Second Auditions

16

Second Auditions

    “You weren’t at the auditions,” noted Adrian idly.

    Euan returned sourly: “No.” Apparently bloody Revill had come round to the boatyard express to show off his new girlfriend. A pretty little plump, fair-haired thing, most unlike the usual glamorous creatures he’d had in tow any time these past umpteen years. All right, good luck to him, but Euan didn’t want to know.

    “They’re looking for a Nanki Poo, ya know,” said Adrian with a leer.

    “That lets me out, then. –Did you want anything? Because I’m busy.”

    “Actually, we wanted to ask you home to lunch, didn’t we, Anna?”—Anna nodded and smiled.—“Only don’t come, if you’re too busy,” finished Adrian politely.

    Euan sighed and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “Sorry. Yeah, I’d love to come to lunch. Can you hang on while I finish this?”

    “Sure. Siddown, Anna. This bench thing’s sorta clean.”

    Anna sat down, smiling. Revill promptly sat down next to her very close, and put his arm round her. Oh, well—nice work if you could get it. Euan got on with putting bloody Pete Feather-tit’s engine back together again; this was the fourth time this year he’d had it in, and considering they’d told him a million times not to gun ’er like that… Well, it was all grist to their mill. But it was a great pity that them as could afford a decent boat all seemed to be the sort of types that shouldn’t be let near the water in a million years.

    “Don’t want a boat, do ya?” he said without hope.

    “No. Well, yeah, only I’m absolutely broke. I’d love a decent launch, like old Jacko’s,” said Adrian glumly.

    “Isn’t she beautiful? Well, I’m a sailing man myself, but—yeah.” Euan wiped his hands on an oily rag.

    “Almost finished?”

    “Nearly. The lunch won’t spoil, will it?”

    “Nope: pas si bête. Can I show Anna your loft?”

    “Yes, of course. Um, it’s a bit of a tip,” added Euan uneasily.

    “You’re speaking to the woman that invaded that rat hole bloody Martin and Sim live in and cleaned it out this morning as ever was,” returned Adrian solemnly.

    “Shit, what’d ya do that for? Those two great lumps are more than capable of looking after themselves, they’re just bone lazy!” he gasped.

    “Well, they are only boys, really,” she said smiling shyly. “And I’d done the other rooms.”

    Euan looked after them limply as they climbed the ladder to the loft which contained his rudimentary living quarters. Flaming Norah! Not that Revill wasn’t the type that attracted little body-slaves as fly-paper attracted flies. But cleaning out Martin’s and Sim’s room? Good grief. What had Revill ever done to deserve her? Well, nothing. Didn’t have to do anything, he only had to stand there looking like ruddy Mel Gibson. Euan got on with Feather-tit’s engine, sighing.

    … “She’s got the place positively sparkling clean. Even done the front windows. She reckons she’s gonna do them every week, regardless of those bloody trucks of Carrano Development’s,” he reported that evening to Sol and Michaela.

    “Uh-huh.” Sol passed the salad. “What did ya have for lunch?”

    Euan smiled. “He called it haricot de mouton. Kind of a stoo, Sol.”

    “Funny,” he noted mildly. “Had beans in it, huh?”

    “Yes, but it bore no resemblance, not even a generic one, to that bloody chilli of yours! They were dried white beans, Michaela,” he said kindly, “and the meat was lamb shanks. I always thought that they were for soup, but in France they do other things with them. They had a bet on, Anna and Revill, I mean, that he couldn’t make sheep shanks taste good, and needless to state, he won.” Euan sighed. “I suppose it’s a fair exchange.”

    “Her favours for his cooking? Yep, I’d say so,” agreed Sol.

    “No, you flaming clot!” he said, reddening. “No, um, she does the housework and stuff and he does all the cooking.”

    “Uh-huh. Have some more silverbeet and apple salad, Euan.”

    “It tastes all right: it’s got Sol’s dressing on it,” said Michaela kindly.

    Euan had noticed that: he smiled, and took some more. “Ta. Well, he’s a lucky bloke, but then if ya look like Mel Gibson I suppose ya don’t need luck.”

    “Uh-huh. Young Wallis there, was she?” asked his host casually.

    “Yeah, and don’t ask me how, but Anna seems to have got round her. Well, Wallis was falling over herself to help her and every second word she uttered was: ‘Anna says’ or ‘Anna’s gonna show me how to.’” He shrugged.

    “How to what?” asked Michaela.

    Euan had overlooked her literal mind, for a moment, there. “Um—mostly sewing and stuff, I think, Michaela.”

    “I see.”

    Euan stared at his plate.

    Sol looked thoughtfully at his bent fair head. “She’ll be the girl Simone Gautier was telling us about, I guess: what do you think, Michaela, honey?”

    “I think she must be. Does she do lovely embroidery, Euan?”

    “Eh? Oh: Anna? Yeah,” he said shortly.

    Sol wouldn’t have thought that Michaela had noticed anything but she must have, because when Euan had pushed off back to his loft she said with a frown: “You were really horrid to poor Euan.”

    “I only—”

    “Polly once said to me,”—Sol cringed—“that you’re a bit the sort that likes poking a stick down a person’s hole to see if they’ll wriggle. I think she was right.”

    “Yeah. I’ll try not to. But I am concerned about him, honey. He’s been in the dumps ever since Simone’s husband came out from France.”

    “Yes, well, now you know he’s still in love with her. And—and don’t say anything mean about Adrian,” she said, her lips trembling.

    “Honey, I wasn’t gonna! What on earth’s the matter?”

    “Nothing. I like him. I know he’s very beautiful, but it isn’t that. He sometimes used to come up to the old kiln at the Butlers’: you know, when he was living in Blossom Avenue.”

    “And?” he groped.

    “Nothing. Well, he didn’t interrupt my work. And he was really good with Mason. You probably don’t remember, but back then, the two older boys always used to be victimising Mason, and June said she was afraid he was growing up to be a little weepy dreep.”

    Sol goggled at her. “Yeah?” he croaked.

    “Well, nothing. But Adrian was really kind to him.”

    “I see,” he croaked.

    “I notice some things,” said his wife with dignity.

    “Uh-huh. The things that really matter, huh? Like who’s decent to whiny, snot-nosed little kids.”

    Michaela eyed him suspiciously.

    Sol got out his handkerchief and trumpeted into it. “I mean it.”

    “Good. Euan’s nice, too. I wish they could both be happy,” she said in a vague voice.

    “Uh-huh. Me, too. Uh—Euan and Beth?” he ventured cautiously.

    Michaela went very red. “You’re plotting again.”

    “Cain’t help it. Uh, well, no; sorry. It just sorta slipped out. And I did not try to talk her into the G&S Society: she volunteered to be in the chorus!”

    “I know; she told me,” said Michaela mildly.

    Sol sagged: he’d been on edge all day about that.

    “Shall we have a cup of your real coffee?”

    “You’ll be awake for hours, honey.”

    “Yeah!” said his wife with her deep laugh.

    Sol bounced up, grinning broadly, and hurried off to make real coffee.

    “So you are up!” ascertained Dorothy, barging ruthlessly into her brother’s abode.

    “I’ve been up for hours; and how the Hell did you get in here?” returned Jack angrily.

    “Ida let me in through the crafts shop. Take your head out of that computer and come over by the window.”

    “I’m working, Dot! –Oh, go on, get it over with,” he groaned, hauling himself up. “You’ve broken my concentration successfully. What the Hell is it?”

    Dorothy dragged him over to the window. “See this?”

    Jack peered at the sheaf of papers blearily. “Uh-huh.”

    “Sing it,” she said briskly.

    Jack shrugged. He held the smeared photocopy in the light and began to sing: “‘The sun whose rays—’”

    “NO!” she shouted, snatching it back off him. “Bloody moron! Here!” She shoved it back at him, ruthlessly folded back to the right page. “Now—sing!”

    Jack shrugged, but sang. “‘A wandering minstrel I…’”

    At the end of it he perceived that his sister was blowing her nose, and that Ida Grey had come to the head of his spiral staircase and was staring at him.

    “I told you!” said Dorothy on a note of somewhat soggy triumph.

    Ida bustled forward. She was perhaps around sixty, was Ida, looked like a perky little robin, and was entirely full of life and energy. “That was wonderful! You were right, Dorothy: he absolutely must do it! You must do it, Jack!” she urged.

    Jack looked weakly at her. “Do what, Ida?”

    “Sing, of course!”

    “I just did, didn’t I? Look, I’m glad you ladies liked it,” he said with a nasty gleam in his eye that his sister could only hope Ida didn’t notice, “but I got work to—”

    “Not that,” said Dorothy without much hope. “Sing the part for the Carter’s Bay G&S Society, Jack. They’re desperate for a tenor. And before you say—”

    “I’m too busy.”

