29
The Cruellest Month
It rained and it rained and it rained. It was like that damned Christopher Robin thing he used to read to Mitsy when she was little. Hugh stood at the picture window of his up-market yuppie Willow Grove townhouse and gazed out at the view of very wet Woollaston-ish hills on a very wet April Sunday and wished he was anywhere else. In a better climate, where you didn’t start to wonder if your bones were starting to ache or if it was only in your head, which was going mouldy like the shoes in the back of your wardrobe... Ugh.
Eventually he turned away from the picture window and sat down right in front of his large electric heater. Ralph had endeavoured to force him to install either a large gas heater which would warm the whole flat, or at least a night-store, which he could leave on throughout the colder months and which would take the chill off, but Hugh had resisted. Not admitting even to himself that the reason why he was resisting the gas suggestion was that secretly he was terrified of the damned stuff and the reason why he was resisting the night-store was even more perverse, it was because it had been suggested to him. Only now he was secretly reconsidering the latter: the mornings had started to be noticeably chilly and, as he had correctly assumed, you had to get up damned early in order to get into town in anything like decent time, because the closer you got to the city the more the motorways became jam-packed with commuters. And the opening of the new motorway which would by-pass Puriri township and go all the way to Carter’s Bay (read, to Jake Carrano’s Kingfisher Marina at Kingfisher Bay) would not help, in fact it would worsen the situation, merely leading a further flow of traffic onto the last stretch of motorway before the Bridge. Yes, well: there you were. There was one bright spot in all of this, which was that Ralph was starting to grumble about the traffic, hah, hah.
Thinking about the new motorway and Jake Carrano had brought to mind Hugh’s accidental meeting with Polly earlier in the week: they had both been lunching alone at The Golden Lamb—for once Ralph wasn’t infesting it—and had joined forces. Polly had revealed cheerfully that her husband had stood her up for a conference call, and Hugh hadn’t asked, he’d just thought glumly that bloody Carrano didn’t deserve a wife who was that easy-going, not to say that pretty, that charming, that intelligent and—well, everything a wife ought to be, really.
He was unaware, of course, that this easy-going, charming wife was the woman who had biffed a rock onto her south lawn at four in the morning in order to set off her husband’s elaborate alarm system. Or that this charming, intelligent woman who looked at you over your avocado starter as you told her all about a highly technical piece of surgery not only as if she was actually listening but also as if she actually understood what you were saying to her, had been known to rise at seven, shoot into her study and huddle over her computer without so much as greeting her groggy hubby, let alone her darling kiddies, and stay immured there until seven in the evening, emerging blurry-eyed to say blankly: “Are you home already? Um—we’ll have to defrost something, I forgot about tea.”
He was certainly aware that no-one’s relationship was perfect and that even those marriages that looked perfect from the outside might not be so to those involved in them. However, he was deliberately ignoring this fact. Besides, Jake Carrano gave every evidence of being a bloody happy man. It wasn’t fair!
After a certain period of brooding had elapsed he got up heavily and went out to his little lobby, where the phone lived. Ralph also had a little lobby but he didn’t have the phone in his, he claimed that that was one of those uncomfortable and essentially meaningless bourgeois traditions to which he saw no need to sacrifice his comfort: he had a phone in the kitchen, an extension in the bedroom, and a mobile phone which mostly lived in the sitting-room. Hugh had no idea how Ralph had managed this series of miracles. He himself had merely agreed limply with the decision of the Telecom NZ man, who looked to him exactly like the old Post Office men had used to look, in fact when he came to take another look at him that new logo appeared to have been sewn onto a very old overall that was undoubtedly a Post Office overall. The man had said in the tone of terrifically off-hand mateship that Hugh had long since given up kidding himself he himself could ever manage with anything like conviction: “Put ’er out here, eh?”—looking at the little lobby, complete with its draught under the trendy pale green laminated front door with its trendy insert of industrial glass tiles that afforded no view and very little illumination. In spite of the conventional interrogative particle, this had not been intended as a question. And Hugh had said limply: “Yes. Thanks.”
