35
Sol’s Christmas. Part 1
Sol was barely able to repress a cheer when Michaela asked him if she could use the room above the crafts boutique while she rented out her flat over Christmas. He managed to assure her the attic room was all hers, and to beat her down in the matter of rent, assuring her that her presence would make no difference whatsoever (Jesus, who was he kidding?), so there was no need to feel she had to pay anything. He was aware, though she let him beat her down, that she was probably silently making up her mind to live off of fruit, bread and salads the entire summer and to get up and go to bed with the birds, in order not to use the boutique’s electricity. He guessed he could get round the food thing by feeding her himself but—unfortunately—there was nothing much he could do about the bed angle, at this stage. He offered to drive down to her place to fetch her stuff but Michaela said in a puzzled voice that she would put it in her rucksack.
“Uh—yeah. Sure.”
There was a short pause.
“Michaela, there’s no bed in that attic,” said Sol weakly.
“I’ll be all right, I’ve got an old sleeping-bag.”
Sol had to take a deep breath. There was no way—no way!—he was gonna let her sleep in, or he guessed on, the Auckland summers sure were muggy, an old sleeping-bag for a month! “I can fetch your bed up easy in the Land Rover—no sweat.”
“No, I’m letting the flat furnished.”
There was another pause.
“I see. Uh—look, we’ll put a stretcher-bed up for you, okay? You can put the sleeping-bag on that,” he said weakly.
“Have you got a stretcher?”
“Sure,” he lied. Then he reflected she’d no doubt offer to go fetch it right now. “Well, I can easy borrow one,” he amended feebly.
He waited but she didn’t say who from, somebody up there sure loved S. Winkelmann, today. He waited until she’d ridden off on her bike—which she had actually let him cart up here in the Land Rover, that had been a red-letter day for S. Winkelmann, too—to her new source of clay. Then he told off young Jimmy Burton to mind the store and drove right on down to Puriri and bought the largest, most comfortable-looking thing that could possibly fall within the Kiwi definition of a stretcher-bed. It came complete with a padded mattress, yellow and white stripes, and could have doubled as a sun-lounger with very little stretch of the imagination. Then he drove back again and put it in the attic of the crafts boutique.
Milly Watson, who was on duty in the boutique, came upstairs during a pause between customers and noted it looked scarcely used. Sol agreed in a pleased voice that it sure was in good condition. –They had Milly Watsons back in the good ole U.S. of A., too, a point which apparently had never occurred to his obliging but nosy middle-aged helper.
Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies did good business over summer, so he and Jimmy were kept pretty busy, the more so as Sol was now renting the boatyard permanently and had to apportion his time between it and the store. Euan was on duty full-time at the boatyard, in fact he’d elected to sleep there. Sol was perfectly willing, it certainly solved the problem of possible vandalism, though the lack of road access probably meant there was little enough risk of that. Oddly enough, though he certainly had room, he didn’t suggest Euan share his apartment over the store. Fortunately it didn’t seem to occur to Euan that he might.
Akiko also proposed spending a good deal of time with them that summer: the Carranos were taking her down to Polly’s parents’ farm for Christmas but after New Year’s Day she’d come back and help out at the boutique, while the Carranos were overseas. She was gonna stay at the Carranos’ bach, up the far end of Carter’s Inlet, but she’d have the little car their Nanny used, Nanny herself having gone home to England to see her parents. Sol realized there was nothing to stop Michaela from sleeping there in the meantime, or even when Akiko did turn up, but funnily enough he never suggested this. Fortunately it didn’t seem to occur to Michaela that he might.
Christmas Eve dawned muggy and overcast at Kingfisher Bay. Sol woke early: his attic room got the early morning sun, and he still hadn’t managed to afford curtains for the big gable. Though he was definitely putting some in before next winter! He went off to take a shower: maybe that would suggest to it that it might as well lie down, because it sure wasn’t goin’ anywheres interesting this morning! It didn’t, so he had a wank under the shower.
His usual morning routine was to go slowly downstairs, open the store’s front door and stand on the step, scratching the whiskers and looking at the day while he thought what to have for breakfast. So he went downstairs—
“Hi, Sol,” said one of the girls on the doorstep with huge relief. “We were hoping you’d be open.”
“Uh—yeah. Sure.” She was a sturdy, brown-haired, cheerful-faced, tanned creature in grimy shorts, tee-shirt and sneakers. Well, so was her companion, but—
“I’m Barbara Michaels,” she said, grinning, apparently not taking offence at his not having recognized her
“Oh, sure! Professor Michaels’s kid.” The guy had a marina slot here, though they lived way down in Narrowneck, about as far south as you could go without actually crossing the harbour to the city. City marina slots, however, were reliably reported to be (a) rare as hen’s teeth and (b) even dearer than the through-the-nose price charged by Jake Carrano’s Kingfisher Development Company for one up here.
“Bill,” she corrected. “He’ll think you’re mad if you call him Professor.”
“Uh—sure.”—She meant “crazy”, of course; boy, had that one taken some getting used to!—“How are you, Barbara?” –He didn’t offer his hand because he knew now that Kiwis hardly ever did.
“I’d be better if we hadn’t just put a Godalmighty scratch the length of Dad’s boat,” replied Barbara cheerfully.
“Shit: where’bouts, Barbara?”
“Above the water-line, dunno if that makes it better or worse!” she admitted, still grinning.
“We were tying up and some cretin in a bloody launch that he couldn’t control came straight at us,” explained the other girl glumly.
“Yo, boy,” he noted. “Over to the marina, was this?”
“Nope,” said Barbara, still cheerful: “down at Carter’s Bay: you know, the old wooden jetty?”—Sol winced, and nodded.—“So we thought we’d better come straight on up here and slap a lick of paint on ’er.”
“Yeah, sure.” He couldn’t quite work out from this narrative if they’d brought the boat up, or not: and he had a fair idea it wasn’t just that he still had difficulties with the elliptical Kiwi narrative style. “You mind spellin’ it out for this poor foreigner whether you brung the boat up here, Barbara?”
Barbara grinned. “Yeah. She’s down there in Dad’s slot.” She nodded at the marina.
“Uh-huh. Well, want me to take a look at her?”
The other girl looked relieved but Barbara said in amazement: “Heck, no! No, we just want some paint and stuff.”
“Barbara—” said her friend hesitantly.
“Just a scratch,” said Barbara comfortably. “Hey, you can legally sell us stuff at this hour of the morning, can ya?”
Actually, he had no idea. “No idea. Come on in,” he said, grinning.
They followed him in, Barbara also grinning and the friend looking anxious.
