The Shores Of Erewhon

9

The Shores Of Erewhon

    To their tremendous relief, Leigh Gore and Thomas Baranski had both received letters requesting second-round interviews. Within a week of each other. Out in New Zealand.

    After a moment Leigh said: “He told me he saw ESL as one of the core departments, central to the School of Languages.”

    “He told me the same thing about Marine Geology and Environmental Resources,” said Thomas unemotionally.

    Leigh swallowed.

    “And I have no doubt he was perfectly genuine, in both cases.”

    “Uh—yes. On second thoughts, yes, how too horribly likely.”

    Grinning, Thomas said: “Better make a holiday out of it: New Zealand for Christmas? The thermal area’s said to be very interesting.”

    “Y— Um, the Pattersons said it’s terribly touristy.”

    “Geologically fascinating, though. They’ve got volcanoes, too.”

    “Ooh, goody,” replied Leigh acidly. “Do they let you climb them?”

    “No idea. For all I know they may all be like Kilauea,” said Thomas, grinning.

    “What? Is that Maori?”

    “No, you cretin, it’s Hawaiian!” he roared.

    When the echoes had ceased quivering, Leigh noted with dignity: “They are both Polynesian languages.”

    “Yeah, but if Maori has an L, I’ve yet to hear of it.”

    Leigh goggled at him. True, Thomas’s mind was the most incredible rag-bag of bits and pieces, but—

    “Kilauea, when I visited it, which was before its last eruption, was adorned by a beautiful wide American highway, smooth as silk, all the way to the top: that is, to the crater’s rim.”

    “And at the crater’s rim was a revolving three-star restaurant: yeah, yeah.”

    “Oh, have I told you before?”

    Leigh gulped. “No.”

    “It didn’t revolve. But it was glass-walled. And no American food even approaches three stars. But apart from that—” He shrugged.

    “Is New Zealand that Americanised?” said Leigh feebly.

    “No idea. Probably—I know Australia is.”

    Leigh sighed.

    “Do you want to change your mind?”

    “Um—not really. But Americanised plus Kincaid?”

    Thomas shrugged.

    “Well, um, at least it’ll be a nice Yuletide break. I won’t mind getting away from this bloody weather.”

    “Quite.” Thomas got up, stretching. “They say they’ll refund travel expenses. Dare say it’s a test,”—he leered at him—“to see if we’ve got the nous to get ourselves out there safely.”

    “More likely a test to see if we’ve got the cheek to get ourselves out there first-class at their expense!” retorted Leigh on a cross note.

    “Very possibly. I’ll book the tickets, shall I?”

    “Y— Hang on, isn’t it a bit late? I mean, Christmas and so forth?”

    “I’ll do it through Iannopoulos the Cretin.”

    Leigh winced, but let him. Thomas’s Iannopoulos had once booked him and Thomas successfully to Istanbul for a conference for which the university was funding only Leigh, not simply at the height of the Istanbul tourist season, but also at the price of what the university had been prepared to cough up for him, Leigh, alone. And back, yes. And a decent hotel room in a fascinating but not too obscure part of the town.

    Iannopoulos’s route ended them up in Sydney, Australia, at four in the morning.

    When Sydney eventually woke up, which wasn’t for some two and a half hours, a very helpful lady at the Qantas stand (though Qantas was not mentioned on their tickets) explained that they were ticketed through to Auckland, yes, but they’d missed the connection. There wasn’t another Air New Zealand flight until… And no, all the Qantas flights were full. But if they liked to run up those stairs, she’d get them onto the Air France flight!

    Leigh and Thomas the Tank Engine ran.

    “Just shut up and LISTEN!” shouted Sammi.

    “But me an’ Sim—”

    “YES! Shut UP, Martin, this call’s costing me a bomb!”

    Sammi’s receiver was silent. Apart from the sound of him breathing hoarsely. “I’m trying to tell you, I’m not coming back. I’m taking all the leave that’s due to me from Worth, Inglis, I arranged it before I came out here. And tacking that on to Christmas means I’ve covered the period of the notice I have to give them. Are you LISTENING?” she shouted as her moronic little brother was heard to speak hoarsely to someone at his end of the line.

    “Yeah. I’m just telling Sim.”

    “Tell him later, and not on my phone bill,” she said grimly. “I’m starting the job in January.”

    “January!” he gasped. “Hey, c’n we—”

    “WILL YOU LISTEN! The buildings aren’t up yet. The first intake of students won’t be until March of the year after next. But I’ve met a man who says he can employ you and your moronic little friend, if you can get yourselves out here.”

    Martin gulped. “But we haven’t had time to save up hardly anything, yet.”

    “I realise that. This man wants a couple of hard-working kids for the Christmas period: it’s their summer holidays. Long Vac, right?”

    “Um—yeah,” he said vaguely.

    Sammi took a deep breath. “I’ll take care of the bookings. Get yourselves passports and visas. Don’t ask Dad, ask Paul or Mr Wynters to help you, okay?”

    “Yeah!” he gasped. “Hey, really? Hey, ace! Thanks, Sammi!”

    “Martin,” said Sammi clearly: “you and Sim will have to work very, very hard at these jobs.”

    “Yeah, of course: we—”

    “And during the year you will have to study for and pass the local equivalent of A-Levels.”

    “Yes, sure!” he gasped.

    Sammi sniffed slightly but noted: “I’ll fax the details to you on Dad’s home number.”

    “Y— Um—does he know?” he gulped.

    “He knows I’ve got the job, yeah. You can tell him the rest yourself. Prove to him how mature you are. I’ve got to go. ’Bye!”

    “Good-bye,” said Martin numbly to his humming receiver.

    Gordon went into a frightful fuss, Norma burst into floods of tears and Mrs Wynters also burst into floods of tears. Mr Wynters was pretty indifferent to floods of tears, not to say to his son’s best friend’s father’s fusses, and as Sim had been nothing but a pest over the last two years, he felt he’d be quite glad to see the back of him. Paul felt likewise about Martin. And they agreed privily that if the experience did nothing else, it might help the pair of them grow up a bit. And if Sammi was mad enough to want to take the pair of them on—

    British Airways was horribly booked up but Sammi had got them onto a South African plane to Johannesburg, where they would be met by a Hansi van Dorn and transferred to something that would get them to Perth, Australia, and then Sydney and finally Auckland.

    Hansi van Dorn turned out to be six-foot-four with shoulders like a bull, an Afrikaaner accent that they couldn’t understand, and a complete indifference to the fact that Sim had had a migraine all the way. The sort of large, red-faced man that slaps skinny young English boys on the back and tells them to buck up. He took them to his home, gave them an immense meal of steak that Sim couldn’t face, meanwhile giving forth with an almost continuous flow of racist remarks about the Blacks that were running the country and couldn’t pull their fingers out to save their ruddy Black souls, man, utterly horrifying them both, and competently put them on their connection next day with a pile of magazines. Unclad girls and cars, they discovered. Sim’s migraine began to dissipate, though that could have been the improved air conditioning on this plane.

    No-one met them in Perth but by this time they had grasped that you just did what the loudspeakers said and if you couldn’t understand the pilot’s announcement, asked the hostess before you got off. So they duly got off, starting to feel quite proud of themselves. Perth Customs and Agriculture inspections having successfully shaken that out of them, they fell onto their internal connection to Sydney in a state of nervous exhaustion, and slept most of that leg.

    At Sydney they got hopelessly lost. Though they did manage to reclaim their baggage. When they finally figured out that they now needed an international flight and tottered off to it, they were told that it didn’t go until tomorrow.

    “But we haven’t crossed the International Date Line!” cried Sim wildly.

    “Shut up, you clot,” ordered Martin hoarsely. “Um, my sister booked the tickets from this end,” he said to the lady on the desk.

    The lady’s name was Dianne Kuczek (second-generation Polish-Australian) and she was in fact about two years older than they were. She looked at them with all the superiority that her age and position conferred and said: “You better give her a bell, then.”

    “But she’s in New Zealand!” he gasped.

    “That’ll be an STD call,” said Dianne kindly.

    The boys nodded limply and, since no more help seemed to be forthcoming from the lady, tottered off to confer. It was already eleven-thirty at night. They didn’t have any money apart from the twenty pounds that Paul had given Martin when they left and the twenty pounds that Mr Wynters had given Sim, and they didn’t think that would be enough for a hotel. Even if they could find one. Added to which Australian hotels probably didn’t take English money.

    “Airports don’t close, do they?” said Sim hopefully.

    “Um—dunno. Um—we could stay here, I suppose.”

    “Yeah. If anyone asks, we’ll say we’re waiting for a plane!” he said brilliantly.

    “Um—yeah. Well, we will be.”

