PART I. APPROACHES TO THE RUBICON
1
Introducing Sol Winkelmann
Sol Winkelmann was bored. This was pretty much a usual state with Sol—well, it sure as Hell was when he was in the company of his sister-in-law, Patricia Cohen Winkelmann, and it not infrequently was when he was in the company of his half-brother, Abe, and at the moment he was both. So it was odds-on he’d be bored. And as the three of them were suspended thirty-five thousand feet or so above the Pacific on an Air New Zealand jet where there was nothing to do but watch a blurred and very silly teeny-bopper beach movie that Sol had so far successfully avoided seeing in the company of his young and silly girlfriend in downtown Miami, in the company of his very young and almost entirely mindless great-nephews in downtown Fort Lauderdale, and in the company of the aforesaid Pat and Abe on the flight from Miami to LA, he was, indeed, bored.
Abe didn’t appear bored: he was watching the movie, sipping Scotch, and not listening to Pat’s complaints that he was drinking too much. Abe had a very sunny nature, so he almost never appeared bored, and, his brother reflected with a certain wryness, probably rarely was. Abe was not unintelligent, but in many ways he was a simple man. Sol felt once again the surge of envy he often experienced in his brother’s company. This had nothing to do with the fact that Abe was a very wealthy man and Sol, who ran a small boating-supplies store in Fort Lauderdale (largely patronized by Abe and his cronies, who were all fishing-crazy) most certainly wasn’t. Nor did it have anything to do with Abe’s new wife: Pat, in her mid-forties, looked like a discontented ex-model, was costing Abe a fortune, and never, as far as Sol’s experience of her went, ceased complaining. No, what Sol envied in Abe was his capacity to extract simple enjoyment from almost any situation in which he found himself. Like now, for instance.
Sol sighed slightly. He recrossed his ankles. There was room to do this: they were flying First Class, at Abe’s insistence and expense. Sol had long since given up caring that these gestures on his elder brother’s part made him feel like a parasite. He guessed he was a parasite. Well, he had intended to shout himself a skiing holiday to New Zealand this summer (our summer, their winter), but he hadn’t intended it to be First Class. He’d chosen New Zealand because Pat was a New Zealander and having met some of her friends and relations over Christmas he’d decided the scenery there sounded interesting. And the skiing sure sounded good. But as Pat’s elder daughter, Susan Shapiro, had suddenly upped and declared her intention of getting married this winter (their winter), Abe had decided firmly that they’d all go, and gee, there was no point Sol paying for himself, fella! –Hearty buffet on Sol’s slender back. Since Sol, at going on forty-five, had been having those sinking feelings about old age, retirement, and pensions that not-well-off persons are apt to have around forty-five, especially in countries like the good ole U.S. of A., where hospitals will let you croak on their very doorsteps if you don’t have the appropriate health insurance, he had accepted Abe’s offer. Abe had so much dough that it couldn’t possibly matter to him. In fact, Abe had so much that there was no point to his living in a dump like Fort Lauderdale, except it was his hometown and all his friends were there and he liked it—as Patricia had by now discovered. So Sol had kept, as Abe had so graphically phrased it, his dough in his wallet. Nevertheless, he had recognized with that certain wryness, he still felt like a parasite.
After some considerable time of desperate boredom, the parasite, having discovered that it’s very difficult to read anything, even a trashy airport bookstall novel, when your gregarious and loquacious brother is sitting across the aisle from you (even if nominally watching a movie) and his complaining wife is sitting on the far side of him, consulted his watch and decided maybe he would have another, after all. He rang for the air hostess.
Penny and Sheila were giggling at the rear of the First Class section. “Aw, blow,” said Sheila.
“It’s those Americans again,” pointed out Penny.
“It’s that thin one, ya mean!” retorted Sheila. “I reckon he must have hollow legs!”
“Shall I go?” said Penny.
“Nah, ’s all right,” said Sheila, sighing. “Don’t blame me if we run out of bourbon before we even get to Honolulu,” she added sourly.
At that point That Indian Woman rang—again. At this rate they were gonna run out of Évian water as well as bourbon, where did she PUT it? She’d only been to the toilet once—and then she’d got stuck in it, they’d had to get Alexei (hah, hah, I don’t think, plain Alec from Palmerston North was more like it) to help them get her out. Had she tipped them? Don’t be funny! –Air New Zealand prided itself that its cabin crews didn’t accept tips. It wasn’t the New Zealand way, to tip. However that might have been, it was certainly Penny’s, Sheila’s, and Alec’s way to accept tips. And almost anything else that came their way.
Alec wiggled up to them crossly. “What are you up to? The passengers are ringing for you!” he hissed.
