43
“Raindrops Keep Falling…”
Mid-Year Break. The wind howled, the rain hurled itself against the windows, and boys tracked mud unendingly through the house. But Meg and June didn’t care: Polly had sent the Rolls to collect them for a ladies’ afternoon tea and Bill and Bob weren’t invited, hah, hah, hah!
“Well, that would seem to be that!” concluded Laura cheerfully. She ate a small cheese savoury and beamed at the company.
“Yeff,” agreed Polly, nodding, through a mouthful of cheese savoury.
Meg’s and June’s mouths were too full even to utter that much, so they just nodded fiercely.
Meg then managed to swallow, and said on an edgy note: “Of course, his divorce hasn’t come through, yet...”
“Don’t be a nana!” gasped Laura. “Have you seen that bloody great mansion he’s bought her in Mountain Road?”
“Just off Mountain Road,” corrected Polly with a laugh in her voice.
“We went for a drive over that way last weekend,” confessed June. “It’s a lovely sheltered little street... It’s awfully up-market, though.”
“Ralph’s got pots,” said Lady Carrano unemotionally.
“He’d need to: the rates alone, anywhere round there—!” said Laura with feeling.
“Of course, it’s handy to The Mater for him,” said Meg on an edgy note.
“Hoo minsh’ walk ’way: yeah,” agreed Laura thickly.
“Ye-es... “ said Meg uneasily.
Laura swallowed thickly. “Meg, what in God’s name’s up? Surely you don’t think Phoebe’s going to renege on it at this stage?”
“We-ell… Well, they did do it rather quickly. I mean, after they’d—um—decided. Well, I mean, it isn’t that long since she was going round with Sol, if you work it out,” said Meg uneasily.
“What did they have to wait for?” said Polly mildly.
“Yeah: at their ages,” agreed Laura, staring.
Meg went rather red. “No—um—no; but...”
“We had dinner with them last week: they seem very settled,” said Polly. “And very happy, Meg.”
Meg swallowed. “Mm...”
“Who cooked the dinner?” asked Laura with a grin.
Lady Carrano gave her a dry look. “He did, you idiot. It was excellent. Home-made pâté, very rare roast beef with superb mashed potato, braised endives belges, a plain salad, a nice runny Camembert, and a bavarois Religieuse that Jake made the expected pig of himself over.”
“I understood at least two words of that,” said Laura numbly.
“Well, it was lovely,” said Polly definitively. “The pudding was a huge great chocolatey custard thing!” she said loudly as Laura opened her mouth.
“Oh: got it, got it. He did one of those baked Alaska things for us,” she admitted. “Jim made a pig of himself, too.”
“How—how was Phoebe, though?” asked Meg nervously.
They goggled at her.
Finally Laura said weakly: “How would you be, Meg, with a resident cordong blue cook that’s potty on you?”
“Oh. Is he?” she said uneasily.
“Besotted,” said Laura drily. “He’s made her get rid of her car, did I say?”
“How does she get to work, though?” asked June, very puzzled.
“As a matter of fact—well, according to ruddy Yvonne, but her gen’s usually good—he’s been driving her,” admitted Meg. “In that snouty-nosed thing.”
“Is it?” said June feebly. “I thought it was the latest model. Bob said it must have set him back, um—thousands,” she ended weakly.
“Yes,” said Lady Carrano definitely.—The ladies watched greedily as she sliced up the rich, dark chocolate cake—“Go on, Laura,” she said mildly. “Tell them.”
“He’s bought her a Merc. Two-seater. But it’s got a top; would that be right, Polly?”
“A hard top. Mm. And the reason your mate Yvonne hasn’t seen her round School in it yet, Meg, is that there’s a waiting-list for the things.”
After a moment Meg said feebly: “You mean she’s letting him?”
“Uh—well, I gather there was something of a demarcation dispute,” admitted Laura.
“I knew it!” she cried.
“No, ya didn’t,” said Laura, taking a huge piece of chocolate cake. “He finally agreed that the little woman could trade in the old heap, and she graciously accepted the rest of the prishe fro— Shorry.” She chewed and swallowed thickly. “From him.”
“Help,” said Meg numbly.
June just looked numbly from one to the other of them.
After a minute Polly said kindly: “Have some cake, Meg. It really does sound all right.”
“Yeah: what is all this doom and gloom, Meg?” demanded Laura. “Everything in the garden’s rosy! Couldn’t be rosier. –Actually I think that two-storeyed place’s garden is full of roses. Well, Jim reckons that’s what all those stunted sticks are. Bit hard to tell, this time of year.”
“Yes, there’s a rose arbour: that garden’s very pretty in summer,” said Polly.
Laura stared at her.
“We know the former owners,” she admitted.
“The ones that have moved to a penthouse in The Pines: right?”
“No!” she said with a startled laugh. “Who told you that? No: they’ve bought one of those new condos in Carter’s Bay. No stairs, and it’s got a huge balcony for her pot plants.”
“You don’t mean that gruesome white wedding-cake thing your husband’s putting up in View Road?” croaked Laura.
“Not him, personally. Carrano Development.”
“It’s hideous!” gasped Laura.
Polly shrugged. “They like it. But if you feel like that about it, Laura, why don’t you get yourself elected to the County Council?”
“It’s easier to sit back and bitch,” explained Laura, grinning.
June gave a sudden loud giggle. “Yes! Um—haven’t we wandered from the point again?” she added with another giggle.
“Yeah; why have you assumed the rôle of Cassandra, Meg?” asked Polly.
Meg chewed hard. They waited. She swallowed cake. “I haven’t exactly— Um, well, the thing is, she’s still going on with her Ph.D.”
They stared at her. Finally Laura said: “Meg, I don’t think that she’s the type to sit quietly at home polishing the Meissen in the intervals of snipping off a dead rose-head or two and driving slowly into Remmers to take afternoon tea.”
“I’ve forgotten the cake forks again!” remembered Polly.
The ladies looked guiltily from their sticky hands to the huge pieces of cake before them, and back again. Though admittedly Laura was chewing as she did it.
“Never mind,” said Meg at last. “I haven’t even got any cake forks, Polly.”
“Um, I think I have,” said June, wrinkling her brow. “They were a wedding present. I think Bob put them on top of the wardrobe.
“Best place for them,” decided Laura briskly. “—WELL?” she bellowed at Meg.