    They spent the night at Sydney airport. Whether or not it closed it certainly got very quiet and slack between about one-thirty and five-thirty, but no-one challenged them. They were not the only depressed-looking, baggy-eyed travellers collapsed in untidy heaps on uncomfortable plastic chairs, surrounded by baggage. Luckily Martin’s watch had an alarm, which luckily he remembered to set, so they made it to their plane in plenty of time. It had not occurred to either of them that it might have been possible to wash and shave in the Gents’ at Sydney airport, so they hadn’t done. Not that Martin really did need to shave every day. Though Sim did, he was a dark boy. Perhaps fortunately there was no-one in the third seat of their group on the Air France plane. Sim had a slight panic on the score of it might be going to Noumea not New Zealand and the hostess’s not being able to understand them, but Martin spoke to her in his schoolboy French and found out that she could, and it wasn’t. Then they were brought an enormous breakfast. The first food that tasted like food and not like plastic since those steaks of Hansi van Dorn’s. They fell on it ravenously, in dead silence.

    “Haven’t we seen those boys before?” asked Leigh as they waited interminably for their baggage, watching a large red plastic zippered suitcase, a hiking pack on a huge aluminium frame, and a bursting cardboard box labelled “Fragile: This Way Up” (upside down), go round and round and round and round…

    “Yeah, they were on the plane, across the aisle from us. The pale fawn or Piglet-coloured one lent me a Playboy,” said Thomas, yawning horribly.

    “I wonder if anyone’s meeting them?” said Leigh in a low voice.

    “Who cares?” replied Thomas brutally.

    “They are only kids,” he murmured.

    “In that case, someone’ll be meeting them. Ah! My bag!” He threw himself on it.

    Leigh went on waiting for his. The red plastic suitcase, the hiking pack and the cardboard box were all still unclaimed. They had been joined by a small blue nylon carry-all, and a rolled-up something. A swag? Well, at the very least a bed-roll. All five of them went round and round and round and round…

    “That’s Australian,” said Leigh weakly as the Agriculture Inspector poked gingerly at Thomas’s half-eaten Mars Bar.

    The Mars Bar got the chop.

    “Where did you buy this?” demanded the Customs Inspector, poking at Thomas’s neat little laptop computer.

    “Toronto,” said Thomas in a bored voice.

    The Customs Inspector looked through Thomas’s hugely rubber-stamp-spattered passport in dead silence. Then he demanded to see their tickets. He looked through them in dead silence, too.

    “I was in Toronto about three years back,” said Thomas in a bored voice. “There’s probably a stamp for it somewhere in my passport.”

    After that the Customs Inspector, and his mate, another Customs Inspector, went through every stitch they had in, on or near them.

    They finally staggered out into the streaming humidity of what was possibly the main concourse of the Auckland International Airport at what according to Thomas was four p.m., local time.

    “It can’t be!” croaked Leigh. “It was four in the morning when we got to Sydney! I mean, even allowing for the time difference… Um…”

    Thomas looked round for a clock but as this was an international airport, there wasn’t one. “Grand Central, where are you now?” he muttered savagely. He dragged Leigh over to a counter that said “Avis.” The Avis man told them it was five to four. Yeah, Sunday: right. Possibly he should have been in a coloured jacket but he wasn’t, he was in a white shirt. Short-sleeved. No tie. Collar unbuttoned. If Leigh hadn’t been so hot he’d have done something about awarding him a medal for his individuality and strength of mind. Or possibly just plain common sense.

    “Why didn’t you tell me it’d be this humid?” he gasped.

    “Didn’t know it would. Fiji’s worse,” said Thomas dispassionately. “And PNG’s miles worse.”

    “Thank you for those comforting words, Baranski. What now?” said Leigh grimly.

    “Well—uh— We’ll rent a car!”

    “You couldn’t find your licence,” Leigh reminded him acidly.

    “We’ll use yours.”

    “My licence and your American Express card?”

    “Why not?” he said comfortably. He hefted his laptop, his duty-frees, and his battered nylon hold-all marked “BARANSKI” in glaring white paint. Limply Leigh picked up his duty-frees and his expensive, designed-to-hold-your-suit-without-creasing suitcase that had been exactly like three hundred other suitcases on the baggage-claim and thus only identifiable by embarrassing elimination.

    “Uh—just a minute, Thomas. Look, those boys look a bit flummoxed.”

    Thomas groaned but looked. “The dark one looks as if he’s about to burst into tears,” he noted clinically.

    “Yes. Stay here.” Leigh dumped his suitcase and went over to the boys. “My name’s Leigh Gore. I’m a respectable English academic with no homicidal or homosexual tendencies, and can I help you?” he said briskly.

    The Piglet-coloured boy said through trembling lips: “Thanks awfully, sir. My sister was supposed to meet us, but—but she isn’t here.”

    “I see. The plane wasn’t early, though, was it?”

    The boy shook his head. “No.”

    “But it took us ages to get through Customs: maybe she went home again!” burst out the other boy.

    “She wouldn’t have done that, if she’d taken all the trouble to come here. Could we phone her home, perhaps?”

    The brother fumbled in his pocket. “Her number’s on this fax, buh-but we haven’t got any New Zealand money!”

    “Uh—nor have I. But I think that can be managed.”

    “No, ’cos it’s all closed!” burst out the other boy.

    “Yes, it is. He means the—the phone place, with the, um, counter,” he fumbled. “And the place where you can change your money.”

    “Oh,” said Leigh, biting his lip. “Sunday. The Commonwealth phenomenon.”

    Thomas strolled up to them, looking bored. “What is?”

    Leigh explained tersely.

    “Hang on,” ordered Thomas, striding off. They held on.

    Thomas returned waving a fistful of—well, dollars. Coins. “That Avis man seems to collect English fivers,” he noted. “Come on, ring your sister’s number.”

    The boy’s sister’s number went into a frightful tizz, assuring the boy that Miss Wolfe had had to go out on business, but she’d left a message with the airport, and they’d absolutely promised to deliver it, and she (the voice) had said to Mike that they should never have let her, they should have driven in and collected the boys themselves! The boy looked helplessly at Leigh and Thomas.

    Thomas grabbed the receiver. “It’s all right, they’re not alone. Who are you? Oh, I see. –It’s a motel,” he said to them. “She sounds nice,” he added, not covering the receiver. He produced a carpenter’s pencil from his pocket and, assuring the voice that she and Mike were not to worry, he and Leigh would personally drive the boys to wherever, wrote busily. Blue Heron Motel. Uh—Poo-rirry? Right. Poo-something Drive? Yes, he had that. “Lot of Poos in Maori,” he said detachedly, ringing off.

    Leigh was not wholly surprised that both boys collapsed in hysterical giggles.

    The Avis man cheerfully rented them a car on Leigh’s licence and Thomas’s American Express card. Appearing fully to sympathise with Thomas’s explanation that Leigh’s estranged wife had gone mad on his credit cards so he’d cancelled them all. And assuring them that there would be a map in the glove compartment. The boys accompanied them trustingly. They must have decided that not only were Leigh and Thomas not homicidal or homosexual, they weren’t white slavers, either, thought Leigh silently.

    “Was it necessary to tell that lie?” he said feebly as they located the rental cars.

    “Which particular lie?” replied Thomas, staring in confusion at a bright red Um, and ignoring the fact that the boys were now looking at him and Leigh sideways.

    “The lie about Belinda going mad on my credit cards. She wouldn’t demean herself.” Leigh read the name on the Um. “This is a Subaru.”

    “Ours is a Mitsubishi, sir,” said the Piglet boy hoarsely.

    “Oh.” Thomas moved on towards the next red car. “What the Christ’s that?”

    “No idea. It’s not red, however, so it isn’t ours,” said Leigh, looking at it with dislike.

    “It’s a Eunos,” said the dark boy suddenly.

    “There’s a red Porsche over there,” noted Thomas.

    “Yes, outside the hire-car enclave! Come on! If I don’t get a bath within the next hour, I’ll commit something ’orrible! –You, probably,” Leigh admitted with a smile in his voice. Some male persons conscientiously shaved in the tiny cramped loos of giant international jumbos. Thomas the Tank Engine was not one of them. “Look, that red thing over there must be ours.”

    It was, and they drove off in the streaming humidity, Thomas mistreating the Mitsubishi horribly.

·· … “A grass farm!” he discovered.

    “Yes, we see it: keep going,” moaned Leigh.

    “A grass farm?” echoed one of the boys in bewilderment.

    “For supplying landscape gardening places, one supposes,” said Leigh. “Did you see that television series with Judi Dench and—”

    “Yeah! Mike!” choked one of the boys ecstatically. “His glass kept sticking to his coaster!”

    “Yeah!” choked the other one ecstatically.

    “Mm. Well, think of him as the middle-man,” said Leigh on a dry note.

    There was silence from the back seat.

    … Thomas braked savagely. His passengers gasped. “See that notice?”

    “YES! We go thataway!” shouted Leigh.

    Martin began: “The other way’s to—um—” There was a muttered conclave in the back.

    “Thomas, it’s left or right or back to the airport! Go LEFT!” shouted Leigh irritably. “What’s the matter with you?”

