Kids And Ducks

47

Kids And Ducks

    “You still here?” said Sol limply the Sunday of the following week as a lanky form emerged from the A-frame in the gathering dusk and came up to where he was sitting on the edge of the grass at Sol’s Cove with his feet on the sand. Sort of thinking about a barbecue.

    Starsky reddened. “Yeah. You said it was all right.”

    “Sure it’s all right, kid, only ain’t you got school tomorrow?”

    “No! It’s mid-semester break!” he cried aggrievedly.

    “Uh—oh. Two weeks, huh?”

    “Three. Counting Easter,” he explained.

    “Huh? Oh,” said Sol limply. Jesus, that made two more whole weeks! Not that he wasn’t a good kid, only— “Uh—don’t your parents expect you to—uh—well, show your face round the place, now your new little sister’s home?”

    “All she does is bawl and sleep!”

    “Yeah, well, they tell me they’re like that.”

    Starsky scowled. “Yeah.”

    Sol eyed him sideways. “Which is she, a Winston Churchill baby or a Fatman baby?”

    Starsky goggled at him.

    “As in Jake and The Fatman? They all look like one or the other of ’em, at that age,” he explained kindly.

    Suddenly a grin broke over Starsky’s skinny countenance. “Winston Churchill!” he choked. “Gee, she’s ugly!”

    Sol nodded placidly.

    “Mum actually reckons she’s pretty,” he reported in awed tones.

    “Uh-huh. Hormones, that’ll be.”

    “And Dad keeps saying dumb things like ‘Fourth time lucky,’ and telling everyone he’s gonna build on another room for her!”

    “Uh-huh. It ain’t that he don’t like boys just as much, ya know,” said Sol without emphasis. “It’s just that this one’s new. Plus and his first girl. And I guess he just is the sort of guy that goes real soppy over babies.”

    “Yeah,” he said heavily. There was a short pause. “It’s really embarrassing!” he burst out.

    “Nope. It’s real natural. You’ll probably feel the same once you’re his age. Only at your age it’s real natural to feel it’s real embarrassing. –Say, does the Carter’s Bay fish and chips shop count the Easter Break as summer or winter?”

     Starsky got up, looking hopeful. “Dunno.”

    “Wal, we could drive down there and find out.”

    “Yeah, or take the runabout!” he said eagerly.

    Come Easter, the Inlet had become heavily infested with idiots in launches what didn’t know what a riding-light was. So Sol said reluctantly: “Better not. The Inlet’s infested with idiots without riding-lights.”

    Starsky admitted that that big launch down there a bit, you know, Sol, the one with the pink superstructure that belonged to that bloke that reckoned he was gonna build a pole-house, well, it didn’t have riding-lights. Sol agreed.

    “Couldn’t we have a barbecue?” he then said wistfully.

    “Well—uh—yeah, there is a hamper of stuff in the Land Rover, if ya really—”

    Starsky was off and running.

    “—got the energy.” finished Sol limply, sitting down again.

    He let Starsky more or less do it all. Who cared if the sausages was burnt?

    When Starsky had engulfed a goodly amount of burnt sausage wrapped in white bread with lashings of tomato ketchup he pointed out eagerly: “You could move in tomorrow!”

    “Ye-ah...”

    Starsky swallowed noisily. “One of Jemima’s cousins, well, he’s got a van!”

    “Huh? –Oh. No, that’s okay, Starsky, Kevin Goode said he’d loan me his pickup any time.”

    Starsky looked at him eagerly.

    Sol made a face. “I know it’s only five minutes down to the marina in the runabout, but somehow it seems just so isolated up here!”

    Starsky looked at him blankly. After a moment he said: “I could stay with you.”

    “Uh—yeah. So you could,” he said limply. “Thanks.”

    “Actually,” the self-sacrificing boy said thoughtfully, narrowing his eyes: “if I came up here and lived with you, Bub could have my room!”

    Yo, boy.

    “Starsky, I think that June and Bob might be very hurt by such a suggestion.” He took a look at the lower lip and added hurriedly: “Only of course you’re welcome to spend as much of your vacations here as you like.”

    “Yeah,” he said glumly. “Ta. –Only Michael and me ’uve got Computer Camp the last week of the holidays,” he admitted.

    Hooray, thought Sol simply. “Yeah. Well, stay for next week, if ya feel like it.”

    “Yeah! Great!” he breathed. “Tha-anks, Sol!”

    Sol swallowed a sigh. “That’s okay. Uh—well, I guess maybe we could move in tomorrow, huh?”

    “YEAH!” he cried.

    “Yeah. Okay. Uh... Starsky,” said Sol cautiously, wrapping well-margarined white bread round a burnt sausage and carefully anointing the sausage with tomato ketchup down one end of the resultant roll, unaware that this technique was being narrowly observed for future reference: “you wouldn’t know anyone that might have a pup to give away, would you? Or for sale, even, if it wasn’t too dear.”

    “No. Um, Mrs Barstow, she breeds poodles. Linton Barstow, he reckons they’re all right really. They’ll go for miles, if you take them out on a lead; and ya don’t have to clip them or all that junk,” he added on a cautious note.

    Sol smiled a little. “Real doggy dogs at heart, huh? –No, wasn’t thinking of a poodle, really.” he admitted. “Besides, guess she’d want the earth for a pup, huh?”

    “Yeah. Linton Barstow, he reckons she charges two hundred and fifty dollars at the least!”

    Sol winced. “Yeah. I could maybe run to twenny-five.”

    “There’s ads in the paper!” he offered.

    “Mm. Okay, let’s get on back to the store and take a look at yesterday’s paper.”

    Starsky scrambled up, beaming. “Yeah! And Tom reckons that that market down near Maungakiekie Street, they have pups there!”

    “Y— Uh, ain’t that a Saturday market, Starsky?”

    “Um—dunno. Ask Tom.”

    Sol had by now recollected that anything in the way of canine progeny that got sold down at a market near Maungakiekie Street would have three chances in five of being a bull-terrier cross, one chance in five of being a genuine black-and-tan, and one chance in five of growing into something like The Fiend. Added to which it wouldn’t have had any shots, let alone been doctored, and— Yeah, well. Could try the SPCA?

    “Uh—where did Alan get his dog, do ya know?” he said as they drove back down to the Marina.

    “Um... Dunno. –Jemima knows!” he said brightly.

    Sol said weakly he’d ring her.

    There wasn’t no chance Starsky would let him get away with a thing, of course, so that evening they rang Tom and Jemima and asked about the market near Maungakiekie Street and Alan’s dog, and rang Susan to check, rang fifty numbers what had advertised pups in Saturday’s paper... And packed all of Sol’s belongings that weren’t already in cartons. Including the books: he’d had the butter cartons all ready for ’em. Well, all folded up flat. Which hadn’t suggested to Starsky that he hadn’t been planning to pack the books, quite yet.

    Next morning he woke to find the sun making strange, unfamiliar patterns high in his gable. And to a strong singeing smell.

    “What the—”

   Starsky emerged from the kitchenette, beaming. “Hey, these ceramic-top stoves are cool, eh? Hey, Tom says ya just gotta get it unwired, see—”

    “Jesus, you haven’t touched the wiring?” he gasped, bolt upright. –Relatively easy, Starsky had told him he could have the divan and nobly taken the hammock himself.

    “Nah!” he said witheringly. “It’s illegal! –I’ve done bacon and eggs,” he added in a careless voice.

    “Uh—great,” he croaked.

    “An’ Mrs Emmett, she come round with a letter, she said it got delivered to their place by mistake.” He fished it out of the back pocket of his jeans.

    The Emmetts lived, if Sol was not mistaken—that was, if this was the same Mrs Emmett that was married to a Mr Emmett that owned a very nice fifteen-footer that Sol wouldn’t have said no to himself, had it been on offer, up Kahikatea Boulevard. Sol’s address was Kingfisher Parade. Yeah, sure there was one or two consonants in common, but—

    It was from Gracie. Sol ripped it open, ignoring the involved explanation in re sticky envelopes and the Emmetts having been away on their boat since Friday that was going on around him.

    “Jesus,” he said limply.

    Starsky stood on one foot.

    Becoming aware of the sudden silence, Sol looked up. “Huh? Oh: it ain’t bad news. It’s just whenever I hear from Mom, I get this dumb shaky feeling— Anyroad, it’s good news. Her and that Lillian Goodridge, they’re a-comin’ out this summer—our summer, their winter—on Lillian’s late husband’s insurance. Wal, seems Lillian fancies the South Seas and she’s real keen to have Gracie tag along as a travelling companion— You don’t wanna know that,” he recognized, grinning sheepishly.

    Starsky only smiled kindly and said: “Are you hungry?”

    “Huh? Oh! Bacon and eggs, huh? I sure am!”

    The bacon was singed but the toast was real good, so it was clearly the bacon that had produced the smell. The fried eggs was leathery, but never to mind. Sol informed him he done good and Starsky beamed all over his skinny face. He then revealed that there’d been an early customer before Jimmy arrived and he’d sold him some antifouling compound and told him you couldn’t use it in the Inlet, Puriri County Council regulations.

    Sol just nodded limply. And what was the— Jesus CHRIST, was that the time?

    “I rung up Mum and she said if you were still asleep you must be pretty tired, so I better not wake you up.”