He duly sold them paint and appropriate stuff, not to say appropriate brushes, and saw them off the premises. Barbara still hadn’t introduced her friend but then, it was fair to say that Sol would have been mighty disappointed if she hadda done, it would have broken his record for Kiwi non-introductions.
He went over and rang the crafts boutique’s bell. He’d installed it for the express purpose of being able to get Michaela downstairs of a morning and invite her to breakfast. He didn’t think this had occurred to her, yet. Whether it had occurred to Milly Watson yet was a moot point.
“Hey, Michaela,” he said mildly. “Mornin’s at seven, the lark’s on the wing and so forth: you want breakfast?” –She appeared to be wearing a baggy tee-shirt and nothing else, so it wasn’t breakfast he felt like offering her, in spite of the little episode in the shower.
She squinted at the sky. “Is it seven o’clock?”
“Wal, early enough for coffee and waffles,” he said mildly.
An expression of sheer greed spread over Michaela’s face. Sol watched in amusement: he didn’t mind if she fancied his waffles more than she fancied him, at this stage: at least it was a step in the right direction.
“Real American waffles?”
“Uh-huh, made in my real American waffle-iron.” –Thank God he’d brought it out! Kiwis had never heard of ’em.
“I didn’t realise you could have them for breakfast,” she said eagerly. “Thanks; I’ll just go and get dressed.”
“Sure,” he said, sagging against the door-jamb. “You do that.” –It was true, now he came to think of it, that he had made waffles a couple of times for her and Euan and Akiko as dessert, this last year, only... Sheesh.
She was back in double-quick time, in a different tee, not quite as baggy, and a pair of grimy, faded denim shorts, not unlike Sol’s own grimy, faded denim shorts, true, but hers had the advantage of showing a considerable acreage of pale Michaela, just a little sunburnt from all that biking up and down the Inlet to her clay.
“You been using that sunscreen cream like I warned you?” he said mildly, leading the way inside.
“Yeah. Aunty Vi was on about it, too,” she said glumly. “The ultra-violet rays are worse if you’ve got Scotch blood and red hair.”
He was sure glad that had sunk in. “Uh-huh. What’s your old aunty doing for Christmas?” He halted, ostensibly to look at her as he spoke but actually to let her precede him. This meant that he would be behind her on the little spiral staircase going up to the apartment, there were few flies on S. Winkelmann, appearances to the contrary.
“She’s gone down to Aunty Maureen’s,” said Michaela, innocently preceding him.
“Uh—oh, sure, Polly’s mother,” he croaked, eyeing the expanses of Michaela and wondering why she was wearing navy-blue heavy cotton panties under them shorts on a day like this.
“Yes.” Michaela went into the main room and looked in surprise at the bare table in the window.
“I haven’t made the mixture up yet: you wanna help?”
She came into the tiny kitchenette and stood necessarily very close as he made up the mixture and put the mixture in the waffle-iron. Sol wondered idly if she actually possessed a bra. All the evidence so far sure ’nuff was against it. Yup!
“Euan’s missing out,” she noted after the first lot of waffles had vanished like the dew.
“Mm-hm. No way of getting in touch with him. Lessen I send up a smoke signal?” He raised his eyebrows at her.
“I could have gone and got him while you were mixing up the waffles.”
He got up to put a fresh lot of mixture in the waffle-iron. “Yeah. Pity we never thought of it, huh?”
“Yes,” she agreed innocently.
Sol went off to the little kitchenette, smiling.
“So, what have you got planned for tomorrow?” he said when they were sipping their final cups of coffee—she liked hers very milky and Sol had no intention of revealing that he now bought three times as much milk as was his normal practice.
“Tomorrow?” said Michaela blankly.
It was true that Sol had asked his question with malice aforethought. And it was also true that he had more or less expected this reaction. Nevertheless he responded in rather a weak voice: “It is Christmas Day.”
“Um—yeah. Well, I don’t usually do anything for Christmas.” She paused. “Blow, I suppose there won’t be any buses.”
As there were normally only two buses a day from Carter’s Bay to Puriri, Sol felt fairly confident in replying: “No.”
“I was going to dig some clay today and take it down to the shed tomorrow,” she revealed.
Without asking him for a ride—right. He rubbed his chin. “Well, there might be a bus, Friday. Only I’d say you’ll be lucky if they’re running again by Monday.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“I was wondering if you might like to come here for Christmas dinner,” he said weakly.
“Are you having one?”
If she’d come, he would. Sol didn’t reveal this, he said: “I gotta have one, it’s self-defence: if I don’t, Milly Watson’ll force me to go to theirs.”
Michaela grinned and said happily: “She hasn’t invited me: must be your fatal Yankee charm.”
Sol laughed immoderately: it was the first time she had ever ventured on a joke with him.
Michaela sat back in her little chair, beaming.
“Well, will you?” he said at last.
“Um—yes, I’d love to, thanks, if you’re sure you really are having one,” she said, blushing.
“Yeah, I got a duck in the freezer and I’m going into Carter’s Bay today to collect some organic green peas from Swadling’s dairy.”
There was a short pause. “Organic?” said Michaela weakly.
Sol grinned. “Jack Swadling was saying their garden’s full of ’em: too many for them to get through, and their kids only like the frozen kind. So I suggested he oughta sell ’em as organic produce.”
Michaela gulped, not merely because he pronounced it “proh-dooce”.
“Now I know this won’t go with them thirty-day-old wilted lettuces he sells; only it’s the first step that counts, ain’t it?” he said plaintively.
“Will anyone want organic peas, though?” she said weakly.
“Wal, now, Michaela, you done put your finger on the flaw in my reasoning: with Jake and Polly away on vacation, there sure won’t be much of a market, no. Only I was hopin’ that maybe some of them yuppies that patronize the Carter’s Bay Garden Centre—” He stopped: she was sniggering helplessly already.
When she’d recovered he admitted: “One of them nice ladies from Tui Grove—that’s here in Kingfisher Bay, just a little ways back from the waterfront—she was complainin’ about the quality of the produce up here, so I’d say there might be a market. Of course, whether Jack Swadling’s the one to develop it—” He shrugged.
“Yes,” said Michaela weakly, thinking of those dreadful wilted lettuces. “That’s what they ought to turn Shop 3 into,” she added after some cogitation.
Sol had very much enjoyed watching the cogitation. Since at the moment the third store in his block was a dress shop which appeared to be run by two society ladies as some sort of tax-loss thing (well, they were hardly ever there and certainly never there on days when the bay was busy and the marina full of boats, so they certainly couldn’t be running it to make money), he agreed: “Yeah, that’d be the very thing! Could even grow stuff out in back, huh?”
“You’d have to get some topsoil in. And you might not get enough morning sun round there.”
