Michaela And Her Admirers. Part 2

7

Michaela And Her Admirers. Part 2

    The squarish salt-glazed pot was on Hugh Morton’s desk, as he’d promised Michaela. It was full of daffodils, too. They’d cost an arm and a leg, because their season was really over. His secretary had expressed shock and horror at the price. She hadn’t objected to having to ring up all the florists in town until she found one that would supply them pronto if not yesterday, because she regarded any such task as a challenge. It was, too, in New Zealand. Remember that time Caroline had needed a dry-cleaner’s that could do suede? Ugh. Miss Quimby—such was her name; Hugh had never dared to address her as “Amy”, which was her Christian name—Miss Quimby had ended by phoning Sydney. And sending the bloody coat there and back by courier: oh, yes. Caroline Morton thought the world of Miss Quimby. Hugh had a suspicion that this was due not only to his secretary’s undoubted ability but also to the face that she had a face like a ferret, was well into her fifties, and lived with an aged mum to whom she was devoted. Ah, well. You couldn’t have everything.

    According to his long-time friend and sparring-partner Ralph Overdale, Hugh’s profession was that of palaeontologist. Sighing slightly, he agreed to Miss Quimby’s suggestion on the fucking intercom that Mr Morton might be ready to see young Master Thompson now—she really did talk like that, it was well-nigh unbearable—and allowed her to usher in a pale, scared little boy with an overbearing mum in a fierce blue coat (a shade that Caroline often wore) with enormous square shoulders.

    The mum explained—Hugh already knew all of this, it was in the notes that the child’s G.P. had sent him—that he’d done it when they were on holiday down at Mount Hutt last year—lucky them; Hugh hadn’t been able to get away for a holiday in the snow, either that year or this—and it had never seemed quite right since, though of course they’d taken him straight to Christchurch, blah-blah.

    According to the G.P.’s acid report on the phone they’d taken the poor little sod to Christchurch all right, but not nearly soon enough.

    “Do you like skiing, Damian?” he asked.

    “No: I like sledding. It’s good, see: you—”

    “Dr Morton doesn’t want to hear all that, Damian!” she interrupted officiously.

    Hugh smiled at her. “But I’d quite like to. A friend of mine asked me to go skiing with him last month, but I couldn’t get the time off,” he explained to Damian.

    “Did he go sledding?”

    Hugh couldn’t envisage Ralph doing anything so undignified, but he lied cheerfully.

    Damian then told him a long and quite probably apocryphal story about a friend of his that had gone on a real bob-sleigh run, see! Interrupted only occasionally by Mrs Thompson’s huffing sighs.

    “Mm,” he said the end of it, smiling at him. “Well, when we’ve fixed up this leg of yours, Damian, you’ll be able to go bob-sleighing with the best of ’em.”

    “Will I have to have an operation?” he squeaked.

    “Yes. What we do, see, is give you an anaesthetic so you can’t feel anything. Then we open up your leg and have a look at the bone. We’ll have taken lots of X-rays so we’ll know pretty much what to expect. Then if we don’t like the look of it, we’ll re-set it so as it’ll grow back nice and straight.”

    Damian frowned. “How?” he said.

    “Now, Damian, you don’t need to bother the doctor—”

    Hugh explained.

    “Will it hurt?”

    “Not when we do it, because of the anaesthetic. You won’t feel the operation at all. Then when you wake up you’ll be very sleepy and dopey. Then it’ll probably start to ache. If it hurts too much the nurse’ll give you a pill to make the pain go away.”

    “Doctor, does he really have to know all this?” she said loudly.

    Hugh was used to stupid parents: he saw at least half a dozen Mrs Thompsons every week of his working life. But he was suddenly seized with a desire to take her by her well-creamed neck and choke the breath out of her. Then throw her bodily, blue coat and all, through the charming bay-window of the charming old house in Remuera in which he and a couple of similarly eminent bone-setters and/or palaeontologists had their consulting rooms, and into the charming garden which was kept so charming by the very reliable firm that it had taken Miss Quimby six months of relentless trying, rejecting and sacking to find.

    After that he’d throw the heavy Victorian desk, the old-fashioned wooden filing cabinets (almost empty: all his stuff was on the computer but his terminal was in another room, it’d spoil the refayned atmosphere to have it in the consulting room)—the old-fashioned glass-fronted bookcases that held the heavy bound volumes of the Lancet and the BMJ that were so ancient he never consulted them, the unused polished brass fire-tongs, the— Yes, well.

    “It is his leg,” he pointed out mildly.

    “I’m not scared!” lied Damian boldly.

    “I think I would be, a bit, if it was my leg. But it’s better to know exactly what’s going to happen, isn’t it?” said Hugh. He had actually been sure of this position, as a young man. He no longer was. But he still acted on it: he had no strong conviction that it was wrong, either.

    “Yeah,” agreed Damian stoutly.

    “Don’t say ‘yeah’!” snapped his mother. “Say ‘Yes, Doctor Morton.’“

    Going very red, Damian whispered this.

    His mother didn’t bestow her august approval. She merely told Hugh that of course they’d be having it done privately, at The Mater. Hugh didn’t point out that he could do it for them for nothing at the excellent facilities at Middlemore Hospital, which had the best orthopaedic department in the country. He didn’t give a fuck. If she wanted to throw money away on private hospitals, and incidentally on undermining the public health service, let her. At least she was spending it on the kid, rather than on a second spa pool or another trip to Europe.

