mummy and Daddy Throsby.”

    “Stop it! Where do you imagine you’re GOING?” she shouted.

    “In the first instance, I’m going in to work, to type up my application for this stupid job. It’s in New Zealand, but don’t bother to retain that in your specialised memory store: I won’t be meeting any people that Mummy and Daddy Throsby will think it nice to know. And in the second instance, I’m going round to Thomas the Tank Engine’s place. To stay until I find out whether or not I get the job. If I don’t, I’ll make other arrangements. Don’t ring me there, Thomas’ll hang up on you. And don’t ring me at work, my secretary’s believed for the last five years I’m not married, and I’d quite like to keep it that way.”

    “That’s a LIE! And what about the CHILDREN?” she shouted

    “They’re nineteen and twenty and neither of them gives a damn what I do, and never has, so long as I cough up for their bloody tuition fees and/or their bloody wedding receptions. But you could tell Michael from me that Management is not a subject, as such. And if Lindy decides she can’t stand living with that twat after all, you can tell her that in the first instance I told her he’s a twat and in the second instance I’m not paying for any more weddings, white or not: that was her lot. –Oh, you can have the bloody house: as you so rightly pointed out, I don’t care about money.”

    “Look, Leigh, you’re being ridiculous; this is some sort of mid-life crisis,” she said, trying to speak calmly.

    “Yes, and I’ve only just realised I’ve been having it for the past ten years. So I might as well enjoy it now I have realised it. Goodbye,” said Leigh, walking out.

    Belinda hurried after him and shouted, regardless of old Mr Featherstonehaugh next-door spraying his roses: “If you think Alan Kincaid will give you a job, you’re out of your mind!”

    Leigh stood on the path of the handsome two-storeyed stockbroker-Tudor house which he was disowning and shouted back: “He won’t be prejudiced by a small matter like actually having got into your sheets twenty-odd years back, he’s a fair-minded-man!”

    Belinda gave a scream of rage and slammed the door.

    Leigh went on his way whistling gently half under his breath. He’d take whatever job he could get, even if Alan Kincaid offered him associate-prof instead of the chair. Or a bloody lectureship. What the Hell, there was nothing left for him here, and if he didn’t make a move now—

    Leigh Gore was forty-eight. More than old enough to be having a mid-life crisis, as he fully realised. So what, if it wasn’t mature decision-making? You were a long time dead.

    The Gordon Wolfes, as Dr Jill Davis, M.A., Ph.D., was all too painfully aware, lived in Manchester. In a very nice suburb of it. Surrounded by other houses with large lawns and trees, just like their own. At about the time Belinda was ordering Leigh Gore not to eat strawberry-jammed toast in bed, Gordon Wolfe was saying incredulously to his second daughter: “What did you say?”

    “Why not?” said Martin Wolfe hoarsely.

    Since Martin, the youngest of the family, was only seventeen, his parents and siblings took no notice of him. Shrugging, he hunched himself into his PC Magazine and proceeded ostentatiously to ignore the discussion which followed.

    The Wolfes, unlike the Gores, normally arose for Sunday breakfast, both Norma and Gordon were like that. Though they did allow themselves and the family to arise at a slightly later hour than on weekdays. So the discussion was taking place around the kitchen table. Of course they had a dining-room, but Norma had recently had the kitchen enlarged and given more of a family-room look: expanses of grey-blue slate underfoot, a new ceramic-topped stove to supplement the Aga, new grey-blue slate-topped benches with a large grey and white marble slab for pastry that she never used, a butcher’s block in heavy varnished wood that she never used, white tiles to a height of five feet on every wall and then whitewash over plaster, fake exposed beams in the ceiling in order to support a copper batterie de cuisine that she never used, terracotta pots full of ferny herbs that she never used—that sort of thing.

    Sammi Wolfe repeated calmly: “I’m applying for this job: Senior Administrator.”

    “Sammi, that’s the place where that awful Alan Kincaid went, I’m sure,” warned her mother.

    “Yes; you’d be working directly under him, I suppose you realise?” said her father grimly.

    Sammi shrugged. “Yes.”

    “Dear, with your law degree,” said Norma cautiously, “you could—”

    “Rubbish, Mother.”

    Her older brother agreed: “She’s moved on, Mother. She’s past that stage in her life. But I wouldn’t have thought your Business Studies qualifications and your experience at Worth, Inglis would put you in line for this, Sammi. Not even if you did do those three years at York.” –Paul Wolfe lived not so very far away in a beautifully modernised cottage in what had once been a village half a day’s journey by farm cart from the big Manchester market. He had popped over to borrow his father’s hedge-trimmer: his own was in for repair and in any case he was thinking of trading up to a better model like Dad’s. Gordon Wolfe was a man who believed in buying the best; he frequently advised others to do likewise, it was a false economy not to. It had never occurred to him that most of the population could not afford anything but false economies.

    Sammi returned: “That was solid experience, at York. And I’m capable. In fact I’m working at a much higher level at Worth, Inglis than I’d be required to as registrar.”

    “Well, isn’t that partly the point?” said Paul. “Would you get the same challenge, at this Sir George Whoever University?”

    “Grey. It’s a different sort of challenge. I’ve done well at Worth, Inglis, but I’ve had enough.”

    “Wasn’t there some plan of sending you over to manage the German office, Sammi?” said her father.

    Sammi’s elegantly curved lips tightened. “They’ve brought Brad Inglis in from the States instead. I’ve got as high as I’m going to get: I’m not an Inglis or a Worth.”

    “But—well, I can understand you wanting to move on, then, dear. But New Zealand’s so far away! Couldn’t you find something closer?” said Norma in distress.

    Sammi looked drily at Paul, and sniffed. “Within borrowing distance of Dad’s hedge-trimmer, Mother?” –Martin did not gratify his elders with an actual laugh, it might have given the impression that he was interested in their conversation, but at this point he smiled into the PC Magazine.

    “Have you completed that economics degree?” asked Gordon suddenly.

    “Last year,” replied Sammi drily.

    “Oh. Well, good.”

    “Good unless they decide she’s over-qualified,” said Paul.

    Silently Sammi handed him the paper, neatly folded to display the advertisement for a Senior Administrator for Sir George Grey University.

    “Oh. Well, good!” he said.

    “Paul, if she gets it she’ll be on the other side of the world!” cried their mother.

    “We’ll probably see more of her than we do now, when she’s only based in London,” he noted.

    Sammi shrugged. “I’ve come here to tell you, haven’t I?”

    “So you’ve definitely decided to apply?” said her father.

    “I have applied. This thing,” she said, with a scornful nod at the paper, “is late. They advertised it in the professional journals three weeks ago.”

    Norma gasped and Gordon frowned, wearing his most judicious expression. Sammi Wolfe had long since worked out that Dad was mainly hot air. Hot air plus a lot of outdated linguistic theory that he’d absorbed in the Sixties or possibly earlier and had clung to like a limpet ever since. She ignored the judicious expression, it meant less than nothing, but replied succinctly to Paul’s enquiry if she’d heard back: “Acknowledgement letter.”

    “Shows they’re on the ball,” he conceded.

    “Have they set a date for your interview, dear?” asked her mother.

    “Mother, they haven’t even short-listed, yet. Is there any juice?”

    “No, Martin will’ve drunk it all,” said Paul instantly.

    Martin ignored him.

    “Nonsense, Paul. There’s a fresh carton of orange, Sammi, and some of that new cranberry stuff your father likes.”

    Sammi got up and poured herself a large orange juice.

    “Have some toast, Sammi,” urged her mother.

    “No, thanks.” Sammi leaned on the grey-blue slate bench, drinking juice. “I’m going for a run. –You ought to come: it’d do you a lot more good than mechanised hedge-trimming,” she said pointedly to her older brother.

    Paul got up. “No, Ellie’s expecting me back.”

