35
Sol’s Christmas. Part 2
Michaela’s idea of a suitable Christmas Eve dinner consisted of, as a first course, huge amounts of spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce but no meat in it and a very little grated cheese—when Starsky asked, Sol said it was okay to grate more, though left to himself he would tactfully have refrained—accompanied by a huge salad incorporating half of the large lettuce from Sol’s fridge, a good deal of silverbeet that hadn’t had a home anywheres in his apartment that he was aware of, a quantity of sprouted lentils—must do ’em herself—and a quantity of raw peas. Starsky began to object to these last but found that both Sol and Euan were giving him amazed stares, so he shut up pretty damn quick. She would have eaten it without dressing but Sol murmured that he thought he had some mixed somewhere, would she like that? Michaela agreed and he didn’t reveal that it contained the most expensive brand of olive oil, barring what the drugst—uh, chemists’ shops sold. (Oh, yes. Yup. Medicinal, geddit?)
The second course was stewed plums and it was just as well that Michaela had apparently never heard of the concept of peeling fruit, because the pale yellow flesh of New Zealand Christmas plums was almost tasteless. She served ’em up with a big bowl of yoghurt, revealing shyly upon enquiry that she made it herself. Starsky had been looking at the plums with an “Ugh, yuck, stewed plums” expression on his face but came to at this and said scornfully Mum made yoghurt, too, it was easy.
Sol said peaceably that Michaela had better teach him, then, he guessed it would be cheaper than buying the bought stuff, huh? Loads, Starsky assured him scornfully. After that there was a pause while Starsky watched Sol and Euan put lots of yoghurt on their stewed plums and start to eat ’em hungrily.
“Yum!” said Euan, beaming at her. “You put honey in these, eh?” –Sol had already awarded that young guy a huge medal for the three options he’d offered Feather-tit, and oak-leaves for his reaction to Starsky’s reaction to the peas in the salad—but at this he awarded him the Order of the British Empire on the spot. First-Class.
“Yes. I hope that’s all right?” she said shyly to Sol.
He nodded enthusiastically. “Great idea!”
Looking relieved, Michaela began to eat her dessert.
Starsky picked up his spoon and ate stewed plums and yoghurt without saying a word.
By the time they got down to Puriri it was pretty late and Sol decided that if he wanted to do any marketing, they better go to the supermarkets right now. Starsky agreed eagerly to this proposition though actually no-one had solicited his opinion. Euan agreed with some relief and added by the by that he only had a couple of tins of baked beans left. Sol didn’t point out he’d told him he could eat regular at his place, because he’d already discovered that Euan felt he shouldn’t. Not every meal.
The Puriri supermarkets were crammed to the gunnels with a pushin’, shovin’, heavin’ mass of humanity. The humidity hadn’t dropped, neither, and this made it real good, because the Puriri supermarkets, like, Sol had now discovered, the rest of the country, hadn’t never heard of air conditioning. Yo, boy.
Starsky urged various tropical fruits on him, to wit, strawberries at six times the price they’d been last week, pineapples at six times the price they’d been last week, green mangoes at about what the store made in a fortnight, and visibly rotting paw-paws at ditto. Sol ignored this but that didn’t mean he could find a single grapefruit that wasn’t kinda cuboid in shape with a gigantic squashy dint in at least one of its faces. Yo, boy. Starsky appeared to have no concept of what a kilo of grapes constituted, as he urged a huge bunch that musta weighed two kilo if an ounce on Sol, but fortunately Michaela didn’t, neither, she didn’t scream as he let the kid put ’em in his cart. Well, they looked good, and Californian produce was generally reliable lessen the New Zealand teenage supermarket assistants that put the fruit out had actually dropped it five times from a great height. Like they did: Sol had seen ’em do it with his own eyes and he was in no doubt that was how the squashy patches had gotten onto the grapefruit.
Starsky also thought Sol could buy a frozen turkey or a whole ham. Or a tin of squid to see what it was like, a tin of coconut cream to see what it was like, a jar of vindaloo paste to see what it was— Sol dragged him away from the “delicacies” section with an iron hand. Starsky then thought that no-one would wanna eat that many gherkins!—Dills, Sol contradicted him neutrally: Euan choked—that no-one would wanna whole tin of olive oil—fortunately Michaela didn’t look at the price on it and Starsky was too naïve to; and, as they retraced their steps slightly, that no-one would actually eat cod’s roe, it was all nasty little eggs, ugh, yuck! Sol ignored this, and again dragged him away from the “delicacies” section with an iron hand…
They made for the dairy section. No milk left: figured. What did Sol want all that cream for? Heck, Mum never bought cream, she reckoned— This strawberry milk was ace, Sol; ya see— Aw. Well, it was ace. Ugh, cottage cheese, ugh, you were never gonna get through all that! Even Michaela looked at it sideways and said: “It is a big pot, it might go off.” She followed this up by: “What is sour cream?” in a dubious voice but on the whole Sol woulda been disappointed if she hadn’t. Starsky then revealed that he didn’t know what Philadelphia Cream Cheese was but Sol would have been staggered if he hadda done, in fact it was fair to say he woulda been shocked out of seven years’ growth.
Euan asked with interest what Sol was planning to do with it, so he was able to explain that he was gonna make a cheesecake, yes, he knew the bought ones were ace, Starsky, using the Philly, some of the cottage cheese and some of the sour cream. Grinning, Euan revealed he thought the bought ones were foul: tasted of gelatine and sugar, and Sol grinned back and said he entirely concurred, put it there, pordner.
They shook hands over the dairy section, grinning, and Sol, catching a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of his eye, was just in time to order Starsky to take that cheese dip OUTA Michaela’s cart!
Once Starsky had been dissuaded from putting a chocolate Santa Claus, a packet of Christmas tree baubles and three rolls of Christmas paper for the price of one in anybody’s cart—okay, Starsky, trolley!—once that, they staggered to the check-out. Where Sol realised he’d only forgotten all the stuff he’d come for but what the Hell, he wasn’t gonna struggle through all them tank-tops, sneakers and jandals again: he’d had it.
Throughout this entire period of extended torture, perhaps needless to state, the supermarket had been broadcasting, very loud, Bing Crosby crooning White Christmas, interspersed with loud announcements of Very Special Offers, shoppers. Gee, apart from the lack of air conditioning and the appalling quality of the fresh produce, he’d have thought himself at home in good ole Fort Lauderdale.
Euan had probably been thinking along these lines, too: when they finally they emerged, panting and sweating, into the carpark, he asked: “What would you have been doing if you’d been at home in America for Christmas Eve, Sol?”
“Wal, now, Christmas Eve is traditionally the great boys’ night out in the Winkelmann family. Wal, last Christmas I was back home it kinda had to include Pat, too, so—” He had to stop, Euan was choking, he’d heard a fair bit about Pat Winkelmann over the last year.
When he was over it Sol explained: “I always used to feed Junior and the boys, so as to give Ruthie a bit of a rest, well, time to scrub the kitchen floor and bake a last batch of pies. And Abe always tagged along, too.”
“What did you have to eat?” asked Michaela with interest.
Sol had to swallow. “Wal, now, Michaela, honey, that would depend on where I took ’em.”
“I thought you meant tea at your place,” she said.
“Nope. Sometimes we’d eat fish at The Cove—well, Abe and Junior and me; or Mexican at The Cactus Flower—well, Abe and Junior and me; or steak at The Chuck Waggon—well, Abe and Junior and me.”
By this time even Starsky had got it: he asked breathlessly: “What did the boys have?”
“Hamburgers and fries.”
“Gee!” he said enviously.
Euan had another choking fit.
Michaela was silent, thinking it over. As they reached the car she said: “Do you mean all those American restaurants had hamburgers?”
“Yeah. Well, they’re all what we call family restaurants, you see, Michaela. Catering to family parties, not the place where a guy’d take a fancy bird he was chatting up.”
Euan added helpfully: “And all American kids have been brought up on the notion that eating out means hamburgers: the fell influence of McDonald’s, you see.”
“Wal, more or less,” murmured Sol. “It’s more like all American kids have been brought up on the idea that food equals hamburgers. That’s the fell influence of McDonald’s, too.”
Euan choked again.
“I wish I lived in America,” said Starsky glumly. “Mum never lets us—”
“That’ll do,” said Sol hurriedly. “Hop in, she’ll be thinking we’ve kidnapped you.”