    “You’re not too busy, you’re doing nothing but work and polish your cars, and for God’s sake, if you’re living in a little country backwater you might as well make the most of it before the place is overrun with middle-class varsity trendies and their amateur jazz societies!” said Dorothy hotly. Rather forgetting her audience, though remembering that Jack hated amateur jazz.

    “And their alumni societies and their fork suppers, huh? Yeah, well, in the first instance I am busy and in the second, last time I sang solo in public it was Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring in soprano.”

    “You were in that group thing in America.”

    “Early music with a group of like-minded middle-class varsity trendies is not the same thing as G&S in Carter’s Bay, Dot.”

    “It’s still singing in public, however.”

    “Parts. Bit different from having to take the stage in draughty white tights and sing a whole song all on your ownsome.”

    “If you have a nerve in your body, I’ve yet to hear of it. Jack, they haven’t got one strong voice, they really need you! Look, if only you’ll do the Nanki Poo for them, I’ll do the Katisha!” she said desperately.

    Jack gave a yelp, and collapsed in splutters, gasping: “You—can’t—sing!”

    “No, I can’t,” agreed Dorothy heavily, “and if I’m willing to stand up and make a fool of myself, why shouldn’t you?”

    “You’ve got a lovely voice, Jack!” urged Mrs Grey.

    “Uh—thanks, Ida,” he said feebly.

    “Couldn’t you come along to second auditions and see if they need you?” she suggested brightly.

    “Uh—well, gee, I dunno… When are they planning to put it on, Ida?”

    “Oh, not for months yet, dear!” she assured him brightly.

    “Uh… Well, if you’re gonna be in it, Dot… Well, okay, I’ll come to the audition with ya.”

    “Great!” said Dorothy with a huge sigh, as Ida beamed and nodded at him. “They may find someone else, of course, you never know.”

    “Yeah, right.”

    Dorothy didn’t insist: she could see that, as usual, even though he didn’t want it (whatever “it” was), the idea that someone else might get it instead of him was anathema to Jack.

    Sheryl and Simone were in Sprouts, looking dubiously at the blackboard, which listed combinations of sandwich ingredients such as “alfalfa, cream cheese, walnuts, smoked chicken”, or “mixed sprouts, tomato, spinach, cashew paste” when Avon came in with Fiorella and said: “Hey, gidday, Simone.”

    “Hullo, Avon! Hullo, Fiorella! Do you know Sheryl, Avon?”

    Avon didn’t, so Simone explained that this was Sheryl and Billy, and this was Avon and Fiorella.

    Sheryl then said: “We thought this place was all vegetarian, but it isn’t, eh?”

    “Nah, not the sandwiches. The turkey combo’s good. Um… Number 7. ‘Cream cheese, pea sprouts, cranberry jelly, roast turkey.’ Ya get used to the pea sprouts,” Avon assured them.

    The looked at her dubiously.

    “Like little leaves?” explained Avon.

    In spite of the interrogative note both Sheryl and Simone understood this was an explanation, so they nodded.

    “It’s dear, though, eh?” she added.

    Sheryl and Simone nodded again.

    “Usually we ’ave toasts and Vegemaite for h’our lunch,” explained Simone. “But today we fancied a change, eh, Sheryl?”

    “Yeah. Thought we’d splash out.” She looked at the board again, and muttered: “Not this far.”

    “Their prices are aimed at the Sir G.G. lot,” said Avon. “They’re all on whopping great salaries.”

    “Yes. Armand is on a whopping great salary,” agreed Simone. “But h’it is almost entirely committed to the mortgage,”—Simone could say this to the manner born, it was a phrase frequently to be heard on Sheryl’s and Bryce’s lips—“and also, ’e has bought a second car, because he needs it for his work.”

    “Or so he says,” noted Sheryl. “Actually, Simone could drive him in every morning, easy, but that isn’t the image, eh, Simone?”

    “No. We know h’it is because of the image, because we heard Armand and his boss ’aving a most serious conversation about it,” explained Simone with a twinkle in her eye.

    Avon winked. “They would. ’S’all image, at Sir G.G. Um—well, whaddaya think?”

    “One could pair’aps buy the ingredients?” suggested Simone.

    “It wouldn’t be cost-effective, Simone,” said Sheryl, nudging her and giving a sudden giggle, “to buy a whole smoked chicken.”

    “No, vairy true! Though if one used h’it up for hors d’oeuvre?”

    “You’re on the right track. Personally, I’d cut it up small and use it instead of ham in that pasta recipe Bryce’s mum gave me. –It’s rilly easy,” she explained to Avon.

    “Yes, and h’it ’as dhuh cream cheese, also!” choked Simone, suddenly going into a paroxysm.

    Avon grinned. “They are rather heavy on the cream cheese, here, eh?”

    “Yes!” gasped Simone, wiping her eyes. “Also, what is ‘cashew paste’, please?”

    “Dunno. Never had it.” Normally Avon would have asked the lady behind the counter without a second thought but as it was lunchtime Sprouts’ counter was hidden behind the backs of most of the Sir G.G. staff.

    “I think it’s probably cashew peanut butter,” said Sheryl. “Um—ya can’t say that, eh?” she discovered. “Cashew nut butter?”

    “Peanut butter sammitch!” piped Fiorella suddenly.

    “Yeah, right,” said Avon, kissing her forehead. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen it, Sheryl,” she said. “Maybe they make their own. –There’s nowhere to sit down, here, ya know,” she pointed out.

    “Eugh—no,” agreed Simone, looking disconcerted.

    “Blow, nor there is,” agreed Sheryl. “We’ll have to take the stuff home and eat it there, Simone.”

    They looked at each other uncertainly.

    “Why is that such a depressing idea, Sheryl? We have lunch at ’ome every day!” said Simone with a smothered laugh.

    “Dunno. Maybe that’s why.”

    The looked at each other again.

    “Listen,” said Avon, hitching Fiorella higher on her hip: “come home with us. We’ll pick up a packet of ham and some cheese from Swadlings’—and I tell ya what, a tin of pineapple pieces!” she said, brightening. “And we’ll have toasted sandwiches: Barry’s got a rill keen sandwich-maker, eh, Fiorella?”

    “Toasted sammitch!” she piped.

    “Yeah, thass right. Come on!” she urged them.

    “That’s vairy kind, Avon. But we must share dhuh cost,” said Simone anxiously.

    “Yeah, we’ll each pay a third,” agreed Sheryl.

    “Well, okay, that’s fair. Want to?”—They nodded eagerly.—“Come on, then!” Avon led the way.

    It had been drizzling steadily all morning, and by the time they got to Barry’s house in Station Road it was pouring. Barry arrived five minutes after they did, declaring this weather was ruining the building trade, so he was allowed toasted ham, cheese and pineapple sandwiches, too.

    “You’d enjoy it: it’ll be fun!” urged Avon, some time after the first round of sandwiches.

    “I was in the choir at school,” admitted Sheryl dubiously.

    “But Sheryl, this is dhuh singing that Armand attends!” gasped Simone.

    “Oh, blow, not really?”

    “Your hubby? Yeah, he did turn up, eh, Barry?” recalled Avon. “But he didn’t get a part.”

    “No. He coulda done Pish Tush miles better than me, but he didn’t want it. It’s just a supporting rôle, you see,” he explained. “Penny suggested he might like to take the Mikado himself, but he said it was too deep for his voice, he didn’t want to ruin his throat.”

    “Eh?” said Sheryl.

    “Yes. He says this in France, too. One must sing at dhuh—” Simone waved her hands helplessly. “Level? I do not know singing words. Not even in French, really.”

    “That’d be it,” agreed Barry comfortably. “So Penny said he could lead the chorus, they need a really strong voice to give them some body—um—sorry, Simone, do you understand?”

    “Yes, of course. Otherwise one cannot hear them vairy well.”

    “That’s it!” said Barry with laugh. “But he didn’t fancy it.”

    “He would not laike to be in dhuh chorus, no,” agreed Simone in horror.

    “No; I gather he always took solo parts with this group he was in?”

    “Ye-es… Sometimes they sing all together. But there are vairy few members. Eight was dhuh most.”

    “‘Eight is Enough’, eh?” said Barry with a twinkle.

    Strangely, at this Simone, Sheryl and Avon all collapsed in giggles. Fiorella and Billy also laughed, but not as if they’d got the point.

    “We watch the re-runs in the arvo,” explained Simone in the vernacular, wiping her eyes.

