Pot-Pourri

25

Pot-Pourri

    Unlike Alan, Armand had not returned from the conference weekend with a load of guilt. He had, however, returned in a very bad mood indeed. Telling himself that it was some consolation that Sammi hadn’t appeared attracted to any of the other men there didn’t actually help. On his arrival home his wife appeared perfectly indifferent to his presence so he merely changed his clothes and went straight off to work.

    When he got home there was a smoky smell pervading the house…

    “You’ve had THAT WOMAN in my house!” he shouted, rushing into the kitchen.

    Simone was sitting at the peculiar little table, which she had refused point-blank to get rid of, reading a magazine—English. “Yes, and it isn’t your house, it’s ours," she said indifferently.

    “I FORBID you to have her here!” he screamed.

    “You can’t forbid me anything, Armand,” said Simone calmly. “When you’re home Annick won’t come here. Just be satisfied with that.”

    “You are not to have smokers here polluting the atmosphere for the children!” he hissed furiously.

    “They were at school,” said Simone indifferently. “‘Cut on the bias’,” she read slowly in English. “Ah; c’est ça.”

    “Pay attention when I’m talking to you!” he shouted.

    “I’m not interested in what you have to say, Armand. If you want dinner, you’ll have to get it yourself, we’ve got an early rehearsal for The Mikado,” said Simone into the magazine.

    “What? Where are the kids?” he gasped.

    “They’re having dinner at the Winkelmanns’ and Michaela’s going to baby-sit,” she said calmly.

    “Who?” said Armand, suddenly sitting down limply on another of the peculiar chairs that Simone had refused to get rid of. –He looked, had Simone but bothered to take any notice, very shell-shocked and rather pathetic, but she didn't bother.

    “Les Winkelmann.”

    “I don’t even know these people!”

    “I do,” said Simone indifferently.

    Armand took a deep and terrible breath. “You’ve gone too far, this time, Simone. How dare you allow people I don’t even know to look after my children?”

    “I’ve known them for months, you’re being silly.”

    “I’M NOT BEING SILLY!” he shouted.

    Simone shrugged.

    “All right, Simone,” said Armand in a trembling voice, getting up: “that does it. You’re entirely unsuited to be a wife. I’ll move my things out of the bedroom into the study. Then—”

    “Don’t do that: you can keep the bedroom, I hate le lit Michelin. I’ll sleep in the sitting-room, even l’homme Michelin’s better th—”

    “TA GUEULE!” he screamed.

    Simone shut up, looking indifferent.

    “I’m going to go and collect the children RIGHT NOW!” he shouted.

    “It’s up to you.”

    “Where— SIMONE, LISTEN TO ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU! Where do they live?”

    “Up the Inlet. Sol said he'd bring them home after the rehearsal.” Simone got up. “I’ve got to go.”

    “Don’t you DARE to walk out on me!” he screamed.

    “I’ll be late,” said Simone mildly.

    “What is the address of these Winkelmann people?” said Armand between his teeth.

    “I don’t know. You go up that road that doesn’t go anywhere.”

    “HOW DARE YOU SEND OUR KIDS TO STAY AT A PLACE YOU CAN’T EVEN FIND AGAIN!” he screamed, tears starting to his eyes.

    “I can find it, I just don’t know what the address is.”

    “All right, all RIGHT!” he shouted. “You can take it that this is a nominal separation, Simone, until you come to your senses and start behaving like a reasonable human being!” He rushed out.

    “Nominal? I think you mean virtual separation,” said Simone sourly. “Good.” She picked up her handbag, which was lying on the table next to the magazine, and went out, holding her head up very high and ignoring the fact that her hands were shaking.

    “Hey, Beth,” said Jack very mildly to her, on the Saturday after the conference weekend. “You oughta get a phone put in, save you having to come downstairs to the door all the time.”

    “I don’t need a phone,” replied Beth grimly. “I’m awfully busy; did you want something?”

    “Uh—well, Rab’s working, and I’ve got some stuff I ought to get finished today; I was wondering if you could possibly take Murray this morning?”

    Beth almost said yes: after all, he was the dearest little boy and it wasn’t his fault that he had a horrible pig for a grandfather. “No, I’m afraid I can’t, I’m house-hunting today. I’m leaving in about five minutes.”

    “House-hunting?” said Jack limply.

    “Yes, I’m fed up with this dump,” said Beth untruthfully. She was, of course, fed up with living next to a pig who, after being really nice to you on a Sunday morning and taking you and your friends in his car for a lovely drive, then spends the night in bed with another lady entirely and flaunts this fact in your face over breakfast on a day when the dictates of your job condemn you to spend the rest of that day in his company.

    “Uh—we’ll sure miss you,” said Jack numbly.

    “I think you’ll miss having an unpaid baby-sitter, won’t you?” said Beth unkindly. “’Scuse me, I really have to go.” She shut the door firmly.

    Jack retreated, muttering sourly under his breath about women. And not admitting to himself that it was all his own fault and if only he’d held off at the damned conference— But Jesus! You spend a great morning with a person, you think you’re getting to know her as a person and that maybe she’s getting to like you at last and not just see you as someone’s elderly grandfather that makes unwanted passes, and then when you merely try to be friendly over afternoon coffee (he was unaware, of course, that he had bounced at her like Tigger at his worst), she gives you the brush-off and disappears for the rest of the Goddamned evening, not even showing up at dinner when you’d expected her to be there and sort of planned that the two of you might—well, get it together at the best scenario, but at least spend a pleasant evening together! He went over to Dot’s, fuming.

    “It’s not my day,” said Dorothy flatly. “Shove off.”

    “Dot, I’m desperate to get this work done!”

    “Hard cheese. I’m busy; I’ve got my own life to lead; and I am not responsible for the scattering of unwanted offspring and their offspring round all four points of the globe! Shove OFF, Jack!”

    “Maybe you woulda been a better person if you ever hadda produced offspring!” cried Jack bitterly.

    “That’s really rich, coming from the deserter of two whole families, Jack.”

    “I did NOT desert them!” he shouted.

    “I don’t think I care. Get out. Sort your own ruddy problems out and STOP DUMPING THEM ON OTHER PEOPLE!” shouted Dorothy. “Assume some responsibility for the results of your own actions, can't you?”

    “What are you, a bloody Existentialist?” he shouted.

    “Probably. It’s better than being a combination of an exhibitionist and an emotional blackmailer. Get out before I chuck something at you,” warned Dorothy, rising to her feet, lurid scarlet fuzzy nylon dressing-gown and all, and picking up her empty coffee mug. “This, probably: it came from the Puriri Emporium and it’s cheap Korean stuff: full of hairline cracks. Like,” she said pointedly, baring her teeth at him: “my patience.”

    “I’m going, you cow!” he shouted, going.

    Dorothy shrugged.

    … “That was interesting,” noted Euan Knox, leaning heavily on Sol’s counter as Perkins’s back disappeared into the crafts boutique next-door.

    “Uh-huh. Fairly.”

    “This has all blown up after the conference, has it?”

    “Uh-huh. It and the rest, Euan.”

    “Musta been some conference.”

    Sol sniffed, ever so slightly. “Par for the course, I’d say. You taken a look at Buffalo Gal lately?”

    “Not all that lately, no; I’m waiting till Harry Bull gets back from his sabbatical to suggest tactfully that someone, preferably me, should get that five ton of barnacles off ’er bottom before she sinks under the weight of ’em. Why?”

    Sol raised his eyebrows, pulled the corners of his long mouth down lugubriously, and shoved his tongue behind his top lip, shrugging.

    “Ugh!” said Euan, taking a step backwards.

    “Yup,” he replied, desisting. “Something like that.”

    Euan went over to the shop window and flattened his straight nose against the glass, squinting. “The boat’s there,” he produced.

    “She’s gotta be there, Euan, them legs are anchoring her to the seabed, remember?”

    “Yeah!” he said with a choke of laughter. “–So?”

    “Legs up to here.”

    Euan blenched.

    “Tall, blonde, career-gal, y’know? Works at Middlemore Hospital, on the administrative staff. Got here around seven last night. Then Baranski, need I say it, flaunted her all over the marina, eventually walking up to the Royal K for dinner with her right under Dorothy’s windows.”

    “Christ. Do I dare ask how the Hell he met her?”

    “They was hospital administrators at this other conference at Wairakei, Euan," said Sol patiently.

    Euan nodded, his eyes bulging, and pointed to the ceiling. “That explains that, then.”

    “Uh-huh. Some of it, yep. –Ya know Beth’s threat’nin’ to leave? –Get out of his road,” he elaborated unnecessarily, jerking his head in the direction of Jack’s flat.

    “Shit.”

    “Yeah. –That ain’t all,” he warned.

    “Can I bear more?” replied Euan with his easy grin.

    Sol rubbed his narrow chin uneasily. “You better hear it from me.”

    “Just tell it, Sol,” he said, going very white under the permanent matte tan.

    “Uh—wal, it’s not easy, because strictly speaking there ain’t nothing to tell. Gautier and Ms W. both behaved themselves, even though in her case you couldn't have blamed her for kicking up her heels: Takagaki got off with a lady hospital administrator. But Gautier got home in a real bad mood.”

    “Took it out on Simone?” asked Euan tightly.

    “More or less. Shouted at her. This was the evening we were giving the kids their tea, Michaela having volunteered, believe me or believe me not,” he said with a little smile, “to sit Simone’s kids with Grace. Well, I collected them okay. He was at work: she seemed okay. Looking forward to the Mikado rehearsal. Seemed okay at the rehearsal, too. –You oughta come.”