    Sammi made a rude noise. “That or she’s over at her parents’.”

    Martin collapsed in sniggers.

    “Stop that, Martin, it’s not funny,” said his mother with a sigh.

    Sammi went over to the door, slowly removing her pale grey sweatshirt. “You could come with me, Martin. Though with the amount of exercise you normally take, I grant you we can expect a heart attack before we get to the corner.”

    Martin ignored her.

    “Sammi, will you be warm enough in that tee-shirt?” said Norma.

    “Yes.” Sammi tied the sweatshirt loosely around her waist by its arms and went out.

    “New Zealand!” lamented Norma.

    “She might get home leave,” said Paul thoughtfully.

    His father got up. “In that case we’ll see her every three years, so nothing will have changed. Do you want that hedge-trimmer, or not?”

    “Oh. Yes: thanks, Dad.” Paul followed his father out.

    “New Zealand!” lamented Norma. “It’s at the other side of the world!”

    “Gee, Mom, you can tell you did geography in your degree,” said her youngest offspring admiringly.

    “Be quiet! And don’t call me ‘Mom’, it’s vulgar and American.”

    “In that order,” noted Martin sourly. He got up, picking up the PC Magazine. As an afterthought he went over to the huge pale grey refrigerator, removed the carton of cranberry juice, and shambled off with it.

    “New Zealand!” lamented Norma.

    “Close as I could get!” said Thomas the Tank Engine with a laugh.

    Leigh took the beer can in a feeble hand. “Foster’s Lager” was what it said on it. “It’s the thought that counts,” he allowed.

    Thomas sat down heavily on his beat-up apology for a chesterfield. “Yeah.” He drank thirstily. Leigh sipped his cautiously. Ugh.

    “Might come with you,” said his old friend casually.

    Leigh goggled at him. “Eh?”

    Thomas was investigating the shopping carrier of takeaways which generally constituted dinner at his flat unless there was one of his lady friends in residence. Which Leigh had sort of thought there was, actually. “Chips, third-strength vindaloo, spare-ribs?”

    “What?”

    Thomas continued cheerfully: “Fried dim-sims? –Joe Lee’s, they’re horrible but they exert a strange, morbid fascination over me, think he puts your actual non-meat British sausage-meat into them. Curried spinach with cottage cheese: I’ll have that if you don’t like it. Chicken with almonds, that’s Chinese. Um… what’s this? Dunno.” He sniffed it. “Putative steak in black bean sauce. Hang on. Ah! Flied lice, Joe Lee’s best. Care for mushy peas?”

    “Mushy peas yourself,” replied Leigh limply. “Where’s the pizza?”

    “Next time!” promised Thomas with a laugh. He set out all the cartons on the heavily-ringed coffee table. There was very little varnish left on it to be taken off, which was just as well.

    Leigh helped himself to chips, on the theory that they would probably deteriorate fastest as they cooled. “Did you say you might come with me?”

    “Esh. Why not?” said Thomas the Tank Engine through mushy peas and fried rice.

    Leigh looked at him limply. Thomas Baranski was a squarish personality, to consider only his physical make-up and very definitely not his more mental, or as some claimed, completely mental, side. About five-foot-nine, shoulders like an all-in wrestler, chest to match. He had never, in fact, done any wrestling, but in his youth had been a keen amateur boxer. A sport which he now declared should be banned: he’d seen too many young idiots with their brains scrambled. The face, which would have been pretty rugged anyway, was as a result of this indulgence in the manly art rather battered as to the nose. He didn’t admit to taking exercise these days, but he was not flabby: Leigh knew for a fact that he swam several lengths of the public pool every day, often at lunchtimes, sometimes in the early morning when not otherwise occupied, and quite often in the evenings after classes. And walked for miles, he was waging a one-man boycott against the British public transport system. Sometimes he cycled, but he preferred to walk. He was about Leigh’s own age, but where Leigh had a head of respectably greyed light brown, neatly combed hair, at least in his more official, Professor Gore moments, Thomas’s shock of silvering black curls was, although reasonably short, always in mad disarray. He never shaved in the weekends so he was now, at seven-thirty of a Sunday evening, pretty hideous.

    No-one was quite sure where the name came from: according to Thomas his great-grandfather had been, variously, a half-Polish, half-gypsy rug-seller, a White Russian refugee, a Polish-Hungarian horse trader, and a half-Russian spy for variously, the Turks, the White Russians, and the Bolsheviks. There were several other versions, more or less romantic and unlikely according to his mood, the amount of alcohol he’d consumed, and the credulity and gender of his audience. The rug-selling was a recurring motif but whether it represented any sort of reality Leigh Gore wouldn’t have cared to say. He did know that Thomas’s father, an eminently sane man, had been a doctor in Cambridge. His English mother had also been extremely sane, so where Thomas got the streak of madness from was anybody’s guess.

    “Why not?” repeated Thomas mildly. He dipped a bunch of chips in the putative steak with black bean sauce.

    “Where’s Marianne?” replied Leigh heavily.

    “Go’ nuffin a hoo hiffit,” replied Thomas indistinctly. He swallowed. “She tried to introduce a bathroom roster.”

    “For two?” said Leigh weakly.

    Thomas shrugged. “Then she decided I could defrost the fridge every second Saturday.”

    “Oh.”

    Thomas shovelled in fried rice with mushy peas. “Hen oo heen a hundow!” he said loudly, waving the hand that held the small plastic fork.

    Trying not to wince as bits of rice and mushy peas fell onto the very, very, very tired rug, Leigh replied: “Swallow.”

    Thomas swallowed noisily. “Then she cleaned the windows.”

    “I thought something seemed very odd,” agreed Leigh.

    “I told her she could have me or a bathroom roster for one and she opted for the bathroom roster. I do admit,” he said, scratching the whiskers with the fork, “that the paint straining through the tights may have been an influence, here.”

    “Was the situation,” asked Leigh, taking a spare-rib, “that she strained paint that you would have preferred to remain lumpy, or that you strained paint through her good tights that she would have preferred to retain as tights?”

    “Got it in two.”

    “I suppose most women would have reacted like that,” said Leigh, removing the carton of chicken and almonds from under his nose.

    “Oy! What if I wanted some of that?”

    “What if I wanted some mushy peas?” returned Leigh calmly.

    Thomas looked at where the mushy peas had once been. “Oh. Sorry. Want any of the spinach thing?”

    “No.”

    Thomas picked up the carton. “Fried rice?”

    “YES!”

    “All right, all right,” he muttered. He spooned rice into the spinach, rather than vice versa.

    “So—um—she’s gone for good?” ventured Leigh.

    “Mm. Well, she had that look in her eye,” he said with a sigh.

    “How old was she?” asked Leigh, rolling his own eyes.

    “Twenty-two. Which is more than old enough to be enslaved, I use the word advisedly, by the nesting instinct.”

    “Mm. What do you imagine you’d do if you did come to New Zealand?” said Leigh, not admitting how much he fancied the idea, now that the maniac had put it forward.

    Thomas picked up a spare-rib, though not releasing the carton of spinach and cottage cheese curry that was held firmly in his other fist. He ripped the meat off the spare-rib with his large front teeth, looking thoughtful. “Dunno. Same as I do now, I suppose.”

    Leigh looked at him wildly. Thomas was a geologist. More specifically, he was a marine geologist. He had done a brilliant degree and had had a brilliantly successful career in industry until the moment the large international conglomerate he was working for decided to prospect for certain minerals in international waters, regardless of what international treaty agreements might or might not officially apply. So he resigned. The university had leapt at his application to become their professor of geology, not discovering until three months after he’d got permanent tenure, though admittedly there had been no calculation on Thomas’s part, that their new professor was a hopeless iconoclast who did things like, in this instance, figuring prominently in protests against the presence of a Department of Nuclear Science on a peaceful campus in the middle of a peaceful, prosperous little university town in the middle of England.

