So Long At The Fair

27

So Long At The Fair

    The Carter’s Bay Primary School Fair was being held later than usual this year. According to some, this was a good idea because the kids’d be doing nothing over these last two weeks before the Christmas holidays, so they might as well spend all their time preparing for the fair and tidying up after the fair. According to others they wasted enough time at this time of year without having the fair as well, and it was a stupid time of year because everyone was, take your pick: too busy getting ready to go away for Christmas to have time to concentrate on making stuff for the fair; too over-committed on Christmas presents to have any money to spend on buying junk at the fair; far too busy with all the sports fixtures all the schools and clubs had at this time of the year; or just generally too busy, didn’t these blimming teachers know how ordinary people lived? Or any permutation or combination thereof.

    “You don’t have to come, Gerhard,” said Jill kindly.

    “I won’t come if you don’t want me,” he replied amiably.

    “Don’t be an idiot. I’m just warning you that a school fair at Carter’s Bay Primary is about the nadir of the Antipodean cultural experience.”

    “It can’t be, surely; don’t they have something called rugby?”

    “Very witty,” said Jill weakly. “Just don’t say I haven’t warned you.”

    … “Cake stall?” she suggested with super-optimism, after the usual struggle to find a spot in the parking area allotted to the fair attendees and the usual hike over the untamed wilderness constituting said parking area to the actual school grounds.

    Gretchen gave a short, sharp bark of bitter laughter.

    “No, you’re right,” she agreed glumly. “Could still look, though?”

    “Vhy not? It’s probably near the vegetable stall.”

    Shutting her eyes for a moment, Jill tottered in her wake.

    “I’m afraid they ran out quite a while back,” said Deirdre Carpenter, very red.

    “‘They’?” replied Gerhard keenly.

    “Um, well, the ladies that were running it. They’ve gone home!” she gulped.

    “She means the cabal that put all the good cakes aside for themselves and their mates two hours before the thing starts,” explained Jill. “Why haven’t you gone home, too?”

    Blushing, Miss Carpenter explained she was one of the teachers. Adding without hope that sometimes one or two ladies brought their cakes along later.

    “I’d get myself a chair, if I was you,” advised Jill. “Have they got home-made pies this year?”

    “Yes. The pie stall’s over there,” said Miss Carpenter kindly.

    “And ducks?” asked Gretchen.

    “Um—I think so. The poultry stall’s that way.”

    “Good. First ve take a look at the vegetables,” she announced, grabbing her brother’s arm in a grip of steel, “because they are just there. –Thank you.” Ignoring Gerhard’s gasp of pain, she towed him away. “Hullo,” she said in astonishment, having fought her way inexorably though the struggling mass of vegetable-stall customers. “Vhat are you doing here?”

    “Oh! Hullo, Gretchen!” gasped Janet, very pink. “I said I’d help them out. Well, um, there aren’t really very many families that send their children to the school, and—um—lots of the mothers work, these days.”

    “So do you work, but ve vill overlook that,” she said kindly. “Vhat are the cabbages like this year?”

    “Real beauties!” replied the misguided Janet, beaming.

    “I think I see you at the Puriri Library?” said Gerhard with a smile.

    “Yes, that’s right,” she agreed, blushing.

    Hurriedly Gretchen introduced them to each other. And bought a carton of cabbages, which she then ordered Gerhard to carry. Blushing very much, Janet offered to keep it for them under the stall.

    “Ja, but vhat iff someone sells it by mistake?” she worried.

    Jill had by now fought her way to her side, though not in any real expectation of being able to stop her buying cabbages. “I’ll give them a medal!” she offered instantly.

    Giggling, Janet said: “A cartonload is an awful lot. But you don’t need to worry, I’ll be here.”

    “Dorothy’s told us you’re the next thing to an angel in human form, Janet, but what about calls of nature?” said Jill feebly.

    “What? Oh. Um—I tell you what: I’ll put a big notice on it!” She did so, using for the purpose what appeared to be, though admittedly they were reading it upside down, an official Carter’s Bay Primary School Fair Returns Sheet. Word-processed columns an’ all.

    Jill then broke down and explained that the reason a household of three persons, shortly to be reduced to two persons, wanted a whole bloody cartonload of cabbages was that persons of Aryan descent were persuaded that sauerkraut was actual food.

    “Help, do you make your own, Gretchen?” she gasped.

    Gretchen began to explain that it cost practically nothing to do so and the cost of the bottled stuff was exorbitant out here… Groaning, Jill inspected the sweetcorn.

    “Vill you char that on your little charcoal fire, like a street-vendor, Jill?” croaked Gerhard.

    Ignoring this remark, Jill paid for the sweetcorn, grabbed Gerhard’s arm—since Gretchen had accidentally released it in her excitement over the cabbages—and bidding Janet farewell, dragged him away.

    “This is all for children,” he said limply as she inspected the little cellophane packets of pink and white coconut ice—ooh, and green coconut ice!—and pale brown fudge.

    “That stall down there, it’s got better fudge,” said a contralto voice at her elbow.

    Jumping ten feet, Jill gulped: “Oh—uh—hullo. Don’t you work at The Quays?”

    “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Wallis.”

    “Hi. I thought for a moment you were Polly Carrano: your voice is just like hers,” said Jill feebly.

    “Yes, she’s got a contralto speaking voice, but Penny Bergen says she can’t sing. –This coconut ice is good, only the fudge down there’s better,” she repeated.

    “Right. Thanks for the tip. –OY! Male authority figure!”

    “Vhat, me?” said Gerhard limply.

    “Yes. Assume your male rôle and unlock your bloody hip-pocket.”

    “I’m sorry, Jill, you just lost me, there.”

    “She means, buy some coconut ice,” translated Wallis kindly.

    “You don’t mean, for us?” he said dubiously.

    “Yeah!” snarled Jill. “Get into the spirit of the thing!”

    “Er—certainly, if you really—” Limply Gerhard bought a selection of pink, green and white coconut ice. Distributing it equally amongst them.

    “Ta,” said Wallis in astonishment.

    “Gretchen’s brother: Gerhard. Old enough to be your bloody father,” groaned Jill in explanation of this phenomenon. “You live next to Bill Michaels, don’t you? Where is your bloody father, or shouldn’t I ask?”

    “He’s still in Wellington.”

    Jill shrugged. “Whatever turns you on.”

    “Mm,” said Wallis a trifle thickly through the green coconut ice. “Pe’min’! Shtrong!” she gasped.

    “Oh? Good show.” Jill tasted some of hers. “Phew!” she gasped, fanning her mouth with her hand.

    “Hey,” Wallis then said.

    The note had been almost interrogative. Jill could see Gerhard looking puzzled: he hadn’t been able to find a dictionary of New Zealand slang, even though he’d scoured the bookshops in the city, poor misguided sap. And if he had done, it was Lombard Street to a China orange it wouldn’t have explained the nuances of the vernacular “Hey”. “Yesh?” she replied through some pink coconut ice. Mm! Extraordinary! Not merely cochineal, as was customary: the inspired creator had flavoured it with strawberry!

    “You know Lady Carrano’s cousin Clara?”

    “Er… Been sort of introduced by Beth Whatsit down Puriri supermarkets on a late shopping night over some dead-looking lettuces and the remains of a rumour of spring lamb at $3.90 a kilo. If you mean a tallish woman who looks very like Polly but without the benefit of the rich-executive-wife accoutrements?”

    “Yeah, I do. ’Ve you seen her?”

    “Uh—oh! Today! No, barely seen a soul for the crush. Why?” Jill investigated her white coconut ice. Ordinary. Not bad, though. Good meaty texture, not too dry.

    “I’m supposed to look for her,” said Wallis on a glum note.

    Jill goggled. By her reckoning, Wallis was about half—no, that was a bit of an exaggeration: not half Clara Whatsit’s age. About fifteen years her junior. According to the dictates of the local social norms they could not, therefore, have a thing in common. Unless Wallis had a car she was planning to sell her?

    “Vhy?” asked Gretchen baldly.

    “Mm. That,” agreed Jill.

    “She rung up. Lady Carrano, I mean. And Adrian said him and Anna weren’t coming, they’re too busy. So then she said, if I was coming, could I keep an eye out for her?”

    “And do what?” groped Jill.

    “Ja. That,” agreed Gretchen.

    “I gotta show her the ropes!” said Wallis on a desperate note.

    Jill now perceived that the poor kid was all red and sweaty. Bloody Polly had forgotten what the local social norms were, that was wot. “Oh, right. Well, stick with us, we’ll all look for her together: okay?”

    “Yeah. Ta,” said Wallis gratefully.

    “And meantime, he can buy some more of this truly splendid coconut ice.”

    “Er—okay. Vhich colours?” said Gerhard limply.

    “All are good,” replied Jill smoothly.

    Obediently Gerhard purchased huge amounts of coconut ice, again distributing them equally, and they staggered slowly on…

    “So many people came in and asked if we were doing morning teas, that we thought we might as well!” panted May Swadling.

    “Yeah, but table service, May?” asked Dorothy with a grin.

    May explained that queuing at the hatch hadn’t worked all that well, last year. Well, they’d see how it went. And would Murray like orange juice, or a Coke?

    “Coke!” he beamed before Dorothy could say that anything with artificial colourings and/or stimulants was probably highly counter-indicated, given his immediate family’s medical history. Oh, well.

    Eyeing him sideways, May then asked in a careless voice: “Where’s Grandpa today, Murray?”

    “He’s at his wor-ruk,” said the little brown boy gravely in his killer of a Scotch accent.

    Dorothy watched drily as May simultaneously went all weak at the knees at the Scotch accent and almost burst with the need to remark that she’d known it and wasn’t it Jack all over. “Are there any scones, May?” she asked hopefully.

    “Not yet, dear. Gillian and Hilda volunteered to do them this year, but we thought we’d have them fresh, so they’re doing them this afternoon and bringing them over for afternoon tea. There’s pikelets, though: we’ve whipped up a batch of them!” she beamed.

    “Ooh, goody. Pikelets for two, then, May, ta.”

    “Strawberry or apricot jam?”

    “Blimey. Uh— Hang on. Murray, what sort of jam do you like?”

    “I like jam, Aunty Dorothy.”

    “Uh—yeah, but— His bloody G,R,A,N,D,M,O,T,H,E,R didn’t bake,” Dorothy explained grimly to May.

