7
Michaela And Her Admirers. Part 1
David Shapiro had rung old Mrs Lambert, hoping to catch Michaela at home, but she’d been out. Mrs Lambert had thought she might be up at the Butlers’ but when he rang there, there had been no reply. In due course Michaela rang him back. It had been rather unfortunate that his sister, Ann, who was a widow and lived in the unit next to his, should have taken the call. There was no reason whatsoever why she should have done so, David was right there and he was very far from being a cripple; but Ann was the sort of person who does answer their brother’s phone if they happen to be a few feet nearer to it than he is when it rings. Very helpful. Or extremely irritating, depending on your point of view.
David said acidly, not bothering to lower his voice: “Permit me to take my own phone calls uncensored in my own home, would you, Ann?” but Ann ignored him.
“Oh,” she said into the phone. “Well, just a minute, I’ll just see...” To David she said: “You don’t know anyone called Daniels, do you?”
“As it happens, yes. And even if I didn’t, I’d still quite like to take the call.”
Gripping the receiver fiercely, his sister hissed hoarsely: “It’s a lady!”
“There,” replied David firmly, “you are very much mistaken. It’s an artist. Give me that!” He wrenched it off her. “Hullo, Michaela, how are you?” he said.
“I’m fine,” she replied gruffly. “How are you?”
Smiling a little, David said: “I’m very well, thanks. That was a pleasant evening on Thursday, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You got home all right?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Did Dickon talk at you all the way up to the Coast?” he asked sympathetically.
“Yes. But the mangroves bits were all right. Quite interesting.”
“Unlike the artistic bits?”
“Yes. My head goes muddled when they talk like that.”
“So does mine,” he agreed.
“Does it? I thought you understood that sort of stuff.”
“Oh, I do. Where my head goes muddled is in trying to make the connection between the meaning of the words and the reality of the art.”
There was a short pause. Then Michaela gave a shout of laughter.
Grinning, the old man said: “Could I come up and see you on Tuesday? Where will you be?”
“Um... Well, on Tuesday mornings I do the Livingstones’ garden. And next Tuesday I’m going to cut down their neighbour’s tree for her, afterwards. But I thought I’d go down to the kiln after that.”
“Good. Then shall I meet you there—say, in the early afternoon?”
“If you come quite early you’ll get pensioners’ rates on the bus. I should be there by half-past eleven, easy.”
“Good. Well, I’ll meet you there around twelve, then. I’ll bring a few rolls and some cheese or something; we can have a picnic lunch, if you’d like to.”
“Okay, that sounds good,” she agreed.
“Good-bye, then, Michaela; I’ll look forward to it.”
“Yes,” she said gruffly. “Me, too. Good-bye.”
“Who on earth was that?” demanded Ann the minute he’d hung up.
“Actually she’s an eighteen-year-old gold-digger, she’s after me for me fortune.”
“Very funny!” she snapped.
“The question is, will it be worth it to let her catch me?” He leered horribly.
“Really!”
“The art of the bridle is not lost,” murmured David. “She’s a potter, she’s got some notes from some Japanese potter friends that she wants me to get translated for her; are you satisfied?”
“I never knew you knew any potters!”
“Up until last Thursday evening, I didn’t.”
Ann sniffed.
“I know you disapprove thoroughly of my relationship with Polly Carrano, Ann; but I keep trying to tell you: it isn’t really a relationship—at least, not an exclusive one: I’m open to other offers.” He leered again.
“If you’re going to be like that all night, I’m going home!”
“Good,” he said callously.
Ann gathered up her knitting with a trembling hand. “That Carrano woman’s making you worse,” she muttered.
David laughed coarsely. “Better, ya mean!”
“It’s disgusting! At your age!”
“We only read Spanish together; what’s disgusting about that?”
Ann was very flushed. She knew what she meant. And she knew she was right. “Coming home at all hours,” she muttered, going over to the door.
“Shocking. Laughing and talking and waking the neighbours. Those that weren’t lurking at their front windows in the pitch dar—”
“David Shapiro! That isn’t funny!”
“Not in the slightest; no.”
Very pink, Ann said with dignity: “I only happened to be up because I had a touch of indigestion.”
At this point, David realized quite clearly, he could say something placatory and she’d stay. Or something only mildly rude and she’d huff and puff a bit, and stay. But these days he found himself more and more coming to the conclusion that although he owed Ann a lot for looking after his two kids after their mother died, he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his days paying for it. Because he mightn’t have all that many left. And because he’d paid enough already. And because Ann, however sweet-natured, was the sort of person who’d be quite ready to let him go on paying for the rest of his natural. She was, after all, the sort of person who answered her brother’s phone in his own house when he was sitting not three yards from it.
“Or a touch of incurable nosiness, quite. Painful, was it?”
Ann glared. “I’m going home right now!”
“Well, stand not upon the order of it.”
“You can be really horrible sometimes, David!” she declared in a shaking voice.
“I’m glad you’ve noticed.”
“OOH!” Ann flounced out.
David heaved a sigh of relief. He turned off the radio that Ann had turned on without asking him if he wanted it on. Then he put on a recording of “that awful tuneless Japanese stuff, I don’t know how you can listen to it” and got out a book of photographs of Noh performances. He looked through this very slowly while the record played. Then he got himself a whisky. Then, sipping it slowly, he drew his chess set towards him and looked at it in a considering way. Then he got up without haste and phoned his son.
“Mate in three,” he said when Micky answered.
“Eh?”
“All this matrimony’s turned your brain to mush, has it? Mate—in—three.”
“Hang on.”
There was a silence. David waited.
“You’re right, bugger it,” said his son’s voice. “Can’t have been concentrating, or something.”
“No. Well, let me know when you start to recover from getting it on a regular basis, and we might have another game.”
“It’s not the regularity, it’s the frequency!” said Micky, chuckling richly.
“Ah. Well, at my age ya tend to forget.”
“Yeah. –Hang on. What’s all this about you and Polly Carrano jaunting round the town in black racing cars on dates?”
“Ann,” he said resignedly.
“Mm. Well, had to be, who else would have called it a racing car?”
