Visiting Firemen

23

Visiting Firemen

    Thomas lay flat on the palatial bed of his palatial hotel room, groaning. “God, why?” he groaned.

    “If you mean, why are we here, I’m here because Kincaid suggested I be here,” replied Leigh brutally, investigating the contents of Thomas’s hotel room’s fridge. “My God, you can’t have drunk your whisky already!”

    “Those bottles are only small. Weeny. Minute. Mingy. Infinites—”

    “Yes, all right, you’ve guzzled it. And your rum.”

    “I like rum.”

    “You’re turning into an alcoholic, you mean.” Leigh took the single bottle of brandy and looked for the soda. “You can’t have drunk all the soda, surely?”

    “Mm? Oh: no. Took it out of the fridge.”

    “Why, for God’s sake?”

    “Ruins the brandy.”

    “You left the brandy in the fridge,” pointed out Leigh, opening and shutting cupboards crossly.

    “I think those ones are for clothes.”

    “Then which one did you decide was for warm soda water, Thomas?”

    “The bathroom,” he groaned.

    Leigh investigated his bathroom. So he had, the cretin. He came back with the large glass tumbler that had been standing on the fancy American-style vanity of the American-style bathroom. Almost American-style: it was damned poky and Thomas had used the entirety of the grudging allotment of towels, just as Leigh himself had, being under the mistaken impression that they’d be changed every day.

    Thomas waited until he’d poured cold brandy and room-temperature soda water into the tumbler; then he said: “Did you wash that glass? It had mouthwash in it.”

    “Yes. In fact I think I sterilised it: the water here’s incredibly hot, have you noticed?”

    “Ge-o-ther-mal,” said Thomas clearly.

    “Er—yes?”

    “It comes up out of the GROUND!” he shouted.

    “Um… I’m sorry, Thomas, doesn’t all water? I mean, um, there are the pipes and the reservoirs… No, I suppose sometimes it’s rainwater, is it?”

    “Can anything live to your age and remain that IGNORANT?” shouted Thomas. “We’re in the middle of their goddamned Jellystone!”

    “Oh; how fascinating: you mean they use the hot springs?”

    “Something like that,” he sighed.

    “It must be very cheap; it’s a wonder there isn’t a whole suburb of conference hotels here, then,” admitted Leigh feebly.

    “You have a point. Though one is quite bad enough. –Did they change your towels today?”

    “No.”

    Thomas sighed. “No.”

    “Last night’s dinner was quite nice,” offered Leigh.

    “‘Quite nice’: only an Englishman would say that of food with approval,” he said sourly.

    “Why don’t you develop a galloping cold and go home?” Leigh suggested kindly.

    “Because Kincaid would never believe it for a single, solitary.”

    “That's true!” Leigh agreed with a laugh.

    “Leigh, you can’t possibly be enjoying this damned weekend!” he protested.

    Leigh sat down on a corner of the immense bed. “Oh—well, not the brain-storming as such, obviously. But it’s quite fun, isn’t it, coming to a nice hotel and— All right, you hate it,” he said with a sigh. “You usually enjoy conferences, though.”

    “I enjoy conferences,” said Thomas acidly, “where the best brains in a given discipline are gathered together in order to tear one another’s best intellectual efforts to shreds, get blind drunk, and fuck like crazed rabbits for a week. Not necessarily in that order.”

    “Yes, well, this thing certainly bears very little resemblance to one of those. But I suppose if it results in some streamlining of the administrative procedures, it will have achieved its ends. No?” he said as another horrible scowl gathered on Thomas’s brow.

    “Are those its ends?”

    “Uh—its declared ends, surely?”

    “Are you quite sure he doesn’t have some bloody daft notion that this long weekend of togetherness is going to pull us all closer together and forge us into a team? –Teams, by the way, cannot be forged: but I realise I am alone in the latter part of the twentieth century in—”

    “Thomas, for God’s sake!”

    “I’m bored out of my skull, and I could be doing some real work!” he said crossly.

    Leigh eyed him drily. “Would you, though?”

    “Er—well, possibly not. I could certainly be standing over that bloody builder making him get my windows in, though.”

    “Mm.”

    Thomas sighed. “Have you left any booze in my fridge?”

    “Mm? There’s some beer. And I think there may be some gin.”

    “Gin and beer, then,” he said, heaving himself up.

    Leigh ignored the subsequent proceedings. Though not in the hope that if he didn't have an audience Thomas wouldn’t add gin to his beer.

    “Anyway,” he said as Thomas was drinking it, “forging or not, I’m damned sure Alan doesn’t subscribe to that crap. Though he may pay it lip-service to serve his own purposes.”

    “Quite. The Wicked Witch of the West and Tom Thumb seemed convinced he was sincere; though of course, who is to say that convincing them of such was truly his purpose?”

    “Thomas, don’t call her that.”

    “It isn’t mine: it’s Hal Gorman’s. Good, though.”

    “Yes, I freely admit it is good, but I know you: you pick up catch-phrases and turn them into personal manias, and then you come out with them at the wrong moments. I’m referring to the accidental wrong moments, not the accidental-on-purpose ones.”

    “I can’t imagine what could be the wrong moment.”

    “Referring to her that way in front of any of her superiors,” replied Leigh grimly, “or any of her staff; unless, of course, you want to get quids-in with the Admin staff?”

    “No!” he cried indignantly.

    “Well, no: I know you wouldn’t: not your style. Added to which I honestly don’t think you give a stuff if people like Yvonne or Juliette like you or not—poor deceived dears,” said Leigh with a smothered laugh.

    “Thanks,” replied Thomas, grinning.

    “So in that case it would be a lot, lot better to refrain, wouldn’t it?”

    “I’ll try, Mummy,” he said sweetly.

    Leigh sighed. “Yeah.” He finished his brandy. “Do I conclude that Gautier is Tom Thumb?”

    “Of course!” he said, brightening.

    “Do—not—tell—me.”

    “The reference is physiological, though not, I have to admit it, verified empirically. It’s just the inescapable conclusion.”

    “Rubbish.”

    “Think about it,” said Thomas, looking smug.

    “Rub-bish,” said Leigh clearly. “Want to come for a walk before dinner?”

    “I think I’d rather go for a walk instead of dinner.” He got up and started searching for, apparently, an outer garment.

    “Thomas, there’s nowhere else to eat: this place is miles from anywhere!”

    “In that case, when you feel peckish you turn back; I’m a big boy now, Mummy.”

    “I intend to stroll,” warned Leigh, as Thomas then put on his expensive walking shoes.