“No. Well, start a truck-garden up the Inlet further, huh?”
“Ye-es... A what?”
“A—uh—gee...” There was a sufficiently long pause. During it Michaela merely looked mildly expectant. Finally Sol said weakly: “I dunno what you’d call ’em. It’s a place where you farm vegetables, I guess, Michaela, and truck ’em in to—uh, well, the market. You know: commercial horticulture.”
Her wide brow wrinkled. Finally she said: “I think you mean a market-garden.”
Sol smiled, he guessed he did, at that. “Well, that’s set Carter’s Inlet on its feet financially!” he said cheerfully, standing up and collecting plates. And incidentally making a mental resolution to take it as settled that she was coming for Christmas dinner. “You wanna drive in to Carter’s Bay with me when I fetch them peas?”
“What? Oh—yes; thanks; I need some milk.”
So did he: it sure was a pain having to drive a round trip of 10 K or so in order to get milk. Not to mention bread and everything else that wasn’t available at up-market Kingfisher Bay. If Jake Carrano really intended the dad-blamed marina to go ahead, he’d have to agree to turn Shop 3 into a place that sold food—surely? More than one disgruntled holiday-homer had voiced complaints on the matter to Sol, besides the up-market resident from up-market Tui Grove. –There weren’t no native tui birds in Tui Grove and there weren’t no native kowhai trees for ’em to perch on, neither. But then, Sol had never laid eyes on a single kingfisher in all the time he’d been here.
By nine-thirty Sol had served a steady stream of customers, Jimmy Burton had arrived and was helping to serve the customers, and a beaming Starsky had also arrived. Yeah, ’course Mum knew where he was! He’d caught the early bus and thumbed a lift from Carter’s Bay, there were loads of cars coming up—
Sol just said weakly: “Well, call your Mom right now and let her know you’ve arrived, okay?”
“Heck, she won’t be worrying!”
Sol gave him a Look. Starsky shot behind the counter and rang June. Judging by the squawking noises that proceeded from the receiver, not to say the redness of the ears, she not only hadn’t had a clue where he’d gone, she was extremely annoyed about it.
Finally Sol strolled behind the counter himself, wrenched the receiver off of him and said: “Hi, June. You want me to bring him straight back?”
“No!” he cried in anguish.
“Oh, hullo, Sol,” said June weakly. “Um—well, are you sure he won’t be a nuisance?”
“Nope, there’s loads of odd jobs he can do. Say, can he make change?” he asked without hope.
“Not without a pocket calculator and considerable heavy breathing, no.”
“And even then he’ll get the pennies and the nickels mixed up; yeah,” he recognized.
June giggled madly. “Yes!”
“I’ll bring him back in time for his tea, okay?”
“No, you mustn’t, Sol, we’ve told him if he insists on going up there he has to be responsible for getting himself back. He can catch the bus.”
Sol wasn’t too sure there’d be one, Christmas Eve. “Ye-ah...”
“If he misses the Carter’s Bay bus there’s always the one from Whangarei.”
This large coach swayed through the township at about ninety miles an hour around ten o’clock at night. And though Carter’s Bay was normally pretty peaceful, on Christmas Eve, what with the seasonal influx of holiday-makers and the old pub? Sol swallowed. “No, I got some errands to run in Puriri this evening, I’ll drop him off. See ya, June!”
June bade him goodbye in a weak and embarrassed voice, so she’d seen right through that one.
“Look, Starsky, after Christmas you better work out something better with your mom,” he said firmly.
“Um—what?” the kid mumbled, shuffling his gigantic sneakers.
Starsky was an okay kid but Sol was damned if he was going to invite him to sleep at his place, not with what he had planned for this summer. “Well, maybe you could camp at the boatyard with Euan, if that’s—”
“YE-AH! MIGHTY!”
“—okay with Euan,” ended Sol weakly.
“Yeah! C’n I go over and ask him?”
“No. What you can do, you can sort out five million yards of cheap fishing line and wind it onto these here sticks, okay? Plus like a hook and a sinker for each.”
“Ya can’t catch much with—”
“Kids’ specials. For all those kids that keep on coming in here and asking us for fishing line that we have to unwind off of the big reel each time and that Someone,” he said loudly, “is incapable of unwinding off of the big reel without putting five million tangles in it!”—Jimmy just grinned: he’d thought the job was going to be his.—“And when you’ve done that you can put the price tags on ’em, Jimmy’ll show ya how to work the clicker.”
Starksy’s face lit up. “Yeah! Mighty! Then c’n I go over to the boatyard?”
“Okay. Only ask first—geddit?”
Starsky got it. He pulled up a stool and sat down, beaming, and got on with it.
By eleven-thirty they’d served another steady stream of customers, Jimmy had made a pot of stewed tea (of which Starsky, who normally didn’t drink tea, had manfully partaken under the illusion that he was being grown up), and Starsky had neatly wound the entire tangled reel of line onto umpteen little sticks and Jimmy had already sold four of them, so Sol reckoned he could safely leave them to it. And if he didn’t get in soon there was always the risk that Swadlings’ would be out of bread. Oh, yes. Yup.
The boutique was having a Christmas Eve rush of up-market holiday-homer ladies buying coffee mugs and hand-painted silk scarves, so Michaela was helping out. He waited until she’d laboriously worked the credit-card thing and given the lady her docket and then winkled her out of there.
“Not many of them pay with money,” she reported seriously.
Sol returned sedately: “I’d say that was just as well, Michaela.”
Michaela grinned. “Yes: I’m no good with money.”
“No. Well, Milly’s not that shit-hot, either.”
“She can give the right change, though.”
“Yeah, but she sure can’t add up the week’s takings and get ’em to tally!” he said with feeling.
“Can’t she? Not even with one of those, um... adding-machines?”
“Uh—calculators, Michaela?”
“Yes. When I worked for the Valuation Department,” she said cheerfully—Sol just about passed out—“we had adding-machines. You had to pull the handle.”
“Uh-huh. When was this?” he managed to croak.
“Ages ago. Not long after I’d finished my diploma. Before I went to Japan.”
“I see. Was this a full-time job?”
“Yes. It was horrible, and I never had enough time to work on my pots. So I gave it up.”
“I see.”
They got in the Land Rover, and this activity gave Sol time to recover from the shock of her voluntarily mentioning something out of her past to him.
“Anyroad,” he said, “Milly can’t make the accounts tally even with a calculator, and boy was it a struggle to get her to use one!”
“Oh.” Michaela looked out thoughtfully at the green slope of Kingfisher Bay with its yuppy holiday homes as he let the clutch in. “Maybe she’s... Maybe it’s one of those... I don’t know what they call them,” she murmured.
