Christmas In July

22

Christmas In July

    Certain people hadn’t really wanted to go to the Christmas in July party at Number 10 Blossom Avenue. Michaela, for one. Tom had immediately spotted this—it wasn’t that hard, he was aware that Michaela didn’t enjoy social functions—but as he wasn’t at all sure that Jemima Puddle-Duck had, he kindly didn’t mention it.

    June Butler, however, had been extremely eager to be included and in fact had been unable to prevent an expression of huge relief spreading over her face when Tom and Jemima had asked her. And they weren’t to worry about Bob, he’d enjoy it when he got there!

    Since Susan Harding had been in on the first one, she and Alan were in it, boots and all. In fact Susan would have taken it over entirely if Tom had let her. After that, somehow or other the guest list had grown, and what with Bob’s mother Ida having to be included—; and Jemima discovering that Polly would be all alone that week—; and they couldn’t ask Michaela and not Roberta; and what did Tom think about the Austin twins, Ginny was Roberta’s friend—; and Bill had said Isabel Blakely from school had drunk in every word of his account of the last one, so didn’t Tom think— Jemima’s latest inspiration was to invite Tom’s old Uncle Alec.

    Tom’s Addams-Family doorbell hadn’t boomed, so he said blankly: “How did you get in?” as Darryl and John came into the front room, beaming.

    “Your front door’s wide open,” Darryl replied. “Isn’t it meant to be, for the party?”

    “No,” said Tom grimly. At the same time June cried angrily: “Those dratted boys again!” and Meg cried angrily: “The blasted twins again!”

    “I’ll shut it,” said Darryl amiably, ambling out.

    “Here,” said John, grinning, as he shoved a large flat box at Tom.

    “Mince pies,” deduced Meg in a hollow voice. She’d contributed mince pies. She’d half killed herself looking for a jar of Christmas mince in New Zealand in July. June had also contributed mince pies. Fortunately she’d had a jar, left over from last Christmas: Ida Butler had given it to her and June had put it in the cupboard and forgotten about it. Ida herself had also contributed mince pies. Her cupboards were undoubtedly stuffed with jars of Christmas mince, she was that sort of person. The Austin twins had also brought mince pies. When they’d told their mother about the Christmas in July party she’d immediately sent them up a huge cake tin full of carefully packed mince pies.

    “No: sono i tortiglione,” said John, grinning behind the beard.

    “I hope that’s not Italian for mince pies,” said June.

    “No, it’s Italian for tortiglione,” John replied cheerfully.

    Tom opened it gingerly, but it wasn’t mince pies. Little, um, sort of biscuits? Presumably edible. Well, good. They were gonna have an immense mince pie surplus after the party, and when you came right down to it, who really liked the things?

    Tom’s Addams-Family doorbell boomed and everybody jumped except Tom.

    “Get that, Lurch,” Tom ordered Roger.

    Roger had come into the sitting-room from the room opposite that was destined to become Jemima’s study in the near future because in it the twins and Connie and the Butler boys were watching The Muppet Movie and it made him—as he had not failed to explain—want to spew. Especially Miss Piggy, he’d said firmly to Jemima’s enquiry. Jemima had said she thought Miss Piggy was a sad character, she always made her want to cry. Those who knew Jemima well hadn’t reacted to this. But Vicki had said that she couldn’t see that: she’d always thought Miss Piggy was awfully funny. Her blond boyfriend, Euan Knox, had looked at her dubiously, so those who had already thought that he seemed a bit too bright for Vicki thought so yet again.

    “I’ll come, too,” said Jemima kindly, accompanying Roger to the door.

    “Here we are at last!” announced Bill, grinning all over his face and—possibly on the excuse that he had a bit of squashed-looking imitation mistletoe in one fist—enveloping Jemima in a bearhug and giving her a smacking kiss. Roger turned bright maroon.

    “Gidday,” said old Alec Overdale, apparently unmoved.

    “Hi, Alec,” said Roger gratefully.

    “Grab this,” said Alec, shoving a large, dampish sack at him. Roger did. He looked in it. He gulped.

    “You better put it in ’is freezer,” advised Tom’s uncle, coming into the front passage and shutting the door behind him.

    “Wait!” cried Jemima, bursting out of Bill’s embrace. “Where’s Rover?”

    “He can stay outs—” began Rover’s proud master, but Jemima had wrenched the front door open and was crying: “Rover! Come on, poor boy!”

    Rover came in slowly with something in his mouth.

    “Drop it!” said Alec crossly.

    Rover dropped it. He looked meekly up at Jemima, wagging his tail.

    “Ugh, what is it?” said Roger.

    “Clever boy!” cried Jemima, dropping to her knees and hugging him. “It’s the paper! Look, Bill, he’s brought the paper in!”

    “He can’t have. I brought that in, before,” said Roger.

    “It’s that Herald I got down Papakura way. ’E’s been chewing on it all the way,” noted Bill.

    “Never mind, he thought he was doing the right thing!” decided Jemima, stroking his black head. “Good boy, Rover!”

    Rover looked up at her with worshipping doggy eyes. In about three seconds flat, three male persons present in the front hall calculated sourly, she’d be taking him out the back and offering him M,I,L,K. There were very few flies on Rover. Not metaphorical ones, anyway.

    “What sort of dog is he?” asked Roger abruptly.

    Alec sniffed slightly. “I’ve often wondered that,” he admitted.

    Roger gave a surprised snort of laughter.

    “Mongrel,” offered Bill, grinning. He struggled out of his parka and hung it on the newel post.

    “He is not!” said Jemima indignantly. “He’s—um... a Labrador.”

    “Rats,” said Alec.

    “Um—no, he isn’t, they don’t have curly tails or—or ears like that,” ended Roger on a weak note.

    “Well, um—I know! He’s a retriever! They’re a lot like Labradors, only curlier!”

    “Might have a bit of retriever in ’im,” conceded Alec.

    “Or a bit of chow!” choked Roger.

    “Bitser,” offered Bill, grinning.

    Jemima got up with great dignity. “Ignore them,” she advised Rover. “They’re just jealous, because none of them are as beautiful as you!”—The three male humans present in the front hall choked slightly.—“Come on, we’ll go out to the kitchen and you can have—”

    “Not milk,” said Alec in a hard voice.

    Roger began: “Look out—” but too late, Rover gave an excited “Woof!” and rose on his hind legs to paw Jemima’s shoulders.

    “GEDDOWN!” roared Alec.

    “Shouldn’ta said that: always sets ’im off,” noted Bill, as Rover got down, looking abashed.

    “He’s heavy!” gasped Jemima.

    “Put the bugger outside,” said Alec.

    “Yeah: ’e can form a welcoming committee for Ralphy,” noted Bill sourly.

    “Shit, is he coming?” asked Ralph’s uncle.

    “So he has been graciously pleased to inform us,” said Bill heavily.

    “We had to have him, he’s bringing the wine,” explained Jemima simply. “Come on, Rover, you can have a drink of water and—um, can I give him a B,O,N,E, Alec?” she asked wistfully.

    “You can give ’im one,” he replied heavily. “And then you can explain to ‘Is Lordship why there’s a ruddy great hole in ’is flaming vege garden.”

    “Well, let’s hope he digs it in the parsnip bed,” said Jemima, leading Rover out to the kitchen.

    “Parsnip bed?” said Alec after a moment.

    “Gone potty. Toleja,” replied Bill with satisfaction.

    Alec looked slowly round the hall. Tom had stripped and varnished the panelling up the staircase wall but the balusters were proving harder nuts to crack. Which hadn’t stopped him putting down marble tiles—black and white, what else—on the floor. Only in the front part of the hall, admittedly, but—

    After a moment the old man said: “Ralph reckons he’s had her working on that fucking stair-rail. That right?”

    “Yes, that’s why she’s got those elastic bandages on her wrists, Ralph was hopping mad, he reckons it’s R.S.I. and if Tom was an employer he coulda been prosecuted for it!” revealed Roger in a rush.

    “Sir R. has inspected the wrists and ordered her not to touch another bit of sandpaper till Kingdom Come,” said Bill neutrally.

    “Yeah, an’ he reckoned if Tom made her do any more he’d drop him where he stood!” contributed Roger eagerly.

    Alec didn’t point out that there was no fear of Sir Ralph’s risking his precious surgeon’s hands for any stake less than his own life. He merely rubbed his craggy chin slowly and said: “Must be some good in ’im after all, then.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Roger and Bill sourly, neither of them making the mistake of supposing he meant Tom.

    Tom’s Addams-Family doorbell boomed and everybody jumped except Tom.

    “God Almighty,” muttered Alec, shaking his head.

    “It’s so as I can hear it when I’m working,” explained Jemima, scrambling up.

    Bill was peering out of the French windows. “It’s Isabel from school,” he warned.

    “Good,” replied Jemima, giving him a glare. She hurried out.

    In the front hall Isabel Blakely from Maungakiekie Street Primary greeted Jemima breathlessly with: “Oh, Jemima, dear! I hope I’m not too early; it was so lovely of you and dear Tom to invite— Oh, this is for you, dear!”

    She panted slightly. There was no obvious reason for this: Number 10’s front yard was almost flat and, as Bill had just ascertained, she had parked her Honda City across the bottom of the drive. The which, as Bill was now telling the assembled multitude with relish, was gonna prevent Sir Ralphy’s driving the fucking BMW up it and, it was sincerely to be hoped, allow Sir Ralphy to give ’imself a hernia by carting the crates of booze in all the way from the road.

    Gingerly Jemima investigated the cake tin Isabel had presented her with. “Mince pies,” she said faintly. “Lovely.”

    As they put the mince pies in the kitchen, Isabel gasped at the sight of Rover in a corner with his bone. Jemima explained that he was hiding, he didn’t like crowds. Since Isabel didn’t like crowds either and was secretly terrified, though very flattered, at being invited to a party with all of Tom and Jemima’s sophisticated friends from the University, and since she was sentimental about dogs anyway, she immediately experienced immense sympathy for Rover and had to crouch down in her good pink wool suit and pat him and suggest that maybe he’d like a drink of—

    “Ssh!” said Jemima desperately.