    “Yeah. After school,” agreed Sheryl. “Her kids are glued to it.” She closed one eye very slowly.

    The two Goodes looked at her dubiously.

    “Armand does not know!” choked Simone, going off into another paroxysm.

    “He thinks Yank comedies are tripe. I think that’s what he’d call ‘loosely translated’, eh, Simone?” said Sheryl.

    “Yes!” she gasped. She wiped her eyes. “’E used a vairy bad French word! ‘Loosely translated’ is a phrase that he uses often,” she explained.

    “We got that!” admitted Barry with a laugh. “Well, the Yank shows are tripe, of course,”—Simone went into a further fit—“but Eight is Enough is totally harmless, I’d have said.”

    “Yes, of course,” agreed Simone. “One would not—eugh—disregard a prohibition of Armand’s merely for—eugh—the sake of it, you know?”

    “I would,” muttered Sheryl sourly.

    “No, of course not,” agreed Barry hurriedly, not looking at his sister in case she opened her fat mouth. “Um—well, anyway, your husband decided he wouldn’t be in it, after all.”

    “I see.”

    Sheryl ate Billy’s crust. “In case you’re wondering why he didn’t tell her, he’s like that.”

    “When he has made—eugh—dhuh big fuss over a thing and then he decides he—eugh—does not laike it, after all,” explained Simone carefully.

    “Yeah, we get it,” said Avon comfortably. “So, whaddaya think? If he’s not in it, do ya wanna give it a go? You’d get to wear great Japanese gear!”

    Sheryl and Simone looked at each other with shining faces.

    “But I cannot sing,” murmured Simone.

    “You can sing good enough! Heck, ya sing those little French songs to the kids! You only have to be able to sing in tune to be in the chorus!” urged Sheryl.

    “Reading music helps,” said Barry on a dry note, getting up. “I’ll make another round of sandwiches, shall I? Everyone want pineapple in theirs?” Everyone did, and Barry went over to the bench and got on with making them.

    Sheryl and Simone decided, not to Barry’s surprise—he fancied that in both cases the idea of wearing “great Japanese gear” was a strong factor—that they might as well go along to the second round of auditions and at least try out. Avon then told them that confidentially, Penny was looking for some younger chorus ladies, because they had a lot of older ladies, like Mrs Parkinson, and Mrs Corcoran, and Mrs Fein from Kingfisher Bay, that could sing okay but were a bit old to look good in a kimono. This appeared to go over a treat. Though Sheryl did note dubiously that Mrs Fein could really sing and belonged to a big choir in town. Barry didn’t point out that Mrs Fein was sixteen stone if an ounce and if only she’d been a contralto would have made the ideal Katisha, he rather thought that it would all become blindingly obvious once the girls saw what the chorus line—led by the non-singing Akiko, yep—was so far composed of.

    “Everyone else is in it,” said Martin, shuffling his giant sneakers.

    “You can’t read music,” noted Sim uneasily.

    “No, but I can sing in tune. No, look, Sim, if everyone else is in it!”

    “Ye-ah…” Sim looked sideways at Wallis, on whom, though this was probably not apparent to any of the household but Adrian and Anna, he had recently developed a tremendous crush.

    “I think it’s bloody daft,” she said promptly.

    “Leigh Gore’s in it,” said Martin.

    “He’s ancient!” she scoffed.

    The boys looked dubiously at each other.

    “Do it if ya want to,” said Wallis heavily. “But stop yacking about it, I’m trying to read.”

    “You could be in it,” said Sim hoarsely. ‘You’d look okay in a kimono.”

    Wallis ignored this.

    Martin and Sim looked dubiously at each other and shuffled out.

    … “It’s not music, it’s crap,” said Wallis, scowling, two hours later.

    “Yeah. I’m not going because it’s music, I’m going because it’ll be fun,” said Adrian.

    “Yeah, and like, the cash nexus wouldn’t of reared its ugly head at all, would it?” returned Wallis with a sneer.

    “It will be good PR, certainly!” replied Adrian, eyes twinkling.

    “Yeah,” she said sourly.

    “No, well, it’s not only that. It’s small-town life, you see. I’m enjoying it while I can. Once the university takes off, it’ll all be over. Types like me and Martin that can only sing a bit,”—he winked at him—“and Sim, here, who can read music real good but’s got a voice somewhere in between baritone and nothing—you could fill in for Barry Goode as Pish Tush, that’s for sure,” he noted—Sim, very obviously not knowing whether to laugh or scowl, did neither—“not to say all those uncertain sopranos like May Swadling and Gail Bates from the small shopkeeping class,”—he eyed the three offspring of the professional class sardonically—“won’t get a look-in. It’ll be dieted matrons in designer jeans and Volvo station-waggons, you can betcha sweet life. And it won’t be good old Gilbert and Sullivan productions that our great-grandparents woulda recognised, it’ll be recycled bloody Cats in leopard-print leotards. Left over from their flaming aerobics classes.”

    There was a considerable silence after he’d finished this speech.

    “Actually, the thought of standing up on the stage scares me stiff, though I do like singing,” said Anna, smiling at the boys. “But I think he’s right: it is just about our last chance to join in anything related to the real Carter’s Bay.”

    “All right,” said Wallis, suddenly getting up. “I’ll do it!”

    “Me, too,” said Sim with a sigh of relief.

    Martin had always intended to, really. He nodded and grinned.

    “Come on, then,” said Adrian, looking at his watch. “We can make it easy, it’s only in the primary school prefab. Pardon, Hall.”

    “It isn’t till seven, though, is it?” said Martin.

    “We’re not taking the car, you lazy Pommy git,” replied Adrian mildly. “Cars are for leopard-leotarded matrons, it’s why they have to shell out megabucks for all those aerobics classes, hadn’t you noticed?”

    Suddenly Martin went into a paroxysm. “Yeah!” he gasped, tears oozing from the corners of his eyes. “Help!” he gasped, bashing himself on the chest. “Yeah, Sammi does that. When she was working in Manchester she signed on for these aerobics classes, and then she claimed she had to buy a car to get there and back. And no-one but me thought it was funny.”

    Adrian slung a comradely arm round his shoulder. “Always said there was some good in you somewhere, Martin, old mate! –Come on, you lot!”

    They went out, Adrian with his arm slung casually over Martin’s shoulder, and Anna saying seriously to Wallis: “I think you’d look really good in Japanese costume, you’ve got the right-shaped face, and you’re dark.” And Sim, shambling along eagerly on Wallis’s other side, agreeing hoarsely.

    When Jack had sung (A Wandering Minstrel I, of course) there was a stunned silence. Then Ida Grey, May Swadling, and Gail Bates (daughter of Ada Corcoran, mother of Teddi), burst into rapturous applause and the rest of them followed suit.

    “I think there’s no doubt about that!” said Penny, very flushed. “That was wonderful! Um—what did you say your name was, again?”

    “Jack Perkins. Uh—look, if there’s anyone else that wants to do it—”

    “No, all the rest of them only want to be in the back row of the chorus,” said Penny with a sigh. “And you’re the only real tenor, anyway!”

    “I’ll give him the part, shall I?” said Yvonne Fitzpatrick helpfully. The Fitzpatricks lived in Carter’s Bay, on the Point, and until she’d landed the position as receptionist for Sir G.G. Yvonne had had a job as receptionist/typist for a group of lawyers in Puriri. Which was all right, and quite varied, and these days if you had good keyboarding skills (because of course they always wanted their documents yesterday) legal typing was a breeze, the formats were all in the computer. But it was really marvellous not to have the travelling time. Yvonne could read music, she’d learnt the piano as a girl, and at a pinch could fill in for Deirdre Carpenter as accompanist. Currently, however, she was filling the dual role of ASM (entailing the handing out of photocopied parts), and mainstay of the chorus. Yvonne had perfect pitch.

    “Yes: ta, Yvonne,” Penny agreed, and Yvonne handed Jack a script. They had all been done on the old recycled photocopier that Euan had fixed for Kevin. Which was why they were all rather fuzzy, but then, you couldn’t have everything.

    “That’s that,” said Penny with a sigh. “Who shall we do next?”

    The real singing teacher at this put in: “I have to get back to town, Penny, so can we do the other principals?”

    “Well, yeah,” said Penny, looking at her watch in a harried way, “but they aren’t all here, yet. –Where’s your cousin?” she said crossly to Sol.

    “Florida. Uh—sorry,” he said as certain male try-outs for the chorus went into sniggering fits. “You mean Michaela’s cousin, Beth? Dunno. Didn’t you only cast her for the chorus, Penny?”