“Yeah, yeah,” replied Sheila. She wobbled off on her high heels.
“Keep ya hair on,” added Penny. She looked pointedly at it.
Flushing, Alec retreated. As soon as he thought their attention was elsewhere he nipped into the toilet and examined the top of his head very carefully with his pocket mirror. No... Well, possibly a wee bit thinner than it used to be, but— No. Stupid bitches!
“Yee-uss, sir? Ken Oi getchew anythunk?” asked Sheila in what she fondly imagined was a sexy purr.
Sol had been interested to discover that her accent was much nastier than Pat’s or Susan’s; or, indeed, that of Susan’s boyfriend and his parents, whom he’d also met over Christmas. Much more nasal. Was it a regional or a class thing? he wondered idly.
“Yeah; I think I might have a bourbon, this time round,” he said in a totally neutral voice.
“One bourbon: yee-uss, sir,” replied Sheila, apparently unmoved. “Anythunk wuth ut?”
“Oh—make it water, I guess,” said Sol, in a totally neutral voice.
“One bourbon and water,” replied Sheila. “Coming right up!” She gave him a blinding and meaningless smile and tottered off.
No-one could have guessed from this exchange that it was the sixth bourbon and water that Sol had ordered this trip, or that Sheila was just about at the point of screaming if she heard That Thin American ask for another bourbon and water this trip.
“Hee-are we are!” she purred, returning with it. “Are yew coming wuth us all the way to Aucklund?”
Why did they say “yew” with that very tight vowel, and yet lower the short I in words like “with”? It was a weird accent, all right. “No, we’re having a stopover in Hawaii,” he replied politely. The girl must know this, it was the sort of thing that airlines routinely listed on their cabin crews’ passenger lists. However, if it was the required sort of social interchange, Sol had no intention of disappointing her expectations by attempting anything else.
Sol reflected along these lines; Sheila gave forth with much interesting, or, from another point of view, trite and meaningless, information about the desirable tourist resort their Air New Zealand jet was not approaching fast enough for either of them.
“I’ll go next time,” said Penny comfortingly when she got back.
“Ta.”
“That dratted Indian woman did want more Évian water.”
“Fancy,” said Sheila dully.
“Do you think he’s attractive?” asked Penny idly, surreptitiously easing off a shoe and rubbing the inside of her foot up the opposite calf.
“That American?” replied Sheila, goggling at her in a sort of dull incredulity.
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“Nor do I,” agreed Penny sadly. “I don’t think he’s even rich, I got a shirt just like that for Dad at J.C. Penney’s in LA last month.”
“Mm.”
Penny and Sheila were in their mid-twenties. Their ideas of male attractiveness had been almost entirely formed by breathless perusal of True Romances around puberty, Mills and Boon novels (that the corresponding Betty Lous and June Bobs of Sol’s acquaintance knew as Harlequins) around their mid-teens and ever since, and American movies and TV shows. Sol Winkelmann resembled, Penny and Sheila had instantly recognized, that actor that had played the messy one in The Odd Couple, not the film, the TV series; but it will by now be apparent that neither Sheila nor Penny was capable of recognising why Penny’s mother, for one, had always been glued to that series. And the repeats.
The handsome Frenchman two rows behind the Winkelmanns rang. The girls looked at each other.
“I think we can leave that one to Alec,” said Penny sourly.
“Ya don’t say!”
“Why is it,” said Penny sourly, as Alec flew down the cabin, all lit up, “that all the good-looking ones are gay?”
“Or drunk.”
“Or both,” agreed Penny.
Penny shrugged sourly.
Sheila sighed.
The Indian woman rang AGAIN.
“My God,” said Patricia Cohen Winkelmann deeply as they emerged into the streaming humidity of Honolulu airport. “I thought you said Hawaii wasn’t humid?”
“Well, it isn’t usually, hon’,” replied Abe comfortably. “We’ll take a limo, you’ll be okay in that.”
Pat didn’t reply.
“And the hotel’ll be air-conditioned, hon’.”
“I thought you’d been to Hawaii before?” said Sol mildly to his sister-in-law.
Pat withered him with a Look.
… Neither the humidity nor Pat’s bad mood had quenched her husband’s optimistic good cheer. “See, if we do the volcanoes on The Big Island,”—Abe had immediately appropriated the local dialect as his own; he was saying “Havai’-i” with a hiccup in the middle of it with the best of ’em—“that’ll take us the best part of a day, I guess... Yeah, look, see: we can take this little airplane back the same evening and do the hula-hula show!”
“I am not going in any little plane,” said Pat slowly and acidly.