    “What?” asked Miss Blakely meekly.

    “He goes all silly if you say M,I,L,K,” explained Jemima lamely, going very pink. “And Alec doesn’t let him have it.”

    “Oh, poor boy!” she cried. “Poor old boy,” she cooed, stroking his head. “Could he have a mince pie, Jemima?”

    One way of getting rid of them! thought Jemima madly. “Um—well, just one, I suppose wouldn’t hurt him... Only don’t tell Alec or Tom.”

    When Rover had galloped down the mince pie Miss Blakely stood up and said firmly: “Men get ever so macho about dogs—have you noticed? It’s silly, isn’t it?”

    “Yes,” agreed Jemima weakly.

    Connie came into the front room, pouting.

    “There she is!” cried Isabel immediately. “Hullo, Connie, dear!”

    “Wanna cakey,” said Connie, pouting.

    “Connie!” cried Meg.

    “I’m hung-gree-ee!” wailed Connie.

    “Can’t see why,” said Darryl dispassionately. “Had a huge great bowl of muesli and a banana down our place this morning, and then ate half John’s toast.”

    “What?” said Meg faintly, gulping.

    “Um—couldn’t she have a mince pie?” said Jemima in a weak voice.

    Meg opened her mouth. She met Jemima’s eye. “Well, just one,” she said feebly.

    Tom’s Addams-Family doorbell boomed and everybody jumped except possibly Tom and Jemima, who were in the kitchen. “I’ll go,” groaned Bill.

    Since he left the sitting-room door open everyone heard the exchange which followed. “Hullo,” he said. “Do I know you?” –Meg covered her face with her hand.

    “I think we have met,” said a composed young voice. “Aren’t you Jemima’s neighbour? I’m Allyson Shapiro, my sister Susan used to flat at Number 3.”

    “Oh—yeah,” said Bill’s voice weakly.

    “And this is Donald Freeman,” said Allyson’s voice.

    “Gidday,” said Bill.

    “How do you do?” replied a polite young male voice.

    “Hul-lo!” Bill’s voice then said—an exclamation, not a greeting. “Who’ve we got here, then?”

    “This is Baby William,” Allyson explained.

    “Really? I’m a William, too!” he said brightly. Meg covered her face with her hand again.

    “Isn’t lunch ready YET?” demanded Starsky, appearing abruptly in the sitting-room doorway.

    “NO!” bellowed Bob. June merely cringed.

    “Aw, you lot have got drinks and that, it isn’t fair-yuh!” he whinged.

    “You lot had mountains of Coke and stuff, where’s it gone if not into your pelican-like gullets?” retorted Bob smartly.

    “I never had much,” lied Starsky valiantly.

    “Liar,” spotted Bob immediately.

    “Well, what about the presents: can’t we open them n—”

    “NO!” roared Bob.

    Tom’s Addams-Family doorbell boomed and everybody jumped except possibly Tom, who was still in the kitchen.

    “Volvo station-waggon,” said Bill, peering out the French windows. “I’ll go!” He grabbed up his sprig of crushed artificial mistletoe and hastened out. As he didn’t shut the sitting-room door they all heard the exchange which followed.

    “Gidday!” he said eagerly. “Merry Christmas in July!”

    “Merry Christmas in July, Bill!” replied a contralto voice with a gurgle in it. “Ooh, is that mistletoe?”

    Bill gave a chuckle. They heard quite clearly a smacking kiss and a contralto giggle. Meg rolled her eyes to High Heaven and sighed. June swallowed loudly.

    Then two little voices piped uncertainly: “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!”

    And a third little voice, much hoarser, cried anxiously: “See a TREE-EE! See a tree NOW!”

    Bob’s face lit up. “That’s little Katie Maureen!”

    At that Meg gave in entirely, got up, and hurried out to the hall. Even the sight of Polly disentangling mistletoe from her curls as Bill tenderly peeled her out of a huge fluffy brown fur coat hardly put her off her stroke for more than an instant. “There they are!” she cried. “Aren’t they getting to be big boys! Hullo, darlings! Merry Christmas in July!”

    The Addams-Family doorbell boomed under his touch and Ralph recoiled. “Er—Merry Christmas in July, little almost sister-in-law,” he said weakly.

    Jemima stood back, goggling, as he came in with his armfuls of brightly wrapped presents. And a wreath of holly and mistletoe round his fur hat.

    Connie burst out of the study. “Sanna Claus!” she cried.

    “Shut the DOOR!” yelled several young male voices.

    Jemima staggered over and shut the study door. “Um—yes, it is practically Santa Claus,” she agreed weakly.

    “Presents!” gasped Connie.

    “Keep it off me,” said Ralph, as she came up to him and goggled at him with her mouth open.

    Jemima took her hand and pulled her away. “It’s Tom’s brother, Ralph, really, Connie,” she said weakly.

    Ralph deposited the armful of presents on the hall table. “Where’s the green-eyed monster?”

    Jemima swallowed. “In the kitchen.”

    “Good.” He came up to her swiftly. “See this?” He waved at his hat.

    “Mm!” admitted Jemima, trying not to giggle.

    “Good!” beamed Ralph. He swept her into a tight embrace. Jemima didn’t pull away, in fact she emitted a very faint giggle. As she both smelled and tasted strongly of rum punch, Ralph didn’t delude himself it was all him, but it was damn’ good all the same. He was about to make a complete tit of himself by saying something rather genuine, only at that point a terrifically dry voice said: “I dunno who’s encouraging who, here, but if either of you wants to live to eat ’is flaming Christmas dinner, I’d stop.”

    “Hullo, Nunky, dear,” said Ralph without enthusiasm.

    Alec came up the passage. He gave Ralph a sour look but conceded: “She’s full of grog, ya know.”

    “Yes!” agreed Jemima with a loud giggle. “Doesn’t Ralph look lovely in his overcoat, Alec?”

    “No. Horrible,” replied Alec with satisfaction. He was about to go into the front room but paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Hear you told ’im where to get off about the bloody sandpapering,” he said.

    Ralph raised his eyebrows. “So?”

    “Nothing. Well, just as well somebody did,” the old man conceded. He went into the sitting-room, shutting the door firmly after him.

    Having been informed by his sister-in-law that, in his reinterpretation of Jemima’s actual words, male hangers-on of delightful twins would be strong enough to carry the wine in from his car, Ralph brazenly accompanied Ginny upstairs to fetch her parka, preparatory to, apparently, fetching her twin and a hanger-on, who were over the road for reasons to which he didn’t listen. His excuse would have been that he didn’t want to leave his good coat and overcoat in the front hall but as nobody seemed to expect one, he didn’t offer it.

    He took Ginny’s grey-blue parka off her and helped her into it. “What a vile garment,” he noted detachedly.

    Angrily she retorted: “Not all of us are rich surgeons that can afford to wear dead lambs on their heads!”

    His lips twitched, but he merely removed the hat and showed her the label.

    “Oh, good.” She hesitated and then said with a frown: “Why did you call me Red Fed downstairs, just now?”

    “Er—I think I intended to convey to the onlookers that while I wished to be friendly, I fully recognized the inescapable age gap between us imposed by—er—our society. –Age and sex,” he corrected himself sourly.

    “New Zealand society is stultified!” replied Ginny fiercely.

    “And stultifying—oh, quite.”

    “My closest male friend is over seventy and I get on miles and miles better with him than anybody else I know of any age or sex!”

    “Who?” croaked Ralph.

    “David Shapiro. He was at that stupid luau of Polly’s. He’s giving me Japanese lessons, only it isn’t just that, we talk about everything and—and he listens to my opinions!” she ended fiercely.

    “Mm.” Ralph did vaguely recall the elderly gent in question. Rather close to the delicious Lady C., hadn’t he been? He looked thoughtfully at the pink face and the gleaming red-gold locks a good way below his own face and said: “Luckily for him he’s past the age where it might still occur to the filthy if undoubtedly stultified minds of the onlookers that sex might possibly rear its ugly head in the relationship.”

    “Of course he is, what’s that got to do— Oh,” she said, going very red indeed.

    “Mm,” said Ralph. Ginny glared at the floor, so he added: “Whereas I, most unfortunately for both of us but especially me, am not.”

    “Don’t kid yourself that you’re my type!” retorted Ginny with huge scorn.

    “Uh—no. What is your type, may I ask?”

    “I don’t know,” she said simply. “I can’t stand stupid people... Someone as bright as David, only younger.”

    “Mm.” Ralph sat down slowly on the big bed. ““You don’t know how much I wish at this precise moment,” he said with immense bitterness, “that I could drop twenty years.”

    Ginny swallowed loudly. “We could still be friends.”

    “Don’t start feeling sorry for me, for God’s sake, I’m more than capable of doing that for myself!”

    She looked hard at him.

    “What?” he said faintly.

    “I’m trying to put myself in your place, only I can’t.”

    “No. There’s thirty years of disillusionment between us: could have something to do with it.”

    “Ye-es... And being different sexes... Do you think that counts?”

    Ralph opened his mouth. He shut it again. Then he admitted: “I’m undecided. It certainly counts to the stultified minds of the hidebound thinkers of this boring, bourgeois society.”

    She nodded slowly. “Mm… I know I wouldn’t like you if you were female.”

    Ralph’s jaw sagged.

    “It’s stupid not to admit that sort of thing to yourself, don’t you think?”

    “Extremely stupid. –By God, Red Fed, has anyone ever told you that you bring your cousin Polly vividly to mind at times?”

    “Yes. Several people. –You called me it again.”

    He looked at her cautiously. Ginny merely looked expectant. “Let’s call it a pet name,” he said, making a face. “I have a feeling that if I don't use it I might forget the huge and insuperable age difference and let the huge and insuperable sex difference lead me into doing something that’d scare the living daylights out of you,” he ended on a sour note.

    Ginny was very flushed.

    “Yes. Dirty old man,” he said with a sneer. “Just go away, will you?” When he looked up she’d gone. “Si jeunesse savait!” he said on a savage note. “Unfortunately,” he noted with a grimace, “vieillesse peut. Still. Just. And wouldn’t I bloody like to!” He made an awful face, got up, and went out.