    “That can’t be right: the city’s to the north, surely?” Thomas pored over the map, muttering, whilst other more knowledgeable or less cretinous drivers swerved round them, and took the road to the city. Left. He turned the map upside-down and squinted at it.

    “LEFT!” shouted Leigh. “Oh, for God’s sake, let me drive!”

    Thomas changed places with him but retained the map. Leigh turned left and headed towards the city, trustingly obeying the large road sign which told him that was the way to go. Thomas continued to mutter over the map.

    … “Here’s a bridge, Thomas. Over water. Blue on your map,” noted Leigh nastily.

    “Wait, this is wrong!” he cried.

    “Sit DOWN!” shouted Leigh as one of the boys undid his seat-belt in order to stand up and peer over Thomas’s shoulder.

    “Wait a bit, wait a bit… There are two harbours!” Thomas produced. Leigh ignored him. He drove on, following the signs that said CITY.

    … “Where are we?” he croaked.

    Thomas looked vindicated. “Outer suburbia. –Look, these must be Mike’s customers,” he said meanly to the boys.

    “Shut up, Thomas. Give me that map!”

    Thomas handed him the map. Leigh muttered over route numbers.

    “I’ll get out,” decided Thomas, “and find a street name.” He got out. They waited.

    Thomas came back with a little old lady. “They’ve all got Maori names,” he explained. “This is Mrs Burns. She’ll show you where we are.”

    “This is the airport road, dear!” chirped Mrs Burns. “It’s not the main road, though, you see! It’s all very confusing, isn’t it?” Rapidly she sorted them out. Yes, they had crossed a harbour, but that—pitying laugh—wasn’t the Harbour Bridge!

    With grovelling thanks to Mrs Burns, they set off again.

    … “I get it!” shouted Thomas.

    Leigh gasped. “Don’t do that,” he said weakly.

    “We’re in the southern hemisphere!” he proclaimed.

    In the back, Martin collapsed in sniggers. Sim, Leigh saw with a glance over his shoulder, was asleep. God, weren’t they trusting at that age? It was frightening, really.

    “No, listen, Leigh: it’s logical! The sun’s moving in the northern half of the sky!”—Leigh ignored him.—“That’s why I thought north was south,” finished Thomas pleasedly. Leigh continued to ignore him. In the back Martin went on choking helplessly.

    … Leigh pulled in. “Give me that bloody map.”

    Thomas gave him the map, noting: “I suppose the sleeping beauties in the back do realise we’ve now kidnapped them and are about to hack them into tiny pieces before burying them in an unmarked Antipodean grave?”

    “Shut up. Just be thankful it’s us. Uh… shit,” he muttered.

    Thomas put his finger on the Harbour Bridge. “We need to go here.”

    “Yes. You’re supposed to be navigating: how do we get onto it?”

    Thomas opened his door. “I’ll ask.”

    Leigh rolled his eyes, sighed heavily, and waited.

    Thomas came back with a little old man. “This is Mr Hartshorne.”

    “Larry,” piped the little old man. “Lost your way, have you? This is Point Chev,” he said helpfully.

    They had managed to miss the turn-off to what should have taken them to the Harbour Bridge, and would need to go back. Yeah, that was right, he said encouragingly to Thomas: they’d come too far west! See, those were the Why-tacks!

    “What it is,” explained Thomas, as they set off firmly on the right route, with Larry nodding and pointing in their wake, “the Caucasian tongue has adapted, or possibly bowdlerised, all these Maori names to some sort of local vernacular.”

    “Yeah, sure. ‘Chev’?”

    “Maori or French,” he corrected solemnly.

    “Eh? Chevrolet?” said Leigh feebly.

    Thomas had found it on the map. “Point Chevalier. ‘Thonk hea-vans, for leedle gurrls—’”

    “Shut up, you’ll wake them up!” hissed Leigh, shoulders shaking in spite of himself.

    “Ooh, look,” said Thomas, again studying the map: “Wai-ta-ke-re Ranges! Why-tacks!”

    “Really?” said Leigh limply, swallowing.

    “Isn’t it fun!” he discovered.

    “Yeah,” said Leigh limply.

    … “Ooh!” Thomas discovered.

    “Yes, wonderful view. For God’s sake watch those signs AHEAD!” shouted Leigh as they crossed the actual undoubted Harbour Bridge. It was just as Larry had said. Looked like a bloody coat hanger.

    “See over there?”

    “NO! Watch the SIGNS, Thomas!”

    “Whang-a-rei,” he discerned.

    “NORTH! NORTH! Puriri County!” shouted Leigh.

    “Um… No. That’s a volcano, over there,” he offered.

    “Shut—up.” They were off the actual bridge and onto a motorway which snaked along by the water’s edge. Leigh drew up on the verge.

    “Ooh: mangroves,” said Thomas with intense interest. “It’s quite subtropical, isn’t it?”

    “This bloody humidity is, yes,” agreed Leigh, winding his window down even further. “Get out and flag down a car.”

    Thomas got out. It took a while but finally a car pulled in and a man said: “Having a spot of bother, mate?”

    “Not really. We’re lost,” said Thomas politely. Leigh cringed.

    “Eh?” said the motorist.

    “Which way to Puriri? None of these signs say.”

    “Aw! Yeah, bloody maddening, aren’t they? English, are you?” he said kindly. Not waiting for an answer, he said: “Take that lane there, mate. Ya wanna stick to the motorway most of the way. Uh, when ya get to the turn-off that says ‘Brown’s Bay’, don’t take it, but head straight on. You’ll see a sign that says ‘Motorway ends’: ignore it, just head straight on, there’s another sign that says ‘Motorway begins’ about ten metres further on. When ya see the Albany turn-off—got that, mate?” he said kindly to Leigh—”go straight on. Don’t take the Puriri Bypass: it bypasses Puriri and gets you out well north of Kowhai Bay.”

    Leigh nodded frantically, scribbling it down.

    “Thanks frightfully,” said Thomas.

    “No sweat. Enjoy your holiday!” he said cheerfully.

    “Let’s go,” said Leigh heavily.

    They headed north.

     … “We must be there by now!”

     “I don’t think so, Thomas.”

    “Leigh, it’s all fields! We must be lost!”

    Leigh treated this with the ignore it deserved.

    … “Look: ‘Tomatoes’! This can’t be a motorway, Leigh!”

    “It is a motorway, and that’s the fourteenth tomatoes sign we’ve passed.”

    “But… I’m sure we’ve come too far. If we were at home, we’d be in Manchester by now!”

    Leigh ignored him, and kept driving.

    Thomas investigated the glove compartment and found an AA route map. There was a long silence… “Bugger it, Leigh, that Whang-place is two hundred miles north of the city!”

    “Kilometres. About a hundred miles. Very probably.”

    “Leigh, we took the turn-off to Whang-thing!”

    “So? We need to go north, don’t we?”

    Thomas subsided, scowling.

    Leigh drove on, smiling a little.

     … “There! Pooh-place Bypass! LEIGH!” he shouted.

    Leigh drove on calmly. “We don’t take it, remember?”

    “Uh—oh.”

    “Thomas, I grant you are unrivalled in guiding one on foot round the casbah or the souk, don’t correct my vocabulary, thanks, and I’m sure you’re unrivalled on foot in the rainforests of PNG, but in a wheeled vehicle you are the worst navigator bar none—bar none—ever to have existed upon the face of the earth!”

    “Is he?” said an interested voice from the back seat.

    Leigh jumped. “Yes. You’re awake, are you?”

    “Yes,” agreed Sim, blinking. “Where are we, sir?”

    “We’re nearly at that Pooh-place. We’ve just passed the bypass that avoids the town.” He looked sideways at Thomas.

    “Oh, good!” said Sim happily.

    “When Thomas and I were in Gibraltar,” remembered Leigh dreamily, “he failed to navigate our hire car to Spain.”

    Sim choked.

    Thomas hunched himself into the AA route book, scowling.

    … “Uh—that was the end of the motorway,” said Leigh limply as, without any signs saying “Motorway ends” they suddenly found themselves on a two-lane highway. Behind a large, lumbering bus. Belching fumes. Just like home, really.

    “Yes. Ooh, look: ‘Fresh Eggs’!”

    “We don’t want eggs, Thomas. Or tomatoes. Look out for a sign that says ‘Pooh-place’, please.”

    Thomas was silent.

    … “Look!” said Leigh with a smile as they topped a rise, and a glorious view of the sea was suddenly revealed ahead and to the right. At the bottom of the rise was a long sweep of silver beach, with what looked horribly like a caravan park at its near end. On the inland side of the beach was a fair-sized settlement.

    “Glorious,” said Thomas with a sigh. “Stop, Leigh!”

    “I can’t,” said Leigh, following the bus down the slope: “there’s a sign telling me not to.”

    “Where are we?” said Martin’s voice groggily.

    “Nearly there, I think,” replied Sim comfortably.