    “I can’t sing.”

    “You’d feel right to home, then. I drove home, picked the kids up, and brought them back to her place. There was no sign of him. She offered me a glass of something, so we sat down in the sitting-room on that Goddawful couch he chose; and first off she laughs and calls it l’homme Michelin and then all of a sudden she bursts into tears and tells me that he was furious because he found out she had Annick in the house, and just generally in a filthy temper; and he’s decided they’re gonna sleep in separate rooms.”

    There was a short silence.

    “She didn’t appear upset about that, as such,” he said cautiously.

    “That it?” said Euan tightly.

    “Yeah. Wal, there was still no sign of him by the time I left. She said he usually eats at the Royal K when they have a row.”

    “Mm.”

    “Reading between the lines, she’s kinda developed, some, since she came out here. Doing them cute little dresses an’ all for Tricksie’s: y’know? She said that Armand’s always nagged her to become more independent, only now she has, he cain’t hack it.”

    “Mm.”

    Sol sighed. “Just thought you oughta know. Want a coffee?’

    “Uh—yes; I’ll get it,” said Euan.

    Sol watched sympathetically as he vanished out back in the direction of the store’s rudimentary coffee facilities. He guessed that had helped, a mite. But he was sure glad it wasn’t him in their shoes. –Any of their shoes, he thought with a shudder as the sound of Dorothy shouting at her computer came floating down from above. Life could be a bitch, huh?

    The sun shone out of a pale blue sky, the sound of concrete mixers and builders’ labourers’ transistor radios rose cheerfully on the mild morning air from the direction of the fast-completing Casa Meridionale complex a little further round the bay, and Leigh looked up at the soon-to-be-his balcony of the old waterfront pub, grinning like a maniac.

    “Good, eh?” cried Sim in the vernacular, leaning over the railing.

    “Super-wonderful!” cried Leigh. “I say, Sim? Do you think I could get a piano up there?”

    “No sweat! Winch ’er up, straight onto the balcony! Block an’ tackle!” he cried promptly.

    What was it his father did, again: a surgeon, was he? Oh, well, serve him right for sending his offspring out to the Antipodes, which was, Leigh had now decided, the birthplace of DIY. So much so that they didn’t even call it that: it seemed to be as natural as breathing to the male half of the populace. Some of the females being just as bad, he recognised as Wallis, in grimy jeans and tee-shirt behind a carpenter’s leather apron (the property of Professor William Michaels: serve him right for going off to MIT) appeared on the balcony behind Sim, grinning.

    “Looks neato, eh?” she screamed.

    “Wonderful!” cried Leigh, grinning like a maniac once more.

    “Come up!” shouted Wallis.

    Grinning and waving, Leigh headed for the back door. The front door was now sparkling in heavy black high-gloss paint but he didn't attempt to enter through it, as it was of this precise moment blocked by the gangling form of Martin Wolfe, slowly screwing in a shining recycled brass plate which told a lot of lies about the name of the Licensed Prop. and bore the date “March 17th, 1898”. Jacko had discovered it buried in the back yard on the day when they’d taken a pneumatic drill to the asphalt out there. Soon there would be a legal board bearing Adrian’s name above the door of the side bar. As yet embryo, merely: Leigh gave it a cautious glance as he passed it: that hole in the outer shell of the building must create the most frightful draught. Even though there was a sheet of corrugated iron over it.

    The flat smelled of paint but otherwise it was glorious: glorious! And all his! Er—his plus his visitors’, Leigh registered silently as Wallis, Sim and Martin joined him.

    “I’ll have to get some houseplants,” he murmured, wandering round the gloriously empty spaces of his living-room. The original kauri floorboards: glowing a wonderful warm, golden shade, the like of which Leigh had never seen before. Hard yacker and layers of plain polyurethane, according to Adrian: well, he’d take his word for it.

    “Palms! Brass pots!” gasped Martin eagerly, scurrying to his side.

    “Little metal bottle-tops!” squeaked Wallis unexpectedly, collapsing.

    “Ignore it,” said Martin briefly, taking Leigh’s arm confidentially. “What I reckon is—” Martin told Leigh what he reckoned for Leigh’s sitting-room.

    “Yes,” said Leigh dreamily.

    “Have ya got any money left, though?” asked Wallis tersely.

    The boys turned scarlet, which possibly proved they weren’t as acclimatised as they thought they were.

    Leigh admitted that he had enough to make a start. Immediately a loud argument broke out on the subject of done-up recycled junk versus not-done-up-junk from Kevin’s, cane furniture from the cane shop, and bean-bags like what Wallis’s aunty used to have in her flat in the olden days. Leigh just smiled and nodded; he’d have smiled and nodded at anything, he was in such a good mood.

    Inoue had had a meeting with Sammi, Leigh, his niece Akiko and Hanae Armstrong: all very satisfactory, and Professor Armstrong’s programme was already so well organised that they could have started pre-enrolments for the new year tomorrow. Unfortunately the buildings weren’t coming along quite so fast and if they didn’t manage to get something up Sir G.G. would have to pay megabucks to the rival establishment to borrow their under-utilised language laboratories on Puriri Campus. However, Alan, simmering, was this very day closeted with the architect, the two top men at Carrano Development, the head sub-contractor, and Sir Jake himself, so in all probability something would be got up at Sir G.G. very soon. Inoue was aware that Alan was in a particularly bad mood because of the row with Catherine; he had not, however, mentioned this point either to Alan himself or to any of the Sir G.G. staff.

    “If I might just have a word, Sammi?" he said politely as they all left his office in a bunch.

    “Of course.” Sammi sat down again.

    Inoue showed the others out and closed the door. “That was very satisfactory, wasn’t-ah it?”

    “Yes. I always enjoy working with Hanae, she's got such a well organised mind.”

    Many Japanese women had: it was what made them as interesting, in Inoue’s opinion, as cold left-over rice. “Yes, you’re right. If I may introduce a more personal note, would you care to have dinner with me tonight?”

    It was a Wednesday, which had always been their usual night. And it was the first time he had even hinted at anything personal since his wife died. Sammi’s chiselled nostrils flickered for a moment. She had not been precisely surprised at his picking up an attractive hospital administrator during the long weekend at Wairakei. And she had not wanted to demonstrate their own involvement to the Sir G.G. senior staff. But she had certainly not been either pleased or flattered by his behaviour. “No, I don’t think so, Inoue.”

    “Although we—ah… are both free agents, I do not consider it appropriate to indulge in—ah… conference high-jinks before our co-workers,” he said carefully.

    “Nor do I,” said Sammi grimly, completely overlooking his amazing grasp of the vernacular. “Not if you mean together.”

    “Ah—yes!” he said with a startled little laugh. “Of course, my dear.”

    Sammi got up. “Please don’t call me ‘my dear’ in the office, Inoue, it’s inappropriate. Let’s just forget it all, shall we?”

    “Certainlee,” he said with the smallest of bows. “–Please.” He opened the door politely for her.

    “Thank you,” said Sammi grimly, going out.

    Inoue wandered slowly over to his window and looked down at a view of Kevin Goode’s blue truck in the distance, Akiko in her smart little business suit going into Swadling’s, no doubt to buy European junk food—he had better have a word with her about her diet—and Penny Bergen energetically polishing her shop window. “That’s that, then,” he said to himself. “A pity, in a way.”

    “It’s gigantic,” said Dorothy limply, looking up at it from sea level. Well, inlet level.

    “Crap,” replied Jack crossly. “Are you coming in, or are you gonna sit there all day disapproving of it?”

    “No, I’ll come in and disapprove of the inside,” she said mildly. “Help me out of this damned tub."

    Grudgingly Jack held out his hand to help his sister out of his new runabout and onto the shore of Left-Hand (or Lone Pine Tree) Cove.

    “It’s lovely, actually,” admitted Dorothy, once she was on terra firma. She looked at the low, sweeping lines of Jack’s split-level, flat-roofed house, and smiled.

    “Thanks. Uh—what are you grinning for?” he asked uneasily.

    “Well, even though those nice low lines and all those horizontals of your big roof-beams, don’t correct me, and your heavy balcony rails and so forth do blend in wonderfully to this flattish landscape, Jack, it’s just so American,” said Dorothy on an apologetic note. “I don’t know whether it’s all the glass sliding doors, or… Maybe there’s something Frank Lloyd Wright-ish about it, maybe that’s it,” she said as a frown gathered on his brow.

    “Yeah, well, I did look at a lot of his designs before we finalized it,” he said, cheering up. “And most of the outside woodwork’s cedar. Recycled kauri floors; you’ll like it!” he predicted confidently. “See that rock?”

    “Boulder,” she corrected faintly. It was a giant one, just by the shallow flight of steps leading up to the lower balcony—no, probably a deck. “Came from Boulder Dam, did it?”

    Ignoring this, Jack told her proudly about the provenance of his boulder, the effort and expense it had taken to get it here, blah-blah. Then, producing a giant bundle of keys from his pocket, he leapt up onto the deck—it was definitely a deck, Dorothy decided, even though it had a low, heavy and probably cedar railing round most of it—and unlocked the sliding glass door. Inside it was all super-duper, of course, in fact many portions of it had been super-duperised by Dorothy’s brother’s own hyperactive hands. The gi-normous fireplace was not of recycled brick as some might have expected, but of river stones. Ye gods, the nearest river that featured stones like that was four hundred miles away: he must have had them trucked up! Sure, the effect was wonderful: lovely rounded grey shapes; but—! The main room on the ground floor was a “family-room”, and besides the huge fireplace it featured a couple of giant pillars also faced with these stones. Gee, the back wall was all recycled brick, what a surprise. Next to the family-room were a couple of bedrooms and a bathroom, plus a sort of dark panelled cubby-hole. Dorothy looked round it blankly. “What’s this room for?”