    “Sheen an ad,” said Thomas thickly.

    “Um—ye-es… Hang on.” Prudently keeping hold of his chicken and almonds, Leigh got up and retrieved the newspaper he’d brought from home. “Was it in this?”

    “No idea.”“

    Leigh looked through the appointments, his face gradually becoming more and more puzzled. Finally Thomas said thickly through the vindaloo, only slightly tempered by the rice: “Vir’mennal Rezhourshesh.”

    “Huh?”

    He jabbed at the paper with his fork. “Ish!”

    “Oh: ‘this’. –You?” croaked Leigh, goggling at him. “Environmental Resources?”

    Thomas swallowed. “I do have a chair here,” he pointed out.

    Leigh just went on goggling at him.

    “New Zealand is entirely surrounded by water,” he pointed out. “So, come to think of it,” he said thoughtfully: “are all the islands of the Pacific whose offshore resources the Japs and Koreans—and before long the Chinese, I have no doubt—are hoping to exploit before they learn to do it themselves. Indonesia, Malaysia and PNG have large coastlines—”

    “Thomas, didn’t I explain? This is the joint that Alan Kincaid is running!” he cried.

    “Thought it was,” said Thomas, unmoved. “I am qualified in marine geology, you know,” he added mildly.

    “Your expertise isn’t in question, you fool! Look, this dump will be all about exploiting the bloody Pacific Basin; that’s what ‘resources’ means!” said Leigh heatedly.

    “Yes.” Thomas took the last spare-rib. He chewed on it slowly, while Leigh glared. Eventually he said: “Have the last dim-sim.”

    “No, I hate sausage-meat. And stop hogging that bloody rice, will you?”

    Resignedly Thomas the Tank Engine passed him the remains of the rice. Defiantly Leigh tipped steak and black-bean sauce onto it and began to eat.

    “I shall endeavour, in my quiet way,” said Thomas dreamily: “to introduce the notion ‘environmental’ into all those little brown and yellow heads, whilst overtly inculcating the ‘resources’ doctrine.”

    Leigh choked on his black bean sauce.

    “Serves you right,” said Thomas, scowling, when he was more or less recovered and rinsing out his throat with medicinal Australian lager.

    “Look, you clown, this is Alan Kincaid we’re talking about! He’ll see right through that one!”

    “But possibly not until I’ve done a mite of good in the world.”

    “Well, have it your own way. –That is, assuming he appoints you in the first place.”

    “There are three other men with qualifications as good as mine who might apply. None of them have got my working experience. I worked off PNG for two years, you know.”

    Leigh had forgotten; he nodded silently, however.

    “There are quite a few really good men out in the field who could be up for it, of course, but,” said Thomas, eating the last dim-sim, after first dipping it into Leigh’s black bean sauce and rice mixture, “in case you hadn’t noticed, Alan Kincaid is a raving snob.”

    “There’s a lot of things I’d call him, but— Oh! Do you mean an intellectual snob. Thomas?”

    “Mm,” he said through the last of the spinach. “–That was good. Should have got a double lot.”

    “You got a double lot of rice and ate two-thirds of it,” said Leigh pointedly. “Let that make up for it.”

    “Want more vindaloo?”—Leigh shook his head, wincing.—“Very well, then, I’ll force myself.” He began to eat third-strength vindaloo, neat.

    Leigh sighed and finished his black bean sauce with very little steak and not much rice. “Are you serious?”

    “Yes. Are you?”

    “Well, yes. Don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get it, though,” he admitted.

    “Come anyway,” offered Thomas. “Get away from bloody Belinda, make the break. We could go into business! Run a little diving-hire place! You know: wet-suits, scuba gear, training for novices?”

    “I’m a rotten swimmer.”

    “I’m not. But you’d do the books, of course!” he said cheerfully.

    “On your computer?”

    Thomas looked uneasily at the welter of electronic junk which cluttered the large main room of his flat. “Ugh, I’ll have to pack all this. Um, no, we’d buy a p.c. for the business,” he decided briskly.

    Leigh looked at him limply.

    “Well?”

    “Uh—well, have you got any money, Thomas?”

    “Must do. My salary goes straight into the bank. Haven’t looked, really.”

    Wincing, Leigh conceded: “Well, you’re undoubtedly better off than I am, mine’s all tied up in the house. What didn’t go on Lindy’s bloody wedding.”

    “Mm. Well?”

    “Um—I’ll think about it. No, I mean it, Thomas: seriously.”

    “Good. Coffee?”

    “Go on, then, poison me.”

    “Could put a slug of brandy in it?”

    “That would help,” said Leigh with precision. Thomas got up, grinning. Absently Leigh opened another can of Foster’s. “I wonder if the New Zealand government lets in unemployed ex-ESL teachers?”

    “We’ll pretend all the money’s yours, they’ll let you in!” said Thomas bracingly.

    Leigh smiled weakly. By God, he’d better get that job! He wouldn’t mind giving the diving-gear thing a go, but he wasn’t too sure the New Zealand government would be keen on the idea, with or without Thomas’s money. But staying here, within spitting distance of bloody Belinda, at the moment felt like a distinct no-no. And he had a feeling it would continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

    Martin Wolfe sidled into the bedroom Sammi occupied when visiting her parents’ charming suburban abode. Not the one she and her older sister had once shared, Martin had claimed that for himself and his electronic gear, but the official spare bedroom. Her black, heavy-duty nylon suitcase was open on the bed, her black leather briefcase was placed neatly, shut, on the chair beside the bed, and her scarlet leather carry-on case was open on the low chest of drawers. Sammi, in a scarlet lace bra and scarlet satin knickers and suspender belt that matched the case, though this might have been a coincidence, was brushing her chin-length, honey-coloured wavy hair before the mirror. Her chiselled, wide-jawed, rather cat-like features were expressionless. They remained so at the sight of her shambling brother, his bony form draped in a black tee-shirt and baggy black jeans, the feet shrouded in box-like black sneakers.

    “You’re not packing, are you?” he said after a short period of cogitation on his part and brushing on Sammi’s.

    “No. Just deciding what to wear tonight.”

    “You’re not going out, are you?”

    “Yes, I’ve got a date with John Saunders.”

    “Help, Mother’ll do her nut!” he gasped.

    “Let her, it’s none of her business.”

    “You’ll miss dinner! Um, and isn’t he married?” he gulped.

    Sammi shrugged. “Separated, I thought.”

    “He’s awfully old, though, Sammi.”

    Sammi was thirty-four. John Saunders was probably around fifty-four. She shrugged again.

    “Um, Sammi?”

    “I’m still here,” she noted drily.

    “Yeah. Um…” Martin watched as his sister applied make-up. “Um…”

    “Yeh?” grunted Sammi, mouth tensed for the lip brush.

    “That’s quite neat, the way you do that.” he admitted. “Um… could I come with you if you get that job?” He looked at her miserably.

    “Dream on,” said Sammi briskly, wiping the lip brush on a tissue and putting it neatly in its case. She wound the lipstick down and slid it into its cover.

    “I wouldn’t be a nuisance! I’m seventeen!”

    “You would be a nuisance and seventeen means that you’re not legally an adult.”

    Martin’s lips tightened. “I’m old enough to choose where I want to live.”

    “You and Simeon Wynters would have been into all this, I suppose?” said his sister coldly.

    “So what, if we have?” he returned sulkily.

    “Nothing, I suppose. But he’s an even bigger idiot than you are, so whatever the two of you may have cooked up between you, forget it.”

    “Sim’s nearly eighteen,” said Martin sulkily.

    “Really?” she said without interest. “Well, tell him to reflect on this: the New Zealand immigration authorities may not want him. Even with his O-Level,” she noted sweetly.