“Family Christmases sound as bloody awful over there as they are here,” summed up Euan.
“Yup. –You goin’ home for dinner tomorrow, Euan?”
“Yeah,” he said glumly. “I rung up Mum the other day and she bawled when I said I might just stay up the Inlet.”
Uh-huh. Yup.
June’s face was very red when she opened the kitchen door but this was only partly because the place was like an oven, with the oven, in fact, going. It was a lot more because Ivan and Mason had been Impossible All Day, as she immediately revealed.
Bob came in from the passage, scowling, as they all came into the big main room, and said: “I’ve put ’em down, but don’t expect ’em to stay down.” His face was pretty red, too.
“We won’t stay,” said Sol hurriedly. “Just looked in to drop him off and to give you these.”
June protested and gasped as they handed over armfuls of presents. Bob didn’t even make a pretence of gasping, let alone protesting, as Sol handed over a bottle-shaped present and advised: “Better open that now.”
“Yeah! Too right!”
“C’n I have some?” cried his firstborn.
“NO.”
“You could go to bed,” noted June.
Starsky protested on the grounds of his advanced age.
“See: it’s just like Meg said,” noted his mother darkly, sinking into the rocking-chair. “Oh—Siddown,” she said graciously to her guests.
They duly sat and Sol ventured: “What did Meg say?”
“Once they reach the teens,” said June, glaring evilly at her teenager, who was now upended under the tree, fee-eeling presents lingeringly and lovingly, “they’re always with you.”
“Even unto bedtime,” noted Bob grimly, handing glasses.
“Huh? Oh—your bedtime!” said Sol with a grin.
“Got it in three,” he noted sourly, pouring.
“Whoa!” cried Sol in horror. “I’m driving.”
“Oh. I’ll have that one.” Bob took it off him and replaced it with a minute trickle.
Sol looked at it sadly, even though he was driving.
Once June got a belt down her she started interrogating them as to how Starsky had behaved himself, what Michaela had done today, what Michaela and Sol intended doing for Christmas dinner—
They did eventually get away, but it was later than Sol would have liked, considering Euan and he still had to finish Feather-tit’s gear-box. Oh, yes.
He left the runabout with Euan and walked home, finally, at around three Christmas morning. It was a mild night, still quite humid but not as unpleasant as it had been all day. Well, for the best part of December, actually. The hill that separated the boatyard’s little cove from Kingfisher Bay was quiet and redolent of grass and manuka scrub. Over the hill it wasn’t so quiet, in fact the air was rent with raucous screams from all the yuppie Christmas Eve parties winding down, and the roar of Porsches starting up. Down by the store, however, everything was quiet except for two young policemen in a patrol car having a smoke just across the road with their police radio on. And incidentally ignoring the Porsches roaring up to the main road just behind ’em and the BMWs and Jags roaring past ’em from the Royal Kingfisher Hotel, where the Christmas Eve party was apparently still in full swing; but there, it was Christmas Eve. Sol bade them a cheerful goodnight and went inside very quietly, so as not to disturb Michaela next-door.
What with the thought of her next-door on her narrow stretcher, the day ended pretty much as it had begun for S. Winkelmann. But he was gettin’ used to that: she’d been there for over a week, now. It still hadn’t gotten tired of it, though. Uh-uh. No, sir. Nup.
Sol emerged onto his front step, blinking and scratching, at pretty near crack of dawn next day—well, sevenish: he wanted to try out that Goddamn cabin-cruiser before Feather-tit collected it.
“Uh—yeah?” he said to the large tee-shirted, shorted figure that was standing just by the step.
“Have you got boats to hire?” the guy asked glumly through the whiskers and the hangover.
Sol didn’t point out that right in his window was a big notice that said “BOATS FOR HIRE”, nor that right there on the grass next to his block were several small runabouts bottom-up (chained and padlocked, he had no faith whatsoever in the probity of the denizens of Carter’s Inlet, nor anyone else, neither), and a large sign that said “FOR HIRE. With Outboard. ASK AT SOL’S.” And the rate per hour, though that was redundant, they always asked you again. He refrained from pointing these facts out not because it was good business practice but because the guy bore all the earmarks of not just harried and hungover, but hen-pecked with it. The more so since attached to the right wrist he had a small, loud object in fluorescent shorts and a faded Ninja Turtle tee-shirt and a new sun-visor that was leapin’ up and down a-hollerin’: “You promised! Dad, Dad! You promised!”
Sol also refrained from pointing out it was Christmas Day and he was closed, and, indeed, that right here on his door there was a notice that said: “Closed Xmas Day, Boxing Day,” because for the same reasons.
“Cash only,” he said.
The guy produced a wallet. “We’re staying at the Pink Manuka Motel,” he volunteered glumly as Sol led the way inside in order to consolidate the transaction and to point out that hire of life-jackets was included and that towing ’em to the launching ramp was EXTRA.
“Mum said to get out of her hair!” gasped the object, jumping. “Aw-uh, Da-ad, c’n I’ve a—”
“NO!”
Sol carefully wrote out a receipt on a plain piece of paper.
“Is there anywhere round here where we can buy bread?” the guy added glumly.
“Nope.”
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Pink Manuka does breakfasts, doesn’t it?” said Sol cheerfully—he knew every detail of what the motels provided. Last summer had been one continuous stream of disgruntled clients therefrom.
“Yeah. Not bloody lunches, though.”
“Fish an’ chips!” screamed the object.
“SHUDDUP!”
“The Hongi Heke Room at the Royal Kingfisher does lunches. No need to book,” said Sol breezily, reflecting there was no need to reveal the awful truth of a possible wait of up to ninety minutes, neither.
“Yeah, there was a price list in our room,” he said glumly. “She wants to go, of course.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Dad, Dad, look! C’n I’ve a—”
“NO! You’ve had your presents! And SHUDDUP!”
Sol leaned on his counter and broke the awful news about TOWING.
“Oh—shit. Um…” He fumbled through his wallet. “Hell, they do take MasterCard at this Hongi Heke place, do they?” he said in a panic.
“Uh-huh. Sure. Also Visa, American Express, You-Name-It-Card.”
“Like that, is it?” he recognized glumly.
“Yup. They tell me the tobacco boutique in the lobby’s worse: you a smoker?”
“No, but I’ve gotta get some cigars for her father.”
There was a short, glum pause.
“We usually go to her parents’ for Christmas,” he said sadly.
“Uh-huh.”
“Only this year—LEAVE THAT ALONE, DANIEL!—we thought it’d be nicer to get away by ourselves. No cooking—ya know?”
“Mm.”
“Yeah,” he said sadly. “Well—um…” He began counting out notes, but after all it was Christmas, so Sol said kindly: “Put that away, I’ll tow ya down for nothing. And lemme give you a tip, only swear you won’t pass it on to all those other motellers up there at the Pink and White Manukas, okay?”
“Um—yes.”
“Boxing Day night the old pub in Carter’s Bay lays on a real spread. Hot roast lamb, roast turkey, leg of ham—y’know? Family-style, of course. Upstairs dining-room. Kids welcome.”
His face lit up. “Sort of like Cobb an’ Co.?”
“Uh—yeah,” said Sol groggily. “Sure. I guess.”
He held his hand out. Sol had gotten so indoctrinated that he wondered what for, for an instant, then let his be wrung fervently, took the boat down to the ramp, made sure they both had their life-jackets on, made sure the guy knew how to start and stop the outboard (he didn’t), made sure he knew how to steer (he didn’t) and finally left them to it. They’d be all right, Daniel had grasped the whole bit in a flash.
He took the Land Rover over as far as it would go, too bad if the peace of Kingfisher Bay, not to mention the Christmas Eve hangover, was being disturbed, and hurried down the hill to the boatyard.
Euan was still asleep: hardly surprizing, since he was little more than a kid and they’d got to bed about five hours ago. There was no sign of Feather-tit, so Sol climbed thankfully aboard the cabin-cruiser, checked their work and tried ’er out. Went like a bird, so he took her for a fly down the Inlet.
Feather-tit turned up about five minutes after he’d got back. With the cash—which was just as well, because after working till three-thirty a.m. Christmas Day Sol hadn’t been about to give him back his boat unless and until. He was overwhelmingly grateful, too.
Sol asked him kindly how Christmas had gone so far. Feather-tit made a sick face. Uh-huh. Yup.