“Quite. Shall I tell you what I told her?”
“I’m not old enough for that, Dad!” said Micky in alarm.
Sniggering, David conceded: “No. Well, take it as read.”
His son replied cautiously: “Are you making a tit of yourself?”
“By-God-that-is-rich-coming-from-you-Mi-chael,” responded his father in a slow, high-pitched monotone.
“I’m not seventy-one, dammit!”
“No, and if ya were Polly Carrano still wouldn’t go out with you: ya too du-umb, see-ee?”
“Look, all right, I apologize for poking my nose into your business!”
“We had dinner with a most respectable acquaintance of hers. Did you imagine we went clubbing and tied one on? –Pity we didn’t, mighta got me picksha in Metro.”
“No.” Micky added with an effort: “It’s news to me Polly’s got any most respectable acquaintances—apart from me and Marianne, that is.”
“How does Phoebe Fothergill of St Ursie’s grab you?” David replied nastily.
“WHAT?”
“Do I deduce that behind that cacophonous overreaction lies more than mere surprize at Polly’s having made such an inordinately respectable connection?”
“No,” lied Micky weakly.
“If you’re trying to avoid, in your delicate elephant-footed way, letting on to the old man that Phoebe’s having an affaire with your erstwhile brother-in-law, don’t bother.”
Gulping, Micky whispered: “Who in God’s name told you, Dad?”
“Polly did. She very kindly took me to lunch at a very out-of-the-way, not to say ruddy expensive, chop-house, and Lo, there they were. Not looking as if they were having a mad passionate affaire, mind you—especially since they were both in blue serge suits—but Polly assured me they are. Have been for some time, indeed.”
“Uh—right. Well, Nat’s regular one—you know, that female that worked in his office—I believe she pushed off to Queensland or somewhere. And—uh—well, anyway, uh…”
“Regular sex with Phoebe took over from regular sex with the regular one?”
“Uh—yeah. Literally, I gather. Every Wednesday. Well, he’s like that,” he ended weakly.
“Mm. But is she?” said David on a very dry note.
Micky evidently didn’t pick it; he replied: “Don’t ask me, I’ve only ever sat trembling on the other side of that desk of hers while she told me how rotten the fruit of me loins were doing at school.”
“Mm.”
An uncomfortable silence fell. At least, David’s wasn’t in the least uncomfortable, but he could feel Micky’s was.
“Uh—what on earth do you and Polly Carrano get up to together, Dad?”
“We make wild passionate love. On me tiger-skin rug. Sometimes she’s on top and sometimes I am. And sometimes we have a real special treat, she’s at one end and I’m at the other—”
“All right!” he yelled.
“—of the sofa. And we have a little sake, or perhaps a whisky. And we READ CERVANTES TOGETHER, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK WE DO, YOU PRUNE?” he yelled.
Micky swallowed loudly. “I’m sorry, dammit,” he said weakly. “Only Aunty Ann— Well, you know what she is.”
“And so, I should have thought, do you. It would appear, however, that I was mistaken.”
“Yeah. All right, I’m a prune. But she was going on even worse than usual. Even for her. And then bloody Fee got in on the act—”
“Oh, well, that proves there must be something in it! I mean, your sister’s known for her delicate perceptiveness where the finer human emotions are—”
“Yeah. Well, I’m sorry.”
“I’m quite flattered, actually,” said David mildly.
To his immense joy, Micky gasped.
“Thank you, Michael. I’ll ring off on that,” he said.
“Uh—no, don’t, Marianne wants to talk to you.”
David chatted gently for a while to his rather new daughter-in-law, of whom he was very fond.
“Oh, by the way,” she said: “don’t take any notice of what Micky said about Polly. I tried to tell him he was mad, but he got all worked up.”
“The limited mind. Couldn’t imagine Polly having a relationship with a man that wasn’t sexual. Not to say, couldn’t conceive of the possibility of the over-seventies having sex—let alone enjoying it.”
In response to this gambit his daughter-in-law gave a gurgle of laughter and his son—he must have had his ear to the receiver—shouted: “You’re talking bullshit, Dad!”
“I’d better go, David,” she said, giggling. “He’s frothing at the mouth! Bye-bye!”
“’Bye, Marianne,” he said, smiling. “Oh—tell him to read A Town Like Alice. Slowly.” He hung up.
His daughter-in-law conveyed this message to her spouse. They stared at each other. Slowly a look of consternation overtook them both.
“It’s years since I read it,” said Micky, “but I saw the TV thing... The Scotch character, wasn’t it? Gordon Thingummy?”
“Yes, but he was a lot older in the book.”
“I had a feeling he mighta been.”
“Oh, dear! Now I don’t know what to think!” she said. “He was in love with her—with the girl, wasn’t he?”
Micky made a face. “Mm.”
“Micky, do you think he really could be? How awful!”
Suddenly Micky gave a shout of laughter. “No! The old devil! He said it on purpose!”
“Oh! Do you really think—?”
“Of course he did! Wanted to really stir us up! By God, I’ve a good mind to ring him and— No, I won’t, bugger him! I won’t give him the satisfaction!”
Marianne looked dubious. “It might still have been a hint. I mean it might have been one of those—um—thingummyjigs.”
“Double bluff?” he said weakly.
“Mm!” She nodded vigorously.
“Nah! Just a bit of spur of the moment spite! Typical Dad. Wanted to ruin our evening, probably.” He grinned. “But we won’t let him, will we? Hee, hee, hee!”
“No,” agreed Marianne slowly.
“Oh, come on, darling! Be realistic! He’s seventy-one, and sharp as a pin. Polly’s the first person he’s met for years that can talk on his bloody wavelength. And the fact that she looks like a ruddy Botticelli Venus or something doesn’t hurt.”
“No-o, I suppose…”
Micky made an awful face. “Dad’s the type that—uh—tends to—uh—suck people dry. Bit of a Dracula—not emotionally, I don’t mean: intellectually. Sucks ’em dry and spits out the husk. Then he looks round for a new victim.”
“Micky!”
Micky shrugged. “Well, he does. Always been like that. Too bloody sharp for his own good. Gets bored too damn quick, too.”