    “Jack’s ex, would this be?”

    “Yeah. Um—well, is there any—uh, H,O,N,E—”

    May got that. “No, I’m afraid not. Shall I bring some strawberry and some apricot?”

    “Ta, May.”

    Beaming, May hurried off to the back regions.

    Dorothy sagged limply on the school desk thinly disguised as a tea-table (one piece of coloured crêpe paper, slightly the worse for wear, and one plastic fruit-juice bottle containing two very hand-made crêpe-paper flowers). What would a very small boy that had already had a bag of pink coconut ice and a green plastic frog filled with bubble-bath (his choice) off the stalls, want to do after the morning tea? Given that there were no side-shows and that all one could do was eat or buy or both, at Carter’s Bay Primary School Fair.

    “Hullo, Dorothy,” said a shy voice as she sagged.

    Dorothy blinked. “Hullo, Simone. What are you doing here, shouldn’t you be grabbing the pre-Christmas customers?”

    “Yes, but Annick ’as said she can manage, and Beth is kaindly ’elping her. And I wanted to be with the kids, ya know?” she finished happily in the local vernacular.

    “Yes, of course. Sit down,” said Dorothy, not asking where the fuck Armand was, because she had a pretty fair idea.

    Simone sat, smiling. “Hullo, Meur-ray,” she said kindly.

    “Hullo, Mrs Gautier! I’ve go’ a wee frog!” he chirped, proudly displaying it.

    “Indeed you have! Look, Pierre, Meur-ray ’as a wee frog!”

    “Kermit the Frog. Bubble-bath,” ascertained Anne-Louise firmly before Pierre could open his mouth.

    “Aye, it is that,” agreed Murray.

    “I’ve got a boomerang!” said Pierre in an aggressive voice, brandishing it. One of those balsa-wood boomerangs, noted Dorothy, hand-made by Standard Three-H. Genuine felt-tip art work an’ all. The two little boys plunged into a male peer group huddle immediately.

    Anne-Louise looked superior. “It’s not a real boomerang,” she said to Dorothy.

    “No; I doubt if either of them could lift one of those, let alone throw it,” replied Dorothy drily, not bothering to temper her mode of expression: Anne-Louise Gautier was as about as innocent, in her considered opinion, as a hard-bitten exec in his forties. Sure enough, the kid sniggered meanly at this crack.

    “Does one order the morning tea through the ’ole?” asked Simone cautiously.

    “Mm? Oh; no, I’m reliably informed it’s not like last year, whatever that was like. Table service.”

    “I see: that’s good. Euan said that last year one must queue for ages.”

    “Mm, so I gather,” said Dorothy, hoping she was hiding her immense interest at the sudden introduction of this name into the conversation. “May should be back soon, she took my order a few minutes back. Mind you, I asked for pikelets, she may be whipping them up as we speak.”

    “Pikelets?”

    “Don’t say you haven’t— No, of course, your friend Sheryl’s generation doesn’t cook!” Dorothy attempted to explain.

    “Des crêpes!” cried Anne-Louise, brightening.

    “Um—sort of,” said Dorothy weakly. She watched the subsequent introduction of the Gautiers to May Swadling’s pikelets uneasily. A strange expression came over Simone’s face, so her assumption that they’d be bloody unlike anything that ever got whipped up within the shores of La belle France had been spot-on. But the kids lapped them up with shining morning faces, so they must have forgotten a fair bit. This was a relief, in a way: it meant that Murray must be well on the way to forgetting a fair bit, too.

    “What shall we do next?” asked Simone, smiling, once the pikelets had disappeared and Anne-Louise was bossily telling poor little Murray that if he couldn’t manage his Coke—seizing it in an iron fist—she’d finish it for him.

    “I was wondering that,” admitted Dorothy.

    “Eugh—there is not vairy much to buy,” she ventured.

    “Not if you don’t want giant bundles of silverbeet or Carter’s Bay’s idea of what’s suitable for a white elephant stall, no. Um—that’s junk. I don’t know what the French word is.”

    “Des puces.”

    “I thought that was a kind of insect?”

    For a moment Simone’s face was blank. Then she laughed very much and explained.

    “Wee-ell,” conceded Dorothy, scratching her head with her forefinger in the absence of a ball-point pen, “I usually spend some time brooding over the second-hand bookstalls at these does.”

    “So shall we do that?” she said, brightening.

    “Sure, if you’d like to. Will the kids be—uh—B,O,R,E,D?” said Dorothy, coughing slightly.

    “No, no! They’re ’appy just to be here!” she said with a laugh. “And they only get grizzly when they’re tired.”

    This last was pure, unadulterated Sheryl Carew. Somewhat limply Dorothy got up, took Murray’s hand, did not explain, in spite of several vows to the contrary taken in her great-nephew-less days, precisely where they were going now, and staggered in their wake…

    Gerhard tasted his tea cautiously. “Well?” said Jill meanly.

    “I don’t see how the coffee could be worse.”

    Jill explained several points very clearly, involving Brown Dust, back end of the British Empah, lowest common denominator of popular taste, and five generations of working-class immigrants.

    “Ja, very clear. I still don’t see how it could be worse.”

    “Put a pikelet in your mug,” she sighed.

    Poor Gerhard looked in a bewildered way at his polystyrene cup of tea and Gretchen and Wallis went into choked hysterics.

    “Sorry,” said Jill limply. “Face. –Eat, eat, already,” she groaned, changing vernaculars in mid-stream.

    Smiling gamely, Gerhard did so. He pronounced the pikelets not to be crêpes but no-one was surprised. Then he tried to describe the apple pancakes their grandmother had made in their youth but neither his sister nor Jill listened, and Wallis looked as blank as if the whole idea was utterly foreign to her, so he gave up, gave in almost entirely and said: “Vhy are you both peering around the room like that? Who are you looking for? Or is it just this Clara person we must find for Wallis?”

    “Uh—” Jill looked uneasily at Wallis.

    “Ve tell you!” said Gretchen impatiently. “The pink woman and the Iceman!”

    “Shit, Gretchen, ya won’t find them: she’s left him!” protested Wallis.

    “Ja, ve know. Some of the points that ve, or at least one off us, vishes to clarify are, (a)—”

    “God, she’s gone into her Aryan-analysis thing,” groaned Jill.

    Inexorably Gretchen continued: “(a) Vill he turn up at all, (b) Vill she turn up at all, (c) Who vill be with Dicky, and (d) In the case that they do turn up, vill they speak to each other?”

    “That seems to cover it,” admitted Jill feebly.

    “Um, but why? Is she a friend of yours?” she said in bewilderment.

    It was now clear to Gerhard why Jill had looked uneasily at Wallis. “No, no,” he said kindly. “When you’re old and grey, Wallis, you vill also spend half your life and energies perving on the relationships of other people whom you scarcely know.”

    Wallis went into a sniggering fit, gasping: “Goddit!”

    “Personally I am much more interested in looking at the stalls. Gretchen at one point mentioned ducks,” he said, smiling.

    “Ye-ah… Adrian did say he’d heard rumours of a poultry stall.”

    “Some fresh eggs would be nice, too,” conceded Jill.

    “Ja. Added to vhich, last year the pink woman was personing the poultry stall,” remembered Gretchen drily.

    “I made that egg remark in a spirit of perfect innocence! Not to mention in the vivid remembrance of that damned last dozen from the supermarket we had to chuck out.”

    “Were they rotten?” asked Wallis with interest as they began to fight their way out through the milling crowd of morning tea-ers.

    “No: they tasted strongly of fish. We concluded the hens had been fed on fish meal.”

    “Yuck.”

    “Yuck, indeed. If it isn’t a trade secret, may I ask where Adrian gets his eggs?”

    “You can ask, but it won’t do you any good. He’s got half a dozen local suppliers. Ole Mr Deakin’s, they’re the best, only he charges through the nose, so Adrian only uses them for rilly special dishes, like, crème caramel, or his omelettes: ya know?”

    “We must go to this restaurant!” said Gerhard eagerly.

    “We’ve booked: just be patient,” replied Jill soothingly.

    “Yeah, we’re rilly booked up, right until New Year!” beamed Wallis.

    Gerhard looked down at her short, slim, dark-haired, earnest little person, and smiled very much.

    “You can’t have her, I’m told Leigh Gore’s got dibs on her,” said Jill in his ear as Wallis cleaved her way ahead of them to the door.

    “Isn’t she sweet?”

    “You’re getting old, that’s wot,” discovered Jill. “I can remember a time when anything of the opposite sex between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five was regarded as legitimate prey.”

    “Ja,” said Gerhard vaguely, smiling. “Vhat? Oh, did Gretchen tell you about that camper girl ve met down at Roto-wat that time? She was very well developed for her age.”

    “I don’t wanna know. Come on, quick, or we’ll lose them!” They hastened in Gretchen’s and Wallis’s wake.

    Jenny Fermour looked blankly at the tallish, squarish, blondish foreign lady who’d just remarked on Catherine’s absence from the poultry stall this year. “Um—no, well, she’s got a job at The Blue Heron in Puriri, helping with the cooking. She didn’t think she could manage it, this year.”

    “Ah!” said the foreign lady. “So, do you haff ducks?”

    “What? Oh,” said Jenny limply. “Live or dead?”

    A tallish, thinnish lady with undistinguished short fawn hair at this point struggled up to the foreign lady’s elbow and said on a sort of gasp: “We do NOT want live ducks!”

    “But they’re very amiable creatures,” said the foreign lady mildly.

    “The cats would attack them,” said the other one: help, she had an awfully plummy English accent: she sounded just like Alan! Surely she couldn’t be his sister or something? Had Catherine said he had any sisters? Um… Jenny was almost sure she’d said he was an only. She was just about to explain that ducks could be kept in a run like hens, but they did like it if you had an old baby’s bath or something that you could fill with water for them to swim in, when a tall man appeared beside the two ladies. He looked very like the blondish one but—and this was very strange—where she was not good-looking at all, he was: very.

    “Our grandmother used to keep ducks,” he said, smiling.

    “Did she?” replied Jenny limply.

    “We are not going to start up an Aryan village in our back yard,” said the English lady firmly. “And just in case anybody was thinking thoughts of canard à l’orange, may I remind you that to turn a dead duck into that, you have to be able to cook? Added to which, the bloody things are smothered in layers of fat.”