    Five seconds after they’d exited from his office Hugh had forgotten their very existence, apart from the surgical problem as such. He did all that stuff automatically; he’d been doing it for so long that the Seans and Damians and Lindas and Dianas and the even smaller Harrys with their little scared faces were no longer real to him. Even the multitudinous Mrs Thompsons were only minor irritants. Less than skin-deep. Hugh recognised that this was so, for he was a highly intelligent being. But so far as he was aware there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Not and live life as he had chosen to live it, way back in those days when he’d decided to sacrifice his fair young body on the altar of his professional ambitions and become Sir Bertie’s son-in-law. Ralph Overdale, incidentally, had made a book on Caroline’s suitors. So far as Hugh’s information went, and he saw no reason to doubt its accuracy, he’d made a small fortune out of it. Which, being Ralph, he had promptly invested in something that was bound to turn out very, very sound. Bloody Carrano Development, probably.

    Hugh stared at his pot. After a considerable period he made a ferocious grimace and picked up the phone. He had a note of Michaela’s contact numbers. He tried Mrs Butler first and got the information that today Michaela was at St Ursie’s.

    Louise Churton waited respectfully while Michaela finished explaining to a very small, flushed Third-Former that if you wanted your pot to be symmetrical, you could make it like that, but if you didn’t want it to be you didn’t have to. And Eleanor’s pot was very nice, yes, but Debbie’s didn’t have to be the same if she wanted it to be different. Her coiling was very good, actually.

    Flushed with pride, Debbie hissed viciously: “See!” at Eleanor, as Michaela turned to the next tortured mound of clay.

    Trying not to look at it, Louise—casting a mental glance at the gold rims idea and deciding it didn’t sound that bad, unaware that Michaela’s Third-Formers’ efforts were the results of their age, inexperience, inability, general cack-handedness and total lack of anything approaching an aesthetic sense rather than a reflection of Michaela’s teaching ability or approach to her subject—cleared her throat and said: “Excuse me, Miss Daniels; there’s a phone message for you.”

    “For me?” said Michaela, goggling at her.

    “Mm. From a Mr Morton; he’d like you to ring him back as soon as it’s convenient. I’ve made a note of the number for you.” She had not failed to notice—she was very alert to such things, St Ursie’s being St Ursie’s—that it was a Remuera number. Like the Queen Mother’s. “You can use my phone; would you like to come now?” she said kindly.

    Michaela eyed her class uneasily. “I’d better come at half-past three. Oh—no, I can’t!” she gasped.

    “Will it make you miss your bus?”

    “No: my lift: Tom said he’d collect me but he wouldn’t wait if I wasn’t there!” she gasped.

    Louise was about to say never mind, she could catch a bus instead. She swallowed. “Now don’t worry about that. We’ll work something out.”

    “You don’t understand, Mrs Churton,” said Michaela, turning puce.

    “Yes, I do,” said Louise firmly, patting her arm. “I’ll see you get back home all right if you miss your lift. But I’m sure he’ll wait for you.”

    “No; he doesn’t like Jemima being all by herself in the house,” she said.

    Louise’s antennae were swivelling frantically; her head had begun to feel quite dizzy. What with Mr Mortons (with numbers in up-market Remmers and the voice to match) and Toms and Jemimas popping up all over the show—

    “Well, you give me his number and I’ll leave a message to say you’ll be a wee bit late,” she said firmly.

    Michaela looked at her helplessly.

    “What’s his name?” asked Louise firmly, only just stopping herself from saying “dear”—Phoebe would have had ten fits if she’d called a teacher “dear” in front of the gels.

    “Tom Overdale. He teaches at Maungakiekie Street Primary. Only I don’t know the number.”

    “Oh, that’s Meg’s husband’s school!” said Louise breezily. She was quite aware that Meg O’Connell and Bill Coggins—pace little Connie, the joint offspring—were not married. But she didn’t feel that this was a Third-Form need-to-know. “I’ve got that number: I’ll ring him. Just come straight over to the office after your class.”

    “Um—yes. All right; thanks,” said Michaela. Louise saw that her eye had wandered off. “That’s too much water, Denise, the clay doesn’t like it,” she said firmly.

    Louise trotted off, smiling to herself. “Are you busy?” she said, breaking in rudely on her Headmistress’s meditations.

    Phoebe jumped. “I’m always busy.”

    “What, planning another flash wee dinner party for Mrs Jake Carrano?” said Louise nastily.

    “Yeah, I was trying to decide whether to have quails’ legs in aspic or plovers’ eggs for starters. Did you want something?”

    Louise waggled her eyebrows mysteriously. Phoebe merely looked at her watch. “I’m telling you!” she said quickly. “It’s Michaela. First she gets a mysterious phone-call from a Mr Morton with a number in Remuera, no less—”

    “He’s probably her dentist.”

    “No: he rang himself!”

    “His receptionist’s off with the bot,” she said promptly.

    “He didn’t sound like a dentist in the least!” declared Louise, very flushed. “He had a very flash voice!”

    “May dentist is frayghtfulleh nayce: he went to King’s.”