“Mm.” Marianne hadn’t known David Shapiro very long, but she could see that this was very probably true. She could also see that it didn’t necessarily render it impossible that he should have fallen in love with Polly. She didn’t say so.
“You found it all right,” said Michaela with some relief as David sauntered towards her where she was working outside the shed, glazing some large pots.
David was fully aware that this remark related to the crippling effect of old age on the brain cells. He was about to say “I haven’t got Alzheimer’s yet, you know,” but on second thoughts decided that Michaela would never have heard of it.
“Yes; I did just manage it,” he drawled. “As you might assume from my physical presence here.”
Michaela straightened. “Could you grab that jug?” she said mildly.
David set down his picnic basket (basket provided by Ann, contents provided by himself except for the ginger cake he’d let her force on him), and grabbed the jug. “What now?”
“Stand there holding it,” she said, grinning.
It was a large earthenware jug, full of some murky-looking liquid. Extremely heavy. He stood there gripping the handle with one hand and supporting its base with the other, feeling exquisitely foolish. Had anyone but Michaela put him in this position he would have assumed they’d done it out of malice.
“Right: go on,” she said eventually.
“Me?” said David in a voice that came out a lot squeakier than he’d meant it to.
“Yeah. Go on: pour.”
“What if I ruin them?”
“I’m trying for a haphazard look,” she said, frowning. “Is that the word?”
“It certainly will be, when I’ve done me dash,” said David, grinning feebly. He poured, and looked at the result in horror.
“The glaze changes colour in the firing,” said Michaela.
“It’ll need to.”
“Yes,” she said vaguely.—David realized she wasn’t listening.—“I’ve got to do some mugs, now.”
“Can I help?”
“Not unless you can paint leaves.”
“Leaves?”
“Yes; they’re for a gallery in Puriri. June did some for them a couple of months back and they sold like hot cakes, so they want some more.”
She led the way into the shed. “Like this,” she said, picking up a tallish, not unattractive, if somewhat etiolated, grey-blue coffee mug.
David took it off her. “Etiolated,” he observed with satisfaction.
Michaela ignored this, doubtless because she hadn’t understood it. “See the leaves? That’s what they want.”
David looked weakly at the array of dozens of mugs on the big scrubbed table. “On all of those?”
“Yes. It won’t take long.”
He looked at the mug again. “Two strokes; I see. Very potterly. No, I definitely couldn’t do that.”
“Three: one for the stalk,” said Michaela, grinning. “Would you like to sit down? You can put the heater on, if you like.”
There was a very small bar-heater near the table. David wasn’t proud, he switched it on and pulled up an old Windsor chair very close to it. The more so since Michaela had left the door open. The sun was shining, but…
Michaela had some glaze in a jam jar. She sat on another wooden chair, dipped a fat brush with a pointed tip into the jar, and began painting. David watched in awe.
“How in God’s name do you do it?” he said, when he dared to open his mouth.
“Practice,” said Michaela, neatly whisking a bunch of leaves onto the umpteenth mug.
“Have you ever tried calligraphy?”
“Yes. Toshiro said I was—um, I’d better not say. ‘Rotten’ probably comes closest to it,” she said, grinning at him.
“You tried Japanese calligraphy?” he said weakly.
“Mm. Isn’t that what you meant?” She said “calligraphy” in Japanese.
“Hai,” he agreed weakly. “I mean—that is the word, yes; but I meant— Skip it.”
“Most potters know how to decorate their ware. Not everybody does it, though. Well, I don’t usually decorate my serious stuff.”
“No... These mugs,” he said abruptly.
“Mm?”
“Did you make them?”
“Some of them. June made some.”
“They all look exactly the same to me,” he said feebly.
“That’s the point. That’s what the gallery wants. Sets of gruesome coffee mugs. Then they can tell their customers that that’s the last set, it was a special order. Then when they’ve bought it and gone round the corner, they put the next set out.”
David swallowed. “I think I believe that.”
Michaela smiled. “Two ladies run it. June says they’re very much on the ball.”
“They sound it. May one ask why June isn’t decorating these herself?”
“She’s got too many pixies to finish off. And she went and said she’d do some sets of cups and saucers for that place, as well.”
“This is very clear,” noted David drily.
“She does pay me,” Michaela replied simply.
Since that was what David had meant, there wasn’t much he could say. “I’m glad to hear it,” he offered feebly.
“I owe June and Bob a lot. They pulled me out of a hole.” She made a face. “Several holes. I’d probably be dead without them.”
“Dead?” he echoed faintly.
“Of starvation.”
“People do not starve to death in New Zealand. What about the dole?”
“You have to have the strength to walk to the Labour Department to claim it, don’t you? And then fill in all those forms and things.”
“You’re quite right. I’ve never looked at it in just those terms,” he said feebly.
“People that haven’t been broke never do.”
“No. –And I apologize for poking my blasted nose into your personal business,” he added sourly.
“That’s all right,” said Michaela vaguely. “Could you count the ones I’ve done?”
David began to count. By the time he’d caught up with her she’d nearly finished.
“I make it fifty-nine you’ve done. Five to go.”
“Good: that’s what I thought, but I always lose count.”
“I’m madly doing mental arithmetic, but I can’t figure out— Unless you’re doing sets of four?”
“No, six.”
There was a short silence. Then David burst out: “You’re two short, then!”
“No. Four spares. In case any get ruined in the firing. Or Starsky drops one, or something.”
David felt so weak that he didn’t even say “Who’s Starsky?”
“June made that gallery a very special set once without a spare and they broke one. And then they couldn’t sell it as a set, so she didn’t get her price.”
“They didn’t sell each one off singly at far more than a sixth of the price of the set?”
“No. Well, admittedly that was before the red-haired lady started there; there was only the Indian lady, then.”
“I see. What’s the gallery’s name?”
“Art for Art’s Sake.” David winced, and she added uncertainly: “It’s very tasteful. Tom’s got a word for it, but I’ve forgotten it.”
“Tom... Now what is his name? His little girlfriend was Susan’s bridesmaid, isn’t that the one?”