    Leigh drew in to the side of the road.

    “What have you stopped for? That’s manifestly the town, in front of us!” objected Thomas.

    “Yes. Give me the map and the AA route guide.”

    Thomas handed them over. Leigh forthwith navigated them competently along the main north highway for a further four hundred yards, into Riverside Drive, up it to its junction with the southern end of Pukeko Drive, and right along Pukeko Drive to The Blue Heron Motel, at its further, or northern end. “That was easy,” he said nastily. “Get out. You, too, boys.”

    “It doesn’t look much like the sort of place Sammi would choose,” said Martin dubiously.

    “It looks very neat and clean,” replied Leigh firmly. “This is the address. Get out.”

    They got out, looking nervous.

    Suddenly all the motel’s outside lights came on.

    “I’d say,” said Leigh, getting out, “that that indicates they have short subtropical twilights in these climes.”

    “Rubbish, we’re not that close to the equator!” Thomas looked out of his window, yawning. “Funny gravel. Look, a golden Labrador.”—It was lying on the step of the motel office. Apparently intimidating the boys. Certainly they were looking at it nervously.—”Go on, then,” he added in a bored voice.

    Sighing, Leigh went over to the boys, said: “Come along, then, we’ll ask,” and led them in. Thomas had apparently lost interest. He was like that. Leigh doubted if he’d even bother to come in.

    Apparently the sister was not yet back, but the motherly woman behind the counter in the little office-cum-shop, assuring Leigh that it must have been he to whom she had spoken on the phone—Leigh didn’t disabuse her, when Thomas was in an uninterested mood she was better off not knowing him—informed the boys that it didn’t matter, she had tea all ready for them, and though they did have their own restaurant right next-door, after all that travelling she thought they’d rather just have it out the back with her and Mike, wouldn’t they? The boys looked at her dazedly.

    “This is Martin,” said Leigh kindly: “he’s Miss Wolfe’s brother, and this is his friend, Sim.”

    “Of course!” she beamed, “Call me Molly, dears. –Here’s Mike!” she beamed, as a tall, slim, extremely handsome man in perhaps his mid-forties emerged from the back regions. “Mike, dear, here are the boys at last!”

    “So you got here, then?” he said with a smile, coming round the counter with his hand held out. “Mike Collingwood.”

    Leigh shook it a trifle feebly. “Leigh Gore.”

    Mr Collingwood eyed him drily. “The sister did leave a message with the airport, ya know. Given that they’re used to taking messages for arriving travellers, I’d say it’s about five to one that there was a message labelled ‘Wolfe’ on the message-board.”

    Leigh had already worked out for himself that the boys had either not noticed the noticeboard or not realised that they should look on it in case there was a message for them. “Mm,” he agreed.

    Mike Collingwood smiled. “Yeah. Well, Molly’s got a nice tea all ready and waiting for you types,” he said, holding out his hand to Martin. “That’ll be what you call ‘dinner’ or ‘high tea’ where you come from,”—expressions of huge relief spread over the boys’ faces—“so you’d better come on through and have it, eh? Then we’ll show you your cabin: you’re in Number Six; your sister’s in the end one, Number Seven.”

    Martin and Sim, gasping out thanks to Leigh, were led away.

    Molly was still behind the counter. She nodded and smiled brightly. “So you found your way here all right?”

    “Yes,” said Leigh feebly. “It’s a bit of a drive, isn’t it?”

    “Oh, yes: it takes nearly two hours, from the airport!”

    It had taken them three. “Mm. Er—I wonder, Mrs Collingwood,” he said, clearing his throat, and hoping she was: neither she nor Mike had at any stage introduced her—“how much further north is Carter’s Inlet?”

    “Oh, that’s about another forty minutes!” she said brightly.

    Leigh blenched, though by now he had more or less been expecting this. Sir George Grey must be about two hours’ drive from the city.

    “Though you could take the new motorway, only it doesn’t make it much shorter, really, because of the bypass.”

    “I see.”

    “So you’ve come out to work at the new university, too, have you?” she said brightly.

    “Uh—not quite. Job interview,” said Leigh feebly.

    Molly was just assuring him that she was sure he’d get it, why else would they have asked him to come all this way, when Mike popped his head back into the office. “If you types want to stay, we’ve got a spare cabin.”

    “Uh—we’re booked into a hotel in the city,” said Leigh feebly.

    “Good gracious, you don’t want to be driving all that way back at this hour! You’ll meet the picture crowd!” cried Molly.

    “Cinema to you,” said Mike gravely. “What I mean is, the cabin’s going begging: no charge. Put you up overnight, guarantee to give you a wake-up call?”

    “And we can bring you in something really nice for tea! From the restaurant. We thought the food’d be a bit fancy for the boys,” explained Molly.

    “Well— Yes. Thanks very much,” said Leigh, suddenly making up his mind. And if Thomas didn’t like it he could take a running jump.

    “So, whaddaya reckon?” drawled Mike Collingwood the next afternoon, wandering into the motel office as Molly was serving Number Two.

    “Just a minute, Mike, dear! Now, that’s one small Johnson’s Baby Powder, one packet of Band-Aids, and one small instant coffee—you’ll find it’s more economical to buy the larger size, Mr Dean, if you’re staying on more than a week!” she said brightly.

    Mr Dean hummed and hawed, but didn’t buy the larger size. Molly totted up the sum owing, made change briskly, reassured him that the morning’s Herald was complimentary and wouldn’t be on his bill, and smiled him on his way. “What was that, Mike?”

    Mike came up very close behind her and put his hand in an interesting place. Molly squeaked and giggled. “Whaddaya reckon about these Poms?”

    “Don’t call them that, Mike. Well, the boys are lovely, of course!”

    Mike smiled. “Mm.” Molly had a weakness for teenage kids. They’d only been married about seven years—second time round for both of them—and they didn’t have any of their own. “What about the blokes?”

    “Leigh’s terribly nice, isn’t he? He asked me not to call him Dr Gore!” she said, beaming.

    “Uh-huh.” Mike eyed her sideways. “And Baranski?”

    “Oh, well, he’s got charm, dear, I suppose you’d say,” said the plump, fluffy Molly in lightly disparaging tones. “Hullo, Mrs Hatton: how are you today, dear?” she beamed as the skinny fair girl from Number Five came in. –Honeymooners. He’d copped a bad dose of sunburn their first afternoon out of the cabin, and had been sulking ever since. She had been suspiciously red-eyed over the same period.

    Mrs Hatton assured her shyly she was very well, thanks. And—um—blushing fierily—was there a chemist’s nearby?

    “Well, the nearest one’s in The Arcade, dear: you just go straight down Coronation Road, you can’t miss it!” said Molly. “But we’ve got most of the everyday things here. –Mike, dear, just pop out to the kitchen and get me those dockets, will you?” she said loudly.

    “Uh—oh.” Grinning, Mike wandered slowly out. Behind him, Molly could be heard assuring little Mrs Whatsit that they had condoms, dear: all very nice ones. And if it was tampons she was after—

    In due course Mike wandered back, looking bland. “Condoms or feminine necessaries?”

    “Ssh! The poor little thing!”

    “Still sulking, is ’e?”

    “Yes. And I said to her, we could always take him in a nice lunch, if she felt like popping out for a bit, but he won’t spend the money!”

    “He’d prefer to shout at her about her rotten cooking every lunchtime, would ’e?”

    “Yes. Never mind that, dear, what were we— Oh, yes! The Baranski man! Well, as I was saying, dear, charm: but spoilt. The little-boy type: never grown up: you know?”

    Mike nodded. Even though they had been married those seven years, Molly’s capacity for summing people up, under that fluffy manner, never failed to astound and delight him,

    “And he capitalises on it,” she added seriously.

    Mike raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. He wandered over to the office doorway and looked out at a sunny, windy December day. “Wonder if they’ll get the jobs?”

    “It’s a long way to bring them if he doesn’t want them, Mike.”

    “Mm.” Mike rubbed his handsome chin. “I can’t quite see Kincaid appointing Baranski.”

    “It depends what he wants him for, dear,” she said seriously.

    Mike swallowed a grin. “That’s true.” He stared at the sky. “So in your opinion, is the Iceman better husband material than Baranski?”

    “There’s nothing wrong with Dr Kincaid that marriage to that lovely Mrs Burchett won’t fix!” she said firmly.

    Mike gulped. “Jill Davis’s Iceman?”

    “Don’t be silly, dear,” she said briskly.

    Mike raised his eyebrows again, but concluded that that was It, then.

    When Armand had flown out all the way to New Zealand for his second interview, Simone had been conscious of a certain hope that he wouldn’t come back. Even though she didn’t know what she and the kids would live on, if he didn’t. But he did come back, and he did get the job, though revealing sourly that he’d have to report to the registrar, who was a woman. Simone didn’t say anything to that. Armand then told her that he’d have to give three months’ notice here. Simone looked relieved. But in the meantime she could find them a house. Simone looked blank.