    Sol nodded limply. Half TEN? Jesus!

    After breakfast Starsky organized him into loading stuff into the Land Rover and taking it on up to Sol’s Cove. Jimmy was managing the store, not that he was swamped with custom. Ida provided lunch around one-ish and since by that time he’d unloaded about five thousand butter-cartons of books Sol was about ready for it, in spite of the bacon and eggs. After lunch Starsky organized him into dismantling his shelving and taking it on up to Sol’s Cove and putting it up again. Euan came round about six-thirty and force-fed them on franks done over the camping-gas burner. After tea Starsky organized them into getting the hammock, Sol’s divan and all the bedding up to Sol’s Cove. So that was more or less that.

    The rest of the week was pretty well similar. By the Sunday morning Sol’s Cove looked as if it had always been inhabited by a greyish-faced, shagged-out guy in his late forties, a horribly energetic skinny-faced, long-legged teenager, and shelves and shelves and shelves of books that were STILL not, sob, weep, in the right order! It never having occurred to Starsky Butler that they hadda been in any order in the first place.

    During this entire week, just by the by, Sol had not so much as laid eyes on Michaela. He hadn’t even noticed Wednesday go by until it was Thursday. Then on Thursday he had rung Mrs Morton’s and left an apologetic message. Whether Michaela had got it he had no idea. It wasn’t that Mrs Morton was unreliable, but would Michaela even have been back to the flat? If she was potting up a storm she not infrequently slept in the shed. Or on a divan at Bob and June’s if they realized she was there.

    Starsky was a good kid and normally Sol enjoyed his company. But usually when he came up to Carter’s Inlet he spent at least half of the time foisting himself on Euan at the boatyard. This visit Sol had had him pretty well unadulterated. He had intended to drive him home himself on the Sunday before his Computer Camp, largely in order to get another look at Melinda (Winston Churchill) Butler, but when Ida proposed loading him into her neat little car he just nodded thankfully.

    And off they went, Starsky’s head protruding from the front passenger’s window as he screamed: “Don’t buy a dog without ME!” Sol nodded weakly and waved.

   He tottered back into the store. “Ugh,” he said, a-lookin’ at the staircase and rememberin’ they was nothin’, nothin’ at all, not even a sleepin’ bag, to sleep in or on upstairs. Groggily he groped his way on back and made himself a cup of coffee. He quite felt like milk in it but there was no milk in the store’s little refrigerator. Though there had been a full one-litre carton at 8 a.m. this morning. Oh, well. He staggered back into the store and drank black coffee with his elbows on the counter. Hell, and there was still three runabouts out on hire, he couldn’t possibly close up until they came back! ...Boy, maybe kids and ducks wasn’t the great idea that it looked like. from the outside.

    It felt real strange, waking by himself next morning to Hell and gone out to Sol’s Cove, with no stairs to get on down so’s he could stand on the doorstep, a-scratchin’ the whiskers. The French doors were actually in the A-Frame, now: all three of ‘em. (The fourth was jest a-leanin’ up against a neatly gib-boarded but unpainted inside wall.) Kevin Goode had thrown in the old Holland blinds that had come with the set. On his first night at the Cove Sol had been too shagged out to notice anything, much, let alone the way the moonlight, the starlight and then the rising sun came on in through all those little glass panes, but by the third morning, he sure as Hell had been aware of it: so the Holland blinds had gotten fixed back in place right smart. Never mind if they was a hideous dark brown, kind of the darker side of chocolate, and sort of shiny and cracked. They sure helped.

    He didn’t bother to pull the blinds up, just opened the doors with one hand, already a-scratchin’ the whiskers with the other—

    “Jesus!” he said.

    Two little boys, around seven, maybe, in scruffy shorts and bright hand-knit sweaters, were sitting patiently on the large flat stone, weighing only approximately half a ton, that Sean Stacey had kindly donated to take the place of a front step. And that Michaela and Darryl between them had person-handled into place.

    “Hullo, Sol!” they cried, beaming.

    “Hi, Davey and Johnny,” said Sol in a hollow voice. “How did you guys get here?”

    Davey Carrano replied in an off-hand voice: “In the runabout, ’course!”

    “See?” said Johnny, pointing to it. Sure enough, Jake Carrano’s aluminum runabout was pulled well up onto the gritty sand of Sol’s Cove.

    “Y— Uh, look, guys, do your mom and dad know you’re here?”

    They looked vague.

    Sol ran a hand through what was left of his hair. At this rate he wouldn’t need to check on it no more, because for it would all have fallen out before the week was over. No, make that turned pure white and then fallen out. It was difficult to know which point to tackle first. Well, it sure was for one with as little experience of dad-blamed kids and ducks as him!

    Finally he croaked: “Listen, hasn’t your dad told you never to get in a boat without a life-jacket on?”

    “We did!” cried Davey crossly. “We left them in the boat: see?”

    “Oh,” he said limply, blinking and peering. “Sure you did. Good guys.”

    “They make ya too hot,” explained Johnny.

    It was a real chilly morning for this time of year, but never to mind. “Yeah. Uh—come on in,” he said weakly.

    They came in, looking hopeful. The reason for this was not long in coming, because Johnny said immediately his foot touched Sol’s uncovered concrete floor: “C’n we have breakfast at your place, Sol?”

    “Y— Uh—sure. Look, I ain’t got nothin’ fancy to eat!” he said on a desperate note.

    The Carrano twins looked vague.

    “Uh—what do you usually have?” he said weakly.

    They looked vague.

    “What does Nanny make you?” he said desperately.

    “Orange juice and then muesli and then toast and Marmite,” said Davey.

    “With milk,” added Johnny.

    “Yeah. Right. I ain’t got none of— Well. I got some whole-wheat bread, only I ain’t got nothin’ to toast it on. Uh—what is Marmite?” he added weakly.

    After some thought Johnny produced: “It’s like Vegemite.”

    “Nah!” cried his twin scornfully.

    “It IS!” he shouted.

    “It IS NOT! –They taste different. Nanny hates Vegemite,” he explained to Sol.

    “Yeah. It’s still like it, though,” persisted Johnny.

    Sol now gathered that they were both right. On different wave-lengths. Generically like Vegemite, right? A concept it was obviously going to be impossible to get over to kids of around—uh, too young to be sailing on the Inlet by themselves before seven of a greyish April morning: quite.

    “Yeah, I get it,” he said hurriedly. “Listen, I think we better call your parents and let ’em know where you are, okay?”

    Johnny looked around the unpainted, semi-furnished interior of Sol’s Cove House with interest. “Have you got a phone?”

    It was the logical question, all rightee. The fawn-headed twin was the one that was more like Polly. His brother was the living image of his dad.

    “Everybody’s got a phone!” said dark-haired Davey scornfully. –Wal, had Jake’s looks, that was.

    “Michaela hasn’t,” said Johnny immediately.

    Davey thought it over. “She has, but it doesn’t work,” he pronounced.

    Yeah, right. “Yeah, right,” said Sol, looking unavailingly through the phone book which had been resting comfortably on the floor next to a bookcase. Laid there tenderly by Starsky. Sol had let it lie, he couldn’t decide where to put the dad-blamed thing. “I have got a phone, it’s a portable one. –Listen, guys, what’s your phone number?”

    Davey reeled it off.

    “Uh—no, that’s the number of the house in Pohutukawa Bay, isn’t it?” said Sol feebly.

    “Yeah,” they agreed.

    “Yeah. I need the number of the phone at the bach.”

    They looked vague.

    Yo, boy. Break in on Sir Jake and Lady Carrano at sevenish of a grey April morning?

    “I guess your parents were asleep when you left, huh?” he asked cautiously.

    They looked vague. Eventually Johnny said vaguely: “They prolly were.”

    Yo, boy.

    After some thought he rang Ida Grey.

    Sure, she was up, getting Bob’s breakfast. And sure, Bob had the number of the bach: just a minute, Sol! Sol’s knees went all saggy with relief. He rang the number. Shit, the machine was on! He left a feeble message, and hung up with a feeble hand.

    “That was the answering machine,” he said feebly.

    “It’s a new one. Mum can’t work it. Dad reckons she’s a hen,” said Johnny indifferently.

    “Y— Uh—yeah.” He was almost one hundred percent sure that last time he had spoken to these kids, it had been “Mummy” and “Daddy”. Boy, didn’t time fly in the under-ten set? Or, just simply, fly.

    Pulling himself together with an effort the greyish-faced, shagged-out one croaked: “Listen, all I got’s wholewheat bread and margarine.” –Pronouncing it in his native accents “morj-rin”, forgetting that the local vernacular was “meear-jah-ree-un.”

    “We like that!” said Johnny quickly.

    Davey was investigating. “You haven’t got a fridge!” he reported in stunned tones.

    “Nup. Well, I ain’t got no electricity, see?”

    “Our bach has got electricity,” said Johnny dubiously.

    “Yeah. Mine ain’t connected yet.”

    Johnny was now investigating the cupboards under the sink. “What’s this bucket for?”

    “Don’t touch that!” he gasped.

    Johnny merely looked at him.

    “Uh—well, I ain’t got no drainage, neither. And before you say anything, I know that bach of your dad’s has got drains, and a real shower, and all! Only I can’t afford to get it all put in, yet. Geddit?”

    “Haven’t you got a shower?” said Davey in awe.