“Well, heck! She’s got a decent career, and now she’s got a husband and a new house to cope with as well: what does she want to go on bothering with a blimmin’ degree for?”
“She did say she felt she’d given St Ursie’s all she could, Meg,” murmured Polly.
Meg goggled at her.
Polly took another piece of cake. “And that it was time for a change.”
“She’s just MADE a change!” shouted Meg.
“It isn’t the same as doing a higher degree, Meg,” said Polly definitely.
“Can’t be,” agreed Laura cheerfully. “Her and Jim were going on about the Training Coll education curriculum that time she had us round for tea. She reckons it needs gingering up, or something. Well, don’t ask me. Something to do with getting back to basics.”
“Spelling would be nice,” said Polly on an acid note.
Laura nodded, “Wha’ h’I shaid,” she agreed thickly. She swallowed. “The puddings can’t spell C,A,T. –Let alone ‘avocado’,” she added sourly.
Meg had already heard about this one: she explained, with a nervous glance at Laura: “They put two Vs in it. At least, Robbie did.—It was him, wasn’t it, Laura?”—Laura nodded grimly.—“And Mick corrected it, only, um, when Laura and Jim looked he’d corrected it to two Cs, instead.”
Polly and June both swallowed.
“Anyway, there you are!” said Laura definitely. “No reason why marrying Ralph should suddenly turn Phoebe’s brain to mush!”
“No,” said Meg dully.
“She’s been all right at School, hasn’t she?” asked Laura, staring at her.
Meg nodded miserably.
“Meg: what’s up?” demanded Polly bluntly.
“Well, if she’s going on with her Ph.D., she’ll want to take that leave, and that means she’s gonna go on nagging at me to do my Master’s.”
“ME-EG!” shouted Lady Carrano, closely followed by Laura.
“Oh, Meg,” said June sadly. “Don’t say you haven’t told her yet!”
Meg pouted, looking remarkably like Connie. “Well, she was all lit up, what with the engagement and the house, and she hasn’t said anything about it for ages, so I thought—”
Laura broke down and giggled helplessly.
“Don’t laugh,” said Polly feebly, swallowing hard. “If you don’t want to do it, Meg, you’ll just have to tell her you don’t.”
“Get it over with,” agreed June anxiously.
Suddenly Meg shouted: “It’s all right for HER! It’s different when you’ve got four kids and not enough money and the house is falling down round your ears!”
“If you started your Master’s and got the flaming deputyship it’d be more money,” pointed out Laura, wiping her eyes .
“Don’t be a clot, Laura,” said Lady Carrano calmly. She put her plate on the coffee table and rose smoothly. “Have you forgotten what’s it like?”
“Mm,” agreed June on a nervous note. “Sol said he wanted more cottages, but honestly, one a week’s more than I can manage, really. I mean, I’m still doing a dozen pixilated horrors a month, and Art For Art’s Sake have put in a definite order for mugs: I can’t just drop everything... And now Ivan’s started rotten Scouts: it’s far too far to let him walk, ’specially in this weather, and Bob’s got evening classes every other night, it isn’t fair to expect him to turn out on a Wednesday as well…” She ran down, and looked at them limply. “You know.”
“Yes, and Mason’s a Brownie, too, isn’t he?” agreed Meg.
“Cub,” said June faintly. “Mm. Well, at least it starts straight after school, but that means there’s no bus he can catch home.”
“Yeah. And Starsky’s got Computer Club,” remembered Meg.
“Bob takes him to that, it’s on one of his evening-class nights. Only it’s costing us a fortune for the plastic whatsits, the things they put in them, and of course he’s falling behind, he’s the only one in the class without a dratted computer of his own, so it looks as if we’re gonna have to cough up— Um, sorry, I think I’ve wandered from the point!” she said guiltily.
Polly had gone over to the sideboard. “No, you haven’t, June. Women without family responsibilities can never understand just how time-consuming and exhausting they are.”
“Oh, is that the point?” said Laura feebly.
“YES!” shouted Lady Carrano.
“All right, all right, no need to deafen me into submission! Uh—oh, yeah: I geddit, Meg,” said Laura sheepishly, She rubbed her nose. “Well, the puddings are grown up now, illiterate or not: I suppose I had sort of— Well, the memory of the pain fades, doesn’t it?’” she said with a chuckle. “Yeah, I never had time for anything much when they were smaller. It just about came to the point of divorce the year Robbie became a Sea Scout—talking of scouts,” she added to June. “I’d taken on a huge great commission, bloody stupid, really, a sort of mural thing, it was taking all my so-called spare time and every evening and most of the weekends, and Jim was teaching evening classes on top of volunteering for bloody School Cert marking even though we’d agreed he’d give it up that year—talking of evening classes,” she added to June. “And Mick was in the Fourth Form, and you know what they’re like at that age!” she added with a shudder.—Everybody nodded sympathetically, especially Meg and June.—“And Carey was in the Seventh Form and the bloody teachers were pushing him to sit Schol and he was refusing to do a stroke of work because of course he’d already done it, they make them do all the Schol work the year before at Grammar, and Jim was ropeable about the whole thing because he’s opposed to bloody Grammar’s pressurized Schol class anyway, only that didn’t justify Carey skiving off—” She drew a deep breath. “Anyway, Robbie’s bloody sea-scouting was just about the last straw that broke the camel’s back, because one of us had to take him there and back!” She smiled. at June. June nodded feelingly.
The others smiled and nodded, thinking Laura had finished, but she suddenly added viciously: “Not to mention the bloody chauffeuring to Saturday sports! You’ve never seen anything like it! Robbie’d have soccer at one end of the flaming city and Mick’d have hockey at the other, half an hour apart! Plus, I might add,” she added grimly, “Robbie’s sodding violin lessons on top of that, at two o’clock! –Jim’s mother was musical,” she added to their stunned expressions.
There was a sufficient silence.
Finally Meg said weakly: “The twins aren’t that bad. Well, Michael’s been making noises about the Computer Club, I think he’s under the delusion that Roger’ll let him use his. And Andrew’s getting quite keen on tennis. But at least they’re not interested in team sports. But Connie’s going to be: mindless little conformist,” she said grimly. “She’s already babbling about netball.” She paused. “Well,” she admitted with a conscious smile: “she calls it “nebball’ and can’t throw a ball straight for three feet, but it’s the thin end of the wedge. And she said ‘slam-dunk’ the other day. But it’s quite bad enough! And equality or not, Guess Who has to stay home if one of the kids gets sick!”—June nodded fiercely. Polly and Laura looked at her sympathetically.—“Half the time I have to pretend to ruddy Phoebe it’s me that’s sick—and don’t you dare breathe a word!” she suddenly snarled at Laura. Laura shook her head numbly. Meg took a deep breath. “And we spend hours a day travelling, the Bridge traffic gets thicker every day!”
