Settling In

14

Settling In

    “Hullo, Mrs Collingwood,” said Leigh rather shyly. He didn’t think she’d remember him: it had been over four months, after all.

    But Molly Collingwood cried: “Hullo, Professor Gore! How lovely to see you again!” And duly got him signed on and settled in. Hoping that he would like Number Seven. Number Seven was at the far end of the block of cabins and unlike the rest of them did not face onto the gravelled driveway, but had the same outlook, more or less, as the restaurant: a field and a slope of green hillside with dark native bush adorning its top. Leigh knew that to be awarded Number Seven was a mark of great favour. He duly expressed his appreciation, and Mrs Collingwood beamed, ascertained he had everything he needed, added that if he felt peckish there’d be scones for afternoon tea in about half an hour, and toddled off. Not having betrayed by so much as a sideways look her entire disapproval of Thomas’s not having met Leigh at the airport.

    Leigh, on the other hand, did understand that when Thomas was immersed in work he didn’t notice anything much that went on around him. Nevertheless he wasn’t too sure that the set-up period for the Faculty of Environmental Resources did constitute anything that Thomas would have categorised as work. He sat down rather slowly on the bed, and looked at his suitcases.

    “Thought I migh’ buy a houshe,” explained Thomas indistinctly later that evening through Mrs Collingwood’s excellent Irish stew with Guinness in it.

    “I’d have said you and a house were basically incompatible,” replied Leigh composedly. He was having the chicken crêpes. Molly Collingwood had surmised, quite correctly, that he’d like something light after the airline food.

    “Sheems huh be usua’ thing, out here,” replied Thomas thickly, shovelling in stew.

    “That doesn’t mean you’ll be instantly rendered capable of looking after its garden. Let alone doing any housekeeping.”

    “Could geh shomeone in,” he replied thickly.

    “Mm, and alienate her forever by straining paint through her tights.”

    “Not that. Pay a char. –Don’t use the word unless you want to alienate the locals,” he warned.

    “I won’t. Thanks for the warning,” said Leigh, staring at him.

    “Dorothy told me,” said Thomas on a sour note, ceasing to shovel in stew.

    “Oh?” replied Leigh cautiously.

    Thomas took a great draught of the Guinness he was appropriately drinking with the stew, and burst out with an aggrieved and entirely prejudiced account of Dorothy’s incomprehensible and unforgivable behaviour towards himself.

    “Sucks,” concluded Leigh nastily.

    “I might have known you wouldn’t be sympathetic!” he said bitterly.

    “You might indeed. She sounds a thoroughly decent woman.”

    Thomas scowled horribly and drank Guinness.

    “So what happened to this Mandy?” asked Leigh cautiously.

    He shrugged. “How should I know? Pushed off home, I suppose. Dumb little bitch, anyway.”

    Leigh ate crêpes with small pieces of white chicken done in a light cream sauce. He didn’t know what it was flavoured with but it was ambrosia. Ambrosia.

    “I know what you’re going to say,” said Thomas evilly.

    “No, you don’t, Thomas. I was going to say I don’t know what this is flavoured with, but it’s ambrosia.”

    Thomas glared.

    Leigh finished his crêpes, and sighed. “Ambrosia. –In your shoes, I would crawl to your nice Dorothy, and if necessary serve seven years for her. Seven celibate years,” he said pointedly.

    “You don’t even know her!”

    “True.”

    “And there’s no guarantee that she’d have me at the end of seven years, anyway! In fact, there’s every probability she wouldn’t.”

    “Serves you right.” Leigh looked round, and Mike Collingwood himself was at his elbow in a flash.

    During dessert Thomas told him sourly about the fact that Inoue Takagaki was doing Sammi Wolfe, who was a hard little bitch but had one of those cheeky, chunky little figures that usually indicated hot stuff in bed—Leigh ignored all of this; that Ms Coffi was probably frigid, she had that look, that sort of inhuman beauty usually indicated a complete lack of interest in the opposite sex—Leigh ignored this completely; and that Moana Curtis was an attractive enough bit but only interested in bloody wildfowl and with a mind as exciting as that of the bloody wildfowl. Leigh ignored that, too.

    Thomas then described Simone Gautier’s French figure and French looks with a certain wistful appreciation but on Leigh’s remarking that as he understood it she was married, agreed glumly: “Yes. Not happily, mind you. Nice little soul, but not actually my type.”

    Leigh raised his eyebrows slightly and let Mike Collingwood give him a coffee and a brandy.

    Over the brandies Thomas gave him a rapturous account of Akiko’s cheeky little Japanese figure and a considerably less than rapturous account of her involvement with one of Jake Carrano’s business associates.

    “That’s it for the local talent, is it?” concluded Leigh after Mike had ascertained that he didn’t want another and told Thomas brutally he didn’t need another, and hadn’t he asked Molly to give him a wake-up call tomorrow because he had a meeting with Kincaid at nine o’clock?

    Thomas shrugged, looking sulky.

    “Tough tit. I’m going to bed, sleep off the jet-lag,” said Leigh cheerfully, getting up. “Personally I didn’t come out here in quest of fresh bird. And if you did, I’d advise you to rethink.” He went off, looking entirely cheerful.

    Thomas sat on in the restaurant for a while, scowling, but neither Mike nor little old Janet came near him so after a while he got the point, and took himself off to his room.

    The next morning, Molly having faithfully given him a wake-up call at seven-thirty, he unkindly rang Leigh’s room and woke him up, too. Informing him that if he stirred his stumps Molly would probably do him some breakfast, even though he hadn’t ordered any last night. And that he, Thomas, was leaving no later than eight twenty-five, so if he wanted a lift to his office he’d better stir his stumps.

    “Is this the verso of a new leaf?” asked Leigh nastily.

    “No, it’s got something to do with the fact that until the university is actually operating there won’t be a daytime bus service to Carter’s Bay. But I’m sure the local taxi service will be glad of your custom, should you feel like shelling out sixty dollars per.”

    Leigh groaned, but conceded: “I’ll come with you, then. Are there any car-hire firms in Carter’s Bay?”

    “No. But there’s a branch of Puriri Motors just opened up that’ll sell you a shiny new Toyota.”

    “I don’t like Japanese cars,” said Leigh sadly.

    “You’ve come to the wrong country, then,” said Thomas brutally, hanging up.

    In Carter’s Bay Leigh goggled at the cream-painted post office. Clock tower and all. Thomas hadn’t been lying about their office accommodation, however, for as they approached its large front door he saw that there was a metal plate up—probably not brass, it was a strange off-gold colour—which bore a coloured edge of maroon and green, and the legend: “Sir George Grey Enterprise Corporation: Corporate Offices. Sir George Grey University: Administrative Headquarters. Office hours: 9 a.m.—4.30 p.m.”

    “See?” said Thomas blandly.

    “Mm.”

    “The nobs are on the first floor. We’re on the second. This is Reception,” he said, leading the way. “’Morning, Yvonne. This is Leigh Gore. Is his office ready?”

    Yvonne was a good-looking middle-aged woman: unfortunately, Leigh saw with a sort of glum despair, not the sort like Molly Collingwood that was too sensible to be taken in by bloody Thomas the Tank Engine, but the sort that went all silly and giggly at the mere sight of him. Oh, God. She duly went all silly and giggly and quite some time later, Leigh was at last installed in his second-floor office. It was a low-ceilinged but roomy office, with its own secretary’s office adjoining it. Thomas was next-door and at the end of the corridor were a couple of little hutches which Thomas explained were his Ornithological Fellows’ offices, but they’d be out bird-spotting all week, this week.

    “Have you got a secretary yet?” asked Leigh glumly, looking dully at his empty secretary’s office.

    “No. Ms Coffi’s off-sider, Juliette with two E’s and two T’s, did set up a round of interviews for me, but none of the applicants were suitable.”

    “You mean they didn’t have legs up to their armpits,” he translated sourly.

    “No, I mean they couldn’t spell C,A,T, let alone bathysphere!” replied Thomas angrily.

    “Oops,” said Leigh, cheering up immediately.

    “And if you imagine you’ll get anything that can read any foreign languages at all, let alone the languages that your hopeful ESL applicants’ letters of application will be in, you’ve got another imagine coming!” said Thomas loudly.

    “Ssh!” hissed Leigh, pointing at the floor.

    Thomas stuck his tongue out at the floor.

    Leigh smiled weakly.

    “No, he’s on the street-front, actually,” admitted Thomas.

    “Uh-huh. Why aren’t we?”

    “Because Kincaid’s blue-eyed boy decided that rather than use the perfectly comfortable and spacious office assigned to him on the nobs’ floor, he’d take over the entire bloody street-front up here, that’s why!” said Thomas loudly.

    Leigh returned without much interest: “Oh, yes? Who’s that, then?”

    Thomas scowled horribly. “Dean of Engineering. No, well, I tell a lie. That was what the bloody job was advertised as, but between them he and Kincaid have turned it into Director, Engineering and Information Technology Science and Applications.”

    “Oh? What’s his name?” said Leigh mildly.

    “Perkins,” replied Thomas sourly.

    “Eh?”

    “Her brother!” said Thomas loudly, stomping out.

    Trying not to laugh—though not very hard—Leigh hurried after him. “Hang on! Where’s her office?”

    “On the floor below us. Next to Kincaid’s suite,” he said sourly, vanishing into his empty secretary’s office and closing the door with emphasis.

    Leigh went through to his own office with a grin on his face.

    Dorothy welcomed him to Sir G.G. with a smile, welcomed his huge list of ESL texts with a smile, and introduced him to Sandra, who would be putting his orders through for him. And ascertained that he did understand that he was paying for Sandra’s time, yes. “So don’t let any of the other academics con you into placing their orders for ’em, or looking anything up on NZBN, or even on your CD of BIP, will you?” she added cheerfully to Sandra.

    Sandra, a thin, pale, fawn-haired young woman of the type Leigh was very used to finding working in libraries—she could have been any age between twenty-five and forty, really—nodded obediently but said in a nervous voice: “Um—Dr Baranski did ask—”

    “I just bet he did! If he asks you again refer him to me,” said Dorothy firmly.

    “Yes, I will. Thanks, Dorothy.”