    “Nope.” Sol waved a hand round his spacious residence. “What you see is what you get. –What I mean is, this is all there is,” he amended weakly.

    “Gee, you’re lucky!” said Davey fervently.

    “Ye-ah,” breathed Johnny reverently, drawing a chair up to the sink-bench.

    “No!” cried Sol, rushing over to him as his fell intent became clear and he knelt up on it, reaching for the faucet.

    Johnny’s little oval face fell ten feet.

    “Listen,” he said kindly, laying a hand on the frail little shoulder in its bright scarlet sweater: “the thing is, if you use up all the water in my little tank, then we’ll have to refill it by hand, see? Just turn the fau—tap very gently and let a dribble out, okay?”

    Johnny nodded convulsively. Davey came over eagerly to watch. Johnny turned the faucet very cautiously. A dribble of water and a small dead beetle came out of it. Johnny Carrano didn’t remark on this last so Sol didn’t, neither. Davey bent over and peered into the bucket. “It’s come through!” he announced pleasedly.

    Johnny scrambled off the chair and also peered. “Yeah!” he breathed. “Neat, eh?”

    “Yeah!” Davey straightened, sighing. “Nanny’s always making us have showers,” he reported glumly.

    “Oh!” said Sol in great enlightenment. “I getcha! Yeah, well, that’s her job, I guess. Only most women are like that: cain’t hack it in a house without hot and cold runnin’ water!”

    “Nah,” they agreed in macho tones. “They’re sissy, eh?”

    “Right,” said Sol limply, not allowing his mind to dwell on what their mother might have said to that one. Apart from “Macho little toads,” that was. “Now, lessee...”

    He opened a top cupboard. The cupboards had been a kit-set. Euan had pointed out that he could buy the timber and the chipboard and make them for a fraction of the price but Sol had pointed out that he didn’t have the rest of his life for buildin’ kitchen cupboards. They were laminated: they came like that. He’d have preferred plain wood, but evidently modern kit-set cupboards came in white Melamine, take it or leave it.

    “Uh—you guys like porridge?”

    “No,” said Davey immediately.

    “I hate it!” cried Johnny.

    Right. Sol put the packet of rolled oats back in the cupboard. There wasn’t no milk, anyroad.

    “Mum gives us fruit,” said Johnny helpfully.

    “In the weekends,” explained Davey. “Dad makes pancakes, sometimes.”

    The two little faces looked up at him hopefully.

    Sol bit his lip. “Yeah. Only even with pancake mix, you need eggs, and at the moment I don’t got no eggs, neither. Uh... now wait. You ever tried fried ham?”

    Johnny nodded convulsively. “Dad sometimes makes that!”

    “With fried pineapple!” agreed Davey eagerly.

    “Uh-huh. Well, I ain’t got no pineapple today.”—Nor any day, the prices were shocking.—“I got tomatoes: we’ll have fried tomatoes and ham, with wholewheat bread, okay?”

    “Ye-ah!” they breathed.

    “Neat-oh!” added Davey.

    Sol and the Carrano twins ate fried ham and tomatoes, the latter extremely pale and anaemic. God knew where they’d come from: Susan had informed him that the local season was over. The which no doubt explained the extortionate price the anaemic things had been. The twins were entranced by the camping-gas burner on which necessarily he did the cooking and informed him sadly that Dad only used theirs on picnics. Sol was visited by an awful vision of the pair of ’em bringing theirs into the house and burning the place down. He made a cringing mental note to warn Jake and Polly. Very fortunately he had an unopened carton of’ orange juice so they drank that. They didn’t seem to notice it wasn’t chilled.

    Then, as Polly and Jake still hadn’t called up, the twins had the enormous treat of first helping Sol to wash his dishes, the which necessitated two boilings-up of a pan of water and three emptyings of the bucket into the bushes—he figured the salt-tolerant, scrubby vegetation could probably take his bio-degradable detergent better than the Inlet could—and then helping Sol to refill his little tank. Which entailed turning on the outside faucet right up at the far, or roadside end, of his property, and then rushing through the undergrowth down to the house to see that the business end of the enormous length of hosepipe hadn’t fallen out of the tank fixed just outside the kitchen sink... Admittedly the track through the undergrowth had gotten trodden down some, these last couple of weeks. But it was still real good fun.

    Jake turned up just as Sol was thinking he’d better run them on up there and hammer on the bach’s door, because he hadda get in to the store.

    “Thanks, Sol,” he said sheepishly after the shrieks of: “Dad! We had fried ham for breakfast!” and: “Dad! Sol’s got a neat sink, you oughta see it, ya haveta empty the bucket!” and: “Dad! Sol hasn’t got a shower an’ he never has to have a wash!” had died down.

    “Gee, that’s okay, Jake. Pretty enterprising, to get themselves down here.”

    “Yeah. Some of us didn’t know they could start the outboard on their own,” he noted grimly.

    “That’ll be why you never ordered them not to, huh?”

    “Too right,” he agreed grimly.

    “They did wear their life-jackets.”

    “Yes! We wore our life-jackets. Daddy!” cried Johnny on an anxious note. –Sol registered that the macho “Dad” and “Mum” must be pretty recent.

    “Good. I might not put the pair of you over my knee for getting out by yourselves in the boat, then,” he noted grimly.

    “We were all right!” cried Davey pugnaciously.

    “Yeah, I know you were all right, but that isn’t the point.”

    They looked at him blankly.

    “By God, it’s not bloody easy, ya know!” he said to Sol, passing a distracted hand through his silvered curls. –Was it just Sol’s imagination or was there measurably more silver in ’em than when he’d first met him?

    “No,” Sol agreed neutrally.

    “Look, you pair of tiny twerps, you could have drowned,” said Jake to his offspring.

    “We can handle the boat!” cried Johnny.

    “What if it had turned over on the pair of you?”

    “We can swim!” said Davey crossly.

    “True: you can swim pretty good. Only Johnny can’t, can he?”

    “I CAN!” he cried angrily.

    Jake sighed. “See?” he said to Sol.

    “Yeah,” Sol agreed neutrally.

    “Listen, Johnny, we know you can swim a lot better than you used to be able to, only could you swim all the way to the shore from the middle of the Inlet?”

    “Yeah,” said Johnny immediately.

    Jake took a deep breath.

    “We kept near the bank,” said Davey sulkily.

    “Look, you are NOT to take the boat out by yourselves!” he said, getting very loud.

    They pouted.

    “Understand?”

    They pouted.

    “UNDERSTAND?”

    “Yes,” they said sulkily.

    “With or without the outboard: UNDERSTAND?”

    “Yes,” said Johnny sulkily.

    “Davey?” said his father grimly.

    “YES! YOU’RE MEAN, DAD!” he screamed, bursting into tears.

    Jake ignored this. “And neither of you is to TOUCH the outboard unless I say you can! Geddit? –GEDDIT?”

    At this Johnny also burst into tears.

    “Is that enough?” said Jake wildly to Sol.

    “Don’t ask me, you’re the parent. I’d say it was, only I ain’t no expert. And if you was thinkin’ of lockin’ that there outboard away in your shed every night, like I sort of thought you might be,”—Jake grinned sheepishly—“I would.”

    “Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “I bloody will.”

    “Coffee?” said Sol over the sobs.

    “You betcha!” He scooped a sobbing twin up under each arm and brought them inside. “Shit,” he said numbly, depositing them on the concrete floor and goggling at the scene of gracious living spread out before him. –The twins sniffled and rubbed their eyes: he ignored them.

    “I’m gettin’ there,” said Sol mildly. He went over to the camping-gas stove set on the bench. “See this here?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Lemme issue an awful warning: they ain’t never seen one used in the house before.”

    There was a short pause. “No-o... Oh, Jesus Christ!” He rumpled the curls again. “What else will we have to lock away to get them to the age of eighteen or so, alive and unmaimed?”

    “Don’t ask me. But at a rough guess I’d say everything flammable, powered, sharp-edged, or wheeled, multiplied by fourteen and add the number you first thought of. And then some.”

    “Yeah,” he said, sagging on the bench. “Too right.”

    Sol lit the burner.

    “What was the worst thing you ever did when you were a kid?” said Jake glumly.

    Sol replied cautiously: “In terms of my family’s reaction, or goin’ by what I knew in my black little heart to be the worst?”

    “Uh—take your family’s reaction, for a start.”

    “Oh, that’s real easy. Guessed I was about nine, when I druv Pop’s brand, spanking new pale pink Chevy convertible down the street, onto the highway, through the lights at the shoppin’ centre, no sweat, ten miles further on down the highway, and rear-ended a police car at the next set of lights that was red.”

    “Shit,” he said in awe.

    “I panicked when I saw it was the cops in front of me. I’d been doin’ real good, up till then. –Hadda stand up to reach the pedals, mind you!” he said with a laugh.

    “Did you get in for trouble?” breathed an awed little voice.

    Sol winced. He looked at Jake apologetically.

    “My fault for asking!” said Jake with a laugh. “Go on: didja?”

    “Too right. Pop whaled the tar out of me. Then Abe whaled the tar out of me, just in case he hadn’t done it right.”

    “Two spankings?” said Johnny in awe, sniffing, and rubbing his eyes. Absently Jake hoisted him up onto his hip and gave him his own handkerchief.