    When it finally penetrated that he meant, pack up the kids and go all the way to New Zealand and look for a house for them to live in out there, she burst into tears. Armand ignored the tears, informed her that the school year started in February out there and that he expected her to have got the children settled into a suitable house by then, and retired to his study, looking virtuous.

    Of course Simone could not have got herself out to New Zealand alone. But then, she didn’t exactly have to. Armand made all the bookings and put her and the kids on the plane. Air France would do the rest. Simone couldn’t say, afterwards, how she managed any of it. But she certainly ended up alive, with both kids, alive, with all their bags, intact, at Auckland International Airport at a very strange hour of the morning, looking in vain for a taxi. The English word for taxi was “taxi”, so she’d found where they were supposed to be. But there weren’t any!

    Anne-Louise began to whine. “Maman, I’m hungry! Where’s Papa?”

    Pierre kicked her shin. “He’s at home.”

    “He’s on the other side of the world,” said Simone with a sigh. She had explained at great length to both of them where it was they were going, and why.

    “I want Papa!” wailed Anne-Louise.

    “Stop that,” said Simone without conviction.

    Pierre kicked his sister’s shin again.

    “Stop that, Pierre,” said Simone dully.

    Pierre immediately began to whine: “I wanna go home!”

    Anne-Louise joined in: “I wanna go home!”

    “TAISEZ-VOUS!” shouted Simone.

    They shut up, pouting.

    “We’ll just wait for a taxi,” she said without conviction.

    It was very early. Barry Goode had explained at length to Fiorella—and Avon—that he wasn’t going out to the airport to look at planes—Christ, why had he ever mentioned the word “airport”?—he was going to collect a slab of Italian marble that had arrived from overseas for Dr Kincaid, and he wouldn’t, with less conviction, be anywhere near the planes. Oh, all right! Let her come! And YES, you too, Avon, he wasn’t leaving a two-year-old kid alone in the van while he farted around trying to convince the dim-witted clots at the bonded warehouse that he actually was Dr Kincaid’s legal deputy and that what they were looking for actually was one slab of Italian marble as described on the ruddy— Oh, just get in.

    Fiorella was asleep before they were even at the Takapuna turnoff.

    “Look, couldn’t I just drop you two off here?” he said cautiously.

    “No, she’d wake up and roar for the planes!” returned Avon crossly. “And you shouldn’t break promises to kids, it creates unfortunate expectations of adult behaviour.”

    “All right,” he groaned. “And shut up, it’s too early for ruddy polysyllables.”

    Avon shut up, scowling.

    After quite some time Barry said on a weak note: “Sorry. Maybe we shoulda had something to eat before we started.”

    “Yeah.”

    “’Ve you been reading those books that Janet got you from her library?”

    “Yeah. So?” she said, sticking out her little pointed chin.

    Barry swallowed a sigh. “Nothing.” There was nothing much wrong with little Janet Wilson, except that she knew even less about kids, not to say about real life, than Avon did, even though she must be in her thirties: so all the books on child psychology she was helpfully supplying Avon with were even fuller of crap than the mags Avon usually read.

    “It’s probably too early for—um, P,L,A,N,E,S, ya know,” he said weakly as, with the slab of marble at long last stowed in the back, they headed for the immense and almost deserted carpark.

    “Pooh, I can hear one now!”

    Yeah, right. They were manifestly testing its engines. Barry didn’t know much about planes but he knew the sound of an engine being tested when he heard it.

    “Maybe we could find something to—uh—E,A,T,” he said weakly.

    “Yeah! Great! I’m starving!” she beamed.

    “Wanna see pla-anes!” whined Fiorella.

    “Yes! YES! This is the airport, Fiorella, we’re gonna look for planes!” he shouted.

    “See planes!” she said happily, beaming.

    Barry took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

    Even though they went up to the deserted spaces of the so-called viewing area there were no planes. Fiorella burst into tears.

    Barry stood on tiptoe. “Look, even if there were any planes, you still couldn’t see ’em from here, these roofs are completely blocking the view of the runway!” he said in exasperation.

    “Um—yeah,” admitted Avon, looking dazedly at several hectares of grey airport roofs. “Um—I don’t think this is where we came that time with Kevin.”

    “Can’ta been, if ya saw planes.”

    “But it is the viewing area,” she said in confusion.

    Barry sighed. “Look, let’s— Fiorella! The planes have gone bye-byes!” he said loudly. “All gone sleepy-byes! See ’em later, eh?”

    Fiorella continued to cry, though now it was more sobbing than wailing.

    “Let’s get some tucker into ’er, then we could go over to the Domestic Terminal: I think we might have a better chance of seeing a plane or two from there.”

    “All right. –Fiorella!” she said loudly to her sobbing offspring. “The planes are gonna have their brekky now! You want brekky?”

    Fiorella stopped in the middle of a sob. “See planes have brekky?”

    Muttering under his breath about moronic sisters, Barry headed off to where, possibly, they might find something to eat. If it was open yet.

    No taxis having eventuated, Simone had given in to the kids’ whining that they were hungry. Eventually she found a huge area of plastic-topped tables, with plastic seats, but only three people observably eating or drinking. You had to choose your food from the hutches, she decided, like un self: joining what would be a queue if there was anybody else in it, and then paying the lady at the cash register.

    Anne-Louise chose a strange pink fuzzy cake, sort of square in shape, but Simone let her, after all this was a foreign country and then, by their stomachs it could be time for un five o’clock, or— Well, anyway, who cared? And it might stop her whining for five minutes. Pierre looked blankly at all the strange food and Simone, belatedly remembering that he was only seven, even if he was a horrible little know-it-all, said feebly: “I think those ones are hot, Pierre. They probably have meat in them. Would you like one?”

    “Yes,” he decided. “Can I have a coffee?”

    Strictly forbidden by Armand, of course, but— “Oh, all right,” she said weakly. She moved on cautiously, peering at strange viands. “Laisse ça,” she said hurriedly as Pierre’s hand went out to a huge platter of shredded lettuce, beetroot and… hard-boiled egg? Ugh.

    “Mais j’ai faim!” he protested.

    “Cherche un sandwich,” said Simone feebly.

    They looked. There were no sandwichs.

    “Ce sont peut-être des sandwichs anglais,” decided Simone, looking at the thin slices of English bread packaged tightly in plastic. “Wouldn’t you like—” They wouldn’t. Simone swallowed a sigh, but didn’t force them.

    As they approached the last two sets of food cabinets Anne-Louise gasped, and pointed. Very, very bright little mounds of… red and green and orange. They were definitely not des glaces, though they were in the sort of little glass dish in which one bought ices in summer in the sort of grimy little café that Armand didn’t let them go into. Sort of see-through substances. Topped with knobs of cream and… little multi-coloured dots on the cream. Simone let Anne-Louise have one. She chose a bright red one. It was probably full of the sort of dye that the French had long since stopped putting in their food, but— Well, one couldn’t possibly hurt her. “Have one, Maman!” she beamed.

    Pierre officiously opened the hutch for her.

    “Eugh, non, j’ai pas faim,” said Simone feebly. “I’ll just have a coffee.”

    Barry took a Big Pen pie.

    “Wan’ poi-ee!” whinged Fiorella immediately.

    “Let her, they’re full of TVP: completely vegetarian,” he said drily.

    “No, they’re too big for her. Here, Fiorella, here’s a lovely little wee pie for you!” said Avon, putting a small savoury on her plate.

    “Poie for me!” she beamed.

    They moved on. Barry took a sandwich.

    “Wan’ sammitch!”

    Avon took two sandwiches, placing one on her daughter’s plate and noting over her head: “I’ll eat it if she doesn’t want it.”

    “Mm…” said Barry vaguely, peering.

    They moved on.

    “Ah: choice between cream doughnuts with artificial cream, and real lamingtons!” discovered Barry. He took two brown lamingtons.

    “Wan’ cakey!”

    “These here are genuine lamington cakeys!” Barry informed his small niece with a chuckle.”

    “They’ll taste like sawdust,” predicted Avon.

    “Sure to.” Choice was a bit beyond Fiorella: he said kindly: “Wanna pink cakey?”

    “’Es!”

    Fiorella got a pink lamington.

    Avon, with a feeble smile, took a brown one.

    They moved on…

    “Wan’ pud-dee-eeng!”

    Before Avon could move, Barry dumped a small green jelly on her tray. “Water, dye, sugar and gelatine, yeah.”

    They reached the very last compartment. Suddenly the cold puddings gave way to hot sausages.

    “Wan’ sausage! Wan’—”

    “Yeah, so do I,” admitted Barry. He distributed three sausages round their plates.

    “Barry, she’ll never eat all that.”

    “This is true,” said Barry mildly, squinting at the drinks prices. Ouch. “Don’t ask for C,O,K,E, thanks,” he warned.