“Well,” said Polly with a little smile, “they all call it ‘nebball’, Meg. But I agree it’s undoubtedly the thin end of the wedge.” She came back to her pretty flowered sofa, smiling. “A Master’s is certainly what you don’t need, at this juncture.”
Meg looked weakly at the portable phone in her hand. “What are you doing?” she croaked.
“Ringing Phoebe. And you’re going to tell her you can’t cope with a Master’s.”
Meg gulped. “I really can’t,” she said, looking at her plaintively. “Not on top of everything else. Not with all my marking. And it’d be worse, not better, if I did get the deputy’s job. All that awful admin!”
“Mm. –She could make that a whole new chapter in the thesis,” she noted detachedly.
“Yeah: ‘The Real Reason Women Don’t Rise in the Ruddy Professions’,” agreed Laura sourly.
“Something like that, mm,” murmured Polly, punching buttons.
Meg watched her fearfully.
“Hullo, Ralph,” she said, smiling. “It’s Polly. ...Oh, fine, thanks! No, he’s gone up to Carter’s Inlet on a macho pipi-ing trip. –What? No!” she choked. “Nanny wouldn’t let him take the twins pipi-ing in weather like this!”—Meg and June looked at each other and smiled.—“No: he’s gone with Bill and Bob and their boys: you know, Tom and Jemima’s neighbours. Anyway, how’s everything? ...Oh, good. ...Oh, are you? That’s nice,” she said weakly. The others looked at her uncertainly. Polly pulled an awful face at them but said: “Is Phoebe there. Ralph? –He’s getting her,” she said to them with a smile. “She’s in her study, working on her thesis.”
“Ask him what he’s been doing!” hissed Laura, grinning.
“Ssh! –Hi, Phoebe, how are you? How’s the work going?”—Laura pulled an awful face; June giggled guiltily; Meg smiled palely.—“No; specifically I rang you up to pass Meg onto you; she’s here for afternoon tea. She wants to tell you,” she said blandly, “that only an idiot would expect a harried mother of four who’s barely coping with a fulltime job to start any sort of swot until the youngest kid’s at least in its late teens. Only she won’t put it like that: she’s too polite. ...No, it wasn’t, was it?”—None of them could work out what this last meant, they all looked at her fearfully, even Laura.—“Yes. Okay; here she is. –Go on, she won’t eat you,” she said to Meg, passing her the receiver.
The others watched fearfully but in fact Meg didn’t say anything much. It was mostly: “Yes,” and “No,” and “Um—well, maybe later,” and at one point: “Yvonne’ll do all that admin stuff miles better than me, anyway,” and: “Oh—um, are you? That’s nice.” She put the phone down slowly.
“What did she say?” asked Laura.
Meg swallowed. “She said I should have stopped her before she got the bit between the teeth. And she said Yvonne can have it as acting deputy, but she won’t give it to her permanently because she isn’t real,”—she swallowed involuntarily—“real executive material.”—Laura choked.—“And—and—um—he was listening,” said Meg, going very red, “and he said she’s got no idea how the other half lives.”
Laura and Polly both went into strangled paroxysms, but June said with relief: “It’s all right, then, Meg!”
Meg nodded, but added with feeling; “Telling me she doesn’t know how the other half lives! Guess where the two of them are off to for the rest of Mid-Year Break!”
“Tahiti?” said Laura.
Meg glared. “No!”
“Surfer’s Paradise?” ventured June.
“No.”
“I won’t say ‘Bali,’ because Ralph told me where. And anyway, they’ve got Bali planned for this time next year. Once Phoebe’s got the major part of the thesis out of the way,” said Polly on a dry note.
Meg took a deep breath. “How nice,” she said bitterly. “Well, it’s flaming Ruapehu, if ya wanna know,” she said to the others. “The Chateau, what’s more. –I suppose he never stays anywhere else!” she said loudly to Polly.
“Um—well, I think he does always stay there when he goes for the skiing,” she admitted feebly.
“Yeah: when he goes to other places he stays at hotels other than The Chateau,” said Laura snidely, but very grammatically, eyeing the cake.
“Go on, it’s only twenty million calories,” said Meg sourly.
“Sure it isn’t twenty million and one? My diet says I mustn’t eat pieces of cake with over twenty million calories in ’em,” said Laura, taking another piece.
“It’s all right, then, Meg,” said Polly comfortingly.
Meg sighed. “Yes. Thanks awfully, Polly.”
“What’s The Chateau like?” asked June thoughtfully.
Everyone looked expectantly at Polly.
“Très up-market. Very dull, actually, June: full of middle-aged trendies. Jake hates it. We usually stay at a little ski-lodge that belongs to—”
“—the Governor General,” finished Laura.
“No, a small syndicate that Jake knows through his racing connections, actually,” said Polly, trying not to laugh.
“Ooh, yes: how is your horse?” asked Meg, brightening.
“He’s lovely. Not winning much, but he’s lovely!” said Polly, laughing. “Only unfortunately his loveliness has got Sir Jacob all inspired and he’s bought two more—whole ones, not just legs,” she added with a twinkle, “and he’s talking about buying a racing stable!”
“Tax deductible,” said Laura darkly.
“Something like that,” she agreed vaguely.
“Can you just buy a leg?” asked June feebly.
“Syndicated,” explained Meg scornfully.
June looked at her incredulously.
“She’s keen on them in theory, June,” explained Polly, trying not to laugh.
June giggled suddenly. “Well, she isn’t in reality, that’s for sure! We were out for a walk one day and we saw one in field and she wouldn’t go near it: she’s scared of their big feet! –Starsky takes the same size shoes as Bob, now,” she added on a sudden glum note.
The ladies nodded sympathetically, and Polly kindly offered her another sherry. June admitted she didn’t mind if she did: it was awfully nice, she’d never heard of that brand. Laura coughed suddenly.
“Michael’s wearing that bush shirt of Bill’s, now,” revealed Meg with a sigh. “Well, I admit it shrank in the wash, but…”
The ladies nodded sympathetically.