In the draughty lobby, shivering a little, he rang Michaela’s number. Roberta answered. She sounded as if she had a cold. No, Michaela was up at the kiln. Yes, she did have a cold, a stinker, Bryn had it, too.—Here Roberta sneezed.—Ariadne reckoned avgolemono was good for colds and so they were making some, did Hugh think the egg ought to go all stringy? Hugh didn’t. Oh, well, they’d eat it anyway, it was protein.—Another sneeze.—By the way, did Hugh need anyone to do housework for him? Hugh did, actually, but wasn’t Roberta (cautiously), rather overcommitted at the moment? No, because you know the English actor that had been renting Mrs Mayhew’s unit? The one nearest yours, Hugh, she explained kindly. Hugh understood that Roberta meant by this the townhouse at the top of the drive before the turning circle, on the other side of his, not Ralph’s. He also understood that Roberta thought he lived in a dream world and had no idea of who that actor was or even if he was.
So he said shortly: “Adam McIntyre. Yes, I believe he’s doing a play in Sydney.”
Roberta sneezed again and said Mrs Mayhew wasn’t coming back from her overseas trip for ages and even when she did there was no guarantee that she’d want her, Roberta, to do housework for her, and so she was free to take on another job at Willow Grove, and if he liked, it could be him.
At this Hugh weakly agreed, he loathed housework and he’d tried a series of daily helps, either hopeless tertiary students who didn’t sweep, didn’t dust and didn’t clean the bathroom, in fact seemed merely to do a few dishes in his dishwasher and pull the bedding up over the unmade bed, or hopeless young mothers from Pohutukawa Bay who always either called up to say they couldn’t come today, little Johnny had the bot, or brought bloody little Johnny and let him put his filthy, sticky paws all over Hugh’s pale oatmeal walls, impeccably plastered and painted at immense expense. And they didn’t clean the bathroom, either.
Roberta then sneezed again, and said she’d been coming three times a week for Adam McIntyre, was that okay? And Hugh said that would be splendid, and how much money did she want? Rather dubiously she named the sum the actor had paid her and said hurriedly that it was too much, really, only he’d wanted her to do the laundry and stuff, too—well, everything, really—most people only specified certain jobs and that’d be much cheaper.
Hugh registered with amusement but also immense liking that she was as honest as the day was long and reflected that there would most certainly be no need to worry about some of his more beloved objets d’art with Roberta in the flat. He pointed out that he had an automatic washing-machine and a drier but Roberta said that Mister Titania had had, too!—Sneeze, and laugh.—Hugh replied with a smile in his voice that he didn’t think McIntyre was gay, hadn’t he had a nice little girlfriend living with him? And Roberta replied on a grim note that he wasn’t gay, but he was bloody la-de-da, she didn’t know how Georgy had stood him!
At this Hugh frankly laughed and said he was afraid he was la-de-da too, he was terrified of his automatic washing-machine and if Roberta really wanted to do his laundry he’d be more than happy to pay her what the actor had.
“Oh, good,” said Roberta in unaffected relief, and Hugh laughed again and said he’d heard from Old Fozzie that she was taking up bone-cutting, was that right? Roberta agreed gruffly it was and abruptly revealed she’d always thought it was only the students who called him that. Grinning, Hugh replied that Old Fozzie never been young: he’d been in the Second-Year Sixth—artful pause—what Roberta called the Seventh Form, when Hugh was in the Third Form and he’d been “Old Fozzie” to the entire school.
“That makes you think, eh?” she said with a laugh and another sneeze and Hugh smiled and said yes, it did, imagine a lifetime of being “Old Fozzie.” And he’d expect her once she’d got rid of that cold and not before, and by the way, didn’t she think she ought to be in bed? Roberta replied in surprize that it was only a cold, she wasn’t sick. “Ah, youth,” sighed Hugh. Roberta replied gruffly “Bullshit,” and Hugh said on a sour note he was fifty-three, if you liked to work it out he’d lived twice as long as her, if not a bit more. There was a silence while Roberta did arithmetic.
“That makes you think, eh?” he said, still sour.
“Well, yeah, only I can’t quite spell out what about, exactly, can you?” she replied sardonically.
Hugh gave a little surprized choke of laughter and admitted he couldn’t, actually, but possibly that was the baleful influence of the industrial glass tiles in his bloody trendy front door. And added he’d better go, it was bloody nippy out here.
Roberta said she’d come on Wednesday, she should have got rid of the germs by then, and Hugh began to say he wasn’t scared of catching her cold, but thought better of it. He was abut to say goodbye and good luck with the soup, but abruptly remembered the object of his call.
“Um, look: can you get Michaela to ring me? It’s quite important.”
“Yeah: when she comes back, is that soon enough?”