    Dorothy then dismissed them both cheerfully and Leigh went out reflecting somewhat dazedly that she seemed an extremely nice woman, but what on earth had made Thomas the Tank Engine fall for her so heavily? Horse-faced, at least Thomas’s own age… Well, she was wearing a very smart suit of dark green wool with a cream silk shirt that frankly he wouldn’t have minded owning himself, though he wouldn’t have worn a red velvet bow-tie with it as Dorothy was, but as long as he’d known him Thomas hadn’t been interested in what women put on their bodies, only in the bodies. And Dorothy’s certainly hadn’t struck Leigh as being anything to write home about. Life was bloody peculiar, was the only conclusion one could draw from that.

    He accompanied Sandra to her tiny hutch of an office on the ground floor behind the large administration area and kindly let her show him her computer and demonstrate her links to the Internet and Blackwell’s and something in America that he’d never heard of. And thanked her very much for agreeing to be his acquisitions librarian. And Sandra, even though Dr Gore was paying her salary, went very pink and assured him it was her pleasure.

    Leigh went back to his office, smiling.

    … “What do you mean, she’s your librarian?” said Thomas angrily, two days later.

    “She’s being paid for out of my faculty budget, is what I mean. Therefore, logically, she is my librarian. Don’t bother her again, please, or I shall be forced to complain to Dorothy,” replied Leigh calmly.

    “You prick, Leigh!”

    “Thomas, if you want library services, you will have to bite on the bullet and pay for them.”

    “But I only wanted her to look up—”

    “I’m not interested.”

    “But she was already signed on, it would have taken—”

    “I’m still not interested. And you’re supposed to be a whizz-bang expert with bloody computers, dial it up yourself.”

    “I don’t know the ruddy command language their stupid system uses, it dates from the ARK!” shouted Thomas angrily.

    “I’m still not interested. And push off: I’m drafting ads for secretaries.”

    Muttering about not being able to spell C,A,T, Thomas pushed off.

    “YES!” shouted Thomas irritably as there was a firm knock at his door.

    Dorothy came in, looking firm. “I understand you’ve been bothering Sandra again.”

    “I only—”

    Dorothy shut the door firmly. “She’s a meek little back-room soul who will never rise to be more than first assistant in a largish acquisitions department. And thus entirely incapable of standing up to you, as you have apparently spotted. However, unlike some of them she does at least have the nous to come and tell me when she’s being victimised.”

    Thomas was now very red.

    “Please do not ask Sandra to do your work,” said Dorothy with finality.

    “I only—”

    “If you do so, your faculty budget will be charged for the work, and since she is not your employee, Leigh and I will jointly lodge a complaint with Dr Kincaid,” she said unemotionally.

    “It would have taken less than TWO MINUTES!” shouted Thomas.

    “That isn’t the point.”

    “I only wanted to find out if a title was held in this bloody country!” he shouted.

    “So I gathered. You have two options. One, employ a qualified trainer to train you in the use of NZBN’s antique command language. I think they’re all in Wellington, but I can get someone to find out. –At your expense, don’t thank me. Or, Two, pay for your own librarian.” She eyed him blandly.

    After a moment Thomas said sulkily: “Look, Dorothy, none of it was my fault. You did agree to stay at a motel with me, what was I supposed to think?”

    “I grant you I was a bloody clot to have gone down to Rotorua with you in the belief that you’d actually listened to a word a woman uttered to you.”

    “It’s hormonal,” he said, scowling.

    “I think it possibly is, yes, on mature reflection. Or at the least, Y-chromosome linked. I am not victimising you on account of it, I’m treating you the same as I would any other member of the senior staff who attempted to bully an employee of Sir G.G. who is under my administrative supervision. If it’s any comfort to you, I had to tell Ken Takagaki not to ask her to look up something for him, just the other day. He apologised profusely and politely to me, and then to Sandra, for his lack of consideration,” she added, eyeing him thoughtfully.

    “That’s cultural!” shouted Thomas, turning purple. “It means less than nothing!”

    “I agree it’s cultural. I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that it’s a culture I’ve got a lot more in common with than I have with the English one. Possibly it’s because of my brown ancestors: I believe there is an anthropological school of thought that claims the Polynesians are more closely linked to the east Asians than to any other race.”

    “I’ve apologised for that!” he said crossly.

    “Not to me, Thomas. You may have thought you did, though,” said Dorothy politely.

    “I— All right, then, I apologise now. And I won’t say brown again.”

    “Thank you. And the latter would be sensible, especially in view of Alan’s known views.”

    “‘Alan!’” returned Thomas with loathing.

    Dorothy raised her eyebrows very slightly but as he seemed to have nothing more to say, went out.

    Thomas looked around furiously, saw nothing throwable to hand, and crumpled up the piece of paper he’d been taking notes on, hurling it furiously across the room. Then having to go and retrieve it in order to get on with his work…

    “Er—as our advertisement mentioned, we’re really looking for someone with one or two Southeast Asian languages under their belt,” said Leigh limply to the fifth unsuitable applicant.

    Ms Brauer protested she’d done Japanese at school, was told kindly that they’d let her know, and minced out in her skin-tight mini-skirt and four-inch heels.

    Leigh sighed.

    “Those were the best of them from their CVs, Dr Gore,” said Ms Coffi’s Juliette cautiously.

    Leigh smiled limply at her. “Yes. And please, call me Leigh.”

    Juliette smiled and nodded eagerly.

    “How many did you say you’d winnowed out?” asked Leigh limply.

    “Um—there were two hundred and thirteen, originally, Leigh.”

    Leigh swallowed. “Mm.” Two hundred and— In a country of this size? For a job up here? He could only conclude the secretaries of New Zealand were desperate for employment.

    Juliette looked in her folder. “There’s a few more possibles.”

    “Yes. We might as well see ’em,” said Leigh glumly.

    “Very well, I’ll set up the appointments, Leigh,” she said, smiling at him and getting up.

    “Yes. Thanks very much, Juliette. Sorry to have taken up your time for nothing,” said Leigh glumly.

    Beaming, Juliette assured him it was no problem, and minced out. Skin-tight mini-skirt, four-inch heels an’ all. Leigh sighed, unaware he was doing it. Juliette was a thoroughly nice woman: not unattractive, perhaps in her mid-thirties. And the fact that Thomas had not mentioned her in his list of Carter’s Bay bird was due not so much to the fact that she was a happily married mum of three but more to the other fact that she was a woman of limited intelligence and very limited education, from a background where they referred to magazines as “books.” Leigh knew this last for a fact: after he’d left a verbal message with one of the Admin staff for Sandra which had got strangely garbled in the re-telling, Dorothy had kindly taken him out to lunch and initiated him into the facts of life, Downunder. But apart from the specifics of the dialect, Leigh could see it for himself. Nice young matrons from the petty bourgeoisie were definitely not Thomas’s cup of tea. Which sort of ruled out the rest of the Admin staff, too.

    Most unfortunately, Juliette-clones seemed to be all that was available on the secretarial front in this neck of the woods. Where were all those recent graduates with excellent secretarial courses under their belts that Leigh had fondly imagined beating a path to the ESL door in the hope of taking that first step up onto the ladder that led to PA to VIP? He had discovered he was not alone in this fantasy, Thomas had had it, too. But this was no consolation.

    Thomas had also been interviewing candidates all morning. He came in looking sour. “You might as well have all of mine, none of ’em can spell C,A,T,” he announced sourly.

    “Didn’t you have a male one?”

    “Even more cretinous than the rest.”

    Leigh sighed. “Mm. Lunch?”

    Thomas scratched his chin. “What about that poncy place in The Arcade, in Puriri?”

    Leigh looked at his watch. “Why not?”

    “Good. Oh—my ornithologists are in today, better ask ’em if they fancy— What are you looking like that for?”

    “The difference between the remuneration offered by Sir G.G. to its deans and that offered to its fellows, in particular its junior fellows—”

    “I’ll PAY!” he shouted, stamping out.

    “Just remember to mention it to ’em,” murmured Leigh.

    Moana accepted eagerly, if with some surprise, and Jane accepted even more eagerly, especially after he’d said: “On me, of course.” Thomas concluded that bloody Leigh had been right—as usual, in these matters of intra-departmental, inter-personal etiquette.

    Moana was looking smart in a fine black wool pants suit with a high-necked orange sweater under it, and Jane was neat if not gaudy in ironed jeans and a tweed jacket, so in spite of Thomas’s garb, to wit, a very, very old blazer, black with a fine gold stripe, a denim workman’s shirt adorned with a small green silk bow-tie, and a pair of rubbed fawn cords which had been patched in leather by one of his many handmaidens at the knees and crotch quite some years previously, they were admitted to the Chez Basil. Though this might have had something to do with the fact that on a drizzly day in early May only three other tables were occupied.

    “Poncy,” pronounced Thomas with distaste, having pored over the menu.

    Jane agreed happily: “Isn’t it, though? It’s just like the places my ex used to drag me to!”

    “Ditto,” agreed Moana on a sour note. “Oh, did I say?” she said to Jane. “The little sod’s getting married next month.”

    “That was quick,” said Jane limply.

    “Yeah. One of his lab technicians. Just enough brains to see that getting yourself up the spout and telling him about it after the event was the only way to make bloody Wayne make up his mind.”

    “It’s called a fait accompli,” explained Thomas. “That is, if up the spout’s the same as up the duff?”

    “Yes,” said Jane immediately.

    “If she says so!” admitted Moana with a reluctant laugh. “God, when I think of all the heart-burning I went through in the last five years, wondering if it’d be ethical to go off the Pill without telling him—!”

    “Mm. It still doesn’t pay for a woman to have ethics, even post-Lib,” murmured Jane. “D.L.S. was right in the Thirties and things haven’t bloody well changed.”

    “Who?” said Moana blankly.

    “Never mind,” replied Jane weakly. “Try the Spécialité tahitienne, it sounds really revolting!”

    Moana shuddered. “Ugh, no! I hate curry sauce with fish.”

    “This thing with the oysters sounds interesting. I may start off with that,” said Leigh. “Oysters en surprise. What’s the surprise, Thomas, do you know?”

    “The ‘lightest puff of whispery salmon soufflé’ is hot—and the salmon is a whisper, believe you me—but the oysters are cold, underneath it. Very dead, if you mind that.”

    “I’ll have it,” decided Jane, grinning.