    “Yes, but on second thoughts I decided she could try out for Peep Bo,” said Penny, looking cross. “I sent her a message. Um, by one of Ida’s grandkids.”

    “Iffen you sent it by this small, skinny object, it would never have reached her—guaranteed,” said Sol, grasping a small, skinny object by the ear just as it dived eagerly into the school’s storage hamper. “Come outa there, Mason!"

    “They got basketballs in here!” he gasped.

    “Yeah, it’s where they keep ’em, and leave them alone.”

    “He’s not yours, is he?” asked Penny dubiously.

    “Nup, on loan. –No, he is one of Ida’s grandkids!” he admitted with a laugh. “Michaela’s known his family forever. Hadda bring him, Michaela’s got a new idea for doin’ things with grainy textures, and Ida was coming anyway. Besides, he can sing.”

    “We don’t need any boy sopranos,” said Penny on a regretful note. “How old are you, Mason?”

    “Ten,” he said, glaring.

    Penny brightened. “Maybe we could do Amahl and the Night Visitors next year, then!”

    “Yeah. But I suggest you hear him sing, first. –Come on, Mason, you can do it!”

    “Aw, it’s sissy,” he whinged.

    “Bullshit. Or are you claimin’ that Jack Perkins is sissy? He’s the guy that owns that great Cadd—”

    “I know!”

    “–Caddy convertible,” finished Sol limply. “Boy, they’re sharp at that age. Come on, Miss Carpenter’ll play for ya, she’s better’n me. –Play, and for God’s sake don’t play any bum notes, the damn kid’s got perfect pitch,” he said to Deirdre.

    Blushing and laughing, Miss Carpenter gasped: “Play what, though, Sol?”

    “Huh? Oh.” Sol cleared his throat. “The Sun Whose Rays, and just don’t no-one breathe a word, thanks.”

    No-one would have dared, actually: Sol didn’t quite realise it, but down-home though he was, his American forcefulness had cowed the lot of them. Jack Perkins stood back with his arms folded, watching this, a very wry expression on his face.

    Miss Carpenter played, and the grimy, scabby-kneed, ten-year-old Mason Butler sang.

    At the end of it his grandmother mopped her eyes and Penny had to haul out her handkerchief and trumpet into it. Everybody else was too stunned even to applaud.

    “That was excellent, dear!” said the real singing teacher, recovering herself and producing several cards. “Now, just give this card to your mother, dear.”

    “Better give one to Ida, this is her: she’s his grandma,” said Sol, drawing her forward. “Because his mother likes listening to music but it’s never dawned on her to give her kids any musical education. –Well, she cain’t sing, herself.”

    “Mum’s got a voice like a crow,” said Mason dispassionately.

    “Yep,” confirmed Sol placidly. “Mason, ya done good, that was excellent. –Cain’t read a note, played it to him onct,” he said to the teacher.

    “I can pick up tunes,” volunteered Mason.

    “Of course you can, dear!” cried his grandmother. “That was lovely, dear! I’ll talk to June: you’d like to have real music lessons, wouldn’t you?”

    The ten-year-old brain thought this over. “Not if they cost money,” it produced.

    Gulping slightly, Ida said: “That’s all right, dear, I’ll take care of it.”

    “Meantime,” said Sol airily to Penny, “if you can force him into D,R,A,G, and iffen you’re desperate for a Yum-Yum?”

    Penny gulped, and clapped a hand over her mouth.

    Jack came forward, his face expressionless. “Why not? He’s a bit small to sustain the rôle, though. Hey, Mason, you wanna sing lots of songs and play the part of the lady my character has to make sissy love to?”

    “No,” he said, scowling.

    “Didn’t think so,” admitted Jack.

    Dorothy had sat through all of this in a stunned silence. Now she croaked: “Sol, you can’t mean it! It’s too cruel! Not in this—this hidebound macho society!”

    “Why not?” he said blandly. “Tom sings, eh?” he said to Mason.

    “Yeah.” Mason thought. “He doesn’t dress up as a lady, though. –He lives down our road. He’s got sort of a squeaky voice,” he said to Jack.

    “Yeah?”

    “Yeah.” Mason thought it over. “He’s in between you and me.”

    “Counter-tenor,” explained Sol expressionlessly.

    “C’n I have a ride in your car?” Mason demanded abruptly of Jack.

    Jack looked at Sol. Mr Winkelmann’s face was expressionless. Jack took a deep breath. He was aware that the eyes of the entire room were on them and that about fifty percent of them were aware of the sort of blackmail that was ostensibly going on, here. He himself believed about five percent of it and was damned sure that Winkelmann had some sort of a hidden agenda. He said very firmly to Mason: “Sure you can, Mason, guy. You can come in my car any time you’re up at the Marina, okay? You only gotta ask.”

    “Ace! Tha-anks!” he cried, his skinny face lighting up. “Hey, Sol, he says I can go in it!”

    “Uh-huh. Guess he’s an okay guy, after all,” said Mr Winkelmann without emotion. “So, you gonna sing this lady’s part for us, then?”

    Mason went very red all of a sudden. His lower lip trembled.

    Suddenly Anna came forward. “I don’t think the auditions are over yet, are they? Perhaps Penny and Miss Winters ought to hear the rest of us before they decide.”

    “Perhaps they oughta, at that,” agreed Sol. “You gonna go next, then, Anna?”

    “Yes, I will,” she said grimly, giving him a nasty look.

    Sol’s eyes twinkled but he said: “Okay. Come on, Mason, let’s sit over here and see if this lady does as good as you. –Now, she won’t sound the same, mind, her voice is richer. More like that Kiri lady your Mum’s got a record of.”

    Mason sat down obediently, but he still looked a bit teary.

    “Play before I lose my nerve,” said Anna to Miss Carpenter.

    Deirdre played and Anna sang The Sun Whose Rays.

    At the end of it everybody applauded and Mason jumped up, very flushed. “She’s better’n me!” he cried. “She sounds like a real lady! She can be it, eh, Jack?”

    Jack strolled over to him, hands in pockets. “Uh-huh, she sure can. I’d be honoured to wear sissy white tights and sing love songs to a lady with a voice like that.”

    “There are some others,” said Anna weakly.

    “Well, they can audition if they like,” said Penny fairly, “but we’ve heard them before. You’re miles the best, Anna. Why didn’t you sing like that last time?”

    “I was very nervous. And I didn’t know the tune. What I mean is, I can’t sight-read very well, and until I heard Mason sing it I wasn’t sure what it should sound like,” she said, smiling at him.

    “Boy, I’m sure glad we’ve cleared that one up!” said Jack, looking hard at Sol.

    Poker-faced, Mr Winkelmann replied: “Say, if you’ve got the Caddy outside, why not give Mason a spin now, Jack?”

    Glaring, Jack returned: “I damn well will! Come on, then, Mason, just a spin round the block, huh?” He grabbed Mason’s hand and they went out.

    Penny looked rather weakly at her Yum-Yum. “Um—it’s yours, then, Anna. Why didn’t you say you’d never heard the tune before?”

    Adrian had guessed almost from the first what Sol’s hidden agenda might be. He had sat quietly beside Martin, letting the scene play itself out. Now he came up to Anna’s side. “As I recall, nobody asked. Anna, you don’t have to do it. Sol won’t make the little boy do it: that whole scene was a jack-up. And before you say anything, No, I was not in on it.”

    “No-one was. It just come to me,” said Sol modestly, “when Mason turned up whilst me and Ida was rehearsin’ and Michaela was covering her ears.”

    “He comes up after school sometimes,” said Ida. “His brothers are quite a bit older than him and they always leave him out of things. But I must say, Sol, it was a bit mean!”

    “Well, I think he genuinely would enjoy singing lessons. But I have to admit I had no intention of forcin’ the poor little guy to play Yum-Yum, no sirree.”

    “What do you mean?” cried Penny in bewilderment.

    “Uh—sorry, Penny. I thought if it looked like Mason was gonna be forced to do it, some older soprano what was hanging back and what some of us talent-spotted first time round—that right, Yvonne?”—Yvonne nodded and smiled—“might just step forward and offer.”

    “Quite,” said Adrian acidly.

    “It’s all right. I’ll do it, if you think I’m good enough,” said Anna.

    “Of course you’re good enough!” cried Penny loudly.

    “Yes, but several other people wanted to audition.”

    “No, they didn’t,” said Avon with a sigh, coming up to her elbow. “I mean, I did, only I can see now it was a daft idea, I can’t sing. –You sounded good,” she said to Anna. “Like, real, y’know?”

    “Thanks,” said Anna shyly, smiling at her. “I used to have lessons, but I gave them up when I had to sit for School Cert. And my sight-reading was never very good, so Mum said I might as well stop, and there was no future in singing, anyway.”