“Good God, yes! Don’t go racing up to Blossom Avenue!” said Hugh in horror.
“I wasn’t going to, I was going to ring June and get her to tie a message to Starsky’s leg,” said Roberta—Hugh could tell she was grinning.
“Look, get back to your avgolemono. –Oh, talking of legs: if you’re interested, I’ve a got a nice leg scheduled for Monday week at The Mater—fancy it?”
Roberta gulped. “Do you mean it, Hugh?”
“Yes. If you’re over that bloody cold you can come and stand quietly in the theatre. Otherwise it’ll be the gallery.”
“Thanks,” she said shakily.
“Da nada,” said Hugh in a la-de-da voice. “I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
“Yes—um—would seven o’clock be too early?”
“In the morning?” he said limply.
“Yes,” she replied in an anxious voice and Hugh said limply that was fine, he’d be up, and bade her goodbye somewhat limply and hung up somewhat limply. Had she invaded Mister Titania’s love-nest at seven in the morning? he wondered madly. God knew—but Roberta was certainly capable of it! He went back into the sitting-room and sat down very close to the heater with a smile hovering round his mouth.
After a while he remembered what he wanted to speak to Michaela about and the smile vanished, to be replaced by a nasty feeling that was a compound of guilt, sick hopelessness, and anger in advance—because he knew she’d never agree to what he was about to suggest. He picked up the letter that stood on his simple, sturdy rimu coffee table—a style to which Ralph referred as “Seventies Bland Au Natchurel,” but Hugh had got so as he almost didn’t hear that sort of comment—or else took it as a compliment—and re-read it slowly, not really taking in the words. He knew it by heart, anyway. It was damned flattering, and too good to resist—and it was only for six months...
Only she’d never agree to come with him, it was furrin parts.
Michaela’s heart beat furiously hard and she stared at Hugh without saying anything.
“Well?” he said.
“But— Well, how could I be away for six months?” she said in a trembling voice.
“Very easily, who’s keeping you?” replied Hugh in a voice that came out a lot harder then he’d intended.
“Um—well, there’s my rent, how would I pay my rent if I wasn’t working?”
“I’ll pay your bloody rent!” said Hugh very loudly.
Michaela swallowed.
“Or give the damned flat up, it’s a dump anyway, I don’t know why the Christ you’re so keen on hanging onto it,” he added angrily.
“I’ve got used to it, I suppose,” she said faintly.
If Hugh had stopped to think he might have realized that this was Michaela’s way of saying that the flat represented the only piece of security in her very insecure existence and that she had a deep psychological need to hang onto it, but he was far too stirred up to stop to think. Besides, never having been in that precarious sort of situation himself in all of his comfortable middle-class life, he had no notion of the degree of importance Michaela subconsciously placed on knowing where she would be living for the foreseeable future and, indeed, no way of empathizing with this need in her.
“Well, forget about it: come to America with me: widen your horizons, meet a few different people, go to some decent art galleries!” he said on an impatient note.
“Um—have they got decent art galleries in San Francisco?” she asked uncertainly.
“YES!” shouted Hugh.
There was a pause.
“I couldn’t, anyway,” she said in a stifled voice.
“Why NOT?” shouted Hugh.
“Because I— Because... Well, what would I do when I came back?” she said, very low.
Hugh put his hands heavily on her solid shoulders and said slowly: “I don’t know, Michaela, I can’t foretell the future. Possibly we would live in this up-market townhouse together. Possibly we’d have decided we couldn’t stand the sight of each other and would go our separate ways. Or possibly— God, how should I know! You name it! Possibly you’d have a met a long-haired San Francisco trendy of a fine-arts lecturer and gone off to live with him; possibly pigs might have flown and I’d have landed a job at the Mayo Clinic—or in Arizona somewhere: at the moment I must admit I find the idea of taking my sinuses to Arizona on a permanent basis damned attractive!”
Michaela swallowed. “I see,” she said in a tiny voice.
“It’s a chance to make a change, don’t you see?” he said, squeezing her shoulders hard.
She swallowed again, but looked him in the eye. “Yes, I do see, and I think you ought to take it. Anyway, it’s what you want, isn’t it? Only I don’t think I can.”
Hugh took a deep breath. “Why not?” he said, as quietly as he could.
“I don’t know,” she said miserably. “I just… It just seems too... risky, or something.”
Hugh sighed loudly. “The essence of life is risk, Michaela; haven’t we had this conversation before?”