    “The States, last visit. Classy, huh?” he said in strong American, waggling them.

    “Be careful, those tongues are about to throttle you. –They’ll impress Ms W., at all events. You might need a jacket, the evenings are quite chilly.”

    “Can’t find one.”

    Leigh opened a cupboard. “You put one in here, God knows why.”

    “Must’ve been drunk. On whisky, probably.” He put his giant faded anorak on. “Ready?”

    “Hours ago.”

    They went out.

    … “I’m terribly sorry, he went for a walk. We didn't realise it would be a working evening,” said Leigh, very limply indeed, some two hours later.

    “I see. We’ll just have to manage without him, in that case,” replied Alan.

    Leigh nodded weakly.

    About four hours after that he let them off the leash. Leigh staggered upstairs to his room, groped for a bottle in his little fridge, not really caring what it was so long as it was strong licker, and threw himself on the bed with it. He’d got about a quarter of it down him—it was Bourbon, which he disliked, but too bad—when the door, which he hadn’t locked, opened without warning and a horrible falsetto voice sang: “‘Saturday night at the movies, Who cares what pick-sha ya see-hee—’”

    “Kincaid’s about to have your guts for garters,” responded Leigh sourly.

    Thomas patted himself on the chest, wheezing.

    “Those bloody Yank shoes did choke you, I see.”

    “The dinner wasn’t that bad, surely?”

    “Uh—no.” Leigh peered blearily at him. He seemed sincere, for Thomas. “Uh—possibly you really didn’t know. He had another session lined up for us after din—”

    “On a Saturday night?” he screamed.

    “This is a working weekend. As he keeps telling us. Where have you been?”

    “I walked for several miles and then I found Bert and Maisie,” he said proudly.

    “I can already see that this is apocryphal: people are not called Bert and Maisie in the latter part of the twentieth century; so I’ll stop listening now, thanks.”

    Thomas investigated Leigh’s fridge. “I’ll just have a beer, on top of all that roast lamb and gravy, and home-made apple pie with real farm cream.”

    “Help yourself,” replied Leigh grimly.

    He came over to the bed with the can, and perched on the foot. “I’d met Bert before: he’s a geophysicist. Works at the geothermal power station,” he said, very mildly.

    “You mean you found a fellow geo-cretin out in the howling wilderness and got taken home to a good home-cooked meal?”

    “Yes; and a video. Two videos, it being Saturday night.”

    “Go on,” he said grimly.

    Thomas drank beer insouciantly. “’S true. They each choose one, you see: got past the stage of stingily hiring just one and filing for divorce right afterwards.’

    “Uh-huh.”

    “When the kids are home they sometimes let them choose, but fortunately they weren’t home tonight, so first—they toss for who goes first, it seems fairer—first we had Bert’s choice, that was good: True Grit. John Wayne. Not a classic, of course, but enjoyable to us connoisseurs. ‘The Dook; wa-as goo-od,’” he drawled in a horrible gravelly American voice which, with the greatest stretch of the imagination…

    Leigh sighed.

    “Then Maisie’s. Guess!”

    “The Sound of Music,” said Leigh sourly.

    “Not even close! You do think in clichés, don't you?” he said, looking at him with interest.

    “Just tell me and go away, I’ve been listening to Tom Thumb on the subject of how they run their bloody French registry systems good for the past aeon!”

    “I knew you’d start calling him it, it’s impossible not to, once the thought has occurred.”

    Leigh just closed his eyes.

    “Aw, go on, guess!”

    “Mary Poppins,” said Leigh with his eyes shut.

    “No.”

    “Digitally re-cretinised My Fair Lady. Belinda had a copy of that. Harrison looked sort of… scrubbed. Peeled?”

    “No.—God, did he?—No. Not even close.” Thomas drained his beer noisily.

    “This is the woman who cooked the lamb roast and made apple pie, is it?”

    “Certainly. Wonderful cook, is Maisie. You ought to taste her scones!”

    “In your fruity Oxbridge tones, Thomas, that last statement is entirely unconvincing. And please don't even attempt the local accent.”

    “Branagh can do it.”

    Leigh opened one eye. “Thought you loathed him and all his works?”

    “I do. Nevertheless, he can do the accent: saw him interviewed on the box, not long since; I nearly fell off me chair.”

    “Fake Australian?”

    “NO! He can do a real New Zealand ACCENT!” he shouted.

    “All right, I’m convinced. Uh—okay, if it wasn’t The Sound of Music and I’m thinking in clichés, it was another Western.”

    “Wrong.”

    “I give up.”

    “No, you don't, Leigh!”

    “Thomas, my brain has turned to mush: they started that drawing on great sheets of paper with blue felt-tipped pens thing again.”

    “Pinned on the walls?”

    “Yes,” he groaned.

    “You poor bugger!”

    “Yes, well, have mercy—mercy even for Pooh Bah—and tell me what Maisie’s video was, please.”

    “‘Yoo-oo On-lee Live Tuh-wice…’” he lowed.

    “Really? Bond? It was Connery, wasn’t it?” said Leigh with a laugh.

    “Uh—yeah.”

    “All the ladies love him, Thomas! Especially the ones that make real apple pie!”

    “Oh. Well, it made a damn good evening.”

    Leigh sighed. “Yes. Now, in order to live to enjoy the memory, you’ll only have to convince Kincaid you really weren’t aware he had another session scheduled for tonight.”

    “I’m innocent, for once,” he said glumly.

    “Mm, it’s the boy who cried wolf, isn't it?’

    Thomas replied mildly: “I’d have to be really desperate to cry that, Leigh.”

    Leigh laughed so much that he nearly fell off the bed.

    Grinning, Thomas padded off to the fridge again.

    “Are you about to make a night of it?” said Leigh feebly, blowing his nose.

    “No-o… Well, Bert did say, if you can get one of the channels tuned in, forget which, there’s a Freddy movie on later. Friday the Thirteenth Part Thirty-Two.”

    “No! I really draw the line there, Thomas!”

    Thomas wandered over to Leigh’s television set and twiddled knobs.

    “Friday the Thirteenth Part Sixty-Four,” drawled a dry voice from the doorway.

    “Yes, we know,” agreed Leigh resignedly. “Come in, Jack, if you’re coming in; and for God’s sake lock the door after you.”

    “They’re supposed to be self-locking.” Jack investigated. “Yours is faulty. With any luck, you’ll be raped in your wee bed by a seven-foot, sixteen-stone Maori lady with a mo’ tonight.”