    “But if we came with you,” burst out Martin desperately, “we could go to your university!”

    Sammi’s mouth opened slightly. “Uh—yes. If it was open yet, if you satisfied its entrance requirements, if you could afford it, and if you had somewhere to live and something to live off. Always supposing the New Zealand immigration authorities would let you into the country in the first place.”

    “It was only POT!” shouted Martin.

    “It was only blithering idiocy. No-one cares what you two twerps blow your minds on, but why do it where you can get caught? –Don’t answer that, we’re all aware it was an attention-getting device, and with parents like ours on the one hand and the Wynterses on the other, that’s understandable. It’s still not interesting, though.” Sammi went over to her suitcase and extracted a little black number. It was uncreased; when she travelled she did not bring garments that would need ironing. She got into it.

    Martin watched her sulkily. “If we came up with the money—”

    “Martin, let me just mention two words. A—Levels,” she said slowly and clearly.

    “They don’t HAVE them out there!” he shouted.

    “Shouting is not the way to get your own way once you’ve passed your second birthday, let me tell you that free, gratis and for nothing.” Sammi slipped on a pair of black patent-leather, high-heeled shoes. She extracted her good overcoat from the wardrobe, slung it round her shoulders and went over to the door. “Look, I’ll make you a counter-offer. If you and Sim can get enough A-Levels to qualify for this Sir George Grey place, can find the first year’s tuition, which I’m telling you now will run into thousands, and can scrape up the fare, which I’m telling you now will be around a thousand, it’s literally the other side of the world, I’ll spring for your board and lodging for the first year. But you’ll have to get yourselves jobs to help pay for the next year’s tuition.”

    “Really?” he gasped, turning beetroot.

    “Yes, really. But it won’t happen, Martin: because in order to get cash money, the pair of you lazy little twerps will have do some physical work, and to get any A-Levels you’ll have to do some intellectual work, and any sort of work is not your forte, is it?” said Sammi sweetly. “And in any case it can’t happen until March of the year after next at the very earliest.”

    “March?” he gulped, staring.

    “The academic year,” said Sammi, very clearly: “does not start in September at the other side of the world. Because why not? I’ll tell you, free, gratis and for nothing. The other side of the world, or as it’s sometimes called by those with more than recycled junk food between the ears, the Antipodes, is at the geographical antipodes to us. In the southern hemisphere,” she clarified slowly. “Added to which,” she said before her purple-faced brother could formulate speech: “the buildings aren’t even up, yet.”

    “But— What about next September?” he said feebly.

    Sammi went out, replying over her shoulder: “Next September Dad will have you enrolled for some dim polytech course, Martin, unless you take your head out of your bloody toy computer and do some WORK!”

    Martin sat down on the edge of her bed, pouting horribly. Mean cow. She thought she was smart, well, she wasn’t! After a considerable period he recalled that the mean cow had offered to see him housed and fed if he could get himself out to the other side of the world. And Sim! His face brightened. He began to meditate ways and means. After a while he went quietly downstairs, slid out of the front door, and hurried off to Sim’s.

    … “Where are they?” wailed Norma, ten minutes later.

    “He’ll be round at that damned Wynters boy’s house. Unless you specifically ordered him not to be, at this precise moment. Did you?”—Norma shook her head.—“There you are, then.” Gordon sat down and unfolded his napkin, “And I’ve no idea where she is. But she is an adult and she is aware of the hour at which dinner is served in this house. May we start?”

    Even though Norma of course could tell from this speech that he was as upset and dismayed as she was by having both of the offspring nominally at home disappear at Sunday dinnertime, she cried: “You can be really cold and unfeeling, Gordon Wolfe, and if you ask me, that’s where she gets it from!” And rushed out of the room.

    Gordon sighed, but got up slowly and helped himself to soup.

    “Moi, je mangerais volontiers un croissant,” announced Pierre with a pout.

    Simone replied with a sigh: “Ton père n’aime pas les croissants. Mange ton toast.”

    Pierre looked sulkily at the round of tinder-dry Dutch biscotte on his plate. Even with confiture de fraises on them, they were horrible things. And today the Gautiers had run out of strawberry jam, so there was only confiture de framboises, and he didn’t like it.

    “And drink your milk up,” added his mother in their native language, without hope.

    Pierre scowled at the large cup of milk which stood beside his despised toast. Everybody else in the whole of France had coffee for breakfast, why couldn’t he?

    Anne-Louise was older, she was allowed by Papa to drink her milk slightly flavoured with coffee. She sipped it, looking superior.

    “Anne-Louise is slurping,” reported Pierre with satisfaction.

    “I’m NOT! And you’re a horrid little SNEAK!”

    Simone ignored all this. She stared vacantly out of the kitchen window at an unexciting view of a newish suburban street entirely filled with apartment blocks like their own: four-storeyed only, nice balconies, nice squares of grass behind them for the children to play on, the brick façades nicely adorned with concrete pediments and porches cast to resemble stone. Most of the kitchen windows in the block backing onto theirs featured bright geraniums in pots. Simone had had a geranium. It had died.

    Armand hurried in, looking efficient. “Aren’t those children ready YET?”

    Jumping, Simone conceded: “Almost. Go and clean your teeth, children.”

    Anne-Louise hurriedly finished her milky coffee and scampered off. Pierre abandoned his untouched toast and milk and shuffled in her wake, looking sulky.

    Armand had long since breakfasted. He looked crossly at his watch. “Why can’t you be more efficient?”

    “I didn’t sleep very well last night,” said Simone in a small voice.

    Ignoring that, Armand pointed out crossly: “Most other women of your age manage kids, a home and a job! You haven’t got a job to worry about and you still can’t manage to get two little kids ready for school on time!”

    Simone replied glumly: “They’ll never cope in an English-speaking country.”

    “Anne-Louise has started English,” he replied firmly.

    “Armand, she’s only eight!”

    “Children pick up languages very quickly. It’ll be a learning experience for them.”

    Simone’s lips quivered. She didn’t reply.

    Rapidly Armand reminded her of all the commissions he had given her for that day, of the groceries, including strawberry jam, she had to pick up without fail, and of Pierre’s appointment with the paediatrician. Simone had forgotten all about this last but she concealed this oversight and said: “Yes, and that’s another thing! What’ll the doctors be like?”

    “There’s no point in discussing it further, Simone, we’ve agreed that it’s the best move for us at this juncture.”

    He had, yes. Simone was silent.

    “Go and see what those kids are taking so long about!” he said irritably.

    Simone hurried out, blinking.

    Armand consulted his watch again with a frown.

    No sooner had Armand’s neat fawn Golf with the kids buckled into the not very adequate back seat disappeared round the corner, than there was a knock on Simone’s door. She had been expecting this: she hurried to answer it. “Come in, Annick!”

    Annick came in eagerly, and though they had seen each other only yesterday, kissed her on both cheeks. Simone returned the salutation wanly.

    “Hé bien?”

    “He’s done it,” replied Simone glumly.

    “We knew he would.” Annick tucked her arm through hers and marched her into the kitchen.

    “He never listened to a word I said,” said Simone, sitting down at the table.

    Automatically Annick bustled over to the stove and began to make a fresh pot of coffee. “Well, we knew he wouldn’t!”

    Simone looked wanly at Pierre’s discarded breakfast. “I bet they don’t have les toasts out there.”

    “Bah… non,” she decided. “It’d be English bread, non?”

    “Dégueulasse,” admitted Simone, wincing. After a moment, however, she added viciously: “Good. Armand hates it.”

    “Hah, hah,” agreed Annick. “I thought he didn’t like those Dutch toasts, either?”

    “He doesn’t, much. But I ran out of those horrible square ones he does like. He was cross about it.”

    “That would have improved the morning for you,” agreed Annick, putting the coffee pot on the heat. She sat down and said briskly: “Alors, qu’est-ce que tu vas faire?”