    “How dead are the oysters?” asked Leigh suspiciously.

    “Not tinned, if that’s what you’re getting at, but I think the dish is made by freezing them onto your basic scallop shell and shoving them into the oven just long enough for the spoonful of—” Thomas broke off, looking sour: Jane was rubbing her hands and crying: “Yum, yum!” and Leigh was grinning and also rubbing his.

    “What’s this black fish thing?” asked Moana.

    “Purportedly Creole. A.L.P.,” replied Thomas promptly.

    “What?”

    “‘Avoid like plague.’ It’s one of his more irritating sayings,” said Leigh with a sigh. “I had that when I was in Louisiana for a conference: it was delicious.”

    “This won’t be,” predicted Thomas confidently. “Their lamb chops are sheepy but then they always are, out h— Um—sorry. Forgot.”

    “This time, I think he’s genuine,” admitted Leigh with a sigh.

    “Anyway, who wants lamb? You can have that any old time!” said Jane with a laugh.

    “Yeah. There’s this thingy here that I might have if I knew what it was,” ventured Moana. “It’s under poultry and game.”

    Leigh turned over two pages of his giant menu. “Mm?”

    Moana leaned over and pointed to it. She smelled even more delightful than she looked: Arpège. Leigh smiled at her and read out: “‘Cailles’—it’ll only be one, or I’m a Dutchman—‘aux raisins.’ Help. –Listen, Thomas: ‘Tender wee bundles laced with the aroma of the Rhine vignerons in full summer’—they’d be pretty stinky, if it’s full summer, wouldn’t they?—‘as they nestle on a delicate bed of slivered choucroute rouge!’ –Red cabbage, is what it means,” he said to Moana. “What it actually says is ‘red sauerkraut’, but—” He waited while Moana got over the choking fit. “I’d say it was quail in a white wine sauce, possibly but not inevitably with a few grapes in it, sitting on a bed of shredded red cabbage, Moana.”

    “I’ll pass,” decided Moana. She sighed. “There’s too much choice, really.”

    “Mm,” agreed Leigh on a dry note, avoiding Thomas’s eye.

    The eventual choices made were all somewhat odd, but Leigh was in no doubt that only Thomas’s were deliberately so. The warm chicken liver salad entrée, judging by the look on his face as he got it down him, was as revolting as it sounded. And anybody who chose “pan-fried orange roughy” in order to see what sort of fish it was, in spite of the fact that it came with a raspberry-vinegar based sauce, deserved every horrible mouthful of it.

    During the course of the meal it became apparent to Leigh that both of Thomas’s Ornithological Fellows actually liked him! Though they seemed equally immune to him. And neither of them seemed particularly amused by him. Well, well. Possibly it was a Sign, and Thomas would—well, not drop the damned party tricks entirely, too much to hope for, and they were pretty well ingrained, by now—but at least become less febrile and, dare one hope, more settled? Leigh eyed him dubiously over the puddings.

    “Ver’ rish. No’ goob ’sh’Molly’sh,” Thomas reported thickly through the black-bottom pie.

    “Mm.” Leigh looked at his watch. “Juliette was telling me there’s a pleasant house for sale in Ridge Road, in Kowhai Bay: if you’re really house-hunting, we might just have time to drive past it.”

    Jane and Moana exchanged cautious glances, but said nothing.

    … “It’s huge!” gasped Thomas.

    “Well, it’s a bit bigger than that bloody thing Belinda made me mortgage my immortal soul for,” said Leigh temperately. “Detached, Thomas: nice big garden.”

    “I was thinking of something…” Thomas looked up at the giant two-storeyed white weatherboard house, brick pillared porch, rambling roses, an’ all, and waved his hands feebly.

    “Something a bit more downmarket?” asked Jane kindly.

    “That’d do for a start!” He looked round dazedly. “They’re all the same!”

    “Rubbish,” said Leigh mildly. “Not another house in sight is architecturally anything like this one.”

    “You know damn’ well what I mean! It’s like bloody Surbiton!”

    “Without Tom and Barbara Good,” said Jane drily.

    The two Englishmen jumped.

    “We get a lot of British culcha out here,” she said mildly. “Seen enough?”

    Thomas nodded feebly.

    “Very up-market area, Kowhai Bay, so Juliette tells me,” said Leigh on a brisk note. “Lot of doctors and professors live here.”

    Jane and Moana both choked, what time Thomas cried aggrievedly: “You brought me here on purpose, you bugger!”

    “No. This is the sort of house that persons of your age and in your income-bracket buy, Thomas. I thought you might actually be serious about it.”

    “I am!” he cried aggrievedly.

    “Carter’s Bay’s downmarket enough,” noted Moana, smiling.

    “Hutches,” he said glumly. “I drove up your road, Jane,” he added. “Couldn’t see any houses at all. Um, well, there was a sort of hut right up at the far end, near the W-something Reserve. –Sorry, Moana: it was an awfully long name.”

    “I never knew it had a name!” she admitted with her cheerful laugh.

    Moana Curtis for Thomas after all? wondered Leigh. Stranger things had happened. At least she wasn’t taken in by him. And she was lovely-looking. And had excellent taste in scent!

    By the time Carter’s Bay hove in sight Thomas was actually in a good mood and was speculating happily about houseboats. Leigh didn’t listen, really: he looked out dreamily at green, damp little New Zealand and even though he couldn’t find a suitable secretary and it was going to cost an arm and a leg to get any undergraduate textbooks from England let alone anything more substantial for the library, and even though he didn’t have a clue what he himself was going to do about rather more permanent accommodation than Cabin Seven, The Blue Heron Motel, Pukeko Drive, Puriri, felt perfectly happy.

    Jack Perkins was also house-hunting. He was more used to New Zealand houses than Thomas was, of course, and a lot more used to the social distinctions that prevailed in what still claimed at times to be a classless society. So, as he was free of Randi and her mind-set, he didn’t make the mistake of looking in Kowhai Bay. Added to which, he didn’t want an hour’s drive to work every morning. He did make the mistake of letting himself be suckered into being taken to view an apartment in a white wedding cake out on the Carter’s Bay Peninsula, but the minute the dread word “condo” was pronounced he had enough sense to say no.

    Somehow he’d expected there would be a nice, low-ceilinged, roomy old verandahed bungalow, maybe dating from the Twenties, just begging to be slowly and lovingly restored. But in Carter’s Bay there was nary a one. Well, there were half a dozen out on the point, but they’d already been done up. Most of the rest of Carter’s Bay’s housing seemed to date from the Thirties or Forties but these were small, utilitarian, verandah-less, porch-less, featureless clapboard boxes. Here and there you saw a Fifties house: equally featureless if slightly larger, and sometimes with a large concrete flight of steps forming an almost-patio at the front. These houses in Jack’s youth had all featured glass front doors etched with patterns of dolphins, seagulls, or palm trees, and he was intrigued to see that some of the Carter’s Bay ones still did. They were, however, not for sale.

    “Well, I don’t know,” said May Swadling slowly, putting slices of tinned beetroot, unasked, in Jack’s filled-roll. “Most people that live here don’t want to sell, you see.”

    Jack nodded glumly.

    May opened a small Tupperware container. Shredded raw carrot. Oh, well: very good for you, and it might help disguise the taste of the beetroot. “Somehow I see you living up the Inlet, in a sort of flat-roofed house—open-plan, you know.”—Jack nodded dazedly: the good ole EnZed “you know”: he’d thought the redundant interrogative American “y’know?” had entirely replaced it. Not in these here backblocks, evidently. Or maybe it was just the television giving him the wrong impression, because everything TVNZ interviewed sure as Hell said “y’know?” five times in every breath. And that was excluding the drivel they got off of CNN and MTV and C-R-A-P TV.—“Lots of balconies with sliding doors. The natural look: you know. Lots of wood.”

   “Canadian cedarwood,” said a deep contralto from Jack’s rear.

    Jumping, he gasped: “Yeah!”

    A tall, broad-shouldered woman with the most glorious deep auburn hair Jack Perkins had ever laid eyes on came up to the counter, smiling shyly. It could not—could not—be real.

    Jack Swadling had come silently out from the back regions. He leaned on the counter, looking laconic. “Their kiddy’s got the same shade of auburn,” he drawled.

    “Uh—yeah,” gulped Jack, feeling his knees go real weird—y’know?

    “What? Oh!” said the woman in confusion. “Red hair runs in Mum’s side of the family.”

    “You were saying Canadian cedarwood, Michaela,” prompted Mr Swadling. –With, Jack Perkins had no doubt whatsoever, malice aforethought.

    “Yes. Sol sort of thought of building a house in that. He showed me a picture in a book. Only we could only afford our A-frame, of course,” she explained cheerfully.

    “Can you get cedar, out here?” said Jack feebly.

    The ladies both looked blank but Mr Swadling drawled: “Yeah. Exotic, they call it. Doesn’t count as ruining the environment. Not like chopping down a kauri. Geddit?”

    “Yeah,” said Jack, trying not to give the guy the satisfaction of laughing.

    “They’re all five-acre lots, up the Inlet,” said May, carefully rolling up Jack’s completed filled-roll in lunch-paper.—Gee, real lunch-paper.—“Well, it’s all hectares now, of course.”

    “Is it?” he said blankly.

    “Sol doesn’t know hectares, either. Are you an American, too?” asked the auburn-haired Michaela shyly, blushing.

    “Not exactly. I was born here—well, not here, but I am a New Zealander. But I’ve been living in the States for twenty years.”

    “We get a few in, from the Royal K. More in summer, though. Our summer, usually,” said Mr Swadling.

    “That’ll do, Jack,” said his wife hurriedly.

    “Sol’s an American,” said Michaela, going very red.

    “I see: this would be your husband?” responded Jack politely.

    “Mm,” she said, nodding hard.

    “Cedarwood does sound great,” he said slowly, leaning an elbow on the counter as May turned to serve a small boy—why wasn’t he in school?—with a packet of M&M’s—well, actually they seemed to be some other brand: same thing, though.

    Mr Swadling was reading carefully through a list Michaela had given him. “Yeah. You still got that book?” he said to her.

    “Sol’s got every book he’s ever owned, so unless it was a library book, he’ll still have it.”