    “Don’t say it,” murmured Sol with a little sigh as Miss Winters opened her mouth.

    “No,” she said heavily. “Well, I think that’s that, Penny,” she said loudly, standing up. “That is, if there’s nobody new that wants to try out for the rôle of the Mikado?”

    There wasn’t, so, thanking Miss Winters profusely, Penny let her escape.

    Sol went quietly into a corner and sat in it: he felt he deserved it. After a moment Dorothy followed him. “You total rat-bag,” she said limply.

    “Loved every minute of, didn’t ya?”

    “No! Well, I would have, if it hadn’t involved that poor little scrap.”

    “Mason’s tougher ’n he looks, he’ll get over it. And actually, the treat of riding in Jack’s Caddy will overshadow anything else that’s happened today; he’s been aching for a ride in it ever since he laid eyes on it.”

    “I certainly hope so! Poor little tyke!”

    “Uh-huh. I won’t ask what sort of manoeuvring you and Ida hadda do to get your brother to audition.”

    “No, don’t. Well, a combination of emotional blackmail and appeal to his vanity, I think. Oh, and I got that bloody competitiveness of his going, too. Dunno whether I meant to or not, as far as that aspect of it goes: I just found myself doing it. I suppose I fell back on the way I used to manipulate him when he was a pig-headed little boy not much older than your Mason, and I was a knock-kneed, laddered-stockinged, conniving bastard disguised as the worst hockey player my school had ever had. Mind you, the way my parents discriminated in favour of the only boy, I probably had to be,” she said with a sigh.

    “Uh-huh.”

    Dorothy watched dully as Penny lined up putative chorus ladies and handed out parts. After a moment she said: “That performance of yours explains what you and the smell of fish were doing in our reception area yesterday morning driving Alan Kincaid berserk, I presume?”

    “Yeah, well, I do got perfect pitch, but I just wanted Yvonne to confirm my feeling about the quality of Anna’s voice.”

    “Right, before you went ahead. –Yesterday is before today,” noted Dorothy.

    “Huh? Oh! No, I always intended to get Anna to sing again. Mason happening along was just fortuitous.”

    “Yes. Well, if it isn’t tactless to say so, although Yvonne was overjoyed to see you, Kincaid wasn’t, nor was he thrilled by the smell of fish.”

    “I’d been smoking ’em. Nice, juicy ones. Thought Yvonne and Kenny Fitzpatrick might fancy a couple to their teas.”

    Dorothy counted on her fingers. “Yvonne, Juliette, Merri, the misguided Sandra—that girl has all the personality of a Southdown—Lowell in Accounts whose mum’s a great cook, Jack’s fool of a secretary—she’ll lose that job if she doesn’t stop consorting with the typing pool, Jack prefers his secretaries to be both competent and up-market—and bloody Baranski. The whole place stank of smoked fish for the rest of the day. And it happened to be the day on which Inoue Takagaki had brought in a whole clutch of very stiff Jap businessmen for high-level talks with Kincaid and the Board.”

    “Japs are real fond of fish, and I’m told they all have hot dinners at the office,” he replied tranquilly.

    “That isn’t the point. Kincaid was ropeable and tore a strip off poor old Yvonne for ‘encouraging hawkers’. –To you, you are a person. To me, even, you are a person. To Kincaid, you and your fishy jeans are a hawker, period.”

    “Listen, Dorothy, I—”

    “His strips are not as other men’s strips, in case you haven’t heard. He was very, very icy and superior, and poor Yvonne went and bawled her eyes out in the ladies’ lav for three quarters of an hour afterwards. Informing the entire office, by the by, that she would never have taken the job if she’d known they were all going to be Englishmen.”

    “Huh?”

    Dorothy shrugged slightly.

    “Shit,” muttered Sol.

    “To him, Carter’s Bay is merely a convenient site while he waits for that monstrosity to be built on the other side of the Inlet. As a real place with real people leading real lives, it—”

    “Go on, Dorothy, batter me over the head with that there bludgeon of yours,” he sighed. “Guessed I deserve it.”

    “It is less than meaningless to him,” finished Dorothy inexorably. “Get it?”

    “Uh—finally, yeah. I think. Maybe you better run it by me one more time?”

    “Shut up. Let’s listen to the chorus.”

    “Off-key,” he murmured.

    “Ssh! –Serves ya right for coming,” said Dorothy out of the corner of her mouth.

    “Uh-huh,” he muttered, allowing his chin to sink upon his chest.

    The auditions dragged on. Five more ladies were accepted for the chorus. It was discovered that Simone sounded less French, to certain people’s visible relief, when she sang, so although Penny couldn’t tell whether she was really a mezzo, she was allowed in. Sheryl Carew turned out to have a sweet, clear soprano and Penny immediately put her in the front row, beaming at her. Then Penny tried out Wallis. “What are you, dear?” Wallis didn’t know. At first only a sort of high-pitched croak was produced and Penny was going to tell her she couldn’t sing, but then Deirdre Carpenter had an inspiration and they discovered that Wallis was a contralto. Not a loud one, true, but she could stand next to that lady—see? And copy her. A large, middle-aged matron in an elaborate fluffy jumper beamed and nodded at her, and Wallis retired to her shadow. Martin and Sim were accepted as gentlemen of Japan, though certain persons reflected that this was possibly because, although there were now seventeen ladies in the chorus, there were only nine men. Martin was clearly a tenor. Well, light enough to be almost a tenor. There was confusion over Sim, and he was finally told to stand next to Gerry Fermour and sing like him. Sim did so, not asking what Mr Fermour was. At first Mr Fermour pointed to the bits they were supposed to sing but after a while Sim discovered that he wasn’t reading the music, took the score off him, and firmly pointed to their bits himself.

    Beth still hadn’t turned up, possibly because it was not yet the scheduled time for the rehearsal. So in the meantime the scowling Penny forced several gentlemen of Japan to re-audition for the rôle of the Mikado. They were all hopeless. Gerry Fermour distinguished himself by breaking down in sniggers in the middle of his. Tim Bergen simply broke down. An elderly gentleman from the Point had quite a good voice, but had to stop and use his inhaler in the middle of his. A young man in an Aran jersey and designer jeans started to sing but Penny gave a scream and reassigned him to the tenors. Explaining firmly he was a tenor, and just to stand next to Martin, and sing what he sang. Martin looked terrified but the young man only grinned and said: “Okay!” Privily informing Martin that he hadn’t sung anything since drunken rugby songs since he was at school but the wife had dragged him.

    “Where have you been?” cried Penny aggrievedly as Beth eventually turned up.

    “I thought I was early,” she said meekly.

    “You are for rehearsal. Only someone forgot to give you a message that Penny wanted you earlier,” said Sol mildly.

    “Oh. Sorry, Penny.”

    “Never mind, you’re here, now. We’ll try the trio. –ANNA!”

    Anna hadn’t needed shouting at, she was sitting meekly on a hard wooden chair paying attention. She got up obediently.

    “Don’t drown them,” said Penny sternly.

    “All right,” she said in a bewildered voice.

    “Now— Oh. Deirdre, can you play over Three Little Maids From School for Anna? Go and read the music while she does it,” ordered Penny sternly. “Now, Beth, you go and stand— Blow. Where’s Janet? JANET!” she shouted.

    “Here,” said Janet meekly. She had been even earlier than Beth, and, perceiving that auditions were still going on, had come to sit very quietly beside Dorothy and Sol.

    “Oh. Good. Go and stand by Beth. Have you got your music?” Janet nodded meekly. “Good. Now, Janet’s Pitti Sing, ya see, Beth, and—”

    “But I can’t! It’s a solo!” gasped Beth in horror.

    “No, it isn’t, it’s a trio,” said Penny firmly.

    “Ain’t writ for her voice, neither,” said Sol in Dorothy’s ear.

    “Ssh! Does it matter, if she can carry a tune?”

    “Ya got a point.”

    Eventually Anna, Janet and Beth sang Three Little Maids From School. Not only was the part of Peep Bo all wrong for Beth’s voice, she obviously hadn’t a clue how to act at the same time as she was singing. Once Penny had laboriously explained to Anna that she was supposed to be a simpering Japanese schoolgirl, she was very good. Janet was very good from the word “go”.

    “See?” said Beth.

    “Yeah. All right, you can be in the chorus,” said Penny dully.

    “What about Avon?” suggested Adrian.

    Avon’s voice was weak but she put on a surprisingly good performance as a simpering, giggling, Japanese Miss.

    “Thank God. You can have it,” said Penny, sagging.