Abe attempted to persuade her that she’d enjoy it, hon’, it’d be a real fun thing to do. And gee, she didn’t want to miss out on Kilauea, did she? –Sol reflected idly that there was no possible way to transcribe the phonological delights of his half-brother’s pronunciation of “Kilauea.”
“She’s active, honey, how can ya possibly miss a sight like that?”
Very, very easily. It involved nothing more difficult than lying flat on one’s back with an eau-de-Cologne-soaked cloth on one’s head in an air-conditioned room that faced onto Beautiful Waikiki. (Not “Waikiki Beach”, apparently, though that was what it was.) If you got up real early, Sol was reliably informed by a kindred spirit whom he’d found propping up the Diamond Head Bar, you saw the guys that were employed to dump fresh silver-gold sand on it dumping truckloads of fresh silver-gold sand on it.
“Uh-huh,” he’d said. “See ya down there, say four-thirty, Franco.”
“See my ass,” Franco had returned genially, ordering them each another bourbon. Triples.
Pat retired to her room to start on the indicated activity. Abe, clutching his brightly coloured brochures, looked at his brother hopefully. “You’ll come, though, won’tcha, Sol?”
Sol was not averse to seeing a volcano in action. He was pretty much averse, though, to seeing a touristified South Pacific Artificial Paradise, which, he was reliably informed by a person not a million miles away from the Diamond Head Bar, was what They had turned Hawaii Island into. He looked at his brother’s eager, ugly face. “Yeah, sure, what else are we here for?”
“HEY!” cried Abe. “Now ya talking, fella!” –Buffet on the shoulder.
Sol could only conclude from the extra-enthusiasm, not to say downright surprize, in his brother’s voice, that he was letting it show too much. Gotta watch that, he told himself ruefully.
Abe then made ecstatic plans for what they would do for dinner, after dinner, and after after-dinner. Sol acquiesced in all of these, inwardly kicking himself because he couldn’t manage anything more than politeness.
As he went off thankfully to his own room to have what Abe declared was the nap they all needed to freshen themselves up after their flight, Sol reflected sardonically that there was one good thing about this trip, anyroad: Abe’s son Junior, Junior’s wife Ruthie, and their two ghastly offspring were not with them. Oh, sure Ruthie had seemed quite keen: but Little Abe and Bobby had gone into strong hysterics at the thought that they might have to miss Ronny Michaelson’s birthday party. So Junior and his family were joining them later. For the wedding. Gee, he could look forward to that! Sol went into his palatial room with a grin.
Susan Shapiro’s and Alan Harding’s wedding turned out to be pretty bad. But then no-one that had the slightest acquaintance with either of their families would have expected anything else. Well, Sol Winkelmann only had the slightest acquaintance with both of their families and he sure as Hell hadn’t expected anything else.
For a start, Susan was in a filthy mood because her grandmother and her Aunty Helen (the Cohen side) had completely taken over the reception (that she hadn’t even wanted to have in the first place) and planned it down to the last miniature ruffle on the last quail leg. Yo, boy.
For a second, the grandmother in question, Belinda, Lady Cohen (though she hid it well, Sol gave her that) was in a filthy mood. In spite of being about five-two and fluffy with it, she was very definitely the matriarch, so when Belinda was in a filthy mood everybody suffered. There were many reasons for this filthy mood, but there were five main ones, more or less.
Reason (a): The young couple had refused point-blank to have a synagogue ceremony and Susan’s grandfather, old Sir Jerry Cohen, had supported them. So had her other grandfather, David Shapiro, but Belinda didn’t have to take any notice of him. Well, she only nominally had to take notice of her husband, but appearances counted for a lot, Sol had to concede, in the world of those such as Belinda, Lady Cohen.
Reason (b): The Harding boy’s mother had put up a real fight to have the reception not at the Cohens’ gracious residence but at a proper reception hall with five million extra guests and ten million photographers. Belinda Cohen had won that one but that didn’t mean her nose hadn’t been put out of joint good and proper by it.
Reason (c)—though possibly this should have been (a), if you were ranking the reasons, though Sol wasn’t too sure he was capable of that, there were so many nuances involved—(c) was Susan’s refusal to wear the garments of her grandmother’s choosing. The Shapiro side had all supported Susan in this stand and even to a comparative stranger like Sol it was evident that Belinda believed they had done so out of spite.