    “Your dentist would!”

    Phoebe raised her eyebrows. “One mysterious phone call does not a swallow make.”

    “All right; be like that and I won’t tell you the rest!” said Louise crossly.

    “The rest? Ooh, sorry, sorry; I’m all ears!”

    “I’m trying to tell you that they’re popping up all over the show!”

    “Who or what are popping up all over the show?” said Phoebe heavily.

    “People. Mysterious people. In Michaela’s life,” she said on a sulky note.

    “Mysterious dentists in Remmers: mm.”

    “Look, I’ll bloody well ring him myself!” hissed Louise, bright red.

    Phoebe saw with dismay that she’d gone too far. Her Loyal Secretary snatched the fawn phone off her desk and stabbed buttons with a trembling finger.

    She held the receiver up in the air between them. “Mr Morton’s Consulting Rumes,” said a highly artificial voice. “May Ay help yoow?”

    Poor Louise’s jaw dropped.

    Phoebe grabbed the phone before it could drop, too. “I’m sorry to trouble you,” she said, “but I think I may have the wrong number; is this the Mr Morton who specializes in endodontic work?” The receiver quacked something that the goggling Louise didn’t catch. “I see; thank you so much; I’m sorry to have troubled you,” said Phoebe. She hung up.

    Louise swallowed loudly.

    “No presence of mind, that’s your trouble. He’s an orthopaedic surgeon.”

    “What?”

    “There’s a dictionary just over there,” said Phoebe kindly.

    “I know what it means!” There was a short silence. “Help, what would you have said if he’d been a—whatever it was you said?”

    “I’d have made an appointment for a purely fictitious Mattiwilda Entwhistle, where in God’s name do you keep your brains, Louise?”

    “Well, it was my idea to ring him,” she said feebly. “…An orthopaedic surgeon! Why, on earth?”

    “He could be a client. After a special pot.”

    “Ye—es... I suppose it must be that, he did say it was important.”

    “Urgent?”

    “No—o... But he really insisted on it. It was a bit odd, actually, Phoebe.”

    “Well, at least we know he’s genuine. I mean, he really is a Mr Morton who does exist at a Consulting Rumes in Remmers.”

    “Oh! Yes, I see what you mean.”

    “Unless it’s a Gigantic Plot,” said Phoebe, grinning.

    “Oh, hah, hah, very funny.”

    Phoebe relented. “Maybe it’s about a special pot for his wife’s birthday. You know: an urgent job. Rush effort, or something.”

    “I suppose so… You don’t think he could be her secret lover, do you?”

    “No—I—don’t!” gasped Phoebe.

    “Go on: laugh,” said Louise sulkily.

    “Thanks—I—will!” gasped Phoebe.

    “She’s not unattractive,” said Louise uncertainly, rather red. “What’s so funny? I don’t see why she shouldn’t have a boyfriend.”

    “No, nor do I,” Phoebe admitted. “She’s very nice: he’d be a damned lucky fellow. Sorry, Louise; it was just the way you put it.”

    Louise stalked over to the door, looking defiant. “All right: now explain who this Tom man is that’s giving her a lift home out of the blue, and this Jemima that can’t be left alone in the house or something!”

    Those little smiles that Sol Winkelmann so much appreciated were coming and going round Phoebe's wide mouth. “They’re Meg O’Connell’s neighbours. He teaches at Bill's school and she’s a junior lecturer. I suppose he’s a bit nervous about her being home alone miles from anywhere.”

    Louise stuck out her round chin. “Well, it’s the first I’ve heard of them! Especially in connection with Michaela!"

    “Me, too. But then, Michaela doesn’t hang round the staffroom gossiping about her private life for hours on end like the rest of ’em.”

    “Boy, is that true!” Louise agreed feelingly, going out.

    Phoebe smiled. But when the door had closed behind her Loyal Secretary she sighed, and stared unseeingly out her window at the damp shrubbery and the line of trees behind it, today veiled in, hardly unusual for these climes in September but nonetheless depressing, a steady downpour. “Oh, dear. School gossip,” she murmured. She grinned reluctantly. “We’re a monstrous regiment, all right!”

    Then she went back to the meditations that Louise had interrupted. They did not focus on dainty dinners featuring quails’ legs (in aspic or otherwise), let alone plovers’ eggs (which Phoebe had never laid eyes on in her life). Nor did they focus, as those of tenderly romantic disposition such as one, L. Churton, should she ever get wind of it, might have assumed, on Sol Winkelmann and his putative intentions towards her in particular and New Zealand in general. No, they focussed on next year’s School budget. Which at the moment was presenting a choice between fixing the roof of the Old Block or finishing off the new swimming pool. Bugger. Phoebe would have liked to see some new scholarships next year, too, but she didn’t see how on earth... Another nayce cocktail get-together for Old Gels and Friends, she supposed; ugh, yuck: have to ring the Queen Mother. Not to mention the cold blue Lady Westby!

    Phoebe found her thoughts had wandered round to Michaela again. Orthopaedic surgeons in bloody Remmers? Good grief. Must be about a pot! Firmly she concentrated on her budget predictions.

    “So he wants to learn to pot! That sounds all right,” said June on the following Saturday.