Sol didn’t say anything, he’d learned a fair bit this last year. He just glanced over his shoulder for speeding Jags and BMWs coming from the Royal Kingfisher and drew out from the curb.
Michaela said cautiously: “When the person doesn’t want to do the thing; so although they go and ahead and do it, they sort of do it wrong accidentally on purpose.”
Sol didn’t know that he’d ever heard a better description of it. “Yeah, that’s it. It’s a form of passive resistance, I guess.”
“Yes.”
He drove up towards the main road to Carter’s Bay.
“I’m sure she doesn’t know she’s doing it,” she said.
“She ain’t letting herself know she’s doin’ it: nope,” he agreed drily.
After a moment Michaela said thoughtfully: “Yes. Aren’t people peculiar?”
He touched her knee very fleetingly. “They sure are.”
She didn’t say anything else during the drive. Sol didn’t feel she was emanating disapproval, or boredom, or any of the other things he might have feared, had she been some other woman entirely. He could see, every time he glanced at her, that she was looking out of the window with pleasure and quite simply—though the scenery was not particularly interesting—enjoying the drive. Without knowing he was doing it he began to whistle.
Swadlings’ “dairy” was just as exciting as ever: a tiny general store, iffen you defined “general” as selling hardly anything. There was only white sliced bread left on the rack, but the kindly May Swadling had kept back a plain wholemeal loaf for him. Sol picked it up in a palsied hand.
“I got that yeast in for you,” she said in self-congratulatory tones.
“Thanks, May,” he said feebly. “Uh—”
Jack Swadling had finished serving a small boy with a triple-header choc-coated ice cream, and a fat woman in a floral sunfrock with two loaves of sliced white bread, a three-kilo bag of sugar, a jar of instant coffee and a pot of marg. He lounged up to May’s side and said: “We got that stone-ground wholemeal flour in for ya, too. You sure you meant a whole bag?”
“Uh—yeah.”
Jack’s eyebrows rose infinitesimally Sol quailed in his rubber flip-flops. Saying nothing, Jack went out in back.
May produced a huge plastic bag full of peas from under the counter and said: “You wouldn’t like some plums, would you?”
“Uh—”
“Off our tree,” said May, smiling at him innocently. –She was totally innocent. Jack was one of the most cynical characters Sol Winkelmann in the course of a misspent life had ever encountered. Without ever having left his native shores, what was more. He put Sol just slightly in mind of Tom Overdale’s old Uncle Alec, but possibly this was merely down to the laconic manner. Jack was, he guessed, a bit younger than he was, but that didn’t seem to stop him.
“Off of your tree? Gee, that’d be great, May!”
May produced a huge plastic bag of fresh plums from under the counter.
“Christmas plums,” discerned Michaela, coming up to Sol’s elbow.
May agreed placidly: “Yes. The tree’s bearing really well, this year. It had a couple of really poor years, after that very hot summer—when was it? About three years back, I think—when it went absolutely mad. Everyone’s trees did.”
Michaela nodded seriously. “Yes, I remember. Old Mrs Potter gave me lots of plums off her tree and I made some jam. And I think that was the year that Mrs Tonks gave me a whole lot of nectarines.”
Sol was certain that May Swadling couldn’t possibly know these Puriri personalities, but she agreed happily: “Yes, it was a great year for stone fruit. –Just the milk, is it, Michaela?”
Michaela nodded and carefully counted out the exact change for one carton of milk.
May accepted this but said: “Wasn’t there a bottle left?”
“No, only cream,” replied Michaela.
May sighed. “They’re phasing the bottles out,” she said sadly to Sol.
Sol already knew this, she only mentioned it every other time he came in. He knew, too, that by “they” she meant the Waikaukau Dairy Company, which lurked down Elizabeth Road not all that far from Blossom Avenue. He nodded and didn’t ask her why it was that the Waikaukau Dairy Company did not supply Waikaukau Junction or Puriri, but Carter’s Bay and environs. Because in the first place May wouldn’t know and in the second place she wouldn’t think it was a question worth asking. Sol had never asked Jack, either: not because he thought Jack wouldn’t know but because, frankly, he was too gutless.
Jack came back dragging an enormous sack of flour. Yo, boy.
“If you don’t want it all,” said May on a dubious note, “I suppose we could bag it up in one-kilo lots and—um…”
“Sell it to the yuppie types that patronize the Garden Centre,” finished Jack, straight-faced.
Sol and Michaela both choked.
“Well, it is that stone-ground stuff,” murmured May: “there wouldn’t be much demand round here...”
“No, that’s fine. I’ll use it up over winter, making my own bread,” said Sol cheerfully.
“Can you?” asked Michaela, staring at him.
“Well, I never tried. Only I got a book!”
“Ya gotta have the strength in the wrists,” said Jack, releasing the bag and panting. –He was a thin, wiry man, with a build rather like Sol’s, in fact, and Sol, although he was no weakling, began to have thoughts about his back, and heaving that up into the Land Rover…
“She could,” added Jack, jerking his head at Michaela.
“I often do. Only not with stone-ground flour: it’s too dear,” replied Michaela unemotionally. “It’s time-consuming, though.”
“Well, good, how’s about some lessons?” said Sol weakly.
“Righto,” Michaela agreed. “I’ll take it out to the car, shall I?” She didn’t wait for a reply. They all watched limply as she heaved the sack of flour onto one shoulder, picked up—picked up the carton of milk with the other hand, yet!—and walked out.
“Gawd,” whispered Jack eventually in a shaking voice, clutching the counter.
His nice little fair-haired wife went red and said sharply: “Stop that, Jack!”
“No,” said Sol, gulping: “he’s right, May, strong men have just blenched.”
Jack winked.
“Very funny!” said May, glaring at them both impartially.
Jack straightened, grinning. “Fine figure of a woman, eh?”
“Uh-huh.”
Jack winked again.
May said quickly in a very high voice, not looking at her embarrassing husband: “Oh, by the way, Sol, did you know that Adam McIntyre’s back in the country again? They’re going to turn the play he was in into a film!”
It would be hard to miss this fact if you were a consumer of even one form of media, because they were all full of it. One rumour was that the star was going to wear nothing but a small grass apron and blue tattoos in A Midsummer Night’s Dream The EnZed Movie Version.
May plunged into it, in the intervals of pointing him in the direction of the other stuff he wanted or finding it for him. Sol put a listening look on his face and allowed his mind to switch off.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Jack in a bored voice as she finally paused for breath. Rapidly he served two small boys with a jelly-baby alligator. Not each, between ’em.