Reason (d)—again, setting aside any notion of ranking—was that Susan’s younger sister, Allyson, who at her own insistence was matron of honour, was not married but was very heavily pregnant. Sure she was living with the guy in question and it was permanent (anyone could see with half an eye Donald was nutty on her), and sure he was getting a divorce the minute he possibly could under the real weird New Zealand divorce laws that apparently trapped both parties in undesired relationships for two years regardless of who was getting pregnant by whom in the meantime. That all didn’t seem to matter to Lady Cohen, who was apparently convinced that it was all Donald’s fault—though naturally she did not express herself on this subject to Sol Winkelmann, who was not only almost a stranger but American, plus into the bargain a player of poker, a smoker of foul cigars, and a shameless encourager of Sir Jerry Cohen in his efforts to do likewise. Naturally Sol didn’t attempt to point out to her that it couldn’t have all been Donald’s fault, Allyson musta been in there somewhere. Allyson Shapiro, by the way, was only just twenty, and Sol guessed that maybe that didn’t help.
Reason (e) for the royal displeasure—Sol by now had decided that was very much what it was—was that Lady Cohen’s youngest daughter, Veronica Something, had refused to cancel the trip to France she’d planned months in advance, mainly to attend a conference at which she was to present a paper, in order to stay home in New Zealand to attend her niece’s wedding. Nor had she countenanced for one moment the notion that her husband or their two small children should remain behind without her. Susan appeared totally unmoved by the fact of her youngest aunt’s absence, and this did not go down at all well with Lady Cohen. Not at all well.
There was also a reason (f), which, give her her due, Lady Cohen had not so much as breathed a word of to the Winkelmanns, not even when it was just her, Sir Jerry, their daughter Pat, Pat’s new husband and the husband’s negligible (if irritating) half-brother having dinner alone. However, Sol Winkelmann perceived quite clearly—and he was damn sure Abe did too, there were no flies on Abe—that Belinda was very seriously upset because Alan Harding, even if he did have a lot of family money behind him, was not Jewish. Actually, he was Anglican. Actually, his mother—though not by any but the wildest stretch of the imagination could you have called her a Christian—was, when home, a regular presence at the large and hideous newish Anglican Cathedral that was sited, quite coincidentally, not a million miles from the Cohens’ gracious home. Ouch.
Various minor irritants such as the presence of the unsuitable boyfriends of various granddaughters, the unsuitable age of the man that the bridesmaid (whom Belinda barely knew) had got herself mixed up with, the fact the bridesmaid’s hair was totally unmanageable (floods of black silk to her waist, who wanted to manage it, for Chrissakes?), the failure of the liquor store to supply the pink champagne that Sir Jerry had wanted, her daughter Patricia’s extravagant outfit, and the third-rate efforts of the caterers as compared to the cooking of B. Cohen herself, were of course, just extra grains of sand in the machine. Yo, boy, in fact.
Phyllis, Lady Harding—boy, we were in High Society now!—Phyllis, Lady Harding, mother of the groom, was in an almost equally filthy mood. Phyllis was an old friend of Pat Cohen Winkelmann’s, but that sure as Hell didn’t mean that Sol wanted any closer acquaintance with her than he’d had over last Christmas, when he’d managed to really impress the sharp-faced, sharp-voiced dame whom he mentally referred to as “Lady P”—though he knew all about British titles: Sol was neither ignorant nor slow-witted, and he was very widely read, there being an off-season for boating-supplies stores even in Florida. Mainly he’d impressed Lady P by playing poker and smoking foul cigars, and encouraging the hen-pecked Sir John Harding to do likewise.
Phyllis was largely in a filthy mood because Lady Cohen had beaten her over the reception hall thing, but she was also, it wouldn’t have taken a genius to deduce, in a more fundamentally filthy mood because her only son was marrying a Jew. Into the bargain one who, though she may have had money in the family, didn’t have a bean herself. Having imbibed an astounding amount of gin the night she’d had the Winkelmann party to dinner without the Cohens, Phyllis had actually imparted the beanless bit to Sol, but he’d been able to put her right on that one (because he’d gotten to know Susan quite well over Christmas and was very fond of her, and Susan had told him): she did have a bean, she had two thousand beans left to her by an old aunt or something. Phyllis had replied viciously: “Exactly!” So Sol hadn’t bothered to mention Susan’s trust fund set up by old Sir Jerry: Phyllis would then have pointed out that it was all tied up so as she couldn’t touch the capital…
As an extra—but far from minor—irritant, Phyllis was also clearly aware that Pat Winkelmann’s outfit had cost three times as much as her own and was much, much smarter. Or, if you looked at ’em with an unprejudiced eye—or with a totally jaundiced one, Sol by this time had drunk so much not-pink champagne that he didn’t care what you called it, either woulda done—much, much more hideous.
“Nan’s so smart,” sighed Ruthie Winkelmann at this point in his ruinations.