    “I wasn’t gonna, they’re the most expensive ones in the country!”

    “You can say that again.” There were people in front of them: Barry came to a halt, gazing dreamily up at a large coloured ad for hamburgers.

    “They’ve stopped doing those,” said his sister cautiously.

    “Uh-huh. Well, let’s hope she doesn’t recognise two-dimensional representations of ’em.”

    “Mm,” agreed Avon, swallowing.

    “Eat cakey,” decided Fiorella.

    “No!” snapped Avon. “You can’t eat it till Mummy says, Fiorella: this is a shop!”

    “Like Mc—” Barry choked.

    “Like Swadlings’,” said Avon hurriedly. “’Member when we go to Swadlings’?”

    Obviously she did: she immediately wailed: “Wan’ chocky fish!”

    “Clot,” noted Barry.

    Avon bit her lip, frowning. “Yeah,” she admitted.

    “Wa-an’ chocky fi-ush!” wailed Fiorella.

    “This isn’t Swadlings’!” said Avon crossly. “Look! Where’s May?”

    Whether this was over Fiorella’s head or whether she was just plain ignoring it in the hope that it’d go away wasn’t perfectly clear: but whichever it was, she went on wailing: “Wa-an’ chocky fi-ush!”

    Simone had understood when the man behind them said: “Well, let’s hope she doesn’t recognise two-dimensional representations of them.” Since then, she hadn’t understood a single word any of the three of them had said, especially not the little girl. And she hadn’t understood a word the woman at the cash resister had said.

    “Donne-lui l’argent, Maman!” urged Anne-Louise officiously.

    Simone was trying to. She held out a handful of ten-franc notes. “H’it ees ’ow meuch, please?”

    The woman burst into speech.

    “Barry,” said Avon cautiously.

    Barry came to with a jump. “Huh?”

    His sister said in a low voice: “Can you help that lady? She doesn’t understand. I think she’s only got foreign money.”

    “Uh—oh.” Barry looked at the red-faced and perspiring woman at the cash register, and at the bewildered, harried-looking little woman with the two whingeing kids, and swallowed. Shit. He didn’t even know what lingo the brats were whingeing in! “What’s up?” he said easily to the pink-overalled woman behind the counter.

    “She’s trying to give me this foreign money!” she said exasperatedly. “I keep telling her, this isn’t a bank!”

    That’d help, acknowledged Barry Goode silently. “Hullo,” he said with a smile. “Can—I—help—you?”

    “‘Ullo!” gasped the thin woman—wasn’t much more than a girl, really. “Please, eet ees ’ow meuch, dhuh food?”

    “Tell her, it isn’t a bank, we can’t change her money here!” said Pink Overall loudly.

    “Yeah. This is—wrong—money,” said Barry loudly and clearly.

    “Eet ees ’ow meuch monnay, dhuh food?”

    “Uh—this—is—wrong—money.”

    “Yes, yes!” she said brightly, nodding. “So, h’eet ees ’ow meuch monnay, dhuh food?”

    “Bugger,” muttered Barry to himself. “Look, you need dollars,” he said to the woman.

    “Par-don?”

    “You—need—”

    “Wanna eat cakey NOW!” screeched Fiorella aggrievedly.

    “Oh, look, bugger it,” decided Barry, producing notes from his wallet. “I’ll pay for them as well, sort it out after,” he said to Pink Overall. “How much is it, then?”

    Pink Overall, with some relief, told him, and added his lot onto it; and Barry paid it all. “Come—on,” he said, taking the little mother’s arm. “Pick—up your—tray.”

    The little boy said something loud and scornful to her and grabbed his plate. The little girl added something loud and scornful, and grabbed her plate.

    Barry sighed. He transferred the three coffees left on the woman’s tray to his, and tugged at her arm. “Come—on,” he said loudly.

    She burst into agitated speech. Uh—was it French? Didn’t sound like no Froggy lingo Barry had ever heard at school, but it was sort of something like what you heard at the University Film Society. Only come to think of it, it was something like the Polish films as well as the French ones. “Does that remind you of Jean Gabin?” he said to Avon.

    “Jean Gabin?” echoed the woman dazedly.

    “Oui. Jean Gabin,” said Barry with some relief. “Etes— um, hang on. Etes-vous français?” he said loudly.

    “Oui, oui, monsieur, nous sommes français!” agreed Simone in relief. “Please,” she continued in her own language: “you mustn’t pay for our food! If you’d just let me know how much—”

    “Ne comprenny pas,” said Barry, shaking his head. “Ne—comprenny—pas!” he said loudly as she stopped and gaped at him.

    “Barry, that’s wrong!” said Avon scornfully.

    “All right: you do better.”

    “Um—hang on. Mon frère—um—ne comprend—pas,” said Avon loudly, going very red.

    “Right: it’s easy when it isn’t you,” muttered Barry. “What’s the French for sit down?” he asked with a sigh.

    “Um—dunno.”

    “Wan’ cake-eey!” wailed Fiorella piercingly. “Bawwy! Wan’ cakey! Wan’ cakey!”

    “Yeah. Come ON, for God’s sake!” said Barry, starting to get rather hot under the collar, as he perceived that the café had suddenly filled with a great queue of people—well, at least ten—all staring at them. He more or less pulled the Frenchwoman over to a table and forced her to sit at it.

    “Manger!” remembered Avon in some relief. She pointed to the table, and repeated loudly: “Manger.”

    “Oui, oui, mangez, tous les deux,” said Simone limply to her children.

    “Siddown, and shuddup, and eat,” said Barry grimly to his niece, dumping her bodily on a chair. “Here. Pink cakey. Wee pie.”

    Looking sideways at the foreign girl, Fiorella began to eat pink lamington.

    Anne-Louise looked sideways at the little foreign girl.

    “Oui, elle mange son baba: mange le tien,” urged Simone.

    “C’est pas un baba!” she retorted scornfully, starting to eat nonetheless.

    Pierre embarked on his strange hot thing with meat in it. Simone sighed, and picked up her coffee. If the man didn’t speak French, how was she ever going to make him understand that she must repay him for the… She set her cup down hurriedly, looking horrified.

    Barry had been thinking out this speech for a couple of minutes, so he was able to swallow Big Ben pie hastily and note: “Oui. Le café est ’orrible, n’est-ce pas?”

    “Oui. I ’ave dhuh wrong monnay,” stated Simone.

    Barry sagged. “Yeah.” She still had it in one hand: he reached over and unclenched the hand gently. Crikey, it was peculiar-looking money, all right. “Wrong money,” he said slowly. She nodded. “You—need—New Zealand—dollars,” said Barry slowly.

    “Que dit-il?” demanded Pierre suspiciously, glaring at him.

    “Rien. Mange—eugh—mange ton truc chaud, Pierre.” Pierre got on with the strange hot thing with meat in it. “I ondair-stand,” said Simone carefully to the kind man. “I need New Zealand dollars.”

    Barry nodded limply. “Yes, that’s right.”

    “Sossy ROLL!” shouted Fiorella aggrievedly as the last of the little boy’s sausage roll vanished down his gullet.

    “Shuddup. You had a lamington,” said Barry firmly. “And ya got a sausage. Eat ya sausage, eh?”

    “Wan’ poie!” she said with a defiant pout, embarking on her little savoury instead.

    Barry shrugged. “Kids, eh?” he said to the little Frenchwoman.

    Simone translated silently to herself: Les gosses… Suddenly she realised what he meant. “Yes!” she said with a beaming smile. “Keeds, hay?”

    Barry twinkled at her, and got on with his Big Ben before it could go stone cold and glue itself to the plate.

    “Votre fille,” said Avon suddenly, nodding at Anne-Louise.

    Simone smiled. “Oui, oui, c’est ma fille. Anne-Louise.”

    “Uh— Oh, is that her name? Isn’t that pretty, Barry? Anne-Louise.”

    Anne-Louise glared suspiciously at her and said to her mother: “Que dit-elle?”

    “Elle demande si t’es ma fille. Tu veux un café?”

    Barry and Avon watched limply as the skinny little French girl took a paper cup of coffee.

    Once Avon was more or less over the shock of seeing the kid sugar it and then actually drink it, she said: “Um, quelle âge?”

    “Anne-Louise? Huit ans. Eugh—she ’as h’eight years.”

    “Help, she’s eight,” said Avon limply to Barry.

    “Skinny little thing, eh?” he agreed.

    “No wonder, if she lives on a diet of refined sugar and blimmin’ coffee!”

    “Wan’ coffee!” whined Fiorella immediately.

    “Rave on,” replied Avon grimly. Fiorella subsided.

    “Eat some sausage,” said Barry tolerantly.

    “Wan d’ink!” she replied aggressively.

    “Yeah, and then you’ll wanna go toilet— Oh, all right. Ya wouldn’t know the French for milkshake, wouldja?” he said to Avon.

    “No.”