Euan had emerged from the shed, scratching and blinking, by this time, so they both saw him off—after Sol had given him one or two tips about listenin’ to the sound of ’er and treating the gears gently and so forth that he mighta been listening to meekly now, but twenny minutes down the track he’d have completely forgotten. Oh, well. Sol had pointed out that she’d handle a bit smoother now that they’d fine-tuned the engine but this hadn’t sunk in.
“Lorraine’ll be waiting on the marina, breathing fire and brimstone, with the bubbly in the chillybin,” noted Euan as the Lorraine Too (oh, yes), disappeared round the point of their tiny bay.
Sol scratched his head. “No argument there. –Know what I always wonder?”
“What?” said Euan warily.
“When they decide to trade in Wife One for a new model: at what stage do they change the name on the boat?”
Euan choked.
After that they went back to Sol’s for waffles and coffee. Laced with brandy since it was Christmas. Sol didn’t wake Michaela: for one thing he felt it was too early and for another, he had a sneaky feeling she wouldn’t approve of macho laced coffee for breakfast even if you had been up all night fixin’ boats. Not that she’d say anything, but she’d get that doubtful look on her face without (unlike Some) knowin’ she was gettin’ it. And for another thing he didn’t feel like sharing Michaela with Euan, if ya came right down to it.
By eleven-thirty only about fifteen more desperate motellers from the Pink and the White Manukas had turned up wanting to hire boats and asking hopeful questions about places to eat and dairies, so he’d given in to the extent of hiring out all the boats. For cash. He’d also sold one runabout, to a particularly desperate moteller from the Kingfisher Motel (it was more up-market than the other two, i.e., higher on the slope with better views).
At eleven-thirty Michaela turned up, looking expectant, as he was lounging on his doorstep after having towed the last of the runabouts down to the ramp. For cash, the Christmas spirit didn’t last out fifteen motellers.
“Can I do anything?” she said.
Only at that point did it dawn on the great S. Winkelmann brain that when he’d said “Christmas dinner” she’d thought he meant lunch like the rest of the country! Well, admittedly the Abe Winkelmann household had theirs around two o’clock, or three-thirty if Pat was in charge of it, but— Yo, boy.
Sol looked at her with a kind of despair, the more so as she was wearing a clean blouse and a much-washed pair of black cotton shorts that he’d seen on the line behind the boutique yesterday, and had severely brushed her hair. And, he thought, washed it, it looked fluffier than yesterday.
“Well, not for lunch, Michaela, I thought we’d have Christmas dinner for—uh—tea. Seeing as it’s so humid and all,” he said weakly.
“Oh,” she said, going very red. “I see. Um—here.” Going redder than ever, she brought one hand from behind her back and shoved something at him.
Sol also went very red and croaked: “Gee, thanks, Michaela, you didn’t have to. Uh—say, come on inside out of the way of all these up-market BMWs, huh?”
Michaela smiled: the road was empty except for a Mitsubishi with an arguing family in it parked further round the curve of the bay towards the Royal K. “Okay.”
They went upstairs and he installed her in the big chair, facing the sea, while he perched at the little table. With the present. Michaela looked at him expectantly.
Sol would have liked it whatever it was, in fact the hand-done paper would have been enough for him. Pale green New Zealand fern on a dark green background, and kinda sprinkled with silver like... very light snow? Stardust? One of those.
“This wrapping paper’s beautiful, Michaela: you do it yourself, huh?”
Unexpectedly she laughed and said: “Sort of! I was round at June and Bob’s—it was that very muggy, drizzly day, just after the schools broke up,”—Sol couldn’t actually isolate this day: sounded like pretty well the most of December to him, but he nodded—“and Bob had the kids doing some elementary screen-printing to keep them occupied. It’s just cheap newsprint, he gets ends of it for the kids to draw on.”—This was pretty well Greek to Sol, but he nodded.—“The stuff with the ferns turned out okay so we thought we’d use it for wrapping-paper this year. The silver’s air-brushing, Starsky did that. Bob borrowed the equipment, they use it in the night-school classes.”
“Looks real classy.”
“Yeah, air-brushing does!” said Michaela with another laugh.
“Un—enlighten my ignorance, Michaela: this fern pattern looks real intricate: how in Hades did them kids manage that?”
Michaela stared at him. “Don’t you—” She swallowed.
“Nope: I’m real ignorant.”
“Well, first we just put a pale green wash on the paper and then we put the bits of fern—”
Boy, he was ignorant, all right. “I see,” he said humbly.
“Like stencils in reverse,” she said kindly.
Uh-huh. Yep. Sure ’nuff was. “Sounds like fun,” he said.
“Yes. Only then Ivan got silly and tried to put Whitey’s tail—”
“Say no more, I wondered why that animal had a green tip to his tail.”
Michaela grinned. “Yeah. –Open it.”
Sol opened it carefully. It was shaped like a large plate, so— Ooh. Wow!
“You haven’t got many plates, so I thought it might be useful,” she said shyly.
Useful? Nope, a T’ang horse might be useful. This was...
“Do you like it?” she said anxiously.
“Yeah,” he croaked. “Thanks, Michaela.” He swallowed. “Just my colours,” he said, smiling blindly at her.
“I thought it would look all right in here. You could put fruit on it or something.”
It was russet and navy, mainly; very deep, glowing, shiny glazes. With a bit of the rough brown biscuit showing here and there on the rim, Sol just loved that look. He had a fair idea she knew it, too. The underside had a shallow base, and it was all in the unglazed biscuit. He had a fair idea she knew he loved that, as well.
He ran his hand slowly over the surface of the glaze and said: “Yeah, I might bring myself to cover it up with fruit after I’ve gotten used to it. Like, in five hundred years or so.”
There was a short pause.
“I did a set of mugs, too. Do you want them?” she said abruptly, very red.
“Yes, of course I— Listen, I’ll pay you for the mugs, you mustn’t—” But Michaela had bounced up and growling: “No,” run out.
Sol just sat there looking at his plate, and sweating. He didn’t think this latter had much to do with the humidity.
The mugs were fully glazed inside and on the outside the russet and navy had just dripped down a little over the brown biscuit. Mm-mm!
“I was going to put them in the shop, because Milly said we’d run out of mugs, only you can have them,” she said.
Sol scratched his head. “It’s too much, Michaela.”
“No, I’d hardly have sold anything this year without you,” she said, very red and not looking at him.
“Okay, then, I accept gratefully!” he said with a laugh. Michaela looked very relieved. “Only there is a condition, mind,” he warned, getting up. “Well, two.”
“What?” she said nervously.
“The first is that you help me baptize ’em right away with some Christmas fizz, and the second is that you don’t say a word about me being too extravagant or anything silly like that over your present.” It was under the divan: he fished it out and gave it to her. Two-handed, his wrists weren’t as strong as hers and he had gone just very slightly overboard. Well, once he’d scoured every bookshop in the metropolitan area in order to find it, that was. The wrapping paper was only bought stuff: red and green, very shiny—Sol went crazy like a magpie when faced with Christmas wrapping papers—but he’d put a bow or five thousand on it.
“It’s a lovely parcel,” she said numbly.
“Mainstream,” he noted sadly. “Open it, Michaela.”
Michaela opened it very carefully, first reading the message on the little card, attached with a gold string and adorned with a Santa Claus. It said “From Sol,” he guessed that wasn’t too inspired but he’d been terrified of saying too much if he said any more. Sol found he was too damn chicken to stay and watch, he went round the divider to the kitchenette and got a bottle of chilled fizz out. Noting vaguely that there should be more than that in there... Oh, shit!
When he worked up the courage to emerge she was turning the pages very, very slowly.
“Like it?” he said in a casual voice.
Michaela looked up and nodded speechlessly. Her wide grey-green eyes were full of tears, so Sol guessed she liked it okay. Actually, he was pretty much that way himself. He came up to her shoulder and watched silently. Finally he managed to croak: “Any of Toshiro’s in there?”
“Yes. Here.” She turned back a few pages. There was a whole section of Toshiro’s pots in there, and on the whole Sol wasn’t surprized, the blurb claimed the book showed the best of twentieth-century Japanese pottery.
His knees gave on him suddenly, and he tottered over to the table, sat down and poured fizz. “Glad you like it. I don’t know that the text’s all that great but I thought the photography was okay.”
