Trouble

33

Trouble

    In the absence of Jack Perkins, a happy two weeks had been spent by most of the populace of Carter’s Bay still in residence. Whether this was a cause-and-effect relationship was a moot point. Out at Toetoe Bay Barry Goode, more or less resigned to the fact that Dr Kincaid and Mrs Burchett were back together again, was immersed in plans for the stable block. The big diggers (mineral rather than animal, though the blokes in charge of them weren’t small, either) had come, much to the delight of Dicky Burchett, Shane Tamehana, and Scott, Normie and Harry Fermour, all of whom had managed to be present for the entirety of the operation of scooping out and flattening the requisite piece of land. Toetoe Bay Farm was pretty flat but as Barry had explained to Dr Kincaid, it was more cost-effective these days to get the machines in than to have the blokes level the site by hand. Not that Nev and Jonno wouldn’t have been willing, with Mrs Burchett’s home-made cider in the offing. (Barry hadn’t said that last to Alan Kincaid.) Tama would have been willing, too, if he’d been there, but he wasn’t, it was his grandparents’ diamond wedding this January and the whole family had gone up to the obscure little township north of Whangarei where Tama’s ancestors had lived for about the last five hundred years to help them celebrate it.

    Over in Carter’s Bay itself Janet Wilson and Hal Gorman had apparently settled down to a blissfully cosy relationship in which he pruned the trees in her old orchard and did any heavy digging required in the garden, plus cooking fish or steak on the barbecue in her back yard which was actually his, as most of Carter’s Bay now knew, and she made potato salad and/or tomato and lettuce salad as and when, plus the occasional pavlova for pudding, for a treat. Not too often, as she explained happily to May Swadling: she was watching his weight. Jane Vincent, being swamped with family over the said period, was pretty busy; but at one point she did surface long enough to be able to remark to her neighbours that as far as her observation went Janet Wilson was the epitome of everything Hal had once said to her he didn’t want; but let it pass. Sol had advised her she better write this to Polly Carrano without delay but Jane had ignored that.

    In Kingfisher Bay, Gerhard and Beth were spending their time almost exclusively in each other’s company—mostly in his flat, though whether this was significant was a moot point. Certainly hers had Clara in it, so it wouldn’t have been very convenient.

    Up in up-market Kaingaroa Way Posy and Inoue were apparently happy as Larry in their big hired house. They had had a few days away, yes: down at Taupo, staying with some of his business friends, in a big house right on the lake, May wasn’t quite sure exactly where, but it was what they called the good side. Some of her audience actually knew what she was talking about here, but in any case all of them were able to nod understandingly.

    Little Wallis seemed to be coping very capably—and there was definitely nothing between her and Rab Perkins. Those of May’s audience who knew Avon Goode could only conclude, with a cringe or two, that that was a relief.

    Take it for all in all, things were going so well that there was almost nothing to report at all. Unless you were May Swadling, of course.

    Then, very shortly after Jack got back, things began to change…

    Jack hadn’t left the pink Caddy at the airport, he didn’t have that much faith either in the security of EnZed airport carparks or in the probity of the locals. He’d taken the old black Mercedes that he sometimes drove instead: she was a good, solid old thing, dating from the early Sixties. But not a downright tempting sight, though she didn’t look bad. Some of her parts were not authentically Sixties and in fact the right front fender, what Jack was slowly re-teaching himself had to be called “mudguard” if you didn’t want to be favoured with the local blank stare even though they watched the crapulous Yank TV shows all the time—the right front fender was totally and completely ersatz, cobbled together by Jack and some like-minded engineering buddies not long after he first moved to California from a sheet of metal that at some stage in its history had been destined for a quite different fate at a large aeronautical establishment which could remain anonymous. Serve them right for sacking poor old Red Fernandez when the bottom fell out of the aerospace industry not to say the defence industry: he was a real good guy and a decent engineer. It looked like a genuine Mercedes fender since him and Red and the guys had operated on it, he’d say that for it.