She nodded. “Overdale.”
“Yes. He would have a word for it, from what I’ve seen of him.”
“Yes, he likes words. Meg says he writes poetry.”
David hit his forehead. “Flaming Norah, it is Alzheimer’s!”
“What?” she said blankly.
Pulling a hideous face, David said: “He must be T.M. Overdale. I’ve read some of his stuff.”
“Is it good?”
David opened his mouth. Then he looked at Michaela’s wide, frank face. “Yes,” he admitted. “Bitter, but good. Rather like an excellent turnip pickle.”
“I’ve had that: Toshiro’s daughter makes it. It takes a while to get used to it.”
“Exactly. –Go on, try and remember Overdale’s word.”
“I think it was sub-something.”
David’s mouth twitched. “Subfusc?”
“Yes. Is it a word?”
“Mm. Denoting the very, very tasteful indeed. Restrained. Frayghtfulleh nayce, in fact.”
Michaela just nodded and said: “We could have lunch, now, if you like.”
“Uh—yes. What about your friend June? Would she like to join us?”
“No: she said not to disturb her on pain of death. She’s locked herself in with the pixies.”
“That’s very clear,” he murmured.
Michaela merely returned: “I’ve got some apples. What have you brought?”
David had brought rolls, a selection of cheeses, and a bottle of red. Plus Ann’s ginger cake and the cream cheese that he, personally, liked to spread on it. They spread all these provisions out on the table.
Michaela then produced two mugs.
David looked at them in awe. “Why in God’s name are we drinking out of these?”
“I like them,” she replied.
“So do I; my godfather! Did you make them?”
“No; Toshiro did. For fun. I was telling him how New Zealand potters make their living. Well, the ones that do. I made him a mug, so he had a go.”
“A go? He produced these as a—a one-off?”
“Yes; he usually makes bowls. And vases, and big pots.”
“I’d like to see them, if these were for fun.” He ran his fingers over the glaze. “Tell me about them. Tell me how he made them. And—and about the clay, and the glaze, and everything.”
“Ye-es... But some of the words I only know in Japanese.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Um—well...” Michaela attempted to explain. The bit on the clay and the glazes was too scientific for David. Even the parts in English.
“Stop,” he said faintly. “Here—sully them with this.” He poured.
“Ugh,” she said.
“Yes: drink it up quickly, then it’ll stop clashing!” he grinned.
They ate and drank in comfortable silence for a while. David was glad he’d brought a lot of food, Michaela had a hearty appetite.
“Have you done some sort of science degree, by any chance?” he asked cautiously at last.
“No—why?”
“You seem to know a lot about—uh—the chemical properties of soils, and glazes and so on.”
“Yes. I like to know what I’m doing. Some potters only work by instinct.”
David ran his hand over the surface of his empty mug. “Mm.”
“Toshiro says—” She stopped, flushing.
“Go on,” he said in Japanese.
Michaela replied in English: “I’ll probably get the grammar wrong.”
“Never mind; please go on,” he said Japanese.
Michaela reported what Toshiro had said.
“Oh, dear,” said David in English.
“Yes. Mind you, that Canadian was the other way round. Did I tell you about him?”—She had, at Phoebe’s; David nodded.—“He knew all the technical side, but his pots were horrible.” She paused. “I can’t describe them.”
“A mere quote from Toshiro would suffice,” he murmured
“He threw one onto the stones once. Earl was awfully upset, he thought it was the best thing he’d ever done. And when he asked why, Toshiro said—” She paused, and smiled.
“Yes?” he prompted eagerly.
“I can’t remember it, because I only ever heard it the once. But Masako, that’s his daughter, she screamed and put her hands over her ears and ran inside, so it must have been bad.”
“Or good.”
Michaela grinned. “Yes!” She added without the slightest indication of sympathy: “After that poor old Earl decided to go back to Canada.”
“Where no doubt he’s been promoting himself on the strength of his Japanese experience ever since.”
“Probably,” she agreed indifferently. “Could I have a bit of cake?”
“What? Oh—yes; I’m sorry, my dear, I’ll cut it for you. And have some of this on it, it’s very nice.”
Michaela accepted a slab of ginger cake, lavishly spread with cream cheese. “Goob,” she said through it.
“Yes.” David made a silent vow to come up at least once a week and get some solid nosh down her. He was quite unaware that June had long since taken a similar vow, so had Meg O’Connell, so, more recently, had Tom and Jemima, and so, more recently still, had John Aitken and his girlfriend. Shortly after Darryl, newly returned from Europe, had said angrily to him: “Whaddaya mean, Tom and Jemima are feeding her up? Why the fuck aren’t you feeding her up?” Darryl Tuwhare was a very strong-minded woman. Which, as John Aitken’s acquaintances all agreed, was just as well.
When they’d washed and dried the wonderful mugs at the sink in Michaela’s workroom, she shoved the one he’d drunk from at him. “Keep it.”
“I couldn’t possibly,” said David faintly.
“Yes. You’re the only person except me that likes them.”
“What about Bob and June?” he said faintly.
“June thinks they’re awful: she says they’re not pretty. And Bob calls them Splodge and Splutter. That one’s Splodge. He originally named it after one of Meg O’Connell’s cats because of that gingery bit in the black, only then he said it suited it anyway and the other one just had to be Splutter.”
“He prefers those etiolated, not to say effete, efforts?” he croaked, nodding at the array on the table.
“No, he doesn’t like the colour. He likes... um, this style.” She produced a shiny brown one with a broken handle, that held pencils, paintbrushes and a screwdriver. It was not unpleasant. Sort of thing you could have faced with equanimity to drink your Instant out of in the morning before choking down your cornflakes and rushing off to your sterile hutch of an office in its sterile high-rise. It was shorter and fatter than the etiolated ones, with a black line round its equator and couple of black sprays of leaves above and below. Acceptable—yes. Art—no.
“This man calls himself an artist?” David said feebly.
“No, he’s a screen-printer,” said Michaela, deadpan.
David’s eyes met hers. They chuckled, but David then insisted that he couldn’t take Toshiro’s mug.