“I told you Connie said ‘slam-dunk’ the other day, didn’t I?” she added mournfully.
The ladies nodded sympathetically and Polly gave her another sherry.
After a moment June said cautiously: “Derry Dawlish has gone back to England, has he, Polly?”
“Well, not exactly. He has gone—he’s finished editing the film—but he doesn’t live in England, he lives in the South of France.”
“Oh,” said June limply.
“Well, go on, Polly!” said Meg crossly.
“Go on what?”
Scowling, Meg said: “What about him and Akiko?”
Polly stared at her.
“Look, he even brought her to that dinner that Tom and Jemima gave to get Phoebe and Ralph together, Polly, you can’t pretend he—he—”
“—wasn’t up her,” finished Laura kindly, as Meg had faltered to a stop.
“Uh—no, I’m not pretending anything, Meg. She’s gone home, of course.”
“To Japan?” faltered June.
“Mm.”
There was a short silence.
Polly poured herself another sherry and drank it off rapidly. “And don’t ask me about Michaela and Sol, because I don’t know anything! Whenever I go round to her place she’s always out. And I’ve tried grilling Ginny, but all she’ll say is that Michaela won’t talk to her, and she can’t—no, won’t,” she said, wrinkling her straight nose—“won’t make her if she doesn’t want to.”
“She won’t talk to me, either,” said June sadly. “I did try to talk her into the Japan trip,”
“Yes, I know, June,” agreed Polly, sighing. “Jake hasn’t given up on it, mind you, but anyone with less super-optimism than his Sir-ship would have, I have to admit.”
“Mm,” they all agreed sadly.
“I suppose,” ventured Meg eventually, “no-one’s, um, spoken to Sol about it, have they?”
“Um—well, I have to admit that Sir Jacob’s elephantine foot has been in there, Meg,” Polly admitted.
Meg winced.
“Actually,” admitted Laura, “so has Jim’s, I gather.”
“Well—um—what did he say?” asked June nervously, addressing, as far as they could see, both of them impartially.
“You first,” said Laura firmly.
Polly swallowed. “Um, I think Jake said something like Sol had made a right tit of himself by the sounds of it, and what was he going to do about it?”—The ladies gulped.—“And Sol asked him what he suggested.”—The ladies gulped again.—“Well, you can’t say he didn’t ask for it,” she said detachedly. “Only then Sol admitted he hasn’t been able to get near Michaela, she’s been avoiding him.”
“Yes,” said June, sighing. “She never goes up to the boutique, these days.”
“How long ago was it?” demanded Laura, frowning.
“Um—beginning of March?” said Polly fuzzily. “No, hang on, that was when we had the barbie and Akiko took up with Derry... Um, I think it was near the end of March, Laura. –Why?”
Laura counted on her fingers laboriously. “Three and a half months. Um—well, I just thought maybe she’d have had time by now to get over the shock and, um, realize there was nothing in it, or... Well, it wasn’t as if Michaela and him were actually an item, was it?”
“No: I said that to her,” revealed June, going very red.
“Help, what did she say?” gasped Meg.
June swallowed. “She said she knew that.”
They looked at her with their mouths slightly open.
June swallowed again. “Then she said that it was no use thinking about men, none of them were nice underneath.”
“Hell’s bells!” cried Laura in horror.
“Yes. I did try to—to explain that—that it would only have been a physical thing and—and that it didn’t mean that Sol didn’t like her, only she—um—just went away. –She does that,” she explained sadly.
After a due pause for horrified contemplation Polly said weakly: “When was this, June?”
June was blowing her nose. She put her hanky away and said: “The end of last month: I thought she might have had time to get over the shock by then.”
“Oh, heck,” said Meg.
“Yeah,” agreed Laura. “Poor soul. Mind you, I’d have been ropeable if I’d caught Jim doing something that bloody silly when we were sort of—um, thinking about it.”
“I don’t think she’s angry, exactly, Laura,” said June, sniffing.
The ladies contemplated this one in silence.
Finally Polly ventured cautiously: “Is she working, June?”
“Well, she is starting to, yes, that’s the one good thing,” said June, cheering up and smiling at her. “Grey and fawn glazes. They look a bit odd, but they’re still at the experimental stage.”
“That’s a relief!” said Laura, beaming at her.
“I think she’s burying herself in her work,” announced Meg darkly.
“It’s better than brooding,” said Polly on a firm note. “Anyway, what did your one say to Sol, Laura?”
Laura jumped. “Eh? Oh. Um, he didn’t report the laconic macho interchange verbatim. But it was something along the lines of we’d thought Sol and Michaela might make a go of it, and Sol said something along the lines of he’d thought so, too. Only it was hard to make a go of anything when you hadn’t set eyes on the other person concerned in two months. Um—something like that.”
“Shit,” pronounced Meg after a period of contemplation.
Laura sighed. “Yes, well, tact isn’t Jim’s middle name, but he done his little male best.’
After a moment June gasped: “But least it proves it!”
“Huh?” said Laura dully.
“Proves Sol really is interested in Michaela!” she gasped. “I mean, if he admitted it in so many words to Jim!”
“He admitted it in so many words to me back at the barbecue,” murmured Polly.
“What?” cried June indignantly„
“I’m sorry, June; I thought— Well, everyone seemed to be taking it as a given, so— Well, I’m sorry, I’d have mentioned it I thought there was the least doubt about it,” said Polly limply.
After a moment Meg said firmly: “Well, at any rate there’s no doubt about it now.”
“No, but she’s so stubborn!” cried June.
“Mm. Well, let’s hope he can be even stubborner,” said Polly on a grim note.
“Ye-es...” said June uneasily.
Polly got up and poured them all more sherry. “We’ve all done our best. And it is their business,” she said firmly.
“Oh, is it?” said Laura in astonishment.
“Shut up,” she said, trying not to laugh. “Of course it is. And Sol’s got plenty of sense. –Appearances to the contrary,” she admitted with a silly smile. “I’m sure he won’t give up.”
June sighed. “No-o…”
“Drink up, June,” said Laura kindly. “Tell us about these cottages you mentioned; is this something new?”
“Haven’t you seen them? They’re super!” said Meg, beaming at her.
“Yes—hang on!” said Polly, rushing out. She was back in two minutes, beaming. “See!”
“I didn’t know you’d bought one, Polly,” said June, blushing.
“Yes, last time we were up the bach. –It pours and everything, Laura,” she explained.