    “Gidday, gidday!” said Tom’s old friend Erik Nilsson cheerfully.

    Tom uttered a high-pitched scream and hurled a spoon across the kitchen.

    “He has that effect on the young, the elderly and those of a nervous disposition!” noted Pauline, coming in smiling.

    “How the Hell did you types get in?”

    “Through the back door. It wasn’t locked,” explained Erik. “Me nerves couldn’t face that bloody Addams-Family doorbell of yours.”

    Tom grinned. “You can give that here,” he informed Pauline, taking Baby Belinda off her. She was awake and looked up at him with what Tom was sure was a smile, though persons less besotted might have claimed it was wind. “Huwwo, Baby Bewinda!” he said immediately in a high-pitched squeak. “Wozza pitty girl, den! Wozza pitty girl, den!”

    “Um—Tom, would it be all right if Dad comes?” asked Pauline nervously.

    Pauline Weintraub Nilsson’s male parent, was, of course, Nat Weintraub. Tom bloody nearly dropped Baby Belinda, but managed to say: “Uh—sure. More the merrier.” Thinking: Thank Christ I talked Jemima out of inviting Sol and Phoebe! It would have been bad enough, he recognized groggily, with them plus bloody Ralph: in his cups he was capable of saying anything and actually even not in his cups he was capable of saying practically anything; but them plus Nat Weintraub—! Possibly there was a God after all. One that had a soft spot for T.M. Overdale’s nerves.

    Tom was in the hall with a trayful of clean glasses when his Addams-Family doorbell boomed. “It’s all right, Morticia, I’ll get it,” he said, as Jemima shot out of the dining-room.

    Roger hurried out in her wake. “It might be Damian,” he said hopefully.

    It wasn’t Damian, but his cousin Melanie Weintraub with a huge carton, and her father with a bottle-shaped paper bag. Nat had also brought, at least he had his arm round, an auburn-haired little lovely in a vile khaki bomber jacket. Roger turned maroon on seeing her and after the lovely Morticia’s addressing her as: “Hullo, Anne. Mince pies? How nice. Tell your mother thank you, won’t you?” the T.M. Overdale brain realized she of course was Anne Wiseman, the kid that Rog had been unceasingly bending everyone’s ears about for several aeons.

    The florid, burly Nat appeared totally cheerful. On the other hand, if he was pining for Phoebe Fothergill, he would hardly wear his heart on his sleeve, would he? He then peeled his parka off to reveal a Fairisle jumper: and that made him and Ralph the only two blokes that were wearing Christmas Fairisle jumpers at Number 10 Blossom Av’ as we spoke. Yikes!

    Bill mooched out to the kitchen. “Meg reckons you’re gonna need a few more chairs and I’m the mug that’s gotta trot off and get ’em for ya.”

    At that moment the Addams-Family doorbell pealed and they both leapt in the air.

    “Uh—yes,” Tom agreed. “Morticia’s just checking in the dining-room. Just hold your horses.”

    Bill peered into the oven. “Noticed Ralphy?”

    “What, the eyes-on-stalks bit?” Tom was about to add something along the lines of Weintraub being more than capable of keeping an eye on that little harem he’d brought with him, but before he could utter Susan and Alan Harding burst into the kitchen, panting, and deposited huge cartons on the table.

    “Some moron’s parked a flaming Honda City across your ruddy driveway!” panted Susan.

    “That was you at the front door just then, was it?” returned Tom mildly.

    “No!” panted Alan.

    “We came in the back door!” panted Susan, leaning on the table.

    “Why are you panting?” asked Bill politely.

    “’S pouring!” gasped Susan. “H’are ya, Bill?”

    “We made a dash for it,” explained Alan mildly.

    “Yeah,” she agreed. “Did you bring those Christmas crackers in, Alan?”

    “Um—no, they’re still in the car.”

    “Clot,” she said amiably.

    “Well, you’re the one that told me to be extra careful with this carton, it’s the one with the glasses in it.”

    Tom eyed the carton. “Harding’s Spaghetti” was what it said.

    “Don’t say it,” warned Susan.

    “Oh, I expect Alan’s used to that sort of insensitivity by now,” said Bill immediately.

    Alan and Susan choked but Tom merely noted: “There speaks a bloke that’s about to trudge out into the foggy, foggy dew in search of more chairs.”

    “I’ll give you a hand,” said Alan amiably.

    Susan had been undoing the snaps on her parka but she paused with her hand on the zip and said: “Yeah. So’ll I.”

    “Ta,” said Bill gratefully. “I reckon we could manage ’em in—” He began to count laboriously on his fingers. “Well, two trips, anyway,” he conceded, as Tom withdrew newspaper-wrapped objects from Alan’s carton.

    “Christ. As a husband what didn’t drop this lot, you deserve a medal,” he said to Alan.

    Alan looked at the cut-crystal objet in his host’s hand and grinned. “Got a hole in the top,” he pointed out.

    Susan groaned. “Yeah, they’re putrid, eh?” she agreed. “They were a wedding present,” she explained. “From—who else—Grandma and— Ooh, hullo, Grandpa!” she gasped, turning puce.

    Jemima had come into the kitchen, closely followed by old Sir Jerry Cohen, grinning amiably all over his frog-like face.

    “Sir Jerry brought Damian: tell him we’d love him to stay, Tom,” prompted Jemima as Tom allowed his hand to be wrung painfully hard.

    “That heap of his has conked out: said it was gonna,” the old man said, looking hopefully at Tom.

    “Yes, stay by all means, Sir Jerry: the more the merrier,” said Tom weakly.

    “Jerry,” the old man corrected firmly.

    Even the ebullient Nat Weintraub, after nearly thirty years married to his eldest daughter, still called him “Sir Jerry”. Tom swallowed and said faintly: “Jerry.”

    Sir Jerry beamed, wrung Bill’s hand fervently, asked eagerly after his little Connie—Bill’s eyes stood out on stalks—bashed his grandson-in-law on the back, and said to his granddaughter: “Well, Missy?”

    The ebullient Susan, not to anyone’s surprize, really, meekly pecked her grandfather’s cheek.

    Charles Brownloe and Roberta Nicholls both arrived not long after the extra chairs had. They seemed to be on very good terms. Oops. Maybe, thought Tom uneasily, asking him to the party had been the Wrong Move. After all, he was married, and twice her age. And if that wasn’t green jealousy that spread over her face when Jemima Puddle-Duck kissed Charles’s cheek, Tom had never seen green jealousy. As for Charles: he was a decent old stick, but he was pretty much of an old stick, and Roberta must be about twenty-two. Was he the sort to go in for bits of fluff on the side? Tom didn’t think so, but there was always a first time, and especially at that age. Unfortunately Roberta didn’t strike him as the type that could take such encounters lightly. But was Charles the sort that would ditch his wife of twenty-five years for a girl half his age? And even if he did, that would be pretty messy and miserable, too. Was there any point in hoping Mima Puddle-Duck hadn’t spotted something? Well, in the old days, of course... But since living with him, not to mention over the road from Meg, Jemima’s antennae seemed to have developed, or got sharpened, or something. Oh, dear.

    At last their company were all assembled—or words to that effect—and the kids were finally getting their sticky mitts on their presents. Starsky had even dragged himself away momentarily from a video of Animal House for the occasion.

    “ME!” bellowed Connie. Bill put his hand over his eyes. Meg cringed.

    “Yeah: come on, then: this one’s for you!” beamed old Sir Jerry.

    “PANDA!” screamed Connie.

    Tom murmured: “I’d have said she was too old...”

    “Can’t be,” said Bill numbly.

    “No,” agreed Meg numbly.

    “Sanna Claus gived me a panda,” said Connie to the old man.

    “Yeah: thass right,” he said, winking at his grandson. “Someone told Santa Claus you had a Huggy Bear and a fuzzy elephant, but ya never had a panda.”

    Bill and Meg exchanged frantic glances, gulped, and turned puce.

    ... “Look, Mum!” screamed Mason. “A TRAY-EEN!”

    “I thought we said no expensive presents!” gasped June as Bob leapt up and assisted Mason to finish unwrapping it.

    The presents were supposed to be anonymous. “Nope, we said from each according to his means,” said Tom, considerately pretending he hadn’t noticed that Polly had turned puce.

    Ivan scrambled over hurriedly to Mason’s side. “Gee, it’s real good: look, it’s got coal in the tender an’ everything: gee, look at the carriages, it’s ace, eh?”

    “MY TRAIN!” roared Mason terribly.

    “Yeah, it’s yours, I’m only—”

    Bob pushed his hand away. “Leave it,” he said mildly.

    Ivan desisted, but remained squatting at his brother’s side, his eyes shining.

    “Engine!” panted Mason, disinterring it.

    Johnny Carrano abruptly deserted his new Giant Colouring Book. He staggered over to Mason. “Gray Western!” he ascertained brightly as Bob drew forth a carriage.

    Polly turned even redder and stared fixedly at the Christmas tree, but no-one noticed except Tom, because Mason was bellowing terribly: “LEAVE MY TRAIN ALONE, DAD!” and Bob was sheepishly putting the carriage back in the box.

    ... “They’re super, Ida!” said Polly with a pleased laugh. “You shouldn’t have, really!”—Ida Butler made disclaiming noises and explained that she loved to knit, and that was a very easy pattern.—“Look, Twins: mittens! You could wear them when we go to the snow: they’re real snow mittens!” said Polly to her little boys.

    “Snow mittens!” they cried.

    “Aren’t they sweet?” said Meg, her face all lit up and pinkish. Bill drew a deep breath.

    … “A Sopwith Camel!” breathed Andrew.

    “Yeah: it’s a kitset, see!” breathed his twin.

    Andrew was so thrilled he didn’t even tell him he could see that.

    Meg said faintly: “He’s the most cack-handed...”

    “I could give him a bit of hand,” offered Tom meekly.

    ... “You shouldn’t have,” said Polly in a strangled voice to Nat.

    “It’s from me and Mel both, really,” he said, putting his heavy hand on his daughter’s shoulder.