“Yes.” She swallowed. “Thanks very much, Sol. I haven’t got many books.”
He knew that. Most of what she did have seemed to date from her art-school days. “Yeah. Get this down ya.”
She took a mug of fizz, smiling shyly.
“Merry Christmas,” he croaked, raising his mug.
“Merry Christmas,” she said, suddenly beaming at him.
It was that all right! Yup. Even though— Sol drained his mug. “Uh, I just gotta shoot downstairs to the freezer, I forgot to take the duck out last night,” he said, making a face.
“Help, will you be able to cook it?”
“I’ll have to defrost it in the microwave, I guess.”
“Oh,” she said, puzzled but accepting.
Sol shot downstairs—the freezer belonged to the store: well, needed it for the bait, ya see. Halfway down he found he was whistling.
“You’re a good whistler,” she said, looking up from her new book with a smile when he came back.
“Uh—Jesus, Michaela, I never thought— Would you like some music? What would you like?” He’d never played a thing for her, all these months: he had no idea if she liked music or— What a cretin.
“I don’t know anything about music.” She hesitated. “I like it when Tom sings. Um, I liked that tune you were whistling. I think you were whistling it the other day.” Sol musta looked as blank as he felt because she explained: “When we went to Carter’s Bay to get the peas and stuff.”
“Uh—yeah?”
Michaela hummed a little uncertainly, in a deep contralto. Evidently he’d been whistling Schafe können sicher weiden, it was one of his favourites. She’d had every note spot-on.
“You in your school choir?”
“No, they said I was too loud. And Mum always said I made enough noise to wake the dead,” she said composedly.
Sol ground his teeth, though telling himself he might have expected it. “Yeah. Well, that’s Bach. I’ve got the cantata. I’ll put it on.”
He put it on. Michaela alternately listened, smiling, and looked at her book, smiling. Couldn’t be bad, huh?
They ended up deciding on a picnic lunch, up the Inlet a ways. Mainly, in Sol’s case, because he had a strong feeling that if they stayed in the apartment any longer he’d jump on her. Which, he had another strong feeling, would be entirely the wrong move.
As he dumped a hamper in the back of the Land Rover while Michaela was fetching her swimsuit, a large maroon BMW shot past, heading for the Royal K. “RALPH 1.” Sol coulda sworn that was young Ginny Austin in the passenger seat next to him. He scratched his head a bit, but after all, she was nominally an adult, and several of his own relatively recent girlfriends hadn’t been much older, and it was none of his business... But Ralph Overdale? Shit.
They drove down to the marina: Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies owned a slot. Well, rented a slot. But he was seriously considering giving it up, even though it would be a Helluva bore towing the runabout up the launching ramp every time he brought her in. It was true the lease would have to be rewritten, the marina slot went with the store... If only he could get the Kingfisher Development Company to agree to him putting in a ramp just over the road from the store! Trouble was, according to them, it could block access to the hotel. Only the boat-hire business wasn’t that busy! ...Shit; yes, it was!
Sol drew up in his parking slot that went with his mooring slot and checked in three runabouts. Eager clients immediately checked ’em out again. The Kingfisher Development Company had already said they didn’t like him having painted “SOL’S” in large navy letters on the white frame of his marina slot—morons, how else were his clients gonna tell where to return the boats? Only Sol had told ’em, so long as the rent of the marina slot went with the lease...
Fighting off six more would-be clients who wanted to hire his own runabout, Sol got into it. He turned to give Michaela a hand but she handed him the hamper instead and got in without his assistance. Sol smiled: he’d had to teach her how to get in and out of a boat earlier in the year, she’d never been in one before.
They pottered slowly up the Inlet, looking for a good spot. Sol would cheerfully have gone right up to where the bird sanctuary was, only he already knew the idea of disturbing the birds would make Michaela very uneasy, so he didn’t. He finally chose a nice, deserted little cove a good way up. On this side the whole of Carter’s Inlet was pretty much the same: screening the road was a wide belt of what several locals had informed Sol was “second growth”, mainly manuka scrub, with some tattered flags of pampas grass that was toetoe out here, commonly pronounced “toy-toy”, and here and there some taller trees, and then a slope of rough grass, varying in width from around two yards to, in places, more like fifty, leading down to the water. Sometimes there would be a little beach of coarse, yellow-grey sand, sometimes not. –The silver sand on the bathing beach at Kingfisher Bay had been trucked in by Carrano Development: every time he looked at it Sol got this vision of a guy in a fluorescent Hawaiian shirt, propping up a bar not a million miles away from Diamond Head...
The little cove he’d chosen had about thirty yards or so of grass, with in back of it some taller growth amongst the scrub, and a small stretch of coarse sand. It was not a valley, more a natural depression, about sixty feet wide, sloping gently up to more scrub on what you couldn’t have called headlands, the banks of the Inlet there being about five or six foot high. It was very secluded: there was no access from the road at all and the scrub to either side of it continued for say half a mile eastwards to the boatyard, and a good ways further than that westwards to the Carranos’ little holiday house and the bird sanctuary. In fact it was the exact spot which Sol had long since sussed out as the spot for his cabin. Mm-hm. Yup. When his ship came in.
The day was still muggy and overcast, he guessed if it hadn’t cleared by now it wasn’t going to. Nevertheless he insisted Michaela put her shabby khaki hat on, and put his shabby once-pink one on to encourage her. –It had been on special in a Puriri menswear store, he guessed not that many Kiwi guys bought pink canvas hats. He handed her a tube of sunscreen without comment. Michaela silently rubbed it on her face, arms and legs.
The picnic consisted of more fizz, a bottle of mineral water in case they were actually thirsty, and what Michaela called “American sandwiches.” Sol never made any other kind, he couldn’t understand why the Kiwi notion of a sandwich was two real thin, mean-lookin’ bits of bread with somethin’ real thin and mean-lookin’ between ’em, like a see-through slice of ham or baloney (they didn’t call it that) or a smear of Vegemite, ugh! Sol hadn’t gotten converted to Vegemite. It took at least six Kiwi sandwiches to make a meal. Whereas two of Sal’s were enough for an average adult unless you’d been working all morning at some real hard physical activity like breakin’ rocks or painting boats. In which case you’d maybe manage three. Sol had made four: cold chicken, lettuce, avocado, heavy on the mayo. He let her eat three, he didn’t feel hungry, somehow.
“You were hungry, huh?” he said mildly.
Michaela nodded round her last mouthful. “Mm.” She swallowed and added: “I went up to get some clay, earlier. And I didn’t have any breakfast.”
No, of course she hadn’t had breakfast: she’d been expecting Christmas lunch! Yo, boy.
Later they went for a swim. Well, bobbin’ up and down some: even though the tide was in, you had to go out around thirty yards to the channel if you wanted to swim. It wasn’t surprizing Feather-tit had gotten his boat stuck, actually.
It was still grey and overcast when they came out, but very, very humid. Sol gave in and drank off half the remains of the mineral water straight from the bottle. “Want some?”
Michaela nodded eagerly and drank off the rest straight from the bottle. Straight after him. It gave him such a funny feeling he hadda sit down hurriedly on his towel.
“Wet out as in, really,” he noted after a while.
“Mm.” Michaela lay on her front with her head on her folded arms.
“The ultra-violet can still get ya, they tell me,” he said mildly.
“Mm: could you put some sunscreen stuff on me, please?” she asked politely.
Sol obliged. The back was bad enough, though the old-fashioned swimsuit wasn’t that lowcut, but the thighs nigh to killt him. He lay down on his towel, not saying anything.
“Shall I put some on you?” she said anxiously.
He had been going to resume his shirt. He rolled over onto his front, painful though this was, and let her. “Be gentle with me, Michaela,” he said weakly.
Michaela gave a yelp of laughter that kind of broke off halfway. Sounded as if it wasn’t the first time a guy had said that to her... Sol eyed her cautiously over his folded arms. She was very red. Mm-hm.
She massaged the stuff into him briskly and impersonally but he hadn’t expected anything else. Not that it was bad, mind you.
After quite some time he rolled onto his back, largely because it was killing him, and said, squinting up at the sky through his unfashionable shades: “Would you object if I smoked?”