    “Bigot,” replied Leigh, trying not to laugh. “Did you want something, or do you merely want someone to get drunk with? Because if so, you can take that away and get on with it. –Thomas! That’s football!”

    Grunting, Thomas changed channels again. “Ah!”

    “Not Freddy, thanks. Go and watch it in your own room.”

    “’Tisn’t.”

    “Crap, of course it is. Look, that fellow’s got a Devil mask— Not wrestling!” screamed Leigh.

    “’S good. Totally ersatz from start to finish: choreographed. Fascinating. –Cans are in the fridge, Jack.” Thomas came and sat on the end of the bed, staring avidly at the screen.

    Grinning, Jack went over to the fridge.

    Leigh gave in. “You might as well get me a beer, too. –Thanks.”

    They settled down to watch the tag wrestling.

    Since there was nothing watchable on the box that night and since she was buggered anyway, Dorothy hadn’t watched anything, and had got a decent night’s sleep. True, she had had one moment of blind panic when Sammi had tapped on her door after the Saturday evening session, but it was only to tell Dorothy that she had really taken on board what she’d said about her library administrative procedures, vis-à-vis the IT liaison, and could they make an appointment for a breakfast meet tomorrow? Dorothy had agreed, she'd have agreed to anything so long as it didn't entail forcing her fifty-plus brain to stay awake, not to say the body that supported it, through more interminable Admin-Speak mouthings that evening.

    Sammi was very brisk and fresh in what young female execs apparently wore for Sunday breakfast in posh hotels in the middle of Waikikamoocow on working long weekends. A bright green tracksuit—heavy jersey-knit: at least she’d had the sense to wear something relatively warm—with a sparkling white, fuzzy forehead-band and a sparkling white jumper or something at the throat. Probably there were sparkling white sneakers but Dorothy didn’t look. The small gold hoops in the ears were a nice touch: not quite keepers, just feminine enough to underline the fact that she was. Well, if you ignored the fact that two tables away Dorothy’s very own Faculty Liaison was sitting with a young man he must have picked up last night from the other group of visiting firemen infesting the hotel (yep, it was all go down here at Waikikamoocow in the tourist off-season), both of them with small gold hoops in their ears.

    Sammi’s executive breakfast consisted of orange juice (it’d be concentrate reconstituted with tap water, Dorothy would have bet that enormous Sir G.G. salary that at the moment she felt she was earning every penny of), and horrendously rough-looking muesli with lumps of dried apple in it. Breakfast was self-serve, and she had innocently put some peaches on top of the muesli: they’d be tinned, and at that tinned in 5,000 percent sugar syrup, or Dorothy K. Perkins was a Dutchman, but if Sammi was happy to believe they were fruit and good for her, and tinned in pure fruit juice, who was Dorothy to enlighten her?

    Dorothy herself, considering that Alan Kincaid was coughing up from his budget for this bloody junket, went and got herself a whacking great helping of bacon, fried tomatoes, on due consideration (largely consideration of what it would do to Sammi’s sensibilities) a sausage, and some scrambled egg. Plus some wholemeal toast, which she actually liked with fried tomatoes, so there was no virtue in her at all. To prove it she took a couple of packets of real butter, sat down in front of the girl, and buttered her toast. Then she sipped coffee with milk and sugar in it and said: “That’s better. I’ll just get this lot down before we talk, and then we can chat to your heart’s content while I get myself very slowly round a large helping of tinned apricots and cream. And I may add some pear, for the roughage.”

    “Not cream,” said Sammi faintly.

    “My metabolism needs a belt of solid dairy fats every so often; my generation grew up on ’em.”

    “Hah, hah,” she said weakly.

    At least she’d spotted it had been said to annoy, so she wasn’t totally thick. On the other hand, had she spotted that while A was true, B was not necessarily untrue? Well, who cared? Dorothy got herself round her large, hot, cholesterol-laden breakfast. Make that cholesterol and salt: boy, that bacon was guaranteed to put hairs on your chest!

    Over the bowl of pudding and Sammi’s helping of rock melon they discussed precisely what Sammi had intimated they would discuss, but as this was precisely what Dorothy had expected she was neither surprised nor disappointed.

    After that Dorothy had another cup of coffee. On top of all that cream she couldn’t actually force herself to put milk in it so she had it black, even though silently recognising that Sammi might conclude her earlier remarked in re the cream had worked. And Sammi had another “orange juice”. And over them Sammi said: “What are you planning to do with your free morning, Dorothy?”

    It hadn’t felt like a free morning so far, which as it was now bloody nearly ten o’clock, was scarcely surprising, was it? Dorothy therefore replied with malice aforethought: “It’s a bit late for church in Taupo. –Well, it doesn’t start till eleven, but could I make it by then?” she said mildly, looking at her watch.

    Poor Sammi went scarlet and gasped: “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to keep you from church! Um—is it far?”

    “Only five miles or so. I think I might rush off, actually,”

    Ms Wolfe gave a relieved smile and let her go.

    Dorothy was not given to religious observance—not since she was about fourteen and it had dawned that there was no reason actually to believe any of it; at least, no better reason to believe in a Christian God than there was to believe in Rangi and Papa and forests full of taniwhas, or Mohammed and all his prophets, if so be the fancy took you that way. Her Bible Class teachers, so-called, having failed to convince her otherwise, she had simply stopped going. Poor Mum had thought she might like grown-up church better—oh, dear. That had lasted about three Sundays. Nevertheless, she now changed rapidly out of her brand-new casual navy wool slacks (bought for the occasion) and out of the smart, female-execs-for-the-use-of, leisure sweater that May Swadling had knitted her and duly refused to take payment for, except for the wool, and into a black jersey-knit suit that Lady Carrano, frowning, had refrained from condemning utterly only because it had brass buttons and Chanel-like braiding round its jacket, with a smart, emerald-green, high-necked skinny-knit jumper that nobody on the face of the earth except Dorothy could know she'd had since 1972, and rushed downstairs and got into her car and drove off to church. All of which probably proved that Mum’s brainwashing had had some effect, she reflected as she drove. Or that the Christian conscience that went with it had, or something. Well, that plus the desire to get right away from the lot of them and the conviction that absolutely none of them would head for church on an exec’s long-weekend Sundee morning.

    Nor they had done. It was wonderful. Dorothy sat at the back of the congregation, that was, halfway up the church, and switched her mind off entirely. It was nominally C of E, and most of them took communion, but Dorothy didn’t: for one thing she wasn’t that much of a hypocrite and for another she’d been brung up Presbyterian. Until the age of fourteen, of course. C of E or not, the service, what little she took notice of, was relentlessly ecumenical in tone and the singing was just the same mournful dirge as the Presbyterians produced, but given that it was the 1990s at the back end of the British Empire, anything else would have shocked Dorothy Perkins out of seventeen years’ growth.