    The good old Merc was dozing placidly in the grey murk of a typical January day and Jack was pretty glad to see her. Not overjoyed, no: it was hard to work up that much energy, when Air New Zealand’s idea of sustenance for someone who’d got up at crack of dawn to catch a bumpy little plane from the West Coast up to Nelson and transferred after a four-hour wait into a scarcely less bumpy one for the frightful flight over Cook Strait—not long, thank God, but air-pockets all the way—and then had a three-hour wait until he could get a connection at Wellington, was two salty crackers in a hermetically sealed cellophane packet, two sweet cookies in a hermetically ditto, and one small piece of sweating cheese sealed inside a space capsule intended to be opened in the year 2525. If man was still alive, yeah. Jee-sus! Jack had given up, and admitted to the fat guy next to him that he’d forgotten all about EnZed airplane cheese. The fat guy next to him had turned out to be one, Bob Denton, who’d admitted after some probing that he taught mechanical engineering at Auckland: yeah, Bill Michaels was his boss, and Bill shoulda told him, Jack, that it wasn’t cheese, it was an artefact: this was something they’d got off NASA to preserve it in its original state, see? In spite of Bob Denton, who was clearly a good guy, Jack hadn’t felt all that much better about the cheese, not on top of one piece of white toast, singed, at five-thirty this morning and a cup of unspeakable coffee at Wellington airport. He would have had something solid to eat, but everything that might have sold actual food at the airport had been closed. And hungry though he was, he hadn’t fancied insulting his cholesterol level with, take your pick, a Mars Bar, a Crunchie bar, a Milky Bar—Jesus, did they still sell those?—or even a packet of MSG-and-vinegar-flavoured chips.

    Jack got into the Merc, patting her wheel approvingly and, since there was nobody there to hear him do so, addressing her tenderly as “Good old Gertrude.” And drove off northwards.

    By the time he’d passed approximately fifteen roadside stalls advertising tomatoes he’d had time to remember that between the airport and the city itself there was nothing that sold actual food. Unless you fancied stopping off at a suburban dairy and buying, take your pick, a Mars Bar, a— Yeah, well. He was so hungry he’d have settled for a McDonald’s, but there wasn’t one. By the time he’d completely skirted the downtown area, remembering too late that the road with all those vertical arrow signs that said “Airport” did that, he was at the stage of not really being hungry any more—so hungry that you no longer fancy food, y’know? Though still before the stage where the hallucinations set in. The Harbour Bridge was now two minutes away, so he headed for it.

    Some might have said that a sensible man, or perhaps one less given to cutting off his nose to spite his face, or to relentlessly playing “Now I’ve Got You, You Bastard”, depending on which era your clichés came from, might have taken the Takapuna off-ramp and gone straight to any one of the outlets providing not elegant but substantial food in that metropolitan centre. Or at the very least, the Brown’s Bay off-ramp and gone to the McDonald’s or Ching’s. Jack Perkins didn’t. By the time he got to the Puriri off-ramp, taking the new motorway as a matter of course, and thus avoiding the signs on the main north highway that advertised tomatoes, fresh eggs and, in at least one case of actual enterprise, “Devonshire Teas”, he was about as ratty as might have been expected. He did not turn off at Puriri, but headed straight on to Carter’s Bay and its roundabout.

    He did not cast so much as a mental glance in the direction of whether Rab and Wallis might not have got enough milk or bread in, and whether it might therefore be a good idea to drive the extra five minutes into Carter’s Bay to Swadlings’, but took the Inlet road; passing the turnoff to the Royal Kingfisher without even a thought cast in the direction of the substantial meal he could have got there.

    There was a strange station-waggon parked near Jane Vincent’s mailbox and a crowd of people loading it up with junk: Jack near as dammit drove into it.

    “Get the Hell off of the hardtop!” he shouted angrily.

    “What hardtop?” said Jane’s son-in-law blankly as the ancient black Merc shot on down the road. “This road isn’t sealed.”

    “Never mind. Just be thankful you didn’t have to actually meet him,” replied Jane soothingly.

    The next driveway was the Winkelmanns’. He still hadn’t put his mailbox back: Jesus! Jack drove on past, muttering.