Michaela had come back, not even breathing hard, while May was in the middle of it. “Are these all Sol’s? Shall I take them out?”
“Oh! Just a minute, Michaela, I haven’t finished adding—” May added up feverishly on a pile of New Zealand Heralds.
“Don’t forget the flour,” Jack reminded her.
“Or the peas and the plums,” added Michaela.
“What? Oh, no, that’s nothing, dear, we’d have thrown them away.”
“Not genuine organic produce like this, May!” said Sol in horror.
“Don’t be silly, Sol, it’s just stuff from our garden.”
“Yeah,” said Jack. It was impossible to tell whether in fact he agreed with her. Sol looked at him appreciatively. Jack looked back blandly.
“Organic stuff’s very expensive. I know a lady that’s into that,” said Michaela seriously. “She lives in Kowhai Bay and she drives all the way into town twice a week to a special shop.”
“Rubbish, dear! These are just out of the garden!” cried May.
Jack was serving a young woman in jeans and a floppy cotton-knit top with three cartons of milk, a packet of Lipton’s teabags, a tin of tomatoes, a small bag of frozen peas and a packet of par-boiled rice. “Prob’ly smothered in DDT, anyway,” he noted.
“Don’t be silly, Jack, you know that’s been illegal for years! And I’m sure that old plum tree hasn’t been sprayed within living memory!”
Jack rubbed his chin. “Not judging by the lichen on it: no.”
“Well, that proves it: organic,” said Sol briskly. “Charge me eighteen dollars a kilo, May.”
May giggled ecstatically.
“Organic? Eighteen dollars per plum, more like,” drawled Jack. An elderly man in a yachting cap came in and asked him for a packet of Marlboro and then, wistfully, whether they stocked cigarillos. No, they didn’t.
Jack served a small girl with a Milky Bar and added to the elderly man as he went sadly out: “You could try at the Royal Kingfisher, up at the marina. They’ve got a tobacco boutique in their lobby. Charge you the earth, o’ course.” The elderly man touched his finger to the peak of this cap in mournful acknowledgement of this information, and went out.
Sol managed in a strangled voice: “Well, there you are, then, May. Charge what you like.”
May giggled again. “In that case, it’s nothing, you’re doing us a favour by taking them off our hands!”
Jack served another small girl with a Crunchie Bar. “The kids won’t eat real peas,” he said lugubriously, leaning on the counter.
A small boy came in and asked for a choc-mint Trumpet. They were in the freezer over by the biscuits, so Jack ambled round to get one for him. “Do you like fresh peas, Jason?” he said to him.
“Neh. Only frozen,” said Jason tersely. He handed over some money. “Gran makes us eat fresh peas,” he added sadly.
Jack eyed Sol in a considering sort of way.
“Uncle,” said Sol immediately.
Jack allowed his lips to twitch ever so slightly as he gave Jason his change.
“Remind me,” said Sol thoughtfully as they retired to the Land Rover, Michaela carrying most of his groceries in a large cardboard carton emblazoned with the mystic message “Harding’s Baked Beans”, and he carrying the bag of plums, “to let Jack and May have a few flounder next time I take the runabout down the Inlet.”
“Righto,” said Michaela simply.
Sol’s lips twitched but in a manner worthy of Jack Swadling himself he didn’t permit himself to laugh.
When they got back it was definitely lunchtime. The store was pretty busy, though things seemed to have slackened off next-door at the boutique. Just as well, since Milly Watson had gone home for lunch and her daughter, Sharon, who was conscientious but very, very slow, had taken over. It would of course have been possible for Milly to bring her lunch, or even for Sharon to bring some lunch for her, and for her to eat it in the tiny sink area at the back of the boutique, or, when the weather was fine, outside on the grass in back, or even down on the beach, but Milly always went home to Carter’s Bay. This was so as she could feed her husband, an able-bodied retired man of sixty-seven. Sol had never attempted to find out why Russ Watson couldn’t feed himself. Come to that, Russ could have brought Milly some lunch, or at least collected her, Sol knew he drove, he’d seen him driving round Carter’s B— Nope: that way madness lay. At least Milly was conscientious and honest. And the clients seemed to like her, even though she didn’t have an artistic bone in her body as far as Sol could see.
Sol served four customers in the boating-supplies store and then the smoke cleared enough for him to say to Jimmy: “I’ll go upstairs and make lunch, I guess. Can you eat franks?”
Jimmy nodded eagerly.
“Good. Starsky go on over to the boatyard, did he?”
“No, he’s sorting sinkers.”
Sol peered. So he was. He went and told him to go get Euan for lunch.
Starsky scrambled up, beaming. “Ace! C’n I go back with him, after?”
“I guess you better pot up some bait first,” said Sol, scratching his head. “It’s getting kinda low. Then you can go on over.”
“Ace! Hey, Sol?”
“Mm-hm?”
“Euan reckons people are always asking him if he sells bait, do ya reckon I could take some over there?”
Sol had prior experience of the phrase “people are always” proceeding from the mouths of naïve young helpers. Or even just helpers. He eyed him drily but said: “You could take a couple of pots, yeah: see how it goes. Don’t take no more until we see if he can get rid of ’em, huh? Remember there’s no fridge over there.”
“Yes, there is, Sol, Euan’s got that old one going!” said Jimmy eagerly.
“Geddouda here! It’s older than I am!”
“No, honest: I saw him at the Bottle Store last night, he was buying some beer and when I said it it’d get Helluva warm he said no it wouldn’t, ’cos he’d fixed the fridge!” He beamed.
“Wal, that’s circumstantial, yep,” he allowed.
They looked at him blankly.
“Good on him,” he said weakly. “I won’t ask what you were doing at the Bottle Store,” he added mildly.
“l was with Dad!” said Jimmy quickly.
Uh-huh.
“Well, I could take a lot of bait over!” said Starsky keenly.
Sol shut his eyes for a split second, even though he had prior experience of eager young helpers. “Just wait and see how it goes, okay? And remember whose responsibility choppin’ and pottin’ the bait is from here on in,” he added pointedly.
Starsky grinned all over his face. “Yeah! Hey, Sol—”
“If you want lunch, git.”
Starsky got.
Michaela had taken the groceries upstairs. She came down and asked: “What shall I do?”
Honey, jes’ pop on up them stairs and take that tee-shirt off— “Can you cook franks?” he said mildly.
“No.”
Sol served a man in dirty jeans and an orange tee-shirt with an antifouling compound and warned him he wasn’t allowed to use it in the Inlet, Puriri County Council regulations. “You better take over for me here. All the prices are on everything, and if there’s anything you need to know, ask Jimmy.”
“Um—okay.” She came behind the counter, looking nervous.