    She emerged, duly shaking the vicar’s hand and thanking him and admitting that yes, she was just on holiday—no need to foist her troubles on him—into a wonderful blue day. Possibly God had listened to someone, then, though on balance it wouldn’t have been to her unbelieving self. She now had the choice of eating over-cooked frozen fish fillets and limp chips, with pieces of limp lettuce and tinned beetroot on the side, at one of the Taupo tourist-traps, or possible sandwiches, though given it was a Sunday this was unlikely, or almost definite cakes, with pale fawn coffee, if she could find a coffee-bar that was open in the off-season. Or… Dorothy drove slowly round Taupo in the tourist off-season until she actually found, miracle of miracles, It. The fish and chips shop. Open! On consideration of that breakfast she only bought minimum chips but she let them pour vinegar and salt on ’em for her. Adding a bottle of Diet Coke to this lot, she then drove off to a very quiet little spot on the actual lake, and, jersey-knit suit an’ all, sat on a tiny little pumice-covered beach and ate and drank in a state of unadulterated bliss. Following this up with the dessert, almost as blissful, of mindlessly throwing pumice stones into the water and watching them float. Thank You, Non-Existent Supreme Being. Added to which one of the mountains, still snow-topped at this time of year, was visible at the far end of the enormous, deep blue lake but Dorothy didn’t even need this heaping of coals of fire to make it Heaven on Earth.

    Then she had to get back and face Kincaid, Ms Wolfe, Gautier, et al. for a two-thirty “consolidation” of the blue felt-tip nonsense from the previous evening, but what the Hell. If she hadn’t learned at her age that you couldn’t have everything, then there was little hope for her! Dorothy drove back to the hotel, humming tunelessly.

    Thomas had woken quite early, given the wrestling, and after standing under the shower scowling for quite some time, worked up the guts to go along and tap on Kincaid’s door. Shit—did he have some unfortunate in there with him already? It certainly sounded as if he was haranguing someone.

    “Just a moment!” he called loudly. Then he went back to the haranguing, but in a lower tone.

    “Come in,” he said, opening the door.

    Thomas jumped a little. “Uh—I don’t want to interrupt.”

    “What? Oh—no, I was on the phone. Sorry to keep you waiting. Please come in, Thomas.”

    On the phone haranguing that nice little blonde woman with the tits, concluded Thomas. He came in. Kincaid was only wearing a towel; he had a damned good body, actually. Thomas watched somewhat gloomily as he got into the regulation grey sweatsuit, socks so white they were an insult to humanity, and trainers. “I don't want to hold you up.”

    “You’re not. What can I do for you?

    If one could break through the screen of good manners and that horrible self-control, would there be a human being in there somewhere? Even a human being that harangued nice plump little blonde women long-distance before breakfast? Thomas rather doubted it.

    “About last night," he said, clearing his throat and trying without success to suppress the memory of the time when, aged ten, he had illegally borrowed Fred Thompson’s airgun and shot Professor and Mrs Thompson’s fat white pedigree Persian dead as a doornail and tried to pretend to Dad that he'd had nothing to do with it.

    “Mm?”

    “I know you won’t believe me, and I’m not here in the hope of convincing you, but I really didn’t realise that you had another session planned for the evening.”

    “So Leigh mentioned. Where did you go, may I ask?

    It was entirely impossible to tell whether he believed a word of it. Oh, well, Leigh was right: he’d cried wolf often enough in his inglorious career: serve him right. “Actually I met up with Bert Thompson.” Possibly the coincidence of the names was why that particular inglorious episode with the Persian had been brought to mind—or possibly not.

    “Oh, yes: the geophysicist?”

    The elephant never forgot. “Mm. He still doesn’t fancy coming up to Auckland. Or more accurately, Carter’s Inlet.”

    “No, well, who can blame him?” said Alan vaguely. Thomas blinked at him; he smiled and said with something of an effort: “Was this a coincidence?”

    “Yes. I merely went for a long walk, and he and his wife came past in their car when I was in the middle of a forest, and offered me a lift. Then they asked me to dinner. Um… Well,” he said, scratching his chin—buggeration, he’d forgotten to shave, and Kincaid was as smooth as a baby’s bum, as usual—“you may not like this idea. I thought—well, if we can come to an arrangement with his bosses… Run all the theory up at Sir G.G., send the kids down here for block practical sessions with Bert? Say three weeks, a month at a time?”

    “Mm… Who is his employer, in that case?”

    “That’s the sticking point. If we’re his employer and he stays down here, we’ll only get a couple of months’ block teaching out of him at the most. But will they wear still employing him and lending him to us for about twenty percent of his working year?”

    “Down-sizing is all the rage. They may be glad to save twenty percent of his salary. And given that he’s the best in his field, I wouldn’t want to give the idea up until we’ve looked into all the possibilities… Sit down, Thomas.”

    Thomas sat down in the easy chair and Alan himself sat on the bed.

    “In addition to down-sizing,” he said mildly, “corporatisation and privatisation are also all the rage, in government circles here.”

    After a moment Thomas croaked: “Take over the power station?”

    “Why not?”

    Thomas gave a yelp of laughter.

    “All the government is concerned about is that sufficient power gets fed into the National Grid to avoid blackouts and make them look as if they can do one thing right; they don’t care who actually owns the resources, any more.”

    Thomas nodded. “That had dawned. Um… they’d probably want a fixed price for the damned power for umpteen years, Alan.”

    “I’m sure you’re right; but these things can be negotiated. It would certainly simplify the whole business of offering a course in geothermal engineering.”

    “Geophysics and geothermal engineering.”

    “We have already agreed that geophysics is to be part of your faculty, while Perkins get the engineering aspects; I’m not in the habit of going back on my word.”

    “No,” agreed Thomas limply. “Sorry.”

    “No, I am: that was quite uncalled-for: I apologise,” said Alan with a sigh. He got up and wandered over to the window, where he stared out with his back to Thomas.

    If he had been any other chap possibly Thomas would have enquired sympathetically whether he and the little woman had had a run-in. As he was Alan Kincaid, he didn’t. Not because he didn’t care, but because he was very sure that the enquiry would not be welcome.

    “Mm…” said Alan thoughtfully. “Percentage-wise, the geothermal station doesn’t make all that much of a contribution, does it?”