    “Yes, domestic ducks are fatty,” said Jenny limply.

    “So, maybe ve just buy a chook and some eggs?” said the foreign lady peaceably.

    Jenny had been wondering if they were about to come to blows. She went all saggy at the knees. So much so that when young Wallis came up beside the fair-haired man she let her bully her into letting them have fourteen eggs for the price of a dozen because three were little banties’ eggs. Wallis then capably superintended the packing of the fourteen eggs into three half-dozen cartons: five in two, four in one; the stacking of these cartons in a plastic bag; the sealing of said bag with sticky tape which Jenny had been hoping not to use, it was her own, brought from home in case they ran out of plastic bags and had to wrap things in paper; and the insertion of the safely sealed package into a second plastic bag, which she then let the foreign man carry.

    Mitsuko Takagaki arrived, looking flustered, just as they were departing. “Who were ur-they, Jen-nee?”

    “Um—dunno. Foreigners,” said Jenny limply.

    “Ah. They ur-buy-ah much?”

    “A dozen eggs and a chook,” said Jenny limply.

    “Ah, werr-ah, better than-ah nothing, eh?” she said happily. “I am-ah sor-ree I am so rate, Jen-nee: we could no’ find a park.”

    “So you managed to get a lift?” said Jenny. She knew Akiko’s car was in dock.

    “Sor-rut of,” replied Mitsuko, scowling, as she came behind the stall. “Kevin-ah has promise’ to pick us up, but I say to ur-him, Your blue ur-tur-ruck, it no-ah good for Mrs Ad-uh-ler!”

    “Heck, no," agreed Jenny.

    “Then I ring up-ah Uncle Inoue, because I know Janet-ah has to ur-reave home-ear-lee.”

    “Yes, she’s on the vege stall. So, um, your uncle dropped you off, did he?” she said weakly.

    “Yes.” Briskly Mitsuko inspected Jenny’s cash box. “Hah! You done pret-tee good, eh?”

    “Not bad. Mind you, last year—” Jenny told Mitsuko about the lady that had bought four dressed ducks. Omitting to explain it had been Lady Carrano because Catherine had never mentioned that it was.

    “Nev-ah mind-ah, I told-ah Uncle Inoue he must ur-buy up ur-lots, because he is ur-ver-ree rich!” she said with a giggle.

    Jenny swallowed, and smiled weakly. “Did he mind?

    “Mind-ah? Heck, no! He no’ mind-ah!”

    “Um—so, where is he?” she said feebly.

    “He stay with Mrs Ad-uh-ler, of course. They’re gonna have a bit of a rook ah-round, then a nice-ah sit-ah-down an’ a cuppah.”

    What with the mixture of Japanese English with the expressions she must have picked up from old Mrs A., Jenny could only smile weakly at her. Not to mention, what with the mental picture of that up-market little Mr Takagaki escorting old Mrs A. round Carter’s Bay Primary School Fair!

    Clara Macdonald had come to the fair under the mistaken impression that it was going to be something like a village fête in Grandma Thwaites’s local village. She wandered round for a long time in a sort of groggy ecstasy. It was very, very hard to sum up the ambience of Carter’s Bay Primary School Fair, but if she’d had to, she’d have plumped for “grotty.” Nothing else even came close. It was deliriously and deliciously grotty. The white elephant stall had to be seen to be believed: for one thing, Clara would have taken her dying oath that, although everything on it was undoubtedly junk, not a thing was as old as she was. It was manned by a cheery-looking young fellow with a shock of black curls and an earring. And a pale pink tee-shirt that said, in cherry-pink lettering: “I love English”. Not a heart: the word “love”. After a moment Clara got the point, and smiled.

    “Can I help you with that plastic bread bin?” he said.

    “Is that what it is!”

    “Well, it would be if it still had its lid. It’s still good, though.”

    “Yes, it would make a cosy little home for a hamster,” replied Clara cordially.

    Grinning, he said: “It would, only we’re not allowed to import them, don’t ask me why: probably give the sheep foot an’ mouth. Hi, I’m Roger Dunne; Standard Four-D’s daily victim.”

    “Hullo. Clara Macdonald,” said Clara, allowing her hand to be gripped too hard.

    “Local, are you?” said Roger Dunne.

    “More or less. I’m new here. Staying with a cousin, at the moment. I’ve got a job at Sir George Grey. I do like your tee-shirt,” she added, smiling.

    “There, see!” he cried. “I told Shane we shoulda had a tee-shirt printing stall!”

    “Oh, yes: that would have gone down a treat!” said Clara, laughing. “They had one one year at the fête in my grandmother’s village: it was very popular.”

    “What did they print?” asked Roger Dunne with friendly interest.

    “They had two choices. One was a head. I’m not sure whose, I think it was a pop singer.”

    “Male or female?”

    “I couldn’t tell,” said Clara simply.

    Grinning, Roger Dunne said: “I’m pretty sure we’d be able to reach that standard, even at Carter’s Bay. Go on.”

    “Well, the other choice was a phrase. ‘I heart’,” said Clara with a twinkle in her eye, “and then whatever word you liked.”

    “Very average!” he said with a laugh. “I’ll really push it, next year; I think we could make a bomb out of it. Trouble is, tee-shirt printing requires an initial capital outlay on the— Sean Donoghue, if you want that plastic dongy-knocker, buy it,” he said sternly. “If you don’t, stop fingering it.” Looking wistful, Sean Donoghue stopped fingering it, and drifted off. “–On the tee-shirts,” finished Roger Dunne, unmoved.

    “Um—yes! Of course!” gasped Clara. “What is that thing?”

    Roger Dunne picked it up. “A genuine plastic dongy-knocker or doo-hickey.”

    Clara goggled at it.

    “Mm…” he said thoughtfully. “I’d say it was part of something else.”

    Clara broke down in frightful giggles.

    “This is Carter’s Bay!” he said cheerfully. “Mind you, we did have a bit of decent junk: donated by the types from Kingfisher Bay that thought they were doing their bit. Only it all went by nine-forty.”

    “What time did you open?” returned Clara suspiciously.

    “Nine-thirty, of course.”

    Clara broke down in giggles again.

    “Fancy an empty Miss Piggy?” he said, proffering it.

    “Empty?” said Clara limply.

    Roger Dunne unscrewed its head busily, and sniffed hard. “Strewth!” he gasped. “Either triple-strength formaldehyde or bubble-bath,” he explained to Clara.

    “If you like Miss Piggy, I suppose it’s quite nice,” she said dubiously.

    “Well, yes, but all the local kids are already in proud possession of the things: a couple of the mums have taken up the Avon Lady thing, ya see. I did manage to flog off a Kermit the Frog to an unsuspecting aunty. Mind you, it was a bargain, almost three-quarters full.”

    “One of my cousins has got a little girl, but she’s got everything that opens and shuts. Um—and the other cousin’s daughter is only tiny… No, I tell you what, I will get it for her, if it’s all wrong her parents can chuck it away!”

    “That’s the spirit!” To Clara’s horror Roger Dunne than called out at the top of his considerable lungs: “How much am I bid for this lovely empty Miss Piggy? Will the lady in the front start the bidding for us? Do I hear ten dollars?”

    He sounded quite professional; and what with this and the shouting Clara was too stunned to say anything at all.

    “Don’t let him con you, dear,” said a comfortable voice from behind her.

    Jumping, Clara gasped: “No!”

    A very large, smiling, elderly woman in a terrifically bright turquoise tracksuit in shiny light-weight space-age material had shouldered her way to the front row of the crowd—mainly little boys—round the white elephant stall. “That’s Roger Dunne, dear, his father’s Dunne’s the auctioneers, in town,” she explained.

    “I see!” gasped Clara.

    “Ten cents!” called the elderly woman with a chuckle in her voice.

    “Ten cents I am bid: thank you, Davina!” cried Roger Dunne. “Come on, ladies and gents, any advance on ten cents for this beautiful Miss Piggy?”

    Truth to tell, Clara couldn’t remember how much New Zealand money was. But if ten cents was anything like ten P, she supposed that was a fair price for an empty plastic Miss Piggy. And would a dollar be like a pound? She floundered, but fortunately the large woman hissed: “Offer fifteen, dear!”

    “Fifteen cents!” called Clara timidly.

    “Fifteen cents from the English rose in the front row!” roared Roger Dunne cheerfully.

    Clara Macdonald was not as shy as her cousins Beth Martin and Michaela Winkelmann, but at this intensely personal remark, fortissimo, she experienced a strong desire to sink right into the muddy turf she was standing on. She could feel the elderly woman beside her shaking with fat chuckles; oh, dear! That was obviously the desired reaction: why couldn’t she be like everybody else?

    “Twenty cents,” said a quiet English baritone voice from somewhere in the background.

    “Thank you, sir! That’s more like it! Twenty cents from the gent with Mrs Adler!” cried Roger Dunne. “Come on, ladies and gentlemen: a chance like this doesn’t come twice in a lifetime!”

    “He’s his father to the life!” hissed Clara’s neighbour, shaking.

    “Twenty-five!” called a lady from somewhere behind them, with a laugh.

    “Twenty-five cents from the glamorous Susan Peabody, mother of Annette and Dean!” cried Roger Dunne. Clara would have classed this as grossly sexist, frankly, but judging by the shriek and the burst of giggles from behind them, Mrs Peabody didn’t see it that way.

    “Thirty!” cried the large lady at Clara’s elbow.

    “Fifty cents,” said the quiet baritone.

    “Fifty cents! Fifty cents I am bid: thank you, sir! Any advance on fifty cents? Come on, ladies and gentlemen, a charming empty Miss Piggy in genuine Nineties plastic, courtesy of your local Avon Lady and the Muppets in person!” he cried.

    “Not person,” murmured Clara under her breath. She’d have expected better from someone with “I love English” on his tee-shirt.

    “Do you want it, dear?” hissed the elderly lady.

    “Yes, what should—”

    “Come a-long, ladies and gentlemen! Do I have to let this wonderful multi-coloured, 3-D Miss Piggy go at fifty cents?” cried Roger Dunne.

    “Fifty-ONE!” shouted a high young voice, ending with a giggle.

    “Increments of five cents or more, if you please, ladies and gentlemen! –If you bid, you buy, Carol Fairfax,” he noted terribly. There came the sound of—presumably—Carol Fairfax collapsing in giggles. “Come along, ladies and—”

    “What should I bid?” hissed Clara frantically.