    There was no sign of Rab’s Golf when he got home, but that was okay: he must be in at work. What there was a sign of, was clouds of smoke coming from the far side of the house! Jack rushed round to the Inlet side of the house, feeling for his keys as he did so, and stopped short at the sight that that met his gaze.

    On his front lawn, that he had paid megabucks to some local landscape gardener guy to have done out in real good turf, a huge and very makeshift barbecue was burning. Not the sort that entailed a little metal flying saucer which you filled with appropriate barbecue fuel, no: the sort that entailed a pile of rocks and rubble placed loosely round a damned great bonfire in order to support a piece of old grating that looked like it came off of the bonnet off of a bull-nosed Riley. A bonfire that was without any doubt whatsoever killing a solid patch of Jack’s very expensive lawn, not to say the elaborate sprinkler system thereunder.

    Presiding over this barbecue was a thinnish middle-aged guy… Winkelmann. Murray was assisting. Jack took a very deep breath.

    After a moment Sol looked up. “Hi,” he said mildly.

    “Hullo, Grandpa!” screamed Murray, coming to and hurling himself at him. “We’re havin’ a barbecue!”

    “On my lawn,” agreed Jack, picking him up and hugging him. “How are ya, Murray? Ya been good, huh? Wallis been looking after you okay?”

    “Aye, and I was no’ lost!” he shouted. “And I’m no’ a babby: put me doon, Grandpa!”

    Limply Jack put him down.

    “Oops,” noted Sol, coming over to them with what Jack could now see was his, Jack’s, good stainless steel barbecue fork in his fist. “Thereby hangs a tale. Nothing to worry about, we don’t think. He went too far down the road: think he lost his bearings.”

    “I was no’ lost!” he shouted.

    “Sure, Murray,” he agreed. “You wanna take the fork? Don’t run. Just give them sausages a good turn or two, huh? Good guy. –Wallis has broken her ankle,” he confided laconically. “’Bout four days back,” he added as Jack’s jaw sagged. “Uh—wal, we gather it happened when she was lookin’ for a certain person what wasn’t lost. Slipped on the bank up the road a ways.” He looked sideways at Murray. “Wal—no harm done. He got about as far as the track above the boatshed: spotted him there when I was driving in to the store.”

    “Jesus,” said Jack feebly. “Uh—do I gather you’ve been looking after him, if Wallis is incapacitated? Thanks, Sol.”

    “That’s okay,” he said drily. “Oh—we moved him and Wallis into a couple of the downstairs rooms: the stairs were too much for her, poor kid."

    “Uh—sure. Well, thanks very much. I—uh—I better see how Wallis is,” he said lamely.

    “Uh-huh. She’s in the kitchen with Michaela.”

    “Right,” said Jack feebly. He tottered inside. “Hey, Michaela,” he said limply.

    “Hullo, Jack,” replied Michaela placidly. “Did you have a good holiday?”

    “Yeah, great, thanks. Well, the transport’s pretty bad, y’know? And the hotels are nothing much. But the walking tour was good. Where’s Wallis?”

    “She’s just gone to the toilet. Did Sol explain?”

    “’Bout the ankle? Yeah,” he said sitting down heavily on a chair that had not been in his kitchen when he’d left: looked like one of the dining chairs. “I gather I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

    “Not really,” she said, pinkening.

    “Don’t believe her: Sol took me to the hospital and everything, they’ve been great,” said Wallis’s voice gruffly from the doorway.

    Jack got up. “How are you, Wallis?”

    “I’m okay, but the doc says I gotta keep off it, or it won’t heal!” she gasped, hopping. Jack put his arm under her elbow and helped her to the chair. “Ta!” she gasped. “I’m really sorry I let Murray wander off, Jack, he must of got up very early and got dressed all by himself and just wandered off!”

    “I see. You can tell me later, Wallis,” he said kindly. “He looks as fit as a flea, so no harm done, eh?”

    “No,” she said gratefully. “We weren’t sure if you’d be back tonight.”