    Sol looked wryly at the fawn-headed twin. “That’s right. And Abe had a real hard hand. Uh—that’s my big brother. he’s a lot older ’n me, he was grown-up,” he explained.

    The twins nodded seriously.

    “And what was the thing that you knew in your heart was the worst thing?” asked Jake curiously.

    Sol shook his head. “You don’t wanna know.”

    “Yes, we do!” cried two little voices.

    “Uh—well, I don’t really think it’s anything they could emulate,” he said to Jake.

    “Ya wanna bet? –No, go on!”

    Sol made an awful face. “I guess I was around thirteen. I dunno, musta been hormones or some such. Anyroad, Gracie—that’s my mom,” he said to the twins—“Gracie had taken up as an Avon lady. –You got those here?” he said to Jake.

    “Yeah. Daph Green was doing it for a while.”

    “Mum bought a Miss Piggy for Katie Maureen,” said Johnny.

    “Uh—did she?” returned Sol foggily.

    “It’s bubble-bath, really,” said Davey, snuffling.

    “Uh—oh! From your Avon lady, right?”

    “Yeah, that’s right,” said Jake, hoisting Davey up onto the bench beside him and handing him the handkerchief that Johnny had used. “Blow your nose, Davey. –The boys were at school, but Katie Maureen was home with Pol. Evidently she bawled for this muck, so Pol hadda buy the sample Daph had. They couldn’t get Katie Maureen to understand it was only a sample. She put in an order for a Kermit the Frog each for these two, but they never came, did they, boys?”

    “No. They never came,” they said glumly.

    Jake winked at Sol. “Daph gave it up after that. Go on.”

    “Uh—oh,” he said limply. “Yeah.” He poured the coffee carefully. “Take sugar, Jake?”

    “Yeah—ta.”

    Sol handed him the sugar. “Like I said, I was about thirteen, and though I saw a lot of Pop and Abe, most of the time it was just me and Gracie by ourselves. We did a heap of things together: she only had a morning job in them days and she’d always be home when I got home from school. Well, once she started bein’ an Avon lady I didn’t hardly see nothin’ of her. She was either out making her calls or out delivering, or if she was home she was doing her accounts or sorting out orders all night and half the weekends—geddit?”

    “Yeah.”

    Sol licked his lips. “Lookin’ back I find it hard to believe that a kid of that age could be so crafty. First off I loused up the orders. Altered ’em deliberately after she’d written ’em out. It wasn’t too hard: waited till she was out of the house.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “When the stuff came she just about went crazy, poor Gracie. Oh, I was sharp, all rightee: I’d made sure all the records matched. She didn’t have no proof that what had come was the wrong things, only a vague recollection of what the orders had been. Then when she tried deliverin’ ’em to the clients—yo, boy. She finally hadda cancel the whole order and start over. Wal, I was too sharp to try the same trick twice: this time round, everything came in okay, and poor Gracie began to think it had been her: that she’d been havin’ a bad streak, ya know? Kind of without noticin’ it at the time. Started wondering if she needed to see a psychiatrist.”

    “Bloody Hell,” said Jake numbly.

    “Yeah. Only that weren’t enough for S. Winkelmann: no, sir! The trick was, to get everything back the way it always had been, with Gracie with time for me. I hadda let that lot go: she took it round to the customers soon as she checked it off.

    “But?” said Jake in a hollow voice.

    Sol shuddered. “S. Winkelmann the Chemist set to work in his little attic room.”

    “What?” he gasped.

    Sol made an awful face. “Yeah. I didn’t mix up nothin’ poisonous, or even dangerous, I had plenty of sense, even if I was blacker’n H,E,L,L in my innermost soul. I could see if I poisoned the customers or even mixed up something nice and sulphuric what’d take the skin right off of their fat faces, I’d be the one that’d get it in the neck. Wal, I had plenty of time, and a houseful of ingredients. I basically used cornstarch, green, red and yellow food colouring, and uh—white glue.”

    “White glue.”

    “Uh-huh. Yup. Found some down the hardware store that looked as like to face-lotion as never no mind. Boy, was I pleased with myself that day!”

    “What did you do about the scent of the stuff?”

    “Nothing. The scheme was to get the bottles looking right, so’s Gracie wouldn’t spot nothin’ and the customers wouldn’t spot nothin’ when she dropped it off. Then, first time they made to use it—” He shrugged.

    “Jesus Christ,” said Jake in awe.

    “Were you bad, Sol?” asked Davey solemnly.

    Jake dropped a kiss on his cheek. “Yeah, he was very bad. You remember that time Katie Maureen played with Mummy’s computer when she’d been told not to and it went wrong and Mummy cried?”

    The twins nodded solemnly.

    “That’s how bad he was. Only it was worse, he was a lot older than Katie Maureen.”

    “Yeah,” said Sol with sigh.

    “Your mother ever figure out it was you?”

    “Nope. S. Winkelmann, Ace Conspirator, got rid of all the evidence. Gracie hadda take all the stuff back. Then she tried to tell the Avon people it was a bad lot, had a flaming row with ’em, and gave the whole thing up.”

    Jake eyed him cautiously. “I see.”

    “No,” said Sol, smiling. “Ya don’t. I hadda suffer all the agonies of a guilty conscience, couldn’t look a jar of face-lotion in the face for years, and then on top of that, Gracie went out and got a fulltime job. Plus added to which she decided to qualify as a realtor and spent all her nights and weekends for the next dunnamany years first studying to get her qualification, and then showin’ people round houses. Guess I learned what the expression ‘just desserts’ means early on, huh?”

    “Serve ya bloody well right.”

    “Uh-huh.” Sol sipped coffee. “How about you?”

    Jake winced. “Not in front of these two, thanks. That was something they could copy!”

    “Daddy was an orphan,” said Johnny solemnly.

    “That right?”

    “Sister Anne used to beat the living daylights out of him with a piece of dowelling,” reported Davey.

    “Did she? Guess he musta deserved it, huh?”

    Jake coughed. “Yeah. Thanks for the coffee, Sol. And for feeding these two monsters. Listen, we’ll be up here for a few days: why not come to tea on—uh—well. make it Wednesday, eh?” They strolled over to the door, Sol thanking him as they went. “Uh—shall we ask Michaela?” he said, scratching his curls.

    “Yes! Ask Michaela!” cried Davey and Johnny loudly.

    “This would be you and Polly, the kids, and me and her, right?” said Sol neutrally.

    “Mm.”

    “Why not?” he said heavily.

    “Look, not if ya don’t want us to!”

    “No, I’d be grateful if you did, Jake,” he said heavily.

    “Go and get into the boat and put your life-jackets on,” Jake ordered his offspring. They rushed down to the boat. “What’s up?” he said bluntly.

    “Nothing. She seems to be holding me at arms’ length, is all. Every time I even look like getting near she makes a bolt for the wild blue yonder.”

    “Mm,” said Jake, rubbing his chin slowly. “Could be a good sign, mind you.”

    “I’ve been telling myself that. Well, yeah: okay then, Jake, thanks very much: you invite her, and I’ll see whether she lets me run her down the Inlet afterwards to sleep over at the boutique.”

    “Sure?”

    “Yeah. Nothin’ venture, nothin’ win, huh?”

    Jake agreed to this in an over-hearty tone, wrung his hand, thanked him again for looking after the two monsters, apologized again for the monsters, and took himself and his monsters away.

    Sol leaned idly in his doorway watching their wake. After some time, when the runabout had long since disappeared round a bend in the shoreline, it occurred to him to wonder how in Hell Jake had got here, if the kids had the runabout. Uh—druv down in the Merc, subsequently abandoning it by the roadside? Curiosity overcame him and he strolled up to see. And incidentally to make sure the outside faucet was well and truly off. There was no large silver foreign car parked by the side of the sparsely gravelled, rutted road.

    Shit, musta walked. Be why it took him so long to get here, then. Sol wandered slowly back to Sol’s Cove House feeling marginally comforted by the reflection that being the parent of two adorable little kids like Davey and Johnny was not by any means a bed of roses, and that while he might have his troubles, at least they didn’t include waking up and wondering if your missing offspring had drowned themselves, electrocuted themselves, fallen off of the roof, or rammed the cops in your new car.

    Nothing much else happened that day, which was pretty well par for the course for the last God knew how long.

    On the Tuesday nothing happened until he actually got to the store. As he walked up from the marina he could see there were two bodies on his doorstep. This wasn’t unusual, and in the school holidays it certainly wasn’t unusual for one of them to be small and clad in fluorescent green shorts, a baggy grey sweatshirt and a dark-coloured baseball cap with the peak turned to the back of the neck. Let’s hope there was some of them there kids’ specials left, that was... all.

    “Hi, Ivan,” he said in a hollow voice. “Hi, Pauline,” he added without hope to the other figure: taller, thinner, but in pretty similar sort of gear, though she’d spared Kingfisher Bay the baseball cap. “He come with you?”

    Michaela’s friend, the artist Pauline Wilson, sister of the more famous Tom, replied cautiously: “Hullo. Um—not exactly.”

    “She was on the bus,” said Ivan illuminatingly.

    “We walked down from Carter’s Bay together, eh, Ivan?” agreed Pauline.

    “Yeah,” confirmed Ivan.