Sol touched her solid shoulder fleetingly as he passed her on his way out. “Just make change slowly. They’d rather have it right and slow than wrong and fast.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling gratefully.
… “How’d it go?” he asked, coming downstairs when the first lot of franks were ready.
Jimmy finished serving a very tanned girl with a length of rope, and smiled. “She tried to charge a bloke ten times the price of the reel of this stuff for ten metres, but apart from that she was okay.”
“It’s got ’em both marked on it, honey,” said Sol mildly. “Sometimes we get a guy off of a big yacht that needs a whole coil, ya see.”
“Yes,” she said, blushing. “Jimmy explained.”
“He show you how to measure it out, too?”
Michaela nodded.
“Good. Well, you go on up, Jimmy, there’s franks and rolls and stuff on the table, and beer in the fridge if you don’t feel like tea.”
Jimmy hurried upstairs, beaming.
“Is he allowed to drink beer? I thought he was too young to go to the Bottle Store?” said Michaela slowly.
“Seventeen. It’s only light-beer, he’d have to drink a six-pack before it had much effect,” he said kindly.
“I see. What about Starsky?”
“Oh, he’ll want some, you can bet your last cent!”
“That doesn’t mean June’d let him,” said Michaela with a smile as two guys in blue and white striped tee-shirts and designer jeans came in—the Tui Grove set, sans doute. The one with the sandy crew-cut wanted a cylinder of camping-gas and the one with the black curls and the black wrap-around shades wanted to know if Sol sold cigarillos.
Sol very kindly told him about the tobacco boutique at the Royal Kingfisher Hotel.
“They cost the earth, there, though,” said Michaela helpfully.
“Ugh, do they?” he said. “How much?”
“We don’t know: that’s just what our spies have told us,” said Sol quickly.
“Well, I suppose we could try there,” he conceded. “Isn’t there anywhere around here that sells food?”
“You folks not local, then?” drawled Sol.
Naturally Wrap-Arounds didn’t react to the accent, he just said: “We’ve just bought a place in Bellbird Crescent.”
Sol was real disappointed, not Tui Grove? “No, there ain’t no place to get food in these here parts, lessen you folks fancy pizzas up to the Hongi Heke Room at the Royal Kingfisher.”
“They do cost the earth,” said Michaela in a pleased voice.
“Yup. We made the mistake of eatin’ there. Onct,” said Sol.
“Well, what about milk and bread and stuff?” said the guy with the black wrap-arounds in a high voice, taking them off and suddenly looking quite ordinary.
“Carter’s Bay. Some folks keep a runabout for the purpose, you’ll do it easy down the Inlet in ten-fifteen minutes,” said Sol.
“It’s more direct than by the road,” added Michaela.
“Carter’s Bay?” said the dark one to the crew-cut one in a shaken voice. “My God, Bob, what’ll Diane say?”
“There must be a milk delivery!” said the sandy crewcut Bob.
“Nope. Boys, this here is the sticks,” said Sol slowly and clearly.
“He means the wop-wops,” said Michaela with a twinkle in her eye.
“You could ask your neighbours if ya don’t wanna take my word,” noted Sol. “Now, that Mrs Parker in Tui Grove, she’s a real nice lady, she wouldn’t mind fillin’ you in. She knows the guy to see when your septic tank backs up, too: they been here a while, see, and theirs backed up last winter.”
“It was awful,” agreed Michaela calmly.
Bob gulped. “Did you know the place had a septic tank, Garry?” he said to his friend.
“No.”
“Christ, Megan went rabid when the bloody bidet got bunged up,” said Bob numbly. He passed a harried hand over the crew-cut. “I can’t imagine what she’ll say if the septic tank—”
“Well, you agreed to the time-share arrangement!”
“You said your lawyer went over the papers with a fine-tooth comb, why didn’t he warn us there was only a septic tank?”
They became aware that the two counter-persons of Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies were regarding them with interest.
“You only using the place on a time-share?” said Sol genially. “Well, in that case the plumbing’s the responsibility of the time-share corporation, not yours.”
“That’s us,” said Bob glumly. “It was one of Garry’s bright ideas.”
“You were all for it!” said Garry indignantly. He replaced his wrap-arounds, looking sulky.
“Isn’t there even a dairy?” said Bob plaintively.
“Nope.”
“Only at Carter’s Bay,” agreed Michaela.
“Yeah. You guys stocked up for the Christmas weekend yet?” asked Sol genially.
“Um—well, we— Not milk or bread,” said Bob limply.
“Or toilet paper—Jesus, can ya even use it with a septic tank?” gasped Garry.
“’Course!” said Michaela scornfully.
“Look, surely the Royal Kingfisher’s connected to the sewerage?” said Garry desperately, removing his wrap-arounds in his desperation.
“Oh, sure, the pipeline comes down to this end of the bay,” replied Sol blandly. “Soon as the County Council’s collected sufficient rates from Kingfisher Bay they’ll extend it. –But listen, what I was gonna say, the dairy at Carter’s Bay’s nearly out of bread, if you need any you better go straight on in.”
Bob passed a hand over his crew-cut again. “Jesus! Look, we’d better get on down to Puriri,” he said to Garry.
“The girls’ll kill us. Diane’s practically got lunch ready, and her bloody parents are due any minute.”
There was a short pause.
“Will the dairy be open on Boxing Day?” asked Garry in a doomed voice.
“Uh-uh,” returned Sol in the negative. “Not Friday, neither. Puriri sure would be your best bet, if you’re out of bread. And toilet paper.”
Garry pinched the bridge of his nose with his eyes shut.
“The dairy’ll be closed right over the weekend, they’re going up to the Bay of Islands,” added Michaela helpfully.
“Christ!” said the dark-haired Garry in angry despair.
“Jesus,” said the sandy Bob in glum despair.
Sol gave a faint sniff. “If anyone in your family knows how to bake bread I could let you have plenny of wholemeal flour and yeast.”
Garry looked at Bob with a wild hope in his eye. “Does Megan—?”
Bob looked at Garry with a wild hope in his eye. “Does Diane—?”
Their shoulders sagged.
“Thanks for the offer,” said Bob dully. “How much do we owe ya?”
Sol told them the price of the camping gas.
When they’d gone he said thoughtfully: “Yeah, a little dairy selling bread, milk and toilet paper, is what this place needs.”
“And cigarillos!” said Michaela with a laugh.
“Yup.”
They looked at each other and grinned.
During the afternoon business slackened off at the boating-supplies store, which was just as well, because the crafts boutique experienced a rush of ladies in flowery frocks—office Christmas party from the Royal K, Sol diagnosed without effort: the ladies were all Helluva lit-up, and unescorted—and he had to go in there and help. By the time the smoke had cleared there wasn’t a coffee mug left in the place and barely a hand-painted silk scarf, neither.