Laura examined the teapot cottage with great interest and asked June about the techniques...
Phew! thought certain people. It had been touch and go, there, for a moment. Meg for one had thought June was going to bawl all over Polly’s pretty little sitting-room. And while Polly of course wouldn’t have minded, she had a fair idea that later on June would have been quite overcome. And while it might well be true that Sol was capable of being stubborn, there was no denying that Michaela was awfully, awfully stubborn. Added to which she quite clearly understood very little indeed about men. Added to which, even if Sol was stubborn and was serious about Michaela, could he manage to—well, hang on without doing other stray nannies’ helps, etcetera, until he’d worn Michaela down...?
Michaela had of course been very upset indeed to walk into Sol’s place and find him making love to Akiko. It hadn’t occurred to her—and perhaps she would not have been capable of such self-analysis anyway—to wonder just why she’d been so upset. Because after all, Sol wasn’t her boyfriend. It was true he’d expressed a sort of an interest in her back at the beginning of December, but since agreeing just to be mates he certainly hadn’t brought the matter up again. Michaela didn’t realize that the main reason she was so upset over finding him with Akiko was that insensibly over the summer she’d got used to thinking of him as belonging to her. Though “thinking” would have been putting it too strongly: she hadn’t consciously thought about the relationship between Sol and herself at all. Nevertheless it was true that she had felt him to be hers. The scene with Akiko was thus not merely a shock, it was a betrayal.
She had tried very hard to forget about it, but hadn’t succeeded. However, to a great extent she had succeeded in not actually thinking it over. This was perhaps not a good thing, because in deciding not to think about it, she had also, of course, decided not to think about Sol any more and not to have stupid hopes about men any more and—though it had taken a couple of months actually to reach this position—just to get on with her work as if men in general and Sol Winkelmann in particular didn’t exist.
Naturally she’d been very tempted by Ginny’s Japan suggestion but as she knew there was no way she’d ever be able to pay Jake back the fares, she shoved that out of her mind as well. Ginny had attempted to explain that Jake was so rich that the money didn’t matter to him, but as Michaela had retorted fiercely: “That isn’t the point!” had had to admit that no, it wasn’t, and actually, she agreed with Michaela. As certain inhabitants of Blossom Avenue were aware, Ginny was not the best person in the circumstances to be sharing Michaela’s flat, not to say her confidence.
After two solid months in which she worked very hard at her gardening jobs but didn’t manage to get any real work done, Michaela began to dig clay again and, as June reported at Polly’s afternoon tea, to think about pots and glazes, even though she still felt very unhappy. But she’d been unhappy before, so she tried not to dwell on it, and just get on with things.
Unhappy though she was, she didn’t admit to herself in so many words that she was in love with Sol. Perhaps if she’d hauled the whole thing out from that place at the back of her mind where she’d shoved it, even Michaela would have had to admit that she was. Though this would not have altered her conviction that men only let you down in the end so it was useless getting mixed up with them.
Because she rarely listened to gossip and in fact didn’t socialize, in any real sense of the word, at all, she had no idea that Tom had had an affaire with Polly round about the time he first met Jemima but that that hadn’t stopped him from falling in love with Jemima, settling down with her and being very happy. And that although Jemima knew about it, that hadn’t stopped her from agreeing to live with Tom and being very happy. She did, of course, know that after attempting to seduce Ginny Ralph Overdale had then settled down with Phoebe, but Michaela hadn’t thought about this at all, merely accepting it as a given. She had not wondered how Ralph could do it, or why he had done it. Nor had she wondered about Phoebe, apart from feeling a sort of puzzled surprize that she could prefer Tom’s awful brother to Sol.
Michaela, in short, although she had reached, back around the time of Tom and Jemima’s wedding, the realization that relationships were as complex as pots, had never grasped that relationships, unlike pots, did not need to be perfect in every aspect in order to function; or, indeed, that—most unlike pots—relationships were characterized by compromise. June’s and Bob’s comfortable and uncomplicated domestic devotion was her unconscious model of the perfect relationship. This was hardly to be wondered at: certainly it was the relationship to which she had been closest all her adult life, and certainly it most nearly represented the norm which she’d had drummed into her as desirable during all her childhood and adolescence. The fact that her own parents, though physically faithful to each other, were not remotely happy, did not affect this perception. And there was, as well, the further point that the words “fallibility” and ‘forgiveness”, let alone “compromise” were not in Mrs Daniels’s vocabulary: she had, of course, never forgiven Michaela for not agreeing to marry the gay Clark Baker from the neighbouring property.
So Michaela went on blaming Sol and feeling, albeit not expressing it to herself in so many words, that he was just another of those worthless males who were incapable of anything like fidelity or keeping their promises or sustaining any sort of a relationship. Or even of wanting to.
On the rainy July afternoon of Polly’s afternoon tea Michaela was up at the kiln, experimenting with her glazes. The super-optimistic Sir Jacob was aware of this fact. He had called to collect Bob and the boys some time after the Rolls had swept June and Meg off, and had found out from Bob where Michaela was. Super-optimistic though he naturally was, he made no attempt to go up there and talk to her, just grunted when Bob uneasily gave him this information.
It continued to rain. In Polly’s pretty little sitting-room the ladies gossiped and ate cake and drank tea or sherry. Bob and Bill, who had basely chickened out of the whole pipi-ing thing on finding that it was still pouring and that Jake was more than willing to take all of their boys off their hands for the afternoon, relaxed in front of Bill’s sitting-room fire, drinking some of Alec Overdale’s nectar and not thinking about their wives’ probable reactions to the way were spending the afternoon. Up at the kiln, Michaela mixed and poured slip and made copious notes in her glaze notebook.
Further north Sir Jacob and the six boys grovelled elbow- and knee-deep for pipis in icy water…
It continued to rain.
Sol leaned on his counter and looked dispiritedly out at the rain. Boy, New Zealand sure was the rainy country... Boy, by his reckoning it had been raining since mid-May, non-stop. Wouldn’t you think some of them hordes of customers out there could read that there notice on his door which said “OPEN. Please Enter”? They couldn’t all be illiterates, surely? Wal, maybe the reason they weren’t a-comin’ in was that there weren’t none out there. Hah, hah.