    “Fifty-five, dear, it isn’t worth more,” murmured her neighbour.

    “Fifty-five!” squeaked Clara, turning very pink.

    “Fifty-five from our charming New Chum-ess! Going at fifty-five cents! At fifty five cents for the second time, ladies and gentlemen! At fifty-five—” Clara’s neighbour was now a red-faced, shaking jelly. Clara herself managed only a tremulous smile.

    “For the last time at fifty cents: this magnificent example of the Muppet-maker’s art—”

    “Fifty dollars,” said the quiet English baritone, sounding very dry and unimpressed.

    Roger Dunne gulped, and stopped.

    “Go on: fifty dollars, he said!” squeaked a cheeky little voice from well back in the crowd.

    “Watch it: I almost saw who that was,” said Roger Dunne on a distinctly weak note.

    “Fifty dollars,” repeated the baritone.

    “Go on, Rog: it’s for a good cause!” shouted a man’s voice.

    “Yeah. Okay, then. Fifty dollars from the gent with Mrs Adler for this outstanding plastic Miss Piggy! Going once, going twice— Oy, haven’t any of you philanthropists got fifty-five dollars to chuck away on a plastic Miss Piggy? No, all right, then. Going at fifty dollars once; going twice; sold to the gent with Mrs Adler for fifty dollars and may all your troubles be little ones!” said Roger Dunne, mopping his brow.

    There was general applause and laughter, and the male voice that had urged him to accept the bid of fifty dollars for the good cause cried: “Come on, Rog, auction something else!”

    “There’s a broken plastic brush with fuzzy pink bristles!” called a hopeful voice, also male.

    Various voices then joined in with ever more helpful suggestions. Clara smiled shakily at the large elderly woman.

    “Oh, dear; did you want it for a kiddy, dear?” she said, mopping her eyes.

    “Well, not really. I did think my cousin’s little girl might like it. She’s too little to mind if it hasn’t got bubble-bath in it.”

    “Michaela’s wee Grace, would that be?” she beamed.

    “Yes,” said Clara limply. She did realise, now that the stress of being singled out in front of a crowd as an English rose and a New Chum-ess was over, not to mention the stress of having to bid, that she’d met this lady before. But she couldn’t for the life of her remember where. Or what her name was.

    “We met at rehearsal, dear. I’m Davina Parkinson,” she said, obviously reading her mind.

    “Oh, yes; of course,” said Clara limply.

    “I wonder who on earth that was, that bought it?” she said, twisting to tiptoe and peer.

    “It was me,” said a meek voice. Clara goggled as a neat middle-aged Japanese gentleman appeared at Mrs Parkinson’s large elbow. “I thought it was a good cause. But possibly a Miss Piggy is not macho enough for my grandson: would you care to keep it?” he said courteously to Clara.

    “Y— N— But it’s yours!” she gasped.

    Beaming, Mrs Parkinson said: “It’s Mr Takagaki, isn’t it? Yes, of course, I know your nieces quite well!” she beamed as he bowed and smiled.

    “Truly, I only bought it in order to support the fair,” he said to Clara. “Please have it.”

    “Wee Grace hasn’t got much,” noted Mrs Parkinson.

    “N—um—well, thank you very much,” said Clara limply as Mr Takagaki solemnly held out the plastic Miss Piggy.

    “Of course, if you’d like a Kermit the Frog for your wee grandson, Mr Takagaki, I could get a friend of mine to put your daughter-in-law on her list,” said Mrs Parkinson helpfully.

    “Ah—list?” he said, sounding Japanese for the very first time.

    “Yes: you can’t buy them retail, you see: only from an Avon Lady.”

    Clara by now had had time to take in the elegant leisure wear that Mr Takagaki apparently deemed suitable for a deliciously grotty school fair at the back end of the southern hemisphere: a conservative black tracksuit, sparkling white, very plain sneakers, very white socks of the heavy pure cotton variety, a spotless white tee-shirt which looked as if it had never been worn before, and neatly tucked into the neck of this, a wisp of a black and white silk scarf. Or possibly cravat: such a mere tasteful wisp was visible that it was impossible to say which it was. Oh, God, she thought numbly.

    “You know: she comes round to your house; a bit like a Tupperware party!” explained Mrs Parkinson helpfully.

    Oh, God, thought Clara.

    But it was all right: he smiled and said: “I see! Yes, I think Hilary would care to be on your friend’s list: may I give you her address?”

    Clear watched the subsequent transaction numbly. He produced a card and wrote his daughter-in-law’s name, address and phone number on the back of it; as he did so, a flat gold watch on a black crocodile strap became visible at his wrist: there was absolutely no doubt at all that it would have cost more than Clara Macdonald earned in six months. The transaction over, he bowed very slightly: rather as if, and Clara was now not in very much doubt, he was doing it because he realised the company expected it of him; collected up the elderly lady whom he was escorting; and departed.

    “I expect you’re used to Japanese men, dear,” said the elderly Mrs Parkinson comfortably.

    “Yes.” Clara looked limply at her Miss Piggy, past wondering how the woman knew.

    “Shall we have some morning tea?” she added brightly.

    “Uh—yes. I’d like that, Mrs Parkinson.”

    “Call me Davina, dear!”

    Clara was towed off inexorably to the tea tent—lumpy, ugly school building, actually, she discovered. As she towed her, Mrs Parkinson told her a lot, very rapidly, and with an air of optimistic and encouraging approval about her which managed to be at the same time completely meaningful and completely artless, about Mr Takagaki’s widowered state and present employment. Even though Clara was of course used to this sort of thing from her mother and both of her grandmothers she only managed to look at her limply.

    “Hullo,” said Barry gloomily.

    Dorothy jumped: the second-hand bookstall was being held in classroom J3 and up until this instant she, Simone, the three kids and a thin-faced girl who was presumably a teacher had had it all to themselves. “Oh—hullo, Barry; hullo, Avon,” she said feebly.

    Anne-Louise immediately lodged a demand to hold Fiorella. As Fiorella was having an independent fit this didn’t go down too well and once that had been resolved, not quietly, and Fiorella was standing on her own two small feet with her fist gripped in Anne-Louise’s iron one, Dorothy explained limply and redundantly: “We’re just looking at the books.”

    “And comics,” said Anne-Louise immediately.

    “Yeah,” Barry agreed. “Most of them are on the magazines stall, though. –Eh? Sorry,” he said limply as Dorothy and Simone turned identical amazed glares on him.

    “YES! We go there next, okay?” cried Simone above the hubbub.

    “Sorry,” said Barry sheepishly as the hubbub died down. “Uh—anyway, ya found anything ya fancy?”

    “There’s a dog-eared copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd minus its last page,” offered Dorothy.

    “Par for the course,” he acknowledged.

    “Lots of Mills and Boons,” ascertained Avon.

    “They have a vairy limited vocabulary: it’s fascinating,” said Simone.

    “Eh?” replied Avon blankly.

    When she had earlier voiced this thought, Dorothy had perfectly understood and in fact replied in kind: so poor Simone went very red and made a confused noise in reply.

    “You’ve said yourself a million times they’re dumb,” said Barry in a bored tone to his little sister. He picked up a large, nicely bound thing that looked like a real book. “Oh.” He put it down again.

    “Reader’s Digest Condensed? Yes,” said Dorothy with a sigh, “we can now tell them a mile off, they’ve all got that binding, eh, Simone?”

    “Yes, indeed,” agreed Simone gratefully.

    “Hang on, here’s a real book!” he said hopefully. There was a short silence. “Cripes, how old is this?” he croaked, flipping through the chemistry textbook dazedly.

    “Um—that’s one of a pile that old Mr Deakin gave us,” contributed the teacher, clearing her throat and trying to smile.

    “It would be,” said Barry numbly.

    “One could probably deduce a very great deal about the relative standards of education in this country by an examination of successive generations of old textbooks,” noted Dorothy thoughtfully.

    “This one here certainly hasn’t got a coloured picture to its name. Actually it hasn’t even got a picture,” noted Barry drily.

    “Yeah.” They looked at each other and grinned.

    “Didn’t do him all that much good, though, did it?” he said cheerfully, putting it back on top of a heap of dog-eared Mills and Boons. “Don’t think you’re gonna find any first editions, today.”

    “No!” agreed Simone with a giggle.

    “Anything readable, would do,” said Dorothy heavily.

    “Here’s a buik, Aunty Dorothy!” squeaked Murray.

    Dorothy took it in a palsied hand. It looked like a book, all right. Hardback. Navy-blue. It rang strange bells. Not in the direction of her long-past degree and those genuine navy-blue OUP volumes she’d been forced to purchase at grossly inflated prices from the University Second-hand Book Stall or, worse, Whitcombe’s downtown, no… Even earlier. “It’s an Approach to Latin,” she said very, very faintly.

    “Shit, we had that!” said Barry.

    “That proves you’re older than I thunk, Barry,” said Dorothy limply. “My year was the first or second year that had these things: the Play-Way system had reached the secondary schools by then, ya see… Hic est agricola,” she said limply, showing them the picture, admittedly not coloured, of a Roman farmer. Not togatus, no.

    “Words to that effect,” agreed Barry, shaking slightly.

    “Where did it come from?” she croaked, peering at the flyleaf.

    “Well?” said Barry.

    “Takapuna Grammar School, apparently,” replied Dorothy limply.

    Barry collapsed in sniggers.

    “Is it a guid buik, Aunty Dorothy?” cried Murray anxiously.

    Dorothy was about to reply with the truth. She looked at his round little face and gulped. “Yes, lovely. It’s just like an old book I had when I was—um—a bit older than you. A couple of years older than Anne-Louise is. I’ll buy it, shall I?”

    Murray beamed. Limply Dorothy bought the Approach To Latin. Fifty cents. She gave the thin-faced girl a dollar and told her to keep the change.

    Barry had found a Wilbur Smith—paperback, of course: everything was, except the old textbooks and the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. He looked through it dubiously.

    “It is appropriate to your age and gender,” noted Dorothy.

    “Yeah, but do I wanna risk stultifying me mind? Oh, what the Hell: it can’t be worse than those bloody re-runs of The Two Ronnies, I’ll read it while they’re on.” He gave the thin-faced girl a dollar and told her to keep the change.