    Mrs Swadling here interrupted the small boy’s argument with himself over whether he would spend his change on a jelly-baby alligator or a two very small bananas in some fake-marshmallow substance to say: “Yes, why don’t you lend it to Dr Perkins, Michaela?”

    Jack was flabbergasted. Flabbergasted. Well, Hell, he walked into the store, never seen this woman in his life before— Well, Hell! He’d known Carter’s Bay was down-home, but for God’s sake, this was the nineteen-nineties!

    Michaela had gone very red again and Jack was just thinking No wonder, when she said gruffly: “Are you Dorothy’s brother, then?”

    “Of course he is, Michaela, dear!” said May brightly.

    “Yeah,” said Jack feebly, sagging all over May’s counter. “And please, call me Jack.”

    “Couldn’t that lead to confusion, Jack?” said Jack Swadling politely.

    “Not on my part, Jack,” replied Jack Perkins, equally politely.

    Michaela at this broke down in giggles, while Mrs Swadling, beaming, cried: “There! It serves you right, Jack!”

    Fortunately this didn’t seem to lead to confusion, so after Jack Swadling had assured Michaela they had got in that wholemeal flour that Sol liked and if she’d like to come out the back and heave it onto her shoulder it was all hers, and after Michaela had been out back and done it—May explaining to the limp Jack Perkins that she was a potter, it having become apparent even to May Swadling that the stranger in their midst had gone all limp; and after the Swadlings jointly had failed to decipher something on Michaela’s list and she had explained that it was molasses and she’d told Sol they wouldn’t have it; and after Jack Perkins had gotten all excited and gasped: “Not Boston baked beans?” and been flattened by Michaela’s simple admission that she didn’t know why Sol wanted it and he did cook a thing with beans only he called that chilli—after all of this, then, it was agreed by all parties that he should accompany Michaela back home, since he was on his lunch break, and look for the book.

    Whereupon Michaela paid for her purchases and before the feebler sex could move, heaved the sack of flour up onto her shoulder again!

    “First time she did that in front of him,” said Jack Swadling reminiscently, “Sol just about passed out.”

    “So did you!” said May swiftly.

    “He’s wiry, but I’ve got the strength for lifting,” said Michaela unemotionally. “Can you grab the carton? It’s not far. –Bye-bye,” she added, smiling.

    “Bye-bye, Michaela, dear!” carolled May. “Bring wee Grace next time, dear!”

    “See ya,” said Mr Swadling emotionally.

    Jack tottered in Michaela’s wake. Jesus, what was her surname? No-one had said. She looked carefully each way before crossing the main road. A trifle redundant: in the far distance a small bright blue truck could be observed turning into a side street. Everything else was stationary. She crossed over—jay-walking—heading for the fish shop. He followed obediently. She went down a very small gap that he had never noticed between the fish shop and the large, featureless, grey slab-like structure beside it, the one with the windows boarded up and that according to various reports was going to be torn down and turned into a parking lot, torn down and turned into a supermarket to rival the one that was a-building over the road, and—there sure must be some super-optimists round Carter’s Bay way—torn down and turned into a picture theatre complex. Personally Juliette didn’t believe they were going to build three theaterettes (sic) and an arcade and personally, Jack Perkins agreed with her.

    And then, by God, they were on the shore of the Inlet! Jack gaped.

    “It’s quite near, just here,” said Michaela placidly.

    “Yeah,” he said numbly. “Jesus, why didn’t they— Oh, forget it.”

    “Sol says,” she said with that blush and shy smile—shit, she was really in love with the guy, huh? Lucky guy—“that they had to build the fish shop on the main road facing the other way, because otherwise it would have been really easy to get the fish up from the Inlet.”

    “Yeah! Right!” he said with a startled laugh. “Oh—here—lemme help you.”

    “I’m all right,” she said placidly, heaving that sack of flour off of her shoulder and into a little aluminum runabout with an outboard attached. Jack handed her down her carton of groceries and got into the runabout after her, reflecting drily that after all those years of effort to remember to write it and say it “aluminum”, until it became second nature, he was now going to have to get back into the habit of “aluminium”.

    “This is sheer Heaven,” he said dazedly after the runabout had pottered gently on up the Inlet for ten minutes or so and the rigidly ranked marina of Kingfisher Bay, not to say the rigid slab of the Royal Kingfisher on the point, was now marring the view to the left more than somewhat.

    “Yes,” agreed Michaela placidly.

    Jack fell into a dream whereby he would buy—well, first off he would definitely buy himself a dinghy, a wooden one, caulked and all, a genuine little old sailing dinghy, never mind if it was heavy as be-Jasus to row; and then maybe a real nice launch… When he came to, blinking, Kingfisher Bay was out of sight and the rudimentary structures on the Sir G.G. site to the right were fading mercifully into the distance and it was just starting in to drizzle: a fine, but kind of relentless drizzle.

    “Here,” said Michaela, handing him a sheet of black plastic. Jack huddled it over his business suit. Michaela herself was in a yellow slicker: she put its hood up and smiled serenely at him from its shelter. “We’re nearly there. Do you know Jane?”

    “Uh—oh: Jane Vincent? The bird lady? Sure do.”

    “That’s her place, just coming up. We’re in the next cove.”

    Jack gaped at the small A-frame—well, not quite, it had walls, of the sort that Danny De Vito would have been right at home with but that wouldn’t have been too comfortable if you were very much taller. But it sure as Hell had that typical steep A for a roof. And most of the front wall was a garage door. Of the corrugated, possibly roller variety.

    “It’s a garage, really. So’s ours. We’ve got French doors in the front, though. We got them second-hand. Jane’s going to get rid of her garage door when she can afford some doors.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Jack numbly.

    They rounded the little, low point and drew in to the left-hand bank. It was an A-frame garage, all right. Not bad at all, though: painted white, or maybe laminated, looked to him like they were not real EnZed weatherboards, and the French doors—there were three, rather than a pair—were real old ones, probably come straight out of an old bungalow that had been pulled down before Jack could point out it had his name on it: small-paned, and the woodwork stripped and varnished.

    He let Michaela heave the sack of flour up, there didn’t seem much point in protest, really. And followed her obediently with the groceries. The front step of her A-frame was formed by a mighty slab of rock. Flattish. The French doors sure couldn’t have been locked, because she opened ’em right up and walked in, flour, damp gumboots and all.

    “Bonzo the Dog stole the doormat again, so Sol said he could keep the dad-blamed thing. But the floor’s got six coats of polyurethane on it,” she explained serenely.

    “Sanded down lovingly by a maniac,” agreed a real American drawl. Uh—southern? Something down that way. Texan? No-o…

    “Florida. Four generations of Rosenbergs, that’s my mom’s family, were born in Florida,” said the thin, Jack Klugman lookalike who’d wandered out from the shelter of a large refrigerator down in back.

    “That guy from the dairy called you,” replied Jack grimly.

    Sol winked slowly. “Uh-huh. I said to him, ‘Why victimise this guy just because he’s a prodigal son, Jack?’ And he said it couldn’t be said to be victimising to send him home with Michaela for lunch, and any bloke that just stood there and let May make him one of her bloody beetroot filled-rolls couldn’t be all bad. But he thought that ruddy zoot-suit deserved some recognition.”

    “I wear it because I’m shit-scared of my boss,” said Jack simply.

    Grinning, Michaela’s husband replied: “At least you’re admitting it.”

    “Mrs Corcoran said to me that Teddi came home in tears after that job interview, and Gail had to put her to bed with a hottie,” put in Michaela.

    “Mrs Corcoran is Gail’s mother and Teddi’s grandmother,” explained Sol kindly.

    “I geddit. What job interview, Michaela?”

    “I’m not sure. It was a job in the office. Mrs Corcoran said the ad said she’d be working closely with his PR. Or was it PA? One of those.”

    “Uh—ugh. Be that secretarial job in Mayli’s office,” said Jack, shuddering slightly.

    “Yes. –He’s Dorothy’s brother,” she said to Sol.

    “Uh-huh. Very pleased to meet you. Sol Winkelmann,” said Sol, straight-faced, holding out his hand.

    Jack admitted to himself quite frankly that he experienced a sense of overwhelming relief as Sol Winkelmann introduced himself. He shook hands gratefully. “Jack Perkins.”

    “Hi, Jack. Fancy a hot chilli dog, everything on it?”

    “Y— Uh, not raw onions, I’ve got a meeting this afternoon.”

    “There won’t be raw onions, because for in this country, which stop me if you’ve just recalled it, they ain’t never heard of the Spanish onion,” he said mournfully.

    “Our ones give him awful wind. I always thought an onion was just an onion,” said Michaela placidly. “Where’s Grace?”

    “It was a choice between Ida Grey kidnappin’ her over her lunch break or Ada Corcoran kidnappin’ her until I got back from my lunch break. So I told ’em they could each have half. Solomon’s choice, huh?” he added to Jack, poker-faced.

    Jack Perkins nigh to laughed himself into a coma.

    When he recovered from it he realised that his hostess must have verified the story because a carrycot with a placid sleeping infant in it was now adorning the creaky-looking old sofa and his hostess herself was sitting on the floor, tugging at her bright red gumboots. And there was a definite smell of steaming chilli.

    Sol came wandering out of the kitchen regions. “Honey, why don’t you jes’ give in and admit them gumboots are a half size too small for you?”

    “They’re—same—size!” she grunted. “As—old—ones!”

    “Yeah, well, them old ones were three centuries if they was a day. And Mr Para might have changed his lasts since then.”

    Jack went all kinda funny at the knees and collapsed into a creaky old cane chair filled with dim, squashed-looking cushions and croaked: “Not Para Rubber?”

    “Uh-huh. These here ones are plastic or vinyl or some such, though. Ain’t got the give in them the rubber ones did. That could be a kinda contributing factor to the problem,” he said thoughtfully, looking at the grunting Michaela.

    “I never—realised!” she gasped. “Oof!” She fell back onto the dim rag rug, gasping, as the boot came off.

    “Nor me. –Para Rubber drives me crazy like a fox, y’know?” he said to Jack.

    “Yeah, me too,” agreed Jack, grinning. “You know the one in Newmarket? I made a special trip out there, last time I was back. Bought this gizzmo to fit on her garden hose that Dot didn’t need or want, a new plastic dish drainer that ditto, and two plastic rain hats my kids wouldn’t be seen dead in. And even if they would my ex wouldn’t let ’em.”