Sol, of course, was as unhappy as Michaela. And, inasmuch as he knew he had only himself to blame, even more bitter about it than she was. He had made several attempts to see her but at the last one Ginny, turning very red, had told him that Michaela didn’t want to see him. So after that he’d stopped, figuring he’d let her calm down some. That had been about six weeks back, and it hadn’t gotten any easier. She hadn’t shown her nose round the boutique at all, and Milly Watson’s incessant wondering as to why hadn’t what you might call helped.
There was also the relatively minor point that Gracie was due to arrive in the country in a week’s time and, though Sol himself hadn’t said anything to her, he was aware that Abe had told her a lot about Michaela and that Gracie therefore cherished certain hopes. And Gracie Rosenberg was not a woman to refrain from questioning her own son as to the progress of his emotional life. ’Specially not when it was plain—as it would be—that the said son had a face like a fiddle on him.
The latest crisis was that Milly had given up on the crafts boutique. Sol didn’t care all that much, to tell the truth, he was feeling so rotten. It had happened around three weeks back: the daughter that had had the new baby back in March wasn’t too well, so Milly had decided she’d go up and stay with her in Whangarei for a time. Sol had told her he couldn’t keep the job open for her, unless she could give him a definite date—? No. He had been about to express hypocritical regrets, only Milly had stopped him in his tracks by confiding that she felt it was all getting a bit much for her. Especially since Akiko had gone home to Japan. Sol hadn’t pointed out that, what with the end of the summer season and the fact that they hadn’t had any more pots off of Michaela, the boutique had barely had enough business lately to keep one salesperson half occupied, he’d just hypocritically agreed that he saw, and thanked her for all her hard work.
It was true that things had turned out very much for the best in that Ida Butler had then agreed, beaming, to take over as manageress. But just at the moment her and Bob Grey were on their honeymoon, so the crafts boutique was closed. Unfortunately this meant they missed out on the conference wives from a big conference at the Royal K last week, but then, there wasn’t all that much in there anyways, to tell the truth. Sol was guiltily glad that Inky and Sticky & Co. weren’t the sort of sleeping partners to get on his back about it. Because he could have done more about restocking the place, iffen he’d tried.
Jimmy didn’t normally work weekends in the off-season, so Sol was just wondering whether he should lock the door, change the notice on it, and go upstairs and make himself a cup of something hot, and incidentally while he was at it put another sweater on, he hadn’t figured out where that dad-blamed draught was a-comin’ from but it sure was a-comin’ from somewheres, right acrosst the back of his neck, when the shop’s bell that he’d installed to shut Jimmy up on the subject tinkled, the door clattered open and several wet forms in yellow slickers or ancient school raincoats burst in, panting, the bell tinkled again, the door clattered closed, and a loud, genial voice said: “Gidday, gidday!” And several younger voices screeched: “Hullo, Sol!”
“Hi, Jake,” said Sol limply to Jake Carrano and several thousand huge boys that didn’t belong to him. “Hi, guys.”
“We’ve been pipi-ing!” beamed Mason, brandishing a Tip-Top Wholegrain Sliced bag with somethin’ unmentionable in it.
“Pipi-ing, huh? At Pipi Beach, huh?”—Here Jake winked at him and Sol, who in common with the majority of the multi-millionaire’s acquaintance tended to forget that the genial Sir Jacob was far from slow, had to swallow.—“Uh—yeah, great, Mason,” he said limply. “Uh, say, you’re pretty wet, Mason,” he added on an uneasy note.
“Yeah,” admitted Jake with a sheepish grin. “We thought you wouldn’t mind if we dried him off a bit. Your place is closer than the bach,” he added with another sheepish grin. “Him and the rest of ’em,” he added with a third sheepish grin.
“Yeah,” said Sol, swallowing. Thank Christ he’d totally ignored all Phoebe’s strenuous representations, and put a fifth and then a sixth coat of clear polyurethane on them upstairs floorboards of his! Because without six coats, boys as wet as this lot were would soak right through that there knotty pine that might be “plantation” and therefore not destructive of the Environment but sure was full of the sort of knots that that fine-grained beautiful native kauri stuff them pioneers had slashed down without no second thoughts about the Environment sure ’nuff hadn’t been. Like, knots that tended to weaken its strength, thereby lessening the life of the structure? Phoebe had rubbished that whole speech so he’d wished he hadn’t made it. Besides which he could see that not only did she agree with every word of it, she’d thought it all out herself no less than twenny-five years back. Ouch.
“Uh—sure, Jake. Look,” he said, glancing at his watch, “let’s all go on up and I’ll make—uh—hot drinks.” –Jesus, was that the time?
“Pipi soup!” screamed Mason, jumping a bit.
“Ye-ah... You fancy pipi soup for tea, Sol?” said Jake with another sheepish grin.
“I sure would. Fresh pipi soup, huh? –Yeah, okay: go on up, I’ll lock up.” He did so, changing the notice on the door to the one that asked ’em to ring and pointed to the bell. Guessed optimism must be his middle name, all right.
Upstairs Jake had gotten most of Mason’s garments off of him and Mason was starting to shiver. Even his little tee-shirt and underpants were soaked.
“How the— Did he fall in?” said Sol, rushing for the divan and the rug that was on it. “Get OFF!” An O’Connell twin and a Butler boy got off of the rug and he scooped it up and swathed Mason in it.
Jake and Mason were attempting to explain that Mason hadn’t fallen in. Over by the hammock the other twin and another Butler were fighting over the hammock.
“DON’T GET IN THAT HAMMOCK WITH THEM WET THINGS ON!” said Sol clearly. They must have gotten the point, because they stopped.
Roger said sheepishly into the silence: “I’ll make them take them off.” Putting down one of Sol’s ancient Hemingways as he did so.
“Yeah, boots and all. –Say, does your mother let you thunder through her house in them gumboots?” he added evilly to Ivan, who was just about to head for the kitchenette. Ivan just looked blank.
Sighing, Sol scooped Mason up, rug and all, and ignoring his shouts, took him off to a hot shower.
“C,U,T,E at this age, huh?” he said loudly to Jake as he towelled Mason dry while Jake was taking a hot shower.
“I’m NOT!” he shouted.
“YEAH!” said Jake loudly over the noise of the water, with a laugh. “Hey, how big’s your hot water cylinder?” he asked, sticking his head out.
“Never thought about it, Jake. Guess we’ll find out, huh?”
“The rest of ’em can shower in pairs,” he decided. “Well, Roger’s not that wet.”
“No. Seems to be the only one with sense.”