    “No. Too bad, I’ll get them for all of ’em, I can’t stand the sight of them drinking this muck,” he said as the little boy, having sugared his coffee liberally, embarked on it. “Want one?”

    “Um—they’re awfully dear here, Barry.”

    “Yeah. Do—ya—want—one?”

    Avon admitted she wanted a lime one, ta, Barry, and Barry went off to get four milkshakes. Fiorella always had strawberry, so he got strawberry for the other two kids, save arguments.

    “Um—mon frère,” explained Avon in his wake.

    “Yes, ’e ees your bro-thair,” said Simone laboriously. “I ondairstand.”

    “Yeah. Um—he’s getting milkshakes. Milkshakes?” The Frenchwoman shook her head, looking apologetic. “Drat,” muttered Avon. “Um— Oh, I know! Lait. Pour les enfants.”

    “Mais je veux pas du lait!” wailed Pierre.

    “Ta gueule. You’ll drink it, if the kind man buys it for you. –Toi aussi,” she said in a steely voice as Anne-Louise opened her mouth.

    Anne-Louise looked virtuous. “Milk’s good for your bones, we learned it at school. Anyway, this coffee’s dégueulasse.”

    Simone took a deep breath. Sanctimonious little hypocrite. “Oui, c’est ça.”

    Pierre began to whine that he hated milk.

    “Ta GUEULE, Pierre! Ça suffit!” she shouted.

    Pierre’s lip wobbled. He hunched up miserably into himself.

    Simone bit her lip, realising consciously for the first time that he was wearing his heavy winter overcoat. “Mon petit, ôte ton pardessus, hein?” she said kindly. Pierre ignored her, hunching into his coat. Giving up, she asked laboriously: “And she h’ees your leetle daughter?”—smiling at the young New Zealand woman. She seemed very young to be a mother.

    “Fiorella: yeah, that’s right,” agreed Avon, smiling.

    “She h’ees called Fiorella?”

    “Yes. She’s two.”

    “Par-don?”

    “She’s two! Two years old!” said Avon loudly.

    “Ah, oui!” agreed Simone, covered in confusion. How silly of her, of course that was what the girl had said! “She ’as two years!”

    “Yeah. –I’m Avon: Avon Goode,” said Avon, pointing at herself.

    With some relief Simone introduced herself. She’d practised that. She hadn’t realised it would be so long before she’d need to say it, though. And she certainly hadn’t realised that it would be so hard to understand them. She’d been quite good at English, at school. “Thees ees Pierre,” she added. “’E has seven years.”

    “Hullo, Pierre,” said Avon, smiling at him.

    Pierre hunched into his coat.

    “Shy,” decided Avon, smiling nicely at his mother.

    “Eugh—yes,” said Simone uncertainly.

    When Barry returned with the milkshakes, his sister greeted him with a bright smile and: “She’s going to the Pink Manuka!”

    “Eh? Up Kingfisher Bay?”

    “Yes! See, she’s got it all here, on her itinerary!”

    Barry sat down limply. “Has she told you how she imagines she’s gonna get there?” He distributed milkshakes, sighing.

    “No. –Her name’s Simone,” Avon said helpfully.

    “Uh—right. Oh: I’m Barry,” he said, pointing at himself and nodding at her.

    “Barrie? Thank-you for dhuh milks, Barrie,” she said carefully.

    An interval ensued in which Barry tried to tell Simone the “milks” were not just milk but strawberry flavoured, with ice cream in them: y’know? Milkshakes.

    “See: the little girl’s drinking it!” Simone urged her scowling children.

    Fiorella, possibly feeling the eyes of the company upon her, looked up from her straw, gasping. “St’aw-by milkshake!”

    “Elle est mignonne, n’est-ce pas?” murmured Simone with a smile.

    “Non,” said Pierre sourly.

    Anne-Louise had been about to say this, but she could not agree with her brother, of course. She scowled, and in self-defence, tried the pink, frothy milk. Her eyes went very round.

    “I think she’s saying,” said Avon to her brother in a low voice, “that it’s like a pudding.”

    Barry thought he had heard “dessert”, too: he nodded. “How’s yours?”

    “Good,” admitted Avon with a sigh.

    Barry smiled. Of all the available flavours, except perhaps the banana, the lime was the most evidently ersatz. Avon had been addicted to it ever since she was about Fiorella’s age.

    Both French kids were now drinking milkshake. “They’ve got the point,” he murmured.

    “Mm,” Avon agreed through hers.

    Barry looked weakly at Simone and tried to figure out how the fuck he was gonna make her understand that public transport up to Kingfisher Bay would take about five hours, even if she could find it, and that a taxi all the way would cost at least, no kidding, two hundred dollars. More, probably: they usually charged for the round trip, the bastards. Eventually he picked up her itinerary and with the aid of much pointing and smiling, got her to understand, he thought, that the Pink Manuka was near their place and he would give her a lift.

    Very fortunately Fiorella was so full of pink milkshake and airport junk food that she seemed to have forgotten they hadn’t come here merely to eat and drink, and allowed herself to be bundled back into the van without shrieking. Also fortunately, Avon volunteered to go in the back with the French kids. There was a seat in there, of sorts, and as it had come out of an old car, it did have seat-belts attached. It was placed along the side of the van, and they wouldn’t be able to see anything, but too bad. Anyway, they’d probably go to sleep.

    “A-von!” he said as the little boy buckled himself in, winter coat and all.

    “What?”

    Sighing, Barry clambered in, knelt down beside the skinny little fellow, unbuckled his seatbelt, smiled at him, and took his coat off him. “What’s ‘hot’, Avon?”

    “Um—chaud.”

    “Gotcha. –Chaud. Trop chaud,” said Barry to the little boy, buckling him in again. “Vous—aussi,” he said, pointing at the little girl. Scowling, but not daring to pretend she hadn’t understood, Anne-Louise removed her winter coat. Barry buckled up her seatbelt for her, ignoring what was evidently the French for “I can do it!”

    “Thank you vairy meuch,” said Simone wearily as he climbed into the front of the van and handed her her children’s coats.

    “Thass okay. –NO!” he snapped.

    Fiorella’s tiny hand retreated from the buckle of her child restraint. Her lower lip wobbled.

    “She can’t get it undone, of course, but it’s the principle of the thing,” said Barry loudly and cheerfully to Simone, giving up on the language problem for the nonce. “Here we go. It’ll take a while.”

    Simone nodded and smiled uncertainly, and they set off.

    “PLANES!” screamed Fiorella ecstatically as one was discerned to be coming in to land, while another could be seen taxiing.

    “Yeah: good one. Ya seen the planes, eh?” said Barry limply.

    Fiorella nodded blissfully. “I seen the planes!” she said brightly to Simone.

    Yeah, well, that was New Zild grammar as she was spoke, reflected Barry Goode, driving off to Carter’s Bay with his cargo of bewildered foreigners.

    “This is it: get out,” ordered Sammi. She had already informed Martin and Sim that she didn’t mind taking them up the first time, but from now on they could catch the morning bus up to Carter’s Bay. The boys tumbled numbly out of the shiny Hertz rental Honda that Sammi was driving until she decided what she wanted to buy. They looked dazedly round at acres of cracked asphalt. “Over there,” said Sammi, winding her window down. “I’ve got to go: I’ve got an appointment with an estate agent in Kowhai Bay.” She drove off without further ado.

    Martin and Sim looked at each other numbly.

    Eventually Sim croaked: “Did she say Mr Goode?”

    “Mm.”

    Sim licked his lips. “That must be it.”

    On the far side of the expanse of asphalt was a huge, battered wooden shed: black. Above a giant gaping space that might have been a doorway, if you wanted to drive the odd jumbo jet into the shed, was an elaborate bright blue and gold sign: Goode as Olde.

    “Come on,” decided Martin at last.

    They shambled over to the gaping hangar entrance.

    Kevin emerged into the sunlight as they approached the doorway. “Hullo,” he said thickly through May Swadling’s version of a filled roll.

    “Um—good morning,” croaked Martin. “Um—we’ve come about the jobs. Um—I’m Martin Wolfe and this is Sim Wynters.”

    Kevin swallowed stodgy white roll, with some difficulty. “Kevin Goode. Well, this is it,” he said, waving at the great acreage of pitted asphalt,

    “Y— Um, what is it, exactly, sir?” croaked Martin, going very red.

    “Didn’t your sister explain?” Martin and Sim shook their heads. “Oh. Well, it’s the old bus terminus, ya see? This is the actual bus barn,” he said, jerking his head at the structure behind him. “Used it as the workshop, I think: they parked the buses out here. These days they run a Sunday market on it: you know: car-boot thing. The Council won’t allow permanent stalls: might actually encourage trade,” he said with a shrug. The boys just goggled at him.

    Eventually Sim croaked: “I see. But—um—what do you do, sir?”

    “Kevin. Or Kev, if ya like,” corrected Kevin, swallowing the last of the filled roll. “Had ya breakfast?” They nodded numbly. “Recycling,” he explained. “Come on through.”