    Sol shut his eyes for a moment. “Just hang on whiles I get this right, Pauline. Did you or did you not have an appointment to meet up with Ivan when the Whangarei bus—whatever bus it was,” he added hurriedly, “stopped at the Puriri bus stop or any other stop this mornin’?”

    “No!” said Pauline with a laugh. “It’s a sheer coincidence.”

    “It’s a something,” he muttered, unlocking the door. “Get in,” he said evilly to Ivan, “and go on over to that there counter. There’s a phone behind it. Get right onto it and call your mother.”

    “She—”

    “DO IT!”

    Ivan went over to the phone.

    “I did ask him if June knew what he was up to, but I couldn’t get any sense out of him. You seem to have the right touch,” said Pauline, grinning.

    “Uh—yeah. Say, Pauline, if you got an appointment to see Ida Grey, she don’t usually get in till nine-thirty, nine-fortyish. The boutique don’t officially open until ten.”

    “I know. But there aren’t many buses.”

    “Oh—right,” he said, sagging. “Jesus, you shoulda said: Ida coulda driven on down to your studio!”

    “Flat,” said Pauline, grinning. “I don’t dignify it by the name of studio. –No, that’s all right, I fancied a trip up to the marina. It’s all changed, hasn’t it?”

    “Since there was nothing here but mangroves? I’d say it woulda done, yep.”

    “It was nice then,” said Pauline with a sigh.

    Sol smiled at her narrow, bony, yallerish, pleasant face and said: “Parts of it still are, Pauline. Up along to Sol’s Cove it’s real peaceful. Listen, if you ain’t busy Saturday, I’m thinkin’ of havin’ a house-warming.” –He hadn’t been, it had just suddenly occurred to him that he’d like Pauline to see his house.—“Could you make it? Bring a friend, if you want. And if you need it, I’ll jack you up a lift in from the city.”

    Pauline beamed. “Thanks. I’d love to! But if I bring Greg, I won’t need a lift.”

    Sol now knew that Greg was an ex-pupil of hers. Remember that time Gracie found out—by askin’, what else—that he did furniture art? He did, too. Pauline was around Michaela’s age and Greg must be around ten years younger. What the relationship was Sol had never liked to ask. Certainly they seemed to spend half their time in each other’s pockets. Oh, well: lucky them, whatever it was they both seemed happy on it. He agreed it would be great to see Greg, forced himself not to wonder what colour his hair was these days, and suggested coffee.

    Pauline agreed and offered to make it but Sol vetoed that when it turned out she meant pour the water on the brown dust.

    By this time Ivan had reappeared at Sol’s elbow, looking sulky. “Mum wants to talk to you.”

    Sol just betted she did. He went over to the phone and managed to calm June down. Assuring her that Ivan could come on up any time, and sure he hadn’t invited him, but that was because it hadn’t dawned he’d want to. June said with a sigh he was jealous of Starsky. Sol guessed he’d guessed that, but just made sympathetic noises. June said with a sigh she’d be really grateful, if Sol was sure he didn’t mind? By now Sol was wondering how long this visit was to be for, but said he didn’t mind. June revealed in a rush it was just lovely with only Mason and Bub! Smiling, Sol agreed he guessed it was, noted Ivan had grown nigh on a foot these last six months alone, and nobly offered to have him all week, if that suited. June’s sigh of mixed relief and gratitude nigh to blew him over, so he guessed it suited, all rightee.

    Ivan’s face lit up like his birthday and Christmas and Halloween was all come at once. Sol looked at him with some sympathy. Guessed it hadn’t been too easy, bein’ the middle one, after all. Though him and Starsky had always looked as if they made a pretty good job of gangin’ up on little Mason, mind you.

    “You gotta make yourself useful, mind,” he warned.

    Ivan nodded frantically.

    Pauline noted: “He was telling me that Starsky makes fishing lines for the kids.”

    Used to make, would be nearer the mark, Starsky had just lately gotten too grand for that job, noted Sol silently.

    Ivan nodded frantically. ‘‘Yeah! Can I, Sol?”

    “Uh—sure.”

    “And can I chop up the bait?” he gasped.

    A kid what wanted to chop bait? “Uh—sure. Sure.”

    He waited for Ivan to ask if he could get on over to the boatyard and drive Euan out of his skull but he didn’t. Sol didn’t bother to figure out why, he just tottered off and made coffee.

    By nine o’clock Jimmy had arrived, panting, and Ivan had made approximately four dozen kids’ specials. By ten-thirty Ida had long since arrived, Pauline had gone off to the boutique with her, and Jimmy and Ivan were competing over who should get morning tea. And Ivan had already chopped all the bait and was volunteering to defrost more bait fish in Sol’s microwave. But luckily it was out at Sol’s Cove: because there was a pole, to use the vernacular, just by the roadside tap, to use the vernacular, and one of these days The Man, to use the vernacular though you coulda guessed that, might come and string a line from the pole to the A-frame. Might.

    He fought off a suggestion from Jimmy that a microwave would come in really useful for the store, especially over winter, because Jimmy’s sister, well, at her work, see— Yeah, yeah. He solved the tea-making dispute by telling ’em they both could: Jimmy could show Ivan the right way—he knew Ivan knew, he meant the way THEY DID THINGS HERE—GEDDIT? He musta gotten it, because he shut up and went down in back.

    Sol leaned on the counter, sighing. Boy, all this here was beginnin’ to seem horribly reminiscent...

    A middle-aged guy in wrinkled jeans and a horrible old sweater that coulda once been navy or black came in—must be a real boatie, Sol registered idly. Antifouling compound? Sol took a deep breath. Sure, they had that. And did the guy know it was against Puriri County Council regs to— He knew. So he was a real boatie, all rightee. He departed with it, whistling. Sol leaned on the counter, sighing...

    Michaela had managed to cope with the relationship with Sol, in the nine months since the Christmas in July party at the Aitkens’, largely by refusing to recognize in her own mind that it was a relationship. He had started to visit her regularly on Wednesdays, as he’d said he would. At first she’d wondered if he would want to go to bed with her after all, even though she was almost sure that what he’d said to her in the car that night had meant he didn’t. As it gradually dawned that he wasn’t going to try to get her into bed she was overwhelmingly relieved, because that meant that she wouldn’t have to cope with another relationship that would inevitably go wrong. If somewhere in the depths of her being she was also disappointed that he didn’t want to, she didn’t admit as much to herself.

    At first Sol had come every Wednesday without fail and Michaela had conscientiously done her best to be home that evening. Then, as the Christmas season approached he’d been very busy at the store and several times had turned up very late on the Wednesday and even missed a couple of times. Though leaving apologetic messages with the sympathetic Mrs Morton. By mid-January he was  pretty well snowed under at the store and decided they better make it every second Wednesday—unless Michaela could manage to get on up to Kingfisher Bay every other week?

    At the hopeful note in his voice and what even she couldn’t deny was a strange look in his eye Michaela had been flooded with panic. She had said gruffly that she’d try.

    She’d only worked up the courage to try once. And that was only because a lift was so available that it would have been more embarrassing to turn it down than to accept it: Ginny was going up to the boatyard with Vicki and Scott to meet Euan for a picnic. When she arrived at the store she’d been filled with panic again. The more so as Sol hadn’t disguised the fact that he was both astonished and thrilled to see her. He had made a very nice dinner but for once in her life Michaela had been too nervous to eat much. She didn’t realise that Sol had noticed this, or that he noticed her great relief when the twins and the two boys turned up with the suggestion that they all drive up the coast a bit for an evening swim.

    Michaela had felt quite exhausted by the effort of that night. Being Michaela she had ignored her exhaustion and not spent the next day in bed or just idling round her flat, but had got on with helping Sean Stacey haul rocks in the morning, and with glazing pots in the afternoon and evening. But when Bob had turned up at the shed around eight suggesting she pack it in and come and have a cuppa, she’d packed it in thankfully.

    No further unavoidable lifts had been offered for Wednesdays—June and Ida had privily agreed that the first move would have to come from Michaela herself. It was true that Darryl Aitken had vetoed loudly and with terrible finality John’s suggestion that a picnic up at Carter’s Inlet might be nice and perhaps Michaela would— It was also true that in another part of Puriri County Sir Jacob had had to use the pointing finger and shout “NO!” a couple of times, and that in a much remoter part of Puriri County Susan Harding had admitted glumly that Alan was right, and they’d better not shove their noses in. But Michaela was blissfully unaware of these facts and gradually, as the after-effects of the terrible Wednesday wore off, began to relax.

    She didn’t consciously perceive that Sol’s Wednesday trips down to Puriri became less frequent as summer waned into autumn. But she did begin to tell herself that perhaps he only wanted to be friends, after all. And that perhaps he wouldn’t repeat the suggestion of being her boyfriend,. A certain sort of mournfulness pervaded Michaela as this began to seem more and more of a certainty. She wasn’t so lacking in self-awareness as to be unconscious of it, but she did decide firmly that if he really didn’t want to after all, it was all for the best, because she was no good at relationships and they never worked out.