    “Uh-huh,” he acknowledged, winking. “We went in to get Michaela’s gumboots and a new pair of rubber jandals each. So I bought a raincoat for Grace, there, like because by the time she’s twenny-two Mr Para might have gone out of business, and sixteen foot of plastic tubing like because it was on special. I’ll think of something to do with it,” he said, shaking his head, “if I have to live to a hundred three to do it.”

    “Yeah!” gasped Jack.

    “And two aprons,” added Michaela cheerfully.

    “Uh-huh. Rude ones,” he explained.

    Jack nodded, he could see that one of them came within the definition of rude apron, sure enough: he was wearing it. It was a full-length heavy plastic apron of the sort designed for barbecue wear, featuring a female form, headless, dressed in a frilled corset that stopped short just below the very pink, very round knockers.

    “The other one’s the back view,” said Sol mildly. “Oh, and I got some genuine rubber plugs. Sink plugs?” He raised his eyebrows.

    “They don’t fit any of your plugholes—don’t tell me.”

    “Got it in one,” he said mournfully. “Fried onions with your chilli hot-dog?”

    “Why the Hell not! Thanks, Sol.”

    “You’re welcome. Make yourself to home. Look for that book. –Hey!” he shouted.

    Michaela’s head appeared round the French door. “Mm?”

    “Honey, what the Hell are you doin’ out there in the drizzle?”

    “Looking for Bonzo the Dog.”

    “He’s under the dad-blamed bed, I’ve given up,” said Sol with a groan.

    Michaela came in, looking pleased. A large bed, king-size, occupied the right-hand side of the room. She got down on her hunkers and peered under it. “So he is. Hullo, Bonzo the Dog!” At about this point it dawned on Jack Perkins that that was actually the dog’s name. His shoulders shook slightly.

    He failed to locate the book during the period while Sol was getting the hot-dogs and Michaela was giving Grace a bottle. But he had a lovely time browsing in Sol’s miles of navy-blue painted, industrial metal shelving. Michaela informed him that the books weren’t all there, they hadn’t had room to put up the rest of the shelves, but Jack could have guessed that: there was a large selection of mixed psychology and do-it-yourself but after that the novels started rigidly with A for Allingham, Asimov and Austen, to name but three, went on rigidly through B for such as Barstow and Benson (Jack had to verify that last: Christ), C for Christie and Conrad, and after the expected K for Kerouac and the K for Kipling which by now did not surprise Jack Perkins in the least, stopped short with L for Lurie. And at that three of them were lying on top of the others: the only spot in the entire sixteen miles of navy-blue industrial metal shelving where this heinous crime had been committed. Jack smiled: Sol’s bookshelves didn’t go with the drawl or the apron or the very, very old jeans or the patched wool checked shirt that peeped coyly from behind the apron, but they sure as Hell matched up with those six layers of sanded-down polyurethane flooring. Which, by the by, was not wooden, or even cork tiling: chipboard. With all that polyurethane on it, it achieved a real golden glow; looked as like to cork as nothing, too.

    Bonzo the Dog deigned to emerge as they sat round the Winkelmanns’ inadequate little white metal table. Actually two little metal tables, Michaela explained redundantly. Jack could see that, there was double the usual number of legs.

    “Cross between a chow and one of them shaggy doormats,” explained Sol, as Jack looked sideways at the pooch. “Could explain why he’s fixated on the dad-blamed thing.”

    “His mother was a pure-bred Weimaraner. Mrs Forsythe was awfully cross about it,” said Michaela.

    Jack nodded numbly. Bonzo the Dog was not as tall as a Weimaraner, but pretty tall. His ears were sort of… Well, maybe. If you knew there was Weimaraner in him, yeah. His coat was shaggy rather than curly, for the most part. But here and there, there were definite curly patches. He had an amiable face, though that poodle-like puff of fluff between the ears was an unfortunate touch. In colour he was sort of brown. Well, doormat colour: yeah.

    “So if there’s a strong smell of damp, dead fur from under the bed tonight, it’ll be the doormat,” concluded Sol.

    Michaela put down her chilli dog half-eaten. She got up. She went over to the bed. She got down on her hunkers. She peered. “It’s under there,” she announced, straightening.

    “Uh-huh. Go wash up, honey, that floor ain’t too pure: not with him on it,” said Sol, giving their pet an evil look. Bonzo the Dog immediately came up to his elbow, panting eagerly.

    Michaela disappeared obediently into the bathroom.

    Jack looked limply at his half-eaten chilli dog. If he’d even tried ordering Randi about like that— And Nancy had been as bad. Worse, really. Wouldn’t accept the merest suggestion she do anything. In fact, would do the opposite to spite him.

    “She can be real recalcitrant when it’s something she cares deeply about,” said Sol out of the blue.

    Jack jumped ten feet where he sat and turned bright puce. “Uh—yeah!” he gasped.

    “But she don’t care about much. Pots, mainly. And clay. She’s a potter. And a bit about me and Grace—wal, she’s learning to,” he said as she came back to the table.

    “I do care, you nana,” she said mildly. “I told June about that dream and she said she still has dreams that Mason isn’t in, let alone Bub.”

    “Proves I was right, then.”

    Michaela’s wide pale brow wrinkled. “It proves what you said was right. But I think it proves that what you were afraid of underneath was wrong.”

    Jack looked a trifle nervously at Sol but all he said was: “I was hoping you’d come to that conclusion. Just don’t let it go as far as reading them women’s mags, though, huh?”

    “I won’t!” she said with a laugh. “They never make sense to me.”

    Jack Perkins was unaware that he was looking at her with the same sort of funny little smile on his face as her husband had on his.

    After lunch Sol disinterred the “book”: it turned out to be an ancient copy of an American architectural magazine, located in a carton that hadn’t yet been unpacked; and they ascertained that Jack really did fancy that style. And after the Winkelmanns had taken him over to Left-Hand Cove and Jack had approved of it loudly and located the exact spot for his split-level, balconied, slightly ranch-look house and told them firmly he was re-naming it Lone Pine Tree Cove, he didn’t care if it was a bloody macrocarpa, nor that it would grow to sixty feet, though it was kind of Michaela to warn him of this last, he remembered that he had a job to go back to. So they all piled into the runabout, the sleeping Grace in a papoose on her mother’s back, and ran Jack back to the landing behind the fish shop.

    The Winkelmanns then went off to Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies in Kingfisher Bay. Where young Jimmy Burton informed Sol that they had had one customer so far this afternoon: Mrs Gardiner had come in and bought a pair of gardening gloves. He was the sort of boy that could not only say this without grinning, but that wouldn’t realise there was anything to grin about, and Sol Winkelmann, being long since over this, merely replied: “Uh-huh.” And suggested that if Jimmy fancied the idea, he could get on over to the boatyard and help— Jimmy was off and running.

    “Help Euan with sanding down fifty feet of Ralph Overdale’s Saucy Sal’s decking,” he finished. “Guess he wants to, huh?’

    “It’s not the sanding, so much,” said Michaela seriously. “It’s the male peer group.”

    “Who did you get that off of?” he croaked.

    “You, of course.”

    “Then I guess I better watch my tongue,” he groaned.

    “Yes. –Ta,” she added in mild surprise as he fetched a chair for her and said: “Set.”

    Sol went behind his counter and leaned on it. Not unaware that he was probably doing it in order to create a barrier behind which to shelter and to give himself some sort of psychological advantage, as he said, super-casual: “So you’re in the habit of pickin’ up thinnish, kinda thin-faced, middle-aged guys with American accents and bringin’ ’em on home like they was lost dawgs, huh?”

    To which his wife returned with no evidence of either surprise or condemnation in her voice: “Don’t be a clot.”

    Sol came out from behind his psychological barrier. “I apologise,” he said, squatting beside her. “That was real uncalled for.”

    Michaela said nothing, just stared peacefully out at the view of the bay in the drizzle.

    After a while Sol said in a surprised voice: “Didn’t realise I was the jealous type.”

    “I suppose you are,” she agreed calmly.

    There was a long silence.

    “Michaela,” said Sol with a laugh in his voice: “Why the Hell did you bring him home?”

    “Um… I suppose it was like you said,” she said slowly.

    Sol didn’t prompt her; he’d had a bad enough time breaking down that reserve of hers sufficiently to even get to know her, not to mention learning to adjust his style to hers and nearly losing her because he was a dad-blamed impatient idiot and— Well. A few things like that.

    “I know he had an awfully smart suit and stuff. But when he was talking to May in Swadling’s I thought just that, that you said.”

    “Mm?”

    “That he was like a lost dog,” said Michaela.

    Sol swallowed hard. He had had a sort of a glimmering of a notion it mighta been something like that, mm-hm. For a while he didn’t say anything. Then he said: “Yeah. I think he might have a Hell of a time readjusting to life Downunder.”

    “Yes. I think he’s lonely, too.”

    Sol did not for a minute take this at face value, or treat it as facile: in fact he avoided all of the dad-blamed stupid, superficial reactions that onct upon a time—before Life had taught him just a little sense—he might have been tempted into. Plus and the jerk-off, smart-ass remark that in his case had gone with said reactions. He just said: “Yes.”

    “It’s a health-food shop. They’re calling it Sprouts,” explained May.

    “With sparkling originality,” agreed Dorothy. “Aren’t you afraid of what it will do to your filled-roll and pie trade, though, May?”

    “Not really. We don’t make anything much out of the filled-rolls. And our pie regulars probably won’t be interested in the sort of things a health-food place will sell.”

    “That’s a point,” agreed Dorothy, watching resignedly as May placed huge slabs of beetroot in her filled-roll.

    “How’s the house-hunting going, Dorothy?”

    Dorothy sighed. “Not a sausage. Talking of which, you don’t do sausages, do you, May?”

    “No. We did think of doing hamburgers, but Jack said they’d make the place stink of onions, so we decided against it. And there isn’t the demand, really.”

    There wouldn’t be, no: the whole of Carter’s Bay of course would know that Swadlings’ didn’t do them, so they wouldn’t— Oh, forget it.

    “If you’re serious about taking one of Adrian’s flats in the old pub,” said May thoughtfully, “there is a place you might consider, just as a temporary measure.”