    “Ooh, ta! Hey, listen, we can wear— No, come on, let’s talk to Akiko!” They joined Akiko in an excited huddle.

    At this point several people who were arriving for rehearsal on time arrived, and Penny decided they might as well start. She came over to Sol and Dorothy and said grimly: “You’ll have to be Koko, and don’t ham it up or fool around.”

    “Okay, Penny, but if anyone else wants it—”

    “None of them can act!” she hissed angrily.

    “No, I noticed that,” agreed Mr Winkelmann primly.

    “That’s what I mean,” warned Penny.

    Sol subsided.

    “Penny, you haven’t tried me out,” ventured Dorothy.

    “You said you’d be Katisha, and you’re being her!” retorted Penny grimly.

    Dorothy subsided.

    “Well?” said Leigh, as he and Thomas headed for their cars after work, rather late, Thomas yawning his head off. “Any more luck, with this round of interviews?”

    “No. Think I’ll have to give it to that female— Um, forget her name. Dark red hair, lovely skin. Doesn’t know beans about dress.”

    “I see,” said Leigh faintly. Thomas himself was today in a giant fuzzy fawn woolly which had been knitted for him by some besotted handmaiden in the far-distant past. It was a very soft yarn which had almost immediately developed gigantic holes in the elbows. A later besotted handmaiden had patched them with bright blue and bright yellow coiled stripes in a sort of snail-like pattern. A high-necked black tee-shirt showed at the throat, but Thomas had jazzed this up by attaching a small rainbow-coloured silk bowtie to it. The pants were a pair of navy-blue pin-stripes which had once belonged to a very smart suit. Fortunately at the moment he had a large navy anorak over the lot and as far as Leigh was concerned it could stay there.

    “Today’s lot were just dim typists,” he explained sourly.

    “Uh-huh.”

    “That red-haired female can’t type, though. Well, not well. Someone’s going to have to show her how to use the word-processing program,” he said sourly.

    “Your budget will have to pay Ms Coffi’s budget for the someone, in that case, Thomas.”

    “Yeah. Would it be cheaper to send her on a course?” he wondered.

    “It might, but would she get anything out of the course?”

    “You have a point.” Thomas unlocked his rental car. “I’m fed up with this piece of crap. If Kincaid can have his Jag sent out here at the university’s expense, why can’t I?”

    “We don’t know for a fact it was at the university’s expense, Thomas,” said Leigh soothingly. “And you haven’t got a Jag.”

    “He doesn’t know that. Say I bought one: I could get Joe Finnegan at Finnegan’s Motors to do it for me, he’s reliable— What’s wrong with that?”

    Leigh explained the New Zealand regulations pertaining to cars bought overseas.

    “All right, I’ll bloody well buy one here!”

    “That’ll cost even more. And I gather there’s a waiting list as long as your arm.”

    “But I’ve got the money!”

    “Yes. That doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it. And I’m sorry, but I can’t explain further, because it’s a mystery to me, too. Actually, I think in your shoes I might make a quick trip to Sydney and buy one there. The shipping costs will be a lot less. You’ll still have to pay the ransom to get it in, though.”

    Thomas scowled, and didn’t reply.

    “This red-headed female wouldn’t Beth Martin, would she?”

    “Uh—could be, I suppose. Why?”

    “Oh—nothing,” said Leigh mildly. “But that red hair is glorious. I would have thought that despite the lack of dress sense, you might have gone for her, Thomas.”

    “Not my type.”

    “Lucky for her,” said Leigh, getting into his rental car.

    Thomas hurried after him. “Oy, do you want to come and eat on the boat?”

    “Not in this weather, thanks. Come down to The Blue Heron; Molly’s promised me a nice piece of porterhouse.”

    “No.” he said sourly, retreating.

    Leigh shrugged, wound his window up, and drove off, whistling. “If you want to know who we a-a-are… We are gentlemen of Japan-n-n…”

    “This is Colleen,” explained Sandra shyly. “She’s just going to be doing some work for Dorothy for a while. Working on the forestry book-lists that Dr Kincaid asked her to check.”

    Thomas’s eyes stood on stalks. Only partly because Colleen was very pretty indeed: a mop of shiny black curls, and a pair of enormous, sooty-finger-type blue Irish eyes. Dressed, unlike Sandra, in a suit of recognisably feminine cut. And definitely under thirty. “Hullo, Colleen, I’m Thomas Baranski,” he croaked.

    Colleen smiled politely, and held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Thomas.”

    Thomas shook it warmly but said: “What is all this about the forestry lists?”

    Composedly Colleen explained that first she was gonna vet the applicants’ lists for Dorothy, and then she was gonna do the selection for the collection.

    “That’s MY decision!” shouted Thomas, turning purple.

    “I thought Dorothy was the Librarian?”

    “It’s all very complicated,” said Sandra hurriedly.

    “I’ll kill the— Look, Colleen, it’s not that I don’t want you,” he said hurriedly, “but if you do anything for the School of Forestry, it’ll have to come out of my budget!”

    “I see,” said Colleen mildly.

    Thomas opened and shut his mouth. “Look, we haven’t appointed anyone yet.”

    “I know. Dorothy said they’d been asked to submit sample book-lists that have to be checked before the interviews.”

    “I’ll speak to Dorothy,” he said grimly, marching off.

    Colleen looked at Sandra.

    “I did warn you,” she said in a small voice.

    Colleen laughed and squeezed her arm. “Yeah! That’s okay, I’ve dealt with worse than him! So, where do I sit?”

    “Next to me. I hope that’s all right. We’re a bit cramped for space. But you’ve got a terminal of your own, and we’ve got stacks of lines!” she assured her.

    Replying calmly that that was great, Colleen accompanied her to the back regions beyond the Admin area on the ground floor.

    … “I don’t care if she’s in a meeting,” said Thomas rudely, rudely pushing past Helen, Dorothy’s secretary, and going into Dorothy’s office.

    Dorothy was having a meeting with her two senior library staff: the Deputy Librarian and Faculty Liaison. Both very capable persons with excellent computer skills and neither a day over thirty-five. Thomas had long since realised that they had both been chosen not only for their abilities but also for the fact that neither of them would pose a threat to Dorothy’s own position, but unfortunately, as he hadn't met them until well after the Rotorua incident, there was no-one to whom he could express this deduction who would take it as merely a piece of deduction. She said mildly: “We’re in a meeting, Thomas.”

    “Bugger that: what are you playing at, hiring librarians to do forestry selection on my budget?”

    “I’m not. I gather you’ve spoken to Colleen. I haven’t explained the ramifications of it all to her. She’s vetting the applicants’ book-lists on my budget, thus allowing me to have meetings with my senior staff,” said Dorothy pointedly. “Then, if she’s done good, and if you agree, she’ll be available to do the book selection for the School. I have told her it won’t be accepting students until the year after next; she does understand that only the Fellows will be starting next year.”

    After a moment Thomas said: “Very well. If she’s any good. But what are her qualifications?”

    “Well, to get the essentials out of the way first, she’s a recently messily separated, soon-to-be-divorced mother of three under ten. Very much off men for the time being.”—Here Faculty Liaison gave a high-pitched giggle but Thomas ignored him grimly.—“Did her degree and Library School course here—well, in Wellington, that’s where it is—had three years at the Forest Research Institute library near Rotorua. Reference, cataloguing, book selection. Then the husband got a job with the CSIRO—that’s in Australia, Thomas—and they emigrated. Couple of part-time jobs, then reference and book selection in the biological sciences for a large university library in Melbourne. Hubby went off to live with a skinny female exec he’d met at his bloody aerobics classes, Colleen came home, end of story. She can’t work full-time yet, the youngest kid’s only three. And do not suggest child-care, the girl’s not a millionaire.”

    “How old is she?” said Thomas feebly.

    “Twenty-eight. They marry young in those small towns. Um—she’s from Rotoiti,” said Dorothy somewhat weakly. “Excellent references.”

    “I’ll want to see them,” he warned threateningly.

    “Yeah, Helen’s run off a set for you,” she said indifferently. “Can we get on with our meeting, now, please?”

    Thomas gave her a glare and walked out.

    “It’s for a celebration,” said Beth shyly to the skinny girl who worked in Sprouts. “I’ve just got the job I applied for at the new university.”

    Jacki smiled and congratulated her and cooperated eagerly in helping Beth choose some really nice ingredients for her celebration lunch party.