    Simone stared at her in dull surprise. “Mais… Go with him.”

    “Simone, why?” she cried. “You don’t even love him!”

    “Eugh—non. I keep asking myself why I married him.”

    Annick hadn’t known the Gautiers, back then. She picked up Pierre’s biscotte, added a lot more raspberry jam and began to eat it. “And why did you?”

    “Because he asked me, I think. I didn’t even like sex with him,” she said with a sigh.

    Annick had large, rather protuberant blue eyes. She rolled them madly. “So why marry him?”

    “Um… well, everybody sort of expected us to… And he sort of… made everybody, his family and everyone, think we were engaged.”

    Annick’s biscotte fell apart abruptly. “Merde,” she noted, picking a bit up off the table and putting it into her mouth. “Before you’d said yes?”

    Simone nodded glumly.

    “Typical,” she noted. “But all the same, did that necessarily mean you had to say yes?”

    “No… I couldn’t think what else to do, really.”

    Annick sighed heavily. “Ouais.”

    “Well, I haven’t got any talents: not like you,” said Simone with simple admiration.

    Annick sighed again. She was a not-very-successful radio and television actress. Older than her inept little neighbour: Simone was in her early thirties. Annick admitted to forty-two. Though there was no silver in her bright, brisk, short and smart yellow crop. Or none that her public knew about. At the moment she was employed as afternoon announcer at the local radio station of their dull little provincial town. With the half-promise of being promoted to the breakfast show. Not an exciting career prospect. She knew she had neither the acting talent nor the looks to go much further than that. She was also a very capable seamstress and made most of her own clothes. Unfortunately there was no demand for that sort of talent in the France of the Nineties. “You’ve got keyboard skills, you could do a computer course.”

    Simone shuddered. “I started one once, when were still living in Paris, before Armand finished his degree. It was terrible: they talked about maths and electric stuff.”

    Rolling her eyes, Annick admitted: “That’s out, then! –Talking of maths, did you ever find out what happened to that twenty francs you were short last week?”

    Simone shook her head. “I think I must have dropped it. Armand was furious.”

    “Mean devil,” said Annick automatically.

    Simone sighed. “Yes, he is, really.”

    “Simone,” said her energetic friend, leaning forward earnestly: “you’ve got some rights as a person! Stand up to him, au nom de Dieu!”

    “He keeps saying he’s the bread-winner.”

    Annick took a deep breath and gave her a speech on the contribution of the non-working, what a misnomer, housewife to the family economy, the local economy and the economy of France; but Simone had heard it all before and anyway she knew that in the first place she wasn’t capable of saying it to Armand, in the second place she wasn’t capable of saying it in a form that would make sense, and in the third place he wouldn’t listen.

    When they were sipping scalding black coffee (which had taken twice the amount that Armand permitted Simone to use for coffee; Annick had long since declared he must be the only man in France who was mean about coffee, au nom de Dieu), Annick said with forced optimism: “You might like it, once you get there.”

    “Tu parles,” she replied dully.

    Annick sipped coffee cautiously. She wouldn’t have minded a cigarette but the Gautiers didn’t smoke and Armand this evening would inevitably spot the smell of smoke, even if Simone had shivered all day with the window open, and deduce that (a) someone had been smoking in his flat, which he had expressly forbidden, and (b) Simone had been seeing her, Annick, again, which he had expressly forbidden. “Between us, isn’t he only doing it because he’s still got the pip that he didn’t get that job in Paris?”

    “Oui,” replied Simone simply.

    Annick bit her lip. “Perhaps he won’t get it,” she said, very cautiously indeed.

    Simone winced. “He’ll be worse than ever, if he doesn’t.”

    This was true. Annick sighed. “I suppose it would be a promotion. He’s not actually in charge of the computers at the university, is he?”

    “No. Fernand Dulac is.”

    “Ouais.” Annick eyed her sideways. “Didn’t I hear a rumour he was separating from that awful wife of his?”

    “I think they have separated. Why?” she said vaguely.

    “Why? Because he’s a nice man! He’d be a lot better for you than beastly Armand, Simone!” she said with feeling.

    “Me? Fernand wouldn’t look twice at me!” she said in astonishment. “All the women students are crazy about him, he’s terrifically handsome! –And sexy,” she added as an afterthought.

    Wincing slightly at the afterthought, Annick said: “You’d be all right if you did yourself up a bit. You’ve got a nice figure.”

    Simone was slim, medium height, with straight, mousy brown bobbed hair. She had once attempted to henna it. Admittedly the result had not been what she had intended but the upwardly mobile Armand had been furious: according to him it had made her look like something off the Rue St André. It had not occurred to Simone to ask him how he knew enough to make the comparison. She had small, neat, regular features which were usually not adorned by anything except a light touch of lipstick: Armand did not like her to wear makeup. It wasn’t her style, he said. Quietly ladylike was her style, he said.

    She replied dully: “Don’t be silly. Fernand likes glamorous ladies.”

    Annick sighed and gave up for the nonce. “Where’s the ad?”

    “Um... On his desk.”

    Annick went off to get it, looking grim.

    “Looking at it won’t do any good, Annick.”

    “Ta gueule… ‘Systems Manager”,” she read dubiously. “I suppose that is what he does.”

    “Yes.”

    Annick read through the ad, frowning. Most of it was gobbledegook, of course, but she finally said: “Yes; it does say a higher degree in electronics, here.”

    “Ouais. And a qualification in computer science, he’s got that, too.”

    Annick made a face. She laid the journal down. “Tu veux encore un café?” Simone accepted; automatically Annick got up to make it. When they were both sipping it she said abruptly: “Look, Simone: we can find a course for you: you can brush up your keyboard skills. Stay here. You can share my flat. Michel won’t mind. Anyway, he’s away most of the time.”

    Michel was a middle-aged travelling salesman. Simone knew he’d been Annick’s lover, off and on, for years. She also knew that he had a wife and a grown-up family in another part of the country.

    “Truly!” urged Annick. “He’s very easy-going. And it’s not as if it’s a passionate relationship.” She shrugged.

    “Non—eugh— What about the children?”

    “Them too, of course!”

    “It’s—it’s very good of you, Annick,” said Simone in a trembling voice, “but Armand’d never let me have them.”

    “You’re their mother!” she cried.

    “You don’t know him. No: I—I can’t take the risk,” she said in a low voice.

    Annick sighed. Anne-Louise was a poisonously self-satisfied little toad, bidding fair to be very like her father, and Pierre was a grumpy little sneak and an habitual liar. It would have been hard to imagine two more unattractive junior personalities on the face of the earth. Talk about only their mother could love them! “At least think about it. If it comes to a court battle, the mother usually gets custody, you know.”

    “Not if she’s got no visible means of support and no qualifications,” said Simone dully.

    Annick had to bite her lip. It sounded as if the poor little thing had been thinking about it, off and on. “Then get out and do one of those back-to-the-workforce courses, Simone! You’ve got time, he won’t be actually moving for months, even if he gets it, will he?”

    “I can’t, he doesn’t give me any money!” she walled.

    Annick had overlooked that small point. Oops. She made a ferocious face. Her own budget was very tight indeed. Afternoon broadcasting didn’t pay at all well. Michel wasn’t much help: like all men who had a second woman in their lives he seemed to consider that the little woman lived on air when wasn’t there and that he was doing her a great favour, when he was there, by bestowing bottles of expensive wine that he drank and the occasional box of chocolates or bunch of flowers. Overlooking the cost of all those dainty home-cooked meals that he ate at her expense. “What about your sister?” she said after some thought,

    “Didn’t I say? They’re getting a divorce. She wants to pursue her career,” she said dully. “She won’t have any spare cash. Anyway, she keeps telling me to stand on my own two feet.”

    Annick sighed.