    “Yes: it’s a wetting doll, see, Lady Carrano?” explained Melanie breathlessly, crouching at Polly’s knee. “Katie Maureen loves the one at Play Group, don’t you, Katie Maureen?”

    “Dolly. Wet a naps,” said Katie Maureen with satisfaction.

    “Yes: this one is your dolly, Katie Maureen!” cooed Melanie. “You can keep this dolly, for your very own: you can take it home with you, when you go!”

    “Me,” said Katie Maureen.

    Polly was even pucer than she had been a few minutes ago. “Has she been misbehaving at Play Group again, Melanie?” she croaked.

    Since the Nanny School girls took it in turns to help supervise the Pohutukawa Bay Play Group, Melanie was able to inform her happily: “Nobody minds. It’s just that she’s very keen on the wetting doll.”

    Polly closed her eyes for a split second.

    “Me,” said Katie Maureen with a pout.

    “Yes, your very own wetting doll: to keep!” cooed Melanie.

    Katie Maureen eyed her suspiciously. After a moment she said: “My dolly.”

    “That’s right: good girl!” cooed Melanie.

    “Well, at least she used a possessive correctly,” said her mother faintly.

    Katie Maureen struggled to get down. “Show Bob. SHOW BOB!” she bellowed.

    “Go on, then,” said Polly feebly, lifting her off her knee.

    Katie Maureen staggered rapidly over to Bob, trampling ruthlessly over anything in her path, which included such items as her brother Johnny’s paper hat out of the cracker that he’d earlier bawled to get, the remains of a gingerbread man off the Christmas tree that Mason had earlier bawled to get, innumerable crumpled piles of wrapping paper, and Ginny’s cardigan.

    “Bob! See my dolly!” she panted.

    “Yeah: good, eh?” he grinned. “I’m her greatest fan,” he said to the company with a wink. “What’s it do?” he said to Katie Maureen.

    There was a short pause.

    “Wetty doll. Have a drink. Wet a naps,” she said with satisfaction.

    June sagged into the modern sofa. “Two and a half!” she muttered.

    Soon it was time for presents for bigger people. Tom brought in a huge yellow plastic dustbin, decked with boughs of... Pinus radiata from over the road, he could see several people noting resignedly as they tried not to look at Polly, after all they were technically her husband’s trees. It was then made abundantly plain to him—not that several people hadn’t already tried to tell him this previously—that the teenagers were expecting real presents. Their faces fell ten feet as he explained airily: “These are only jokes, of course.”

    However, it didn’t matter, because apparently Weintraub saw himself as some sort of Santa Claus: he’d brought presents for the older kids. Cor. Well, presumably as Sir Jerry Cohen’s son-in-law he could afford to chuck his gelt about. What a good thing he’d come!

    After Anne Wiseman had gone very pink and looked as if she was going to cry over a pretty dressing-table set, Damian had thanked his uncle for the new Walkman, and Melanie had hugged and kissed her father enthusiastically for the pale blue slippers adorned with pale blue fluff, Ralph wandered over to the fire. “Touching,” he noted to his uncle.

    “Shut up, ya bugger,” replied Alec unemotionally.

    Weintraub and Sir Jerry then embarrassed Bill and Meg unspeakably by foisting a computer on Roger. Physically only the keyboard but the rest of it was in the car. This was apparently on the strength of Meg’s letting Damian come over with The Fiend whenever he wanted to. Or such was old Jerry’s claim. Tom couldn’t help reflecting it was probably rather more because the old bloke felt sorry for the kid not having a computer while his grandson had everything that opened and shut in that direction—seeing that Rog’s avowed intention was to do electronic engineering, like Damian. He could see Bill and Meg thought so, too: that was partly what the embarrassment was about.

    “Come on!” urged Damian. “Let’s get the rest of it!” He dashed out. Roger gave his benefactors one last tremulous smile and stumbled after him. Starsky shot out in their wake like a homing pigeon to its nest.

    “Right! Lucky dip!” Tom then said briskly. “Big people only!”

    “Aw-wuh!” cried Ivan, suddenly coming to.

    “All right, you can help,” said Tom weakly.

    “Mighty!” He grabbed the present off the top of the tub—or, as it were, plastic dustbin.

    “Hang on: that one on the top’s a special one for Bill.”

    “C’n I open it?” said Ivan hopefully.

    “No!” cried his parents.

    “It’s a strict rule in our house,” added June anxiously.

    “Too right,” agreed Bill. He grabbed it off Ivan and opened it busily, his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth. “Ooh!” he squeaked.

    “It’s a doll,” said Ivan in disgust.

    Bill held up his doll proudly. It was a very old Barbie doll, minus one arm and most of its hair. But someone had made a new bikini for it. A bikini that incorporated—in tiny neat sewing done by the hand of some neurotic neatnik, no doubt—a huge pair of falsies. Quite coincidentally the material of the bikini matched that of the extremely neat new curtains in the room in which they sat.

    “Go on, Ivan,” said Tom when the company had more or less recovered. “You can dip, and choose the person to give them to. But I warn you, all of the presents are just as dumb.”

    Ivan wasn’t listening. He was dipping eagerly.

    Later Michaela was to vote the funny presents the best thing about the party after the food. She certainly laughed a lot, and since there was no guile about her at all, Tom and Jemima concluded thankfully that she was telling the truth and it hadn’t after all been the ghastly mistake to invite her that they were afraid it might have been at one stage. Largely the stage of seeing June’s face when they told her what they’d done. Since persons such as Ida Butler and Isabel Blakely had to be taken into account, none of the presents was actually rude. Bill’s doll was generally considered to be the best. But some of the others were voted good.

    Ralph got a pet rock with a horrible smirk on its face and one eye missing. For some strange reason Polly Carrano collapsed in helpless giggles at this point. Bill offered her a shot of anything she fancied, on the spot.

    Erik Nilsson got a fully coloured-in colouring book. Few people got those for Christmas, he noted. Not even Christmas in July. This struck Michaela as exquisitely funny and she went into a huge spluttering fit.

    Allyson Shapiro got an orange plastic flower-pot: a smallish one. It had a loop of hat-elastic affixed to it. “I could use this,” she said gamely.

    Her sister immediately cried: “No, you couldn’t, you idiot: it’s a hat!”

    Allyson looked at it dubiously, but put it on her head.

    Suddenly her de facto gave a snort of laughter and pulled the elastic down gently under her chin. “It is a hat,” he said to Susan. Allyson smiled bravely.

    Jemima got a trick spider. She gasped, and dropped it.

    “IVAN!” said June in a terrible voice. “I told you not to put that in!” Ivan fell all over the place sniggering madly.

    “Right!” said Tom evilly. “You’ve had your chips, mate! Who else wants to dip?”

    “Me!” and: “Me!” cried Connie and Mason.

    They were both so small that Tom had to hold them round the thighs while they plunged head-first into the plastic dustbin.

    John Aitken got a matchbox. Ivan watched him narrowly.

    “It won’t open!” gasped John.

    “Balls,” began Darryl, but Ivan gave the game away by failing all over the place sniggering madly.

    “Starsky glued it together,” admitted June weakly. “It is quite good, eh?”

    Meg got a square newspaper package. Quite big, all folded up. The Butlers watched her narrowly. Meg unfolded it carefully. Inside was more newspaper. Meg unfolded it carefully. Inside was more newspaper. Meg unfolded it carefully... At the very centre of the package was a tiny square of torn newspaper. The Butlers half killed themselves laughing. Meg smiled gamely. “Dad done that!” gasped Ivan. Meg smiled gamely at him but didn’t look at Bob.

    Michaela got a pine-cone.

    “I done that!” cried Connie.

    “I love pine-cones!” beamed Michaela. “Thank you, Connie!” Connie beamed back at her. Both of them appeared quite genuine and there were few in the room who doubted they were.

    Bob Butler got a newspaper package. “Hah, hah!” said Meg.

    “I only did one,” he replied blankly. He unwrapped it carefully. Inside was the grey leg of a pixilated horror. June fell all over the flat-armed sofa, laughing herself silly. Meg fell all over Bill, laughing herself silly. Bob smiled gamely…

    “All right?” murmured Tom as Michaela appeared in the kitchen some ten minutes later.

    “Yeah, those presents were really funny!” she said with a laugh. “It’s a pity Bryn had to go his granny’s this weekend, he’d have enjoyed it.’

    “Well, I wouldn’t say it was a pity, precisely. We’ve only got a very small turkey,” he murmured, gesturing at the oven.

    Michaela bent and peered. She gasped.

    June had followed her. She bent and peered. She gasped.

    “Small, isn’t it?” said Tom.

    “Hah, hah,” said Michaela numbly.

    June gulped. “Yeah: hah, hah. Um, can we do anything?”

    Tom raised his eyebrows very high. “Explain to bloody Ralph it’s Christmas?”

    June gulped. “No, thanks,” she said faintly. ‘Um, shall I check on the babies?”

    “I had a look at them before,” said Michaela gruffly. “They were all right.”

    Tom ignored the fact that her cheeks had turned a glowing scarlet and said mildly: “Well, good. Only they could have woken up since: they do that.”

    “Well—well, shall I?” she said shyly.

    “Yes, please, Michaela, their mums have gone all giggly on the punch—forgotten they ever had ’em,” he explained.

    “What a lie,” said Michaela unemotionally, going out.

    “Won’t drop ’em, or anything, will she?” said Tom to June, stirring gravy.

    “No, of course not!” she said in amazement. “Don’t you know—” She broke off.

    “Mm?” said Tom mildly, stirring gravy, ears a-quiver. He was aware that, what with mulled wine and rum punch, June was likely to be in a confidential mood, but he did spare a moment to send up a quick prayer that those that might spot him, such as Susan or Darryl, wouldn’t barge into the kitchen until she’d spilled whatever juicy morsel it was.

    June leaned on the bench next to the stove and told Tom all about Jimmy Hendrix Petulia.

    “Oh, Christ,” he said limply. “We had no idea at all, June.”

    “No. She never talks about him,” said June simply.

    Tom blinked rapidly behind the specs. “My God, what clangers we must have dropped,” he muttered.