    It was about ten o’clock. Michaela had been up at the kiln since before first light: Ivan had found her there at around eight and towed her down to the house for breakfast. It had taken June most of the time since then to drag the details out of her.

    Michaela was pouring slip. She didn’t reply until she’d finished. “Yes,” she then said, straightening and looking dubiously at the result.

    “He sounded quite nice on the phone,” said June, probing.

    “He’s got that middle-aged thing,” replied Michaela in a horribly vague voice.

    “Eh?”

    “You know. Like Meg said Bill had when he wanted to go to Bob’s night classes.”

    “Oh. Oh, well, you’ll get a bit of cash out of him on the strength of it!”

    “Ye-es... Do you think it’s fair, though?”

   June’s heart sank. “Of course it is!” she said loudly and angrily. “If it wasn’t you taking his dough for some unlikely arty carry-on that he’s gonna turn out to be a flop at, it’d be someone else, wouldn’t it? If it is mid-life crisis. And anyway, who says it is?”

    “Um—I can’t remember. I think it was Tom. Or I might have thought of it myself.”

    “Never!”

    “He is quite old,” returned Michaela dubiously. “—I’m gonna do those now.”

    “Oh—sorry.” June moved aside.

    In spite of the strong wind that was blowing, Michaela went on pouring slip over large pots.

    Finally June said, pushing a wisp of hair nervously back behind her ear: “You won’t back out of it, will you?”

    “No. He’s coming on Tuesday.”

    “Yes; you said,” said June weakly. She watched her for a bit longer and then said: “Are you ready for morning tea?”

    “Not yet... I brought some cake. Mrs Lambert made it.”

    June repressed a sigh: old Mrs Lambert, she was absolutely positive, did not give Michaela cake in order for it to be guzzled by greedy small Butlers. Not to mention larger ones. “Where is it?” she said resignedly.

    “Um—inside, I think,” said Michaela vaguely.

    June went into the shed. On the table, as well as all the usual clutter, was a knapsack and a paper bag. She looked inside the paper bag first. Well, that was logical, wasn’t it? But it held an apple and a rock. She began to forage in the knapsack. The cake was there, but it was right at the bottom. It was protected by a plastic bag, old Mrs L. wasn’t entirely gaga; but it was very, very squashed.

    “Did you find some more clay?” she said, apropos of the squashing, going out again.

    “What? Oh—it might not be any good. I thought I’d try it. Have you seen those smooth things with the mixture of black and white clays?”

    “Um—oh!” June named the potter in question.

    “Yes. They’re foul. Much too smooth.”

    “Lee style cerameek,” agreed June, grimacing. “Haven’t they got gold rims?”

    “No, that’s not him, it’s Jack Hawthorne,” returned Michaela seriously. “Anyway, they’re foul. But the mixture of clays is quite interesting. They fire at different temperatures, you see—”

    June allowed Michaela to tell her a lot about this. It was way over her head, she was only a maker of coffee mugs and pixilated horrors.

    “I see. So you’re going to try this new stuff?”

    “I might mix it... I thought I’d try it. It could be interesting. I’m thinking of doing some more slab stuff. Using the texture of the clay more.”

    “I see.” June didn’t ask where she’d got the new clay: she knew Michaela would tell her, but would hate having to do so. Praying silently that it wasn’t from somewhere that Carrano Development’s bulldozers were about to bulldoze into extinction, she said: “Well, I’ll go on down and make a cuppa. I’ll send one of the boys up when it’s ready.”

    “Ta,” said Michaela, very, very vaguely.

    June retreated to the house. She took a load of washing out of the machine and put it in the drier, reflecting as she did so that it was just as well Michaela had lost Jimmy, kids were an awful lot of work and there’d be no way she could— Let alone feed him. She went into the big warm kitchen-workroom and boiled the kettle.

    She was just about to shriek for a kid to go and get Michaela when footsteps crunched on the shells.

    Because the pot-bellied stove was on, as usual, June as usual had a kitchen window slightly open; so she heard quite clearly a little hoarse voice say: “Big face!” and a lovely contralto, strangely like Michaela’s, reply: “Round here, is it, darling?”

    June lurked behind her gingham curtains, thinking frantically: Help, could it be? And heard, after further crunching, the contralto say: “Ooh, yes! So it is! A great big face!” And the little hoarse voice cry delightedly: “Big face!” Then an older female voice said with a shudder in it: “Goodness! It—it does sort of look at you, doesn’t it?”

    “Leer, more like,” muttered June: the large ceramic head under the bush had been a present from a friend who was heavily into garden sculpture. June hadn’t liked to turn it down. But she was rather hoping that that bush’d grow up soon and hide it.

    She had time to take a deep breath and smooth the wisps back behind her ears before the tap sounded at the door. She opened the door feeling sick.

    “Get DOWN! Wanna get DOWN! See pussies!” shrieked Katie Maureen frantically. “Mummy! Pummee DOW-OWN!”

    “I’m sorry!” gasped the pretty lady holding her, laughing. “She’s a bit above herself, I’m afraid!”

    “Pussies, pussies!” wailed Katie Maureen. “MUMMY! PUMMEE DOWN!”

    “Put her down,” said June numbly. “It’s all right, she can come in.

    The lady put her down. She’d gone very pink. June was rather glad to see this, she’d had more than her share of that sort of thing when Ivan (The Terrible) had been two.