    Having decided this she should have felt much better about the whole thing and much more comfortable about seeing Sol. But perversely, as March blew itself out into April and June’s baby came, and Vicki’s wedding came, and Ginny went off to Japan, and Sol had his “roof-raising”, or A-frame raising, she found that she was more nervous and excited in his company than she ever had been. Michaela didn’t fail to recognize this as a sexual reaction. She fought it down, however, telling herself that it was just the usual sort of thing and there were lots of attractive men who made her feel peculiar and in any case she was going to ignore it. Well, not ignoring it with Hugh had only resulted in a mess, hadn’t it? So it would be stupid to do it again.

    Nevertheless she went on feeling it. Her offer to help with Sol’s vegetable garden had been a tentative feeler in the direction of getting closer to him. And had been made because she hadn’t been able to help herself. When he rubbished the idea she’d felt very crushed and hadn’t pointed out that her pots were selling so well, thanks to Ida, that she really didn’t need to keep on working for Sean, and had even given up several of her Puriri gardening jobs over the past few months. She had retreated into her shell, telling herself silently that she was mad, it was obvious that if he had once wanted more than friendship from her, it must have worn off.

    “Who else will be there?” she asked nervously when the indefatigable Sir Jacob finally tracked her down and Mason had fetched her from the kiln to take the phone call.

    Jake replied immediately, with no trace of guile in his voice: “Us and Sol and apparently young Ivan Butler, can ya stand it?”

    “Oh. Um—yes. I mean, thanks!” gasped Michaela.

    “Good. I’ll come down and fetch you. If you aren’t at your place I’ll come round to Bob and June’s. See ya!” He rang off before Michaela could lodge a protest.

    “I could have gone on the bus,” she said to June.

    “Pooh! If he wants to come and get you, let him!”

    “I suppose he is on holiday. –He said Polly chucked his briefcase into the Inlet!” she reported in awed tones.

    June gulped but managed to say: “Good on her. Um—they haven’t got Nanny with them up there, have they?”

    Michaela replied seriously: “No, she never goes, there isn’t room.”

    June knew that. She’d been trying to imagine how on earth they might have fitted Nanny in. Her and Katie Maureen in the wee room, the twins on the divans in the main room? She replied weakly: “No. Come and have a cuppa.”

    “Is it afternoon tea-time?”

    “No, but I’m thirsty again!” said June with a laugh.

    Michaela smiled. “Yeah. They drink a lot, don’t they? I’d forgotten, from when Mason was little.”

    “So had I!” said June, laughing again.

    “You sit down, I’ll get it.” Michaela made the tea.

    When they were both sipping, Michaela with Whitey on her lap and June with Jack, the black and white cat, on hers—“Jack” for the sort of reason known only to the brain of a six-year-old Starsky, as she was a female—Michaela said: “You know Aunty Maureen? –Polly’s mother.”

    June nodded vigorously, eyeing her cautiously.

    “Jake said she’s coming up next weekend,” said Michaela.

    “That explains why—” June broke off.

    “Why they’re having a holiday up the bach first: yeah,” said Michaela placidly.

    “Well, yes!”

    “Jake has to go to Canada, so Aunty Maureen said she’d stay with Polly.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “And look out, Jake said she’s keen as mustard to see Bub!” finished Michaela, grinning broadly.

    A sheepish sort of very pleased grin spread slowly over June’s pinkening countenance. “I thought she might be.”

    Michaela nodded. “She’s knitted her something.”

   June gulped, but the sheepish pleased grin didn’t abate.

    “Whaddaya think?” said the enterprising Sir Jacob cautiously to his spouse on the Wednesday night, as their guests departed in Sol’s runabout.

    “What, about the three-way fight between you and Sol and Ivan over who was gonna be in charge of the barbecue?”

    “No, you clot!”

    “I think it’s a terrible pity. He used to be a nice little boy before he got so tall and started believing the macho brain-washing shi—”

    “Shuddup,” he said, hugging her roughly into his side. “What do ya think?”

    “—that you macho idiots dish out so relentlessly without ever wondering if it’s merely the result of your own brainwashing,” finished Polly relentlessly. “Um... I don’t know what to think, actually.”

    Jake had by now gathered that, so he merely groaned.

    In the runabout Sol and Michaela were both silent. This didn’t matter, Ivan was talking enough for all three of them. Even though it was nominally way past his bedtime.

    At the marina he woulda got out and come with them over to the boutique, since Michaela was sleeping in its loft for tonight, only Sol said firmly: “Stay there. Guard the boat.”

    Ivan had been about to object but to Sol’s astonishment this final injunction apparently convinced him. Even though he’d gotten so tall just recently, his brain couldn’ta caught up with the rest of him. Well, not an uncommon syndrome—true.

    “Ain’t he gotten tall?” said Sol mournfully as they walked slowly up to the three little stores in the dim light provided by the glow from the Royal K, the few stars showing in an overcast sky, and them trendy fake-Victorian, fake-gas lamps what decorated the whole of Kingfisher Parade.

    “Yes. Starksy’s really pissed off about it, because Bob said he reckoned Ivan was gonna be taller than him. –That was after Starsky had blown their fuses and the vacuum-cleaner wouldn’t work,” she said placidly.

    Sol laughed. “It woulda been! –No, but he has gotten tall.”

    “Yes,” said Michaela uncertainly.

    “I really envy June and Bob their marriage,” he said grimly.

    “Oh. Um... they’ve been married for ages. What I mean is, they met at Art School and—and they’ve been together ever since.”

    “Yeah,” he said tiredly.

    “They’re lucky.”

    Sol didn’t say and maybe they worked at it: in the first place it was a cliché, in the second place it was a cliché he didn’t subscribe to, and in the third place he guessed June and Bob were, when ya came right down to it, far too simple to be sufficiently self-aware to work at it. And in the fourth place he had always thought they were lucky, ever since he’d first walked into that there bitsy creosoted house of theirs and seen their wonderful ceiling. Like, ten millennia back? Round that, yeah.

   “Yeah.”

    Michaela swallowed loudly and didn’t say anything more.

    Sol sighed. “Is this subject boring the pants offa you?”

    “No!” she gasped. “Um, several people have said that to me—that they envy June an Bob, I mean. They just—they just... chanced across the right person for them. And they both like the same sort of life. And—and... I’m not sure. Jemima says it’s because neither of them tries to change the other that they’re so happy.”

    “Mm-hm. That is one of Jemima’s theme-songs, honey.”

    “I know that,” said Michaela in a strangled voice, turning scarlet.

    After a moment Sol realized that the strangled voice was because of the “honey.” He hadn’t called her honey in— Wal, he didn’t know. Guessed it was some time. He took a deep breath, dug his nails tight into his palms and said, more or less in her vernacular: “Michaela, I’m real fed up.”

    There was a short silence.

    “What with?” said Michaela very cautiously.

    “Us, I guess.” said Sol flatly.

    Michaela didn’t respond.

    “We don’t seem to be going anywhere. In fact we seem to be going backwards.”

    “Does that mean you don’t want to come on Wednesdays any more?” she said hoarsely.

    “Hell, I don’t know, Michaela!” He took another deep breath and managed to say calmly: “Do you want me to?”

    Another silence. This time Sol didn’t break it and was rewarded, or punished, by her finally saying: “I don’t know.”

    He coulda guessed that one for himself. “Uh-huh.”

    “Um—you didn’t want me to do your garden,” said Michaela hoarsely, not having intended to say any such thing.

    They had reached his very own fake-gas lamp that was just near enough to the store to throw a strange sort of glow into the gabled room and deceive you into thinkin’ it was light enough to see by until you fell over something. Sol peered at her face. “What?”

    “Um—I thought— Um—I wanted to help!” she gasped.

    Sol was silent for a moment. “I see,” he said at last. “Did you want to feel you were part of Sol’s Cove, honey?”

    Michaela swallowed loudly. “Um—yes. Um—I thought— It doesn’t matter,” she added hurriedly.

    Sol didn’t press her. He had a feeling it might not produce the desired result. He walked slowly up to the boutique’s door, rested one hand on it, leaned heavily on that arm, and sighed. “I’ve done something wrong, haven’t I?” he said, looking more or less at the crack under the door what wasn’t draughty no more, Ida had bought a real nifty draught-excluder that fit, and he had screwed it on for her.

    “No,” said Michaela in a strangled voice.

    Ignoring that. Sol said: “Only I can’t figure out what the Hell... I been going slow; Jesus, I been going so slow that I can’t stand it no more!”

    Michaela gulped.

    “That’s what I mean by fed up. Maybe it’s too soon,” he said, glaring at the door, “only I can’t hack it on this basis no more, Michaela. I think we gotta have a—a resolution, here!”

    “A what?” she said nervously.

    “A— Oh. Sort things out: decide where we wanna go. Okay?”

    “Now?” she croaked.

    Sol thought he heard tears in her voice. He straightened with an effort, turned to face her and said: “Wal, not this minute. I guess you need time to think about what you want. Only Jesus, if it goes on for one more day, I—” He broke off.

    “What—what would we do?” said Michaela in a trembling voice.

    “You mean if you decide you can stand me in your bed?” he said grimly.

    She nodded mutely.

    Sol passed his hand over his hair. Surprisingly, it was still there. “You mean the basis of the relationship. huh?”

    “Mm.”