    It was a viewing room: what else? Proudly he slid back panels in the panelling… Oh, well. They did get a lot of rain up this way: it would be just the thing for Murray during those long, miserable midwinter holidays the flaming misguided Education Department was now giving the poor little sods in July. Change for the sake of change, apparently; August holidays had been bad enough, but July? Tracking endless mud through the house with no hope of even a glimpse of blue sky the entire two or was it, gulp, three weeks? Dorothy refrained from pointing all this out: he'd learn. Though presumably it would be the luckless Mrs Manning who’d have to wash the floors.

    “Jack, you can’t put a little boy of his age down here,” she said firmly as he began to tell her that Murray and Rab could have these two rooms. Jack expostulated but she explained very clearly about nightmares and panics and being afraid of the dark. Not to mention if he started coughing or something: who would hear him, with Rab at work until three in the morning and Jack upstairs with his head buried in his computer?

    “Uh—I never thought… Well, there are plenty of rooms upstairs… He better have the room right next to— Um, I was gonna have that one as a study. Uh—well, the wiring’s in… No, okay: I can use the next room, he better have the one between my room and the study.”

    “Mm. Or opposite it.”

    “Huh? No, ya got the wrong end of the stick—” Energetically he led the way upstairs. The stairs were all made of heavy recycled—guess what? Dorothy couldn’t guess but he was gonna tell her anyway. You might not think that old warehouse beams would come up that good once they’d been sliced up with a circular saw: no, how true. Kauri? Oh, beg your pardon: rimu. Oh, yes: that lovely warm, reddish glow. No, it didn’t look too much of a contrast with the kauri floors, she said kindly. Jack beamed and informed her that it picked up the shade of the brickwork…

    “I see: the whole of the back wall’s brick. I mean, it—it goes all the way up,” said Dorothy limply. “Both floors.”

    “Huh? Oh: yeah; ya see…” He carried on at length about load-bearing and the insulating qualities of brick. Silently Dorothy, who always got disoriented inside other people’s houses, especially giant empty ones, tried to work out which was west. Uh—that end of the house. Uh—was it? Yes, the Inlet ran east-west. Well, if he reckoned that end wall was gonna catch the winter sun and keep the house warm, who was she to disabuse him? If it did, it would also catch the summer sun and keep the house like a furnace, but she wouldn’t mention that. The back wall, which faced due south, wouldn’t get any sun, but she refrained.

    The kitchen—facing east, without a view of the Inlet, boy, you could tell no woman had had a hand in designing this place—was almost completely smothered in blue-grey slate, which she agreed limply was lovely. –It cost a fortune: A Fortune! “Mm, lovely.” Likewise the bloody eye-level oven and the biggest dishwasher this side of the Rocky Mountains, yeah.

    “You had thought about furniture, had you?” she said misguidedly. He went on and on about saddle-hide and the Southwest look and Navajo rugs, blah-blah, but concluding that his brain had at last become completely addled, she just switched off.

    “Any luck?” said Moana sympathetically to Beth after a dispiriting day spent in abortive house-hunting.

    “No. They’re all so expensive, it’s incredible.”

    “Did you look in my block?” Moana had settled for one of the white Mediterranean-look townhouses of the Casa Meridionale complex on the waterfront. It had a lovely balcony with a great view; it got plenty of sun; she wouldn’t have to worry about a garden as the carport took up all of the back yard, while at the front there was one of the many small communal areas, all paved, with square white-painted concrete plant containers filled with a mixture of New Zealand flax hybrids and creeping rosemary; and of course it was easy-care. And the fact that the old pub on the corner would be opening its restaurants, bar and courtyard before too long was definitely a plus: she really missed the Aussie café lifestyle.

   Beth replied glumly: “Yes. They’re much too dear. And not me.”

    Moana grinned. “Dunno that they’re me, either, but they’ll do, for the time being!”

    “Mm. I haven’t even got a fraction of the down-payment. I thought… I don’t know what I thought,” said Beth sadly.

    “Have you looked at rental properties?” asked Moana kindly.

    “Yes. There just isn’t a thing. And I thought— Well, everybody says it’s silly to throw your money away on rent when you could be owning your own home.”

    “Ye-ah… When you could be in hock to the bank until the day you die and your insurance pays it off, more like. Oh, well, it’s the way things are done,” she said with a shrug. “Buy a five-acre block and put an A-frame on it, like Jane?”

    “I’m not that adventurous,” admitted Beth.

    “Nor am I. Um—look, I did hear that one of my neighbours might be interested in letting his townhouse, I’ll look into it: okay?”

    She was obviously so well-intentioned that Beth didn't have the heart to say No, don’t. She smiled weakly and thanked her.

    … “What’s up?” said Thomas, discovering his P.A. drooping over her desk when she should have been writing an “executive summary” of his report on the complete Sir G.G. takeover of the geothermal power station.

    Beth jumped. “Sorry.”

    Thomas perched a hip on her desk. “What—is—up?”

    “I can’t find anywhere to live.”

    “What’s wrong with where you are?”

    “Nothing. Um—I’m sick of it. Well, it’s a bit poky.”

    “Who does own that block?” he demanded.

    “Um… Inky and Sticky & Co.,” said Beth faintly.

    “Eh?”

    She cleared her throat. “Polly calls it that. It’s the company that Jake set up for their kids.”

    “Really? In that case, why the Hell doesn’t he put in a corner shop?—Never mind that.—That simplifies it, then, Beth. Jack’s moved out, hasn’t he?”

    “Yes,” she muttered, reddening.

    “Yes, well, and Leigh tells me the flats over the pub are nearly ready. Get Jake to throw all three of those bed-sits into one: make a decent flat for you.” Thomas launched into a full-blown scheme for building Beth a delightfully roomy flat above the three shops. “Why don’t I ring him?” he finished cheerily.

    “No!” she gasped.

    Too late, Thomas was ringing him.

    “It’s huge!” gasped Leigh, goggling at Thomas’s house. House and a half.

    “It’s the log-cabin look that makes it look big.”

    “Log cabin plus,” corrected Leigh feebly. It wasn’t all log-cabin style, though there were plenty of logs in evidence, sort of here and there, and forming the lower part of the ground floor. “Slate roof?” he croaked.

    “Why not?”

    “It’s your money,” said Leigh feebly. “Why did you decide to have it split-level?”

    “It’s not!” Thomas proved to his own satisfaction that his giant house was not technically split-level. Most of it was two-storeyed but part of it was one, and in Leigh’s terms that was split-level, but he didn’t argue. If Thomas wanted to claim that the giant games room was a wing, let him. It all looked sort of… Canadian outback? That was certainly what sprang to mind. You expected to see a lumberjack heave into view with his axe in his hand. Not that Thomas in very old jeans and a khaki ex-army woolly liberally patched with McLeod tartan couldn’t have passed for one of those.

    “I know it’s not you,” said Thomas with a laugh, after Leigh had expressed hypocritical admiration of the woodsmanly ambience, not that ambience was a word you’d have dared to use in it; “but I love it!”

    Apparently he did, the macho cretin, if the beaming smile on his unshaven countenance was anything to judge by. Pot-bellied stove an’ all. Additional giant fireplace with its exposed brick chimney an’ all. The winters here were not actually that cold, but mind you, anything with ceilings this high… Not to mention with these giant Mexican-style terracotta paving stones underfoot, why in God’s name hadn’t he asked someone’s advice before having those put in?

    “Well?” said Thomas impatiently as Leigh dutifully looked at the view. The house was set aslant on its giant section, so that there was a view of the Inlet from the living-room, more or less… south-east? East of south-east, possibly. The master bedroom had the same outlook.

    “Yes, it is a lovely view… Um, I just think this might be a cold room in winter.”

    Hah! It wouldn’t, because the wet-back from the pot-bellied stove… He’d lost Leigh there, it all got too technical. “Jealous?” he finished with a cheerful laugh.

    “Er—no,” admitted Leigh apologetically.

    Thomas the Tank Engine just laughed, bashed him on the back in a macho fashion, and dragged him off to watch him do frightfully macho things to the inside parts of the shaggy logs that formed the bottom three feet of his ground-floor walls. Inside they weren’t loggy and shaggy, they were flat. Thomas was apparently sanding them down personally as a preliminary to putting sixteen thousand coats of clear varnish on them.

    “Is this what you’ve been spending all your weekends on lately?” said Leigh faintly

    “Eh? Yes, why not?” he said, switching on a bloody power tool.

    Why not, indeed? It was better than sitting brooding on the houseboat, turning himself into an alcoholic. Silently thanking the Almighty that something seemed to be going right for Thomas at last, Leigh put his hands over his ears and smiled at him.

    … “So he really enjoys all that mucking around with electric drills stuff?” asked Angie cautiously over their cosy morning coffee together, on the following Monday.

    “Oh, Lord, yes, Angie! From way back. Well, he’s never volunteered to finish off the inside of a house before, but then, I don't think he’s ever owned one before. But he used to do a bit of boat-building in his youth. For a while he contented himself with merely mucking round with electronic equipment,”—Angie winced and nodded—“but he is quite handy with a hammer and sixteen tons of complex sophisticated hired building machinery.”

    “Good. Um—has he thought about furniture?” asked Angie cautiously.

    “I don’t think so, Angie,” he admitted, smiling.