    “See pussies!” panted Katie Maureen, grabbing June’s jeans and looking up at her.

    She was just so sweet! June was overcome by the soggy wave of sentimentality that rather unfortunately did tend to overcome Katie Maureen Carrano’s many scores of admirers. “Come in, sweetheart,” she said weakly. “I’m not sure where all the pussies are, but one of them’s over there in the rocking-chair.”

    “Pussy!” Katie Maureen toddled forward.

    “She is quite good with cats,” said her mother. “I’m Polly Carrano,” she added, holding out her hand.

    “I thought you must be,” admitted June limply, taking it. “I’m June Butler.”

    “It’s lovely to meet you, June. I’m sorry about this invasion, but Katie Maureen started screaming about pussies and big faces and bikkies the moment we got to the top of your road!”

    “We never thought she’d remember,” put in the elderly lady who was standing at Polly’s elbow. She beamed at June.

    “Sharp as a tack,” said Polly, grimacing. “—This is my mother, Maureen Mitchell.”

    June shook hands and greeted her politely, inviting them in.

    “We mustn’t disturb you, June! We’ve come to see dear Michaela, really,” said Mrs Mitchell. She was plump and pretty, though quite old: older than Ida Butler, certainly. With a very motherly sort of voice and manner. And masses of silver hair—extremely beautiful hair—done up in a huge and rather untidy bun.

    June assured them they weren’t disturbing her, she’d just been going to have morning tea; and urged them inside.

    “Pussy!” said Katie Maureen proudly to her mother.

    “Ooh, yes,” replied Polly, going over to the rocker: “a lovely white one; isn’t it pretty? Just stroke it very gently, darling, like we stroke Crab Cat—that’s right.”

    June watched limply as she bent over the little girl. Katie Maureen was again in the incredibly cute, pale green fluffy coat with the hood, but with no-nonsense overalls and gumboots. Polly was in green, too, though she didn’t have red hair. She had very long, shiny, gold-streaked brown hair, plaited for about four or five inches and then rioting in a mass of curls for about a further eight or so. June’s wasn’t long enough to do that. And not pretty enough to look like that if it had been. Polly’s pale green top garment was a parka, at least June supposed dully you could have called it that. It was made of corduroy and featured besides puffy sleeves, lots of pockets and so on, a big hood lined with pale grey fur that had, when June had first opened the door, framed the lovely oval face in a most charming fashion. Even if it did contain the coats of a dozen slaughtered possums, thought June on a sour note which she recognized quite clearly had nothing to do with conservation or animal rights, and everything to do with downright envy. The hood had now been pushed back, hence the view of the hair. Polly’s slacks were colour-coordinated, naturally: the same delicate shade of pale green, but velveteen, not corduroy. Her boots were not gumboots, but high-heeled tan cowboy boots in tooled leather, pulled over the slacks. If you had perfect legs that looked really good, noted June dully.

    “Um—sit down, Mrs Mitchell,” she said quickly, coming to. “I’ll just send one of the boys to get Michaela.” She went over to the passage door and bellowed: “BOYS!” before she’d had time to recollect that nice people from huge up-market palaces on the cliff top at Pohutukawa Bay probably didn’t do that sort of thing.

    “Boys was bad,” said the gruff little voice.

    June jumped. “Uh—I don’t think so, dear. What did they do?”

    Katie Maureen didn’t reply. She stroked the cat carefully.

    “Ignore her. She’s a fearsome little sneak, always trying to get her brothers in for trouble,” explained her mother.

    “Polly!” protested Mrs Mitchell. “She is only a baby!”

    “I’m a BIG GIRL!”

    “Yee-uss, you’re a big girl!” cooed her grandmother, undaunted.

    “Forty-two and hard as nails,” muttered Polly.

    June looked at her, startled. Polly winked. June laughed weakly. “Um,” she said, trying to pull herself together and at the same time wishing fervently she hadn’t worn this particular pair of jeans today, they had a rude patch on them: “would you like to take your coat off, Mrs Mitchell?”

    “Thank you, dear.” Mrs Mitchell removed the huge brown fur thing with relief, explaining that “dear Jake” had bought it for her, but really—it was too good for her.

    June had assumed it was rabbit. Or squirrel, her grandmother had once had a squirrel coat. It didn’t feel like either. “What is it?” she croaked, putting it carefully on a dining chair—first making sure that the dining chair didn’t have peanut butter or milky Weetbix on it.

    “Mink, what else?” said Polly heavily. “Jake always buys the best. Mum’s quite right, she doesn’t get the wear out of it: I mean, they live on a backblocks farm down the East Coast, about the only place she could wear it to would be canasta night at Totara Crossing. So I’m forcing her to wear it for everyday!” She smiled at her.

    “It is very cosy,” murmured Maureen Mitchell.

    “It does feel lovely and warm,” agreed June weakly.

    “Pussy coat!” said Katie Maureen brightly.

    “Fur coat,” returned Polly firmly. “Grandma’s fur coat.”

    “Pussy coat,” she said obstinately.

    “Oh, dear: she is a stubborn wee thing,” sighed her grandmother.

    “I told you it was no use trying to make her wear the white coat, Mum: she’s taken a scunner to it. She’ll only wear that green one; thank goodness it’s washable!”