    “Don’t say ‘What about Maman?’”said Simone dully.

    “I won’t!” she returned with feeling.

    “It’s no use brooding about it, I’ll just have to make the best of it. –I wish I had pinched that twenty francs!” she added viciously,

    “Mon Dieu, he didn’t accuse you?” she gasped.

    “Mais si, he always does,” said Simone calmly.

    “In that case,” said Annick, her narrow lips tightening, “I’d make a habit of siphoning off fifty-odd francs from time to time, Simone.”

    “Actually, I think I might.”

    Annick’s determined jaw went all saggy. “Good for you,” she croaked. “–Do you want to go shopping?”

    “Yes. I have to get his dry-cleaning, too. Help, where’s the list?”

    Capably Annick found the list, returned Armand’s sacred journal to his sacred desk, and shepherded Simone out to do their joint shopping.

    Even though their nice newish suburb featured a nice newish supermarché, they did not go anywhere near it. Instead they drove in towards the centre of town, to the inner-city street where Annick had grown up. There they went to Annick’s old neighbourhood market. All the stallholders knew her, of course, and Simone, too, by this time. They bought everything they needed except toilet paper, the toasts for Armand, Armand’s shaving cream and bath gel, and the particular brand of strawberry jam he insisted on. Then they sat down at a table at a handy little café and counted Simone’s change. As usual, there was enough, because the fruit, vegetables, meat and cheese were much cheaper, as well as much nicer, at the market than they would have been at the hygienic supermarket where Armand was under the impression that his wife shopped, for Simone to afford a simple lunch or a bottle of wine. Monday was early closing and everything around them was closing as they sat there, so as lunching at a café in the quartier wasn’t very exciting on early-closing day, they hurried off to the Viniprix and bought a bottle of wine.

    Then they went off to Annick’s parents’ flat, about two minutes away on foot. Her father was very old: about ninety, and a bit vague, but quite good-natured. Her mother was only in her late sixties, very brisk and energetic still, and even more determined and capable than Annick herself. Once Simone had insisted on donating her usual cheese and her bottle of wine, they all sat down to lunch. Pieds de porc aux lentilles, followed by a fresh green salad, followed by the cheese. And pitch-black, very strong coffee. Mme Pic usually made something like pieds de porc aux lentilles on a Monday: she knew that Simone’s husband didn’t approve of such substantial, old-fashioned dishes: he said they were peasant food.

    “I don’t know why it is,” said Simone with a happy laugh, rather flushed, as old M. Pic forced a small glass of marc into her hand at the conclusion of the repast: “but I always feel much hungrier when I’m here than I do at home!”

    Old M. Pic nodded pleasedly at this remark, but Mme Pic and Annick exchanged grim, meaningful glances.

    “Perhaps he won’t get this sacré job,” said Mme Pic to her daughter, when Simone had gone to the WC.

    “That’d be bad, too, he’d take it out on her. Remember what a state she was in when they first came here? That was after he had to take this job, when he didn’t get the Paris one.”

    Mme Pic nodded grimly.

    “Maman, can’t you think of anything?” she said in despair.

    “Mais non. I suppose we all have to fight our own battles, in the end,” she said with a sigh.

    “Simone’s the sort that goes under, rather than fighting.”

    Mme Pic thought so. too. She shook her head slowly.

    “Don’t they all speak English in this Nouvelle Zélande place?” said old M. Pic suddenly.

    Jumping, his relatives assured him kindly that that was right, ouais, ouais!

    “She won’t like that,” he said sadly.

    Annick and Mme Pic, neither of whom had thought he’d taken that much in, exchanged startled glances, but had to agree he was right. She wouldn’t like that, at all.

    It did occur to Leigh Gore to wonder on the Monday morning as he bolted down a mug of lukewarm instant coffee before making a dash in to work, very late, whether Thomas had given Marianne a thought all evening. Well, probably not, given that they’d been watching Marx Brothers videos most of the evening. And given that Thomas was rather like that. Once he’d written a relationship off, it was in the past.

    And of course the girl had been far too young for him. Nesting? Thomas had done all that, over twenty-five years back. Amanda, Jordana (ouch) and Erica were the products of it. Their Mom was a shiny, clean American lady: very bright and very determined but not bright enough to see that no amount of determination could make Thomas the Tank Engine clean and shiny. She had taken the girls home to the States after seven years of hopeless struggle. Thomas had written the relationship off, but he didn’t appear to bear her any malice. His job in the commercial world had entailed a lot of globe-trotting and he’d managed to spend some time with the girls between assignments. Then, when he’d settled here, their mother had conscientiously sent the girls over for their vacations. Amanda and Erica loathed Thomas’s way of life, and their visits had got progressively shorter as they got older, shinier and cleaner, but Jordana seemed indifferent to it. She did not seem particularly attached to Thomas, true, but at twenty-four she was the only one of the three who still visited him. They more or less corresponded, too: by email. Jordana was in television: not acting, or even reporting, but a sound-person, and electronics were a way of life to her. And Thomas had been playing with computers since well before the expression “p.c.” was in daily use.

    Fortunately Thomas’s youngest sister, Posy, the only one of his numerous sisters whom he saw much of, seemed to like Jordana, and Jordana seemed to like her. Posy was quite often to be found at Thomas’s flat: she had a habit of dumping herself on him whenever she was out of work or between boyfriends, two pretty frequent occurrences in her hectic life. In fact, the white cotton knickers and the socks he’d found at the foot of the spare bed last night were probably Posy’s, which probably meant they’d only been there since… Well, Lindy’s wedding last June? Posy had been present for that. Not at the reception or the ceremony. She, Thomas and Marianne had stood outside the church in mackintoshes, black hats, black glasses and false black beards, under large black umbrellas. Even though it had been a lovely summer’s day. Lindy had harangued her father about it in an undervoice all the way up the aisle.

    Leigh made a mental note to change the sheets this evening and hurried off to his car, unaware that as he did so he was humming: “Hooray for Captain Spalding—”

    “Research Fellowship?” said Brian Vincent with a light laugh. “At your age, Mum? Don’t be silly!”

    Jane Vincent went very red. “What’s my age got to do with it? I’ve just finished my Ph.D., that’s what they want!”

    “Bullshit. What they want is someone in their twenties or early thirties, that’s what’s they mean when they say ‘suit recent graduate’.”

    “Stop PATRONISING me! You sound just like your FATHER!” shouted Jane .

    Brian shrugged. Lysle Vincent was a successful Wellington lawyer. Jane had been a great success as his wife, doing all the right things to promote his career, until the year Brian turned seventeen, when she’d found out that Dad had got mixed up with a stupid girl at the office—there was nothing in it, just one of those things—and had walked out on him without even giving him a chance to explain or apologise. –Both Lysle and Brian thought of it as “explain or apologise” in that order and neither of them was capable of understanding that the fact that they could do so typified what Jane Vincent most disliked about the pair of them. Brian had followed his father into law, which in his mother’s opinion was a foregone conclusion.

    Jane had demanded (Lysle’s and Brian’s word) half of everything in the divorce, and custody of Sally and Amy as well as the family house. Lysle hadn’t liked that at all, so he’d taken her to court. He retained the assets he’d had before marriage and had kept carefully separate from the joint property. Half of everything else each, shared custody. The house had been sold, as Jane had had no money to buy Lysle’s share. Shared custody had worked out in practice as Jane’s being responsible for half the kids’ maintenance and for full-time housing, feeding and clothing them, and Lysle’s seeing them whenever he felt like it for weekends, which rapidly became less and less frequent, and occasional holidays when he wasn’t off at Club Med Noumea or Bali—Rarotonga and Queensland, the usual choices for New Zealanders wanting a break in warmer climes, being of course far too down-market for him.