    The eventual guest list was somewhat mixed, an impartial observer would have had to conclude. Jack Perkins wasn’t exactly impartial, but he concluded it anyway. There were Sol and Michaela Winkelmann, of course; and Ida Grey from Galerie 2.—As it was a very wet Saturday, Sol, who apparently was half-owner of the crafts boutique, had simply ordered Ida to put the dad-blamed “closed” notice in the boutique’s window.—Plus little Janet Wilson and the glamorous Akiko Takagaki; why they seemed to be friends Jack had no notion: as far as he could see they had nothing in common but their gender. Plus him and Dot: as far as his invitation went, he didn’t kid himself it was any more than because he was a neighbour. Apart from this, Beth seemed to be avoiding him.

    The lunch was very strong on the ham and cream cheese on half-croissants side and pretty weak on anything approaching real food. However, Sol had brought along what he described as “a jug” and which Michaela warned them all was “horribly strong”, so after a while the party really warmed up.

    “It is cider,” decided Jack, in spite of Sol’s earlier denials.

    “Uh-uh. You’re kind of on the right track, though, Jack.”

    “It is-ah not-ah sake!” said Akiko with a giggle. “But is-ah quite-ah rike!”

    “Yep,” agreed Jack thoughtfully: “it is.” –Boy, she was well away, he’d noticed she only said “rike” when she was excited, disturbed, or, he guessed, half-cut.

    Further adult discussion resulted in no clarification.

    “Perry,” said Ida finally.

    “Look, you got insider knowledge, that’s against the law, even here, these days!” Sol said heatedly.

    Ignoring the fact that Dot had collapsed in helpless sniggers, Jack snapped his fingers and cried: “Of course! Uh—spiked with vodka?”

    “It was a tad weak,” he said meekly.

    Ida smiled and nodded. “So that’s what you did with all those pears from Mrs Fairburn’s tree!”

    “Not all. Wal, she wouldn’t let me. Some.”

    “There were lots,” said Michaela mildly. “I bottled a lot, and made pots and pots of pear ginger.”

    The jug was empty and Sol was just offering to nip home and find another and Beth was just offering coffee which Ida was just urging on everyone as a viable alternative, when there was a thunderous knocking at the door. Akiko was nearest the staircase. “I go!” she squeaked, disappearing down it.

    A rumble of voices was heard and then Akiko’s head appeared at the top of stairs, panting. “Thomas ur-say the boat-ah is lose her mooring, Sol, and can you come-ah, quick?”

    Thomas’s head, very tousled and unshaven, appeared behind her, also panting. “Sorry to disturb you. The bloody thing’s shifted, Sol: think she’s lost her anchor. I’ve got two mooring ropes on her but it’s blowing up a gale, out there. Can you—”

    The macho men were grabbing up their yellow slickers already.

    “That leaves us girls,” noted Dorothy drily, picking up the jug and shaking it experimentally over her glass. “Bum,” she stated, as nothing came out.

    “I have extra bott-uh-ruh of wine-ah in-ah car!” gurgled Akiko.

    “Good on ya. Come to think of, I’ve got one in my flat. Let’s get ’em, eh?” They hurried downstairs.

    “Someone’s got to drive, though,” said Janet muzzily.

    “I’ll take you home, dear,” said Ida kindly. “You enjoy yourself.”

    Jack and Sol staggered back about two hours later, by which time—though it had originally been a lunch party, of course—it was getting dark.

    “We rigged him a sea-anchor in the end. Think Harry’s has gone to the bottom,” reported Sol. “Anything left to drink?”

    “No!” said his wife with a loud laugh,.

    “You’re drunk,” he said with a groan.

    “Yeah!”

    Akiko gave a loud giggle. “She says she-ah deserv-ahs this, for retting you use-ah up all them-ah pear, Solluh!”

    Sol peered at her. “You’re drunk, too,” he ascertained. “Don’t you dare to drive.”

    “I am not-ah duh-rive! Janet-ah is no duh-rive-ah, neith-ah! Ida is-ah duh-rive us aw!” she gurgled.

    The party then broke up with a certain amount of drunken giggling, staggering, and reeling on the part of some.

    “I’m sober as a judge,” grumbled Jack, as, Beth having shown no desire to detain him, he and Dot reached the sidewalk.

    “Serves ya right for being a macho man. Go and drink that unspeakable bourbon you’re addicted to.”

    “All right, I will! I was gonna ask you out to dinner, but you can get stuffed!”

    “I’m not gonna eat: I’m gonna sleep.” Dorothy went inside and closed her door firmly.

    Scowling, Jack let himself into the crafts boutique, closed the door carefully, checked that the lock had caught, put the chain was on, and went upstairs. It was freezing: he kept forgetting there was no central heating in the land of his birth. He pulled his very second-hand, lumpy armchair up to his electric heater, turned the latter on full, fetched himself the bottle and a glass, and sat down. Jesus, what a waste of a Saturday.

    He was woken very early on the Sunday by a thunderous knocking on the door downstairs. Well, not all that early: eight-thirty. Surely some cretin didn’t expect the crafts boutique to be open at this hour? Or maybe it was some cretin looking for Sol, given that on a winter’s Sunday he usually didn’t open up the boating supplies place until half nine.

    Jack’s American robes were all intended for central heating, so he threw on an ancient sheepskin-lined car-coat that he normally wore for such errands as unshaven dashes in to Carter’s Bay to get breakfast milk and The Herald, and stumbled downstairs and through the boutique, muttering under his breath.

    “Yeah? What?” he said angrily to the tall, blond, burly, unshaven young man standing there amidst a pile of luggage and carrying a sleeping kid on his shoulder.

    “Hullo, Dad,” said the young man sheepishly.

    Jack stared blankly.

    “I’m Rab,” said the young man sheepishly.

    “Rab?” croaked Jack foolishly.

    “Rabindranath.”

    “Rab?” croaked Jack.

    “Aye.”

    That was a Scottish accent, or Jack Perkins was a Dutchman. He goggled at him. Under the blond whiskers he did look sort of vaguely familiar… Hell, that was the Perkins nose, all rightee. “Jesus God Almighty, what are you doing in New Zealand?” he croaked.

    “Um—come to see you,” he said with a sheepish grin.

    “Uh—yeah! Right! Well—uh—come on in out of the cold, Rab!”

    “Thanks. E-er… hang on. I’ve got Shiva with me. –Shiva! Come on!” he shouted.

    Jack peered behind him. A thin, cross-looking young woman was getting out of a taxi. A taxi? Yo, boy, as Sol would say.

    “He wants a fortune, Rab!” she shouted crossly.

    “He would do. Did you two imbeciles take a taxi all the way from— I won’t ask. Go in, Rab: go through the store and upstairs.” Jack strode over to the taxi. “How much?” he said without preamble, addressing the driver and his daughter impartially.

    “It’s too much!” said Shiva angrily.

    “It isn’t American dollars, but yeah, it is too much,” said Jack mildly as the driver named the truly extortionate sum. “You better take Visa, otherwise you’ll have a long wait while I knock up the neighbours for cash,” he said to him.

    The guy took Visa. Ordering them to wait, Jack hurried upstairs.

    Rab had put the sleeping child on the unmade bed.

    “Sit, Rab,” said Jack feebly. Rab sat down obediently in the second-hand armchair. Jack grabbed his wallet, dashed downstairs, paid the taxi, hauled the rest of the luggage out of the trunk—they didn’t have much, not if this was three persons emigrating, make that immigrating. The which the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach kept telling him it was.

    “Get on inside, Shiva, it’s freezing out here.”

    Shiva hurried inside. At least she wasn’t wearing Indian gear, Jack supposed that was something. What the Hell were they—? And where the Hell, just by the by, was Nancy-Indira?

    Upstairs, Shiva perched on the edge of the bed. Jack pulled up a hard wooden kitchen chair and dropped onto it. They all looked feebly at one other.

    “Why in God’s name didn’t you let me know you were coming?” said Jack at last.

    “Um—well, we didna have the exact address,” said Rab uneasily.

    “Randi had the address of a motel. We tried there and they gave us this address,” said Shiva in a grudging sort of voice.

    “Randi?” Jack passed his hand through his hair. “Uh—yeah. She would do. Haven’t caught up with my correspondence, yet.”

    His children looked at him warily.

    Jack, for his part, eyed the sleeping dark child warily. “Look, if you’ve got yourselves into some goddamned custody wrangle, don’t expect me to come to the rescue. I don’t approve of kidnapping, even on the excuse of bringing your kids up in white man’s country.”

    “What? No! He’s mine!” said Shiva angrily.

    Jack had thought he might be, yeah. “And?”

    “And nothing. It was ages ago. His father never even knew he was on the way. And he wouldna want him, anyway.”

    “Uh-huh.” Her accent wasn’t as Scottish as Rab’s, but there was a definite burr, here and there.