“If you must force something on me,” he added with a little smile, “force something small of yours.”
“Most of my stuff’s big,” said Michaela, looking vaguely round the shed. “Um, you choose something. That stuff over there’s got prices on it, but don’t take any notice of them.”
David began wandering round the shelves without further ado. He was dimly aware that after a while Michaela had begun to work on the wheel, but he was too absorbed to take much notice. The shelves were cluttered not only with pots of all varieties but also, on the side where the ones without prices sat, with all sorts of objects. Mostly natural objects: odd stones, quite a few bones which she must have picked up from the beach or in the fields round about, a lot of shells, hunks of driftwood, and in one corner a large collection of rocks which were neatly mounted and labelled. But there were also bits of broken glass and odd pieces of china, all either cracked or broken. As well, there was a variety of dried plant life, some in jars or pots, some merely lying on the shelves. Underneath the bottom shelf stood a great assortment of stoppered earthenware pots, plastic bins, and sacks and bags of various kinds. Containing, he presumed dimly, the raw materials of her trade.
“Might I have this?” he said diffidently at last. It was a plate, about the size of a dinner plate, glazed irregularly in a thick shiny black with a few brownish lumps in it over a very pale turquoise which left the clay exposed here and there on the rim.
“It didn’t quite work out,” she replied dubiously.
Since David had had to remove a mouse skeleton and a small bunch of fluffy grass-heads from it, not to say a quantity of dust, he wasn’t entirely surprised.
“I thought that might be the case; but I like it,” he said mildly.
“See those?” she said, pointing to the lumps. “They were supposed to more sort of trail across it. And the overglaze ran, there was supposed to be a streak of the blue showing through. Well, I say it ran, but actually it was my own fault, I put too much on in the first place. I’ve got a photo somewhere of the one that came out better.”
“Did you sell it?”
“Yes. In the exhibition where Phoebe bought the puriri tree. I mean Old Brown Blobby.”
“Why puriri tree?”
She explained, and he asked: “Do you always think of things like that when you’re working?”
“No. Sometimes I just think of the way the pot has to be. I don’t think you can describe it,” she added awkwardly. “I think you’d have to do it to know what it’s like.”
David made a face. “Yeah. Some of us aren’t creative.”
“No,” she agreed simply. “Sorry, I’ve got to get on.’
“Of course. I’ll just watch, if I may?”
“Yes. Only don’t talk.”
David drew up a chair. He sat quietly watching her working at the wheel. When she was at the point of finishing the second section of what was obviously going to be a huge pot, a pleasant-looking woman of about her own age appeared at the open door. She smiled at them but didn’t say anything, just came up and stood by his chair. When Michaela had removed the work from the wheel with a piece of wire that David had a pretty good idea could have cut the throat of a bullock, she said to her: “I’ve done those bloody pixilated menaces.”
“Good,” replied Michaela.
“They’re sitting on the table leering horribly. Worse than usual, shows what a foul mood I was in. –Hi, I’m June Butler,” she said, smiling at David.
He got up and held out his hand. “It’s very nice to meet you, June; I’m David Shapiro.”
She shook his hand but cried in consternation: “You’re frozen! Michaela, why on earth did you let him sit there with the door open?”
“I need the light,” replied Michaela in a vague voice.
“Well, for Heaven’s sake come on down to the house and have a cup of tea!” June said crossly.
“Thank you, that would be nice,” David agreed gratefully, realizing ruefully that he was damned cold and stiff.
“We could put some of that Polish stuff in it,” said Michaela. “That’d help warm you up.”
“What Polish stuff is this?” asked David with interest as they began to make their way towards the house.
“A friend of Tom and Jemima’s gave it to me,” Michaela explained. “His father’s Polish. He’s getting married, and I made him and his girlfriend a pot.”
“I see,” he groped.
“No, you don’t,” June said, smiling. “He’s a university lecturer, he could well have afforded to pay for the pot, but Dopey here wouldn’t let him, so he forced this grog on her instead.”
“Does she often give her work away like that?” he asked.
“All too often,” said June gloomily.
“It was a wedding present, you nongs,” said Michaela amiably.
“See?” said June in despair. David smiled, but said nothing.
They removed their footwear and went into June’s house. David looked round the large room with a pleased smile. His son and daughter-in-law would have found this smile decidedly suspect, but June and Michaela were simpler people.
Michaela looked at the three little boys who were sitting at the dining table. “Oh, heck: what’s the time?”
“Um, four-ten. Sort of,” said June, looking at a large clock on the wall.
“Four seventeen point three-two,” said one of the little boys scornfully, looking at his watch. “That thing’s always wrong, Mum, you oughta throw it away and get one with proper digital works.”
“I like it,” said June obstinately. “And it keeps quite good time.”
The little boy snorted.
David agreed that the round-faced clock with its plain oak surround was very pleasant.
“We got it at an auction,” June explained. “Ages ago, when one of the old government department buildings in town was being torn down.”
“I see; so it’s an office clock?”
“Yes; that’s why it’s so nice and plain,” she replied.
David looked at the very plain clock. He looked at the multiplicity of objects that crowded and draped on June’s two elaborate wallpapers. “Yes,” he agreed feebly.
“I didn’t think it was so late: you’ve missed the last bus, David. I mean the last on pensioner’s rates,” said Michaela in dismay.
“Never mind; my daughter-in-law will nip over and collect me; she lives up at Kowhai Bay.” He hesitated. “But she’s doing a degree, so she may have had a class in town this afternoon; may I phone her, June?”
“It’s in the passage,” she replied glumly.
“Mum let the man talk her into it! Dad said she was an idiot!” the boy with the watch revealed scornfully.
“Shut up, Starsky. –I’ll show you,” said Michaela. She took David out to the passage and left him to it.
“He seems very nice,” said June dubiously in his absence.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Michaela replied cautiously.
“He’s awfully old,” said Starsky.
“I bet he’s a hundred!” said the six-year-old Mason eagerly.
“Bullshit!” his older brothers cried.
“I bet he is! Isn’t he, Mum?” he squeaked.