“Boxing Day I guess I better do a stock-take,” he said, looking round the depleted boutique in a numbed way.
“There might be some more mugs upstairs,” said Michaela dubiously. “Sol, this lady has only got American dollars.”
This lady had not been with the office-party group, she was a small, plump, extremely spruce elderly lady whom Sol coulda spotted at five hundred yards as an American tourist, she had “right off of the QEII” written all over her neat, plump person.
“Wal, we do take American Express,” he drawled.
“Oh, my, are you an American—” This went on for some time, but then he hadn’t expected it wouldn’t, it was one of the hazards of serving in the boutique. He let her use her Gold Card to buy an extremely expensive handwoven afghan, mixed mohair and New Zealand wool, and explained that the Royal Kingfisher Hotel could change the dollars for her. She then had to tell him how her husband was very interested in fishing—Sol was surprized, he’d put her down as one of the billions of travelling American widows—and had hired a boat for the day. And they’d heard about the big-game fishing, only was there anywhere nice to stay up this Bay of Islands— This took some time. The more so as he had to explain about Christmas being the big summer vacation here and if they hadn’t already booked for the Bay of Islands...
“How come these Americans expect they can just walk in the country and stay wherever they feel like it?” he grumbled as her neat back disappeared.
Michaela bit her lip. Milly Watson gulped.
“Never heard of the equator, ya see!” he explained.
Milly gulped again. “Surely you must have Christmas holidays in America, too?”
He didn’t attempt to really explain, he just said mildly: “Yeah, only we don’t combine it with the long vacation.”
“I see,” said Michaela placidly. “So those Gold Card things are okay, are they, Sol?”
“Pretty much: yeah,” he said weakly.
“I’ll remember that.”
“Mm-hm. –You remember it, too, Milly,” he added.
“Oh! Yes! Of course! Um, I won’t be able to help you with the stock-take on Boxing Day, Sol,” she quavered.
Sol knew that. “That’s fine, Milly, I can manage. –You got any more pots down at the kiln?” he asked Michaela.
“Um—not really.”
“Better go through them seconds of yours,” he said with a grin. “How’s about Bob? He ready to sell them lithograph discards, yet?”
“June says not quite!” said Michaela with a laugh.
“Uh-huh. You rackon June might like to spend her summer vacation whippin’ up a few dozen coffee mugs?” he drawled.
“Yeah!” panted a breathless voice from the doorway. “She’s sick of pixies, she reckons if she hasta do another pixie she’ll kill herself! Hey, Sol, Euan’s got a man with a launch and he said to ask you, because it’s a rush job and he wants it by tomorrow morning!”
Sol didn’t ask for details because in his experience that was how clear it was gonna get. He went straight to the heart of the matter. “How did you get here?”
“In the runabout. –I know how to steer it!”
Yeah, yeah. Words would have to be had with Euan on the subject of NOT lettin’ dumb kids in the runabout without life-jackets, however shallow the Inlet. And whether or not the dumb kid claimed he could swim.
“Yeah. Well, we’ll just grab a couple of life-jackets and get goin’, then. And Milly, if you’ve got time this afternoon, you could just check out that glassware, I might give that guy a call.”
“It hasn’t sold as well as the mugs.”
Sol agreed mildly to this, not pointing out that it was a lot more expensive than the mugs and that in any case all the lovely green recycled-glass paperweights had sold like hot-cakes, and bore Starsky away.
The boatyard was set in a tiny natural valley on its own tiny natural bay. Very warm and sheltered. Its amenities comprised a lot of scrubby grass, a slipway and a large shed, this last possibly once a boathouse but with the silting-up of this side of the inlet, only partly consequential on Jake Carrano’s bulldozing of Kingfisher Bay, now set well back from the water. Euan was sitting on the scruffy grass with bits of outboard motor spread out all round him. He was wearing grimy denim shorts and a limp canvas hat but Sol didn’t comment on this even mentally, his own outfit was similar except for a washed-out grey tee-shirt and the rubber flip-flops on his feet. Sol had never seen as many rubber flip-flops per square inch in his life as there were in New Zealand. Never. Boy, whoever had the rubber flip-flop monopoly was onto a good thing. He was in no doubt that it was a monopoly, having discovered by now that almost everything was. Out here they called ’em “jandals” and didn’t know what you meant if you said “flip-flops” but after the “freeways-motorways” thing Sol was pretty well indifferent to this. Besides, they’d never heard of jack cheese.
Ordering Starsky to resume the cotton shirt that was lying on the grass and that had been adorning his scrawny body earlier in the day before he’d been let loose to join up with Euan’s male peer group, Sol added: “That it?”
There was only one large cabin-cruiser moored by the boatyard, actually.
Euan replied laconically: “Yeah. Think ’e’s stripped the gears. Stupid nit.”
“He’s only had it for two weeks!” said Starsky hoarsely, the voice cracking on the “weeks”.
Euan blew scientifically into the fuel line of the outboard. “Yeah. He took it up the Inlet—don’ ask me why,” he warned—“got it stuck on the mud and tried to reverse off.”
“I geddit: never heard of tides,” agreed Sol.
“Yeah,” he said sourly.
“What’s his name?” ventured Sol, even though knowing that introductions in Kiwi circles, especially macho male Kiwi circles, were not the done thing.
“Dunno,” grunted Euan, peering into the fuel line.
“How did he get it off?” asked Sol with interest.
“Come down here in a Helluva flap in ’is rubber dinghy.”
“Uh-huh.”
Euan wiped his hands perfunctorily on a filthy cotton rag. He glanced at his watch. “’Bout two hours back. So I told ’im, nothing to do but wait for the tide: float ’er off easy, tow her down with the runabout.”
“Which ya did.”
“Yeah.”
“He said the runabout wouldn’t be strong enough!” choked Starkey ecstatically.
“Never heard of the principle of flotation,” noted Sol.
“No!” he gasped ecstatically, going into a paroxysm.
“There’s a fair bit of it about,” noted Sol to Euan.
“Yeah. Whaddaya reckon?”
“Where is he?”
“On board, getting pissed.” He looked up suddenly, smiled and said: “Well, you could put it like that. Sulking in his tent, actually.”
Sol smiled: this was one of the things he very much liked about Euan Knox. “Uh-huh, goddit. Well, I’ll take a look-see.”
Euan rose without haste. “Okay. I warned him if you haven’t got the parts, there’s no way he can have it fixed by tomorrow.”
“Good.”