    After that, since there was clearly nothing worth reading here, they let the kids drag them off to the magazines stall to buy piles of dog-eared comics. Not worth reading either, true. But at least enjoyable.

    “I thought males liked The Two Ronnies,” said Dorothy idly as they let the kids rip.

    Barry was flipping through a Superman with a dubious expression on his face. “Mm? –I seem to remember the colour in these things was a lot better than this.”

    “Yeah, it’s something to do with computer generation, in both senses of the word. Well?”

    He choked slightly but admitted: “I can’t stand the little Ronnie, I dunno if it’s sex-linked or not, but he gives me the creeps. I like the big Ronnie, I taped most of Open All Hours.”

    “I liked that, too. Not sentimental,” said Dorothy with a little smile.

    “Not bloody bathetic like every single product of the Hollywood series-maker’s art, ya mean,” he said grimly, chucking the smudgily-coloured Superman back on its pile. Pierre leapt on it immediately.

    “Mm.” Dorothy looked at him sideways and wondered very much why he didn’t get on a lot better with Sol Winkelmann than he did, and why he hadn’t beaten a path to her erstwhile library every late night and— Things like that. Not daring to voice any of them. Eventually she said: “What do you like to read, Barry?”

    There was a short silence.

    “Forget I asked,” said Dorothy limply.

    “No, it’s all right. I don’t go much on novels. I quite like Dickens. Um—well, talking of Approaches to Latin, I’m working my way through Gibbon’s Decline and Fall at the moment.”

    Dorothy gulped. “Where from?” she croaked.

    “There is still a decent collection in the public library in town, if ya can get them to admit it! Um, sorry. Um, the university library’s good, too. Not all their really old stuff’s on the bloody computer, mind you. I’m borrowing it from them, volume by volume. I finally got fed up and went along and said I was a graduate and a taxpayer and couldn’t I bloody well join?” he said, reddening. “Whereupon it was gently made clear to me that that was my right as a graduate and that—well, not that they sign up readers every other day. But that the mechanism does exist for doing so. I’d get in there more often, only it’s a Helluva drive, and nowhere within coo-ee to park when you get there.”

    “Mm. I belong, too. It was easier for me, of course, I’m familiar with the in and outs of the library world. –Sol Winkelmann’s a reader, you ought to ask him if you can take a look at his books.”

    “No, I oughtn’t. Well, I know he’s a reader but he’s a bloody hard case, too. And I know he’s got a lot of books, only I think he’s more into novels and philosophy.”

    “Yes. With the occasional foray into psychology.”

    “Not my bag,” said Barry, shrugging.

    “Mm.” Dorothy thought of the serried ranks of uncommunicative spines in the university library, all ranged rigidly in Dewey Decimal order, and didn’t work up the guts to ask him if he was finding what he wanted there.

    After a while he said: “Most people that read, or call themselves readers, they seem to mean novels.”

    Not in all circles, they didn’t. Dorothy didn’t correct him: she knew precisely what he meant.

    After quite a lot longer he said: “Baranski’s got some interesting books.”

    Dorothy leapt a foot. “Has he?” she said limply.

    “Yeah. He said they took ages to get here: he made the mistake of shipping them out. I was doing a bit of building work for him when he was unpacking them: I gave him a hand to get some of them on his shelves. The scientific stuff was beyond me. But he’s got quite a lot of history and stuff. I thought they were interesting.”

    Dorothy nodded numbly. Barry Goode would have been about the last man in Carter’s Bay that she’d have picked to have anything—anything—in common with Thomas the Tank Engine! Well, showed you what going round with your mind closed to all but the crassest clichés of local social intercourse did for ya, didn’t it? After a moment she said, very cautiously indeed: “I don’t know whether he’s the sort of person that lends his books.”

    Barry smiled. “You mean there’s weirdoes on the face of the earth besides me that would sooner have a knife in the chest than lend another human being a book of theirs?”

    “He’s rilly weird about his stupid ole books,” confirmed Avon vaguely, coming up to them with a fistful of comics. “Hey, Dorothy, do ya reckon Murray can have these Spider-Mans?”

    “Er—how violent and—” She got a look at Murray’s face. “Go on, he’s got to be exposed to the norms of popular culture at some time,” she groaned.

    Barry went into a choking fit as Avon, looking mildly puzzled, agreed: “Righto, then. Your Aunty Dorothy says you can have them, Murray!”

    “There’s thee and me,” she admitted when he was blowing his nose. “And you’re right: a knife in the chest is precisely and exactly what lending a single one of my precious dog-eared volumes feels like!”

    Barry tucked his handkerchief away, grinning. “Novels, mostly, these’d be, would they?”

    “Yeah,” said Dorothy, also grinning.

    Simone had been endeavouring to superintend her children; without very much success in the face of Anne-Louise’s determination that she, Anne-Louise, was perfectly capable of choosing comics for herself. She came up to them, smiling, in time to overhear this last exchange. “That is vairy much the Anglo-Saxon tradition, I think,” she said tranquilly.

    “Yeah, isn’t it?” admitted Barry.

    “In France, it was vairy pleasant to be able to look at the new books. When we lived in Paris I bought quite a lot of non-fiction, but when we moved to a provincial city, I found that the bookshops were not so good.”

    “I won’t ask you what you think of the local ones, then,” said Dorothy drily.

    “No. We have two papers sent out by airmail, and at least one can read the reviews. Occasionally I write to buy a book, you know? But Armand says it’s not a—eugh—a justifiable expense? That is the expression?”

    “That’d be the expression,” agreed Dorothy drily.

    “The university library in town’s not bad,” offered Barry meekly.

    While Dorothy’s jaw was still sagging, Simone began to interrogate him eagerly. Finally deciding that it was unlikely they bought very much of the new non-English-language non-fiction, but she would go in and take a look.

    “So is Armand a reader, too?” said Dorothy idly as they queued to purchase giant bundles of comics.

    “Non, non. Just for his profession, you know? But he likes to keep up with current events, that is why he has the papers sent airmail.”

    “Gotcha. He certainly wouldn’t be able to keep up with current events by reading our local newspapers,” noted Dorothy drily.

    Simone smiled weakly. “No. –H’excuse me. Anne-Louise! What deed I say? You may each ’ave two beundles, and you may not ’ave those blue ones!”

    “Blue?” said Barry numbly in Dorothy’s ear.

    “Literally,” she said with a smile.

    “Oh,” he said sagging. “Yeah.”

    “Why is extreme and unpleasant violence so acceptable a mental dish for the unformed mind,” wondered Dorothy, idly scanning a page full of fists and ZAPs and POW-EEs and similar, “while sex of any kind is a no-no?”

    “Don’t ask me. I’ve noticed that it is, though.”

    “Yeah. You wanna come and join us for lunch?” said Dorothy amiably.

    Barry grinned. “Why not?”

    To Clara’s relief—not that she wasn’t a pleasant woman, but the hints about Mr Takagaki were a bit much from someone she barely knew—Davina Parkinson went home after the elevenses, explaining that she had to get her hubby’s lunch. Clara sagged all over her little table with its grotty little piece of bright orange crêpe paper. “‘Morning tea’,” she said firmly to herself.

    “Yeah. Have you had any? –Hullo, Clara,” said a hoarse young voice in the sort of accent to which Clara was accustomed.

    “Oh—hullo,” she said smiling, to a blushing boy of perhaps eighteen. “You were at the rehearsal of The Mikado, weren’t you?”

    “Yes. Martin Wolfe,” he explained.

    “Mm.” Clara eyed his chef’s uniform uncertainly.

    “I was directing people to the parking lot, but the flow’s dried up. I think most people are here now. I thought I’d grab some elevenses—morning tea, I mean!” he said with a laugh, “and then nip back and relieve my friend, Sim: he’s taking the money at the parking lot.”

    “I see. Well, I can recommend the pikelets and the strawberry jam, it’s home-made.”

    “Great. Can I get you anything?”

    “No, I’m full!” admitted Clara with a laugh. “And you don’t have to queue, it’s table service.”

    Martin sat down opposite her, smiling. “I’d heard a rumour to that effect. Is it working?”

    “Er—what do you mean?”

    Martin explained rapidly. Clara nodded limply and allowed that people didn’t seem to be waiting an undue time for their elevenses—morning teas. Meanwhile wondering somewhat numbly what she was doing here. Well, meeting friendly elderly women and clumsy, well-meaning teenage boys. Mother would probably say it was typical of her. …Were there any attractive, available men of an appropriate age in Carter’s Bay? So far the answer seemed to be in the negative. Well: the too-hearty, insensitive, hand-crushing Roger Dunne? The sophisticated, rich, and definitely not young Mr Takagaki, whom, good-looking though he was, she simply did not fancy? Oh, dear.

    Jill choked violently and jabbed Gerhard, who happened to be nearest, in the side with a needle-sharp elbow. “Ow!” he gasped.

    “The Iceman!” she hissed.

    “Oh, ja. He looks qvite human.”

    “You mean he’s not wearing baggy tracksuit pants and a washed-out tee-shirt with the remains of an ad for a football team on it like ninety-nine percent of them?” she replied evilly.

    “Oh, some off them are wearing baggy jeans vith the tee-shirt, Jill,” replied Gerhard politely. He himself was in extremely neat, nay, designer, jeans, and one of those monogrammed, short-sleeved knit shirts that Jill associated vaguely with Bob Charles, possibly because all the male golfers at the course she patronised wore them. Or possibly because they were sold here under the name of Bob Charles shirts. So was the Iceman.

    Not unnaturally Gretchen’s attention had been attracted by all the hissing. “There he iss,” she spotted in relief. “By himself: can ve go now?”

    “Don’t be a fool. Where’s the pink woman and the little boy?” hissed Jill.

    “Dicky’s just over there,” said Wallis helpfully.

    Five million little boys were over there: it was the candy-floss stall. Jill peered. After some time a small, grimy, sticky little boy emerged from the scrum, clutching a giant handful of pink fluff, and went up to the Iceman. They watched keenly.

    “That vas very exciting,” decided Gretchen drily as the Iceman and the little boy strolled on slowly to the next stall, apparently debated the wisdom of buying a sausage at this juncture, apparently decided in the negative, and strolled on again.

    “Mrs Burchett’s not with them,” said Wallis helpfully.