“No, don’t be silly, Mason,” replied June serenely. “And eat up your sandwich.”
“I’ll have it!” offered Ivan immediately.
“No, you won’t,” replied June firmly.
“Do ya reckon he’s eighty, Mum?” ventured Starsky cautiously.
“About seventy, I think,” she replied.
“That’s pretty old,” he allowed.
“I can count up to seventy!” cried Mason, full of vainglory.
“No, ya can’t!” roared his brothers.
“Yes, I can!” Mason began to count laboriously. He got as far as ten with ease.
“Eleven,” prompted June.
“I know! Eleven. Um…”
“Twelve, ya twit,” said Ivan scornfully. “C’n I go down the twins’ place an’ watch TV?”
“No, there won’t be anybody home.”
“I think Roger might be,” offered Michaela. “I think I saw him when I came past this morning. If that was today,” she finished doubtfully.
“See! Can I, Mum?”
“No, if he is home he’ll be swotting and he won’t want nuisances like you hanging round.”
“AW-WUH!”
June ignored this, she was used to it. It was only a form, anyway: Ivan had had no real expectation of being allowed to go down to Number 9. Meg and June were privily agreed that letting That Lot loose together in the house of either of them was a no-no. They were also privily agreed that Roger was Hopeless, he’d let them burn the house down around his ears while he bonked in that blinking armchair of his. Therefore there was an embargo on going down to the twins’ place at odd times. But a bloke could try. Well, Ivan could, and did. June remained adamant, but serene. Fortunately she was a fairly serene person anyway. Well, anyone that had three boys pretty well had to be. Or go mad. Or have a lobotomy. Or both.
“... thirteen, twenty, twenty-two, sixty, leventy, SEVENTY!” cried Mason.
“Idiot!” said Starsky scornfully.
“Twit,” agreed Ivan.
“Pea-brain,” added Starsky,
“Moron,” agreed Ivan. Giggling, he began to chant: “Ma-son’s a mo-ron, Ma-son’s a mo-ron, Ma-son’s—”
“THAT’LL DO!” roared June.
At this point David came back into the room and a tall, slim man with a lot of ruffled light brown hair came in through the back door saying mildly: “That sounds like home.”
Before anyone else could utter Ivan said keenly to David: “Are you seventy?”
“IVAN!” roared his parents.
David registered with relief that in spite of the Seventies-liberated, post-Sergeant-Pepper décor they weren’t all that liberated about their children’s behaviour. Had he known more about children he would have realized they couldn’t possibly have been, for the big room would then have been far, far untidier and far dirtier. But he’d seen relatively little of his two in their formative years, since he’d been overseas with Foreign Affairs, and they, after their mother died, had been home in New Zealand with Ann and her family.
“Seventy-one,” he replied mildly.
“Heck!”
“Um—this is Bob,” said June weakly.
David shook hands, introducing himself, since Ivan’s mother appeared too overcome to do so.
“Come and sit down,” said Bob hospitably.
“We were just going to have some tea,” said June as they sat down by the pot-bellied stove.
“Polish grog was also mentioned,” murmured David, looking with distaste at a cat that was occupying the rocking-chair. Ann had a cat. So did Polly. It was the only thing apart from their gender that they had in common, as far as he’d ever been able to discover.
“Good idea,” said Bob. “Where is it?” he added to his spouse.
“Um, didn’t we put it in the top cupboard?” she said to Michaela.
“I don’t know.” Michaela began looking in varnished knotty-pine cupboards.
“My daughter-in-law will pick me up in about half an hour; I hope that’s not inconvenient, June,” said David politely.
“No, that’s fine,” she replied in a vague but pleasant way.
As David sat down, Mason, face liberally smeared with Vegemite, clambered down from the table and came and stared gravely at him. David stared gravely back. Finally the little boy said: “Grandma’s seventy-one, too.”
Bob gave a shout of laughter, and June cried: “Mason! She is not! What a fib!”
“He’s just dumb,” said Starsky. Scornfully, noted David without surprise.
“Yeah,” agreed the middle child. David had a fair idea that he didn’t have the faintest idea of age, either: he must be about eight or nine. But he was obviously firmly aligning himself with the sophisticates.
Raising his eyebrows comically at David, Bob explained: “I’m thirty-five. Mum was twenty when I was born. Work it out.”
“Almost seventy-one,” he conceded, twinkling.
“Ida’d be furious if she heard that,” noted Michaela, grinning. “Here, this is it.” She held out a bottle. What it contained was hard to say, there wasn’t an English word on the label.
“Well, if it isn’t I dunno what it is,” admitted Bob, taking it from her. He opened it and sniffed. “Yeah,” he said, recoiling. “It must be.”
“Maybe it’s meths!” suggested Starsky with breathless hope.
“It’s the wrong colour for meths, Pin-head,” returned his father genially. “Anyway, it doesn’t smell like meths.”
Starsky got up immediately and came and sniffed it. He choked; his eyes watered.
“Does it?” said Bob mildly.
“No,” he wheezed.
“Lemme smell it!” cried Mason.
“No.” Bob put his hand over it. “What about some glasses?” he said to Michaela.
“Not neat!” cried June in horror.
“If it’s that good we don’t want to insult the tea with it,” David explained.
“Definitely not,” Bob agreed.
“Well, I’m having mine in my tea,” said Michaela firmly.
“So am I,” agreed June, shuddering.
David looked at Bob, and shrugged. Bob winked.
“Macho morons,” noted June.
“Yeah,” agreed Michaela without animus, handing Bob two large tumblers.
The little boys immediately clamoured for a taste. Bob Butler ignored them. “Well, bottoms up,” he said to David, handing him a glass.
“Cheers.”
They sipped.
“Good, eh?” noted Bob, gasping slightly.
“The dinkum oil,” he agreed, as Michaela came over with a tray of tea, which she set carefully on a coffee table.
David had been trying to decide what this coffee table was made of. Not kauri, not rimu and not any of the normal European woods like oak or ash. It was very odd indeed.
“Pohutukawa,” said Bob mildly.
David jumped. “Oh,” he said sheepishly.
