Phoebe Fothergill's Problem

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Phoebe Fothergill’s Problem

    It sometimes seemed to Michaela Daniels that she’d been battling all her adult life. With very mixed results. True, she had successfully fought her parents’ attempts, in her somewhat distant youth, to prevent her from attending university. (A pointless activity, for “Girls only go and get married.”) She had fought their attempts to prevent her, once there, from switching from a B.A. (with which a girl could at least become a teacher) to a Fine Arts diploma, when it had burst upon her with a blinding light, once she’d experienced the art galleries in the city, that Fine Arts what was she really wanted to do. During the course she’d grimly combatted the attempts of one of the Fine Arts lecturers, who was simultaneously married and AC-DC (a combination that Michaela instinctively found quite revolting) to get her into his bed. She had done battle with the university authorities when this same lecturer had failed her in her final year, and had emerged victorious, but not with the sort of diploma that said loudly “employ this great artist.”

    In order to support herself she had suffered the self-imposed torture of typing classes at night school. In spite of her artistic bent, which her teachers assured her bitterly should mean she was “good with her hands,” Michaela turned out to be a rotten typist. She had fought off endless drunks in endless sleazy restaurants in her endless waitressing jobs. She had washed a million, million dishes and incidentally learned the most underhand and nastiest tricks of the kitchens of the said sleazy restaurants—Michaela could take a hunk of chuck steak and shape it into filet mignon with the best of ’em. She had worked for three years fulltime as a clerk in the Government Valuation Department in New Zealand’s biggest city, and a worse fate than that unutterably dreary routine it would have been hard for her greatest enemy to wish on sensitive, intelligent Michaela Daniels. She had given it up and had a thousand equally trivial and pointless part-time jobs which barely allowed her to eat while she worked on her pots every spare moment of the day and most of the night. Her first three exhibitions were resounding, nay howling, failures. Michaela had fought on.

    In the intervals of struggling to afford the minimum of food and the best of clay (or, preferably, the fare to places where you dug the best clay) she had fought off her mother’s determined attempts to match her up with the son and heir of the farming property next to theirs in Taranaki and the well-meaning attempts of her aunties to force her into marriage with—well, almost anyone, really.

    When she was twenty-six Michaela had her biggest piece of luck. She won a competition which gave her a trip to Japan to study for a year. Michaela didn’t speak a word of Japanese, but she went. Although the prize was supposed to cover all her costs it didn’t, of course, and she came back even broker than she’d left, speaking only the minimum of Japanese, with a head stuffed with ideas just bursting to take shape as pots, with several life-long friends who rather unfortunately were without exception over the age of seventy, and with a dreadful cold which speedily turned to pneumonia. Very fortunately New Zealand’s public hospitals did not leave you lying if you couldn’t pay them, instead they took you in and gave you the best of care. Her parents, though they had harangued her bitterly on the foolhardiness of going off to Japan “just like that”, came to the rescue and hauled her off home to the farm. They didn’t offer her money, or even a permanent home, but they did feed her while she recuperated. Michaela felt so weak that she almost agreed to get engaged to Clark Baker after all. Only fortunately—at least Michaela considered it fortunate—when he revealed that since he was gay he only wanted a platonic relationship, which he thought would suit them both very well, she broke down and laughed like a drain. Clark went off in a huff and Michaela was then faced with the problem of how to explain to Mum and Dad why she wasn’t going to marry Clark after all. Clark was six-foot-two and husky with it. Added to which Mr and Mrs Daniels had known him, as they had not failed to point out as an inducement to matrimony, “all his life”. For once Michaela did what almost anyone would have said was the sensible thing and didn’t tell them the real reason. She just said that she didn’t like him enough to marry him. Mr and Mrs Daniels never forgave her.

    After that Michaela went back to Auckland with, after paying for the bus fare, only a few cents change plus a five-dollar bill forced upon her when he’d given her a lift to the bus stop by dear old Mr Parihaka who had the farm on the other side of them from the Bakers and who was generally referred to by Mrs Baker and Mrs Daniels as “that dirty old Maori.”

    It was dark at the city bus terminal and the place was well-known as utterly unsafe after six in the evening. Michaela ran from her bus’s distant siding all the way to the “Ladies’ Waiting Room” at the other end of the terminal, where she discovered only a drunk, a male drunk, snoring his head off. The fact that the phone there was not vandalized was almost as great a piece of luck as the scholarship to Japan. She rang her friends the Butlers, who lived a good twenty miles north of the city, and Bob Butler, failing to conceal his utter horror, said of course he’d come right in and collect her, but for God’s sake not to stay there, almost anywhere was safer. June, his wife, then removed the receiver from his slackened grasp and ordered Michaela to go straight round to the South Pacific Hotel, go to the upstairs bar and STAY THERE. Never mind what the waiters might say, she was legally entitled, that was what a public house was! Where June had got this piece of information from, and whether it was correct, Michaela had no idea, and even in her somewhat disturbed, not to say weakened state she couldn’t help thinking that June probably didn’t know whether it was correct, either. So, being Michaela, she went there even though she was shaking inside, gave the waiters filthy looks, and installed herself in a huge and hideous, but comfortable armchair.

    However, after half an hour she did give in to the extent of ordering a brandy. It seemed suitably restorative. Also, given that the fiver had come from Mr Parihaka, even Michaela, who was very fond of him, had to admit that it was an awfully appropriate way to spend it.