Sol choked into his champagne. Not because Ruthie, who was thirty-two, persisted in referring to her stepmother, who was in her mid-forties, by this extraordinary term—Abe’s idea, because of the boys: they couldn’t call her “Grandma”, there was Grandma Winkelmann (gaga: they coulda called her Potato Face and she wouldn’ta noticed) and Grandma Lien (very much not gaga and a strong and, fortunately, some felt, disciplinary influence in Little Abe’s and Bobby’s lives)—and “Nan” was real cute. No, Sol had gotten used to this. Ruthie had been doing it for nearly a year, now. No, because—uh—because—
“That acid green sure is her colour,” he managed to say.
“Yes,” sighed Ruthie. “She can wear any colour... Of course, she takes such good care of her skin!”
“Never mind, she can’t cook a roast dinner to save her life.”
Ruthie giggled, told him that was mean, and went all pink and pleased-looking.
Sol was about to offer to refill her glass from his very own bottle when she sighed again and said: “Isn’t that embroidery lovely? All hand-done, I guess.”
It was no use telling Ruthie that if she wanted hideous hand-embroidered acid-green abortions with which to decorate her far from unattractive body, Abe would buy them for her. Truck-loads of ’em. Because Ruthie would only go all pink and distressed and say: “Oh, no; me and Junior have to get used to standing on our own two feet. Especially now Abe’s got Nan to look after!” Unfortunately, she meant every word of it. Ruthie was a thoroughly nice woman.
“Well, I suppose it keeps fifty illegal Cuban immigrants in useful employment,” he said drily.
“Oh, Sol!” Giggle, giggle. “You don’t mean that!”
Sol experienced a strong desire to throw something—preferably Ruthie—and scream loudly. This was a normal desire in the company of his brother’s daughter-in-law, so he ignored it. “Come on, hand us your glass.”
Ruthie giggled coyly and protested, but it was just a form. Ruthie, of course, didn’t drink alcohol, but again of course, champagne at wedding receptions didn’t come under that head. Why? Don’t ask...
Not asking—though One of These Days—Sol said weakly: “I wouldn’t worry about the gear Pat and Phyllis get round in. You’re much prettier than either of ‘em.”
“Me?” squeaked Ruthie, going all pink. “Ooh, Sol, you are naughty!”
Repressing a strong desire to pinch her very nice ass—whilst at the same time aware that the urge to throw her across the room had not abated—Sol replied in an avuncular manner: “That outfit’s real sweet on you.”
If Ruthie had worked out that the years between them were considerably less than the years between Abe (who was in his early sixties) and his second wife, she gave no sign of it. “Oh, thank you, Sol. Do you really think it suits me?”
“Uh-huh. Real sweet.” Yup, real sweet just about defined it. Pinkish, it was. With a big pinkish rose on one shoulder in appliqué, with some beading and embroidery that was certainly not in the same class as Pat’s beading and embroidery. Ruthie’s hat—Ruthie was the sort of woman who inevitably wore a hat to a wedding—was also pinkish but, wincingly, not quite the same shade of pinkish; and her shoes and bag were another shade again. Well, they matched each other. The hat was a small hat with a small veil and two huge roses on it, but Sol thought that they were actually intended to be a different shade. Well, he was giving ’em the benefit of the doubt. The huge square shoulders made Ruthie, who was five-five with a pretty figure, look as if (a) she was about to get out there on the football field and (b) what with the heels that were too high for her, as if she was about to fall over. But most of the women in the crowded three-rooms-thrown-into-one that Belinda had managed to cram the reception into were wearing similar styles, so Sol guessed it was the In Look.
“I don’t think Junior likes it...” she revealed sadly, after gulping her champagne. “Men can be real mean, sometimes!” –All flushed. Yo, boy.
“I guess he’s tired: he doesn’t like travelling, does he?”
“No,” sighed Ruthie.
“You better see he has a nice rest, while the rest of us are down at the mountain.”
“Yes,” sighed Ruthie.
“That nanny that Belinda found for you sure seems capable.”
“Yes,” sighed Ruthie. She gulped champagne. “She’s costing Grandpa Abe a fortune!” she confided abruptly.
“Uh—yeah. Well, he can afford it, Ruthie. And they are his grandkids.”
“Yes,” sighed Ruthie.
Sol refilled her glass and said: “Look, there’s that pretty bridesmaid. Shall we go talk to her? She seems like a real nice girl.”
But to his astonishment Ruthie clutched his arm and said in a tearful voice: “No; don’t, Sol!”
“Why not? Didn’t you like her?”
Ruthie shook the hat violently. After a moment she managed to get out: “No; I thought she was sweet. Susan’s nice, too.”
“Uh-huh,” he said foggily. “Uh—so?”
“They’re all so English!” gulped Ruthie. “I can’t talk to them!”