“What: the coffee table?” June set a plate of home-made biscuits down on it. “LEAVE IT!” she ordered. Starsky’s hand retreated. He pouted. “He’s being mean,” June added to David. “He does it on purpose. It’s pohutukawa roots.”
“Stump,” said Bob.
“Roots,” retorted June firmly.
“I’ve certainly never seen anything like it,” David admitted.
“No; he made the top when he was at Art School. Aren’t the legs horrible?” said June placidly.
They certainly were. Tortured iron. “Yes.”
“A friend of ours did them. He was going through a very rebellious stage at the time,” she explained.
“I can see that; mm.”
“It all comes undone!” Starsky informed him eagerly. “Ya get under it, see, and there’s these great big bolts—”
“You get under it, see,” said Bob, grabbing him by his shabby blue jersey, “while your mother’s got a tray of hot tea on it, and I personally will take you apart, limb from limb. Slowly and painfully. Geddit?”
Starsky just grinned.
“Destined to be an engineer?” murmured David.
“Or a nuisance, yeah,” agreed his father.
“Can I have a biscuit?” said Starsky immediately.
“Please,” prompted Bob.
“Please?” he said eagerly.
“No,” Bob replied with satisfaction.
“Bob! That’s not funny!” cried June.
Bob and Michaela were shaking with laughter. “No!” agreed Bob.
“Mean pig,” muttered Starsky, pouting.
“Well, you won’t get one if that’s your attitude,” June pointed out calmly.
“Well, can I?” the unfortunate child cried desperately.
June relented. “Yes. Just one.”
After that Ivan and Mason had to have just one, too. Mason then got on his father’s knee with his, what time Starsky and Ivan retreated to the far end of the room.
Bob and June chatted amiably over the afternoon tea. The biscuits were very nice indeed and the Polish grog, possibly a brandy but who cared, packed a real wallop. Nevertheless a familiar feeling of boredom mixed with mild suffocation stole over David Shapiro. The Butlers were obviously very pleasant people, but in spite of their artistic bent—or would it be bents, if two were involved?—anyway, in spite of that, and the leftish bent that went with it (which apparently went no further than the obligatory anti-nuclear stance, the obligatory anti-South African rugby tours stance, and a vague belief that the Government was destroying the welfare state), they were just an ordinary middle-class New Zealand couple. David had seen a fair variety of the ordinary middle-class type in his stint for Foreign Affairs and he didn’t hold much brief for it whatever its nationality. But he had to admit that the New Zealand variety was pretty much the most boring he’d ever come across. Was it because of the physical distance they were from everything and everyone except the Australians (a breed indistinguishable from their trans-Tasman cousins in all but the faintest nuances of accent), or the absence of virtually anything approaching excellence in any aesthetic or intellectual sphere you cared to name (Michaela’s pots being an exception), or the total lack of anything like an upper class that might have supported, financially or otherwise, an artistic life of sorts? God knew. Probably.
The early prevalence of mealy-mouthed nonconformist religious sects or low-church religions of more conformist varieties, which had certainly been a dominant cultural influence in the days of his youth, could well be a factor, too. The sort who in his day had gone off eagerly on foot every Sunday to accepted establishments of organized worship in white gloves and veiled hats or stiff suits and fedoras (according to sex) were now roaring off to sybaritic revivalist halls in their Mitsubishis and speaking in tongues or thumping guitars or for all David knew both, in lurid tracksuits and washed denim. The sort that had never been eager but had gone because what would the neighbours think, now didn’t. Times had changed but little else had, in David’s opinion. Plus ça change, plus— Hadn’t that been said before?
He recrossed his ankles and tried not to sigh as Bob described at length—without reference to any political or educational theory whatsoever—how the Government was ruining the country’s system of public education.
Perhaps it was just as well that his daughter-in-law arrived just then. Marianne was a slim, pretty, dark-haired young woman. She was carrying a small red-haired cherub in a pale green fluffy coat with a pointed hood over workmanlike pants and gumboots.
“And who’s this?” cooed June after the two ladies had introduced themselves and June, urging Marianne into the warm and closing the door after her, had introduced Michaela and Bob.
“Katie Mauween,” said the cherub, glaring. “Wanna geddown!”
“Well, we’re not staying, Katie Maureen,” said Marianne on a nervous note.
“Wanna GEDDOWN!”
“Um—just for a minute, then,” said Marianne weakly.
“How old is she?” asked June with smiling interest as Marianne set the cherub down and, with a grimly determined look round its mouth, it tottered off in the direction of the coffee table.
“Nearly two. –She’s not mine,” she added hurriedly.
“An understandable disclaimer,” agreed David. “Hullo, Katie Maureen, how are you?”
The cherub looked hard at him. “Big Davey,” it decided.
“Yes,” he agreed mildly.
“Say hullo to David, Katie Maureen,” suggested Marianne.
The cherub ignored this piece of fatuous feminine blathering, and focussed on the coffee table. “Bikkies.”
“Is she allowed one?” asked June.
“I think it would be all right,” replied Marianne. “Well, I mean, she seems to be able to digest anything. And Polly—that’s her mother—does let her eat biscuits.”
June was about to ask David to give her one when Marianne added dubiously: “Only her nanny’s awfully strict about that sort of thing.”
June’s jaw sagged.
“Nanny?” croaked Bob.
“Nanny gone a shops,” the cherub informed him.
“Mm; it’s her day off,” confirmed Marianne.
“Buy lotsa things,” said the cherub to Bob. It had a noticeably deep voice. Bob, take it for all in all, didn’t look as if he was coping very well with that, either.
“Oh,” he said limply. “That so?”
“Can I’ve a bikky?” said the cherub loudly and crossly, glaring at him.
“Uh—righto, then.” He gave her a biscuit.
“Ta,” she said, grabbing it eagerly.
“Good girl, Katie Maureen,” approved Marianne.
“I never heard of anyone having a nanny out here,” said June very weakly indeed.
Marianne was very pink. David—for he was really very fond of her—came to the rescue. “Her full name’s Katie Maureen Carrano.”
“Me!” she said through the biscuit.
“Yeah, you,” he agreed. “Fat Ego.”