    “I don’t think so,” said June in mild surprize.

    He grimaced. “I asked her last time she was round here whether she approved of little yellow ducks on nursery wallpaper; Jesus!”

    “She wouldn’t have thought anything of it,” said June comfortingly.

    “No.” Tom stirred gravy blindly. “Does Meg know?”

    “Mm. Only I asked her not to talk about it.”

    He gulped.

    “You can tell Jemima,” said June kindly.

    At about this point it dawned on the great T.M. Overdale brain that he and Jemima were being admitted into the exclusive Blossom Avenue inner circle. Without saying anything he handed June the gravy spoon and went over to the window, to stare blindly out at the back garden.

    When June thought he’d recovered she said: “It was a while ago, of course; I suppose she is over it. Um, it isn’t as if he was her own,” she ended on a dubious note.

    Tom blew his nose loudly. “Wouldn’t make that much difference, I wouldn’t think.”

    “No,” June admitted sadly.

    He came back to the stove and looked on while June stirred his gravy. “Has she told Hugh Morton, do you know, June?”

    “No,” said June definitely. “I mean, she hasn’t, I asked her just the other day and she said she hadn’t: it wasn’t anything to do with him.”

    “I suppose that’s true enough...”

    “I’m glad you didn’t ask him to this!” June burst out.

    Tom bit his lip. “Mm. We felt it might be a bit too down-market. And of course, he is a married man, there are one or two people here who might not be aware of the situation, and— Well, we thought we’d better not.” He paused. “Don’t you like him?” he said cautiously.

    June stirred the gravy moodily. “I do quite like him,” she admitted. “Well, I mean, he’s always very pleasant to me... I suppose what I don’t like is that he’s married and mucking Michaela about!” she finished crossly.

    Tom put his hand on her shoulder. “Yeah. Us, too. Mind you, Jemima feels very sorry for him because he’s got such a rotten marriage.”

    “Then why doesn’t he leave the woman?” said June fiercely.

    He sighed. “Dunno.”

    June stirred the gravy slowly. “Even if he did… Well, I don’t think he’s right for Michaela.”

    Tom didn’t think that Hugh Morton, F.R.C.S., could hack living with Michaela, A Potter, either. Or vice versa. He sniffed faintly. “No. Bit of the heated-towel-rail type, isn’t he?”

    “Um—oh, yes,” said June weakly. “I see what you mean.”

    Suddenly Tom kissed her cheek gently.

    “What was that for?” she gasped, blushing.

    “For being such a bloody nice person,” he said on a certain grim note. “There isn’t all that much of it about.”

    “Rubbish!” gasped June, now a glowing peony hue.

    Tom smiled. “I’ll do the gravy. Why don’t you pop over the road and haul Rog and Starsky and Damian off that computer? –I suppose they will want to eat, will they?” he added dubiously.

    June gave a loud giggle, told him not to be mad, and hurried off.

    Tom stirred the gravy thoughtfully. Finally he said: “Thank you, Fates or God or Cosmic Accident or bloody neutrinos left over from the Big Bang or whatever you are, for awarding me Jemima Puddle-Duck just in time. Before it got me,” he added with a sigh, ceasing to stir the gravy and taking his specs off.

    “Before what got you, for Christ’s sake?” said his brother’s voice behind him.

    Tom jumped violently. “Uh—”

    Ralph strolled into the kitchen. He bent to the oven. He raised his eyebrows slightly. He straightened. “Well?”

    “Dunno, exactly,” said Tom, replacing his specs and pulling a horrible face. “Whatever it is that’s got you and Hugh Morton, I rather think.”

    “Oh!” said Ralph in huge enlightenment. “Affluence!”

    “Yeah, that or disillusionment; or both.”

    Ralph shrugged. “I’ve opened the red as ordered,” he said neutrally.

    Tom eyed him sideways but as he wasn’t looking as if he wished the topic of disillusionment to be pursued, didn’t. Instead he said: “I think we’re about ready. Tell John to wheel his stuff on over, will you?”

    “Eh?”

    “John Aitken. He’s popped over to his place.”

    Ralph shrugged. “Very well. –Accidie?” he suggested, going out.

    Tom made a face at the gravy. “Yeah, them too,” he muttered. “Or possibly being dumped by Phoebe Fothergill. A few of them: yeah.”

    The guests were met, the feast was set—well, almost—and you could certainly hear the merry din. Largely proceeding from those who were trying to open the strangely recalcitrant crackers at the adults’ table.

    “Pull!” panted Bill. Isabel obediently pulled, turning very red. Bill also turned very red. Nothing happened. “Hang on,” said Bill, letting go his end.

    Isabel was still pulling, so she fell onto Meg. “Ooh, sorry!” she gasped.

    Meg was pulling grimly. “’S all—right,” she grunted.

    “Let’s have a look at it,” said Bill. He took their cracker off Isabel. It looked very bright and Christmassy, until you inspected it narrowly. Then you saw that its outer integument was a page of a very old Woman’s Day (Ida Butler having donated a pile of them) onto which was stuck a picture of a small yellow chicken.

    “This is one of those Good Life crackers!” discovered Bill in disgust. “OY!” he bellowed at the adults’ table. “STOP!”

    People stopped, and looked at him in surprize—if rather red-faced and panting with it.

    “These are Good Life crackers,” Bill informed them.

    “Eh?” panted Sir Jerry.

    Everyone else looked blank, except Polly, who cried: “Oh! I know!”

    Ralph had been ordered to pull her cracker with her. “Then pray enlighten us,” he said sourly.

    “The Good Life! You know!” cried Polly illuminatingly.

    “Ooh, yes, I know what you mean!” cried Vicki. “The Good Life Christmas Special, Sir Ralph!”

    “With the pea-green jerseys,” added Polly. “You have to shout ‘Bang!’”

    “Like this,” suggested Bill, poking their cracker at Isabel.

    “Bang!” she gasped, giggling madly.

    Bill let her unroll it. Then he took the contents off her. “Have that,” he said in a vague voice, handing her the Woman’s Day hat. Carefully he unrolled the joke. “Ooh!” he squeaked. He gave a dirty snigger.

    “Bill!” cried Meg crossly from Isabel’s other side. “You promised you wouldn’t!”

    Bill gave another dirty snigger.

    “Come on, Meg,” urged Bob, handing her the Woman’s Day hat from their cracker. Meg put it on weakly and he handed her the joke. Meg unrolled it, looking cross. She read it. She went very pink. Then she gave an explosive snigger. Bob took it off her eagerly. “Cripes!” he gasped, sniggering himself sick.

    The huge hot ham borne in proudly by John was received by the adults with due admiration but by Michael O’Connor with a disgusted: “Heck, where’s the turkey?” At which Connie burst into tears, wailing: “Tur-KEE-EEY!”

    “There is turkey,” said John. “Connie, there is— Connie, the turkey’s COMING!”

    Connie sniffled a bit. Sir Jerry, who was down near the end of the table that was nearest the children’s table, got up, grunting, and mopped her cheek with her feeder. He then discovered that no-one had pulled a cracker with her and informed her twin siblings that they were a pair of no-hopers. He pulled her real cracker with her, and put the genuine crêpe-paper pink hat on her head to the accompaniment of happy screams of “PINK! PINK!” He then sat down again in his place on Polly’s right, and informed her happily that he liked a nice bit of hot ham, and that leg looked a bit of all right, eh?

    Gamely Polly agreed, trying very hard not to wonder if Lady Cohen let him…

    “Tah-TAH!” cried Tom triumphantly, staggering in under the weight of the giant turkey. John sprang to his aid. They lowered it tenderly before Tom’s place at the head of the table amidst an awed silence.

    “It’s gigantic,” said Susan faintly.

    “Humungous,” agreed Bob faintly.

    “Where in God’s name did ya get this raft it’s sitting on, Tom?” asked Darryl, goggling at it.

    “Polly! Plate!” he panted.

    “No, it’s solid,” said Polly in surprize.

    “God! I’ll say!” he panted.

    “What’s it got ruddy sausages all round it for?” asked Alec.

    “Chipolatas. Traditional. Cretin,” replied his nephew succinctly.

    “Ooh! Sausages!” cried Starsky.

    “Go and sit down,” said Tom faintly.

    Jemima staggered in under the weight of a huge silver bowl on its own silver raft. “Gravy!” she gasped. John sprang to her aid. They lowered it tenderly beside the turkey.

    “Yours?” said Ralph to Polly.

    “Mm. One of Jake’s—um—pet toys,” she admitted, eyeing it nervously.

    Ralph glanced at it again. “William IV?”

    Polly swallowed. “Yes.”

    “What happens if it gets dented, or these cretins lose its spoon?” he enquired genially.

    She swallowed again. “Divorce, I rather think.”

    There was a short silence at their end of the table—apart from Sir Jerry, on Polly’s right, genially ordering his grandson, on his own right, not to ask for a flaming drumstick or he’d crown him.

    “I brought the wine,” said Ralph in a remarkably neutral tone.

    “It’s just as well they put us together, then.”

    “Isn’t it?” he agreed cordially.

    And now the feast really was set. Tom rose to his feet. You could barely see him behind the carcase. He raised his glass. “Here’s to— OY! YOU LOT! STOP!” he bellowed.

    The kids and Bill stopped eating.

    “We got to have a toast, youse iggerant peasants,” said Tom clearly. “Ladies and gempelmorums—”

    Bill groaned.

    Polly groaned, too, but possibly this was because Katie Maureen had got down from the children’s table and had come up to Sir Jerry’s right elbow and was demanding: “Big drink!”

    “Why did you bring it?” drawled Ralph.

    Glaring, Polly hissed: “Its nanny’s got the weekend off, its greatest female fan is incarcerated at home with a houseful of flu-laden kids, and in my good-Kiwi-mum persona I’m expected to participate joyously in this sort of occasion. Is that sufficient explanation?”

    “Yes, I suppose it was self-evident,” he recognized meekly.

    “Good, eh?” said old Alec Overdale through a mouthful of turkey.

    Jemima sighed blissfully. “Mmm!” She let her smart black leather belt out a notch.