Sol saw in dismay that her nice blue eyes had filled with tears and her lower lip was wobbling. So he didn’t say that while he didn’t guess they were English, maybe you could say they were British, and yup, they sure were different from us good ole folks from the good ole U.S. of A.—though the effort nearly killed him. Especially with all that not-pink fizz inside him.
“I guess not,” he agreed mildly. “Come sit down, Ruthie, honey.” He led her quivering form to a sofa set back against a wall and pushed her gently onto it.
“Oh, dear,” said Ruthie faintly.
“Slip them shoes off,” he recommended.
“Sol, I couldn’t!” she hissed, horrified.
No, being Ruthie, she probably couldn’t.
“Why didn’t Abe say they were all luh-ladies?” she then said, lower lip all wobbly again. Boy, she was upset all right, she’d forgotten to call him “Grandpa Abe.”
“Uh…”
“I feel like I’m in some weird English mini-series, y’know?”
“Oh!” said Sol in great enlightenment. “Ladies, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh—yeah. Well, I don’t guess they all are.”
“Mostly,” said Ruthie with a tearful sniff.
“I guess we’ll just sit here like two Damn Yankees on a log, then, huh?”
“Yes,” whispered Ruthie.
They sat there like two Damn Yankees on a log for some considerable time. During this time they finished off the bottle of champagne and Sol looked wistfully across the room to where he could see the bridesmaid’s flood of black silky hair, sinuous body in a tight white wool-angora thing that did ev-er-y-thing for it, and quite stupendous tits. Especially without a bra. Like they were. His enjoyment was somewhat marred by the fact that the unsuitable older boyfriend, who Sol rather thought was considerably his junior, was very clearly giving out “the-man-in-possession” signals and in fact spent the entire time that Sol had the pair of 'em (heh, heh) under observation with his arm draped across her shoulders.
“Haven’t you gone, yet?” he said, grinning, to the bride.
“Hi, Sol; isn’t it ghastly?” replied Susan amiably.
“What, Pat’s dress?”
“No!” said Pat’s daughter with a yelp of laughter.
“Yes, it is,” objected her groom mildly.
“Yes, of course!” said Susan, grinning all over her face. “But I meant the whole do!”
“Yup. Cain’t say ya didn’t warn me, though,” he drawled.
At this the bridesmaid’s unsuitable elderly boyfriend, whose hand had now transferred itself from the white wool-angora shoulders to under the arm and just under one of ’em—the bridesmaid’s face was now very pink—said with a grin: “We’d just started to play a game when you came along. You can join in, if you like.”
“Will he get the point?” wondered Susan, grinning.
Alan Harding—he was a nice boy but definitely not bright, so, as Abe had mentioned, more than once, it was a good thing he wasn’t going in his family’s business—looked anxiously at Sol, but Sol, being mellowed by lots of fizz and by having got away from Ruthie, merely winked at him.
“Soon see. Describe what Phyllis reminds you of,” drawled the unsuitable boyfriend.
“In that get-up,” elaborated Susan.
“Aw, gee,” said Sol sadly. “Couldn’t I do Pat, instead?”
“We’re gonna do her next, of course!” said Pat’s daughter with huge scorn. “Go ON! Or are you chicken?”
“Cluck, cluck,” murmured the bridesmaid’s unsuitable boyfriend.
“Boy, you’ve got me stirred up now,” Sol informed him. “Boy, this one’ll be good. Now, wait for it, folks…” He stared fixedly at Phyllis Harding. She was in blue. Very bright blue. Mixture of bits of wool, bits of leather, bits of silk, bits of embroidery... The stiff spikes of bright yellow hair were not nearly concealed by the quite incredible feathers of the unbelievable hat.
“She’s like an African crested crane—”
“I said that!” said Phyllis’s son loudly.
“Shuddup, I’m just warming up.”
“Give the bloke a chance, Alan,” agreed the bride.
“She’s like an African crested crane that’s fallen into an electric-blue neon ragbag,” said Sol slowly, poker-face.
“YAY!” cried Susan.
The bridesmaid had hysterics, through which the unsuitable elderly boyfriend had, of course, to support her bodily.
Alan goggled at Sol in stupefaction, not laughing. “That’s really clever,” he said weakly.
“Full of—imagery!” gasped the boyfriend, when he could speak.
“Yeah; crammed with it,” said the bridesmaid, now gazing at Sol in awe.
“You can excuse them: he’s a poet and she reads that sorta stuff,” said Susan briefly.
“Gee, is that so? Gee, in that case I’ll make allowances.”
“It was miles better than yours,” Susan said scornfully to the boyfriend.
“Yes,” the bridesmaid and Alan agreed.
“Come on, Jemima, your turn,” said Susan briskly to the bridesmaid.
“I can’t top that,” she replied definitely.