“I DIDN’T FALL IN!” shouted Mason.
“Calm down, I’m not saying you did. –Say, would you fancy a hot malted before the soup, Mason?”
“Ye-ah! –Tom makes those,” he explained.
“Not a New Zealand icon,” said Jake, sticking his head out again, grinning broadly. “Have you got enough towels?”
“Never thought about it, Jake. Guess we’ll find out, huh?”
Jake got out of the shower, chuckling.
Fortunately Sol did have enough dry towels—just. Wouldn’t leave him a clean one for tomorrow, but he guessed he could face that one when he came to it. Naturally the twins, Starsky and Ivan had to be forced to shower, but Jake proved more than capable of that. Roger really wasn’t very wet, so he just towelled his calves and arms briskly and let Sol force a clean pair of jeans on him. They fit real good. Clothing the smaller boys was a bit of a problem, however, though Bob had given Jake a spare sweater for Mason.
“I was planning to get a clothes drier this winter, only Sol’s Cove intervened.” explained Sol, looking at heaps of soaked jeans and soggy sweaters.
“Yeah.” Jake had reclad himself in pants and a sweater which, he explained, he kept in the waggon just in case. Old but clean, he explained. The pants were old, all rightee: brown corduroy only like with most of the velvet worn off of the knees and with a buttoned fly. The sweater was also elderly, but as it was khaki and had strategic leather patches on it here and there the boys immediately identified it as Real Army Surplus! Sol kind of had an idea that back around when that sweater would have been made the New Zealand Army would not have been into leather patches on its sweaters but didn’t say nothing. After a few moments the boys became distracted by a fight over who was to wear Sol’s genuine New Zealand bush shirt, Michael being unanimously disqualified on the grounds of having acquired Bill’s, apparently, and Jake murmured: “Had this jersey since uh—shit, around nineteen-fifty seven, -eight, woulda been.”
“Uh-huh. Korean Army Surplus, then, Jake?”
“Sydney. First trip. Really decent little gun shop—sold a bit of hunting gear and so forth, too, ya know?”
“Uh-huh,”
“Been mended a few times, of course,” he said, idly rubbing one of the leather-patched elbows.
Sol choked.
Jake winked, poker-face, and strode into the fight over the bush shirt. Sol left him to it and crept off to make malted milks. And hot toddies for him and Jake, he figured one at least of them deserved ’em.
Once Starsky had gotten into the bush shirt plus a pair of Sol’s jeans that only had to be rolled up ten inches and folded in ten inches round the waist with one of Sol’s old belts with a new hole punched in it, and Michael had gotten into the oldest of Sol’s old sweaters plus the one remaining pair of Sol’s jeans that only hadda be rolled up six inches but that fit within a couple of inches round the waist, and Andrew had gotten into a very long old flannel shirt of Sol’s that Sol wasn’t letting on he sometimes wore as a nightshirt and had had since the Flower Power days, insisting on wearing an unnecessary pair of Sol’s denim shorts under it that coulda gone round him twice, and Ivan had gotten into an old grey sweat-shirt that Sol occasionally went for a run in and, scowling terrifically, had tucked it into a pair of Sal’s khaki shorts that not only woulda gone round him two and a half times, they reached to well below his knees, and had tied up the result with a macho piece of cord, brand-new off of one of the big reels from downstairs, they all settled down to their hot malteds in front of the TV. Sure it was a choice between Emmerdale Farm and ice hockey but even though, as rapidly became apparent, none of ’em knew beans about ice hockey, they all became glued to it. –Not Roger, of course: he was reading the Hemingway.
“Not played out here,” murmured Jake over his toddy. Somehow Mason had gotten onto his knee but his brothers and his neighbours must have been mellowed by the malteds because none of them had screamed at him he was sissy. Or maybe they had worked out it made one less to fight over the hammock—maybe.
“Ya don’t say,” he said faintly.
Jake winked, poker-face.
Sol shook silently for some time.
Once the boys had gotten over their shock, horror and disappointment at the news that pipis needed to be soaked in clean water for a while before you made soup out of ’em, and Jake had gone off to the downstairs sink to look after ’em, they all had another round of malteds and concentrated on the rugby league that followed the ice hockey. None of ’em knew beans about that, either, far’s Sol could see. He went quietly downstairs to check up on Jake. Not to say the store.
Sir Jacob was selling a small camping-gas stove to a guy in a yellow slicker and red gumboots. Sol’s knees went all numb and he just stood by and let him do it.
“Thanks, Jake,” he croaked when it was over.
“That’s okay. You got any white wine?”
“Uh—yeah. A couple of bottles in the refrigerator,” he said limply. “Why, Jake?”
The only recipe Jake knew for pipi soup was apparently based on a recipe for cooking mussels he had picked up in France. If Sol had any noodles or spaghetti it was good with those: you put some in the bottom of the soup bowl and poured— Sol just let him get on with it. Himself, he’da made pipi chowder, but if Jake wanted to make pipis marinière with spaghetti he guessed it was okay with him.
Nobody mentioned to the boys that the pipi soup had wine in it, so they all lapped it up eagerly without remarking that it tasted funny, or foreign, or words to that effect. Roger probably noticed, especially as the bottle Jake let him have a glass out of wasn’t full when it was set on the table, but he didn’t say anything. Mason had a few wrastles with the stubborner pipis that refused to come off of their shells but eventually consented to let Jake help him, as no-one was sneering “Sissy.” Possibly because they was all wrastlin’ grimly with theirs.
Eventually Sol sat back with a sigh, undid the waist fastener of his jeans and remarked: “That was swell.”
“Yeah. Mum never does pipi soup,” revealed Ivan sadly.
“Pipis marinière,” murmured Sol.—Roger choked, so he’d noticed, all rightee.—“Yeah, it was swell. Myself I’da done pipi chowder, but it was swell, Jake,’“
Jake choked.
“What’s pipi chowder?” asked Ivan incautiously.
“Soup. Like clam chowder,” said Roger laconically.
“I’ve heard of that,” said Michael quickly.
“Yeah, me too,” lied Starsky.
This effectively prevented any of the rest of ’em from asking what it was like. There was a short silence; then Roger said kindly: “What’s clam chowder like, Sol?”
Shaking some, Sol explained.
“That sounds ace,” said Michael wistfully.
“Yeah,” agreed Starsky sadly. “We never even have shellfish at all!”