    “It’s not a custody thing, honest, Dad!” protested Rab.

    “What the Hell is it, then?” said Jack very grimly indeed.

    Rab stumbled through it as best he could. Now and then Shiva put in a sour word, but she looked, it gradually dawned on Jack, exhausted.

    It was a Scottish accent. Nancy’s thing with the beard had not withstood the strain of upping stakes and moving to an ashram in a foreign country, and the beard had moved on, leaving Nancy and the kids stranded in the ashram. Popular myths to the contrary, the ashram didn’t want to feed a non-contributing white woman and her two kids. They were on the point of being thrown out when Nancy took up with a middle-aged Scotsman who was just passing through. Rab at this stage was fifteen and Shiva almost seventeen. The Scot had a job with an oil company in the Middle East, and was able to take Nancy and the kids along. It turned out Shiva was pregnant at the time but this was not discovered until too late. The job lasted nearly two years, during which time his divorce came through. Here Rab broke off and gave his father a pathetic look. “Doug’s a guid guy, Dad.”

    “You mean he didn’t deserve her,” deduced Jack grimly. “Go on, what did she do?”

    Nancy hadn’t done anything immediately, except marry the unfortunate guy. Doug got them all home to Scotland to his native village. Rab had been nearly seventeen by then, and Jack gathered that the local school which Doug had immediately made him attend was a real shock to his system. Shiva had been forced to learn keyboarding and get a job in the nearby town. Nancy had to stay home in the village and look after her grandchild.

    “He has got an Indian name, but we’ve always called him Murray,” said Rab cautiously.

    “Glad to hear it.”

    Life had gone along peacefully until Rab was nineteen, by which time, after he had failed all his exams twice, Doug had conceded nothing was going to make an engineer out of him, it was too late, and let him go into the family business with him and his brother: motor mechanics who also ran a small hire-car business. Rab had evidently been blissfully happy at this trade.

    “Go on.”

    “E-er… Then we got a letter from New Zealand saying that some money that Mom’s father had put in trust had come due. I mean, this was a wee bit later. Well, when I was twenty-one. There was some for all of us, though.”

    “Yes, but we all had to wait until he turned twenty-one to get it!” said Shiva with a bitter look at him.

    “Your grandfather was like that. So was your grandfather on my side. Personally I’d have tied it up until you turned forty. Go on.”

    “Doug made us put ours in the bank,” said Shiva sourly.

    “Remind me to write him a letter of thanks. Is there more, or did you just decide to blow it on a holiday?”

    Shiva glared. Rab cleared his throat and admitted: “Och—we-ell, then Mom disappeared. This was only recently, Dad.”

    “And?”

    “Well, she met this Californian guy, there was a whole group of them come over to Scotland for a walkin’ tour. Well, Bruce and Fergus and I, we sometimes used to do a bit of tour guiding in the summer holidays,” he said in his Highland sing-song. “Y’know?”

    “Uh—yeah.”

    “They were all stayin’ at the hotel in the village.”

    “Gotcha. So Nancy decided it was pastures new in California?”

    “Aye, weell… She was goin’ on aboot her arthritis for months, only me and Doug, we didna tak’ much notice o’ her… Och, weell, you know what she’s like, Dad.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “But when she vanished… He’s a guid mon, only he said it was the last straw. And he went to see his lawyer straight away.”

    “Understandable.” Rab gave him a pathetic look and he said: “Did he kick you out, Rab?”

    “Och, no, he wouldna dream o’ sich a thing! No, but since there was nothing to keep him at home he thought he might go back to the oil rigs for a spell. And Uncle Jock didna really need me in the business, when Fergus left school. So Doug said, why not try our luck in New Zealand, and mebbe we could try to find you.”

    Jack sighed. “I see. Didn’t it occur to any of you to try to get in touch— Oh, forget it.”

    “I wrote you a postcard from India.”

    “Yes, but you never put a return address on it, you cretin!” shouted Jack.

    “Oh,” said Rab limply.

    Jack ran his hand through his hair. “I suppose I could have tried to trace you through the Embassy, come to that. So—uh—how did you get in touch with Randi, Rab?”

    “He didna do anything!” said Shiva crossly. “I went to the public library in Aberdeen, and they found out which American university you were last at. I wrote there.”

    “Uh-huh.” And Randi King Perkins had then written back with full chapter and verse: yeah. Jack nodded limply.

    “We dinna have to stay. It was a daft idea,” said Rab glumly.

    “He is our father,” said Shiva sulkily.

    Jack sighed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you must stay. Uh—wait. Did you travel on American, British or New Zealand passports?”

    Rab replied in his strong Scottish accent that they were New Zealanders, of course.

    “He could have become an American citizen!” noted Shiva bitterly.

    “Doug said a New Zealand passport would be better if we wanted to come here.”

    “Yeah. Uh—well, we’ll see how it goes, huh?”

    Rab nodded trustingly.

    Jack looked limply at his sleeping grandson. “How old is he?”

    Murray was going on seven.

    “Jesus,” he muttered.

    “Mom did say she’d written you, when he was born,” ventured Rab meekly.

    “Yeah, well, either she had the address wrong, or— Forget it.” Jack got up, creaking a bit. “Want coffee? Or you all still on that non-caffeinated muck your mom used to drink?”

    “No,” said Rab blankly.

    “He’s forgotten,” said Shiva scornfully.

    “Yeah. It tasted so bad you wouldn’t want to remember it.” Yawning, Jack began to make coffee.

    After a little Shiva came up to his elbow—Jesus, she was skinny! Dressed in a raggy little ribbed knit thing, and faded jeans that showed how bony her hips were. “Is this all there is to it?”

    “To what, Shiva? Life? The universe?” said Jack heavily.

    “No!” she said, reddening. “Your flat!”

    “Oh. Yeah; it’s just temporary. But by all means write Randi a scathing description of its inadequacies. –You want the john?”

    She nodded mutely.

    “Downstairs. Foot of the staircase. Pink china plate on its door with a rose and the message: ‘Here ’tis.’ You’ve probably forgotten those, but they were very common in the States. Not in the circles your mother moved in, I’ll admit.”

    Shiva scowled and disappeared.

    “Has she always been that thin?” said Jack to Rab.

    “What?” he said, jumping. “Oh. Well, the thing is, she had a thing wi’ Bruce. Dinna ask me how serious it was. Pairsonally, I wouldna have said she cared the snap o’ her fingers for him. But she’s been off her feed ever since they broke up. Well, his wife gave him an ultimatum, and he chose her. I think Shiva’s nose is out o’ joint. Well, she always thought she was irresistible.”

    Jack winced. A bit like her mom, then. “Uh-huh.”

    Silence fell. Jack made coffee. Rab stared at his feet. Murray slept the sleep of the innocent.

    “What?” said Dorothy, blinking and ruffled.

    Jack looked sheepish. “Yeah.”

    “Jesus,” said Dorothy, rumpling her hair wildly.

    “Yeah. That was my reaction, more or less.”

    Dorothy subsided limply onto her still un-re-covered, Conran-style sofa. “Good grief.” After a moment she said: “Have they emigrated, or what?”

    “Dunno. I don’t think they do, either. Um—the thing is, they’re all asleep at the moment—totally jet-lagged. But there isn’t enough room to swing a cat in my place. Uh—I thought, could I sleep here? You have got a spare bed.”

    At the moment it was functioning as a spare sofa, but Dorothy said feebly: “Yes, of course.” After a moment she added cautiously: “I mean, you’re welcome to my divan any time you need it. But would this be setting a dangerous precedent, Jack?”

    Jack glared. After a moment he said: “I had thought of that, actually. But where else can they go?”

    “By my arithmetic, they are adults,” said Dorothy mildly.

    “They’re bloody hopeless, you mean.”

    “Mm. Given their background and upbringing, that isn’t surprising. And far be it from me to blame them for something they had no control over. But it is a standard ploy of the hopeless to foist themselves on their more capable relatives.”

    “Themselves and their problems, ya mean.”

    “Yeah.” Dorothy hesitated. But what the Hell; there was no-one else to say it to him, and even if he had said it to himself—

    “Jack, one could look upon this sentimentally as a second chance.”

    “Yeah,” he said sourly.

    “Mm. Well, think about it. If you want them, take it easy. Don’t expect them to be anything they can’t be.”

    “Ya mean, bright, resourceful, and hard-working?”

    “Some of those, yes.”

    Jack scowled. “Right. They are goddamned Nancy’s kids—right.”

    “It isn’t often one gets offered a second chance, in life,” said Dorothy mildly.

    Jack looked sour. “Yeah.”

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/surprises-for-carters-bay.html