“Yes,” she muttered.
“Well?” he said.
Michaela just stared glumly at his oatmeal body-carpet.
“Look, you’re the woman that waltzed off to Japan for a whole year against the better judgment of everyone you knew, for God’s sake!” he said in exasperation.
“Yes... I needed to do that,” she said faintly.
“Well, I need to do this!” cried Hugh. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, it’s a damned flattering invitation, and I’d be looking at the very latest techniques!”
“Yes,” she said.
“Look, it’s only for six months,” he repeated, unaware that this was making it worse. It was so long a period that Michaela knew she’d get used to being with him all the time, and so long that she knew also that she’d lose all her regular gardening clients, and far too long for her to be away from her own kiln and her own sources of clay. But on the other hand it wasn’t permanency that he was offering her, that was very clear.
Michaela went on staring at the carpet.
Finally she said: “I can’t be away from my work for six months.”
“Widening your spiritual and artistic horizons doesn’t come into it, I suppose?” he said nastily.
“No,” replied Michaela honestly.
“So that’s it, then? That’s how little you care about me?”
“It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you,” she said in a very low voice.
“If you cared about me, you’d come with me!” cried Hugh.
This time there was a very long silence indeed.
Eventually, since Hugh didn’t seem to be about to say anything else, Michaela said: “I just can’t give everything up.” Hugh didn’t reply. “If I asked you to give everything of yours up, I mean stop working and everything, would you?” she said in a desperate effort to make him understand.
Hugh’s mouth tightened. He didn’t say it was different for him, he was a man, and he had a serious profession, but he felt it very strongly. And he could see that Michaela understood this, she might be inarticulate and she might live in some damned world of her own ninety-nine percent of the time, but she wasn’t stupid.
Finally she said: “I’m sorry, Hugh.”
“So am I,” said Hugh grimly.
Then neither of them said anything for a bit.
“I’d better go,” said Michaela uncomfortably.
Hugh had been glaring at the carpet but now he looked up and said: “I suppose if I said it could really have brought you out of your shell— Oh, well.”
Michaela went over to the door. “Maybe I like my shell,” she said with a crooked smile.
Suddenly Hugh lost control and shouted bitterly: “Like it! You’re bloody wedded to it! God, don’t you want any opportunities in life? Don’t you even care about having some sort of a relationship? Are you even half human?”
Michaela’s eyes filled with tears and she went out without saying anything.
Hugh heard the front door close very quietly. His own eyes hazed over, partly with pain, partly with anger, and he went and poured himself a brandy with hands that shook. He felt like throwing the glass at the wall but that would have been damned stupid, it’d make a mess and Roberta would notice it and there’d be glass in the carpet—
Oh, shit.
Akiko Takagaki said cautiously as Michaela’s sturdy back view disappeared up the spiral staircase to the middle store’s attic room: “I think she not-ah very happy, Sol?”
Sol looked at her with affection. The Carranos’ nanny’s help was a dear little thing: pretty, bright, sunny-natured, and interested in everything: very alive. The fact that she obviously liked Michaela very much was a factor in his own liking for her, and Sol rather wryly had admitted as much to himself.
It had been Akiko’s own idea to come and help in the crafts store: at first while they did it out, and later on during the season, when the Royal Kingfisher Hotel was always teeming with Japanese tourists with yen to change. She had turned up one Saturday with Polly and the children at Sol’s Boating & Marine Supplies and they’d started chatting idly about the empty store next-door and Sol’s idea about a crafts outlet, and Akiko had gotten all carried away. Polly had seemed quite amenable to her nanny’s help’s disappearing for half the time for which they were presumably paying her—and after all the twins were at school, now, so why not?
At the moment they were cleaning the place up and preparing to refurbish it. It bore all the hallmarks of a place which the builders’ men had used as a dumping ground. Their junk had ben removed but that was about all you could say for it.
“No,” Sol said to Akiko: “she isn’t too happy. She’s busted up with her boyfriend; I hear he’s going to the States for six months.”
“Yes: this is Dastardree Sir Hugh, no?” she said with a smile.
“Yeah: who told you that story?” he grinned.
“Polly she takes-ah me to affer-noon-ah tea with Meg, and Meg and Jemima tell-ah aw r’about Dastardree Sir Hugh and Big Why’ Bonu-Cut’ Ur-Rahf,” said Akiko.
Ur-Rahf was a good name for him, must remember that one, thought Sol with a certain sourness. “I get it: they showed you Roger’s book?”