    “Um—was there a laundry?” she said cautiously.

    “I don’t think so, Angie.”

    Angie gulped.

    “He’s happy, thank God.”

    “Yes,” she said, smiling at him. “Maybe you can stop worrying about New Zealand being the wrong move for him, Leigh!”

    Leigh smiled limply. He didn’t think it had showed. “Yes,” he admitted feebly. “Maybe I can.”

    Dorothy having moved into her new flat in Adrian’s pub, the builders had moved into her old flat and Jack’s, and the noise had to be heard to be believed. Sol had tried to explain about load-bearing walls but Beth had just put her hands over her ears and smiled weakly. He had also tried to explain about Sir Jacob’s enthusiasm for new ideas and the way he got carried away with said new ideas—large or small—but Beth had already perceived this for herself, so she just nodded and smiled weakly.

    “The builders” doing Beth’s new flat were Barry Goode and his mates: they’d now finished the flats in the old pub, and Jack’s house had been completed, more or less, given that Jack Perkins was a perfectionist; and the job of Alan Kincaid’s extensions hadn’t eventuated. So far Barry had only come downstairs to the boating-supplies store around fifteen times tearing his hair, groaning: “She hasn’t got a clue!”

    Sol was driven to point out: “It all wasn’t her idea, Barry.”

    “So I gather,” he groaned. “But you’d think she’d have some ideas: I mean, most women do, don’t they?”

    Sol shook his head. “Uh-uh.” Barry glared at him in amazed indignation but before he could utter Sol was elaborating: “Most women know precisely and exactly what they want—or what they think they want—down to the last glass-knobbed bathroom faucet, sorry, tap, Barry. Be it in the area of house renovations or any of the more emotional spheres of life,” he added dreamily.

    Barry came to with a blink and noted: “Ya can drop that, for a start!”

    “It’s true, though. Beth ain’t like that. Bit like Michaela,” he said with a smile.

    “Uh—yeah. Is she? Yeah,” replied Barry limply.

    “So, what have you decided so far?” said Sol very nicely.

    “And that,” he noted grimly. “Um—well, the bathroom’s gotta be enlarged and tuned into an ensuite. And if Sir Jake thinks the staircase in the end shop oughta be replaced, now’s the time to do it. So we’re gonna rip that out and put in a new one: it’ll have a wee landing so as she can have her own front door upstairs.”

    “I get it. What about downstairs?”

    “Yeah! That’s the point! We put in the new staircase against the end wall of Shop 3, see? Then we can make a little front door for her, right at the far end of the block.”

    “Uh-huh. This-all wouldn’t entail any alterations to that there end wall itself, would it, Barry?”

    “No,” he admitted regretfully.

    “That’s good, because those two end walls, they’re bearing the main load of the roofs. Being as how we've got these here triplet Colonial-style gables in front.”

    “Have you finished?”

    “Nup: Colonial gables with Colonial finials.”

    “Thanks. And what you mean is, they’re bearing those giant steel girders that run right along the entire length of the building, front and back, which means that your Colonial gables aren’t in fact wholly held up by your store-front plate-glass, Sol, they only appear to be.”

    “Gee, I’m glad we’ve got that one straight.”

    “Yeah.” Barry finished drinking Sol’s excellent coffee, thanked Sol for it, reminded him that they were taking out the staircase from the back of his, Sol’s, shop starting next Monday—Sol cowered, but Barry ignored this—and went back upstairs.

    “Has it dawned on him,” wondered Sol to his innocent helper, Jimmy Burton—who had, apart from fetching the coffee and Yeah, getting the packet of biscuits, the store could afford to give Barry a biscuit!—merely listened meekly to the whole exchange—“that iffen he takes out our staircase and blocks off the hole—”

    “Like he reckons he’s gonna,” interrupted Jimmy with relish.

    Sol eyed him in some amusement: he’d come on some, had young Jimmy, since first being hired as a wet-behind-the-ears seventeen-year old just out of high-school. “Uh-huh: has it dawned that in order to be able to get downstairs outa my old flat, he’s gonna have to—”

    “Knock a hole in the wall of Jack’s flat first!” he choked deliriously, going into a painful paroxysm.

    “Yep,” said Sol mildly, smiling. “That. Remind him of that, Friday going-home time, shall I, Jimmy?”

    “Yeah!” he choked ecstatically.

    Sol smiled and as old Mrs Fein had come into the shop and was staring round her in a lost way, the way most ladies from Kingfisher Bay did on first entering Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies, whether or not they knew what they wanted in this instance, hastened out from behind his counter to help her. Yeah, they sure had been getting some rain. Yeah—lying in his teeth—it sure was unusual for November. Wal, now, he did stock gumboots (he’d long since learned that phrase off by heart), and they had a range of kids’ sizes, but not all that wide a choice of colours. Here he waited for Jimmy to explain hoarsely that they only had red because see, the wholesalers had had a special on those, but to his relief, he didn’t. He’d grown up some, all rightee. Martina? Oh: seven, was she? Sure he could sell Mrs Fein a pair but it would be better if she brought her in— Like that, was it? Uh-huh. He could put Mrs Fein in touch with a real competent guy who would put a proper front path in for her without delay. He wrote down the name and number for her.

    “Thank you, Sol,” said old Mrs Fein with a sigh. “Lionel, my late husband, you know,”—Sol nodded and smiled: he’d met the late Lionel, shortly before he tottered off of this mortal: maybe he had been good at what he did, back in the days when he was in business, but by the time they’d moved to Kingfisher Bay nothing whatsoever had appeared to be functioning between the ears—“said that it would be much more economical to have the whole drive done in those little wee—um—squares. And they did look very attractive with the grass growing between them, the first year.”

    “Yes, a few of the homes round here have got those,” he said neutrally.

    “Yes. But I think we must have got the wrong grass.” Etcetera. Sol just nodded and smiled, finally agreeing that they musta gotten the wrong sort of grass, sure. And not pointing out that given the slope and positioning of Mrs Fein’s front garden, it not only needed a proper concrete driveway put in, it needed ditching and draining. Because otherwise the driveway, concrete or not, would remain underwater and Martina Fein, aged seven, would still be able to enjoy the sensation of wading through it in her socks and sneakers. Yup. The only shoes what she brung with her. –Mrs Fein, Junior, was very big in the Jewish women’s movement back in the city. To the extent of not having time to supervise what Martina packed when she came up to stay with Nana Fein because for she, Rachel Fein, hadda go off to Israel because of what Sol didn’t bother to listen to.

    After quite some time Jimmy came up to them and said with a blush: “Um—if I came up to your place, Mrs Fein, I could try the gumboots on her.”

    Sol didn’t point out it was November, this was their busy season, because for in the first place this was Initiative, never before observed in J. Burton, and in the second place they weren’t exactly busy, witness Mrs Fein plus Charlie Gordon over there in the corner looking at rope, and in the third place it was pouring, and the mere thought of Martina Fein in her soaking-wet sneakers tramping mud all over Mrs Fein’s immaculate kitchen floor, not to mention her immaculate body-carpeted front hall—! And it was only a step. Added to which Mrs Fein drove a giant steel-blue Volvo, courtesy of the late Lionel. Which, step or not, she was driving today: it was parked right out in front.

    “Do that, Jimmy: take a choice of sizes, okay?”

    Beaming, Jimmy escorted Mrs Fein to her steel-blue Volvo. Likely he’d be back some time this century, after she’d fed him on— Uh: was the Feins Orthodox? Oh, well, Jimmy wouldn’t notice. Cheesecake, most probably!

    Sol sagged on his counter, wondering idly if Mrs Fein, in the grandmotherly excitement at having Martina all to herself, wet sneakers and all, had recollected that it was a school day and the kid was legally supposed to be in school.

    After some time during which nothing happened except that it rained, Euan came in, in his yellow slicker, looking very wet. “Hullo,” he said mildly, a-standin’ there a-drippin’ on Sol’s floor.

    “Hey, Euan. How’s business your end?”

    “Less than so-so. I’ve finished that job on Paul Ainsworth’s engine.”

    “Uh-huh. Make sure he pays ya before he takes it away, Euan.”

    “Right, I will!” he said in horror.

    “Given he owns a new Rolls, a vintage Bentley, a giant sea-going launch, half of Huia Crescent, two four-wheel-drives and three divorces, that’s how he got that rich and stayed that rich.”

    “I’ll remember that,” promised Euan.

    “That It?” said Sol glumly.

    “No; I’ve finished doing up Mr and Mrs Cummings’s Irvina II. She looks quite pretty. Given that nobody wants a wooden non-metricated launch these days, they may get a fifth of what she’s worth for her, at which point they may be able to pay us.”

    “That It?”

    “Yeah.”

    Sol nodded slowly, scratching his chin.

    “Had an idea?” asked Euan without hope.

    “Ye-ah… Only, did he say he wanted a launch? Said he used to sail… This was back in the pouring-wet depths of winter,” he noted.

    “Who?” said Euan loudly.

    “Huh?” he replied, jumping. “Oh; Jack Perkins. –No?”

    “No. I dunno what he might or might not have said in the depths of winter but as of now, actually Sunday afternoon, he’s just bought a giant cabin-cruiser with all mod-cons.”

    “You seen it? Can he steer it?”

    “Yes, and Yes, so there won’t even be any towing involved.”

    “Yeah, but can he get her up to Left-Hand Cove, Euan? Given that there’s three inches of draft, there, when the tide’s in, and he don’t know the waters?”

    “Doesn’t matter. He’s bought a marina slot,” he said dully.