    “Thank you, Wallis!” gasped Gerhard, suddenly breaking down in helpless splutters. “Vhat do we do—now?” he gasped, blowing his nose and wiping his eyes. “Follow them?”

    “Why not?” retorted Jill, tight-lipped.

    “Jill, this iss becoming a mania,” warned Gretchen.

    “If I’m aware of it, can it be a mania?” she said grimly.

    “Yes,” they all said definitely.

    “Shut up: I’m going,” she snarled. Dumping her bag of sweetcorn on the startled Gerhard, she forged off in the Iceman’s wake.

    They looked limply at one another.

    “Should we go with her?” said Gerhard weakly.

    “No,” said Gretchen firmly. “If the pink woman does turn up, she vill not be pleased, because they vill not get together. And since she isn’t sure they are right for each other, in the unlikely event they do get together, she vill not be pleased, either.”

    He looked at her numbly. “Under vhat scenario would she be pleased?”

    “Only if the bloody man had neffer come out here and neffer met the woman. I’d say, let’s go home, but she’s driving us.”

    “Oh—ja,” he said limply.

    “Um—it’s nilly lunchtime. Well, I think they’re opening the hangi soon,” said Wallis kindly. “Shall we go over to the field? We could look for the coconut shy, too.”

    “Ja, okay. Ve sit down on the field along vith five thousand other lunchers: possibly she vill spot us there,” decided Gretchen resignedly.

    Slowly they began to make their way amongst the press of Carter’s Bay Primary School Fair attendees in the direction in which Wallis thought the field was. No-one argued with her: Gerhard because he was quite happy to drift along anywhere in dear little Wallis’s company and Gretchen because (a) she didn’t like hangi food and didn’t care if they missed out on it entirely and (b) she didn’t care if they didn’t catch up with Jill for some considerable time.

    It perhaps would not have gladdened Jill’s heart to know that Catherine wasn’t coming to the fair after all and that she and Alan had already met this morning. The encounter had gone like this:

    Alan (having knocked on her motel unit door): “Hullo, Catherine. Are you ready?”

    Catherine (glaring defiantly): “Dicky is, I’m not coming: we’ve got a party of twenty-six booked in for a Christmas lunch and I promised Molly I’d help with the preparations.”

    Alan (tight-lipped): “Very well, then. –Hullo, Dicky. Ready?”

    And that had been that.

    Over the past weeks Alan had tried four times to persuade Catherine into perceiving him not as a monster but as a fallible human being. It hadn’t worked. The only results had been, twice, a burst of tears and hands over the ears; once, a burst of tears and a slammed door; and once, a phone receiver slammed down in his ear. He’d managed to see a lot of Dicky, what with driving him to and from school and quite often taking him for dinner at The Tavern or McDonald’s, but on due consideration hadn’t pumped the little boy about Catherine’s frame of mind: it was doubtless all far too traumatic for the poor little scrap without adding a further burden to it. Dicky had volunteered, once, that Catherine missed Buttercup, Daisy and Biggles; once, that Mum said the motel unit was “squinty”; once, that she’d been bawling “the other day”; and once that Mr Collingwood was paying her lots of money for doing work for him. Alan had quietly verified that this last was not strictly accurate: the Collingwoods were letting her use a unit, not Unit Seven any more, but one of the smaller ones, in return for her help in the kitchen, and Mike in addition was paying her twenty dollars a week. Alan had grimly vetoed this last: it was the motel’s busy season and he was pretty sure they could have let the damned unit three times over; and was now himself paying Mike the twenty dollars which Mike handed on to Catherine.

    According to Mike Catherine hadn’t discussed the problem of Dicky’s holidays with either himself or Molly. Alan was quietly determined that the little boy was going to come home to Toetoe Bay Farm for the Christmas holiday. He wasn’t sure how he’d manage it, since he himself would have to be back at work early in January; but he was determined it would happen.

    Also during this period Noelle had rung Alan three times: once to earbash him on her mother’s behalf, though apparently not solicited to do so; once to earbash him about Dicky’s schooling and psychological well-being; and once, to Alan’s utter and complete astonishment, almost in tears, to ask him couldn’t he possibly get back together with Mum because it was making her (Catherine) all hard and horrible and she (Noelle) was positive she was miserable.

    Saskia had also rung Alan, apparently to tell him what a bloody fool he was; to remind him that her sister was a hopeless drip and just to keep on at her, she’d give in, in the end; and to ask him what he thought Dicky needed for Christmas, would a bike be all right?

    “It would. I’m getting him one,” Alan had replied grimly.

    “Oh. Damn. Um—well, what, then?”

    “Er… Look, he really needs some decent clothes. She doesn’t seem to have much idea.”

    Rapidly assuring him that she knew some people with kids that age and to leave it all to her, Saskia had checked Dicky’s age with him (Alan had blinked, the bloody woman was, after all, his biological mother), checked that Alan thought he was a normal size for his age, and rung off. Alan had tottered off and poured himself a whisky.

    He wasn’t despairing about Catherine, by any means; but at times, particularly late in the evenings when there was nothing to do but go to bed and hope that tomorrow wouldn’t be as bloody as today, a dull sort of leaden feeling did creep over him. Most problems he had hitherto encountered had proven capable of solution by rational means. When he had applied rational means and these had failed—the long-forgotten episode of Wendy Briggs being a case in point, or the rather more recent episode of that Jacqui who had wanted a house in the Cotswolds and marriage—Alan hadn’t really cared: he had not been sufficiently emotionally involved himself to care. Now he was finding it was different. Quite different. He didn’t feel that he was even thinking clearly: and he couldn’t see what else to do! Well—just keep on trying to wear her down, water dripping on a stone? God.

    He let Dicky tug him around Carter’s Bay Primary School Fair, not really aware of what he was seeing, but remaining alert enough to monitor Dicky’s calorie intake. And to say: “God, do we have to?” when Dicky announced they were opening the hangi now.

    “Yeah! You liked it last year, Alan! Come on!”

    Alan let himself be towed off to the field.

    “Hullo, there.” Thomas subsided heavily beside them on the grass and peered at their paper plates. “What’ve you got?”

    “Er… What have we got, Dicky?” said Alan weakly.

    “Al-lun! We got chicken an’ lamb an’ pork, see?” he said eagerly. “An’ pumpkin an’ kumara an’ potatoes an’ stuff,” he added, less eagerly.

    “Ipomoea,” discerned Thomas.

    Alan bit his lip: the whole scene at last year’s bloody school fair came back to him with vivid clarity. The dumb little dark girl and her enchanting dark-haired infant, and the serious young woman who had known all about Ipomoea but been too nice to say so…

    “I’ve got lamb and chicken and cabbage, mainly,” Thomas was explaining to Dicky.

    “The cabbage’s not for eating!” he retorted scornfully.

    “Er—oh. Isn’t it?”

    “No. God knows what they used before the European invasion,” said Alan, trying to pull himself together. “In more tropic climes it would be banana leaves, I think. They keep the steam in, I think is the story, Thomas.”

    “I see. –This lamb’s extraordinarily tender,” he admitted dazedly.

    “Mm. I’m sorry; do you know Dicky Burchett? Dicky, this is Dr Baranski.”

    “Thomas,” said Thomas mildly. “I’ve seen you round.”

    “I’ve seen you at Alan’s work!”

    “Yes. –Try a bit of sausage.”

    “Is that from the hangi?” said Dicky suspiciously.

    “No, barbecued.”

    “Oh. Ta,” he said in relief, taking it.

    Thomas and Dicky exchanged views on the food available at the Carter’s Bay Primary School Fair, apparently entirely on the same wave-length. Alan stared blankly out across the field, now dotted with clumps of lunchers, and wished, not to put too fine a point on it, that he was dead.

    “Hullo!” said Janet breathlessly, just as Dorothy’s lot had found a likely-looking patch of grass and sunk onto it, limply in the case of the adults.

    “Hullo, again,” agreed Dorothy. “Escaped from the veges?”

    “Yes, Akiko’s looking after them for a bit.”

    “Sit, then. Barry will assume his male rôle and get you something from the hangi,” said Dorothy smoothly.

    “You don’t have to!” gasped Janet, going scarlet.

    Barry got up. “Yeah, all right, I’ll get you all some.”

    “There are too many of us!” protested Simone, starting to get up.

    “No, well, Pierre and Murray can come with me and give me a hand. –Man’s work,” he said solemnly.

    Simone gave a startled giggle, but looked at him uncertainly.

    “Women’s Lib or not, nothing’d get me into that scrum,” noted Dorothy.

    Simone and Janet looked uneasily at the huge crowd, all sexes and sizes, around the steaming hole in the playing field.

    “Bullshit,” said Avon sturdily, getting up again.

    “Look, siddown, ya told me yaself that last year Kincaid got you all stuff from the hangi and you were only too glad to let him!” said her brother loudly.

    “Um, yes, he did,” murmured Janet.

    “Us blokes are going, and that’s an end to it!” Barry strode off, clutching the hands of the two little boys: at least, his back gave the impression of striding, but his legs were taking very small steps.

    “He is such a vairy nice man!” said Simone with a little laugh.

    “He’s a macho idiot,” said Avon uncertainly, sitting down again.

    “Not really. He’s quite literate, too,” said Dorothy in an idle tone, trying not to give the impression that she was looking at Janet out of the corner of her eye.

    “Yes, he reads a lot of history and stuff,” Janet agreed composedly, sitting down beside Simone.

    Dorothy at this point experienced a strong urge to leap up and shake her erstwhile Deputy until the teeth rattled in her bloody thick head. If she didn’t want very nice, quite literate, virtuous, easy-going Barry Goode, what the Hell did the woman want? Eternal spinsterhood with bloody Bobby? “How’s Bobby?” she said in a steely voice.

    Happily Janet told them all about bloody Bobby and the fieldmouse he’d caught from the field next to—blah-blah. Dorothy reflected grimly that she’d asked for it and she’d got it.

    “That’s her,” spotted Wallis in relief as they staggered out onto the field from amidst the feeding-frenzy round the hangi.

    “Vhere?” replied Gretchen reluctantly.

    “Um—not Jill,” she said, pinkening. “Lady Carrano’s cousin, Clara Macdonald.”

    “Gott, she does look like Polly!” she discovered. “Okay, ve join her, ja?”

    “No, wait!” she gasped.