    “That’s the ticket,” he said comfortably. “Here—have a bit more of this jelly muck.” He spooned cranberry jelly onto her plate with an elegant curved-handled silver spoon.

    “Cranberry jelly,” said Jemima happily. “Mmm! Thanks, Alec.”

    “Never had it in my day.”

    “Didn’t you?”

    “Nah. Yank or something, eh? Never had turkey, come to think of it, either. Don’t think you could get it in New Zealand. Well, mighta been one or two farmers that raised ’em, maybe.”

    “Really?” gasped Jemima.

    “Yeah. Most people used to have a chook for Christmas and New Year’s. When I was a kid on the farm we often just had a side of lamb. It was good, mind you. Then when we got the pigs—that was later—we usually used to have pork. Sometimes ham, but Dad used to flog that off, quite often. When he could get his price—this was in the Depression, of course.”

    “I see,” said Jemima in awe. “It must have been awful in the cities during the Depression.”

    Alec rubbed his nose. “Too right. Always been glad I wasn’t a townee.”

    “Yes!” agreed Jemima fervently.

    Alec eyed her tolerantly. “Go on, eat up. But mind ya leave room for pudding. What’s he gone mad over for that?’

    “Real Christmas pudding.”

    Alec’s eye brightened. “Hard sauce?”

    Jemima nodded fervently.

    Alec told her a terrific lot about the hard sauce his old Gran used to make…

    Susan Harding had gone out to the kitchen and although she’d said: “Christ Almighty,” at first sight of the towers of dishes, she’d pretty soon got it all organized. Alan got the job of first rinsing then washing plates, glasses and cutlery, and Susan and Darryl were drying. Jemima, whom Susan had failed to banish from her own kitchen, merely perched on the kitchen stool. Roger, Damian and the two girls, Anne and Melanie, were speedily dispatched to Number 3’s kitchen complete with cartonloads of large cooking utensils and the Carranos’ silver serving dishes.

    As they washed and dried the Hardings endeavoured to force huge largesse on Darryl, on the score of John’s petrol in hunting for the ham in New Zealand in July and John’s having paid for the ham, not to mention having cooked it, but Darryl rubbished this suggestion: Meriel Tuwhare had insisted on paying for the ham. She simply ignored the rest of it.

    “All right! We’ll have the next one at our place!” Susan decided in militant tones.

    Alan brightened. “Yeah!” he agreed fervently.

    Darryl sniffed slightly. “Couldn’t possibly fit forty bods into your shack,” she noted mildly.

    “Um—could it be a smaller party?” asked Jemima in a squeak.

    “Damn good idea,” Darryl conceded on a thankful note.

    “Yes,” agreed Susan fervently. “Just the ones that were in on the original plan, eh? Just us, and Bill and Meg.”

    Jemima and Alan nodded fervently, but Jemima then said: “What about the Butlers?”

    “Might let them come!” replied Susan with a laugh.

    “Yes,” agreed Alan. “Um—maybe we could have Sol next time,” he said cautiously.

    “Eh? You were the one that reckoned Phoebe Fothergill wouldn’t enjoy it!” said Darryl, goggling at him.

    “Uh—yeah… Well, a year’s a long time. See, we were up Carter’s Bay—”

    “Shut up,” said Susan hurriedly, glancing at Jemima.

    “What?” she asked in surprize.

    Glaring at her spouse and his big mouth, Susan said: “It was nothing, really. Well, it was a bloody foul day—bit like this, eh, Alan?”—Alan nodded mutely.—”Yeah. Pouring cats and dogs. We’d nipped up there to get a bit of wood, thought we might look in on Sol, see how he was getting on, ya know?”

    “It was a Saturday,” said Alan uncomfortably.

    “Look, if you pair of nongs are trying to say that Sol and Phoebe were having a barney on a bloody wet, cold Saturday, all I can say is, I’m not surprized: Carter’s Inlet’s enough to sour the best of tempers,” said Darryl in a bored voice.

    “Yes, but he’s got it!” cried Jemima.

    They goggled at her.

    “The best of tempers. Well, he has!”

    Alan began pleasedly: “Yes, that’s what I—”

    Susan said loudly: “Will ya shut UP!”

    Alan shut up, looking duly abashed.

    “It was stupid,” said Susan. “We turned up about lunchtime and Alan suggested fish and chips. And Sol and me agreed but Phoebe wanted pizza. Um—well, that’s all there was to it, really.”

    “Susan!” cried Alan indignantly.

    “Go on, Alan,” said Jemima kindly: “you tell it: she’s hopeless.”

    Looking at Jemima gratefully, Alan said: “Well, Phoebe was in a bad mood to start with, I think. Well, anyway, she said something along the lines of if anyone expected her to look another packet of greasies in the face she’d go straight home. And she was sure that last lot of fish was shark. And Sol said it wasn’t, it was snapper. And she said pizzas at the Hongi Heke Room up at the Royal Kingfisher ’ud be better, even if they were half raw and indigestible. So Susan said they were too dear.”

    “Well, they are!” she said indignantly.

    “Yes, I know,” agreed the heir to the Harding millions kindly. “So Phoebe said she’d pay. And Sol said there was no need for that. And—um—then she shouted at him. Something along the lines of he never let her pay for anything and she was fed up with being treated like a—what was it?” he said to Susan.

    “A supernumerary,” she replied without emotion.

    Alan nodded. “Mm. And he tried to say he didn’t and how could anyone that had been pitching in with the gib-boarding think of themselves as a supernumerary, only she shouted: ‘You know what I mean.’ –Very loud,” he explained.

    “I think they got it,” said Susan drily.

    Warming to his theme, Alan went on: “Yeah, and then he said: ‘Phoebe, you’re exaggerating wildly, honey. Now why don’t we go Dutch, that’d be fair to all parties.’ And she shouted: ‘Bullshit, Sol, will you drop the macho crap!’”

    “Help!” said Jemima in horror.

    “Yeah,” agreed Susan on a sour note. “Then he made it worse by trying to say that going Dutch was the opposite of macho: all sweet reason, if ya know what I mean, only overdoing it; eh, Alan?”

    “Yes: deliberately,” he said, nodding.

    “Help!” gasped Jemima again.

    “So then she—um—told him he was a wanker,” said Alan uncomfortably, “um—a bloody wanker, I think—and—um—went home.”

    “Went!” choked Susan.

    “It’s all right, Alan, we get it,” said Darryl kindly. “Bellowed at the top of her lungs he was a bloody wanker and stormed out slamming every available door in her wake, that it?”

    “Yes. So me and Susan and Sol had fish and chips after all.”

    “That wasn’t actually the point of the story, though,” said Susan in a kind voice.

    “Shut up,” he returned, grinning. “See,” he said to the two young women: “I reckon it shows they aren’t really getting on too well. Sort of fundamentally, if you know what I mean. But Susan reckons it doesn’t mean a thing.”

    “Yeah,” said Susan firmly. “Everyone has rows. –And change that washing-up water, or we’ll be having one.”

    Meekly Alan let the greasy water out of the sink and refilled it.

    “So,” said Susan with a wink, “this time next year, if you can remember what we were actually talking about, according to him, Sol and Phoebe might not be together. And we could invite Sol to the next Christmas in July party.”

    “Right. At your place,” said Darryl. She gave Jemima a hard look. “And just in case Tom starts up, you can tell ’im it isn’t his show, next time round.”

    “Yes,” Jemima agreed in a squashed voice.

    “And when you’ve told him,” said Alan with a sudden laugh, “Darryl and Susan’ll tell him!”

    “Yes!” she squeaked, laughing so much she nearly fell off her stool.

    Darryl and Susan were grinning but they looked at each other in a way that very clearly said: “You bet ya boots, mate.”

    In the rain, mud and ruts of Blossom Avenue the O’Connell twins and the two elder Butler boys screamed and ran about and kicked a semi-deflated soccer ball eagerly. Their mothers had seen to it that they had their parkas on but somehow the parkas hadn’t got done up. Mason was there but he wasn’t playing, he was standing on the sidelines pouting, because several older boys had screamed at him about fifteen times: “NO! You’re too little!”

    Tom was on the front porch with Ralph. Smoking Hindenburgs donated by Sir Jerry. After a long period of silence Ralph said: “Penny for ’em.”

    Tom sniffed slightly. “I will if you will.”

    “Go on, then; I asked first.”

    “I’m thanking Christ I didn’t let certain naïve persons not a million miles away from 10 Blossom Av’ as we speak invite Sol Winkelmann plus a certain headmistress of a poncy gels’ prayvate school to this knees-up,” replied Tom on a certain sour note.

    “Funny, that. I was thanking Christ you had the discretion not to invite Phoebe and the Yank to this bloody knees-up,” replied Ralph smoothly.

    There was a short silence. Tom blew what might have been intended to be a smoke-ring.

    “If you’re wondering whether she’s also given the ubiquitous Weintraub the push, the answer is yes,” drawled Ralph.

    “I wasn’t, actually. Couldn’t figure out why else the two of you would be at a loose end on a Saturday.”

    Ralph blew a perfect smoke-ring. “Quite.”

    “Video!” said Connie eagerly.

    “Yes, hang on, sweetheart, Polly’s just getting you one,” said Polly, hurriedly sorting through them. God, no wonder the boys had been closeted in the study for—

    “An’mal House!” suggested Connie eagerly.

    Gulping a bit, Polly said: “Um, I think that was on earlier, wasn’t it, Connie?”

    Davey’s tastes weren’t as developed as Connie’s. He said eagerly: “Muppets, Muppets! Mummy—Muppets!”

    Polly loathed the Muppets. “I can’t find it,” she lied.

    The twins couldn’t yet read but Johnny could recognise a lurid picture of Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog when he saw one. “Here’s a Muppets!” he panted.

    “Oh, so it is. Thank you, darling,” said Polly in a hollow voice.

    Connie sat down expectantly on the rug rather close to the television set. “Muppets,” she said contentedly.

    Groaning, Polly put The Muppet Movie in the player.