    “Off of who?” gasped Sol. Them slots were like hen’s teeth!

    “The Leadbetters. Offered ’em megabucks.”

    “Those’ll go well with the divorce,” Sol admitted.

    “Yeah. Um—hang on. Baranski was going on about fibreglass being crap in the pub the other day.”

    “Did you leap on him and hog-tie him and get him to swear on a stack of Bibles that he’d at the least take a look at Irvina II?” said Sol without hope.

    “Um—no. Sorry,” he said, biting his lip.

    “Yeah, well, you’re an engineer and a boat-builder, Euan, and not bad with the books, neither; I guess I got no right to expect you to be a salesman, too.”

    “No, it was bloody dumb of me,” he said, scowling. “I’ll get hold of him, shall I?”

    “Might not be a bad idea. –I was gonna say, use the phone!” he screamed as a Godamighty rumpus arose upstairs.

    “What’s— What’s he doing?” screamed Euan.

    Sol shook his head madly but as the noise suddenly ceased, said quickly: “Pushing out the partition-wall of the bathroom, I think. Try Ida’s phone!” he screamed as it started up again.

    Nodding, Euan hastened next-door into the crafts boutique.

    Sol sighed and sagged on his counter. Euan wasn't usually that bad. Brooding over Simone, that was what. Yo, boy.

    … “I’ll take her,” said Thomas, outing with his chequebook, later that same afternoon.

    Sol was just going to tell him a lie about her price when a Godamighty rumpus arose upstairs.

    “Christ, has that been going on all day?” said Thomas as it suddenly stopped.

    Sol just nodded feebly.

    Thomas grinned. “Sorry! How much do I owe you?”

    Sol hurriedly told him a lie before the noise could start up again. He paid up like a lamb. Like a lamb. And went off whistling, to take possession of ’er right now.

    Sol and Jimmy just looked limply at each other for some time.

    Finally Jimmy croaked: “Ya coulda charged him even more!”

    The rumpus breaking out again, Sol just nodded limply.

    Beth sagged gloomily on the sea wall. It was Saturday, but Mr Goode didn’t seem to have realised it was the weekend. Let alone that some people might want a sleep-in on Saturday.

    Barry, Nev and Jonno sweated it out for some time. They had decided to put double doors in the wall between Dorothy’s old flat and Jack’s; at least, Sir Jake had decreed that that was what was gonna be there, and since those dividing walls were concrete block, there was a fair amount of hard yacker involved. Eventually Nev, his nose flattened against the plate-glass of Jack’s erstwhile flat, reported crossly: “She's still down there; what’s she doing, for Pete’s sake?”

    “Sitting,” grunted Barry sourly.

    “Well, heck! She’s been out there for hours! Isn’t she gonna offer us a cuppa at all?” he protested loudly.

    “No, apparently not.”

    “Well, heck!”

    “Nev, get on with it, you’re not on time-and-a-half at Sir Jake Carrano’s expense to stare out of the window and whinge about your bloody smoko!”

    “But heck, Barry, we’ve been here for yonks!”

    “Yes, well, we can knock off for a smoko in a bit, but for God’s sake let’s get this bloody hole in the wall looking slightly like a doorway before we do!”

    Scowling, Nev returned to work.

    Eventually Barry said with a sigh: “That’ll do, we’ll take a break. JONNO!” he shouted, making mad hand-signals.

    Looking mildly surprised, Jonno switched his drill off and held one of his ear-muffs away from his ear. “Yeah?”

    “Smoko,” said Barry heavily.

    “Goodoh. Ya reckon she might do us scones, like Mrs Burchett?” he said wistfully.

    “NO!” shouted Barry. “She won’t do us scones like Mrs Burchett, because she's not Mrs Burchett, and because none of these bloody moos these days can COOK! And she won’t even offer us a bought Shrewsbury, because the bloody moo’s out there sitting on the fucking wall like she has been for the last forty-two hours, doing NOTHING!”

    Jonno wandered over to look. “Oh, yeah,” he said mildly.

    Breathing heavily, Barry said through his teeth: “Well, switch the jug on, one of you.”

    There was a short silence.

    “WELL?”

    Jonno and Nev hadn't brung the jug, see, because they’d thought that the lady— And heck, it was Saturday, Barry!

    “I’ll ask if we can borrow her— Didja bring our tea-bags?”

    They hadn’t brung them because they’d thought that the lady—

    “You’re both bloody HOPELESS!” shouted Barry.

    “We could ask Sol,” offered Nev into the sheepish silence.

    “Yeah, right.” Muttering under his breath about useless clots of helpers, Barry went downstairs.

    Sol was just unlocking his front door. “Some of us is openin’ up late, Barry, because for we thought the worst of it might be over iffen we waited and prayed.”

    “It wasn’t my idea,” he said tightly. “Sir Jake told me to get on with it and time-and-a-half for the boys, so that’s what we’re doing. Ya wanna make an issue of it?”

    “Not me!” said Sol, shuddering. “Can I help ya, or have ya simply found that if ya want to get from one room to another upstairs, ya gotta go through the store because for there ain’t no internal d—”

    “We’re making one!” he shouted.

    “—doorways. Gee, I’m glad we got that clear, Barry.” Sol looked at his grey-dust-covered person in some amusement, which he did not bother to conceal. “Been cutting your way through them concrete blocks what half this country is made of, have ya?”

    “Yes. And could we please borrow your jug, and come to think of it, your tea-bags, too, because those bloody clots upstairs didn’t bring ours.”

    Sol showed him in, grinning. “Or do ya mean, after all them Devonshire teas out at Toetoe Bay, they thought—”

    “YES!” he shouted. “By God, it’s a wonder you haven’t cut yourself to ribbons, by this time!”

    “Thanks,” said Sol modestly, trotting out in back. “Real coffee?”

    “Um—no, ta, Sol. The boys don’t know what it is,” he said weakly.

    “What I meant was, you wanna share a cup with me while we make dark orange tea for the boys?”

    “Well, yes. If you’re making some?” he said feebly.

    “Sure. I don’t got any scones and jam, though.”

    “Hah, hah,” said Barry limply.

    “She been a-settin’ out there on that wall for long?” asked Sol with friendly interest.

    “Hours,” he said grimly.

    “Uh-huh. Guess she don’t like loud noises, huh?”

    “Uh—no. It’s not in her place, though.”

    “No, well, some people are sensitive to noise. Ida hadda go home the other day: the drill—I think it would be the noise combined with the vibrations—was giving her a migraine.”

    “Oh,” said Barry limply.

    “Yeah.” Sol put the coffee on, showed Barry where the tea makings were and got him started, and went on out to speak to Beth. “Hey, Beth,” he said mildly,

    “Oh, it's you!” said Beth in great relief, beaming at him.

    “Uh-huh. Someone been pestering you, have they? Well, apart from Barry Goode and all his works.”

    “The noise has been dreadful!” she admitted. “Um—it was Hal Gorman.”

    “The guy that looks like Arnie Schwarzenegger? What he do?” asked Sol in some surprise.

    “Nothing. It was just me,” she growled, blushing. “He—he came up to me and started asking how to get to some place where they do surfing. And he went on and on about east coasts and west coasts and—and the roads, and I don’t know where anything is, up here!”

    “No, ’course you don’t.”

    “It’s the sort of thing normal people do know, you needn’t pretend!” said his wife’s cousin crossly.

    Sol smiled, just a little. “So he expected you to be as normal as that, huh?”

    “Yes. And then he started talking to me nicely, and I’m just hopeless at that!”

    “Sure. Michaela’s even worse: she tries to see some logic in the asinine kind of questions people ask during these verbal exchanges, be they in order to establish territory, give the correct number of recognition signs—strokes, if you prefer,” he said with a twinkle in his eye,—“or indulge in the preliminaries preliminary to other and maybe less formal rituals.”

    “Well, it wasn’t one of those!” said Beth with feeling.

    “No? Don’t fancy him?”

    “No. I suppose he’s quite nice. But he’s too—” Beth broke off, turning scarlet.

    “Too American: yup,” he agreed cheerfully.

    “Sol, I think you must be unique!” said Beth in despair.

    “I wouldn’t go that far, but thank you for the compliment. Uh—intelligence is rare, Beth, but Hal Gorman’s bright enough. But self-awareness is even rarer, and,” he said gently, “the sort I got, the sort that is generally strong enough to dominate the usual self-consciousness that most of us humans are prey to, a large part of the time: well, that’s very rare. Didn't it occur to you that maybe, underneath, Hal was just as shy of you as you were of him?”

    “No. I mean, not at the time. I did wonder about it, afterwards. But I think that those very large, good-looking people have never felt intimidated in their lives, so they’re never shy.”

    “Yeah, on balance I’d agree. We-ell… ninety-eight percent, anyway. Two percent of him was shy because he was talking to an attractive young woman he don’t know very well?” he offered.

    “No. And he thought I was weird, I could see it in his eyes. And I freely admit it: I am.”

    To them that could not see: yep. Or what couldn’t see past that truly horrible khaki sweater she had on, in the case of the male sex. Sol swallowed a sigh. “Uh-huh. Well, listen: you get on over to our place, huh? Take a runabout—Number 6, she's down at the store’s slot,” he said, producing her key from his pocket. “And iffen you could remind Michaela that the laundry that’s in the machine won’t hang itself out, I’d be grateful. Oh, and these letters, can you give them to her and make sure she opens ’em?”

    “Of course. Is she is a potting mood?”

    “Thinking,” said Sol with a shudder. “No: I think I mean, letting it simmer. You may have to be very firm.”