    “Huh? Oh: didn’t know if the tour would make it back in time for me to get this morning’s connection to Nelson.”

    Wallis nodded. “So, did you have good weather?”

    Dot’s predictions had come true and it had poured most of the time Jack was on the West Coast. True, the dense bush of the area was spectacular in the rain, so long as the rain wasn’t so heavy as to totally obscure it. Jack replied easily: “Oh, not bad for the Coast. Bit of rain, ya know?” and she appeared satisfied.

    Sol had not expected, really, that Jack would have the guts to hold out and refuse to partake in the barbie what was desecrating his sacred lawn, however much he might have looked as if he’d rather eat rat poison; and this, indeed, proved to be the case. But since he was yawning his head off and informed them that he’d been up since four-thirty, he considerately gathered up Michaela and Grace as soon as they’d eaten. Not remarking until they were actually in the runabout that Wallis looked as if she wouldn’t have minded leaving with them.

    “I suppose she was feeling guilty,” murmured Michaela.

    “Uh-huh. This would be about lettin’ Murray wander out at crack of dawn and get lost, would it? Or about not stoppin’ yours truly from buildin’ a barbie on that lawn of his?”

    There was a short pause. “It’s true, isn’t it?” she said. “He really did buy that lawn ready-made.”

    “Don’t set me off, honey!” he choked.

    Michaela thought about it. “The grass’ll grow back.”

    It was only at this point that Sol gave way entirely and collapsed in helpless, streaming hysteria.

    The next stage in the saga didn’t become known to the citizens of Kingfisher Bay and Carter’s Bay generally until a day after it had actually happened: gee, was this a record? Sol debated telling Beth himself, after he’d gotten it from May. She was still on vacation, he could just drop in… Or would it be kinder to pretend the girl didn’t have a personal interest and just let her hear it from May in the natural course of events, or, this afternoon as ever was when she went in to fetch a carton of milk? Uh… On the other hand, he could tell Gerhard and let him do the dirty deed! Unfortunately this last would necessitate his going in to Sir G.G., and even though Kincaid was reliably reported to be very busy out at the new site… Sol dithered, but gee, it was right over the road from Swadlings’… He went. After all, he hadn’t actually been smoking fish today.

    Gerhard was discovered with his head in a computer but by now it was pretty clear to Sol that that was, for all but the fortunate few like him and Euan, or Simone and Annick, what work was. Well, Michaela was an exception, too, but then, pottery wasn’t work, it was a vocation. He went a strange colour when he saw Sol, so as there was no smell of fish Sol was able to reassure him: “No! Nothin’ ain’t happened to her, you dad-blamed fool, if it hadda done wouldn’t I have called you?”

    “Not if it was too late to matter,” he returned clinically.

    “Boy, sometimes you remind me of your sister!” replied Sol hotly.

    “Natural enough,” he returned clinically. “So, how may I help you, Sol?”

    “Uh—well, it’s gossip, really. Coulda told Beth myself, only— Uh, well, thing is, she’s gonna hear it from May anyways!” he said, feeling himself getting rather hot and sweaty even though Gerhard was a real nice guy.

    “Jack again?” said Gerhard in a voice of doom.

    “Uh-huh.” Sol had already shut Professor Sachs’s office door, there was a perky-looking secretary out in the outer office with her nice little pink ears a-wagglin’ like semaphore flags of World War I, y’know? “Thing is,” he admitted, “if I tell her especial, it’ll look too pointed. As if she was supposed to have an interest in the guy, y’know?”

    Gerhard raised his well-shaped blond eyebrows. “Und?”

    “Huh? Oh. He’s had a Goddamighty row with young Rab.”

    Gerhard sighed. “And it vill now be my responsibility to decide whether to tell Beth this before May Swadling does? Thanks. Are there— I won’t say, any details. I vill say, are there any details which you feel might be accurate ones?”

    “None o’ those, no,” he said mournfully.

    Gerhard sighed again, and got up. “I suppose it is not too early to say it’s almost lunch time. Come on, ve’ll go to the old pub, The Quays is too far to stroll, given that I haff to get this work done some time today.”