    Vicki had thought they could dance, later, in the empty room behind Jemima’s study. They could nip over the road and get Adrian’s tapes. Her boyfriend, Euan, thought they could go for a walk, first. After some urging from her twin Vicki conceded she could borrow Jemima’s gumboots and the twins went off in quest of these.

    The two young men eyed each other cautiously.

    “Don’t I know you?” said Euan at last.

    “Um... Were you at Grammar?” replied Adrian cautiously.

    “Yes, but my career there was most undistinguished, I’m glad to say,” Euan assured him hurriedly.

    “Oh. I was Head Boy, a couple of years back,” he said glumly.

    “That right? Um... Patrick de Wit was Head Boy when I was in the Seventh Form,” he remembered with an effort.

    “Oh, yeah, I remember him.”

    There was a pause. “I’m doing a Masters in Engineering; what are you doing these days?” asked Euan.

    “I’m an apprentice chef.”

    There was a short silence.

    “—Figures, eh?” added Adrian drily.

    “Yeah!” gasped Euan with a yelp of laughter, bashing him on the back. “Hey, if Ole Ratty could see us now!”

    They went off to get their parkas, arms round each other’s shoulders, shaking helplessly.

    The Muppet Movie was very, very boring. Very, very, very boring. Especially to a mother that had already been exposed to it a dozen times. Sighing, Polly got up and wandered over to the window. Her gaze sharpened. She stiffened. “Those little sods!” she hissed under her breath. She hastened over to the door.

    “Darlings, I’m just popping out: I won’t be a minute,” she said. The three small heads in front of the TV didn’t move.

    Polly dashed out into the passage. Her full-length mink coat seemed to have disappeared so she grabbed up a parka and dashed out onto the porch.

    “Macho idiots!” she said bitterly to the smoking Overdale brothers. She dashed down to the front gate.

    “Huh?” said Tom to his brother. Ralph merely shrugged.

    Polly bent over the little form in the parka with the hood up. “Mason!” she said. Mason turned a dirty, tear-streaked, woebegone face up to her. “Wouldn’t they let you play?”

    Mason’s lower lip wobbled. “They’re mean!” he choked.

    “I’ll say they are!” said Polly with feeling.

    Suddenly Mason burst into tears and buried his face in her charming dull-gold woollen skirt.

    “Poor little man!” she crooned.

    Naturally Mason sobbed harder.

    “Come on, darling,” she said, picking him up with something of an effort. “Come on inside with Polly and watch a video.”

    Mason snuffled into her shoulder. “Animal House,” he said.

    “Well, it’s The Muppet Movie, first,” said Polly weakly.

    Mason brightened. “Muppets!”

    “Yes.” With a nasty glare over her shoulder at the soccer team, Polly staggered up to the porch with him.

    “He was all right,” said Tom weakly.

    “Macho tit!” retorted Polly fiercely.

    “He was watching—”

    “They wouldn’t let him play, you moron!” she said fiercely.

    “They’re mean,” said Mason with a sniffle.

    “Oh,” said Tom limply.

    “Watch a video,” said Mason, cheering up.

    “Yes,” agreed Polly, panting slightly as she set him down on the hall floor.

    “Um—what video?” asked Tom meekly, following them.

    “The Muppets,” said Polly briefly.

    “I could watch that,” he said meekly.

    Polly was about to wither him but she recollected in time that if Tom was in there keeping an eye on the kids she could sneak off to—well, anywhere, really, and do—well, anything at all unconnected with Muppets, really.

    “All right, but you’ll have to sit down and be quiet,” she said in a steely voice, peeling Mason’s soaking parka off him. Tom gulped as he raced into the newly carpeted study in his muddy gumboots.

    “That’ll be a first,” noted Ralph acidly, pitching his cigar butt into a lavender bush by the front steps and following Tom inside.

    “Shut that door, if you’re coming inside, there’s a perishing draught!” snapped the charming Lady Carrano, not looking at him. She vanished into the study.

    “Blotted copybooks,” sighed Ralph, closing the front door. He wandered into the sitting-room and, ignoring the cackling drunks therein, put a recording of The Four Seasons—suitably undemanding—in the player and sat down with a Cognac, blissfully unaware that it wasn’t Tom’s record, it was an ancient one of Jemima’s, and bang in the middle of it there was a Goddawful scratch.

    “Isn’t it beautiful?” panted Ginny, at the top of the gently sloping expanse of grass and wild turnip that was now officially if inaccurately named The Maureen Mitchell Memorial Reserve.

    “Lovely,” agreed Euan, looking round the misty wet green landscape with satisfaction.

    Vicki looked at it blankly. It just looked like a lot of wet paddocks to her. Not in very good condition, either. However, since Adrian was now agreeing with Euan and they were both smiling at Ginny, she didn’t voice her opinion. “Um—whereabouts is that new development?” she asked.

    Adrian and Euan both immediately pointed out the direction in which lay Willow Plains: further north, towards the golf course. And explained that the swampy area had now been drained, the foundations laid for the larger part of the development, the concrete floors poured, and the concrete block walls were now rising to their planned heights of one, one-and-a-half, and two storeys.

    Vicki sighed. “Those townhouses sound really lovely. I wish we could afford a place like that, Twin.”

    In spite of Ginny’s semester as a Second-Year at university, not to mention all the visits to art galleries and craft galleries with Roberta, not to mention all the books on sculpture, painting and pottery she’d been absorbing like a sponge this year, not to mention all those delicious Tuesday afternoons at David Shapiro’s, she was not entirely immune to the pull of concrete-block, stepped, semi-detached yuppie townhouses, either. So she sighed, too, and said: “We can’t possibly. We can’t even afford to go flatting.”

    Adrian and Euan sighed in sympathy. They weren’t immune to the pull of yuppie townhouses that had drive-in garages underneath them where you could park your Porsche, either.

    After a minute Vicki suggested: “We could get part-time jobs!”

    “Um—well, Michaela knows a couple of people that need someone to do housework. Someone reliable,” said Ginny dubiously.

    “Well, we’re reliable!” replied her twin, beaming.

    Regardless of the fact that they had never even tidied their room at home, let alone vacuumed it, without Miriam’s having to shout at them, Ginny agreed to this.

    “Well, you reckon you could swing it?” said Euan hopefully.

    Vicki’s face fell. “Not really. Not by ourselves.”

    “I could share with you, our rent’s going up and I’m never gonna be able to afford it!” he said eagerly.

    “But are you reliable?” said Adrian, punching him the ribs and grinning.

    Grinning, Euan punched him back.

    “What about you, Adrian?” asked Vicki hopefully.

    “Um—John and Darryl need my rent. Um—hang on. There’s Timothy and Carol’s old room, that’s a huge room. And Jemima’s old room’s stacks big enough for one, it’s an old sunporch really, but it’s pretty neat.”

    There was a thoughtful silence. At last Ginny said: “I really need a room of my own, I’ve got so much swot…”

    “Well, you take Jemima’s old room!” said Adrian bracingly.

    It took about ten seconds after this for it all to be settled. Adrian had no doubts that John and Darryl would agree. They set off back across the field to give his landlords the good news.

    “Vicki, what about our board at the hostel?” said Ginny nervously. “Hasn’t Dad paid in advance?”

    Vicki’s eyes narrowed. Her lips firmed. “Leave that to me,” she said in a hard voice. “I’ll get it back.”

    Since she sounded exactly like Miriam Macdonald Austin about to settle the hash of some dratted New Plymouth firm that had sent her the wrong whatever-it-was, Ginny had very little doubt that she would.

    Isabel Blakely giggled delightedly. Perceiving thankfully that she really did enjoy the Muppets, Polly stood up quietly and—casting a baleful glance at Tom who, far from rescuing her from the Muppets, had gone to sleep stretched out full length on the old divan in the study—murmured: “I think I’ll go for a walk. Um—could you keep an eye on the kids, Isabel?”

    Isabel hadn’t registered who the pretty lady with the long brown curls was.  “Righto, dear!” she chirped, not looking up.

    Polly shot out. Upstairs she used the lavatory in the ensuite and reclaimed her mink coat from the big bed.

    “Ooh! Hullo, Bill!” she gasped, as she perceived he’d been under the rug under it.

    “Uh—norra sleep,” he mumbled, blinking. “Oh—hi, Polly,” he said sheepishly. “Uh—’s not all over, is it?”

    “No, you can safely go back to sleep again!” she said with a laugh.

    In the front hall she was waylaid by the spare room behind Jemima’s study that in her opinion would do nicely for a breakfast room. She went into it and looked round it consideringly. Ye-es... Well, say they had a little table over here by the window—then they could have a two-person sofa and a couple of small armchairs over there! She turned to stare out of the window again. Blow, it was still drizzling. Yes, the room did face east—

    “That’s my hat,” said a voice in her ear.

    Polly jumped, and gasped.

    Ralph had discovered the scratch on the Vivaldi and was fed up with a sitting-room full of giggling morons who couldn’t play Trivial Pursuit to save their lives. So he’d collected his overcoat and was on his way out to have another smoke, this time in the back porch, since the front was now infested by Weintraub and Sir Jerry. “I suppose you know there’s a penalty for wearing other people’s mistletoed Exmas hats, Lady C.,” he said.

    “Exmas? It hasn’t got that, has it?” she replied in horror, raising her hands to it.

    Grinning, Ralph caught the hands. “No, that’s not what’s wrong with it at all.”

    “What a relief!” she said, sagging. “What is it, then?”

    “Do you know, I can’t think?” he discovered. “My brain’s gone quite, quite numb. Stunned, indeed. I think it must be the effect of—”

    “Exmas in July?”

    “No-o... No, I think it was the fact that when you speak, sweet, I’d have you at do it ever,”—he released her hands and put a finger under her chin. “‘Each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds, That all your acts are queens.’”

    Polly eyed him thoughtfully. Ralph shook in his shoes.

    “That’s pretty well said, for one that wears the flowers of winter in his hat,” she said.

    Ralph collapsed in helpless hysterics.

    Ginny had been passing in the hall, having stopped off in the downstairs lavatory on her way from the back porch to the sitting-room. The sound of Sir Ralph’s voice quoting Shakespeare had stopped her in her tracks. Since the door to the spare room was ajar, she peeked in, and became rooted to the spot.