    “I’ll stand over her! Thanks, Sol!” Grasping the key tightly, Beth set off down to the marina without a backwards glance.

    Sol smiled slightly. He watched as she hurried down the boardwalk, got into the little boat and, competently casting off, steered her out amongst the ranks of massed expensive hardware, found the channel without no difficulty at all, and headed sedately on up the Inlet.

    “Shit, is that your boat she’s got?” said Barry’s voice in his ear.

    Jumping slightly, Sol returned mildly: “Yeah. She’s quite handy in a boat. Did her degree in marine zoology, ya know: spent something like five or six years mucking about in boats. –Your guys like shop-bought cookies?”

    “No, but they’ll eat ’em,” he acknowledged.

    Nodding, Sol led him back inside and fetched them. Yeah, well. In the first place Barry Goode was not capable of appreciating Beth, any more than she was capable of appreciating him, and in the second place—and this did surprise Sol slightly—nor, apparently, was Hal Gorman.

    It rained and it rained and it rained. What was more, it was muggy with it. All Jane’s relatives of course had told her how foolish it was, building in a swamp. Not appearing to be amused when she’d pointed out it was only on the edge of a swamp. And they had warned her about the muggy summer weather up in Auckland, which got muggier the further north you went: yes. And Amy and Sally had, independently of each other she had no doubt, written her screeds about the saltiness and general unsatisfactoriness to be expected of the soil on the shore of a brackish inlet in muggy Puriri County. Well, too bad! Jane got into a pair of khaki shorts that had once been Lysle’s, plus a black workman’s singlet that she’d picked up for almost nothing from a seconds bin at the Puriri Emporium: one half of it, at the moment the front, was inside-out. Only Sol Winkelmann had taken in the full implications of Jane’s half-inside-out black singlet in the mere blink of an eye, and he had of course immediately said, poker-face: “Which side is it, again, that’s inside-out?”

    She added a heavy pair of work boots to this attractive outfit, went out into the muggy rain, and got on with digging in the fifteen tons of stable manure that Penny Bergen’s horse-owning friends had provided free. She’d been so grateful to get it that it didn’t dawn on her until too late that they were even more grateful to have it taken away and might even have paid her to do so.

    Some time passed in sweating, streaming effort. At the end of this period she became aware that a large form was standing there silently, watching her. “God!” she gasped, jumping.

    “Hey, Jane,” Hal Gorman greeted her mildly.

    “How long have you been standing there?” she gasped.

    “Some time, I guess. –I left the hire car up on the track.”

    “There isn’t a track,” said Jane blankly.

    “Huh? No, I guess I meant the road: they ever going to pave it?” he asked with kindly interest.

    “The consensus is, not until at least five full professors have bought some of these five-acre lots, and petitioned the County Council, the Roads Board, and their M.P. Are you lost, or were you actually looking for me?”

    “I guess I’m lost. Looking for Jack’s. I drove for miles, seemed like, and found a gate with a notice saying I was in a reserve, only I guess I wasn’t: I didn’t go through the gate. Then I turned back and found a cute little grey house, at first I thought it was shingled, only guess what!”

    “Old creosote,” said Jane heavily. “It’s a bach.”

    “Uh—yeah. You know it, huh? There was a real pretty lady there with some little kids.”

    Lady Carrano: quite. Jane didn’t say so.

    “She told me I’d come past your place and Jack’s, some ways back. So I drove on back but then I found myself on the good surface again, where it’s macadamised. That only leads back to Carter’s Bay or down to Kingfisher Bay: I know that bit of road. So I—”

    “Turned round again. Jack’s letterbox is rather hard to spot: it’s treated wood, and it sort of blends into the landscape, the more so as it’s got a shingled roof, and the sturdy post it’s sitting on has still got its bark on it. In short, it’s the most environmentally-friendly letterbox in the Known Universe, and how the poor postie ever finds it, God alone knows.”

    “That would explain how I missed it. But don’t he got a gate?”

    “Not at the roadside: I think he decided it wasn’t environmentally-friendly enough, Hal.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “There is a gate, and a very expensive stone wall, further in; they’re supposed to keep Murray in. His paved driveway starts there. He is planning to have five thousand tons of environmentally-friendly river gravel trucked in from four hundred miles south of us where they have that sort of environmental river, but so far, it hasn’t eventuated: so there’s no actual drive at the roadside: just sort of—well, they were ruts before this rain started.”

    Hal’s pleasant hazel eyes had twinkled throughout this speech. Now he agreed soothingly: “Sure, I guess it’s a subtropical climate, huh? Often rains in Hawaii, too, come November.”

    Jane opened and shut her mouth,

    “Give or take an equator or two,” said Hal Gorman mildly.

    “Yes, quite. –Drive very slowly along that way—up the Inlet, okay? You will see a— Oh, no, you won’t, I think Sol took his letterbox down,” said Jane in confusion.

    “Uh—Jack told him it wasn’t environmentally-friendly enough?”

    “No,” said Jane, clearing her throat. “The snails kept getting in and chewing his letters. Don’t laugh,” she said weakly. “They really do. So he’s having everything delivered to the shop. And we don’t get a milk delivery up here, so they don’t need a milkbox.”

    “Uh-huh. So after I pass this absent mailbox—sorry, I guess that’s letterbox—of your neighbours’, is it Jack’s next?”

    “Yes. Left-Hand Cove.”

    “He told me it was Lone Pine Tree Cove.”

    “Um—yes. None of them have got official names, actually. He does call it that.”

    “Is there a pine tree?” asked Hal with friendly interest.

    “No. There’s a stunted macrocarpa.” Jane’s lips twitched. “I think that might be ‘Monterey cypress’ to you.”

    “Uh-huh. Maybe I won’t bother. I could stay here and watch you shovel manure—that is manure, huh?—for the rest of the morning.”

    “You could bloody well lend a hand, too!” replied Jane smartly, glaring at his Schwarzenegger-like form.

    “I don’t mind,” he replied amiably. “Only just tell me this: is this a common thing, out here? Or just a personal obsession?”

    “What?” said Jane, staring at him.

    “This manure-shovelling in the rain.”

    “I’m digging it in to improve the quality of my soil, you idiot. This is going to be a vege garden.”

    “I get it: self-sufficiency, huh?”

    “No! Why do Americans have to formalise everything?” said Jane wildly, pushing a wisp of hair off her forehead with a grimy hand. “Thanks,” she said limply as his huge paw closed over the spade and removed it from her grasp.

    “You go make coffee, huh?” he said, grinning. “Or whatever you Kiwis drink, for your morning coffee-break. Tea would be just fine.”

    “That’s good, it’s all there is.” Jane eyed him uneasily. “You will dig it well in, will you, Hal?”

    “Sure! I was watching you, I get the picture!” He fell to. Apparently without effort: Jane watched numbly for a few moments, then tottered inside to make a cuppa.

    … “You got about as much furniture as me,” he discovered, once he’d dug in all of the manure for her, dug over the bits she’d thought she’d dug, and come inside, not neglecting to remove his footwear before entering her gracious abode.

    “Mm. I spent all my money on the section and the A-frame.”

    “Yeah. Jack talked me into that dump I’m in. Well, it’s a roof over my head. Costing an arm and a leg, though. –My ex, she remarried, but she took most of what we owned before she did it. At least we never had kids, not like Jack.”

    “And his two families: right. Well, I’m divorced, too, I should talk. Though funnily enough in my case it was me that came out of it broke.”

    “I guess the nice ones do, Jane,” he said with his pleasant smile.

    “The soft ones, I’ve come to the conclusion, Hal,” replied Jane, sighing.

    “Something up?” he said easily.

    “No. Well, it’s this continual rain. My whole property is infested with powdery mildew and I won’t be able to grow anything like a cucumber for the next umpteen years. Not to mention those tasty little zucchini I had in mind for this summer. Unless I souse the place in chemicals.”

    “Uh-huh. You could try sweetcorn, maybe? Tomatoes? Beans?”

    “Mm,” acknowledged Jane, biting her lip. “Corn does do very well up here. But Sol’s is already three foot high.”

    “Late crop?” he said mildly.

    “Yes,” she agreed, smiling at him. “Well, I wasn’t planning on living off the land, entirely. But I did think I might at least have a few lettuces up, by now! –I planted seed. The soil was too salty. Added to which, armies of snails came and ate what few struggling shoots managed to poke their heads up.”

    “Uh-huh. Snails can be real hard to control—not that I ever had a garden, myself, but Mom used to. But I guess she was into chemicals and not into the environment. Every leaf and stone in her garden was under control: y’know?”

    Jane shuddered and laughed, nodding.

    “You got a lot of undergrowth on your lot,” he noted. “You want me to slash it back? Could dig it up, maybe put in a lawn, create a barrier between the shrubs and the garden?”

    “Y— Well, I did have that in mind, I just didn’t realise what a lot of work it would be. And a lawn needs mowing.”

    “That can be gotten round. Not ground ivy; Mom’s neighbour had that, and boy, was it a haven for the snails. But you could plant one of them little low plants. Camomile, maybe?”

    “A camomile lawn?” croaked Jane.

    “Why not? If it’ll grow here? –You got any cookies?”

    “No, I’m sorry, Hal,” said Jane, eyeing his huge frame in some dismay. “Um—would you like a piece of bread and—um, I’ve run out of marg. Bread and honey?”