Michaela rolled onto her elbow and looked at him uncertainly. Mm-mm! That old suit was entirely unlined. She’d told him she’d had it since she was at school, and Sol saw no reason to doubt her: looked like the sort of thing dumb girls’ boarding-schools made the kids wear, never having realised that a form-fitting piece of unlined jersey-knit had more effect, not less, on lecherous males of the opposite sex. Well, this one sure did on him.
He was unaware that the sight of his lean brown body in its plain black trunks affected Michaela in very much the same way. Nor, perhaps happily for his own peace of mind, had he realized that Michaela had long since noticed that his figure was not unlike Hugh’s. A trifle taller, a trifle leaner, and a lot browner, but Michaela didn’t object to either of those points. She looked at him and, since she’d drunk a fair amount of fizz, wished that she was like those ladies that could let a man know when they wanted to do it. Though she knew it would be stupid to get mixed up with someone else, just when she was starting to get used to being without Hugh. By this she meant to being without emotional complications in her life but Michaela didn’t analyse it in those words. However, as she wasn’t like those ladies, she knew she couldn’t.
“I thought you didn’t smoke?” she said.
“No, I don’t. Only on very special occasions. Jake Carrano came by the store a couple weeks back, gave me some cigars: he thought I might be missin’ Abe’s!” he explained with a grin.
“Oh.”
He then recalled that the smell of cigars made Jemima ill. “Does the smell of cigars make you feel nauseous?” he said, flushing.
“Um—well, I’m not sure. Tom smoked one at Alec’s, the Christmas when I was down there with them. You know: he’s Tom’s uncle.”
“Yeah, I know: great old guy.”
“Yes,” said Michaela seriously, nodding. “Alec made him smoke it on the verandah. And some people were smoking them at that luau of Polly’s, only I wasn’t very near them.”
“Luau, huh?”
“Yes. They’re Hawaiian, I think she said. That was ages ago. Um, when Ginny and Vicki first came up here.”
At around this point it dawned on the great S. Winkelmann brain that she recalled these trifling and, he woulda said, eminently forgettable events so clearly because of course she hardly ever went anywhere. He bit his lip. “Mm.”
“I think some of the men were smoking them at that Christmas in July party, too: that very old man, I forget his name, he gave them cigars.”
“Christmas in July?” said Sol dazedly.
“At Tom and Jemima’s. Roberta and me went.”
He glanced at her cautiously: this was the second time she’d mentioned Roberta in his hearing since the girl had taken up with Hugh.
She smiled at him and said: “It was a good idea, because you feel like eating hot food more in the cold weather, don’t you?”
“Uh—sure. Oh, I get it! You had turkey and all the trimmings, did you?” he grinned.
She nodded, smiling. “Yes. It was a wonderful meal. Only the real Christmas at Alec’s was best. It was the nicest Christmas I’ve ever had.”
Sol swallowed. “Why, Michaela?” he said softly.
“Um...” Michaela sat up and hugged her knees, gazing out over the greenish shallows of the Inlet. “It’s hard to explain. They’re awfully nice.”
“Mm-hm?”
“Alec’s got a dog. His name’s Rover.” She paused. “He’s nice, too.”
That goddamned scene with Weintraub and Ralph Overdale in Tom’s front hall suddenly came back to Sol with blinding clarity. He swallowed. Yeah, old Alec was nice if you defined “nice” as holding no brief for goddamned Ralph Overdale, all rightee! “Uh—yeah.”
“I don’t know, I suppose it was because there was no fuss...” she said dreamily.
“Uh-huh. Easy-going guy, old Alec.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling at him. “Um—well, if you want to smoke a cigar, go on. And if it makes me feel sick, I’ll tell you.”
Sol jumped: he’d entirely forgotten the subject of the conversation. “Uh—yeah. Well, if you’re sure?”
“Mm,” she said, nodding.
He got a cigar out of the hamper and lit up. Michaela remained motionless, hugging her knees. After a little he said: “Well?”
“It does smell pretty awful. Sort of like... burning compost,” she said apologetically.
He got up. “I’ll finish it down in the boat.”
“Okay—ta,” she said with undisguised relief.
Sol betook himself and his cigar to the boat. As he smoked he found he was chewing over that scene at Tom’s. Maybe everything in the garden hadn’t been perfectly rosy between him and Phoebe up until then—well, the odd tussle of wills—only... Sol removed the cigar and made a face at the mangroves on the far side of the Inlet. If he hadn’t found out—and found out in such a way, too—about Phoebe and Ralph, would it still all have gone wrong between him and Phoebe? Sure, he’d had no rights, he’d gone off back to the States without saying a word, and she’d been a free woman; and it was none of his business... Only wouldn’t you have thought she could at least have told him? ...And Jesus, if there’d hadda be someone, wouldn’t you have thought she coulda chosen something a bit better than Ralph Overdale? Jesus!
He had, of course, thought all this and more before. And he was a trifle disconcerted to find himself chewing it over again. However, once he’d started, he couldn’t stop.
It was true he’d never directly reproached Phoebe with the Ralph thing. And it was also true she’d never directly apologized for it—no, well, no reason she should. But... Had he been letting it fester? Had jealousy of Ralph been behind his... would you call it wilful refusal? Well, failure: his failure to let Phoebe know every detail of his timetable this past year? And had it maybe reinforced his jealousy of her goddamned job that kept her chained to town four weekends out of five? ...Yeah, he thought on the whole it had.
Sure, sure, this was all true as far as it went. Sol removed his cigar again and rubbed his nose. But had all those weekends of Phoebe’s where she simply couldn’t get away been strictly necessary? In all honesty, he didn’t believe it. No: there had been times when whatever-it-was just hadn’t needed to be done so urgently, or coulda been done by somebody else, or— Well. There you were. Piggin’ it in a freezing attic in Kingfisher Bay had just been that much less attractive than the comfort of her pleasant apartment in town.
He smoked furiously for a while, looking out over the Inlet, frowning. He guessed, really, it had been a combination of things on his part: jealousy of good ole Ralphy, jealousy of the job, and a distinct feeling—he guessed prompted by the latter as much as by his own insecurities—that she coulda taken a whole lot more interest in him and his goings-on this last year than she had done.
And on Phoebe’s it had been... He still didn’t know, really. Sure, she hadn’t been able to hack his make-and-mend lifestyle, once the novelty had worn off, that was true enough. But it wasn’t entirely that... He looked at the remains of his cigar with dislike. He guessed, finally, he hadn’t had what Phoebe herself, though admittedly not in reference to him, called “enough gorm”. Nope: he hadn’t had enough gorm for Phoebe, he was no go-getter. So long as the store made enough for him to live off of, he’d be content with a simple life: bit of work, bit of fishing, and the ability to take off for the fishing whenever he felt like it. He guessed he didn’t want no more than that. Didn’t care if he never went on another skiing holiday to The Chateau as long as he lived.
And Phoebe could sure keep the planned trip to Europe! Well, Sol guessed he wouldn’t have minded a trip to Europe with everything laid on if—well, say if he’d won this Golden Kiwi Lottery they had here. But he had no intention of working his guts out twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four and like as not giving himself ulcers and a coronary, in order to attain such brief pleasures. Nor he didn’t see himself as no entrepreneur, runnin’ a chain of sporting-goods stores all up and down the— Hadn’t he had this conversation onct or twice before?
Sol pitched the end of his cigar into the sea. It drifted very slowly back and forth, tide couldn’t be on the turn, yet. Yup, no gorm, that was him. His get-up-and-go, if he’d ever had any, had gotten up and went. Well, it had just about held out till he got here, and now it had went. And Phoebe didn’t, ultimately, fancy guys with no get-up-and-go. In fact she couldn’t even understand why a guy that didn’t got none, didn’t want none...
He stood up slowly in the runabout. He was more than aware that Michaela, stubborn and determined in many things as she was, in most other things represented as great a contrast to Phoebe as could have been imagined. Because he was by no means a naïve man, it had occurred to him more than once in the still watches of the night, or when he was down the Inlet with his spear poised, waiting for flounder that weren’t there, that possibly he had turned to Michaela just because she was so different from Phoebe. And that what he now fancied he saw as permanently desirable in Michaela was as much of an illusion as what he’d fancied he’d seen in Phoebe. Yeah. Well, he didn’t think this was so, but he’d been pretty Goddamn sure about wanting Phoebe, too, hadn’t he? And if he took up with Michaela and then changed his mind… No, he couldn’t take the risk of hurting her like that. Not after the Hugh thing. Not to mention that way-back thing with this Pig that Bob Butler had bent his ear about one night he’d been down there a-helpin’ him with the Polish Poison.