    Jane had doggedly gone to a series of back-to-the-workforce courses, got her typing speed up to scratch, and done a series of temping jobs while she scraped together enough to finish her degree part-time. Then her father had died, leaving all of his children a lump sum. So Jane had been able, on completing her M.Sc., to do a doctorate. All of this had, of course, taken years. Brian was now thirty-two, and Jane was fifty-three. Sally, now thirty, was married to a yuppie and living in one of the nicer suburbs of Upper Hutt until they could afford to move to Khandallah, or such was her mother’s claim. Amy, like her mother, had just finished her Ph.D., though hers was in plant genetics and Jane’s was in ornithology.

    Some might have said it was their father’s defection which had influenced Sally to flee into matrimony and Upper Hutt suburbia at twenty-one—she now had three kids, two cars and a red setter; and Amy, who was petite and sweet-looking, to become grimly militant. On the other hand, they might both have turned out that way in any case. Perhaps his mother’s walking out on his father had influenced Brian to turn towards Lysle or, since he had always been very like him, perhaps he’d have been on his side in any case.

    On the surface Jane’s and Lysle’s divorce was now very civilised and Lysle and his new wife, who was not the girl from the office but a nicely-spoken young woman with an MBA who drove a Porsche, would speak very kindly and admiringly of Jane’s academic success and sometimes include her in dinner invitations. Jane sometimes accepted: the social side of it was always agonising but it was free food and Lysle, after all, was her children’s father. Underneath this civilised veneer, however, Jane hated his guts and she knew that Lysle both knew this and begrudged her the success she had gradually and painfully managed to turn life without him into. Oddly, Jane quite liked his new wife. She had pretty much of a closed mind but she was well-meaning enough. True, the well-meaningness was expressed in the current clichés, which Jane, when she managed to translate them at all, found awfully irritating. Jane sometimes looked after their two little boys after school for her. She wasn’t absolutely sure whether Lysle knew about this arrangement, but so what, it was his wife’s business who she got to baby-sit, after all. And they were dear little boys.

    “Anyway, I’ve applied,” she said grimly to her only son.

    Brian shrugged again. “You won’t get it.”

    “If I don’t apply, I’ll never know if I might have got it or not. And there must be at least two going: it says ‘Fellowships’, plural.”

    Brian shrugged again.

    Amy’s reaction was, as was only to be expected, diametrically opposed to her brother’s. “Good on you, Mum! Yes, of course you’ll be in there with a chancel”

    Sally at first was less enthusiastic. “But Mum, isn’t this up in Auckland?”

    Jane jigged little Matthew on her knee. “Mm. Well, it’s about two hours north of the city, I think. Carter’s Inlet.”

    “But Mum, if you go up there, we’ll hardly ever see you! Won’t you miss the kids?”

    “You’ll have to bring them up to see me in the holidays.”

    “Ye-es… It’s a long way.”

    “You went to the Bay of Islands last Christmas, that’s about another hundred miles or so, isn’t it?”

    “Two hundred K. I suppose so. It was about a thousand K, all up.”

    Jane looked at her drily. “I’ll be able to afford somewhere decent to live.”

    Sally brightened. “That’s true! Ooh, isn’t Kingfisher Marina up that way, Mum?”

    “Yeah. But I don’t think it’ll run to a six-hundred-thousand-dollar second home at Kingfisher Bay, Sally,” said Jane kindly to her yuppie daughter.

    “Silly. Not a second home.” Sally did sums in her head. “No, I suppose your working life won’t be that long. You wouldn’t get a mortgage.”

    “Quite. I dare say I’ll manage to find something reasonable, though. With three bedrooms,” she said on a dry note that Sally missed. “Further up Carter’s Inlet might be nice. What do you think?”

    Sally immediately plunged into a discussion of the rival merits of purchasing a home or building one. Without specific reference to the prices of land or construction in Puriri County, but give her time, thought Jane, listening tolerantly. Still, in principle the idea wasn’t a bad one. A place of her very own. It would be the first time in her whole life that she hadn’t been at the mercy of a parent, a husband or a landlord!

    “All right, dear,” she said as Sally decided she would contact their own land agent and find out from him who to contact about prices up north: “you do that. I’d be grateful.”

    Even though it was yet very far from certain that Jane would even get one of the Sir George Grey University Ornithological Research Fellowships, they looked excitedly at each other, and smiled.

    On the other side of the Tasman, Sir George Grey University’s Research Fellowships had also aroused some interest. Wayne Hamilton and Moana Curtis were really fed up with Queensland, though neither of them had admitted it to the other as yet. Moana was also very fed up with their Queenslander neighbours’ persistently addressing her as “Mrs Hamilton.” Wayne, though he had revealed this to no-one and was under the mistaken impression that no-one was aware of it, was also fed up because Moana had recently made Senior Lecturer and he hadn’t had a promotion within the Department of Primary Industry for the last five years.

    “They’re good salaries,” said Moana judiciously. “Miles more than either of us is getting at the moment.”

    “Yeah.” Wayne had carefully translated the amount into Australian dollars at the current rate of exchange. “There must be a catch in it somewhere.”

    “‘Within the Faculty of Environmental Resources’,” read Moana immediately, “That’s the flaming catch, mate!”

    “Yes. Don’t say ‘mate’,” said Wayne, wincing.

    “It was only a joke,” she said with a sigh.

    “Other people don’t understand that, Moana.”

    There were only the two of them on their patio beside their pool. Moana rolled her eyes slightly but said nothing.

    Wayne sipped pineapple juice morosely. The ice-blocks had melted already. “I’m fed up with this Queensland humidity,” he admitted.

    Moana didn’t much like it, either, even though she was almost two-thirds Arawa and thus had ancestors who had been exposed to Auckland’s humidity, admittedly not as bad as Queensland’s, for hundreds of years longer than Wayne’s ancestors. “Mm. Um—this’ll be at Carter’s Bay, you know, Wayne.”

    “I know!” he said irritably.

    “It can be fairly humid up there in summer.”

    “Yeah, but not all year round.”

    “Mm. You remember my Great-Aunty Bess?”—Wayne shook his head.—“Mum’s side of the family. Black as your hat.”—Wayne frowned over the expression, but shook his head again.—“Oh. Well, her and old Uncle Joe—you never met him, he died when I was about twelve—they used to live up near Carter’s Bay. Mum sometimes used to pack us off up there for the August holidays. The winters can be pretty depressing, up that way.”

    “We’d have central heating,” said Wayne grimly.

    “Righto,” she agreed peaceably.

    There was a short pause.

    “I suppose it’s a pity it had to come just when your parents have retired over here,” said Wayne dubiously.

    “That’s their business.” replied Moana with a shrug. “Anyway, they didn’t choose Queensland because of me.”

    “No. –I must say I’d like to get back to pure research!” he said with feeling.

    Wayne was a plant geneticist. At the moment he was mostly involved in breeding a more marketable mango. His heart wasn’t in mangoes.

    “Mm. Well, ‘Agricultural Biotechnology’: that’s you!” she said with a laugh.

    “Yeah. Me and five thousand others. Will my mango stuff be relevant to what they want?”

    “You’ve got the techniques under your belt, Wayne, that’s the important thing. And for that matter, will my stuff be relevant?”

    “Birds are birds. And you’ve done a lot of field work.”

    “Mm. Aussie birds aren’t the same as New Zealand birds.”

    “No. But let’s face it, Moana: ‘Faculty of Environmental Resources’? You’ll end up breeding better turkeys and I’ll end up breeding better—uh, not mangoes,” he admitted with a wry grimace. “Kiwifruit.”

    “Either that or I’ll end up developing an edible pukeko with a high egg yield,”—Wayne had to gulp—“and you’ll end up producing a bright yellow grapefruit that isn’t acid as Hell and guaranteed to give you wind all morning if you’re mad enough to eat it for breakfast.”

    Wayne grinned, but conceded: “There’s something in that. But I thought you missed New Zealand grapefruit?”