    Hal agreed eagerly and eagerly consumed half a loaf of bread and honey. Then, the vegetable garden being now ready, Jane shoved some seedlings into it. The manure had been waiting around for some time, and if it was still too hot for the seedlings, too bad: sitting in pots wasn’t doing them any good. And Hal got on with slashing back the undergrowth and digging over the soil for the immense sweep of camomile lawn which was evidently what he envisaged around the vege garden. He was better than a rotary-hoe, Jane decided limply.

    Over the vegetable soup she served for lunch she said cautiously: “If you enjoy working outdoors, why don’t you think about getting yourself a house with a garden?”

    “Not motivated enough. See, there’s some point in digging your garden. There wouldn’t be, for just me.”

    She nodded numbly.

    “Jack says I oughta get married again.”

    “It’s an option.”

    “Might be, if I could find a woman that wouldn’t want to order me around in a shiny suburban palace filled with consumer junk, Jane.”

    “They’re all like that, Hal,” said Jane cautiously.

    “Goes with the nesting instinct—yeah, I know. But I can’t hack it: that’s basically why we broke up.”

    “Look for someone that’s interested in a simpler lifestyle?”

    “More into self-sufficiency, huh?” he said with a grin. “Yeah, right. Only are there any like that around, these days, Jane?”

    “I suppose there must be some. I can’t think of any unmarried ones of your generation, off-hand. Though possibly that’s because most of the people I know are with Sir G.G.”

    “Yeah.”

    “Moana Curtis is a pleasant young woman,” said Jane, eyeing him out of the corner of her eye.

    “Sexy, too. But managing," he said with a shudder. “I guess I just want an old-fashioned girl.”

    “They don’t grow them like that any more. Er, well… Beth Martin?”

    “Thought Jack was saving her up for a rainy day? No, well,” he said as Jane choked, “I like her, sure. There’s no spark, though, Jane.”

    “No chemistry: right. Is there anybody there is chemistry with, Hal, if I can ask?”

    He smiled a little. “I’m not immune. Yeah, well, young Teddi Bates would make a cosy armful, only long-term, I don’t like ’em dumb, and short-term, I don’t get involved with the secretarial staff.”

    “No. Very sensible.”

    “And I’m not denying there could be chemistry with Mayli, if only she’d look twice at me! Once, would do.”

    “I think most of the men feel that way, Hal.” Jane was fast coming to the conclusion that there was something very, very wrong with Mayli. She didn’t mention this to Hal, however. And possibly it was only that the poor girl’s mother was getting worse. Which would be quite bad enough. After a moment she added: “Colleen Fairlie?”

    Hal smiled a little. “Lovely thing, isn’t she? Helluva waste.”

    “Yes, that’s what I’m saying!”

    “You haven’t noticed, huh?”

    “Noticed what?” said Jane blankly.

    “You do know her and that nice Sandra, they’re sharing a house?”

    “Ye-es… Surely not!”

    “Uh-huh. Thought you woulda realised, Jane.”

    “But— It may only be a reaction to her marriage busting up, Hal.”

    “I don’t think so. I got the impression that the two of them are real happy together. Drove Sandra home from the bus stop one Saturday with a load of groceries, and they asked me in. Domestic harmony,” he said, smiling at her.

    “I see. I had noticed that Sandra’s clothes have got less droopily feminine and tended more towards the smart slacks and tweed jacket style lately, but I’d thought it was just the combination of a decent wage and the realisation that no-one else was wearing droopy floral frocks. God, I’m damn sure Yvonne hasn’t realised!”

    Hal just nodded calmly.

    “Well, that’s about it, for the unattached females of Sir G.G. Leaving aside the Wicked Witch of the West,” she said with a grin.

    He shuddered, but admitted: “A short fling, yeah, maybe: she’s got what it takes. But she is the most organising lady ever born: I thought I’d met some of those, but—” He shook his head in awe.

    “Quite. Well, there’ll be lots of nice young tutors and lecturers coming along, over the next couple of years, Hal!”

    “And you sure would think that out of all of them, statistically speaking, I would find one to suit? Yuh. –Come on, we going to the Garden Centre, or not?”

    Apparently they were. Jane accompanied him limply, hoping, though he was a very nice bloke and she was grateful for all his hard work, that all of this wasn’t some sort of compensation for the lack of suitable ladies in Puriri County and that he wasn’t going to foist himself on her on a regular basis. At times when she didn’t need her garden dug over.

    It seemed to have been raining continuously, that was, non-stop, since January. January of 1942, to be precise. In spite of having moved into her new flat, and of still being in the early gloating-over-it stage, Dorothy was not in the best of moods. Even though Lady Carrano had talked her into having the sofa re-covered in a delicious Sanderson linen! It now looked gorgeous: sort of glowing, in a modern but not modernistic pattern of red, yellow, maroon and gold tulips with pale green and dark green leaves, on a fawn background. Unfortunately Dorothy’s Visa account didn’t look gorgeous, in fact it looked as if it would never be the same again, why had she let the woman talk her into it?

    In spite of the Visa account, the rain, and the muggy humidity which was making one’s executive shirt cling to one, she drove down to Puriri to have lunch at The Blue Heron: might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Not surprisingly there was no-one in the courtyard of The Blue Heron, like there normally would have been in late November, because it was still raining. The restaurant proper was occupied by a large party of drunks over by the far wall and by a smaller party of drunks near the window. Over near the tiny bar at a table for two were two suits in earnest confabulation. The rest of the tables looked rather the worse for wear, but were empty.

    “Hullo, Janet,” she said to Mike and Molly’s little old Janet. “Not too late for lunch, am I?”

    Janet assured her that she wasn’t, and led her to a nice table in the window, Dorothy remembering to ask after her brother as they went. Still enjoying Glen Osmonde? That was good, she said in a hollow voice, trying to smile. Janet then explained that the little boy was great company for him, and after quite some puzzling Dorothy figured out that she meant Catherine Burchett’s little boy. Godfather: was Catherine still staying here, then? She managed to ask this in a neutral sort of voice. Janet was apparently deceived, and beaming, assured her that she was, and guess what! She’d started helping Molly in the kitchen, she was an excellent cook.

    Dorothy nodded and smiled feebly, meanwhile forcibly preventing her brain from doing a cost-comparative study of a unit at The Blue Heron versus Catherine’s putative contribution to the cuisine.

    On due consideration she ordered a very fancy cocktail and left it up to Janet to choose it. Smiling gallantly, Janet tottered off.

    Dorothy leaned back in her seat, wishing very much that she smoked, because now would be the time, except that The Blue Heron had banned it inside, and sighed.

    “Hullo,” said Mike neutrally. “You need this, I gather?”

    She goggled at the glass in his hand. Frothy. Adorned with a small puce umbrella and a row of tropical fruits on a stick. And a candy-striped, twisted straw. “I don’t drink through straws, haven’t done since I was fourteen,” she warned grimly.

    “Eh? No, this is for decoration.” Mike removed it and the umbrella, inserted them carefully into the tasteful little flower arrangement on Dorothy’s table, and sat down opposite her with a sigh. “Just get it down you,” he said, passing the glass over.

    Shrugging, Dorothy placed the skewered tropical fruits on her side plate, and took a gulp. “Gor! Strewth!” she gasped, bashing herself on her executive chest.

    “Don’t ask what’s in it: trade secret.”

    She nodded, sipping cautiously. “It’s very alcoholic: ta,” she conceded.

    “Yeah.” Mike waved vaguely at the figure at the bar and in two seconds flat he was at their sides, panting slightly, with another glass of the same. Minus the umbrella, the fruit salad and the straw, however.

    “The froth is for show, merely,” said Mike, accepting it and taking a gulp. “Thanks, Greg.”

    “How are you, Greg?” asked Dorothy kindly.

    Beaming, he assured her he was good, and he’d got an A for his Continuous Assessment in Accounting 202, and he’d done that bar course that Mike suggested, and guess what? Mike had said he could work full-time these varsity holidays! Dorothy expressed all the right sentiments and he retired to his bar, beaming all over his round, amiable countenance wot Dorothy remembered clear as day seeing in its push-chair.

    Mildly Mike recommended the chicken pie.

    “No, ta, I don’t feel like chicken,” said Dorothy with a sigh.

    “What about a nice little piece of fillet steak with a mushroom sauce that tastes like Paradise, and a few wee new potatoes sprinkled with chopped parsley? And just a dot of butter.”

    Dorothy nodded numbly, and he waved to Janet and conveyed the order. Vetoing Dorothy’s suggestion of wine, as she had to drive.

    “What’s up?” he said as, the level in her cocktail glass having declined considerably, Dorothy began to look marginally more human. “Ta, Janet,” he added as Janet surfaced with a plate of little hot nibbles.

    “Did I order—”

    “No, no,” he said soothingly. “On the house. Molly sometimes does a few when she’s got a few odd mushies or prawns or so forth left over. Or oysters, prunes and bits of bacon,” he admitted with a twinkle.

    “Goob,” said Dorothy with her mouth full.

    “Yes. They’re easy, but you do have to stand over the grill. Molly can cope much better with the odd little one-off, now: she’s got Catherine’s helping out in the kitchen, did Janet say?”

    Dorothy nodded with her mouth full. She couldn’t imagine Catherine Burchett, conscientious creature though she was, having sufficient concentration to rescue little grilled thingies before they grilled to a cinder, actually. “Delish!” she admitted, swallowing and sighing. Mike took one, smiling, and popped it into his mouth, rolling his eyes in appreciation over it.

    “I didn’t realise that Catherine was still here,” said Dorothy weakly.

    Mike nodded, swallowed, and said: “How are things at Sir George Grey?”