“You’ll just have to get Bob geared up to bring you pipi-ing. I know a couple of cockle beaches, too,” murmured Jake.
When that all had died down Sol tottered off to make coffee. Behind him the kids had a short fight over a re-run of MacGyver on one channel and 21 Jump Street on the other, Roger pointing out fairly, but apparently without malicious intent, that the twins weren’t allowed to watch the latter. Then they all settled down to watch it.
Jake joined Sol as he was grinding the beans. “Roger’s reading your book again,” he said neutrally.
“Not interested in mindless Yank TV shows, I guess.”
“No; he’s a good kid,” he said, smiling.
“Mm-hm.”
After a moment Jake murmured: “Michaela was up at the kiln today, so Bob said.”
“Uh-huh.”
Jake gave him a not unkindly, if distinctly ironic look, and said: “Working on new glazes, Bob reckons. Good sign, wouldn’t you say?”
Sol sighed. “Yeah, I guess it is, Jake.”
“You could go up there and ask her when she’s going to produce some more stuff for the boutique,” he said mildly.
Sol took a deep breath.
“Tomorrow,” added Jake.
“Bob told you she’d be up there tomorrow as well, huh?”
“Not in so many words. He said it takes her a while: she was making notes today.”
“Yeah. –Now, maybe I never explained this to you, Jake,” he said; Jake eyed him warily; “but Michaela never did sign no agreement to supply the boutique.”
“Look, I only—”
“Yeah, I know you only, Jake, and I guess I’m grateful,” he said, sighing.
Jake hesitated. Then he put his large hand gently on Sol’s skinny shoulder and squeezed hard. Sol found he was gulping. He stared grimly into the sink.
“She’ll come round,” he said kindly, releasing him.
Sol sighed. He emptied ground beans into the coffee pot. “Will I live that long, though, Jake?”
Jake wandered over to the fridge. “You take milk?’
“Not in after-dinner coffee, no.”
“Me, neither. –Oh, Rog might.” He got the milk out. What there was left of it. “It wouldn’t hurt to at least go up to the kiln tomorrow,” he said mildly.
Sol sighed. “I sort of hoped maybe she’d get in touch with me, once she’d made a few pots and, uh—no?” he said weakly.
“No. They don’t,” said Jake definitely, shaking his head.
“Who don’t?” said Sol feebly.
“Women like her.” He spotted Sol’s mugs hanging on their hooks and got three down. “She make these?”
“Yeah.”
“Mm, thought so,” he said, absently stroking one. “—Dunno whether it’s their social conditioning or in the genes, or what, only they don’t,” he clarified. Sol just looked at him numbly. “Make the first move, you nana!” he said impatiently.
“Uh—oh.”
“Pol’s just the same. Different type from Phoebe Fothergill, ya know,” he explained kindly. Sol nodded numbly. “She let me bust us up once—well, I won’t go into the reasons for it, except I had it fixed in my head she didn’t want to get married, so I thought it was pointless. –This was back before we were engaged.”
“Uh—oh, yeah, I get it,” said Sol weakly.
“Anyway, she let me break it off without saying a word, even though, as it turned out, she did want to get married and she didn’t want to bust up and she musta seen that all the dumb arguments I’d used— Never mind. And even though we’d been haying an affaire for over a bloody year,” he said on a grim note, “she bent over backwards not to let on she wanted to get married—see? Even though she did, as much as I did.”
“Uh—yeah,” said Sol groggily.
Jake took a deep breath. “Anyway, what I’m saying is, don’t expect Michaela to make the first move. Even if she’s forgiven you for behaving like a twat and she’s dying to make it up, she won’t.”
“Y— Oh. Yes, I see. Social conditioning or genetic, or whatever, and however much she might want to—”
Jake was nodding.
“I get it,” he said weakly.
“Yeah.” He picked up a mug, stroked it reflectively and said: “Know what these remind me of?”
Sol let Jake tell him what the shape of Michaela’s beautiful mugs reminded him of. It got pretty crude not to say physiological but, whether it was social conditioning or genetic or just plain hormones, Sol wasn’t that surprized. He poured the coffee while Jake leaned against the divider, watching.
“Feminine,” he said as Sol set the mugs on a tray.
Sol thought it was the mugs again: he said: “So you was sayin’. Uh—oh!”
“Yeah. It might not be the first word that springs to mind when you look at her—depending on yer own flaming social conditioning,” he said with a shrug—Sol gulped—“only she is. Same type as Polly. Feminine.”
“Uh—mm. I’d agree with that. Docile, in some ways, I guess,” ventured Sol feebly.
“Yeah, definitely. Pol sure as Hell is: it’s taken years for her to get to the stage of actually telling me what she likes or doesn’t like in bed. – S’pose I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he noted, scratching his head, as Sol’s shoulders shook. “Oh, well. –Mind you, she’s stubborn as Hell in other directions!” he added cheerfully.
“Mm? Uh—which one, Jake?” he said faintly.
Jake switched off the kitchenette’s light. “I meant Polly, of course. But Michaela is, too. What I said: they’re alike. Cousins, of course.”
Sol could only agree.
When Jake had eventually carted off the waggonload of vociferously objecting boys he locked up and tottered feebly back upstairs. What, precisely, had been the point of that little expedition? Pipi-ing? Oh, yeah?
After another hot toddy and a period of settin’ and figurin’ he figured out that on one level the pipi-ing had been genuine: Jake liked kids and he liked getting out into the countryside and indulging in various forms of hunter-gatherer activity. And naturally he hadn’t let the kids get soaked on purpose, not on a day like this. Only if he hadn’ta had that for an excuse, Sol was sure he wasn’t flattering himself in saying that the man woulda sure enough thought up some other excuse to come a-calling, yep! ...Jesus.
Of course it had all been entirely well-intentioned and there had been nothing prying in Jake’s manner but he sure did feel as if he’d been flattened by a ten-ton truck.
On the other hand, he admitted sheepishly to himself as he crawled into bed, yawning, he also felt quite a lot better. Objectively nothing in his situation had changed, but—yeah. Even though the rain was still hurling itself against the gable and the wind was howlin’ up the spiral staircase—Phoebe was right about that, not only could you feel it, you could, depending no doubt on the angle of the wind, at times actually hear it, too—even though all this, then, and no dry towels and no milk for tomorrow morning, he still felt appreciably better.
Next chapter:
https://theamericanrefugeeanovel.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-goddesses-from-machine.html
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