—Jesus, when you came to think about it, she must have a real great mental image of what a relationship with a guy could be! Not to mention of men per se.
He got slowly out of the boat and went back to Michaela’s side. He’d better be very, very sure before he made the next move.
Christmas dinner consisted of the duck with the peas and Sal’s special orange sauce into which he tipped a goodly quantity of the Grand Marnier he’d purchased some time back from the Puriri wholesalers, having ascertained the Carter’s Bay Bottle store hadn’t never heard of no liqueurs ’ceptin’ Irish Cream, gulp. Followed by ice cream with his mom’s cherry sauce while they listened to some Bach. He found he was telling Michaela rather a lot about Gracie Rosenberg. –She’d gone back to her former name after her and Pop had decided it had all been a mistake and Pop had gone back to Momma Winkelmann. Leavin’ only Sol as a souvenir of the adventure.
“She sounds great,” she said, very shyly.
“Mm, she sure is a game little fighter,” said Sal with a sigh. He saw Michaela was looking rather anxious. “Cain’t cook worth a dime, though: this cherry sauce is her one party-piece!” he said with a laugh.
Michaela smiled. “Cooking is hard. Doesn’t she make waffles, then?”
“Mm-hm. Only in the States you buy the mix ready-made in a packet and just add milk or water, depends on the brand.”
“I see. You can buy cake-mixes and things in the supermarkets here,” she said seriously. “They’re very expensive. June says they taste like sweetened polystyrene.”
“Fair description: yep.” He got up and changed the record, and made coffee.
Over it and some of the Grand Marnier, ’cos for it might go off if left in the bottle, Michaela said shyly: “Would your mother like to come out here to live, do you think?”
Sol smiled ruefully. “Gracie? Nope, she’s as American as... Not apple pie!” he said with a laugh. “Uh—no, American as drip-dry shirts and aerosol non-dairy cream. She never did think much of my way of life and now she thinks I’ve flipped.”
“I think you can get all those things here, now,” said Michaela slowly, wrinkling her brow. “Well, June had some aerosol cream once, only I think it was supposed to be real cream. It tasted like plastic.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, grinning. “Ours does, too.”
“Yes,” said Michaela, looking at him expectantly,
Sol leaned back in his chair and sighed. “It’s the whole way of life that’d be alien to her, Michaela: those specific consumer items are just... symbols, I guess.”
“Ye-es...”
He made a face, and rubbed his nose. “Look, don’t take offence, Michaela, after all I’ve chosen to stay here, haven’t I? Only if I hadda characterize the New Zealand way of life by just one word, I guess I’d have to choose ‘inept.’“
“I see,” she said slowly.
There was a sufficient pause, during which Sol had more than time to (a) regret he’d opened his big mouth and shoved that there elephant foot in it and (b) tell himself sourly he had no right applying his interpretation of what Phoebe claimed to consider was wrong with him to the whole darn country, even though he’d sure ’nuff heard her characterize it as inept, and worse, often enough.
Finally he said weakly: “I like it: I like the—uh—well, laid-back approach of people like, uh, the Swadlings and, uh, young Euan, I guess, and, uh, so forth.”—Michaela nodded slowly, looking doubtful.—“Tom says—well, John Aitken does, too—that it’s dying out, especially in the urban centres,” he said desperately: “only I guess there might be just enough left to last me my lifetime, huh?”
“Yes. Alec Overdale’s laid-back, too,” she said, suddenly smiling at him.
“He sure is! Say, if only there was boating down at Narrer-wokkier,” he said carefully, “I coulda settled there, huh?”
“Yes. Well, there’s the river, I suppose. But it’s an awfully long way from the sea.”
“Yeah,” he said, grinning. Nowhere in New Zealand was an awful long way from the sea: the whole country was about the size and shape of Florida.
“Maybe your mother would like to come out for a holiday,” decided Michaela shyly. “If she could afford it,” she added quickly, blushing dreadfully.
“Yeah. Maybe I ought to write and ask her, huh?”
“Mm. Where would she sleep, though?”
Sol scratched his head. “You gotta point. Uh—I guess she’d take the divan, I’d take the hammock.”
Michaela nodded. “I see. Some ladies wouldn’t like that.”
“What, sharing a room with their very own son? No, well, I did say Gracie’s pretty well unique!”
“She could always sleep next-door,” said Michaela comfortably.
’Cos you won’t always be there, yeah, thought Sol glumly. “Yeah.” He topped up his Grand Marnier.
The rest of the evening consisted pretty much of a few more drinks and some more music and a lot of Sol desperately keepin’ his hands offen her. He was almost relieved when, yawning terrifically, she said she’d better go. He saw her safely downstairs and inside, in case there should be marauding drunks from the Royal K wandering in the road, but although there were lights and a lot of noise up at the hotel, the road was quite empty and peaceful.
“Good-night. Thanks very much,” she said gruffly.
“Good-night, Michaela. Sweet dreams,” returned Sol softly.
She blinked. “Uh—yeah!” she said with an awkward laugh. She closed the door on that: Sol didn’t flatter himself it was because she was overcome with a surge of lust that she didn’t dare to give into, he could see it was because no-one had ever, ever wished her sweet dreams before and she didn’t have a single, solitary notion of what in Hell the correct response might be.
He sighed, and strolled over to the other side of the road and sat on the low concrete sea-wall, staring out for a long time at the reflection of stars in the Inlet, not thinking at all.
Next morning he went slowly downstairs at not long after crack of dawn, already scratching the whiskers, and opened the door.
“Jesus!” he said to the large male form on the doorstep.
Abe chuckled richly. “Hi, Sol, fella! How’s it?”
“It’s a surprize!” screamed Starsky in the background, leaping wildly up and down in the huge sneakers that must be new, they were clean, Sol wasn’t too dazed to notice. “We knew they were coming!”
“Yeah,” confirmed Bob Butler, grinning. “June was shit-scared one of them was gonna let the cat out of the bag.”
Sol emerged from the obligatory bear hug-cum-bashing the life out of him that Abe always indulged in at such moments and said weakly: “Hi, Junior. Hi, Little Abe.”
Junior shook hands, smiling nervously. “We didn’t bring Bobby, he—”
“He wanted to go to the snow with dumb Ronny Michaelson!” revealed Little Abe scornfully.
“Figures,” acknowledged Sol. “Jesus, Little Abe, you’ve grown so much, I wouldn’t hardly have known you. Shit, you’ll soon be tall as Starsky, here!”
Although this was a wild exaggeration, Little Abe grinned all over his freckled face and stuck out a manly hand and said: “Yeah. How are ya, Uncle Sol?”
Sol shook hands limply with his great-nephew. “Oh, great. How are you?”
“Great,” said his great-nephew laconically.
“Well, you gonna ask us in, fella?” asked Abe, beaming.
“Huh? Oh! Sure, sure!” he said sheepishly, grinning. “Come on up—I live over the store, Little Abe,” he explained.
“I know that!” he returned witheringly.
Junior put a hand on his skinny shoulder. “Yeah: he put those Polaroids you sent in the new album,” he explained to his uncle.
Little Abe did? Sol’s jaw dropped. Still, it wasn’t as unlikely as Bobby having done so, that was true. He showed his guests upstairs.
“Where you stayin’?” he asked limply as Abe took the big chair and Little Abe possessed himself ecstatically of the hammock.
“Huh? Oh, the Royal Kingfisher Hotel! Well, once we check in: Bob, here’s, just collected us from the airport.”
“You shouldn’t have,” said Sol limply.
Bob laughed. “All part of the surprize!”
Well, at least it wasn’t Jake Carrano that Abe had asked to collect him from the International Airport, three hours’ drive away on the far side of the city, recognized Sol dazedly, thankful for small mercies.
“You gonna offer us breakfast, or don’t Kiwis eat breakfast?” asked Abe genially.
“Grampa!” cried Little Abe. Gee, some guys sure had embarrassing grandfathers.
“Uh—yeah,” said Sol limply. “Sure.” Just as well he’d bought in extra milk in the expectation of feeding Michaela: yeah, and what if, speakin’ of unlikely, he’da had a lady in his bed this mornin’, he wondered wildly. looking at the innocent, happy morning faces of his relations. “Uh—waffles do ya?”