    “No: doesn’t need to, they’ve got that huge system of hydroelectric power stations; and they get so much rain: the rivers are never low. Might be bad PR if they sold their only geothermal station to us, though.”

    “That might be got over. It does seem to me that it could make more of a contribution as an international centre for the teaching of geothermal resource management than as a mere generator of electricity for which there is little need.”

    “I agree; but can you make the politicians see it your way?”

    “I think so. We’d look into the economics of it, of course.”

    “Talk to Sir Jake?”

    “Definitely. There is a finite number of countries with geothermal resources of which they might take advantage, of course…”

    “Yes, but most of ’em are round the Pacific Rim, Alan: we’d be sitting pretty!”

    Alan smiled. “Quite. And we’d have the advantage of English as our teaching language, rather than Icelandic.”

    Thomas grinned feebly. “Yeah. Um—well, run it as a distance campus, then? Build some dormitories?”

    “No-o… Oh, certainly turn it into a campus, Thomas, yes; no argument there. The tourist stuff could continue, of course: summer’s the big time for tourism round here, and that will be our Long Vac. But I think, rather than spend money needlessly on a large infrastructure,” he said, his eyes narrowing, “we might do a deal with one or two of the motels in the area; those on the outskirts of Taupo, possibly.”

    “Yes! Fill them up in their off-season!” said Thomas with a laugh. “Perfect! They’re equipped to handled breakfasts: dare say they could do dinners, too, without too much effort.”

    “Exactly. I really think we’re onto something. Look, can you get back to Dr Thompson? Don’t let him know our thinking, but find out his staff numbers and see if you can get an idea of exactly how large that complex is. We’d have to put up a couple of classrooms, I think.”

    “Okay, I will! Um—look, I think they go to church on a Sunday, Alan, and I wouldn’t like to interrupt their Sunday lunch, I gather it’s generally still the main meal for many New Zealand families.”

    “It’s interesting, isn’t it?” he said.

    Thomas blinked. “What: the survival of British lower-middle and working-class habits in the subtropical Antipodes?”

    “Yes. –Very much sub, today,” he murmured.

    “Yes, Bert tells me they get much colder winters than the Auckland and Northland regions, and the spring and autumn nights are a lot colder, down here. It’s not only because we’re inland, we’re well over a thousand feet above sea-level.”

    “Not really?” said Alan limply.

    “Yes. The lake’s about a thousand feet above sea-level.”

    “I see.”

    “Have you been to the thermal area, before?”

    “No.”

    “Try to see something of it; it’s fascinating. Parts of it are very beautiful, too, speaking without my geologist’s hat,” said Thomas with his sidelong smile.

    “Mm. –I agree that you’d better not interrupt the Thompsons’ Sunday. You might look in at the power station tomorrow: tell Thompson you got bored with the Admin stuff.”

    “That should be easy enough,” he admitted.

    “Good,” said Alan mildly.

    “Um—if you’ve got any notes from last night…” said Thomas in a weak voice.

    Of course he had: screeds of them. Screeds. Thomas tottered off with them, reflecting that he’d asked for it and he’d got it. But all the same! Take over the country’s one and only, world-famous geothermal power station? The fellow could not be all bad if he could conceive of something as mad as that and actually believe they could pull it off! Thomas went down to breakfast with his pile of notes, whistling.

    Armand had conscientiously booked himself on a half-day tour. It left early: none of the people from the Sir George Grey party were in the dining-room as he breakfasted. English breakfast, ugh. There were, however, croissants, for a wonder not filled with sliced ham or cheese, though they were suggestively near to these items, and although they looked rather limp he took a couple and poured himself a cup of horrible New Zealand coffee, very much wishing, horrible though it was, that he had the guts to take one of those pudding plates and fill it with coffee so that he could dunk his croissant properly.

    Most of the people on the bus seemed to be middle-aged wives from the large conference that was occupying most of the hotel this weekend, or couples who in all likelihood—Armand was familiar with the conference syndrome—should not have been couples at all. Armand sighed and looked out bleakly at a lot of very ugly dark forest and tried not to think of how unsatisfactory his own love life was or of how stunning Sammi had looked at dinner last night in that simple black dress… If only he’d had the guts to ask her, he was sure she’d have had a drink with him last night! As it was, he had gone off glumly to his room, alone, and she had gone upstairs talking to Alan. Armand was gloomily convinced that she fancied Alan. Well, he'd heard her with his own ears telling Moana Curtis that he was an attractive man… Merde de merde.

    Beth couldn’t figure out why on earth Thomas had told her to come. Nobody else’s PA was here, except Mayli, and there was some point in her coming: she was helping Dr Kincaid with handing out stuff, and taking notes, and stuff. Since Thomas hadn’t appeared last night Beth had conscientiously taken notes for him, but it was all in the sort of language that Sammi Wolfe produced without effort, and that even Dorothy and Jack were good at, so the notes didn’t make much sense to her.

    She hadn’t slept very well even though the bed was very comfortable: there were people coming and going up and down her corridor for ages, she thought they were mostly people from the big conference, laughing and talking. Drunkenly, to be strictly accurate. Even the ladies—well, especially, the ladies. Beth had never been to a conference. Well, not one away from home: she’d been to some sessions of one that had been on in Christchurch when she was doing her Master’s. But she was pretty sure that this large one, which to judge by the easel on display in the lobby downstairs featured some eminent speakers from overseas, was typical.

    Dr Kincaid had said that of course Sunday morning would be free, so that those who wished to go to church might. Beth didn’t wish to, but she was afraid that if she went downstairs early someone might nobble her and expect her to say something intelligent about what they’d talked about so far: but as very little of it had been intelligible, she knew she couldn’t. She had a very long shower and used up the soap that the hotel had provided, it was a tiny wee tablet, but didn’t wash her hair because she’d washed it on Friday morning and in any case had forgotten to bring her hair-drier with her. Then she spread out her clothes on the bed and looked at them glumly. They were all horrible, and Sammi had looked marvellous last night and of course Mayli had, she always did; and Beth was sure that they’d both be wearing something terribly appropriate this morning. She herself didn’t even own anything appropriate. And in any case she wasn’t at all sure what would be appropriate for breakfast on a non-session day at a conference in a big hotel.

    As she was thus staring glumly there was a knock at her door. Beth leapt a foot and then thought, that was silly, it was probably only Dorothy or Mayli. Nevertheless she went over to the door and said very cautiously, not opening it: “Yes?”