    “What—about—that penalty—delicious—Lady C.?” gasped Ralph.

    “What penalty was that, Sir Ralph?” replied Polly, looking up at him innocently.

    “Heh, heh! The penalty all innocent maids pay for tempting those with the flowers of winter in their hats but the flowers of spring in their hearts!” he sneered.

    “Their black hearts,” she murmured.

    “Sorry—black hearts,” he agreed. His finger was still under her chin. “Mm—sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,” he sighed, and kissed her gently.

    “—Or Cytherea’s breath,” he decided, releasing her.

    “One of those!” agreed Polly with a giggle.

    “Come for a walk in the wilds of Waikaukau Junction?” he suggested.

    “Only if I can wear the hat!” said Polly with another giggle.

    Ginny came to and whisked herself out of the doorway. He was horrible, he was beastly—and how could he, when Polly was a married lady and—and everything! And how could Polly encourage him like that? Ugh! They were both disgusting, and—and old, and lecherous, and—

    Ginny ran upstairs, through the master bedroom without noticing Bill under his rug, and into the ensuite, where she locked the door, sat down on the toilet seat’s fluffy-covered white lid, and burst into tears.

    Ralph and Polly, meanwhile, went sedately into the hall, down the front path, and into Blossom Avenue. “Up or down?” he sighed.

    “Up, it’ll be easier coming back.”

    They went slowly up the road. Ralph told her a lot about his last couple of ops and a lot about the antique commode he was considering buying for his study, and rather a lot, rather bitterly, about Audrey’s lack of taste. Then he described the blithering idiocy of his three sons, not excluding the fact that the youngest, who had left school after failing Bursary last year, was now sporting an earring, claimed to be learning the guitar, and was living with a group of like-minded persons of doubtful sex. Or that the summit of the middle one’s ambitions appeared to be to become a chartered accountant and live in Pakuranga. Or that the eldest one had failed all his third-year B.A. subjects last year and looked all set to do the same this year.

    “Won’t they chuck him out if he fails two years running?” she asked.

    “Yes; and by God, if he expects me to support him, the lazy little bugger’s got another think coming!”

    Polly hugged his arm. After a little she said: “Is he lazy, or just dumb?”

    “Both,” replied Ralph sourly.

    “Well, perhaps he shouldn’t be doing a B.A.,” she said mildly. “Isn’t there anything he’s ever wanted to do?”

    “When he was ten he wanted to live on a farm, if you call that a career choice!” he said sourly.

    “All my family are farmers,” said Polly mildly.

    “So?”

    “It’s a hard life... Up with the birds, and all that. Vic—that’s my oldest brother—he was saying they need a new roustabout, he’s not as young as he was, and Dad can’t do much, now—though he’d tell you he still the runs the place,” she ended with a little sigh.

    They walked on in silence.

    “I’ll ask him if he fancies it,” said Ralph in a choked voice. “Thanks, Polly.”

    “Uh—well, whaddaya think, John?” said Darryl, rather limply.

    “We were considering becoming a typical nuclear family next year,” he noted, eyeing their current boarder somewhat sardonically. Adrian went rather red and gulped. John’s mouth twitched a bit behind the beard. “For the rest of this year, perhaps?” he said to Darryl. “Didn’t you say Madame was thinking of sending you over to her sister next year?” he added to Adrian.

    “Yeah. In the South of France, or something,” he said without much enthusiasm.

    “Well, darling?” John murmured.

    “Uh—yeah: for the rest of this year, then?” said Darryl.

    “Yeah, that’d be great, thanks!” squeaked Vicki.

    “Yeah, mighty,” agreed Euan. “Thanks, Darryl; thanks, John. –Come on, Adrian, let’s go and get your tapes.”

    “Righto: you can have a look at the place, too, eh? Come on, Vicki!” They dashed out.

    “All right?” said John.

    “Well, three extra boarders will mean extra cash,” Darryl admitted.

    John put his arm round her. “We weren’t planning to start this nuclear family stuff until the end of the academic year,” he said in her ear.

    “No,” she agreed with an uncertain smile.

    “Feet may have to be put down, of course,” he said.

    “Eh?”

    “Largely in the direction of Vicki playing pop music all day and night, from what Ginny’s let drop,” he murmured.

    “Well, I can do that, all right,” said Darryl simply.

    John knew she could. He kissed her ear.

    “Have those twins got any money?” she said abruptly.

    John had been wondering when that would occur. He let out a roar of laughter. “I—doubt—it!” he gasped.

    Nat had hauled Damian off Roger’s computer and out of Number 10 and was now interrogating him about the amount of alcohol he’d consumed. “How much is ‘not much’?” he demanded.

    “Um—well, only two glasses of champagne for lunch—you never said I couldn’t!” he added fiercely.

    Nat’s heavy shoulders shook but he managed to say: “No-one was thinking ya shouldn’t, ya clown, you are over eighteen. I was just wondering if you were sober enough to drive your flamin’ grandfather home.”

    “Ooh, is he drunk? Ooh, help, Grandma’ll be furious!” he gasped.

    Nat began to steer him down the path with a heavy hand on his skinny shoulder.. “Yeah. Well, he’s not pissed out of his mind, I’ll grant ya that. –Pickled in it,” he muttered. “But he’s pretty cheerful,” he added sourly.

    Damian gulped.

    “I’ll come home with ya and face up to Belinda,” Nat said heavily.

    “Will you really? Ooh, thanks, Uncle Nat!” he gasped.

    Nat steered him towards Number 10. Nothing better to do, he thought sourly, not saying it. “Well, didja get ’is blessed computer going?” he asked heavily.

    “Heck, yeah! We—”

    Nat didn’t listen. At least Phoebe hadn’t been at the bloody do; one blessing, he thought heavily. It hadn’t really dawned until he’d got there and Susan and Alan had turned up that of course Tom and Jemima knew Sol from way back—since Susan’s wedding, in fact. What with that, and bloody Ralph Overdale being Tom’s brother! He hadn’t forgotten that, exactly, only he hadn’t really thought about it, because bloody Sir Ralph wasn’t on the face of it the type that you’d expect to bump into at a kids’ winter Christmas party at bloody Waikaukau Junction! Brother or not. ...Shit.

    In the dining-room Susan and Alan were looking numbly at rows and rows and rows of sparkling glassware. Well, some of it was sparkling crystal, if it was theirs.

    “Which are ours?” said Susan numbly.

    “Dunno,” he replied numbly.

    In the unused room that was possibly destined to become a breakfast room Darryl was turning off the cassette player and ordering Euan, Adrian and the Austin twins—Ginny having recovered from the shock of overhearing Ralph and Polly to the extent of deciding he was a pig and she wasn’t gonna give him another thought—to pack it in. And had Adrian forgotten he was gainfully employed? Adrian turned puce and shot out like a rocket.

    The study was still occupied by Isabel Blakely, a bloated and sticky Connie, the three bloated and sticky Carrano children, a bloated and grimy Mason, and the indescribably grimy, bloated and sticky older Butler boys and O’Connell twins. They were all absorbedly watching Animal House in complete silence. None of them was laughing, but they were all equally absorbed.

    In a spare bedroom that hadn’t even been redecorated yet, Bob Butler’s supine figure had just been discovered, flat out behind piles of wallpaper and carpet, with a pink and grey tweed coat, undoubtedly Isabel’s, draped over him. Jemima hurriedly took the coat back to the master bedroom and put it back on the bed. June was overcome, the more so since Bob was supposed to take his mother home. Tom offered but Jemima pointed out he’d just had all that punch. He was about to argue but was overtaken by an enormous belch, so that was that. Other drivers were rapidly passed in review and ruled out of court. Especially Isabel: she’d just had three huge glasses of—hic!—pardon—very rummy punch in the belief punch wasn’t alcoholic.

    Fortunately, just as they were looking at one another in dismay, Polly hurried in and explained that she’d rung Bob Grey, he’d grab a taxi and nip over and ferry all the Puriri County lot home in her car.

    The Christmas in July party had not made Ralph feel particularly good. His consciousness rejected with every fibre, so to speak, of its being the idea that he envied the denizens of Blossom Avenue and environs their cosy bourgeois domesticity, but he was nevertheless aware of a hankering for something slightly similar, only better. And what with the luscious red-headed twin’s being thirty years too young for him (to put it the kindest way, yeah), the undeserving Tom very clearly being deliriously happy with the delightful Jemima, and various undeserving sods of friends of theirs all happily in couples... Well, what had he expected, for Christ’s sake? Tom was years younger than him, practically the next generation, and Jemima was something like twelve years younger again, naturally most of their friends’d be— And he didn’t want that sort of life, anyway. He’d been bored rigid the whole afternoon, apart from those five stolen seconds with the charming Lady C. He was a fool ever to have let himself be talked into it.

    As to which he wanted more, Phoebe or the luscious twin… Ralph didn’t really think about that. He might not have learned much in the past fifty-odd years but he had at least learned that if you tried figuring out what reasons the heart had, not to mention points further south, you’d go batty in a very short time. He did admit to himself, however, very sourly, that he wanted both of them. So there.

    A week after the Christmas in July party Jemima was discovered in the kitchen looking into a large cake tin with a dismayed expression on her face.

    “Anything up?” asked Tom, inspecting the coffee-pot.

    “This tin’s absolutely full of mince pies,” she said faintly. “I—I could have sworn it was empty.”

    “Uh… Are they all the same style, or pattern?”

    “Um, no,” she discovered, sounding bewildered. “Why?”

    “Some fanatical organiser with access to our kitchen, my money’d be on Susan, but I’m not ruling Darryl out of contention, must have helpfully amalgamated them.”

    “Ugh, yes… Tom, what on earth are we gonna do with them all? I mean, do you like them, really?”

    “Do you?” he returned swiftly.

    “Not really,” she admitted sadly.

    Abruptly Tom deserted his coffee-pot and fell all over the kitchen, laughing himself sick. “Nobody—does!” he gasped helplessly.

Next chapter:

https://theamericanrefugeeanovel.blogspot.com/2022/10/hard-times.html