    Numbly they followed him into the bus barn.

    What Kevin mainly wanted them to do, it finally emerged, was to chip old mortar off old bricks. In the weekends, though, which were his busiest time, they could help out in the “shop”, if they liked. They looked at him humbly, nodding. And not asking if they were entitled to any days off. Did they understand they were sub-contractors? Martin admitted groggily that Sammi had said, and Kevin, assuring them with a wink that it was just for the books, then led them out to his little blue truck and invited them to hop in. Obediently they hopped.

    “’Course,” he explained cheerily, as they rattled down the wide, steeply cambered road: “with most demolition jobs ya just cart the bricks away, warts and all, ’cos the developer wants to get going, soonest. Clear the site, ya see?” Groggily they nodded. “Yeah. But Carrano Development won’t be putting anything on this site for a bit, so I’ve worked out that it’s more cost-effective to clean the bricks onsite, and just haul the cleaned ones away: saves haulage. Petrol and labour,” he said kindly. “Means the mess stays on the site, too, not in the yard. This end of town’s pretty rundown; used to be quite busy, round about the turn of the century, before the harbour silted up. Nothing much down here, these days.”

    The boys looked at a scattering of grimy, broken-down industrial buildings interspersed with grassy vacant lots, and nodded.

    “Nice old pub,” noted Kevin as they passed it.

    It looked like something out of a Western. Well, given that it was almost devoid of paint, with its windows boarded over. “Yes,” they agreed feebly.

    “Here we are!” Kevin drew up noisily. “The water’s just at the back, there,” he said, nodding. “Hop out!”

    Now they came to think of it, they could hear gulls. And smell the sea. They got out slowly.

    “What was it?” ventured Martin, looking at the immense piles of bricks, and the gaping teeth of half-demolished pillars.

    “Wool-store. Got some lovely old kauri out of it: wouldn’t leave that for the mongrels to scavenge!” he said with a cheery laugh. “Warehouses,” he explained, waving at the huge, grey-painted, windowless structures along the street. “Concrete. Not much decent in them. The whole lot’s gonna go, and Carrano Development’s putting up ‘harbour-side’, unquote, guinea-pig hutches for yuppies that they’ll charge ’em a cool quarter mill’ for.”

    “A quarter of a million pounds?” gasped Sim.

    “Uh—no. New Zealand dollars. Be about… dunno. About eighty or ninety hundred thousand pounds, I s’pose. Anyway, as I was saying, this is one of the sites. Then there’s a whole row of little houses, other end of town. They’ve gotta go: Carrano Development’s gonna upgrade the whole street to make it more suitable for your junior lecturers’ families, or so the story runs,” he said, making an acid face. “Never mind, all grist to the mill, eh?”

    Martin and Sim gulped. “You mean we have to chip the mortar off all these bricks?” croaked Martin.

    “Yeah. That’ll keep ya going for a bit,” replied Kevin, poker-face.

    They nodded numbly.

    “Got hats?” he asked suddenly.

    They shook their heads numbly.

    “Well, that was pretty bloody dumb, wasn’t it?” he said cheerfully. Cheerfully he decided that his brother Barry could probably let them have a couple of hats, loaded them up into the bright blue little truck again, and roared through the settlement, to draw up in a street of grass-grown vacant lots and tumbledown wooden bungalows. The boys’ blurred eyes brightened momentarily as the door of the unknown Barry’s house was opened by a pretty girl. This slight euphoria was then dissipated by the sight of the hats she produced. One was a cotton thing, with a droopy brim. Faded orange. The other was even worse: a battered, wide-brimmed cowboy hat, made of straw. It was adorned with a bright pink fuzzy thing that no cowboy would have been seen dead with. It didn’t fit Sim, so Martin had to wear it.

    Kevin then drove them back to the immense piles of bricks that would be their job for the foreseeable future, produced the requisite tools, showed them briskly how to use them, made them demonstrate they’d grasped it, corrected their technique, and drove away, with a flip of the hand and a casual: “See ya!”

    Sim licked his lips. “Um—we’d better start.”

    They sat down on the mixture of rubble and plain dirt, and got on with it. Sim did not complain that he was wearing designer jeans, and Martin did not mention the fact that his, Martin’s, Reeboks would be ruined by clambering over all this rubble. So possibly Paul Wolfe and Mr Wynters might have conceded that the New Zealand experience was doing them good, already.

    Old Jacko Te Hana came wandering round from the back around twelve-thirty and found them hard at it. “Gidday. How’s it?”

    “Um—hullo!” gasped Martin. Sim was incapable of utterance. The man was a Black, dressed in unspeakably disreputable jeans and a torn black vest. He was visibly elderly, but that didn’t mean he didn’t look ready to mug them if they even blinked.

    “Jacko Te Hana,” he explained.

    The boys looked at him blankly.

    “Hard yacker, eh?” he said with a tiny smile.

    The boys looked at him blankly.

    “Kev Goode said ya might want lunch.”

    “Oh!” gasped Martin. “Um—yes, thanks frightfully! Um, I’m awfully sorry, but we haven’t got much New Zealand money!” he gasped, turning scarlet and scrambling up.

    Jacko Te Hana sucked his teeth. “Anybody say anything about paying?”

    “Um—no, sir!” gulped Martin.

    “There you are, then,” he said blandly. “Come on, then.”

    “Um—thank you. Um—I’m Martin Wolfe, and this is Sim Wynters!” gasped Martin, as Sim rose numbly.

    “Pleased to meet ya.”

    “How do you do?” said Sim limply. “Um—I say, could I possibly use your facilities?” he burst out, turning scarlet.

    “Eh? Oh: ya wanna go to the toilet?” said Jacko kindly. “Yeah: sure. The boat’s all fitted out. –This way. Mind ya step.”

    They stumbled after him. The blank grey wall at the back of their site was, it turned out, only a wall, not the back of another building, and right behind it was the sea and the jetty. A very broken-down jetty. Moored near the far end of it was a neat little wooden launch. When they reached it, the boys just gaped. It was a very old-fashioned looking boat, painted dark blue, with a glowing varnished superstructure. A tiny flag fluttered jauntily at the stern, and a couple of amazingly white lifebelts and some amazingly white coils of rope were featured.

    “Here she is: the Rose Marie. The only Maori boat in the country that’s not only clean and shipshape but ya wouldn’t mind inviting the Queen Mum to afternoon tea on!” said Jacko Te Hana with pardonable pride.

    “Yes!” they gasped, wondering if racist remarks were all right when it was one of the race concerned that was making them.

    “She’s wonderful, sir!” added Sim.

    “Not bad, eh? Come aboard.”

    They came aboard dazedly. She was just as shipshape below-decks. So—so why was her owner so… filthy, was probably the only word. His wrinkled skin was so dark that it was hard to tell, but it didn’t give the impression of having been washed lately.  His teeth were awful: gappy and dark yellow. His sneakers, which were pretty obviously the third and fourth items of apparel of the four he had on, had giant holes which displayed his bunions and his right big toe. They might once have been white, but were now a brownish colour. His plates, however, were as clean as his boat. And the pan-fried fish was wonderful. With it he served beer from a large, dark brown bottle. It was horrible: very cold, and very heavy and sweet, but they drank it nonetheless.

    It was difficult to keep awake during the afternoon, but at long length came the sound of a truck’s engine. Loading the bricks into the back managed to wake them up sufficiently for Martin to look at his watch and ask: “I say, Kevin, when does the bus leave?”

    “Don’t worry about that, I’ve jacked you up a lift,” said Kevin breezily.

    They nodded numbly.

    … “How’d it go?” asked Mike Collingwood with a grin, strolling out onto the forecourt of The Blue Heron, as a neat little car dropped off two drooping, uncoordinated, grimy figures in odd head-gear at around five-thirty. At the wheel was a neat little robin-like, grandmotherly person whom Mike recognised instantly as Ida Grey from Puriri, who worked up at Kingfisher Bay at the crafts boutique. He waved and smiled as Ida drove off with a toot of her horn.

    “Quite well, I think,” said Martin feebly. Sim just smiled feebly.

    “Uh-huh. Kevin jack you up a lift with Ida, did he?”

    They nodded numbly.

    “And hats, I see: good,” he said, poker-face, as they jumped, and snatched them off, reddening. “Ms Wolfe won’t be back for a bit.” They nodded numbly again and Mike gave in, smiled and admitted: “Molly’s got your dinners all ready for you. Soon as you’ve had a shower, just come on over, eh?”

    Even though it was far earlier than they’d ever have had dinner at home, they nodded convulsively, gasped out grateful thanks, and stumbled off to shower.

    Mike strolled inside, grinning, and reported to Molly: “I was right: Kevin Goode did have them chipping bricks in the sun all day, poor little tykes. Ya better get the sunburn lotion out.”

    Molly already had. She just looked at him tolerantly.

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/home-sweet-home.html