    Gretchen and Gerhard watched Wallis watching Clara being vigorously waved at by Thomas Baranski and then joining Thomas and his group.

    “She joins the Iceman. Iss this killing two birds vith one stone?” said Gretchen heavily.

    “That depends. How far under orders are you, Wallis?” said Gerhard kindly.

    “What?” she said numbly.

    “Vill anything descend on you like a ton of bricks if you pretend you never saw this girl who looks so much like…” Gerhard’s voice faded out: he’d just got a clear look at her. “Polly Mitchell. –Carrano!” he amended hastily.

    “Um, yeah: her, prolly,” said Wallis miserably.

    “Polly?” said Gerhard with a smile in his voice. “I can’t imagine it.”

    “I can. And Adrian, because he thinks she’s the bee’s knees.”

    Gerhard looked in a startled way at the knees coyly peeping through Wallis’s torn jeans. “Yes. Vell, shall ve go over there?”

    “Really! Just because she looks like Polly!” said his sister crossly.

    “Not just because,” he murmured.

    Gretchen said something very cross in German.

    “Rubbish,” he said in English. “But not if Wallis would rather not.”

    “Well, if we go and have lunch with them, then I can say I’ve done it, eh?” admitted Wallis.

    “Yes!” he said with a laugh. He took her skinny elbow very gently and led her over there, ignoring the fact that behind them his sister was muttering imprecations in their native language.

    Thomas had not driven his bright red Jag over to the fair, he had come on a very battered bicycle which was his alternative means of transport for Carter’s Bay. Typically of Thomas, where the Jag was terrifically shiny, new and expensive, the bike was incredibly rusty and decrepit, and so old-fashioned that it actually lacked gears. Posy had still been asleep when he left: when she woke up there was no sign of Thomas, no indication of where he’d gone, and the Jag was sitting out there on the sweep. Posy had liberated the keys from Thomas’s dressing-table and driven off in it. It was a bit of pity that she didn’t have anywhere to go, really. It was a terribly long way into the city and truth to tell she wasn’t much of a driver… And then, there weren’t any interesting shops, really. She supposed she could go down to Puriri, but that was really boring: a little seaside town; and then, she didn’t like the motorway and the highway was always busy… In the end she simply headed for the fair.

    “You’re late,” said the dark-haired boy on duty in the field where everybody else’s cars were parked.

    “I know. Do I have to pay?” replied Posy with a melting smile.

    “Yes.”

    Resignedly she paid.

    “Park over there,” he said sternly.

    “Y— Over there? Darling boy, it’s all mud!” she gasped.

    “Well, you can park just near the gate, if you like. Only will you be able to manoeuvre out again? Given that the whole place will be clogged by cars when people start to go home.”

    Very red, Posy drove over to the far-distant indicated spot and parked there. By the time she got back to the gate the horrid boy had vanished. Her smart little ankle-boots were covered in mud. Added to which she had a feeling that they were about to start to pinch diabolically: they were new, she hadn’t worn them before. Posy began to pick her way in the direction of the noise. She supposed she might as well try it, since she’d got this far…

    Mrs Adler had now acquired a dozen eggs, a small African violet which was a different variety than any she herself possessed (frilly, very pale mauve flowers), a tea-loaf which she had explained was probably one of Gail Bates’s, she always put walnuts in hers, a small wooden box, a nice young marrow, a bag of onions and a pumpkin: Sol Winkelmann had passed on an excellent recipe for pumpkin pie, quite different from any of the recipes she’d got from the Woman’s Weekly, and she was going to try it out. Inoue was now carrying most of these purchases for her. He was rather amused by the whole thing: it was not unlike going to the market with his late wife in the small country town near which he owned a property. Masako had been a whole generation younger than Mrs Adler, who must be in her eighties; but she had been very like in her in many ways. He agreed when Mrs Adler decided it was time for lunch, though he wasn’t particularly hungry, and accompanied her on a detour back to the poultry stall to see if Mitsuko was free; Akiko, they had just ascertained, was busy filling in for Janet at the vegetable stall.

    “You go, dear,” said Jenny kindly.

    “If you are ur-sure…”

    Jenny was sure: she waved her off firmly.

    In the large prefab where the morning teas had been served the crowd had thinned out a little, though some of those who didn’t fancy hangis or picnics had come in to have a nice hot cup of tea or coffee with their lunches. Inoue capably found them a table and got them seated.

    “They’re not really doing lunches," explained Mrs Adler, “but a cup of tea would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

    Mitsuko had had a fairly traumatic morning, what with trying to find a lift, and she’d been on her feet helping Jenny ever since she got here: she gaped at her in consternation. “I thought they do-ah hamburgers?”

    “No, they decided not to, dear: they’re too smelly and messy, really. And the kiddies always eat so much at the stalls, anyway, don’t they?”

    “Yes… But Mrs Ad-uh-ler, I am ver-ree hungree!” she gasped.

    Her uncle spoke sternly to her in their own language. Mitsuko’s rosebud mouth tightened angrily but she didn’t say anything.

    “You could pop out and get a nice sausage or something, dear,” said the old lady peaceably.

    Mitsuko looked pleadingly at her uncle.

    Inoue expressed a pithy opinion of the sausages in Japanese, adding calmly in English: “Please go, if you are hungry, Mitsuko. Shall I order you a cup of tea?”

    “Thank you, Uncle Inoue,” said Mitsuko in a tiny voice. “Please do.” She bowed, and exited hurriedly.

    “You know, you’re really too hard on those girls,” said Mrs Adler calmly.

    Inoue smiled weakly and managed to say: “Living in a strange country is not an excuse for forgetting their manners.”

    “No, but it’s a reason for it,” said the shrewd old lady. “Now, here’s Penny, we’ll ask her if we can have plain tea without milk for you and Mitsuko, shall we?”

    Inoue would not have asked, it was culturally incorrect: very probably the back regions were filled with polystyrene cups already with the milk in them. “Thank you: yes,” he said limply.

    Firmly Mrs Adler told Penny Bergen what they wanted. Adding that as they were a bit peckish, could they have a plate of pikelets? Smiling bravely, Penny said she was sure they could manage some pikelets, and shot off.

    After a minute Inoue said limply: “Mrs Adler, when we were in here before, I think Mrs Swadling mentioned that they were about to stop serving pike-ah-lets.”

    “Mm,” she said, very dry. “But I’m an old lady.”

    Suddenly Inoue collapsed in roars of delighted laughter. “It is a long time,” he said unsteadily, producing a spotless handkerchief and mopping his eyes, “since I enjoy myself so much.”

    “Good. I suppose you haven’t got much in common with any of them at Sir George Grey, have you? Well, Dorothy’s an intelligent woman; but not your type, of course. Akiko and Mitsuko have the same problem.”

    “Yes,” he said limply.

    Mrs Adler’s eye were on the door. She waved vigorously, beckoning.

    Rather surprised that Mitsuko had managed to buy herself something and get back so quickly, Inoue turned his head. He swallowed.

    “Now, there’s more to her than meets the eye,” said the old lady placidly.

    “One would prefer there to be less,” he returned tightly.

    Mrs Adler looked with interest at the flickering of the chiselled nostrils and thought to herself he was a bit of a tartar, really, wasn’t he? Not that that sort wasn’t quite easy to manage, if you knew how. All she said was, however, as Posy tottered up to them in her unsuitably tight jeans, her unsuitably tight and youthful dark purple top and her unsuitable high-heeled boots: “Hullo, Posy, dear. Why don’t you have lunch with us? Mitsuko’s with us, too: she’ll be back in a minute. –That’s right, dear, sit beside Mr Takagaki.”

    Posy sank down, trembling slightly, onto a hard plastic chair beside Inoue. “Hullo, Inoue,” she croaked, trying to smile brightly and failing. He was the last—the very last!—person she had expected to find here.

    There was no need, really, for anyone in a group of which Thomas the Tank Engine formed a part to try to make polite conversation, entertain, or even talk: not when he was in a reasonably good mood. For inscrutable reasons he was in a good mood today, and took over capably. Gerhard had nothing to do but sit back and look at Clara Macdonald. She was incredibly like Polly! No, well, not so much like the charming, polished Lady Carrano of today: more like the girl he remembered from ten years back: tasteful but casual clothes, a long sweep of shiny light brown curls, clipped back simply, that charmingly natural manner, and the fact, which she didn’t try to hide, that she very much enjoyed the company of men. Shyer than Polly, though, he registered. Not a bad thing, on the whole.

    Clara for her part was aware of Gerhard Sachs as very much the sort of thing that her mother would approve of: sophisticated, well educated European male of the businessman type: commercial but cultured with it. Like most of Daddy’s boring friends, in fact. Too old for her, really: well into his forties, she’d say; but in Mummy’s eyes this would render him capable of giving her the lifestyle to which Mummy considered she ought to be accustomed. She recognised silently that he was very attractive—and knew it, that type always did. Clara did nothing to attract him: the sort of lifestyle that that sort of person wanted did not interest her, and her history of little flings had been so disastrous that she wasn’t interested in starting another.

    Jill had observed all this from a handy vantage point. She also observed the Iceman’s lack of interest in the conversation and the fact that there was no sign of the pink woman. Was this good or bad? She looked dubiously at the little boy but he just looked, to her inexpert spinster’s eye, like a little boy stuffing his face on hangi food at a bloody Downunder school fair. After quite some time she went over to them and said cautiously: “Hullo, again.”

    “Oh, there you are,” said Gretchen in an indifferent voice.

    “Yes,” said Jill lamely, recognising, though them as didn’t know her very well wouldn’t, that Gretchen was now thoroughly pissed off by the whole thing.

    “I think you know Alan Kincaid? You and Gerhard met him at a party off Polly’s, I think?” said Gretchen in a horribly social voice. “And then, off course you remember him from your mutual Cambridge days.”

    Jill subsided limply onto the dampish turf. “Yes. Hullo, again, Alan,” she said lamely. “Jill Davis,” she added, since the Iceman obviously didn’t have a clue who she was.

    He responded appropriately and introduced other people appropriately. His social manner was much more convincing than Gretchen’s but this did not make Jill feel more cheerful.

    Thomas then expressed great interest on hearing she had also been at Cambridge, and drew her out on the subject.

    “We weren’t actually up at the same time,” Jill found herself explaining limply to Alan. “You were doing your Lacanish thing, at the time.”