    “It ain’t Room Service, it’s Jack,” said Jack from outside it.

    Fumbling horribly with the strange lock, Beth opened the door. “Hullo!” she gasped.

    “Hey, Beth,” he said mildly, smiling at the sight of her in a pale blue candlewick robe. Maybe, with her hair, that pale blue wasn’t strictly her colour, but that palest-rose skin could take it, all rightee.

    “Um—I was just getting dressed,” said Beth shyly.

    Jack refrained from saying: “Don't let me stop you,” though it was an effort: Jesus, those tits were good; it was obvious she didn’t have a bra on… Full, yeah, and boy, did they fill the robe out, but they looked kinda firm—upstanding, ya know? He was pretty upstanding himself by now, and he had to swallow before he said: “You got any plans for this morning? Bus tour, or something?”

    “No; Armand said he was going on that,” said Beth before she could stop herself.

    Jack winked. “Understandable. Uh—well, just knock me back in your usual fashion if ya don’t fancy it: what about a drive to Orakei Korako? Thermal area, bit like Rotorua, not so touristy? I’d say Rotorua, I guess you South Islanders don’t all get dragged to it at the age of six or so like us, but it’s a bit of a drive.”

    “I don’t always knock you back, do I?” said Beth in a trembling voice.

    “Yeah,” replied Jack drily.

    She went very red. “Um—I haven't had breakfast yet.”

    “Me, neither,” he said with a sigh: obviously she was gonna knock him back.

    “Um—well, the thing is, I didn’t have all that much tea, and—”

    “Yeah, sure, get on down, they’ll probably have a huge spread.”

    “Have you had yours?” she asked doubtfully.

    “No, not hungry: I drank half of Leigh’s beer last night and then finished off his miniatures of tequila and Jack Daniels: he didn’t seem to know what they were.”

    “What?” said Beth blankly.

    “Drink. Strong liquor. Thomas and me kindly invited ourselves to poor old Leigh’s room to watch the wrestling that he didn’t want to watch and drink his booze that hopefully they’ll put on Alan Kincaid’s bill and not his personal— Wait,” said Jack, suddenly recollecting the dim, long, long—very long—ago. Remember when him and Nancy had broken the journey in Hawaii? First off they hadn’t known that ya hadda get a “limo” to the hotel and had shelled out megabucks for a taxi; then they hadn’t known that the drinks in the fridge were not complimentary to anyone that wasn't actually Omar Sharif or Liz Taylor respectively… Yeah, well. Neither of them had known that Americans called babies’ napkins “diapers”, boy had that episode been embarrassing all round. In fact the only one that hadn’t been embarrassed had been Baby Shiva… Shit. He walked right past Beth and over to her window and stared out blindly.

    “Is anything the matter?” she said in a trembling voice.

    “No. –Yeah.” Jack blew his nose hard. “This is real dumb.”

    “I understand. I mean, I don’t know what it’s like, personally, but I do understand. My friend Jackie at secondary school, her mother was killed in a car crash, and for ages she kept bursting into tears at unexpected moments.”

    “Mm,” said Jack, biting his lip. “Well,” he said, turning round and trying to smile at her: “I just suddenly thought of the first time me and Nancy stayed in an up-market hotel room: that was when Shiva was a baby, on the way to the States.”

    “I see.”

    “No, you don’t, entirely, Beth; it was the room fridge… Look,” he said simply, going over to her fridge and opening it.

    Beth gaped. “I never even realised—”

    “They will charge you for every drop you drink out of it. But it is convenient—that’s why they do it.”

    “Yes. What about what you said: Room Service?” she asked, blushing.

    “Sure! They’ll charge you an arm and a leg for that, though. Jesus, you haven't used it, have ya?” he said in alarm.

    “No, I wouldn’t dare,” she said simply.

    Jack looked at her with great liking. “I guess you wouldn’t, at that. Well, if you’d like to hop into some clothes, we could grab a bite and then, if you’d fancy a drive? Doesn’t have to be Orakei Korako.”

    “I’d love to. Um—ugh,” said Beth, looking gloomily at her clothes once more. “What shall I wear, though?”

    Jack didn’t laugh or retreat in coy dismay, nor did he realise that his New Zealand peers would have done so: even although Randi had not needed nor, usually, taken his advice, she had frequently addressed this question to him and so had their two little girls; to him, it was a norm in the relations between the two sexes. So he came over to the bed and looked with interest at Beth’s clothes. “This,” he decided, “with your jeans, huh?”

    Beth looked at him in dismay. It was her very best jersey, a pale apricot one that Polly had talked her into and made her wear to Alan’s and Catherine’s engagement party. It was very cosy to wear: soft; but she had intended keeping it to wear at dinner, when all the ladies would be gussied up, and had in fact so worn it last night. “Duh-do you think so?” she stuttered.

    “Sure. Some red-heads," said Jack, eyeing the thick mahogany waves appreciatively, “couldn’t wear anything approaching a pale orange—Randi used to make a sherbet just this colour—but with your hair colour, it looks real good.”

    “All right, I will,” said Beth, not asking what a sherbet was.

    “Uh-huh. You wanna get dressed in the bathroom? I’ll wait out here,” said Jack cunningly: now she’d agreed, he wasn’t going to give her the chance to change her mind.

    “All right,” she said obediently.

    He shook his head slightly as she disappeared into the ensuite. Yeah, she had all of Michaela’s docile manner; and stubborn as a mule underneath it, about anything that really mattered… Oh, well. It was a start, thought Jack, not asking himself precisely what he imagined it was a start to.

    When they got downstairs they found Leigh and Mayli breakfasting together: he was merely having cornflakes with milk, although he hadn’t drunk as much as the other two last night and couldn’t possibly be hungover. Jack looked at the immense spread laid out on the buffet tables and looked at Leigh eating cornflakes with a very mild expression on his pleasant face, and smiled very much, all of a sudden; and even though he’d intended to have Beth all to himself this morning, sat down with them and said: “You two want to come see some thermal pools with us this morning?”

    “That sounds like fun,” said Leigh with a smile. “Thanks, Jack.”

    “I’d love to,” admitted Mayli.

    “We were wondering what on earth to do this morning: given that if Mayli stays here Alan will probably decide she needs some work to do,” explained Leigh, twinkling at her, “and that we both car-pooled, so we haven’t got transport.”

    “Uh—right,” said Jack, glancing at where Dot was being harangued by Sammi Wolfe over by the window, and glancing hurriedly away again: Leigh had come with Dot, and Mayli—poor girl—had come with Kincaid.