“Yes: is very funny!” she gasped, in ecstasy.
“Yup, it sure is,” said Sol with great satisfaction.
“Hugh go very soon, I think,” she murmured, with a wary eye on the staircase.
“Uh-huh: end of the month, so they tell me,” murmured Sol, equally circumspect. “Be there for May Day.”
“She too nice for him,” decided Akiko.
“Wal, yeah: she’s too nice for anyone; I guess that’s you and me that think so, anyroad, Akiko,” he drawled.
“He need-ah lady that ur-can tell him no,” Akiko elaborated.
Sol swallowed. Gee, she was only about twenty-one, but— “You said it, kid,” he agreed.
“Not in sex-ah thing, all-uh thing,” she explained.
“Yeah, I got that.”
There was a short pause. Akiko wiped a portion of skirting board dry carefully and said: “He no a very happy peru-son, neither, Jemima say.”
“Uh—no. I guess not. Well, Hell, Akiko, who is?” said Sol on a glum note.
Akiko thought about it as she washed the next portion of skirting board. Sol watched her in some amusement. “Polly and Jake is happy, that is good-uh marriage,” she announced.
“Uh-huh.”
“Alluh-so, my Aunt Masako, she is happy and her marriage with my Uncle Inoue is alluh-so good marriage, is Japanese-ah marriage,” she explained.
“Uh-huh.”
“Alluh-so, Daph and Tim-uh Green-ah is happy.”
“Uh… Oh, sure, Polly’s housekeeper?”—Akiko nodded.—“Yeah, they’re a real nice couple, huh?”
“Yes. Tim-ah say he can do wiring at-ah cut ur-rate if you like, Sol!” she said, suddenly beaming at him.
“Oh, great. This place sure needs rewiring, I’ve never seen such a botched job. Tell him thanks, Akiko.”
“Yes, I tell. –Meg and Bill-ah is alluh-so most ver-ree happy.”
Sol kind of thought they weren’t actually married, but he agreed: “Yeah, that’s a good solid relationship. Mind you, that’s the second time for them both, I guess they’ve had their fingers burnt, huh?”
“Fingers bur-run—ah, yes. I unner-stand, Sol. Yes, is learn by experience.”
“More than most of us do,” he said gloomily.
“Yes. You are not-ah very happy,” stated Akiko.
“Uh—not all that, no.”
“You are fighting with-ah Phoebe, I think?
“Mm-hm. Some.”
“She is very-ah strong-ah lady, I think? Most like my Aunt Masako, only not-ah Japanese-ah style.”
“No,” agreed Sol, swallowing. He began scrubbing his patch of floor rather hard.
“I am happy now, only just later-lee I am not so happy,” she said, drying her stretch of skirting.
“No?”
“No. I am engagement to Japanese boy, very most suitabuh’, my fam’ree very pleased. Then I have finished my degree, I decide not marry him, he is not-ah inneresting peruson,”—Sol blenched: that woulda gone down real good with the relatives—“and my fam’ree is very anguh-ry.” She smiled blithely at him and rinsed her rag in her orange plastic bucket.
“You got guts, kid,” he said.
“Yes, but inside I very scare.”
He swallowed hard, and nodded, with a shaky smile.
“So then Aunt Masako say I must-ah have change, and Polly needs help for Nanny and I can improve my English”—this last enunciated very carefully: Sol hid a smile—“so I come. And now I happy, this most—ah... res’fuh time for me!” finished Akiko with a beaming smile.
She was a busy as a bee, but if that was restful— Yeah, no emotional complications: he guessed it would be, at that. He smiled and said: “I’m sure glad to hear that, Akiko, honey.”
“At first,” said Akiko, washing the skirting board busily: “I ur-miss sex-ah with my boyfriend, he is good for that.”
Sol had to swallow: looked a sweet little virginal flower, y’know?
“But then I get over, I no think about!” Another beaming smile and she got down to it, kneeling neatly Japanese style, a-scrubbin’ an’ a-neat’nin’ like crazy.
Sol looked at the neat little figure in its jeans and blue sweatshirt (which sure didn’t suit her, Oriental girls could not wear blue, he’d noticed that before). Shortnin’ Bread, I sure wouldn’t mind consolin’ you-all some, he thought, less than half serious. She apparently regarded him in the light of an uncle. An elderly uncle. Just as well, really, he thought wryly as he heard Michaela’s step on the stairs: he didn’t know if he could have coped with involvements with two lady helpers at once!