“Well, let’s do Pat,” said the boyfriend. “Let me give you a hint: greenish, with, er, stuff.”
“I’ve got a good one!” said Susan eagerly. “The over-age model from the acid-green swamp!”
Alan sniggered.
“Not bad,” said the bridesmaid in considering tones.
“Yeah,” Sol agreed.
“Mm... I’d have left out the ‘green’,” decided the boyfriend.
Susan muttered: “‘The over-age model from the acid swamp’; oh, bugger: that is better.”
Alan sniggered again.
“Who else has got one?” said the bridesmaid.
“Me!” squeaked the boyfriend.
“Shut up,” she said, digging him in the ribs. “You’ve always got one.”
“I have,” said Alan, “but it’s a bit ordinary.”
“Go on!” they all encouraged him.
“The green streak,” he said simply.
Sol and Susan each gave a shout of laughter.
“Oh, dear, that just defines her,” said the bridesmaid sadly. “That’s really good, Alan.”
Alan went all pink and pleased. The more so since Susan put her arm round his waist in a comradely fashion and said: “Yeah.”
“Mine sounds rotten, now,” said the bridesmaid sadly.
“Never mind, sweetheart: go on,” said the boyfriend. –Squeezing her, the swine.
“Um, well,” she said, all pink and flustered, “it was ‘Terribly Metro and Garden.’ Um, because it’s terrible, and because of the green, you see. And she’s dying to get her photo in that silly Metro magazine to put Phyllis’s nose out of joint; so...”
“You’re right, it does sound rotten,” agreed the boyfriend.
“It’s quite clever, really,” said Susan dubiously.
“No, it isn’t,” said the bridesmaid sadly.
“I think it’s very clever!” said Alan sturdily.
The bridesmaid smiled at him gratefully, but not as if she was convinced.
“Uh—if an ignorant American could butt in here,” said Sol apologetically, “I think I may have missed a reference or fourteen.”
“Oh! It’s a song!” said the bridesmaid, going very red. “Flanders and Swann.”
“Uh-huh.”
“They’re English. Well, they were,” said Susan dubiously. “Aren’t they dead?
“Tom’s got a record of them... So they must be dead!” ended the bridesmaid with a crow of laughter.
Ignoring this sally, the boyfriend put his nose in the air and sang—in a beautiful counter-tenor, Sol almost sank through Belinda Cohen’s Axminster—“‘We’re terribly House and Garden at Number Seven-B—’”
When he’d finished Susan said kindly: “House and Garden is a flash Pommy interior-decorating magazine, Sol. And Metro, that’s a new local effort, it tries to do the same sort of thing, all mixed up with sort of current events. Well, more gossip, really.”
“She puts these things so clearly,” murmured the boyfriend.
“Yeah; but us ignorant Americans need to be communicated with at that level,” Spl explained, “Thanks, Susan.”
“Go on, Sol,” promoted the boyfriend, grinning broadly.
“After you.”
“She looks like a nightmare of haute couture,” the boyfriend said dreamily, “swirled through a mist of vitriol.”
“Cor,” said Susan.
“Blimey,” said the bridesmaid.
“It isn’t bad,” said Alan judiciously.
“Not bad at all,” conceded Sol, grinning.
“Well, go on: top it,” said the boyfriend.
“I’da said she looked like a jaded and chlorotic leaf,” he said mildly.
There was a moment’s blank silence, and then the boyfriend gave a yelp of laughter.
“Oh!” squeaked the bridesmaid. To the boyfriend she said: “Does chlorotic—”
“Yes!” he gasped. “Like—in—chlorophyll! Ow!”
“Pity it wasn’t Phyllis that chose the green,” noted Susan, grinning broadly.
“I never thought of that,” Sol admitted sadly.
“Not half,” said the boyfriend, recovering himself.
“I don’t get it,” said Alan simply.
“GREEN, ya nana!” bellowed Susan. “They’re all GREEN! Leaves, and jade, and chlorotic means green!”
“As in chlorosis, or green-sickness,” murmured the boyfriend.
“Yeah,” Sol allowed, “but I wouldn’t say she suffered from that.”
The boyfriend and the bridesmaid both apparently knew their Shakespeare because they both choked, and then he started whistling “Brush up your Shakespeare and they’ll all kow-tow.” Which kinda confirmed it. He could whistle real good, as well.
By the time the bridesmaid had finished off Belinda, Lady Cohen, with “Small blue-petalled powder-keg”, and the boyfriend had done for the harmless if somewhat toad-faced Sir Jerry with a simple “Jermit the Frog”, it was time for the bridal pair to disappear in a hail of rose petals and rice. Well, rice, anyway: a skinny teenage boy who looked like a younger version of Jermit the Frog (Jerkin the Tadpole? wondered Sol unworthily, having absorbed another several glasses of fizz in the same period) threw half a ton of it, ably seconded by the undesirable boyfriends of a couple of the granddaughters.