    So they all ended up in the Caddy, two by two, the proper way in Caddies, of course, roaring off to see the thermal sights of Orakei Korako. Jack had been to the thermal region many times in his youth and although the area had been developed, some, over the last twenty years, none of it was all that new to him .But he enjoyed watching the girls enjoy it. Beth’s excitement was understandable: growing up in Christchurch, it was odds on that she wouldn’t have spent a holiday up here, unless her father happened to be one of those grim fanatics that drove a campervan full of quarrelling kids to some different holiday destination every Christmas holidays without fail. Though he did wonder, just a little, why Mayli had never made it down here, not even to Rotorua on the bus: if she’d grown up in Auckland, like she claimed? We-ell… Maybe the family had never had much spare cash for holidays. It wasn’t suspicious, at all: just a little odd.

    “I guess I should have brought Rab and Murray after all,” he admitted when they were heading back to the hotel, full of junk food and Coke. “Thought they’d be bored, though. Never realised there’d be all those bus tours from the hotel.”

    “Next time,” said Leigh mildly.

    “Mm-hm,” agreed Jack, concentrating on the road.

    “All of the ones with families could have brought them: it’s certainly the ideal place for a family holiday,” said Beth with a happy sigh.

    “Yes; although most of us, come to think of it, don’t have families, Beth,” said Leigh.

    “No. Well, Armand could have brought Simone and the kids after all: they’d have loved it. And there’s Mrs Burchett and her little boy: Dr Kincaid’s family. Well, maybe she doesn’t drive," said Beth dubiously, “but they could have gone on the tours.”

    “Yeah, well, I never realised they’d run regular tours from the hotel, Beth,” said Jack peaceably; “maybe he didn’t—”

    “He did!” burst out Mayli. “I checked up on it especially, and told him, but he never asked them to come! He just doesn’t care!”

    There was a stunned silence in the pink Caddy speeding down the excellent road that cut a swathe through the dark plantation of radiata pine between Orakei Korako and the main highway. –Jack could remember when there was little more than a forestry track, impeded by giant timber trucks.

    Eventually Leigh said kindly: “Perhaps he thought they’d be lonely, Mayli. After all, he's pretty busy.”

    “Yes,” she said stiffly, swallowing. “Of course,”

    After that there was quite a considerable silence in the pink Caddy speeding back to the hotel.

    “Then it all went from not-so-very-bad to worse,” explained Inoue blandly to the Carranos.

    “Yeah,” agreed Jake in a bored voice. “What ’e means is,” he said to his spouse in a bored voice, “everyone got up the wrong ones. Not excluding him, prolly,” he said without interest.

    “Go away, Jake!” she cried. “Inoue’s telling me!”

    He got up. “When she’s finished torturing you with hot irons for fifteen hours I’ll be in the games room.”

    “He means the downstairs one with the stupid ping-pong table, he’s redecorating it in Fifties Tasteless,” said Polly with a sigh.

    “Then I shall join you there, Jake,” he said sedately.

    “Yeah.” Sir Jacob went out.

    “Good riddance,” said Polly heartlessly. “Go on, Inoue.”

    “Some of us had thought it was such a promising start, to see Jack Perkins taking your cousin Beth out to view the tourist sights, even though they did have Mayli and Leigh with them.”

    “Yes, of course it was, if she agreed to go!” she said eagerly.

    “She-ah…. looked quite keen,” he said neutrally.

    “Well, good! So what went wrong?”

    “I think, nothing precise. The afternoon session of consolidation was intensely boring.”

    “Naturally.”

    “Naturah-lee,” he agreed solemnly. “Though it is always interesting to-ah… observe Alan’s techniques.”

    “Yeah. So?”

    “After it, there was time for a drink before dinner. Unfortunately Jack did not have the sense to ask Beth to have one with him. She was looking very tired, and she went upstairs and did not come down for dinner.”

    “What?” she gasped.

    “Yes, a tactical error. She was not on the same floor as Alan and I; possibly the delegates from the other conference had been very noisy on her floor on the Saturday night.”

    “Ye-es… Maybe she was tired. That doesn’t mean that she hadn’t got cold feet as well,” she said heavily.

    “I think that is likely. We had a coffee break and during it Jack came up to her—er—over-eagerly—”

    “He bounced at her. Like Tigger,” recognised Lady Carrano heavily.

    Inoue laughed. “Yes!”

    “Katie Maureen’s re-named that Tigger you gave her, by the way.”

    Inoue said the Japanese word for tiger.

    “Very probably.”

    “I’m so sorry, Polly!”

    “Hai,” she agreed drily. “–I presume that wasn’t all, was it?”

    “Well, no,” he said apologetically. “If you will think about it, Polly, you will see that possibly Jack had cold feet as well. Second thoughts? Hai," he agreed as she nodded glumly. “It was a woman from the other conference. She was youngish: early thirties? Very pretty, wavy brown hair and very well dressed, if rather flashy. Tall.”

    “Um… If Beth didn't come down to dinner, presumably she didn’t actually see them together?”

    “Not that night, but she saw them next morning: their conference was making an early start, so many of them were down for breakfast. And I think this lady was one of the energetic sort who would—ah—think nothing of it.”

    “No, right: a little light evening exercise followed by a sustaining breakfast of All Bran, prunes and orange juice,”

    “Reconstituted orange-ah juice,” he corrected solemnly.

    “Ugh, was it? So Jack actually had the gall to sit with her, preening himself: I see.”

    “I am afraid it was very like that. Beth looked rather sick.”

    “I’m fast coming to the conclusion that he doesn’t deserve her,” said Beth’s cousin grimly.

    “That is very possibly true,” he agreed tranquilly.

    “Was that It?” said Polly without hope.

    “No, I am afraid it gets a lot worse.”

    “Thomas?” she said, screwing up her face horribly.

    “Well, yes. He had tried to be very good, but after the consolidation seminar on the Sunday Dorothy was clearly in a very bad mood and gave him the—ah—brush-off. Rather brutally: I think in spite of her intelligence, she has not yet grasped that we males are human, too.”

    “No,” said Polly with a little smile. “Was there any reason for the bad mood, particularly?”

    “No, in fact several people had taken on board several telling points of hers. I think she was tired, and that the futility of it all—ah…”

    “Yeah.”

    “Yes,” he said mildly.

    Polly sighed. “Describe Thomas’s one, Inoue, or I’ll burst.”

    “Ah… yes. I shall recount it chronologically. After the seminar Alan, Thomas and I had a drink in the bar and discussed briefly a new plan which Alan and he are drawing up. You will not like it, so I shall not explain at this point: let us see whether anything comes of it.”