At this he caught himself up short and scrubbed fiercely at this real strange and horrible patch bang in the middle of the downstairs floor and told himself angrily he must be nuts, who was saying he was going to get involved with Michaela at all? Him and Phoebe were still regularly seeing each other—well, sex and fights was what they were having together, but it was regular enough. Just because the Dastardly Sir Hugh had ditched Michaela—
He heard her come down the spiral staircase and go into the tiny dirty sink-room at the back which she was cleaning, but he didn’t look up, because if he did he knew what he’d see: Michaela’s butt and thighs in tight faded jeans, and that was enough of a turn-on. And the front view was worse—well, better: a white tee-shirt because she’d taken off her heavy wool checkered shirt with the exertion of cleaning, and the tee-shirt was tucked into the jeans and as well it had gotten all damp and splashed from Michaela’s enthusiastic scrubbin’ of the little sink-room: mm-hmm!
Down, boy, he ordered it but as usual with S. Winkelmann’s, it never took no notice. Not when he told it not to, any more than when he told it it had to. Well, that was life, he guessed. Uh-huh. Nary a sight of a policeman when you needed him!
“Oh,” said Phoebe, very dashed. “Um, well, look, I’m sorry, Sol, but I don’t see there’s anything I can do about it, I can’t possibly cancel this dinner.”
“No!” gasped Sol, sneezing madly into the receiver. “Hell! –Sorry, honey,” he said dismally, blowing his nose. “I’m just sorry I’ll upset your numbers for your dinner party.”
Phoebe sighed. “Yes. I don’t know who on earth I could get at such short notice— Oh, well. Thanks for letting me know, Sol.”
Sol sneezed again. “Sorry, honey: it’s going round, I guess,” he said miserably, thinking why had he never noticed how much formal entertaining Phoebe did, that time he was out here before? Possibly because she had only ever entertained him very informally—yeah, well. The formal entertaining was, of course, a strong factor in Phoebe’s refusal to give up her very comfortable flat and move up nearer to Carter’s Bay. Did that prove that persons such as John Westby or the Queen Mother were more important in her life than one, S. Winkelmann? Grow up, Sol, he told himself irritably, but he didn’t feel as if he was listening to himself.
“Well, take care of yourself,” said Phoebe in an abstracted voice—probably wondering how long to do the roast, or who she could get in to replace him at her board.
“You’ll just have to settle for Westby as your escort,” he said, sourer than he’d meant to sound.
“Don’t be an idiot, he’s bringing his wife, of course!” she said irritably.
“Oh. Well, good ole Owen could fly up?” he suggested.
“What in God’s name’s the matter with you?” demanded Phoebe in astonishment.
Sol sneezed miserably. Jealousy, I guess, the green-eyed monster. Been gettin’ worse since learning about you and good ole Ur-Rahf, too, he thought sourly. Aloud he only said: “This cold’s making me bad-tempered, I guess. Maybe I better go to bed with hot lemon and honey.”
“Yes. And aspirin.”
“Yeah.” Sol sneezed again and admitted: “It’s pretty damn cold in this here attic with all that glass, you were right about the big window needing curtains.”
“Yes. Dark blue velvet, like I said. Look, that shop in Remuera’s got some in, I’ll ring them—”
“NO!”
There was a short silence.
“Look, Phoebe, I thought I explained before,” he said weakly: “I can’t afford five thousand yards of that blue furnishing velvet—Hell, I cain’t even afford five thousand yards of blue denim, and before you start five thousand yards is around what it’ll take to curtain the window in the gable! Let alone hang the things.” He sneezed again. “Pardon me.” –He knew she loathed his saying that, for some obscure reason, but he’d said it without thinking.
“I said, I’ll pay; I mean it, I can easily afford—”
“NO!”
“This is ridiculous, Sol! Can’t we agree on this thing like two adults?”
“I guess not.”
“Look, for Heaven’s sake, if I could possibly manage to live up there I would, but what with School and—”
“Yeah, okay, Phoebe, I realize that.”
“Well, is it any different? I mean, I’m up there every other weekend, I’ll be shivering underneath all that glass, too, you won’t be the only sufferer.”