    “Jesus, I—” He broke off. “Look, I’ll tell you what I would really like, okay? Now, this makes no allowance for your wants or needs, I realise that. Only it seems to me that we’ve both been more or less fumbling around in the dark, too goddamn scared to make any sort of move, these past few months, lessen it was the wrong one. Well, I know I have. I’d really like you to come live at Sol’s Cove with me on a permanent basis, Michaela.” He drew a difficult breath. “And—and maybe think about having a couple of kids, if—if the doctor said it was safe for you. –Before it’s too late for the both of us,” he added on a grim note that he hadn’t intended, it had just kinda gotten in there.

    Michaela swallowed.

    “And ducks!” said Sol loudly.

    “It might be too salty there for ducks…” she said dubiously. “I suppose we could build them a pond. We could have hens. Or banties: I like Jemima’s banties.”

    “So do l,” he said dazedly. “Lil’ brown ones, huh?”

    “Yes. I know a lady who lives in Puriri, well, a lady and a man, they’ve got a good idea. One year they put the hen-run along one way, and give all the scraps and that to the hens. Then the next year they put it along the other way and turn the old run into a vege garden!”

    “Uh—oh,” he said dazedly. “Natural manurin’ system, right?”

    “Yes. Your soil really needs it. We’d have to grow the veges up the back. We’d have to get rid of a lot of those trees.”

    “Second growth,” said Sol shakily in the local vernacular. “No loss.

    She was silent. He didn’t dare to ask whether that was a yup or a nup. Gutless, uh-huh.

    “Bruce Smith says I’m the healthiest specimen he’s seen in a long time.” said Michaela at last.

    “Uh—good.”

    She gulped. “I always have my periods regularly!” she said loudly.

    Sol found his eyes had filled with tears. “Uh-huh,” he said huskily. “That sounds like a good sign, honey. But there’s no need to—to talk about all that just at the present. You think about whether you even fancy the idea of—of me bein’ the father of your kids, okay?”

    “Yes. Only you have to think about things like that, because what if you decide you will and then you can’t?”

    “Yes. I see,” said Sol. Suddenly he did see, in fact he felt as if a blinding light from above—not the Kingfisher Parade fake-Victorian monstrosities—had struck him all at once. Jesus, she hadn’t ever dared to let herself hope or make plans or nothing, had she, because always in her experience getting her hopes up and making plans had gotten her nowhere. Worse than nowhere, in deep shit. Sol had often felt that he’d like to take Hugh Morton by his neck and shake him until what little brain the jerk had rattled in his head—even though rationally he did recognize that it hadn’t been Hugh’s fault that he hadn’t been able to hack Michaela’s way of life. Well, not just her way of life: her whole Weltanschauung, he guessed. Now he felt it again, much more strongly, and if Hugh had stood before them at that moment he would not merely have shaken him, he would have killed him. Choked the life out of him. And enjoyed doing it.

    “Think it over, okay?” he said shakily. “And—and think about the basis on which you’d like to live. Like, uh, sharing the housework.” He swallowed. “And the childcare and all that stuff.”

    “Yes. You haven’t got much money, have you?”

    “No. I got enough, I think. The store’s doing real good. And your pots are selling like crazy.”

    “Yes.”

    “We don’t need to live like rich folks,” he said shakily.

    “No.”

    Sol took a deep breath. “Just—just think it over, okay? I better go now. Gotta get young Ivan to bed.”

    “Yes.”

    He unlocked the boutique’s door for her. “There ya go. I think Ida’s put enough supplies for a regiment in that icebox, have anything you fancy for breakfast.”

    “Yes. –You said it,” said Michaela pleasedly. “You hardly ever do.”

    “What?” he said dazedly.

    “Icebox. Instead of fridge.”

    “Uh—oh,” he said weakly. “I try not to, it ain’t used out here.”

    “No. I suppose that’s why I like it when you do.”

    “Ye-ah... Oh, Jesus, you mean you like it when I’m relaxed enough with you to lapse into my own vernacular?”

    “Yes. Not when you’re being silly, of course.”

    “Of course,” said Sol shakily. “Uh—could we try an experiment?” he said, clearing his throat.

    Michaela paused on the threshold. “What?”

    “A good-night kiss. If it turns us both off we can stop thinking about getting it together.”

    “Yes.”

    Sol didn’t ask yes what, he just did it.

    “You’re shaking,” discovered Michaela in astonishment.

    “Uh-huh. –Did you like that?”

    She hadn’t really responded, just stood there passively. Maybe it was just as well she hadn’t responded, because as it was he’d nearly come right there and then, what with all those months of frustration.

    “Yes,” she said hoarsely.

    “Good. Me, too. I won’t do it again, I might explode. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

    “Yes,” said Michaela hoarsely. “Good-night, then.”

    “Good-night.” Sol turned away and hurried down to the marina. If he’da stood there one more second he’da—

    Michaela locked the door carefully and went slowly upstairs. It would not have been true to say she was thinking things over. She had, however, begun to tremble violently, much more so than Sol had done at the feel of her mouth under his.

    Sol sat on the concrete retaining wall that ringed the artificial curve of Kingfisher Bay, his back to the block of stores, his feet dangling just above the water. The tide was in. It was very early, just on six. He hadn’t slept a wink. Back at Sol’s Cove Ivan had woken well before crack of dawn and attempted to get him to make breakfast, so he’d taken the kid along to the boatyard and dumped him on Euan. Euan musta noticed the desperate look in his eye: he’d said amiably that Ivan could stay with him for the day. Sol had come on down to Kingfisher Bay even though it was far too early for her to be up, or to have made a decision, or... Anyroad, might as well be here as anywhere. He wasn’t particularly cold, he was in his grey tracksuit top and his jeans. And it wasn’t a cold morning. Crispish, with the smell of autumn in the air, but not cold.

    The sky lightened. Several yachties took off. The guy that owned that nice little launch, Tui, took off. Sol went on sitting there. A four-wheel-drive drew up in Hugh Morton’s marina parking slot and a thin guy and a dark-haired woman got out with fishing gear and a hamper and took off in Kittiwake. The sun came up, and warmed Sol’s right side. Gradually there was more activity audible from the grassy slope of Kingfisher Bay: voices, doors slamming, car engines starting, even an extra-early dad-blamed motor-mower. Be real good when them hedges was growed enough for ’em to use their hedge-trimmers, huh?

    Down in the marina two curvaceous female figures in shorts and very little else appeared on the deck of Jonelsa and took the raincovers, I kid you not, off of her varnished, I kid you not, foredeck, and upholstered, I kid you not, afterdeck. Though he was probably only imagining the smell of fried bacon and kidneys that then seemed to proceed from Jonelsa’s direction. Nigh to big as a houseboat, she was, and Jonathan Carewe certainly used her like one. What had become of the other half of the name, God only knew: last summer’s girls had been Sondra and Samantha, though as far his failing eyesight could determine, these two wasn’t neither of them. Sol went on sitting there. Nev Smallfield’s grandkids appeared on the deck of Nev’s White Cloud and started shriekin’ at each other. Pretty soon, Nev Smallfield’s son appeared, yelled at ’em, and dragged ’em below. Sol went on sitting there. Pretty soon Phoebe appeared on the deck of the Saucy Sal, fully clad, and started yelling. He appeared topsides, yawning, in his dad-blamed navy silk dressing-gown. What the Hell, Sol went on watchin’ regardless. Took her ten minutes by his watch to get ole Ralph below and changed, on deck again, and takin’ off in the general direction of Carter’s Bay, the Gulf, and Kawau Island. Figured. Sol went on sitting there.

    At the sight of his thin, grey-clad back, hunched shoulders and bowed head, Michaela was filled by a strange, sweet, trembling sensation. It was utterly unlike the physical shakes that she’d experienced the night before, and even more disconcerting. She went over to him and said: “Hullo.”

    “Hullo,” said Sol shakily.

    Michaela sat down beside him, swinging her legs neatly over the wall.

    “How are you?” he said idiotically.

    “Okay.”

    There was a short silence.

    “Where’s Ivan?” she asked.

    “Dumped him on Euan.”

    “Oh.”

    Sol sighed. “He’s a good kid, but—!” He shrugged a little.

    “Ye-es... June says they’re always there.”

    “Huh? Oh!” he said in great enlightenment, reddening. “Yeah. For eighteen years or so, right?”

    “Yes. Roger Coggins is more than that. I think he’s about twenty or twenty-one.”

    “Yeah. Well, give him time, he’s aiming at an M.E.!” he said, smiling. “Only I take your point. And I don’t think I’d seriously want to dump my kids on someone else after I’d had ’em. Or—uh—just walk away from ’em, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

    “Yes,” said Michaela simply. “Everyone gets fed up at times, I didn’t mean that.”

    “No.”

    “I couldn’t do it all by myself, I need to do my work.”

    “Yeah. If we had kids,” said Sol carefully, “I can promise you without any reservations that I’d be there for them, Michaela.”

    “Yes. You’re rather like Tom,” she said thoughtfully.

    Sol flushed a little. “Tom Overdale? Am I? Well, I guess he adores young Dirk, all right, huh?”

    “Yes. That’s why I think it would be all right. So long as you understand,” said Michaela, frowning, “that I couldn’t stop working.”

    “Hell, no!” he said in horror. “I wouldn’t ever want you to, Michaela! I understand that potting’s—well, it’s more than necessary to you: it’s part of your essential nature, isn’t it?”

    “Yes.”

    There was a pause. Michaela dug in the pocket of her jeans. “I got this,” she said hoarsely, handing him a sheet of paper.