    “Mm. Well, you were just as bad with your little red gumboots, Polly!”

    “Mu-um!” said Polly, going about the colour that June judged the gumboots must have been.

    Relentlessly Maureen Mitchell told June the full story of Polly and her little red gumboots. Being interrupted by Ivan coming in to say that Starsky was teasing Mason, and Starsky coming in to say he wasn’t, and June sending the pair of them off to get Michaela and bring her back without fail didn’t put her off her stroke for one second. Not a second.

    What with this, and the fact that Mrs Mitchell under the mink was wearing a hand-knitted pale pink twinset—plus a string of pearls, June had to admit—but nevertheless a twinset made from a pattern that Bob’s mother had also made a twinset from and that had come out of one of last year’s issues of the Woman’s Weekly, with a nice but very ordinary fawn tweed skirt, June felt quite dazed. Quite dazed.

    “Hullo, Aunty Maureen,” said a very gruff voice at last.

    “There she is!” cried Maureen Mitchell, bounding to her feet with a spryness remarkable in one of her age and figure. “Come and give me a kiss, Michaela, dear!”

    Michaela had already removed her gumboots, so she came over and pecked Mrs Mitchell’s plump pink cheek.

    Mrs Mitchell returned the kiss enthusiastically. Now, come and sit by me, Michaela, and tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself all this time!” she clucked.—She was rather like one of those big fluffy Rhode Island Red hens, decided June.—“Polly, say hullo to your cousin!” she reproved her daughter, sitting down.

    “Hi, Michaela,” said Polly, smiling at her. “I was admiring the ceiling, isn’t it great?” Michaela agreed it was.—”Look, Mum, it’s super!” urged Polly.

    “Very nice, dear,” said Maureen, not looking at it. “Now, where exactly are you living, Michaela, dear?”

    June got up to get the tea. She was quite sure that this was going to go on for some time.

    Eventually Polly said with a smile: “Could we leave the small bull here with you, June, instead of taking it up to the china shop?”

    “Good idea,” said June limply.

    “You stay here with June, darling; Mummy and Grandma won’t be long,” said Polly, squatting.

    “Play wiv blocks,” returned Katie Maureen earnestly from floor level.

    “Yes, that’s right. Ooh, look, a lovely house!” She kissed her and rose easily. None of that grunting or puffing that lesser mortals indulged in, noted June resignedly.

    Bob came in while they were still up at the kiln.

    “Hullo, ’ullo!” he beamed. “Who’ve we got here, eh?”

    “I’m Katie Mauween!” she returned crossly.

    “Yeah, ’course you are!” He picked her up and kissed her satiny cheek. “I’m Bob; remember me?”

    “Bob,” she said obligingly.

    Bob kissed her again on the strength of it. June sighed. Glancing over to make sure he’d shut the door, she said darkly: “Wait till ya see what came with her, though!”

    “Oh, yeah?” He waggled his eyebrows.

    “The grown-up version,” said June glumly. “Not red-headed, I’ll give you that; but she’s got everything else. –I mean everything.”

    “I know; met her before, remember?”

    “Oh, yes?” said June in a very high voice. “Was she in a skin-tight violet jumper with skin-tight pale green slacks and a ruddy great carved amethyst brooch and a pale green designer parka with a grey chinchilla hood that time, too?”

    “Nope. Skin-tight white suede pants and boots, skin-tight red shiny top to show off the equipment, and a white cowboy hat. I think she had a white suede jacket but God had favoured me and the sun was shining, so she wasn’t wearing it.”

    Very red, June cried: “You’re making that up, Bob Butler!”

    “Nobody could possibly have made that up,” he replied firmly. “Who’s a pretty girl, then?” he added in a soppy voice to Katie Maureen.

    “Me!”

    “Don’t encourage her,” said June, sagging all over the sofa.

    Grinning, he sat down with Katie Maureen on his knee. “Don’t I get any morning tea?”

    “No,” his wife replied sourly.

    Grinning more, Bob took the last piece of cake. It wasn’t actually a slice, it was what was left after other slices had been sliced off it. June closed her eyes for a second. “That’s Michaela’s cake.”

    “Bullshi’,” he said through it.

    “Mrs Lambert made it, but it is Michaela’s cake.”

    “Waszh, ya mean,” he said through it.

    June sighed.

    … “You don’t want all those,” said Michaela weakly.

    “Yes, I do,” returned her second cousin firmly.

    “Where are you going to put them, dear?” asked Maureen dubiously.

    Polly replied in a determined voice: “In the family-room, mostly. I’m going to re-do it. I’m sick of all that Eighties bright stuff. It’s shallow.”

    “The chairs are quite pretty,” objected Maureen faintly.

    “Jake hates them, he reckons they’re not made for human bums. He won’t sit in there, have you noticed?”

    “Mm,” murmured her mother.

    “It’s a pity, because it’s a lovely room. And it gets all the afternoon sun. If I redo it with a more natural look, it’ll form a sort of transition to the patio, don’t you think?”

    Polly’s patio was a forest of greenery, lightened with marble Edwardian statuary of the funerary variety and white, yellow and apricot flowering plants amongst which orchids featured largely.

    “Yes, that’d be nice,” murmured Maureen. “Um, how are we going to carry these, dear?”