Every other weekend, only not just lately, because just lately there’d been the board meeting that hadda be put off till a Saturday, the other Saturday when the School janitor couldn’t oversee the front lawn at School being cored—whatever the Hell that was, some fancy new idea she’d picked up on a conference junket to Australia—plus and not to mention the weekend the School was open for prospective parents, the weekend the Junior School had its School Fair, the weekend the Senior School had its School Gala, the weekend the Cohens had asked her to dinner to meet some jerk from the Prime Minister’s office, the weekend of the Governor-General’s garden party, yet; not to mention all those other plain ordinary weekends where she’d had budgets, timetables, minutes of Boards of Governors’ meetings, timetables, budgets… You name it, headmistresses of nayce gels’ prayvate schools apparently had it, weekends.
“Okay, I’m a hidebound nineteenth-century paternalist with the wrong ideas about woman’s rôle, only I just can’t stomach you paying for the drapes in my apartment that you won’t even come live in!” he said, starting off quietly ironic but unfortunately getting rather loud by the end of it.
Phoebe sighed. “All right, freeze. But don’t be surprized if you get one cold on top of another—and before you ask, yes, it will get a lot colder, Sol, it’s still only April.”
“Yeah,” he said glumly, blowing his nose and poking gingerly at a hot, swollen lump under one ear. Ugh, now it was getting into his glands, hadn’t had a bout of that since he was around seventeen... “Huh?”
Phoebe sighed again. “Look, ring me when you’re feeling better, I can’t talk now, I’ve got three lots of prospective parents coming this afternoon and then English Lit. with the Schol. class, Helen Busby’s down with the same bug you’ve got.”
Insult to injury, deduced Sol. “Yeah. Wal, good luck with the dinner tonight, Phoebe,” he said glumly.
“Thanks. ’Bye,” said Phoebe on a distracted note, hanging up.
Sol snuffled miserably and crawled back under his duvet—she’d talked him into buying that last month—Jesus, had it only been last month?—when the humidity had still been down like a swaddling blanket and he’d thought she’d gone nuts. But she’d been right, though. Oh, yes. Come Easter and whammo, the weather had entirely changed. Rain, rain, rain—wind, of course—more rain… Ugh.
Sol sneezed and took three aspirin—no, on second thoughts, four, and drank a huge amount of the Lucozade muck he’d driven hazily into Carter’s Bay and bought himself when he’d realized yesterday afternoon it wasn’t gonna get better, it was gonna get worse. For good measure he pulled the heavy Indian cotton divan-cover on top of the duvet and got right under the lot and had a terrific sneezing fit and blew his nose yet again. Even though the rain was lashing the big window and the wind was howling round his steeply gabled attic—the three little stores were in a sort of fake-Colonial style that Phoebe had declared was appalling kitsch but that Sol secretly rather liked—he closed his eyes determinedly and tried to go to sleep.
Phoebe glared out at the wet shrubbery. Damn, who could she ask at such short notice? The company would be such an inducement, of course: Westby with the cold Lady W.; the Q.M. with the luckless Sir Jerry—the bonhomous old thing quite visibly suffered through these does the Q.M. dragged him to as part of her committee-member stuff; the amiable gay Clive, with Yvonne invited for him, she could do her duty for a change; a lady city councillor who was very hot on scholastic issues (the council had nothing whatsoever to do with education but it did have a lot to do with planning permission, bus routes, and the upkeep of the roads), plus this lady’s spouse, a dentist, all that was known of him; and their newest Board member, Evan Black, an eminent medico and pal of Westby’s, plus wife. Hang on, hang on: a dentist, two medicos— Phoebe’s generous mouth firmed. She got out her private address book and looked through it.
... “Do you know, Phoebe darling,” said Ralph at his most affable—Phoebe made a face at her office ceiling—“one is al-most tempted to be insulted at this very late offer?”
“It isn’t an offer, it’s a dinner invitation,” replied Phoebe grimly, “and if you’re refusing it, Ralph, just say so, I’ve got a bookful of names to ring here. I just thought you might like the chance of a night away from your own cooking, even if it does mean putting up with Westby and the Queen Mother.”
“And with your cooking, dear one. –Plus Evan Black, didn’t you say? Have you met his charming wife, Phoebe?”
“No.”
“Ah. The suburban mum sort. Nothing between the ears.”
“Thanks, Ralph, that’s very clear.”
“Good,” he sighed.
“I presume that’s a ‘no’, then?” said Phoebe grimly, as he didn’t add anything.
“What; to the chance to—er—fill the Winkelmann shoes, be it ever so briefly?”