    “Alan is even more coldly competent than ever. The professor of Chinese has just started, he seems a nice guy, he and Leigh are getting on like a house on fire. Hanae Armstrong— Have you met her yet?”—Mike shook his head.—“Well, she's going great guns. Got her whole schedule for next year fully organised. Some of them,” noted Dorothy drily, “don’t appear to have noticed that this is a pre-emptive strike.”—Mike nodded, grinning.—“Superb administrator. She’s a nice woman, too. She’s bought one of those damned guinea-pig hutches of Jake Carrano’s in the white monstrosity on the waterfront. Says she doesn’t want a house with a lot of upkeep: evidently her ex forced her to run a huge Australian house for years. Talking of which, Angie Michaels is so comfortable up at Kingfisher Bay that’s she let that bloody great draught-attractor of theirs in Narrowneck for the whole of the Christmas holidays.”

    “Jesus,” said Mike limply.

    “Well, her kids are grown up. …What else? Jack and Thomas have both moved into their huge houses. They’ve both had their heads together interminably with Alan and some Treasury big-wig that Sir G.G. is putting up at the Royal K at huge expense, but don’t ask me what corporate plot that’s about, because it hasn’t been revealed to us underlings. Rab seems to have settled down: Sid Ching’s a steadying influence,” said Dorothy with a twinkle in her eye.

    “I should say so!” agreed Mike with a laugh. “And little Murray?”

    She sighed. “He seems placid enough, but… I dunno. If I said ‘bewildered’, would I be—um—not anthropomorphising, poor little sprat, though God knows they’re less than half human at that age. Um—over-interpreting, something like that?”

    “I haven’t got kids, but I’d say that bewildered probably puts it well. Has he got any friends, Dorothy?”

    “Uh—well, I dunno about school. Um, Jack’s house is so far out of the settlement, you see,” replied Dorothy uneasily.

    “They need friends, and they need socialisation. As far as I can see, they don't need so-called child care any more than they need a parent who bashes them up,” he said on a grim note.

    “One alternative being almost as bad as the other? Yes,” agreed Dorothy with a sigh. “I don’t know what the answer is, Mike. They do come to me every Sunday for tea: in fact Jack’s got into the habit of dropping him off on Sunday morning, if Rab’s working. We potter round together: I’m not much of a child-minder, but he seems equally happy to go for a little walk, or listen to a story, or watch rubbish on TV. Anna sometimes joins us: I think she’d like to take him permanently, actually, but she and Adrian have been very busy, what with the restaurant opening next week.”

    “Mm… Look, does Jack see to it that he has a few more distractions than Aunty Dorothy reading to him or taking him for walks? I mean, those are fine, for a Sunday out with Aunty Dorothy,” said Mike with his pleasant smile, “but—um—well, drawing? It’s supposed to be developmental.”

    “Jack’s got him everything that opens and shuts,” she said uneasily.

    “Yeah, but according to the experts, that’s not necessarily what they need. Look, I was dropping off a batch of Molly’s buns at the local kindy last Wednesday, and I had quite a chat with Gillian Dacre—you know her, don’t you? Yes. Well, it was mainly about Dicky, but we did sort of diverge onto Murray. And she said that most of the kids get bored with the ready-made toys. They like—well, bits of wood, and playing in the sand-pit, and splashing around with the finger-paints and huge bits of newsprint. That sort of stuff: creative, ya know?”

    “Ye-es… Murray’s a bit older, though. Well, I’m sure if Gillian said it she’s right, Mike, but what the Hell can I do?”

    “Dunno. Um… Try and make sure he has some friends round? Buy him a big scribbling block and a packet of felt-tips?”

    “Felt-tips?” said Dorothy deeply. “On Jack’s sacred imported-specially-from-the-flaming-Southwest, genuine American-Indian tourist rugs? Heh, heh, heh,” she noted, getting out her executive diary and writing a note to herself in it very large. “It’ll be my pleasure,” she explained unnecessarily.

    “Yeah. Good.”

    “Why don’t you have lunch with me, Mike?” she said as he took another little hot thingy.

    “Ta, I’d love to,” admitted Mike with a grin. “I’ll let ya have another stinger, if you like.”

    “Is that what they are?”

    “No, I just call them that ’cos they have that effect.” He waved; Greg was there in a flash.

    Over the second round he said cautiously: “I had a word with Jim Baxter the other day.”

    “Mm?”

    “According to him, there’ve been no more developments on the anonymous fax side,” said Mike in a lowered voice.

    “No, that’s right, as far as is known. Jack was going round breathing fire and brimstone over a rude message from persons unknown on his email, but it turned out to be from some moron of an engineering mate who’d changed his email address.”

    “I see. That all? What’s the general atmosphere like, Dorothy?”

    “It’s hard to gauge it, actually: for one thing, with Alan and Jake putting pressure on the developers, things are fairly tense anyway: everyone’s expecting to be told to up stakes at a moment’s notice and move onto the new site. And—well, there’s nothing you can put your finger on in Alan’s manner, but… Like I said, more coldly competent than ever.” She sighed. “Just as some of us were thinking that—um—not that a thaw might have set in, that’d be going too far. That there were aspects of his personality that were human, let’s say.”

    “Mm.”

    “Then, all this business with Shiva… Jack’s a hyperactive idiot at the best of times, probably not the best temperament for an administrator, but over the years he’s learned not to let it rub off. I won’t say, to suffer fools gladly. But his entire department seems to be a mass of nerves. Two computer programmers were threatening to resign only the other day: you could hear the slanging-match all over the building. Hal Gorman’s not a mass of nerves, he’s just quietly absent. Playing with the grown-up computers at the big university in town.”

    Mike shrugged blankly.

    “Yeah, that was my reaction, too. I was under the impression that Jack had hired Hal especially to help him keep his staff at something less than super-stressed level, but apparently that was my mistake. Um… Sammi Wolfe’s pretty edgy, too. Some of us have deduced it’s because she hasn’t found a replacement for Inoue yet. Well, she had a short thing with a male Forestry Fellow, but apparently he didn’t have the right corporate image. -He was reported as turning up for a nice little dinner in jeans and one of those hairy, checked bush shirts,” she said with a smile. “The lower echelons of the Admin staff are more or less protected from her by Juliette and Merri, but there’ve been a few episodes of tears in the Ladies’. The new Assistant Registrar and his assistant are on edge, but possibly she doesn’t see it as her rôle to do anything to help them. The accountants are happy, though: Alan's put them into an office suite over the sandwich shop next-door and they hardly ever see hide nor hair of her; added to which the head accountant’s a nice bloke who believes in protecting his staff from tense lady-exec top bosses. That’s more or less it.”

    “Mm… None of this edginess likely to be because of nasty little messages that they’re not letting on about?”

    Dorothy sighed. “They’re not my responsibility. I really can't say.”

    “No, of course not.”

    “If you want to know about those who are my responsibility—”

    “Only if they’re showing unusual signs of stress.”

    “They’re not, and you can take my word for it. I may have things on my mind, but some of the things, unlike some so-called administrators, are the welfare of my staff,” she said grimly. Mike just nodded mildly so she relented slightly and said: “I will tell you about Faculty Liaison, he was the only one that came down to Wairakei with me.”

    Mike smiled weakly but said: “Go on, then.”

    “Nigel has got a nice little boyfriend, a junior hospital administrator that he met at Guess Where. His name’s Clay, but that’s par for the course with this generation. They’ve bought one of the smaller flats in Casa Merry-Christmas-To-You,-Too on the waterfront, and have settled down happy as Larry in it. Clay works at The Mater, so with motorway more or less all the way he can drive down there in about two hours, and if that’s what turns you on, good luck to it. I do admit he hasn’t yet had to face driving home on a freezing cold winter’s night in the pouring rain, stuck behind a large truck, but he’s so young he’d probably think nothing of it.”

    “Food will be here very soon,” said Mike soothingly.

    “Sorry,” said Dorothy with a sigh. “Um—well, that’s it, then. Those that are looking stressed to appear to have good reasons for it. Um… Armand Gautier’s looking very strained but we gather his marriage is very rocky indeed.”

    “Ye-es… The odd little message, to either him or his wife, could just be making it worse.”

    “I’m not denying it. Get Jim Baxter to ask him.”

    “I might. And the other characters who were at that brainstorming crap?”

    “Like who?” said Dorothy coldly, grabbing the last little hot thingy before he could guts it. “Leigh Gore? Beth Martin? –I don’t say the girl’s all merry and bright, but she does appear stable. Which, considering she’s working for bloody Baranski, is odd. No, to give him his due, they seem to be getting on like a house on fire,” she admitted.

    “Uh-huh. And Alan’s PA?”

    Dorothy shrugged. “As poker-face as he is and even more beautiful. –I’m not blind,” she said arctically as Mike blinked. “Alan’s a very attractive man, and I have the clinical opinions of both S. Wolfe and P. Carrano on that one. Um… look, Mayli’s mum’s very ill. She isn’t looking stressed, and her work’s as perfect as ever, but she’s been even more reserved than usual. Which, considering that bloody Yvonne chirps: ‘And how’s your poor mother today, dear?’ every bloody morning when she walks into the bloody office, is hardly surprising!”

    “No,” agreed Mike, putting himself in the poor girl’s shoes and wincing horribly.

    “I suppose, given the circs, things are pretty normal. Um—well, it’d be a gross exaggeration to claim they’re going from bad to worse,” summed up Dorothy on a glum note.

    Somewhat to Mike’s relief, Janet hove in sight with the food at this juncture, so he only said: “Is that the sort of feeling you get? Gut feeling?” And only had time to cringe, as she nodded reluctantly.

Next chapter:

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