“Gee, fella. can’t you do better than that? We can get waffles back home!” retorted Abe, grinning from ear to ear. –Starsky’s face fell ten feet. So did Bob’s.
“Jasmine makes good waffles. Mom’s are garbage,” noted Little Abe.
“What about a real Noo Zealand breakfast?” said Abe, grinning from ear to ear.
“Toast and Vegemite,” noted Bob sourly.
“There’s some flounder in the freezer,” volunteered Starsky after some thought. “Sol often has flounder for breakfast,” he informed the company.
Yeah: when he’d just caught ’em, sure! Sol noticed Bob’s face. “Sure we can have flounder—that’s like flatfish, kinda like sole,” he informed his brother.
“Sure, sure!” he said, rubbing his hands and beaming.
Starsky bounded up. “I’ll get Euan! –You wanna come, Little Abe?”
Little Abe fell out of the hammock in his eagerness to align himself with this young-male peer group. “Yeah!” he panted, picking himself up and looking round defiantly in case anyone was gonna laugh.
No-one dared to.
“Not in the runabout, Starsky,” said Sol firmly.
“Aw-wuh! I can—”
“Yeah, I know you can steer a boat, Starsky, but you are not gonna go out and drown my oldest nephew when he’s only just got here!”
“Yeah: drown him tomorrow,” agreed Bob. “Take him up the hill: you get a much better view of the boatyard from there.”
Surprisingly, this went down real well, and the two boys thundered out.
When the spiral iron staircase had finished shaking Sol sagged and croaked feebly: “Just tell me two things: why in God’s name ain’t Ivan and Mason inflictin’ themselves on us as well, and how in God’s name did you talk Ruthie into lettin’ you come, Junior?”
Junior flushed and grinned, and Bob grinned and said: “The stupid little sods refused to get up: we’d told ’em they’d have to be ready at crack of dawn, but they just whinged and stuck their noses under the covers, so we took off regardless!”
“That’s One,” noted Sol to his nephew.
Junior smiled sheepishly. “Well, she was real keen for me to take a vacation and when the Michaelsons invited Bobby to the snow, well, Mother Lien decided Ruthie could have a real nice rest, stopping over with them.”
Uh-huh. Yup.
“Besides, Sue-Ellen—you remember Sue-Ellen, Sol,” he stated confidently.
He sure did, and a real little Georgia peach she— “Uh—no, don’t think so,” he said cautiously.
“Kath’s eldest!” cried Junior in amazement.
“Uh—oh, Kath Lien that was, sure. –Sorry, forgotten her married name,” he admitted.
“Allen,” Abe and Junior chorused, staring at him.
“Oh, sure.” –Sure, sure, how could he possibly have forgotten the surname of his half-brother’s son’s sister-in-law’s husband? Sheesh, families!
“Well, she’s getting married next month and Ruthie was real keen to help Mother Lien and Kath with the—”
Uh-huh, yeah. Sure. Yup. Say no more. Fortunately he didn’t say much more, he wasn’t a loquacious person, wasn’t Junior Winkelmann. Well, never had been given a chanct to get a word in edgewise in his life, more like.
Sol got up. “I’ll get them flounder. Make yourselves to home. Oh—the bathroom’s through there.”
Abe investigated immediately. “Say, this sure is handy! Say, this the upstairs toilet you helped put in, huh?”
Now, why was he wincing? Sol asked himself sourly as he winced. “Yeah. Some job that was. –Junior, don’t you never go for to help plumb in no upstairs toilet,” he warned him.
Junior was the most cack-handed being that ever walked. Worse than Bill Coggins. Remember that time he was makin’ that cart for one of the boys and he sprayed Ruthie’s front stoop bright red? Mm-hm. He thought the warning was a terrific joke, of course, and laughed himself silly.
Sol went down the spiral staircase, rolling his eyes slightly. Families! And Jesus, that reminded him, he only had that real ordinary kinda average-weight New Zealand toilet paper that Jack and May stocked; that wouldn’t go down none too good with his spoilt American relatives.
He got as far as the freezer in back when he realized Bob had followed him.
“Maybe we should have warned you,” he said, swallowing and avoiding Sol’s eye.
“Yeah, only June wouldn’t let you,” he noted neutrally.
“No,” said Bob, smiling a sheepish smile.
“Wal, good, acos I woulda spent the last six weeks super-duperizin’ the place.”
“I bet,” he said, smiling a sheepish smile.
Sol gave in. “You sure you can face flounder for breakfast, Bob?” he said kindly.
Bob’s amiable face lit up. “Heck, yeah!”
Yeah, well, reflected Sol, scratching his jaw, Christmas at Ida Butler’s probably hadn’t featured all the brandies, bourbons and Scotch-flavoured egg-nogs with belts of Scotch in ’em that Winkelmann family Christmases did.
“Pat didn’t come, huh?” he noted.
“No,” gulped Bob.
“Where is she?” said Sol, not bothering to lower his voice.
Bob gulped. “Abe said,” he said very quietly, “that she’s gone to San Francisco to stay with—um—Elayne, was it?”
Sol got the flounder out and closed the freezer. “Elayne and Chuck, uh-huh. And to spend his dough buyin’ more Chinese art objets at Gump’s and more fancy dresses at them fancy San Francisco boutiques.”
“Um—probably,” he gulped.
Sol eyed him drily. “Yeah, well. –Say, your kid ever been known to eat fish for breakfast before?” he added genially, mounting the stairs.
“Um—no,” gulped Bob. “Well, only that time he was up here with you and Euan.”
Right. Absolutely. Oh, yes. Yup.
Strangely enough, it was neither Euan nor Starsky—possibly his father had put the hard word on him, though it was difficult to conceive of the kid’s remembering it in all the excitement—who eventually thought of Michaela in the attic next-door, but Abe. “Say, we can’t leave Michaela out! Now, you just hop next-door, huh, Starsky, and—”
Starsky had hopped, closely followed by Little Abe.
“Have you even met her?” said Sol weakly.
Abe chuckled richly and bashed him on the back. “Same old Sol!” he noted as Sol staggered.
“Was that a ‘yup’ or a ‘nup’?” he said weakly.
Bob gave a startled laugh.
“What?” said Sol mildly.
“Um—sorry! I never realized that Americans really do say that!” he gasped, turning purple round the edges.
“Not that many do. Well, Pop and Sol kinda say it as a joke,” explained Junior earnestly.
“Oh,” said Bob weakly.
“Yeah. Wal, dependin’ on how inty-grated into our down-home peer group we happen to be at the time, yeah,” agreed Sol.
“Cut that out, fella!” –Hearty buffet.
“I see,” said Bob weakly, as Sol staggered off back to the kitchenette. Why was none of them volunteerin’ to help cook the dad-blamed fish breakfast, talkin’ of down-home male peer groups? Well, Abe had investigated the fridge and was drinking New Zealand beer on the excuse he was still on Florida time, but you could scarcely count that. Junior was waiting for coffee, always had been a good boy, Junior Winkelmann. Which reminded him—
“How’s your stomach, Junior?” he said, sticking his head round the divider.
Junior beamed. “Much better, thanks! Your mom fixed it: she found me some real good stuff! Say, that reminds me, I’ve got a letter—” He bounded up and searched anxiously in the five thousand zippered pockets of his in-flight bag.
“From Gracie?” said Sol, going rather pale as he produced it, panting.
“Yes. She made me promise to give it you first thing— There’s nothing wrong, Sol, Gracie’s real fine!” Junior said hastily as Sol went from pale to a greenish colour.
“Dad-blamed idiot,” noted his father fairly from the depths of the big chair.
Sol opened the letter slowly. Gracie hadn’t sealed the envelope, just tucked it in, Gracie Rosenberg knew what was what. There wasn’t a Winkelmann amongst ’em woulda noticed, though.
The room was silent, except for Abe sippin’ beer. Wait until he tried to crumple the can, heh-heh, it was one of them New Zealand steel cans—
“Yeah, she’s fine,” he said limply.
“Sure she is!” said Abe heartily. He drained the beer. “Misses you, of course.”
“Mm. I was thinking— Well, I’m gonna ask her out for a vacation, I was just saying to Michaela only yesterday— Only I don’t know if she can afford it,” he said awkwardly.
“She won’t take anything from you, Pop!” Junior reminded his father hurriedly.