“Not his shoes, his chair, he’s only got a cold, dammit!” said Phoebe very angrily.
“Such heat,” sighed Ralph.—Phoebe could hear the raised eyebrows: she poked out her tongue at her receiver.—“Er—tempted though one is, I fear it must be a ‘no’. –Did you say only a cold?”
“Yes, why?” said Phoebe unguardedly.
“Merely,” said Ralph with a laugh in his voice: “that one had hoped for the Black Death, at the very least—stay, is that a prolonged agony?”
“Yes, and let’s hope you get it BEFORE LONG!” shouted Phoebe, forgetting where she was, and crashing the receiver down into the bargain.
Ralph laughed very softly and very nastily, and hung up. Before long—before very long at all—he would manage to apprise Phoebe of that brief Sundee arvo glimpse of the be-shorted Master Potter arm-in-arm with Sol at Sol’s Boating & Marine Nonsense, or his name wasn’t Ralph Overdale, F.R.C.S., Kindly Call Me God, et al.
The colour faded out of Roberta’s cheeks. “What?” she said numbly.
“Yes. Look, I’m sorry, after I’ve only just given you the job, but I decided to go sooner rather than— Look, I’m sorry, Roberta,” said Hugh, his palms unexpectedly starting to sweat. “But it’s only for six months, then I’ll be back, and I promise you that you can have the job back. In fact, I’ll leave you the keys: if you could come in and air the place, perhaps once a week, and dust a bit? At your usual hourly rate, of course.”
“Yes, sure,” said Roberta dully.
Hugh looked at her dubiously. After all, it wasn’t as if her parents were poor, she couldn’t be stony broke, or if she was, there was no doubt at all that Keith Nicholls would— Only she was such a stubborn kid. “Do you need a loan?” he said abruptly.
“No!” gasped Roberta, turning scarlet.
Hugh took a step nearer. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said hoarsely.
Hugh hesitated. Then he got out his wallet. “Look, I’ll pay you in advance: six months—say twenty-six weeks at an hour a week—” He worked it out rapidly and forced the money into her hand.
“Thanks.”
“When I come back the academic year’ll be pretty well over. You can come and do rounds with me over the holidays, if you like, and we’ll talk about your final year and what you should do after that,” said Hugh.
“I’ll have to—”
“I know. I’ve had a word with Old Fozzie and the types at Middlemore: I think we might wangle house surgeon there, if you fancy it. It’s mostly accident work, of course, and it can be pretty bloody pressurized, but they get most of the interesting bone stuff.”
Roberta swallowed. “Thanks,” she said hoarsely.
Hugh smiled at her. “If it is bones you want?”
“Yeah, those ops of yours were great,” she said hoarsely.
He touched her arm gently. “Good. Well, I’m off next week, and I’m pretty booked up till then, we might not bump into each other. Got your keys?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Get hold of Ralph if anything goes wrong with the flat—washing-machine goes berserk or something—he’ll know who to contact. And I’ve explained the alarms, haven’t I?”
Roberta nodded dumbly.
Hugh looked at his watch. “That’s all right, then. Look, I’ve got to run, I’ve got rounds at The Mater this morning and a full appointment book for this afternoon. Good luck with the swot.”
“Thanks,” said Roberta numbly.
Hugh smiled at her again. He had an impulse to give the kid a hug and a kiss, which was ludicrous, she was a grown woman, after all, and bloody lucky Keith Nicholls’s daughter, not his. “See ya!” he said.
“Good-bye,” said Roberta hoarsely.
Hugh hurried out.
Roberta just stood there in the middle of his oatmeal décor, feeling an odd sense of desolation. Six months! Even if she did have final year to look forward to, and rounds with Hugh over the long holidays... Six months!
When she heard his ageing Jag start up in the garage below her eyes filled with tears and she blinked angrily and hurried into the kitchen, where she put things into the dishwasher blindly and began scouring his spotless bench fiercely.
“Did you know that Hugh was going to America next week?” she said in a very low voice to Bryn as they were doing the dishes that evening.
“Yeah.” He glanced cautiously at the closed kitchen door. Beyond it Michaela was sitting on the divan with a half-eaten plate of congealed beans on her knee, staring into space. “That’ll be why she’s got the blues, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Roberta glumly. “I suppose it will.”
Next chapter:
https://theamericanrefugeeanovel.blogspot.com/2022/10/winter-of-discontent.html
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