    “God, was I?” he said with a smile that was about fifty degrees below zero.

    “Jill for some years vas tempted by Structuralism,” said Gretchen smoothly.

    Jill took a deep breath. “Gretchen, Alan and I are not going to indulge in cosy reminiscences of the bloody Structuralists!”

    “One could neffer understand,” said Gretchen dreamily, “vhere exactly the Communist dialectic entered into the argument: though off course admitting that it did.”

    Alan choked slightly.

    “Look, shut up!” said Jill heatedly to her housemate.

    “I’m sorry: I thought you would enjoy to reminisce over old Cambridge days.”

    “You thought wrong,” said Jill, making the mistake of giving her a warning look.

    “I’m so sorry,” said Gretchen at her social best.

    Gerhard was now, of course, aware that his usually calm sister was at the end of her tether. He also made the mistake of giving her a warning look.

    “So, vhy do you not talk off old mutual acqvaintances, instead?” said Gretchen affably.

    “I don’t think we had any,” replied Jill hurriedly.

    “Ja, but surely! Vhat about Wendy Briggs?”

    Alan looked in a bewildered way from Jill’s bright puce features to Gretchen’s bland blonde ones. “I’m sorry: the name doesn’t ring a bell. Was she at your college, Jill?” he said politely.

    Jill got up. “We shared a flat at one stage. You wouldn’t remember her, she was as obscure as I was, though bidding fair to be a damn sight better scholar.”

    “An early promise vhich neffer blossomed,” said Gretchen smoothly.

    “SHUT UP!” screamed her driven housemate. “I’m going home! If you two want a lift, MOVE!”

    “Promises don’t blossom,” said Thomas into the ringing silence, looking with great interest from one to the other of them.

    “No; I forget the English expression,” said Gretchen indifferently, getting up. “Do excuse me, I think I had better go vith her, ve haff no other form of transport. Coming?” she said to her brother, not meeting his eye.

    “No. I’ll make my own way back.”

    Gretchen shrugged, but hurried in the wake of Jill’s retreating back. As they disappeared the word “cabbages” might have been heard on the muggy December air, as might also the words “Shut up about your bloody cabbages!”

    “That was interesting,” admitted Thomas.

    “I apologise for it!” said Gerhard with a smile.

    “Don’t: brightened up the proceedings no end,” he said on a dry note. “They always like that?”

    “Er—no. Jill’s in a bad mood, today,” he admitted.

    “Uh-huh. Dare one ask," said Thomas the Tank Engine, waggling his eyebrows, “who was Wendy Briggs?”

    “You may certainly ask, but I really have no idea,” said Alan limply.

    “I think Gerhard does, though,” said Thomas shrewdly.

    “All I know is, that she vas up in Jill’s time,” he said limply. “Er—according to Jill, she had a crush on you, Alan.”

    “Am I reading too much into it, or was your sister’s carefully casual introduction of the name the last straw?” asked Thomas, the bright blue eyes sparkling with a mixture of piqued curiosity and simple malice.

    “I thought it was,” growled Wallis, blushing as their attention became fixed on her.

    “Mm,” agreed Clara kindly, smiling at her.

    “I’m sorry, but the name rings no bells at all,” said Alan definitely. “Have you finished, Dicky? –Good. Shall we go and see if that rumour of Eskimo Pies was true?”

    “Yeah! Mighty!” he cried, bounding up.

    Alan got up. “Excuse us, won’t you?” he said to the company with a mocking gleam in his eye. “Oh; fancy coming with us to look for Eskimo Pies, Wallis?”

    Smiling with a relief which she was unable to disguise, Wallis scrambled up and went off with them.

    “Come on, you can spill the beans now,” said Thomas the Tank Engine cheerfully to Gerhard.

    He smiled limply. “Er—ja. Vell, yes, he’s right: there is more," he said to Clara as she looked at him in surprise. “I didn’t feel it would be either necessary or tactful to mention it in front off Alan. In especial as it’s become a mania off Jill’s. She’s been brooding over it, I think… Er—vell, I can’t see there is any harm in your knowing.”

    “Only foreigners say ‘in your’ plus the gerund, old man,” said Thomas kindly.

    “But at least the English language has not degenerated, or perhaps in linguistic terms one should merely say developed, to the point where you no longer recognise the structure, old man!” retorted Gerhard swiftly.

    Clara collapsed in delighted giggles.

    Grinning, Thomas the Tank Engine replied: “Okay, Cambridge United nil, Real Munich forty. Go on.”

    Clearing his throat, Gerhard explained the Wendy Briggs story briefly.

    “Good gracious, the poor girl!” cried Clara.

    “Mm… I agree: pretty bloody. Not that the average junior lecturer with his head full of Lacan and, one presumes, Saussure et al., would have coped any better,” murmured Thomas.

    Gerhard smiled at him. “No, indeed, so I think! Ve haff tried to point this out to Jill, and although intellectually she recognises the justice off the point, emotionally she cannot encompass it at all.”

    Thomas scratched his curls slowly. “Didn’t help that Alan appears to have even forgotten the woman’s name?”

    “Er—no,” agreed Gerhard, biting his lip.

    “Was he genuine?” asked Clara dubiously.

    “Yes: undoubtedly,” said Thomas definitely. They both looked at him doubtfully and he said: “He’s bloody upset because he and Dicky’s mother have had a row. I’m quite sure that, poker-face though he is, he wouldn’t be capable of presenting such a convincing lack of interest if he really did recall the episode.”

    “No. Vell, understandable, it vas many years ago,” murmured Gerhard.

    “Mm.” Thomas scratched his unshaven chin thoughtfully. “What happened to the girl?”

    “Jill does not know. And this is, ve think, what’s really got under her skin: once Wendy vanished from Cambridge—” He shrugged.

    “A not uncommon syndrome," said Thomas, very drily indeed.

    “But surely!” gasped Clara. “I mean, if the girl was her friend?”

    “No,” said Thomas definitely.

    “No,” agreed Gerhard. “These days, Jill hass mellowed. But back then, she vas a very young student, her head full off ideas, coping for the first time vith being avay from home and amongst people who vere not only her intellectual equals but her intellectual superiors.” He shrugged a little. “Out off sight, out off mind, you could say.”

    “Natural enough,” agreed Thomas.

    Clara was still looking at them in horror.

    “I was just the same, at that age. I had dozens off friends when I was at the university, not one of which I haff caught up with since,” admitted Gerhard.

    “Me, too. Well, only caught up with the ones that I’ve happened across at conferences and so forth,” said Thomas, shrugging.

    “Ja. Your personality is very different,” said Gerhard, smiling at Clara. “I think you are very like your cousin Polly, no?”

    “I don’t know. I hardly know her,” she said limply.

    “Do you keep track of the types you studied with?” asked Thomas.

    “Um—there were only two people I saw very much of. Old Mr Rao went back to India. We do write to each other,” said Clara, blushing.

    “And?” demanded Thomas.

    “Jenny Yasutake. She’s American, her husband’s Japanese-American… Um, well, yes; we haven’t got much in common: she’s got four kids, now… But we do write quite regularly. She was disappointed that I didn’t come out here via the States. But I couldn’t: the ticket would have cost a lot more, and anyway Mummy and Daddy wanted me to come through Hong Kong.”

    This simple speech revealed a very great deal about Clara Macdonald to Thomas Baranski and Gerhard Sachs: they both smiled at her very kindly.

    Thomas then scrambled up. “I’ve got to think. –You can take care of Clara, can’t you? So long!” He ambled off, hands in the pockets of his rubbed fawn corduroys.

    Gerhard and Clara smiled somewhat limply at one another.

    After a moment she said timidly: “You do know there aren’t any buses, don’t you?”

    “Oh? I’m only at Kowhai Bay.”

    “Is that very near? My cousins tell me there aren’t any buses at all on a Saturday.”

    “Oh.” Gerhard felt for his key-ring. “It’s all right, I’ve just taken possession of a townhouse in Karaka Grove, in Kingfisher Bay: I can always stay there, if some kind person,”—he smiled at her,—“can’t giff me a lift.”

    “Don’t look at me, I can’t drive,” said Clara hurriedly.

    There was a stunned silence.

    “Not at all?” he said weakly.

    Clara was used to this reaction and she had learned not to elaborate upon her statement. “No,” she said flatly.

    Gerhard was by no means an insensitive man and he was aware that he had put his foot in it: failed, indeed, some sort of test. Refraining from biting his lip, he said: “Vell, it doesn’t matter at all. I wanted to spend some time at my new place this afternoon, in any case. Shall ve look around the fair some more? Or have you had enough?” He smiled his nicest smile at her.

    Clara was now in a cleft stick. Attractive though he was, she felt there was no point in encouraging him. She didn’t spell the thought out to herself but his reaction to her failure to conform to the social norms in the matter of large, smelly, ugly motor vehicles had confirmed her feeling that he was an utterly conventional person with whom she could have nothing in common. Oh, dear, she thought in dismay. If she said she did want to stay at the fair, he’d stay with her: that was clear enough. But if she said she’d had enough he’d undoubtedly insist on walking home with her. “Um, I—” She broke off in some relief, as Wallis hurried back to them.

    “I got you one,” she said, holding out a packet to Clara.

    “Thank you. Oh, I see! It’s an ice! Thank you so much, Wallis!”

    “That’s okay. Polly said to tell you,” she said conscientiously, “that if you’re looking for pot-plants, they usually have some quite good ones.”

    Clara hadn’t been looking for pot-plants, she was the sort of person for whom houseplants regularly died. But she replied with a relief which she didn’t realise was perfectly apparent to the unfortunate Gerhard: “Good; shall we look for some, then, Wallis?”

    “Righto. Come on, then. –See ya,” said Wallis brutally to Gerhard.

    “Good-bye,” said Clara, scrambling up, and not meeting his eye.

    Gerhard was left sitting there all on his ownsome on the scruffy grass of Carter’s Bay Primary School, feeling like ten times of an idiot. He swore under his breath in German. Now he’d be stranded up here for the weekend unless he could somehow ring Gretchen and talk her into collecting him in the Porsche. Well, damn all colonial get-togethers at the back end of the British Empire, it was the last they’d drag him along to, that was for sure! And damn all damned women, too.

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/a-bunch-of-blue-ribbon.html