    “Don’t worry, Aunty Maureen, I’ll put them in the wheelbarrow,” said Michaela. She began swathing the largest one in sacking. Maureen watched in horror; the pot reached to the top of Michaela’s thigh.

    “Don’t sing out if you need a hand, will you?” said a man’s voice crossly. Bob hurried to help.

    “Never knew—you—were home!” panted Michaela as they dumped the big pot in the sacking-padded barrow that she used for moving big pots.

    “Yeah, and if ya hadda done ya still wouldn’t have asked,” he replied.

    “Hullo, Bob, it’s nice to see you again,” said Polly, smiling.

    Bob shook hands and she introduced her mother. Whew! he thought. Three generations of ’em—no wonder poor old June was pissed off, her ma had a face like the back of a bus. And the personality to match. –And dat ain’t no rat, kid, he added to himself, eyeing Mrs Mitchell’s mink in awe.

    Michaela bent to the barrow but he stopped her. “Go and wrap ya pots,” he advised.

    “Don’t be mad: I’m as strong as you; stronger, probably.”

    “Yeah, I’m mad and you’re Superwoman,” he replied mildly.

    Polly and Maureen watched with great interest as the gruff Michaela merely grinned amiably and said: “All right; if you want to put your back out, go on. And don’t try to lift that pot into the station-waggon by yourself.”

    “Some of us aren’t utterly stupid, ya know,” replied Bob cheerfully, wheeling the barrow off.

    “What a nice man!” approved Maureen when h was barely out of sight.

    “Yes, he’s one of the best,” returned Michaela simply. “Don’t lift that, Polly, it’s far too heavy for you.”

    Polly stopped, grimacing. “You’re right. –Oh, heck! Who’s gonna get them all out of the station-waggon?” she asked in a hollow voice.

    “Not Jake, dear!” said Maureen quickly.

    “No: I don’t fancy a husband with a hernia. –He’s convinced he’s the most macho object under God’s good sky: he’ll see it as a matter of pride to heave them about all on his lonesome,” she explained to Michaela.

    Michaela was just offering: “Could I come over and help?” when Bob returned with the wheelbarrow, accompanied by a thin, dark young man.

    “Look what I found!” he grinned.

    The thin, dark young man went very red. “Hullo, Polly; hullo, Michaela,” he croaked.

    “He looks as if he could heave pots around one-handed,” said Polly. “Hi, Dickon; it’s lovely to see you again,” she added, smiling.

    Dickon Fothergill took her outstretched hand and shook it fervently. “I never  expected to find you here!” he said hoarsely.

    … “Phew!” concluded June, as, after a short scene during which Katie Maureen discovered that Dickon had a “port car” and screamed to go in it, they all finally drove away, pots and all. She sagged in the front doorway that they hardly ever used because they hadn’t put in a path to it yet.

    “Would you say the old lady didn’t seem exactly thrilled at the idea of being landed with Dickon Whatsisface?” Bob returned slowly.

    “Ooh, you noticed!” said June brightly. “What in God’s name did he come up here for?”

    “I think he’s genuinely interested in pottery, he came to see if he could do humble tasks for Michaela.”

    “Strewth.”

    “Yeah. I think he fancies himself as the—um—you know: the sort that sits humbly at the master’s knee.”

    “Disciple?”

    “N-no... No, there’s a word in Kim,” he returned dubiously.

    “Well, you’d better ask Starsky, wasn’t he reading it a bit back?”

    “Mm... Acolyte!” decided Bob with considerable satisfaction.

    “That doesn’t sound like Kim.”

    “What? No, it isn’t. It’s what I mean, though. This Dickon type fancies himself as Michaela’s acolyte.”

    “He must be daft. Why hasn’t he got better things to do with his Saturdays? Why hasn’t he got a girlfriend?”

    “Don’t ask me, June; I’m only a humble screen-printer. –Michaela will’ve made a hefty sum this morning, anyway!” he said with satisfaction, as they wandered back into their kitchen-workroom.

    “Ye-es... She will let them pay, won’t she?” asked June in alarm.

    “Probably not. But my money’s on Polly. Not to mention the mum.”

    “You’re right!” June decided in relief, beaming at him.

    When Michaela and Dickon eventually returned it was almost dark and June and Bob had given them up. June was greatly mellowed, partly because she’d had two large helpings of lentil soup and partly because Bob had cleaned the car—dragooning Starsky and Ivan into “helping”. And partly because Bob had subsequently got a slug of Polish Poison into her and had got her onto the sofa and said in her ear he didn’t care if, in Bill Coggins’s very words, Polly Carrano had tits that were the way God intended ’em, he liked hers better.

    “Did she pay you?” asked June eagerly.

    “Um—no. I mean, yes,” said Michaela quickly before June could scream. “I mean, he did.” She produced a crumpled piece of paper from the back pocket of her flannels. “Here.”

    June peered. “Oh. Well, I suppose five hundred isn’t bad. Though I must say, with that huge great pot that looked like a twisted willow, I’d have said—”

    “No,” said Michaela in a strangled voice.

    Bob heaved himself up and switched the lamp on, grinning to himself. “Siddown, Dickon,” he said kindly to the young man. “Fancy a coffee?”