“Hoo!” said Sol, shaking himself.
“Or, in the vernacular, Phew!” agreed the boyfriend.
“Come home with us,” said the bridesmaid, smiling. “We’re going to have home-made chips and a very old Tom Lehrer record for tea.”
“Not—?”
“‘From Helen Gehagen, to— Ronald Reagan?’” sang the boyfriend in that incredible counter-tenor.
“Yes. And stop showing off,” said the bridesmaid severely.
“And if you’re really good,” said the boyfriend, grinning broadly, “she’ll make you her special Namesake Pancakes for pudding.”
“Out of a packet,” said the bridesmaid serenely.
“Real ones, huh?”
“Yes. It’s all I can cook.”
Sol was losing control of his mouth.
“Go on, Jemima, tell him he can laugh,” said the boyfriend.
It had dawned on Sol, rather belatedly, that that was, indeed, her name. He fell all over the Cohens’ gracious front porch, laughing himself sick.
After Belinda Cohen had ordered “Jemima, dear” to come in out of the cold—she didn’t seem to give a damn about the boyfriend or Sol—and they had gone into the front hall, the boyfriend said: “Do come.”
Sol made a face. “I’d love to, Tom, only I can’t, Pat’s dragging us off to some old schoolfriend’s home for dinner.”
“Yuck,” said Tom simply.
“Yeah. Well, when you consider Phyllis and her were at school—”
“Exactly,” he agreed.
“Tomorrow, then?” smiled Jemima.
“Thanks, Jemima, that’d be great—if you’re sure it won’t be too much trouble?”
“Ask Tom, he’s the cook,” she said simply.
“It won’t be any trouble,” Tom assured him. “But I should warn you, we’ve got half a kitchen, a roof that’s about to be replaced, and no sitting-room at all.
“But the bedroom’s finished: it’s really lovely. We sit in there,” she said. He put his arm round her. They smiled at Sol.
Lucky devils. Well, let’s face it, Sol, boy: lucky young devils. The unsuitable elderly boyfriend must be six or seven years his, Sol’s, junior. And he’d take his dying oath the luscious Jemima wasn’t a day over twenty-seven.
“Okay, great; it’s a date.”
“It’s just up the road from Susan’s,” explained Jemima.
“Number 10 Blossom Avenue, Waikaukau Junction,” said Tom hurriedly. “Not the uncharted depths of the Puriri County orcharding wop-wops. As they say in the vernacular.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Or, to put it another way,” said Tom, twinkling through his gold-rimmed specs and reminding Sol forcibly of a cross between a budgie and a demented professor, “not beyond the black stump and out to Hell and gone in the backblocks of northern Puriri—”
“Stop it, Tom!” she cried.
Grinning, Sol drawled: “Say, that was real interesting. Say, you reckon if I brung my notebook tomorrow I could make a note of them—uh—vernackalars?”
Promptly Jemima fell all over the Cohens’ highly polished gracious front hall, laughing herself sick.
“You’ve gotta come, now,” said the boyfriend mournfully. “I’ve gotta think up one to get back on you for that.”
“Write it down for him, Tom. Nobody ever knows where Waikaukau Junction is.”
“It might be simpler if I collected him,” he murmured.
Sol tried to say he’d take a taxi but was overridden by their cries of horror. They decided he’d be collected. Where was he staying?—Here.—He watched them both gulping, and smiled a little.
“Well, don’t forget to tell Lady Cohen you won’t be in for dinner tomorrow,” said Jemima in a squashed voice.
“In good time,” added Tom, not in a squashed voice. Sol winked.
After that Tom and Jemima said good-bye to a few friends, said thank you politely to Lady Cohen (who made quite sure that Jemima put her nice, warm coat on—she didn’t seem to give a damn whether Tom froze to death, though), and went. Sol accompanied them to the front drive more out of a reluctance to stay in the company of any other of the guests than anything, and was either rewarded or punished for this, it was hard to tell which, really, especially after all that champagne, by seeing them get into a little red M.G. A real, old one, not one of those fiberglass imitations you saw round Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
“’Bye!” they cried brightly. “See you tomorrow!”
Sol waved sadly as they roared off with their happiness and their little M.G. towards the old house they were fixing up and their odd supper of chips and Tom Lehrer followed by Namesake Pancakes. Lucky devils.
Next chapter:
https://theamericanrefugeeanovel.blogspot.com/2022/11/an-evening-at-blossom-avenue.html