    Sol took it numbly. Japanese?

    “It’s from Ito. David Shapiro’s written on the back of it.”

    He turned it over and at first read it through uncomprehendingly.

    “Oh! I get it,” he said weakly. “Old David’s translated it, huh?”

    “Yes.”

    Ito was on some committee or other that was organizing a potters’ convention and he wanted Michaela to come on over with some of her stuff for it.

    “Ito’s the younger one, huh? What’d he be: seventy-five, now?”

    “Seventy-seven,” she said seriously.

    Right. So that made Toshiro... “Old Toshiro still going strong?” he said cautiously.

    “Yes. He’s eighty-two.”

    “Uh-huh. And will he be at this here hooley?”

    “No, he hates talking.”

    Sol smiled. “Yeah.”

    Michaela swallowed loudly. “It’s quite soon.”

    “Yes.”

    “It won’t be your busy season,” she said anxiously.

    “Uh—no.”

    “Would you like to come?” she said hoarsely.

    “Uh—Jesus,” he said weakly. “To Japan?”

    “Yes. I thought we could both go. You know. Ito says ‘and partner.’” She added something to herself in Japanese and said: “He probably didn’t say that, that’s probably just David’s translation. But this—um—group, that’s not the word, the people that are running it, they’ve got lots of money. Tom Wilson went to one of their shows one year. I mean, he was Visiting Potter at it, and they sent him air tickets for two, so as his wife could go. Only she didn’t want to. –That was before he went up the Hokianga permanently.”

    Sol had now visited with Tom—once. It was the most God-forsaken place you could possibly imagine. There was nothing there—nothing. No running water, no electricity: nothing. Nada, zilch. Every drop of water in the place either came from the big storage tank or, if it was low, hadda be brung up by hand from the creek. And if the tank was low it was because it hadn’t rained, and the creek would also— Geddit? And apparently Tom hadn’t never heard of no chemical toilets, or if so, he wasn’t interested, but anyroad he had what the Kiwis referred to politely as an “outhouse” or less politely as an “outside dunny” or “long drop.” Jesus, God. In the nineteen-nineties? This was not just boondocks, it was way out past the boondocks! If Sol could sorta understand the fact that Tom Wilson had been pissed off at his wife’s never taking an interest in his pots he could even more understand her gettin’ one look at that place of his up there and runnin’ straight for the divorce courts.

    “Uh-huh,” he said neutrally. He read the translation through again. It was beginning to make more sense. “I get it! ‘Visiting Potter’, huh? Say, that’s an honour, Michaela!”

    Michaela blushed, and nodded.

    “And— Oh, gee,” he said feebly. “You want me to go as—as...” His eyes filled with tears. “So you will come live with me, Michaela?”

    “Yes,” she said. licking her lips. “I tried to think about it, only I couldn’t, really.”

    Sol looked at her anxiously. “But you do want to?”

    She nodded hard.

    “Jesus,” he said, sniffing. “Jesus,”

    Michaela touched his knee gently. “Come inside.”

    He got up, sniffing, and followed her meekly across the road, into the boutique and upstairs.

    He hadn’t been imagining the smell of bacon and kidneys after all. She’d used that there fancy bench-top griller of Ida’s, it was all greasy, and the plate of ’em was a-sittin’ in Ida’s spare microwave.

    “I thought I was hungry,” she said, following his gaze, and blushing. “Only then I wasn’t. We could have them for breakfast, if you haven’t had yours.”

    “No; too nervous to eat.”

    “Yes.” Michaela looked at him apologetically. “Actually, I’ve got to go to the toilet.”

    “Uh-huh. You go.” She went downstairs. Sol tottered over to the narrow stretcher-bed and looked at it. Then he sat down on it. Then he thought, okay, what the Hell, if it don’t work out now it never will, and took all his clothes off and got into it.

    When Michaela came back only his head was visible. She looked down at him dubiously.

    “Yeah, I’m takin’ it for granted, all rightee,” he said.

    She nodded.

    “Didn’t I warn you I’m like that? Wal, I’m certain sure someone’s warned you!” he said on an irritable note.

    Michaela just nodded, and began to undress.

    Sol couldn’t actually believe it, but he watched her regardless. If this was a dream, better make the most of it.

    By the time all her clothes were on the floor he felt as if he was bright red all over: the dipped-in-boiling water syndrome, y’know? Jesus God, what a colour! And that down there, he’d never actually seen one that shade— Hell, that Aprylle hadn’t been a genuine red-head after all, the lying little bitch!

    “Jesus. I never seen a real red-head’s bush before,” he said numbly. “It’s kinda... not auburn, exactly...”

    “Mahogany,” said Michaela composedly. “There isn’t much room in that bed.”

    “Who cares? You can get in on top of me.” He lifted up the flowered duvet that sure as Hell wasn’t his, Ida musta brung it some time, he doubted if them little pink and blue daisies surrounded by a pink and blue paisley border were Michaela’s choice.

    Michaela looked at him and her face and ears went very red.

    That was a relief. Not to say real stimulating. As if he needed it.

    “Get in,” he said mildly.

    “I’ll squash you.”

    “Uh-huh. Let’s hope so.”

    He didn’t attempt to move aside, or lay on his side nor nothing.

    She hadda kind of crouch down and roll herself on top of him. Oh, Jesus!

    “I’m gonna come,” he said very faintly.

    “I am squashing you.”

    “Mm,” said Sol, shutting his eyes and pulling every last square inch of her palest pink curves tight against him.

    Michaela sighed. “Your arms are nice and skinny,” she said in a muffled voice into his neck.

    “Uh-huh. –Jesus, I think I am gonna come,” he said faintly.

    He both felt and heard her gulp.

    “What?” he said in her ear.

    “Can you do it in me?” said Michaela in a strangled voice.

    “Yeah. Edge up a mite.” She edged up a mite. Sol nearly passed out, it was that good. “Now, edge down a—” He wriggled a bit. “JESUS!”

    “Oh, Sol!” said Michaela on a gasp. He was still straining her to him, she didn’t have much room to manoeuvre, but she was managing to move on him.

    “Sol!” she gasped, sliding up and down on him like crazy.

    “Kiss me, for God’s sake!” he gasped.

    Michaela covered his mouth with hers, panting.

    Sol mighta been going to say he loved her or something, only it was so good he couldn’t manage it: he was gonna—

    She began to moan, still sliding up and down. Her head was thrown back and her eyes were closed. Sol gritted his teeth. Then he began to pant hard. Then he held her tight and thrust up as well as he could—she was pretty much in charge—and started to groan a bit on his own account. Michaela gave a high-pitched squeal sorta through her nose and Sol was just conscious enough to realise she was nearly there and so was—

    Then she clenched on him like crazy and gave a terrific hoarse shriek and he pulled her against him with all his might and just exploded in there. Like there were no tomorrows—A-frames, trips to Japan as Consort of Visiting Potter, and kids and ducks or not, and certainly no yesterdays; but only this one single moment, forever.

    … “Them kidneys and bacon’ll be like rocks,” he noted, after several eternities had passed.

    “They’re in the microwave,” she said, yawning, “but it isn’t on.”

    “Can you work it?” he murmured.

    “No.”

    Sol shook all over. He was now sorta lying on his side and she was sorta lying on her side, but the stretcher sure as Hell hadn’t been built for two. Michaela also shook all over, and the stretcher collapsed.

    Several hysterical eternities later he said: “What the heck! It wasn’t no more’n four inches off of the floor anyways.”

    “It’ll be good practice for Japan.”

    He kissed her. “It sure will!”

    “No!” said Michaela, laughing. “Sleeping on the floor!”

    “Omigod.”

    “It’s quite comfortable really.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “You don’t have to come,” she said anxiously, peering at him.

    “Try and stop me! –Listen, we better see about passports straight off, okay?”

    “I’ve got one.”

    “Yeah, but is it still current? And we’ll need visas, too.”

    “Haven’t you got one of those? Isn’t that what pay for your petrol with?”

    “Uh—oh. No, that’s different, I’ll explain later, okay?”

    “Okay. Can you use them in Japan?”

    “Mmm,” he said, snuggling against her. “You sure can! It’s where all them cute liddle Jap kids come from.”

     Michaela gulped. “Ooh, help! We forgot to use a condom!”

    One of us mighta forgot, yeah. Though it was true that at some point in the past millennium or two he had taken some sort of decision not to do it without one until she’d seen her doctor.

    “We better get married real quick, then,” he said, yawning.

    “Married?”

    “Yeah: ya don’t think I want a little illegitimate Jap kid, do ya?”

    “April, May... It wouldn’t be born while we were in Japan!”

    “Whatever. –So?”

    “What?” she said in bewilderment.

    Sol bit his lip. “Shall we get married? Do you want to? Because I sure do.”

    “If you like,” said Michaela humbly.

    Possibly he should have insisted. Or told her it hadda be if she liked. Or at the very least if they both liked.

    “I like,” he said, peering at her blearily.

    “All right, then,” said Michaela, smiling serenely at him. “Let’s.”

    It might not have been good enough for your liberated Nineties’ man, but it sure as Hell was better ’n good enough for S. Winkelmann, Ace Parasite, Dad-Blamed Fool, Gutless Wonder, Never Knowed When He Was Well Off, Etcetera.

    “Then we will,” he said.