    “Where? I’m desperate,” said Dorothy with a groan. “There’s a Jap tour in at the Royal K, and the lobby’s full of ’em, all smiling and smiling, totally bewildered, asking incomprehensible questions in what they fondly imagine is English.”

    “Yes, I know, dear,” agreed May. “It’s Sol’s old flat. Well, the two of them are vacant, really, but the one over the boutique hasn’t got a proper bathroom or anything. If you didn’t mind being above the shop.”

    “It sounds like paradise!” said Dorothy fervently. “Would he let it to me, though?”

    “I expect so,” said May tranquilly. “They could do with the money. Jimmy Burton wanted to go flatting there—you know, he works for Sol,” she said as Dorothy looked blank, “but then his friends decided they wanted something more central, because Andy works in town. So they’re renting old Mrs Armour’s house in George Street. You might not remember her—”

    “Yes. Two large-print romances and a House and Garden, every fortnight,” said Dorothy with a little sigh. “She’s in the old folks’ home in Puriri, now.”

    “Yes. Her legs went bad,” said May sadly.

    “Mm. She still gets her books, though, regular as clockwork. They have the van.”

    May nodded. “She took a few of her bits and bobs with her, and Flo and Jim, that’s her daughter and son-in-law, they took some of the furniture. But I hate to think what those boys are doing to her body carpet.” She sighed.

    If Jimmy Burton’s mum was a typical Kiwi mum, and she had anything to do with it, and Dorothy wasn’t taking any bets on either of these points, they’d be vacuuming it regular as clockwork every Saturday morning, that’s what they’d be doing to it. Dorothy didn’t say so, however: she thanked May for the tip about Sol’s flat, paid for her filled-roll, and hurried off clutching it to her bosom. She’d ring him straight away! Before bloody Jack or bloody Baranski got wind of the fact that there was a perfectly good flat available right in Kingfisher Bay!

    … “In that case, I might as well have the one next-door while I’m building at Lone Pine Tree Cove,” decided Jack.

    “Are you serious about building out there?” croaked Dorothy.

    “Yeah. Why not?” He gave her a defiant look which reminded her irresistibly of the time when, she being around fourteen and he around seven, Jack had decided he was going to build himself a trolley like Rat-Face Ratana’s only better, and beat him and his entire gang hollow with it. “You got Sol’s number? I’ll fix it up now.”

    “Um—I don’t think he owns that other flat, Jack,” said Dorothy cautiously.

    “Never mind, he’ll know who does!”

    She watched as he rang Sol, spoke to Sol, listened to Sol with a thunderstruck expression on his face, thanked Sol feebly, noted down a number, bade Sol goodbye and hung up. “You knew this, didn’t you?” he croaked.

    “Not for a fact, Jack.”

    “He’s given me Jake Carrano’s unlisted number,” he croaked.

    Dorothy just waited.

    “This company their kids own, it’s not really Inky & Sticky & Co., is it?” said her sophisticated brother plaintively.

    “No, you twit! Polly calls it that. And Jake won’t be home at this hour, if anyone answers it’ll be her or Daphne Green. Oh, or Nanny. Or maybe Bob Grey, if he’s not working outside.”

    “Yeah, right.” Jack punched numbers. That defiant look had come back over his face, though…

    “Oh, gee, is that all ya want?” said Sol Winkelmann cheerfully.

    Thomas gave him a look of loathing. “Yes. And don’t tell me you’ve just let the two upstairs flats, I’ve already heard.”

    Sol scratched his chin. “There is the flat above Shop 3.”

    This was the third and last shop, currently empty, in the little block that housed Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies with Galerie 2, and would shortly house Dorothy and Jack. “No.”

    “Never had anything done to it, of course. No bathroom. Just an attic, really.”

    “I’m still not interested.”

    “No? Well, it was just an idea,” he said sadly.

    Thomas the Tank Engine went rather red. “I’m sorry, Sol. Decent of you to suggest it. But—uh—it’s not what I’m looking for, thanks.”

    Sol eyed him drily but didn’t point out that the whole of Carter’s Bay and the small section of Kingfisher Bay that was human enough not to be entirely preoccupied by the subjects of electric lawnmowers and the price of wall-to-wall double glazing knew all about him and Dorothy Perkins. “No. Um… You a good sailor?”

    Given that Thomas had very recently asked him if he might be able to find him a decent little ten-footer, he looked at him wildly.

    “Like living on the water, is what I mean.”

    “I once lived for months aboard a bloody converted trawler doing geological research in the bloody Timor S— I’ve got an iron stomach, is that what you’re asking?”

    “More or less, yeah. Buffalo Gal’s owners are gonna be overseas for a year, he’s got a fellowship at some medical school in England— You don’t wanna know all that. He’d be quite glad to get a let for the houseboat. That floating facsimile of Buck House down there occupying most of Row 12 in the marina,” he said, jerking his head in its general direction.

    Thomas rushed to the shop window, and peered. “The pale pink thing? She’s huge!”

    “Yup. I won’t say she is technically a houseboat, because for iffen the Kingfisher Development Company was forced to admit she was, they’d have to refuse him the berth, and they need the money, but she ain’t never moved since the place was built. Harry and Waveney have these rave-ups on her, every other weekend. Weekends in between, their eldest, Pat, he comes with his wife and two little kids, don’t think he’s got the faintest glimmering what his swingin’ mom and pop get up to on ’er.”

    “Won’t he want to keep on coming while they’re away?”

    Sol shrugged. “Too bad. Onct Harry and Waveney have decided on anything smacking faintly of the cash nexus, family sentiment ain’t gonna get a look in, no sirree.”

    “What’s his number?” said Thomas tensely.

    Sol scratched his head. “Harry Bull? Uh—think he’s generally at the Med. School, this time of day. Unless it’s Doctor’s Rounds. Wal, you could leave a message with either of his secretaries, really. –Yeah, that is why they called her Buffalo Gal,” he said kindly, as Baranski wasn’t asking. He looked through his Rolodex. “Here. It’s ‘Professor Bull’ or ‘Mr Bull’ but iffen you’re nice folks, not ‘Doctor.’ Only I guess you’d know that, being English an’ all, with that real nice accent of yours,” he concluded mournfully.

    “Accent?” said Thomas the Tank Engine in his rich Oxbridge. “I don’t have an accent, old mate: it’s you who have the accent, I’m afraid.”

    “Match point,” replied Sol mournfully.

    Thomas smiled a little. “Mm. –Thanks,” he said as Sol passed him a note of the numbers.

    … “What’s this for?” said Mr Winkelmann numbly some two days later as Euan Knox presented him gravely with a medal. A chocolate one, wrapped in gold paper, but he’d put a genuine medal ribbon on it.

    “Managing to install that Pommy prick, Baranski, in that poncy pale pink floating bordello of Harry Bull’s, what else?”

    “He’s moving in this weekend,” said Sol happily. He unwrapped the medal and extracted the chocolate.

    Euan sniggered gently.

    Sol ate the chocolate but folded the paper up carefully into its original shape and pinned the result to his patched red and black wool checked shirt. “Genuine ribbon and pin, huh? Where’d they come from?”

    “My brother Jim. He was Dux of the school.”

    Sol knew that Jim Knox lived down in Cambridge, a good half-day’s drive away. Euan woulda got up at crack of dawn or even earlier and gotten on down there, though: Euan was like that. “He want it back?”

    “Shouldn’t think so, it was in his kids’ toy box.”

    “I’ll treasure it, in that case.”

    Euan grinned. That meant Sol would wear it on his shirt for the rest of his life or until Michaela forgot it was there and bunged it in the washing machine: Sol was like that.

    Jack leaned in the big gabled window of Dorothy’s apartment, gazing idly down at the half-empty marina, dominated, now that Saucy Sal was round in the boatyard having her bottom scraped and her woodwork sanded and revarnished by the innocent Jimmy Burton in the fond delusion that he was part of Euan Knox’s male peer group, by the pale pink palace that was Buffalo Gal. “Do you want that chest of drawers?”

    Dorothy was shifting her imitation Conrad sofa for the Nth time. “Given that it contains my underwear, yes. –Why does this sofa look (a) grungy and (b) all wrong in here?”

    “Dunno. That dump next-door’s got no closets at all,” he grumbled.

    “It is only temporary. Kevin Goode can get you a rack to hang your suits on, if you’re interested. According to young Wallis, it’s on wheels, don’t ask me what that means.”

    “Who?”

    “Wallis!” said Dorothy crossly.

    “I know Wallis, thanks. Who’s the guy that can get me a rack?”

    “Oh.” Dorothy explained.

    “Good. I’ll get on over there.” Jack stared down at the Bay. “Ida Grey from Galerie 2 was saying that Michaela’s cousin’s going to take the apartment over Shop 3.”

    “And run an Indian restaurant in Shop 3?” said Dorothy eagerly.

    “Eh? No! And why the Hell Indian?”

    “Well, in the first place, there are no Indian restaurants between here and the city, and in the second place, I could just fancy a nice juicy rogan josh. And in the third place, I suddenly wondered what had become of your kids. The first lot, I mean.”

    “Bloody Nancy took them to— You know that. Well, don’t ask me, Dot. Nancy never writes, and I don’t think the beard can.”

    There was a short silence.

    “Wait,” said Jack, going rather red.

    Dorothy waited while he fumbled in his flaming Filofax.

    “This is the last I heard. Eight years since.”

    It was a postcard with a blurred colour photo of a camel on the front. On the back was written, in a careful childish hand:

“Dear Dad, We got camels in India. Mom wants to be a nun. Tony says she’s misguyded. Me and Shiva are okay. India’s real hot. Sometimes we have floods. They all talk funny. Your loving son, Rab.”

    There was no return address.

    Dorothy bit her lip. After a moment she said: “How old would he be now?”

    “Twenty-two, I guess,” said Jack glumly. “He’d have been about fourteen when he wrote that. Well, in America kids are brought up to be semi-literate, you know. And a mom what spends her waking hours smoking pot and staring at quartz doesn’t help.”

    “Why don’t you try to find them?” said Dorothy cautiously.

    “Now that I haven’t got Randi’s American common sense telling me it’d be a waste of time and money? I might, if India was a lot smaller and a lot more civilised.”