Abe glared. “No.” He thought it over. “She could let the condo!” he discovered triumphantly.
Sol smiled a little. “Yeah. Maybe. Anyroad, I’ll write her.”
“We invited her for last Christmas, same as we always do, only she wouldn’t,” reported Junior sadly.
Gracie amidst the Abe Winkelmanns’ décor watchin’ Pat nag the caterers to death over the flat Yorkshire pudding while Abe, Ruthie and Junior knocked back the whisky egg-nog and the kids fought over their presents? Uh-uh. No way.
“No,” agreed Sol mildly.
“You called her yet?” demanded his brother sternly.
Sol sighed. “No, last year she ordered me not to throw my money away on international calls. I wrote her: okay?”
Abe sniffed.
“Anyroad, I called her Yom Kippur.”
Abe glared indignantly but Junior said hurriedly: “Yes, he did, Pop! Um—well, not actually Yom Kippur, I don’t think, but he called her for her birthday! Ruthie was there, she’d just gone over with a few cookies and”—he blushed—“just a little gift,” he murmured.
“Yeah, she said,” agreed Sol, smiling at him. Gracie never ate cookies, she was real keen on a healthy diet and it didn’t include Ruthie’s special cookies with butter and sugar inside of ’em and chocolate on top of ’em, but it was the thought that counted.
Junior musta read his thoughts: he was just explaining hurriedly it was a new recipe of Ruthie’s with real good things like oat bran and honey and— When Michaela arrived.
“She was asleep, we hadda wake her up!” panted Starsky.
“Yeah, she must be a real sound sleeper, worse’n Bobby!” panted Little Abe. “We hadda ring and ring, huh, Starsky?”
“Yeah!” he panted.
“Hullo,” said Michaela shyly to the company, going very pink.
Fortunately Abe didn’t greet her like a long-lost relative, but even so she was overcome and went pinker than ever. And no, he damn well hadn’t met her before! Sheesh, relatives! Sol crept back behind the divider.
After a little Starsky joined him. Immediately Little Abe squeezed in beside him.
“Aren’t they ready yet?”
“Yeah, I’m hungry, Uncle Sol! We never had much to eat on the plane, it—”
“Yeah, yeah. See this here?”
They looked blank.
“One small bench-top broiler—right? And there’s how many of us?”
“Say, you oughta get a decent cooker, Uncle Sol! Say, Mom’s got a new—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Sol put dishes of flounder on a tray. “Take this over to the table—and watch them plates, they’re hot,” he said to Starsky.
Starsky went off importantly. Little Abe followed. Sol rolled his eyes wildly.
Over the fish breakfast Little Abe decided they could have a barbecue for lunch because it was real cool up the Inlet. Also that Grampa could hire a decent boat while they were out here. Also that Sol could buy a new cooker and Pop could show him the model to buy, huh, Pop? Junior went very red and looked in an anguished, apologetic way at his uncle.
Abe thereupon shut his grandchild up jovially and announced that Sol didn’t need to worry about buying no cooker, because he, Abe, would give him one as a Christmas present, he couldn’t carry on pretendin’ he was managing with that there thing. –Junior went even redder and didn’t know where to look, Bob and Michaela likewise, but Euan, Sol wasn’t wholly surprised to see, only looked mildly amused.
He finally accompanied them all up to the Royal K at what seemed like half-past forty-two but was only around noon, and saw them into their palatial suite. Little Abe just about had time to grumble like Hell about having to share a room with Pop before he fell upon his bed and went out like a light. Abe proposed scouting out the bars as he was still on Florida time but Sol merely grabbed Starsky and walked out. Only partly because Junior, in between cracking yawns, was looking anguished again. Jeez, he’d known Abe all his life, wouldn’t you think he’da—well, if not gotten over it, that he wouldn’t have an anguish left in him?
Euan, Bob and Michaela were waiting downstairs in the lobby. Unlike Starsky, they seemed to have had a sorta feeling that maybe the Winkelmanns might like five seconds alone together.
“You were right about the prices at that tobacco place,” said Bob numbly.
“Shit, you didn’t—”
“No, only looked.”
“Jake Carrano gave Dad a huge cigar, Mum was furious, she said it stunk like—”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Sol, steering him out of the Royal K.
“Mrs Swadling reckons they have ace pizzas here!” he said as they blinked in the sun on the steps. Well, under the portico, really.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Sol. “You thought the cigars here were pricy,” he said pointedly to Bob.
“Like that, is it?”
“Uh-huh.”
Starsky began excitedly: “Hey, Euan, I could come over the boatyard an’—”
“NO!” said his father loudly.
“AW-WUH!”
“I don’t think there’s anything you could do,” Euan admitted. “I’ve gotta finish stripping that outboard,” he noted to Sol.
“Might not be a bad idea. Iffen you want the owner to get it back before Easter—yeah.”
Euan just grinned.
“Well—um—could I… Um—I could sell bait!”
“Millions of customers queue up at the boatyard for bait, do they?” asked Bob affably of Sol, opening the car door.
“Yeah. At least one a day. –Think I’ll walk back, Bob, I could do with the fresh air,” he admitted.
Bob just winked, and got in.
“I’ll walk, too—”
“GET IN!” bellowed his father.
Starsky got in.
Euan could take a hint: it was only a hundred yards or so, but he got in, too, shaking gently all over.
Michaela made to follow him, but Sol grabbed her elbow. “No. Walk back with me.”
“I thought you wanted to be by yourself?”
“I don’t wanna talk,” he said pointedly.
“I can manage that,” she said with her slow smile.
“Uh-huh. –We’ll see ya back there,” he said to the car’s occupants.
Bob just winked, and drove off.
Sol and Michaela walked slowly round the artificial waterfront by the low concrete sea wall, not saying a thing. Even though seagulls were screaming overhead and the wind was blowin’ some and various assorted cretins with outboards were churning up and down in the artificial bay, it was real peaceful. Soothing, y’know?
Of course his relatives slept solidly till dinnertime. As they had just about exhausted the resources of Sol’s freezer he gave in to the extent of taking them to the pub at Carter’s Bay for Boxing Day dinner. Little Abe actually ate roast lamb, roast potatoes and gravy without grumbling, so it was a pity, really, that Sol had forcibly restrained Junior from bringin’ along that new video camera that was half as big as he was. Daniel’s father came over, grinning, and wrung Sol’s hand again, and of course by that time what with everything, Sol had forgotten who the Hell he was, but as he had Daniel chained to the other wrist it pretty soon came back to him. Daniel noted accusingly that Sol had been closed this morning, so Sol explained weakly that he had relatives staying, but he’d be open tomorrow, for sure. Yay! They’d come down straight after breakfast an’— His father dragged him away, the gums still flappin’.
“Where’s that Jimmy guy?” asked Abe keenly.
“On his vacation. this here is the great New Zealand Christmas va-ca-ti-on,” said Sol loudly and clearly.
“Hey, no need to take it like that! Boy, you sure don’t know how to make a buck when one’s layin’ there beggin’ to be picked up, do ya?” he said with affectionate scorn. “Now, listen up—”
By the time they were ready for Christmas pudding, ice-cream, pavlova and jally (Sol sure hated Noo Zealand jally, even with them there hundreds and thousands a-meltin’ on the whipped cream on top of it) Abe had his whole commercial scenario for the next five hundred years worked out for him.
Sol was under no illusion that it wouldn’t go on like that for the next several weeks. neither. Until Abe went off with Susan and Alan to visit Susan’s distant relations down near Mount Hutt, which apparently he had had his heart set on for some time. Sol didn’t point out there wouldn’t be no snow anywheres near their farm this time of year, he figured he could find it out for himself. Junior and Little Abe were gonna be left behind. Junior claimed this was because he, Junior, wasn’t a good traveller, but Sol’s theory was it was because even Susan Shapiro Harding wasn’t brave enough to inflict Little Abe on distant relatives what had never met him. Sol didn’t have a clue what he was gonna do with the pair of ’em during this period. Well, Junior would be perfectly content to spend it in his uncle’s big chair with his feet up, dozing, he knew. Only Little Abe? Uh...
Well, so much for this year’s peaceful Christmas. Sheesh!
But he was pretty pleased to see them, really.
Next chapter:
https://theamericanrefugeeanovel.blogspot.com/2022/10/bulletins-from-coal-face.html
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