    “Yeah, and the old pub’s less likely to feature up-market characters from Sir G.G. and Casa Merry-Take-Your-Money, two not mutually exclusive categories, only too eager to hang on our every word or interrupt us remorselessly with trivia, two not mutually excl—”

    “Ja. That. Come on,” he interrupted remorselessly.

    Meekly Sol came. He sure hated the English-style bitter they featured at the old pub but maybe today was one of the days where they’d serve you with a Foster’s Lager or at least a Steinlager without makin’ you feel you wasn’t worthy to be called one of the boys no more…

    “Edifying,” concluded Gerhard sourly at the conclusion of the narrative.

    “Uh-huh. Wal, family life is like that.”

    “Oh, sure: in Germany too, no qvestion.”

    “I got the runabout moored down there just behind the building site of that putative mall, we could be in Kingfisher Bay in five min— No?”

    Gerhardt’s well-shaped mouth tightened. “No. Thank you very much for giving me the option, Sol. But on the whole, I think it would be better if I—alone of Puriri County, but nevertheless—if I do not overtly admit to Beth that I feel there is a reason that she should take a particular interest in Jack Perkins’s concerns.”

    “Uh-huh. Yeah. You got a point, there, guy,” agreed Sol, considerately not asking him in so many words if he was getting serious about the girl; after all, it hadn’t been quite a month yet. “Could stay here and tie one on?”

    “No. I shall have the ploughman’s lunch—don’t tell me what it actually is,” he said with the attractive, rather wistful little smile that Sol had already observed went over real good—but real good—with the distaff side. “Join me? –I think you may need something to soak up that DB Draught,” he explained kindly.

    “Yeah. Okay—thanks. It’ll be— No, you’re right, I won’t tell you, then at least you won’t have the apprehension to go with the indigestion.”

    Gerhard’s eyes twinkled, but he merely nodded.

    On the morning in question Jack had come downstairs to find Rab stuffing clothes into a selection of battered holdalls and backpacks strewn around the family-room. Murray was watching him with a bewildered look on his little round face and Wallis was merely watching. Perched on the very edge of a comfortable, hand-stitched rawhide armchair, eating toast.

    “What in Hell’s going on?”

    Rab didn’t reply.

    “RAB!” he shouted. “What in Hell are you doing?”

    Rab’s soft, generous mouth tightened. “Moving oot. Don’t argue, I’m no’ goin’ to stay here a meenute longer. I’ve talked it over with Avon—”

    “That stupid little tart!” shouted Jack furiously.

    Instead of losing his temper likewise, Rab just straightened from his packing and looked at him calmly. “Don’t call her that. The way you say that sort of thing aboot my friends and relations is one reason I’m moving oot, if you want to know.”

    “About your— Look, you stupid twat, they’re my relations, too!” he shouted.

    “Mum isna. And she may have been a fairly rotten mother, but at least she wanted us wi’ her. And by the time she went to California, we were both grown up, and she couldna know that Shiva would get sick.”

    “Grandma went to California,” said Murray helpfully to Wallis.

    “Yeah. Grab that purple thing, wouldja, Murray? I think it must be Rab’s, it’d be too big for you.”

    “Aye, it’s much too big for me.” Murray picked it up helpfully.

    “That’s MINE!” shouted Jack furiously as the legend “Notre Dame” was revealed on it.

    “Och, I’m no layin’ claim to it,” replied Rab with distaste.

    “It’s purple,” Murray explained to Wallis.

    “Yeah, hidjus, eh?”

    “Aye, hidjus!” he squeaked pleasedly.

    “Avon and me are movin’ into a place of our own,” Rab continued calmly.

    “There are no flats in Carter’s BAY!” shouted Jack. “Or do you mean the pair of you are going to graft off that brother of hers? That I can see!”

    “No. If you want to know, and it’s no business of yours, but I don’t mind tellin’ you, we’re takin’ over the recycling business from Kevin.”

    Jack’s jaw dropped.

    “So we’re moving into the bus barn,” finished Rab firmly.