    “Jack, they must have records of the foreigners that come to their country! Was Nancy an American citizen, or had she kept her New Zealand citizenship?”

    “Don’t ask me. She wouldn’t change when I did, is all I know,” he said gloomily. “I don’t even know what name she travelled under. And don’t say it’s my own fault for not keeping in touch after I left California, I know it!”

    “Yes…” said Dorothy vaguely. “So Shiva must be twenty-four. Help, doesn’t time fly?”

    Jack merely replied grimly: “We should never have had them. We were too damned young. I told her at the time it was a mistake, but she was always so bloody pig-headed!”

    “Well, she was very into all that Mother Earth stuff, wasn’t she? On the surface, that is.”

    Jack stared. “It lasted a bloody long time for something that was on the surface!”

    “I don’t mean the whole ashram thing: just wanting to have kids. It was her hormones prompting her, poor girl.” She shrugged slightly. “A call that can’t be ignored, in the case of some females.”

    “Yeah, well, Nancy sure was one of them.” Jack stared blankly at the marina.

    Dorothy gave him a cautious look and went back to shoving the furniture around.

    Eventually he said: “Well, do you want to come and see this rack of Goode’s?”

    “Uh—yeah, okay. I wonder if he’d like to buy a twenty-year-old fake Habitat sofa?” said Dorothy, looking evilly at it.

    “It’s a good basic shape,” said Jack tolerantly. “I’d keep it. You looked at modern sofas?”

    “No.”

    “Don’t,” he said briefly, going over to the head of the small spiral staircase, which, they had both had ample time to discover, created a howling draught in the flat whenever someone opened the back door down below.

    Once they’d set off in Jack’s hire car, to which he had automatically led the way, typical male that he was, Dorothy said: “What was that you were saying about one of Michaela’s cousins taking over the flat above Shop 3?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Thanks, Jack, that’s enlightening.”

    “Well, that’s all I know.”

    “She’s got thousands of cousins!” said Dorothy indignantly.

    “I can’t help that, Dot.”

    “She must do: she and Polly Carrano are cousins on their mums’ sides, and Polly’s got thousands— What are you stopping for?

    Jack drew shakily into the side of the road and stopped.

    “This is the Inlet. Flat bit of shallow water. We want Kevin Goode’s recycling yard,” said Dorothy clearly. “Flat bit of pitted asphalt with a black bus-barn on it.”

    “Dot, Michaela Winkelmann is real nice folks and that hair of hers is the most glorious thing I’ve ever laid eyes on, but are you seriously telling me she and Polly Carrano are related?”

    “Yes. Second cousins. Their mothers are cousins. They’re both from backblocks farms.”

    “Gee, that’s all it needed!” he said in a shaken voice.

    “Their noses are the same, actually. Very straight,” said Dorothy mildly.

    Jack started up again, muttering: “Boy, it’s a small country.”

    “I’ll ask Sol about this cousin the moment we get back!” decided Dorothy firmly.

    “You’ll get more gen that way than trying to interrogate Michaela, that’s for sure.”

    “Mm,” said Dorothy, looking sideways at him.

    Jack sighed. “Noticed that skin? I admit I couldn’t hack that inarticulateness of hers. Only, that—that placidity is sort of… You’re a female, I don’t guess you can see it.”

    “I think I can see what you mean,” said Dorothy on a dry note. “And before you run away with the idea that Michaela is the genuine Mother Earth type, disabuse your tiny male mind entirely of any such idea. She can’t cook, in fact her best culinary effort is silverbeet salad with chopped apple in it, and she lets her husband get round in rags which she is perfectly capable of mending, because I’ve seen patches and darns on her own rags. And don’t mention the baby: to my certain knowledge if she isn’t strapped onto her, she’ll wander off and forget about her. Which she has done in Puriri Library, ask Janet if ya don’t believe me. –The bloody moos that were working for me at the time took her out the back and spent the entire ruddy afternoon cooing over her,” she noted grimly.

    “I’m sure!” He glanced at her dubiously, however.

    “Believe it,” said Dorothy grimly. “She’s a potter, first, last and in between. –Sol knows it, before you ask.”

    “Mm.” Jack drove on in silence, successfully negotiating the roundabout but having to have Dorothy shout “NO! LEFT!” before he got onto the side road off of the main road through Carter’s Bay.

    “Boy, that’s confusing,” he admitted, turning into the main road at last.

    “Yeah, like some of the rest of it,” said Dorothy under her breath. “Look,” she said more loudly, “they’re moving stuff into Sprouts, that was quick.”

    “Get, for this relief from May Swadling’s beetroot filled-rolls, much thanks,” said Jack with a sidelong smile.

    Dorothy agreed mildly: “Yeah.” Reflecting that it was no use telling Jack not to hope anything from this cousin of Michaela’s because in the first place if she was anything like Michaela he’d never be able to handle her, and in the second place if she was anything like ninety-nine point nine repeating percent of the female population of EnZed, of which statistics were all in favour, she’d bore him silly in less than a month. Nobody had ever been able to tell Jack anything. Not since around his second birthday, that was. Though, give them their due, thought Dorothy, looking blankly at a huge hole in the shop-fronts that hadn’t been there yesterday, Nancy-Indira Perkins and Randi King Perkins, in their separate ways, had tried.

    “The thing is,” said Adrian seriously, “would Leigh fit in?”

    “You flatter me,” replied Dorothy drily.

    “I would be flattering you, if you were in your zoot-suit,” he said frankly.

    Dorothy grinned. She was, actually, in her usual winter weekend gear: black tracksuit pants of sufficiently ancient vintage, a high-necked brown skivvy that no-one but its owner knew had ’orrible ’oles under the arms and dated back to when Nancy Perkins had been getting around in her first lot of Indian beads and Jack had had, pardon her for laughing, shoulder-length curls, and a very, very thick jumper that was not made of genuine New Zealand wool which genuinely shrank and matted in the wash, but even more genuine ersatz something available at a fraction of the price from Big W or, if you were very lucky, at a fraction of that price from the seconds shop in Puriri. Which was where Dorothy had got it. It was, at a conservative estimate, seven sizes too big for her and bore a picture of a clenched fist and the legend “BIG MAN” knitted into it front and back but Dorothy wasn’t proud. May Swadling had taken one look at it, pilled an’ all as it was, and offered very tactfully to knit a jumper for her. Dorothy had accepted, she could always use it for best leisure wear on those occasions when an executive like her needed same, and send it to the dry cleaners when it got dirty.

    “Yeah: whoever ya get in, they gotta be compatible,” explained Avon Goode seriously. Avon, complete with Fiorella, had come round to the old waterfront pub on the excuse of seeing how Wallis was getting on, Wallis now having taken up permanent residence, but actually, or Dorothy K. Perkins was a Dutchman, pardon, Netherlandish person, because she had fallen for the glorious Monsieur Adrian, chef extraordinaire—poor little kid.

    “Leigh is quiet and well behaved,” Dorothy noted.

    “Um, you did tell him there’ll be a restaurant downstairs, didn’t you?” said Adrian on a nervous note.

    “Sure.”

    “And the side bar,” added Wallis.

    “I told him that, too. He then backed me into a corner and questioned me narrowly about New Zealand wines, ignoring my protests that I knew noth-thing, so I don’t think he’ll be too fussed about that,” said Dorothy.

    “The quesh’n is,” said Wallis, chewing juicily, “can he shtan’ ush?”

    Dorothy looked around the kitchen of the old pub with a little smile. “Mm.”

    Adrian was as beautiful as ever: nothing marred that sort of bone-deep beauty; he’d be beautiful at eighty unless he got fat. The fact that he hadn’t shaved and was dressed in a very baggy, very, very old pair of paint-smeared grey overalls was immaterial. Sim and Martin were exactly as you might expect two gangling teenage boys with no responsible adult in charge of them to be. Sim had lately taken to sporting a gold stud in one ear, which Dorothy would have bet her Sir G.G. salary his father would have been driven ropeable by, but unless you were the unfortunate father of the boy in question that was pretty much taken for granted these days, so she wasn’t counting it. Wallis was in torn jeans, a grey baseball cap worn backwards, a navy school jumper with the Grammar colours on it so it was undoubtedly Adrian’s, and Ugg boots.

    Avon, by contrast, was quite incredibly smart. From the floor up, laced brown ankle-boots with rolled-down pale pink fuzzy socks above them, and above that black tights on her spindly legs. Well, to Dorothy’s generation they were spindly. Above the tights appeared as the main outer integument once her parka had been removed, a loose pale green jumper made of crochet squares re-embroidered with large strawberries. Here and there a whole fat woollen strawberry dangled from this creation on a dark green woollen bow. Under that was a high-necked thing which Dorothy silently acknowledged they probably no longer called skivvies. Dark purple. Shiny. The short, dark hair was brushed up into a sort of quiff at the front and her ears sported two thin plastic purple hoops, one in each, two gold studs, one in each, and three very small gold hoops, all in the right one. There was no doubt at all that all this effort was for Adrian’s benefit. Fiorella was in pale pink, one of those all-in-oneys of stretch towelling that on any little kid were guaranteed to look adorable. Even though this particular one was disfigured by a large black splodge, which was why, as Avon had readily explained, she had managed to buy it for only two dollars at the last Carter’s Bay Primary School Fair. Adrian had taken Fiorella on his beauteous knee immediately but if this indicated anything other than that he was the sort of sentimental male that did fall for cute little kiddies in all-in-oneys, Dorothy was that Netherlandish person.

    Dorothy of course was in her weekend gear. And Jacko was in—well, his body was covered. Those had once probably been grey flannel bags. Though it was anybody’s guess what colour the buttoned cardigan—semi-buttoned, half of the buttons were missing—had been. Something darkish. The thing under it had once probably been a cream Aran knit of the Thirties-boating variety but that had been many millennia ago. In fact it had probably belonged to F. Scott Fitzgerald in person. He had gumboots on and nobody had asked him to take them off even though Adrian had recently put down a shiny pale blue and tan vinyl in a fake Spanish-tile pattern of which he was very house-proud.

    Adrian was also looking round the kitchen with a little smile. “Well, if Leigh can’t hack us, it shows that he isn’t right for the place!”

    “Yeah. Shall we give him a ring?” said Wallis through the gum.