“That explains it,” said Michaela. “She looks just like Aunty Miriam’s twins. And her eyes are the same colour as Polly’s.”
June had sat down rather suddenly. Oddly enough her knees had given way.
“Come and sit down, Marianne, I think this may take some time,” said David.
“Look—” began Bob.
“Shut up; I’m about to explain,” said David, grinning meanly. “This extremely determined infant is indeed Katie Maureen Carrano, youngest offspring of Jake of that ilk and Polly, née Mitchell.”
“Yeah,” croaked Bob, “but—”
“Me knee!” she said brightly to him.
“Uh—” Bob reshuffled Mason. “Come on, then, Katie Maureen,” he said, assisting her onto his right thigh. “Uh—this is Mason.”
“I had a bikky!” she said scornfully by way of greeting.
“Nearly two,” noted June faintly.
“Her mother’s very clever,” murmured Marianne.
“I had two bikkies, see!” cried Mason. “And a sammitch!”
“That’ll do,” said Bob mildly, giving them both a bit of a hug.
“Katie Maureen has, indeed, inherited her mother’s eyes,” David continued. “And, so I’m told, the hair that runs in Polly’s mother’s family.”
“Gramma,” she said with satisfaction.
“My God, Mason still hasn’t latched on to that one!” cried June wildly.
“Nah, but he’s dumb,” said Starsky suddenly;’
Everybody jumped. He had come up to them unnoticed and was leaning on the back of his mother’s chair, staring at Katie Maureen. “I suppose she’s quite pretty, really,” he conceded carelessly. Certain of those present sagged in their chairs.
“Me!” she said brightly. “Daddy’s pretty girl!”
“She understands every word you say to her, hasn’t that sunk in?” said David acidly to the goggling Starsky.
“Yeah!” he breathed. “Heck, she’s not dumb, eh?”
“That’ll do, Starsky,” said Bob mildly, trying not to laugh. “We don’t want her to get big-headed, do we?”
“Um—no,” he agreed blankly.
“Get on with it before my wife bursts with frustration,” Bob suggested mildly to David.
Looking bland, he said: “I have been recently led to believe—”
“I was gonna offer you another belt of Polish Poison,” noted Bob, “but—”
David said quickly: “To believe that Michaela and Polly Carrano are second cousins. Their mothers are cousins.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” cried June.
Michaela was very red.
“I don’t think it’s the sort of thing you go round telling people,” said Marianne kindly.
“No,” she agreed gratefully. “Anyway, I haven’t seen her for years.”
“Eh?” cried Bob. At the same time June cried: “You said you saw her at that do!”
“Ye-es... That was a coincidence.”
“Was it?” murmured David.
Nipping his arm, Marianne said soothingly: “She means she hadn’t seen her before that since she was about fourteen. That’s right, isn’t it, Michaela?”
“Yes.”
After a moment June said uncertainly: “Well, you could have told us, Michaela.”
“I never thought about it.”
“No,” June conceded sadly.
“Well, who does go round the place thinking about the cousins they’ve lost track of twenty years back?” said Bob fairly.
“No, but... I mean, her picture was on the cover of the Woman’s Weekly just a while back!” said June indignantly. She perceived that they were all staring at her, though Marianne, who was clearly a very polite young woman, was trying not to. “I saw it in the stationer’s in Puriri when I was buying Starsky a new exercise book,” she said defensively.
“Well, I never saw it!” said Michaela loudly.
“I think we’d better go; leave these people to recover,” David noted.
“Yes,” agreed Marianne, getting up.
“Come on, Katie Maureen, we’re going back to Marianne’s place, now,” he added.
“NO!” she screamed.
“Shut up,” the old man replied mildly, wrenching her off Bob’s thigh.
“NO, NO, NO!”
“Yes,” he said in a steely voice, glaring into her empurpled face. Katie Maureen’s cherubic mouth quivered. A tear ran out of one big grey-green eye.
“Don’t try that on with me, I’m not your doting daddy,” he noted sourly.
“David!” gasped Marianne.
“She is only little,” said June faintly.
David snorted. “Huh! Look at her!”
They looked. The eyes were now perfectly dry and the enraged flush was fast fading.
“Turns it on and off like a tap,” said David mildly. He kissed the satin cheek. “Come on, we’re going in the car.”
“Boys can’t come!” she cried gleefully.
Several people gasped, but David explained with a grin: “That’s one of her favourite lines. Really burns her brothers up.”
Bob and June had risen politely (Bob carrying Mason) but at this June sagged weakly against him.
“Yeah,” he said, pushing her away: “aren’tcha glad this one wasn’t a girl, after all?”
“Now I am,” agreed June in a hollow voice. “How does her mother cope?” she added to Marianne.
“Well, she’s got Nanny, of course,” said Marianne, trying not to laugh.
“She’d need her,” she muttered.
“Yes; well, the boys are a bit of a handful. They’re twins, they’re nearly four.”
“God,” said June simply. “Three under four.”
“Mm. Well, Polly admits herself she’d have gone mad without Nanny. But they’re—” She broke off, looking warily at the cherub, now smirking down at Starsky from David’s shoulder, evidently under the impression—which might have been right, who could say?—that he desired to ride in Marianne’s silver Honda City. “L,O,V,E,L,Y, really.”
“Well, this one is,” agreed Bob, reaching to tickle her chin.
David groaned. “Another besotted male! What she’s going to be like by the time she’s sixteen I shudder to think!”
“Me,” she said, vague but pleased.
“Yes, you. Come on,” said Marianne weakly, leading the way.
As they rounded the corner of the house, having crunched over the shelled area, they quite distinctly heard through an open kitchen window the expected exchange.
June said loudly: “Well, why didn’t you tell us?” and Michaela replied even more loudly: “It never occurred to me, that’s why!” and Bob contributed: “Never occurred to you that you had a ready-made buyer, no: that’s you all over! Crikey, she even came here once to buy a couple of my prints, are you BARMY?”
Next part of Chapter 7:
https://theamericanrefugeeanovel.blogspot.com/2022/11/michaela-and-her-admirers-part-2.html
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