    Wallis licked her fingers. “Yeah. Kev’s put them in as managers. See how it goes. He’s going off to Aussie for a bit. Some people Angie Michaels knows, they’ve got relations over near Coonawarra. They make a lot of wine round there, Kev’s always been interested in that sort of thing. You won’ta heard of it,” she added kindly to Jack. “Read, ‘Napa Valley.’”

    Jack’s lean cheeks reddened angrily but he didn’t retort.

    “Aye; if it works oot, we may tak’ over the business pairmanently.” Rab zipped a holdall shut. “I’ll see you verra soon, okay, Murray? As soon as we’re settled, you can come roond to supper with me and Avon and Fiorella.”

    “‘Tea,’” said Wallis detachedly just as Jack was about to shout it.

    “Oh, aye. Tea.” Rab hefted the other bags. “If you want the Golf back, I’ll no’ raise any objections,” he said calmly to his father.

    “What? No! For God’s sake, a present’s a present! Look, Rab, for Christ’s sake reconsider! I mean, if you want to take on this recycling crap, I guess— But stay here, there’s no need to move out, for God’s sake!”

    “No. And it isna crap. Well, thanks for the Golf, it’ll make life easier. –I’m grown up, Dad, I’ve got ma own life to lead, and I dinna need all the aggro.”

    “Like, the way you bawl him out,” said Wallis helpfully into what almost anyone else would have discerned to be a tingling silence.

    “Grandpa, he bawls Rab oot!” agreed Murray, faint but pursuing.

    “Aye. See ya,” said Rab, walking out.

    “Jesus!” said Jack, collapsing onto a giant hand-stitched rawhide sofa.

    There was a short silence.

    “I can gae and visit wi’ Rab,” stated Murray.

    “Yeah, he’s only gonna be living in Kevin’s ole bus barn, that’s quite near. We can go an’ see him tomorrow, eh?” agreed Wallis calmly.

    “Yeah,” he agreed with, apparently, equal calm.

    They heard Rab’s Golf start up. The sound of its second-generation Volkswagen engine gradually died away.

    Jack passed his hand groggily over his face. “This is crazy,” he muttered.

    “Yeah, to an impartial observer it’d prolly seem like that,” agreed Wallis clinically. “That ole bus barn isn’t exactly a palace.”

    “We had a routine all worked out,” he said dazedly. “Gee, how am I gonna— Hell.”

    “Well, he has got his own life to lead,” said Wallis detachedly.

    “Yes, but—” Jack sighed. “Oh, well. I shoulda seen it coming.”

    “Yeah. I think when Avon went off to Norfolk Island with her mum and dad it mighta sorta made him think what it’d be like if she wasn’t around all the time, ya know?”

    “Mm.”

    The silence lengthened.

    “Want some breakfast?”

    Jack started. “Uh—yeah. Thanks. Jesus, Wallis, if you were ten years older I’d marry you tomorrow, why in Christ can’t the rest of humanity be as rational and intelligent as you?”

    Wallis was rather red, but she replied calmly enough: “I might not want to, hadja thought of that? –I can do pancakes and bacon, if you like.”

    “Yeah. Well, yes, thanks, I’m starving.”

    “You lost a lot of weight on that tramping trip,” replied Wallis detachedly, getting up.

    Jack jumped, and came to give her her walking stick.

    “Ta. I’m not helpless,” she said with a grin.

    “No. Put it down it as a Pavlovian response.”

    “Yeah.” Wallis hobbled over to the door. “Come on, Murray, you can help. –Your trouble is, you have too many of those,” she noted calmly, going out.

    Jack sank down onto his South-Western-look, imported from actual Phoenix, Arizona at undisclosed expense, hand-stitched upholstery. “You’re not wrong,” he muttered grimly. “Well, that or letting the mouth move before the brain gets into gear, same difference. Jesus!” he concluded sourly.

    In view of the reports from Carter’s Bay and district, Jill and Gretchen had kindly urged Dorothy to stay on for a bit after they got back, but she had bravely returned to her flat at the appointed hour. The Carrano giant palms looked suspiciously lively, not to say alive, had someone been watering them? Anna, of course. With apologies for “invading” her flat. Dorothy thanked her humbly.