    “I’ll do it,” offered Dorothy, getting up.

    “No phone,” Adrian reminded her laconically. He looked at his watch. “Instead of me making clam chowder for lunch, we could all go down to Puriri and get fish and chips at the place up Sir John Marshall Av’, and then go round to see Leigh.”

    Wallis bounced up. “Yeah! Come on! We can go pipi-ing this arvo instead.”

    Leigh was stunned to receive a fish-and-chips-smelling deputation, and no less stunned, Dorothy was meanly pleased to see, to observe her gracious self in its weekend gear. But he was very pleased to hear that the embryo second flat was on offer, and agreed eagerly to come back up to Carter’s Bay with them.

    For the journey back Fiorella’s mother got into Adrian’s heap, abandoning her daughter to Dorothy and Leigh, having noted by the by: “She likes you.” Dorothy couldn’t honestly have said whether this was true. She refrained from telling the poor kid it was entirely the wrong move.

    “Does she like me, though?” murmured Leigh.

    “Ssh.” Dorothy watched until Avon was safely in the car, having ousted poor Wallis from the front seat, no sweat, and said: “That will never work. Adrian doesn’t like ’em brainless.”

    “I’m sure you’re right.”

    “HEY!” Dorothy then bellowed, waving frantically. “Does one of you wanna come with US?”

    After a confab in the back of the other car Jacko got out and ambled over to them. Dorothy’s eyes twinkled as Leigh then wound his window down, but she said nothing.

    Leigh was very evidently stunned at the state the pub was in, and Dorothy took herself mentally severely to task, reminding herself that nice upper-middle-class Englishmen were not traditional do-it-yourself maniacs since their bloody cradles, unlike our lot, and that he’d probably never seen a wooden pub in his life, and such-like. But once he got out on the balcony and saw its Sydney lace and the view it had over the silted-up harbour and out to sea and learned that if he took the second flat, one whole side of the balcony would be his, he was sold.

    “Just as well the tide was in!” concluded Adrian with a laugh, as Leigh and Dorothy, with Fiorella and Avon in the back, went off to Barry Goode’s place to look at Plans.

    “Shit, ya wouldn’t of shown it to him if hadda been out, would ya?” asked Jacko in horror.

    Adrian’s beautiful face pinkened. He grinned sheepishly. “I suppose I've still got a lot to learn about the ways of commerce.”

    “So, they are all settled in?” said Inoue.

    “I wouldn’t say that,” replied Alan temperately. “They have found accommodation, so we can stop paying the relocation allowances. And most of them have decided on somewhere permanent to live.”

    “Ah. And we pay the cost of moving their household contents?”

    “So long as what they move is what they had in their homes when they took the positions, yes: point A to point B and, in view of the lack of available accommodation up here, any storage expenses while they build or renovate. And we’ve agreed that the university will pay Jack Perkins’s freight costs for his three vintage cars, but not the storage expenses once he gets them here.”

    “Good. And the quest for secretaries, Alan?”

    “Not good. Ms Coffi has given them her full cooperation, but in terms of what is available here, they are still demanding the impossible. Or, should I say, Baranski is demanding it, Gore is hoping for it and still looking for it, and Perkins has compromised by deciding to go for excellent keyboard skills and a basic command of English.” He eyed Inoue drily.

    “Dear me, that does sum up their characters in a nutshell,” he said mildly.

    Alan grinned. “Thank you.”

    “There is Akiko’s sister, Mitsuko,” he said slowly. “So long as you do not perceive a complete Takagaki take-over, my dear Alan.”

    “No!” said Alan with a laugh. “For Gore, do you mean, Inoue? Has she other languages besides English and Japanese?”

    “Yes. Her English is excellent, by the way; I think, better than Akiko’s. She also speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, and a little Korean.”

    “Mm. Well, over the next few years the applicants from Hong Kong may well dry up, but I think mainland China will be sending more and more students overseas. We can expect a fair number of enrolments from Singapore Chinese, and a few Malaysian Chinese, too. But we still really need someone with Malay and Indonesian.”

    “Yes.” Inoue just waited.

    “How old is she?”

    Eyeing him with considerable respect, Inoue replied: “Well, that is perhaps the rub, Alan. She is only twenty-two. Not very much experience of the office environment. But she does have good keyboard skills.”

    “Mm. Speak to Gore, then, Inoue. Has she a degree?”

    She had: Inoue explained his niece’s qualifications tranquilly.

    “We’ll make it PA. If the other Deans kick up, we’ll offer them the same, on condition they find someone with the same level of qualifications to fill the posts.”

    Inoue’s clever almond eyes twinkled. “Certainly. An excellent solution. I shall speak to Leigh now, if you do not need me?”

    “No, I think we’ve finished here, thanks,” he said with that cool smile.

    Inoue went out, thinking thoughts about English poker-faces.

    “They’re all more or less settled in,” said Janet shyly.

    Lady Carrano grasped her wriggling red-headed daughter’s hand firmly, ignoring the representations that she was too big to have her hand held, and propped her other elbow on the issues counter. It was pouring with rain, so there were not many customers in the Puriri County Library requiring issuing. None, in fact. Well, old Mr Potter was over by the magazines table, but everyone knew he was only in because he was waiting for Mrs Potter, it being her day for the hairdresser. Mr Potter could have gone and sat in the perfectly comfortable chairs in the fuggy warmth of Hair 2000 but although he looked like a frail little old tortoise he was, of course, too macho to do any such thing. Or too much of a wimp, depending on your point of view.

    “So Dorothy’s moved into Sol’s old flat, has she, Janet?”

    “Yes. She’s got two heaters and she got him and her brother to move the chest of drawers and her two big bookcases, and that blocked off the draught from the staircase quite well. So she’s quite comfy. She’s quite excited about the new flat. The one in the old pub, I mean.”

    “It sounded a bit open-plan, from what she was saying,” said Polly cautiously.

    “No, because you see, the kitchen’s going to be entirely separate. The main room’s going to be a very big room, she decided she didn’t want a second bedroom. And she’ll use one corner of it for her study.”

    “I see. That sounds nice.”

    Janet smiled. “Yes, I think so, too. The man who’s having the other flat, he’s one of the professors, he’s going to have a separate dining room. Barry says he wants it to be quite traditional: you know: old-fashioned.”

    “I see. I think that’s Dr Gore. Have you met him, Janet?”

    “Not really,” she said, blushing. “He does come in here sometimes, he’s very keen on D.L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh, but he doesn’t like the more modern detective stories. I tried to tell him about Emma Lathen,”—Polly nodded understandingly—“but when he heard she was American, he wouldn’t try her.”

    “Mm. We had him to dinner one evening. I thought he seemed very nice.”

    “Yes,” said Janet, blushing again. “I can’t imagine why Dorothy— I mean, well, you know!” She laughed awkwardly.

    “Thomas Baranski’s very attractive,” said Polly with a twinkle in her eye.

    Janet predictably went into a terrific flutter, not liking to correct Lady Carrano, not liking to give the impression of criticising Dorothy’s taste, but clearly thinking he was an awful man.

    Polly retreated from the library with a Dick Francis that she’d already read, a Church Cat book that Katie Maureen inaccurately declared she was going to read all by herself, a nice new biography forced upon her by Janet that she knew Jake wouldn’t read, even though he only liked books that were “true”, the computer book that had been on reserve for Johnny, and a new book on cars that Janet thought his twin, Davey, would be sure to like. –He’d only look at the pictures, he was almost as bad as his father. And with considerable food for thought.

    … “What? said Dorothy blankly to her receiver.

    “You heard,” returned Polly grimly.

    “Janet and Leigh Gore? But Polly, she doesn’t even know him!”

    “And whose fault’s that?” she shouted.

    Grimacing, Dorothy held the receiver well away from her ear. “Oh, boy,” she mouthed, rolling her eyes. “Polly, I never thought— And I’ve been very busy, settling in, and so forth.”

    “That is no excuse,” said Lady Carrano threateningly. “She’ll be at the hop, I mean the fund-raiser for the Forest and Birders, won’t she?”

    “You mean the Carter’s Bay Environmental Watch Committee. They’re having it in the bus barn, but whether they’ll ever get it cleared—”

    “Dorothy!” shouted Lady Carrano. “Stop babbling!”

    “Sorry. I’m looking at this mountain of computer print-out that mysteriously appeared on my desk while I was out getting myself a muffin— Sorry. It’s the sort of pile that does induce babbling,” said Dorothy, poking it cautiously with a ball-point pen and then, forgetting she was a lady exec, putting the pen behind the usual ear.

    “Just make sure that Janet wears something really attractive to it,” ordered Polly grimly. “Not blue.”

    “Me?” she croaked.

    “You. I am holding you personally responsible. No more excuses. You’re not settling in any more, you’re settled. If we can get Janet happily married and settled down with a Katie Maureen or Fiorella of her own, some good may come of this bloody user-pays sink-hole of good scholarship funds,” she said grimly.

    “I see,” said Dorothy limply. “I didn’t know you knew Fiorella.”

    “I don’t. When the library moos had grabbed Katie Maureen, elbowing poor little Janet aside as if she was invisible, she told me about her. She is wasted in that blimmin’ libree,” said Lady Carrano grimly in the vernacular of her childhood.

    “Polly, I’ve never denied it!”

    “No, but what have you done about it?” she cried.

    There was a considerable pause. Then Dorothy replied: “Deserted her, apparently.”

    “Yes. So do something about making it up to her.”

    “But— Well, be reasonable! No-one can make these blokes fall for her.”

    “A nice pink dress would be a start, however.”

    Dorothy groaned, and gave in. “All right, I’ll try. I’m hanging up, and don’t pester me again today, thanks. I’m too busy.” She hung up. “Janet is perfectly happy in her wee cottage with her blessed cat,” she ventured in an experimental tone.

    It didn’t even manage to convince her, so how was it going to convince Lady Carrano?

    “Bugger,” she concluded sourly. “What the Hell do I say? ‘You look awful in blue’? Uh—‘Polly thinks pink would suit you’? God! Just when we thought we were all nicely sorted out and settled in, why does sex have to rear its ugly head?”

    There was no answer to that, she concluded sourly, burying herself in her work. Apart from Life Itself.

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/modified-rapture.html