They strolled down to the water’s edge, Starsky hippity-hopping along excitedly, uninvited. Not that Sol had thought he wouldn’t.
On board, the cabin-cruiser’s owner revealed himself not to be a large, elderly, paunchy, red-faced idiot, which Sol had kinda had a picture of in his head, but a large, youngish, red-faced idiot with only an incipient paunch. Which the whisky he was knocking back was doing its best to encourage.
Sol held his hand out. “Sol Winkelmann,” he said.
This forced the scowling cabin-cruiser owner to shake hands and admit: “Featherstone. Pete Featherstone.”
“Glad to meet ya,” drawled Sol.
There was a short pause.
“Haven’t we met before?” said Pete Featherstone uneasily.
“Mighta done. What do you do?” returned Sol cheerfully.
Pete Featherstone revealed that he was a lawyer—barrister, actually.
Sol didn’t know any lawyers except for— Oh. “Yeah, I think Micky Shapiro might have introduced us at his golf club,” he admitted.
“Oh, yeah! You’re—you’re—” Pete Featherstone snapped his fingers, frowning.
“His ex-wife’s brother-in-law,” said Sol smoothly.
“Of course!” Pete Featherstone then asked kindly after Pat and Sol admitted that when Abe last wrote she was just the same as usual. Pete Featherstone gave a startled laugh.
“What’s the trouble, Pete?” Sol then said laconically.
“Eh? Oh! Well, your young fellow, here, thinks it might be the gears.”
“Uh-huh,” said Sol neutrally.
It was the gears, all right. Jesus! Euan of course had been perfectly correct and the clown had stripped ’em. Must have taken quite an effort, really.
“Yeah,” reported Sol, scratching his head. “You’ve stripped them.”
There was a short silence.
“You haven’t got a mast, eh?” said Starsky keenly.
“Shut up,” said Euan without animus.
“It’s serious, then?” said Pete Featherstone with a silly laugh.
“Yeah,” Sol conceded.
“Jesus, we’re supposed to be taking her over to Kawau for Christmas; Jesus, Lorraine’ll kill me!” he muttered.
Sol found this information real interesting, he’d heard it was Auckland’s up-market yachties that went over to Kawau Island, Christmas—well, Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, Labour Day, you name it—to get boozed outa their tiny minds; he’d never realized that cabin-cruiser people did it, too.
“I’ll have to replace the gear-box,” he said flatly.
There was a short silence.
“How long will it take?” asked Pete Featherstone sourly.
Sol scratched his head. “Well, you might be lucky, I think I got the parts. You can have it by tomorrow morning if you’re willing to pay triple rates, I’ve got a fair few other jobs I oughta be doing first.”
Pete Featherstone tried to argue but Sol said it was take it or leave it. So he asked for a quote. Sol could only give him an estimate, it depended on whether he did have the parts. Pete Featherstone accepted this grudgingly.
Then there was a short silence.
“What if you haven’t got the parts?”
“Tell ’im,” said Sol briefly to Euan.
Grinning, Euan said: “You’ve got three options. One, order a replacement. If the suppliers have got one in the country, could take under three weeks. Depending whether they’re closed over Christmas and New Year’s. If they’ve gotta get it from overseas…” He shrugged. “Depends whether they fly it in or not, I suppose. –Six weeks?” he said to Sol. Sol shrugged. “Six weeks, minimum, and at that it depends on whether Customs are feeling like letting it through,” said Euan kindly.—Pete Featherstone by this time was turning purple and it wasn’t the whisky.—“Two, you could have a new set of gears ground for ya; I know a bloke that does that sorta work,” he said thoughtfully.
“How much?” croaked Pete Featherstone.
Euan told him.
“WHAT?” he screamed.
“Have to get tooled up specially. Not worth it for a one-off,” said Euan laconically.
“Yeah,” agreed Sol . “First law of production: the more you order, the cheaper they get per unit.”
“Yeah.”
The cabin-cruiser owner asked through trembling lips: “What’s the third option?”
“Eh? Oh,” said Euan with a twinkle in his clear blue eyes: “Sell ’er for scrap.”
Pete Featherstone took a deep breath. “How soon can you let me know if you’ve got the parts?” he asked Sol.
“Twenny minutes. Give or take. Have to go back to the store. Don’t keep expensive parts here, no security.”
“Do it,” he said tightly. “I’ll pay for your time, of course!” he added irritably.
“You sure will,” Sol agreed.—Pete Featherstone glared.—“It bein’ Christmas Eve an’ all,” he drawled.
“Yes.” There was a short pause. “Thanks, Sol.”
“Da nada,” drawled Sol. –Euan swallowed: he knew Sol only said that when he was in a very good mood indeed, like generally after the seventh bourbon and water, or when he really loathed the person whom he was addressing.
One they were safely back on shore, Euan asked cautiously: “Had you really met him?”
“Uh-huh. Well, I didn’t recognize him,” Sol admitted. “Only I recognized the name. He’s the guy that Micky Shapiro claims the entire legal profession calls Young Feather-tit.”
Euan and Starsky fell about laughing ecstatically.
Sol was quite aware that Pete Featherstone was standing on his foredeck watching them. He couldn’t say he regretted it, neither.
Back at the store he discovered that, as he had been almost a hundred percent sure, he did have the parts. Even though Pete Featherstone seemed a very unlikely candidate indeed, it was clear that Someone up there really loved him. Well, the ways of the Almighty sure were inscrutable. Yup.
Michaela was upstairs in the attic over the boutique, investigating boxes.
“Michaela, honey,” he said, poking his head in: “I got an urgent job over to the boatyard. Will you come get me and Starsky round, uh—” he looked at his watch and grimaced—“six-thirty, I guess?”
“Yes,” she said, blushing. “Shall I ring June?”
“Huh? Oh, sure—better tell her we’ll feed him, huh?”
“Yes. Um—would you like me to get the tea?” she said shyly.
Would he? Boy, oh— “Mm-hm. Thanks, Michaela,” he said, giving her his keys. “The Yale’s the front door to the store, okay?”
“Okay. Is there anything you’d like me to cook?”
Sol almost opened his mouth and put his foot in it. “Nope, you just forage: use anything you like.”
“Okay. I could stew some of those plums.”
Stewed plums, or, Honeydew. Yup. “Sure, sure, good idea. I gotta run—see ya!”
“See ya,” she said, smiling.
Sol tottered downstairs with his head spinning and almost—but not quite—forgot to tell Starsky to put that Goddam life-jacket on, kid, whaddaya think you are—immune?
Next part of Chapter 35:
https://theamericanrefugeeanovel.blogspot.com/2022/10/sols-christmas-part-2.html
No comments:
Post a Comment