    She had decided—though why, she couldn’t have said: brothers did not do that sort of thing—that if Jack took her out to lunch and then broke the news that Rab had deserted him, she might react with kind sympathy. Not offer to baby-sit Murray permanently, no: that would be both brainless and misguided. But treat him with kind sympathy. Of course he didn’t. He didn’t invite her out to dinner, either, but she certainly didn’t expect that: that was the sort of thing they did once in a lifetime, like when they’d been in the States for twenty years and were just back on a flying two-day visit to their actual relations before hurrying off to spend two weeks with an old engineering mate on the far side of the Tasman.

    What he did do was ring her up at crack of dawn on the day that Alan Kincaid was expecting to see her back at her desk all bright-eyed and bushy-executive-tailed.

    “’Lo?” she said groggily into the phone.

    “So you are back!” her brother’s voice cried accusingly.

    “So are you, evidently,” replied Dorothy sourly.

    He didn’t get the point, which was, that sisters deserved annual leave just as much as brothers did, especially when both of them were in full-time employment not to say in jobs which demanded a minimum of forty-five hours’ weekly concentrated attention. On the other hand, Dorothy hadn’t expected he would: (a) too self-centred and (b) too culturally brain-washed; not absolutely necessarily in that order, but it would do.

    Jack didn’t ask how her vacation had been, he just launched into a long diatribe against Rab and, incidentally, Avon.

    “So I’d heard,” said Dorothy drily.

    “What? Jesus, don’t offer any help, here, Dot!” he cried aggrievedly.

    “No, I won’t,” agreed Dorothy calmly.

    “Look, couldn’t we at least agree to—uh—well, share the after-school care? Not the expense, just the—uh—”

    “Responsibility?” said Dorothy sweetly. “No, actually. I don’t think anyone can be held responsible for their genetic connection to their siblings, can they? It’s not as if Shiva had been my daughter, or Rab was my son, or Murray was my son or even my grandson.”

    “All RIGHT!” he shouted. “I get the point!”

    “Sir G.G. is starting up a crèche,” Dorothy pointed out without interest.

    “It isn’t after-school care!” he shouted.

    “Eh? Oh, no, nor it is. I expect they’d take him, though, if you could get him there. Your lectures don’t start till next year, do they?”

    “Uh—no. Uh—yeah, well, that’s a possibility, thanks,” he said grudgingly.

    “School starts here at the beginning of February, that’s not long to wait,” said Dorothy kindly.

    “I haven’t forgotten,” he replied grimly.

    “Mm. He probably doesn’t need after-school care, he needs stability in his home environment, but I’m only a spinster great-aunt, you needn’t count my opinion. Can I go and have my shower now?” said Dorothy sweetly.

    “I can’t give him what I haven’t GOT!” shouted Jack. “Or are you suggesting I go out and find some brainless little home-maker to marry just so’s the kid can have STABILITY?”

    “It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” said Dorothy in a judicious tone. “In the meantime, how’s Wallis’s ankle? Are you making sure she keeps off it?”

    “Huh? Oh—the ankle. Sure,” he said in what even a mere spinster sister on the other end of a very bad local Carter’s Bay connection could tell was that airy tone they put on when they were lying in their California-ized shiny teeth.

    “Goodness, Jack, if you’re so concerned about the girl as all that, maybe you’d better marry her! Her or Velda Manning. I’d have said Velda was more your type: more experience of S,E,X, more lipstick, hair-dye and earrings, and a lot more chest.”

    “Thanks for the help and sympathy, Dot,” said Jack through his perfect California-ized teeth, hanging up with a crash.

    Dorothy shrugged. “Goodness gracious, and he didn’t even wish me Many Happy Returns of three weeks ago!” she said brightly to the phone, hanging it up.