    “Some plot to expand the empire of Sir G.G., I presume,” she said in a hard voice.

    “Got it in one, Polly,” he returned sedately.

    “Go on.”

    “It was at this point that things started to go very wrong,” he said apologetically.

    “Go ON!” she shouted.

    Inoue smiled, rather sadly: she sounded very like Masako. “We were joined at the bar by some of the people from the other conference. Hospital administrators. One of the guest speakers recognised Alan; they had been up at the same time.”

    “A hospital administrator with a Cambridge degree?” she croaked.

    “Yes; he started off doing something quite respectable, Polly: rather as Alan himself did. Then they had caught up with each other at Harvard—”

    “You did say this hospital administrator was a he?” she said sharply.

    “Yes. A Dr Burns. Harold Burns. He was accompanied by several charming ladies and some other men.”

    “Whom you scarcely noticed: right.”

    “Not at all, but as they are not germane to the story, I shall not waste your time by describing them. There were three women who—ah—were very attractive.”

    “Just tell me which one you had and get that over with.”

    “Annie. Short, dark, curr-ree headed, vivacious. But unfortunately, very American. However, it was an enjoyable episode and neither of us took it seriously. I suppose she would be in her forties, though I did not ask. She has a family in California. I liked her: she struck me as a very sensible woman.”

    “You're forgiven,” said Lady Carrano with sigh. “Thomas isn’t, though. Go on.”

    “A trifle unfortunate-lee, his one was a local.”

    “From Auckland?” she gasped.

    “Yes.”

    “For God’s sake! Does the man have a death wish?”

    “That is not impossible.”

    “Go on, tell me the rest,” she groaned.

    “She was not old: an ambitious career-woman, I think. Quite intelligent, though not the sort of brain that we have concuh-luded he admires. Tall and blonde… There is a word, but I have forgotten it, I’m sorry, Polly. Something like—ah—suede?”

    “S— I think you mean svelte.”

    “Hai. Her name was Alexandra.”

    “It would have been!” said Lady Carrano with feeling. “What was she wearing?”’

    “Polly, this is torturing yourself unnecessarilee. –Very well. It was grey, a knit—ah… sheath. With a tight tan leather belt.”

    “In other words, what Jill Davis calls an asset-underliner,” she said grimly. “I get the full picture.”

    “Yes. Insofar as Jack, Thomas and I were concerned: yes,” he said. He smiled widely.

    “Inoue, that was a Japanese cover-up smile!” cried Polly in dismay.

    “Hai. I’m afraid it is in-guh-rained: however much I try not to, I still-ah find myself doing it.”

    “What happened?” she cried.

    “Also in Dr Burns’s group was a lady from Illinois.”

    “And?” said Polly rather blankly; she had been expecting to hear it was a man, and that Dorothy or Beth or even Mayli had made fools of themselves.

    “A Dr McNabb-Kowalski. Millicent McNabb-Kowalski.”

    “Yes!” she snarled. “Get on with it.”

    “She was tall and dark with large blue eyes. Possibly these were Irish looks?”

    “Very possibly. How old?”

    “I think that is immaterial, Polly: she was the very well preserved American type. With a well-developed figure.” He gestured in front of his own very flat chest.

    Lady Carrano’s jaw dropped. “The Iceman?” she whispered.

    “Ah—yes. Oh, dear. I am afraid this is telling tales out of school,” he murmured.

    “Inoue, did Alan Kincaid actually get up her?” she whispered.

    “In my opinion, yes. It bore all the-ah hall-ah-marks. You see, he had had a row with his nice Catherine, and my spies tell me,” he said in Lady Carrano’s very phrase, “that the row was continued long-distance from the hotel on the Sunday morning.”

    “So by Sunday evening he was ripe for— Yes. And did you say their conference was just starting?’

    “Yes: they registered on the Friday night.”

    “Right. Then she’d have had time to size up the available hospital-administrator talent and find out there wasn’t any,” said the experienced Lady Carrano.

    “Yes, exact-lee.”

    She gulped. “Inoue, this is terrible!”

    “I do not think so: unless we are considering it from the stand-ah-point of traditional Western morality?”

    “Don’t be silly,” she replied tersely.

    Inoue smiled a little, but said kindly: “Then it is not terrible, Polly, unless Mrs Burchett finds out. And I do not think she will, for our group was composed of—ah—experienced conference derregates, like myself and Jack and Dorothy Perkins, and complete innocents, like Beth.”

    Polly was so disturbed that she did not, he noticed with some dismay, remark on his mispronunciation of “delegates”. “Ye-es… I take your point. The experienced ones won’t mention it to her, or to anyone who might tell her, and the innocent ones didn’t notice.”

    “Yes. He was quite discreet, but he joined our group at their table for dinner and sat with her in the bar for quite a long time after. Then, when all of our people had disappeared except for myself, they went upstairs together. He did not breakfast downstairs the next morning and nor did she.” He looked at her apologetically.

    “Thanks for telling me,” she said glumly.

    He got up. “Not at all. Perhaps I should remind you, though of course I know you know it, that one cannot run other people’s lives for them?”

    “I’m not. I just… It’s such a mess!”

    “Life very often is.”

    Polly got up and to his astonishment—he knew she was undemonstrative and he knew, too, that she was aware that Japanese traditions in these things were very different from Western ones—came and kissed his cheek.

    “I am all right,” he said meekly, smiling at her.

    “Very few of us are ‘all right’; not after our twenty-fifth birthdays, usually, and never after our thirty-fifth. Some of us cope, merely. –If you get fed up with that blimming hotel, and you think you can stand Pope Jacob Gregarious’s new mania about his Sistine Chapel in the basement, come and stay with us any time you feel like it.”

    “Thank you very much. But the Royal Kingfisher,” he said sedately, “is accustomed to Japanese guests.”

    “Right!” said Polly with feeling.

    “I have almost persuaded them not to put milk in my early-morning tea,” he said primly.

    “Why did you order it? Why didn’t you just boil up your wee jug and use your own green tea?”

    “I was giving them the benefit of the doubt.’

    “Mm,” agreed Polly drily. “Well, trot off; and if you possibly can, try to persuade him not to put so much Fifties junk into that room that the kids won’t be able to get near the ruddy ping-pong table, will you?”

    “Will do!” said Inoue with a laugh, going out.

    Polly sank down onto the sofa. “Oh, help,” she said in hollow tones.

Next chapter:

https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/baxters-last-case.html