    “I do; I actually like them. For the two seconds when they’re in their prime and not acid as Hell: right before they turn to bright green mould!”

    “They are wonderful when they’re just ripe,” he admitted. “For those two seconds.”

    They grinned at each other.

    “So—uh—shall we apply?” said Wayne cautiously.

    Moana already had. “Yeah, why not give it a go?” she said cheerfully.

    Wayne got up. “Right! I will!” He headed for the French doors.

    “Put the air-con on, your study’ll be like a furnace,” warned Moana.

    Wayne hesitated.

    “Never MIND the bloody electricity bill, Wayne!” she shouted. “Do it!”

    “Oh, all right,” he said. He went inside, carefully closing the French doors after him.

    Moana sighed. She was pretty sick of Wayne. He was a decent type, there was nothing you could put your finger on that was anything like a sensible reason for leaving him, but… Shit. She had really thought that if she got one of the fellowships they could quietly agree to break it off: no fuss, y’know?

    Wayne and Moana were both thirty-two. They had been together ever since their student days. Twelve years, in fact. They hadn’t had any kids. Wayne had not yet decided they were permanently established, and he didn’t want to put down roots that they’d only have to pull up again, it would be bad for the kids. Moana had agreed with him for almost a whole ten years. For about the last two to three she hadn’t. But their situation hadn’t really changed: neither of them envisaged the Queensland jobs would be permanent. Only there was such as thing as a woman’s biological clock, for Heaven’s sake! She had recently pointed this out to Wayne but he had only said that though their situation hadn’t changed, he’d think about it: it needed careful thought. They mustn’t do anything precipitate. Precipitate! After twelve years?

    Moana stared at the sparkling turquoise pool, scowling. She didn’t believe for a moment that, higher salaries or not, they’d be able to have anything like the lifestyle they enjoyed here if they went home to New Zealand. Everything was miles dearer over there: clearly Wayne had forgotten this in the five years they’d been in Queensland—and there was far less choice of anything you cared to name. But all the same— Well, if they did both end up getting fellowships there she’d put her foot down. Start a family straight away, or it was all off.

    She stood up slowly. Maybe it would be better to end it all, anyway. The trouble with Wayne was, he was too cautious. She went over to the springboard. Yeah: too cautious, that was good old Wayne. –Shit, if she hadn’t encouraged him over the fellowships, would he ever have got round to taking the risk of applying?

    Moana bounced hard on the springboard, hurled herself into the turquoise depths, and swam furiously until she was exhausted. Damn! What a clot she was! If only she’d said it was a nutty idea and he’d never be able to get back into research after five years away from it! Well, she thought grimly, pulling herself out, panting, Let’s just hope one of us gets one and the other one doesn’t. Because I’m fed up, that’s what!

    “No!” said Jack Perkins with a laugh, long-distance.

    Dorothy’s face fell. “Oh.”

    “I’d be bored silly: they won’t put anything more adventurous on their bloody system than a primitive accounts program. And if the students are very, very lucky, a simple statistical package that they won’t teach them how to use properly.”

    This was one of Jack’s many theme-songs. Dorothy sighed. “Mm. it was just a thought.”

    “Yeah. Seen any ads for Head of the Computer Sciences Department yet, Dot?”

    “Don’t call me that,” said Dorothy automatically. “Um—no. But I haven’t looked. I just heard the magic words ‘IBM SP2’s’.”

    “Uh-huh,” he said vaguely. “Hang on a mo’, Dot.”

    Dorothy could hear him tapping at something in the background. Undoubtedly he hadn’t signed off from whatever he was logged onto, or filed whatever it was he was working on, when he picked up the phone. She held her receiver away from her ear and poked her tongue out at it. “Yeah?” she said hastily, putting it back to her ear.

    “I said, not that computer science, so-called, is my bag, either.”

    That was another theme-song. “No.”

    “There was an ad for Head of the Department of Engineering… But they seem to want some jerk that can design a bridge that won’t actually fall down when anything heavier than a bullock-cart crosses it.”

    “Oh.”

    “What I would envisage…” said Jack slowly—Dorothy brightened, even though Jack was always full of bright ideas that no-one in the whole universe except, sometimes, his sister, agreed with—“is detaching the electronics engineering side from the bridge-building and incorporating it into the computer sciences side…”

    “Yeah, two mega-departments and you as dean of them both, Jack?”

    “Not necessarily… Look, fax me all the gen you can find about all the jobs they’ve advertised so far and about this cousin type that’s going to be CEO. I’ll put a proposal together.”

    “Okay,” said Dorothy in astonishment. “I’ll get right onto it.”

    “Good…” he said vaguely, tapping.

    Dorothy was about to hang up when he said: “Hey, Dot?”

    “Yes?”

    “Apply for University Librarian.”

    “Don’t be a clot, all my experience is in public libraries!”

    “Not all: only your recent experience. You’re capable enough. And you’re going stale in that dead-end job. Didn’t you tell me you’d even resigned from your NZLA committees?”

    “Um—yeah. The local Branch Committee. I’m still on the Public Libraries’ Section— No, but look, Jack, it’d be mad! Waste of time. They’ll appoint some bright little yuppie from overseas. Probably a Pom, Kincaid’s one of them.”

    “Give it a go. Put a proposal together, don’t just send ’em your resumé, it’s the way to go these days.”

    “Yeah, put a proposal together, don’t get the job, and have them grab my bright ideas!” she said bitterly.

    “That’s the risk you take,” replied her brother. “Gotta go, there’s a fax coming in on the other line. See ya!” He rang off.

    “See ya,” said Dorothy grimly to the humming receiver in her hand. She hung up slowly. Give up Puriri County Library and the delights of old Mrs Potter’s book-stealing and old Mr Potter’s endless National Geographics and even more endless tales of how he won the War? Not to mention bloody Janet’s inertia and bloody Bridie’s fixation on her fillum star heart-throb and inability to add two and two; and the photocopier that was always going wrong because the students from up the varsity beat the shit out of it; and the tea-room where you couldn’t bend to the fridge and that was so narrow you had to sit in a row like sparrows on a ruddy wire? Gee, how could she bear to? Not to mention the delights of the County Council: the County Manager, so-called, and his antipathy to anything that smacked remotely of literature or community service; the eternal struggle to convince the Council that the imposition of draconian fines for lost or stolen tattered works of pulp fiction was not the way to win friends, influence people, or encourage them to use their library facility…

    No, she definitely couldn’t bear to give up all that.

    Dorothy had rung Jack from home. It was pretty late, his time, but she’d known he’d be up. She fidgeted a bit. Then, even though she should by rights have been getting herself tea, she sat down at her computer. Five minutes later she was deep into ERIC online, looking for references on “How I run my shiny, user-pays university library good”. Why the Hell not? Nothing venture, nothing win.

    At midnight her time, when she was still working, having paused briefly to sling some sausages under the grill and pour boiling water onto instant mashed potato flakes, subsequently eating them over the computer, a sin for which she’d have slaughtered any innocent young librarian in her employ, the fax machine trilled. What the—

    Jack. “WHERE’S THAT GEN?”

    What? It must be dawn, his time, surely? Oh well. Dorothy faxed back: “IT’S MIDNIGHT HERE YOU AMERICANIZED JERK. TOMORROW, MY TIME. See ya.”

    Well, she thought with super-optimism, there was just a chance that she might really see him in person. If he was keen enough actually to remember the topic six hours down the track and actually to remind her about it. Just a chance.

    … More chance than there was of her, Dorothy K. Perkins, making University Librarian of up-market Sir George Grey Yuppie University, that was for sure. Should she go on with it? Well, for God’s sake, she’d already put six hours’ work into it. Why the Hell not? What did she have to lose? And nothing venture, nothing win!

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/administrative-considerations.html