    Actually nobody had wished her Many Happy Returns, not even Janet, who was usually meticulous about such things—whether or not the victim wished to be reminded of his or her advancing years, natch. True, Dorothy had not been around during the first week of January to be wished it, but she had certainly expected a tasteful card of the pastel reproduction of something-vaguely-familiar type waiting for her in her bundle of mail. Nope. Not a sausage. Proved that even Janet was not immune to S,E,X, didn’t it? Admittedly, there had been two cards: well, a letter from her sister Kathleen, inside a card of the sort that you bought by the box-load from the RSPCA and wrote your own message on. Complaining bitterly about her ex-son-in-law and his goings-on, so it was just as well that Dorothy hadn’t gone down to Invercargill for Christmas, wasn’t it? The virtuous Mavis had turned up trumps: a lovely reproduction of Van Gogh with his ear cut off. Why, why, why? Well, more up-market than lovely reproductions of Bubbles or The Laughing Cavalier, true, and not so beyond the Modernist pale as to suggest that Mavis had gone definitively over to what she clearly presumed Dorothy’s side to be, but— God, forget it, it was the thought that counted. The thought had apparently been “Having a lovely time up here at Ninety Mile Beach, thinking of you, Mavis and Hubby.” No, she hadn’t actually called him that! Good old Jude had forgotten this year, but Dorothy wasn’t up to ringing her and finding out whether that was because she’d found out that the bum-pincher was sleeping with the skinny designer-jeaned cow from several doors down.

    Anyway, who wanted to be reminded that they’d just turned fifty-three? …Thomas must also be fifty-three, because it had been early Jan. when she’d first met him and he’d been the same as age as her, then. Oh, bugger the bloody man, anyway! Let’s hope he choked on a nodule and drowned! Dorothy went crossly off to have her shower and, just to prove to the World that turning fifty-three didn’t slow you down—more especially since she hadn’t had a bloody hot flush for the last three months—walked briskly to work with only a thin slice of Vegemited toast and a cup of Instant in her tummy. It was so swampingly humid that she felt as if she’d been through the wringer by the time she got there and probably looked it, because Helen asked her nicely if she’d had a busy time, not a good time. Added to which she was now so bloody hot that she felt as if the bloody hot flushes were coming back. If she broke down and asked her secretary to nip down the corridor and get her a drink of cold water she would undoubtedly report to all of the Admin staff—very probably starting with bloody Yvonne, yes—that, take you your pick: It was Getting to Dorothy, she was starting to behave like one of Them (male execs, what else?); or, Dorothy was having hot flushes again/still and Not Coping Well, wouldn’t you think that a smart Executive Woman would?; or— Oh, sod it. Dorothy tottered down the corridor and got herself a drink of water from the water cooler that was conveniently placed for people who might be coming up or down the stairs but was not particularly convenient for her office. At least it was cold, because it was, thank God, Mayli’s self-appointed task to make sure that the thing was connected to the bloody electricity and switched on, two concepts which it was apparently beyond bloody Helen’s power to grasp were what made it work.

    “Hullo,” said a cautious voice as she was standing there peacefully alone, sipping.

    “Hi, Jane, how was your holiday?” replied Dorothy glumly.

    “Bloody horrible. Sally nagged me unceasingly because all I could afford was the A-frame after I’d bought the section; the kids fought unceasingly, mainly because their parents wouldn’t let them do anything enjoyable let alone actually grubby; and if the two of them aren’t on the point of divorce it’ll be because they’re both bloody-minded enough not to know when to give in! That make ya feel better?”

    “Yes, it does, actually. Thank God I never perpetuated my genes,” groaned Dorothy, refilling her paper cup.

    Jane filled a paper cup. “Yeah. Is he—?” She jerked her head more or less in the direction of Jack’s office.

    “Even worse than you with all your experience could imagine.”

    “I was thinking of going pipi-ing this evening and eating the result for tea with white bread and real butter, ya wanna come?” she said kindly.

    Dorothy’s eyes lit up. “Really? I’d love to! I’ll bring some beer, if you like.”

    “Bless you,” replied Jane sedately.

    Dorothy went back to her office and the immense piles of paperwork that had spontaneously generated therein, grinning.

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/progress-reports.html