    Dickon accepted gratefully. Bob had had an idea he might, after the Arabian Nights fantasies from Bill Coggins on the subject of Jake Carrano’s notions of liquid hospitality.

    “FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS?” screamed June.

    “I still think you should have let him give you ten,” said Dickon. “That big greenish pot was worth five thousand all by itself.”

    “See! What did I tell you?” June said instantly.

    “Nothing of the sort,” Bob replied firmly. “Not even close.”

    “Well, I said it was worth a lot! I think it’s one of the best things she’s ever done.”

    “I thought five thousand was more than fair,” said Michaela obstinately.

    June handed the cheque back to her limply but she said uneasily: “Could you put it in your ginger jar? I’d hate to lose it.”

    Resignedly June arose and put Jake Carrano’s cheque in the ginger jar along with other treasures of equal value, to wit the key of the round-faced clock, Ivan’s woggle that he’d managed to lose with monotonous regularity before every Cubs meeting until she’d thought of the jar, a very special pebble that Mason had found down in the creek behind Bill and Meg’s, and three glass buttons off a blouse of which she had once been very fond.

    Sitting down again, she said darkly to Dickon: “What she needs is a reliable agent.”

    She waited; but the acolyte only said: “Yes.”

    Much later that night June said to Bob in an exasperated voice: “This is no good!”

    “Thanks very much. I know my hair’s falling out and my chaps are slipping, but—”

    “Not that! –What in God’s name are chaps?”

    “I’m not sure, I got it off Tom Overdale. It sounds good, eh?”

    “No; it sounds like something out of a John Wayne movie. A bad John Wayne movie.”

    Bob replied immediately: “There are no bad John Wayne movies.”

    June sighed. “Are you listening?”

    “Go on,” he groaned.

    “About Michaela.”

    “Look, for Pete’s sake, she must have made close to six thousand this week alone, if I was pulling down that sort of money I’d—”

    “Be QUIET!” she shouted.

    Bob was quiet.

    June said in a sulky voice: “That isn’t the point at all, those were all one-offs. I mean, how many times is Polly Carrano gonna re-do her dratted family-room, may I ask?”—Bob was very tempted to say “Every week, probably: she can afford it,” but discretion was definitely the better part of valour, here.—“What we need to make sure of is that she makes a reasonable sum—five hundred would do—every week!”

    “We’ve been over this a million times: that prick Priestly’s done her in with all the trendy galleries, and she doesn’t make the sort of muck that sells like hot cakes for lovely interior decorations like that moron Jack Hawthorne; there isn’t anything we can do, June! Except stop her starving to death,” he added with a sigh.

    “There must be something... That Dickon’s awfully wet.”

    “Yeah. Well, acolytes don’t go out and develop brand new markets, they sit at the master’s feet, worsh—”

    “All RIGHT!”

    “I was only agreeing with you: he’s hopelessly wet.” –Mangroves, mangroves, he thought wildly. If only June had a bit more of a sense of humour—lighter touch, ya know? No, she’d never wear it. Well, not in the mood she was in at the moment, anyway. So much for Bob Butler, the Casanova of the Southern Hemisphere. “Eh? What?” he asked groggily.

    “That skinny American! He still hasn’t brought his sister-in-law round!”

    “Uh—no. Well, give him time.”

    June sighed. “And anyway, they’re going back to America.”

    “Mm.”

    June lay there frowning, thinking very hard without result, for some time. Then she opened her mouth to report her negative result, but realized he was asleep. “Men!” she muttered. Scowling, she turned on her side and closed her eyes.

    Bob went down the road the very next day and, not neglecting to stress the acolyte motif, worked off the mangroves one on Tom. He was exceedingly gratified when Tom howled with laughter.

    “Heard about the pupil?” he added. “He’s a surgeon, or something.”

    “Oh—Hugh!” they both said.

    Bob’s face fell.

    “He’s older, but he’s the acolyte type, too,” explained Jemima.

    “Rich dilettante from Parnell. Suffering from mid-life crisis,” added Tom succinctly.

    “He puts these things so well,” said Jemima, grinning.

    “He puts everything so well,” admitted Bob with a smile.

    “Just for that, you can come and help me strip me staircase wall!” Tom informed him brightly.

    “Righto. Nothing else to do. If I go home she’ll only start in on me about Michaela again. Dunno why now—I mean, she’s better off today than she has been for years.”

    “What with all of these new admirers!” said Jemima with a giggle.

    “Too right.”

    They went inside out of the momentary patch of sun they’d been standing in and got on with stripping Tom’s staircase wall.

    Michaela herself gave hardly a thought to all her new admirers. She was glad David Shapiro had agreed to translate her Japanese notes, and pleased that he’d liked Toshiro’s mugs. She was indifferent to Dickon’s worship and rather wished for his room than his company. But as, when he turned up again on the Sunday, he showed himself to be quiet and respectful while she was actually working, she supposed vaguely that he could hang round and make himself useful if he wanted to. She didn’t think about Sol Winkelmann or Hugh Morton at all.

    What Michaela mostly thought about was the new source of clay, and her new ideas for making large free-form slab pots with lots of texture in the clay, and experiments with firing temperatures and times—that sort of thing. In fact she thought about these things so hard that she forgot all about Jake’s cheque until June, who felt it was burning a hole right through the ginger jar, reminded her.

Next chapter:

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