    The Butlers would have been happy to keep Michaela for life. Bob was a screen-printer and June was a ceramic artist, not a serious potter like Michaela but a producer of horrid little elves and pixies and similar cutesies which she herself was the first to admit were nauseating, but which certainly helped keep the wolf from the door. Bob had a job as art teacher at the local secondary school, Puriri High, so they were doing all right. They were buying their battered, bits-and-piecey house right up at the furthest and most obscure end of obscure Blossom Avenue in obscure little Waikaukau Junction in what was then pretty obscure Puriri County north of Auckland, they had one kid, another one on the way and were happily planning another one after that; and besides, they were simple, friendly, loving people who not only actually believed all that stuff they’d absorbed in their Art School days about Love is All You Need and Free The People and so on, that the more liberated segments of even tiny obscure New Zealand were bandying about at the time, but actually believed that Michaela had real talent. Besides, they were fond of her.

    Michaela resisted them. She herself wasn’t sure whether she did so because she was imbued with the Protestant Work Ethic (Bob’s claim), or simply (as June insisted) brainwashed by her parents. As soon as she was fit she started looking for work again. There wasn’t much work up in Puriri County: in those days there weren’t any restaurants in Puriri township, and the Puriri County Council was strangely reluctant to include a youngish female, however strong and hard-working, in its road gangs. But Michaela eventually found a selection of odd-jobs, mainly gardening for the retired people who were starting to flood into Puriri and create its land boom at the time, and she got by. She even was able to contribute to the household expenses, over Bob’s and June’s loud objections. She found a new source of clay, built a kiln with Bob’s and June’s eager help, and began to create.

    Nobody was getting rich but it all went very well for the next few years—until, in fact, Michaela was twenty-nine. Then she met The Pig. Bob and June unanimously named him this, after a prime minister of the same nickname—partly because he rather resembled this statesman, but mainly because he was. The Pig was, of course, married and, of course, had no intention of leaving his conventional, supportive middle-class wife for a mad artist who cut her untidy dark auburn mop with a blunt pair of shears when she thought of it, had never bought a lipstick in her life, didn’t own a bra, didn’t own any respectable shoes let alone any high heels, and had hands like a navvy. Not to mention the shoulders to match: The Pig, though he would not have admitted it, was both horrified and fascinated by his mistress’s physical strength. Michaela was a tall, wide-shouldered, broad-hipped girl anyway, and all those years of pedalling, digging, and heaving around the appurtenances of her art had certainly helped develop her muscles.

    In order to be able to spend time alone with The Pig, Michaela moved out of the Butlers’ house and into a flat in Puriri township. Puriri’s land boom was well into its stride by this time and this flat, one of the few that were for rent as opposed to the myriad owner-occupier “units” that were springing up all over like a nasty rash, cost an arm and a leg. This didn’t mean that The Pig helped pay the rent. She sustained with apparent equanimity the fact that The Pig would visit her without warning whenever he felt like it. This could range from one o’clock in the morning when he was weaving his way home from a business meeting with like-minded land developers (yes, he was one of Those, not calculated to endear him to Bob and June Butler), to lunchtime on a Sunday (after not putting in an appearance on a Sunday for months on end) when Michaela was entertaining the most elderly and respectable of her ultra-respectable aunties to lunch. Was it surprising that Michaela gave up inviting Aunty Vi and even gave up asking June and Bob round? June and Bob understood, they kept telling each other. Nevertheless, they were a bit hurt. But being June and Bob, they went on asking her over to their place. Only Michaela hardly ever came because she was always terrified to go out in case The Pig deigned to drop in.

    This could have gone on for years—well, it did go on for two years, and even the gentle June was driven to ask Michaela whether she was really getting anything out of the relationship. Michaela said she didn’t think she was, really, but she didn’t seem to be able to give him up. June wasn’t all that surprised. But after it had gone on for two years, the roof fell in. The Pig turned up on Michaela’s doorstep at ten-thirty of a wet August night with a weeping, frightened, pregnant eighteen-year-old at his side. Jilly. Jilly Petulia.

    Jilly was not only pregnant, she was on dope. The Pig, he explained, didn’t have anyone else to turn to. Yes, he was quite sure it was his. Michaela then informed him that even if it wasn’t she’d take Jilly in and she never wanted to set eyes on him again. He didn’t go, so she pushed him down the front steps. A short flight: in Bob Butler’s expressed opinion, it was a pity they weren’t ten times as high. The Pig limped off into the night and was never heard from again.

    Michaela took Jilly Petulia in. Jilly presumably had parents and a real name, but she steadfastly refused to disclose the truth about either of these matters. Michaela took Jilly to endless forms of therapy, to endless pre-natal classes, and God-knew- what. Pregnant women, even pregnant eighteen-year-old women on dope, were traditionally considered as special by the New Zealand Health Service, so instead of doing the humane thing and giving the unfortunate child an abortion they gave her the best of pre-natal care, got her off the dope, which fortunately for the baby she hadn’t been on that long (Bob’s expressed theory being that she turned to it when The Pig hit on her), and enabled her to produce a healthy infant. June and Bob meanwhile urged Michaela to give up the flat, but she wouldn’t. She did, however, find a congenial flatmate through the local Women’s Group—in the wake of the University’s building its Puriri Campus some sort of notion of women’s rights was slowly filtering through to Puriri County.

    Pris was a great support to Michaela through Jilly’s pregnancy, through Jilly’s two arrests for flogging pot on campus and one arrest for vagrancy on the Puriri waterfront (all during the pregnancy), through Jilly’s two attempts at suicide during the pregnancy and one attempt at suicide after the birth. Then when baby Jimmy (after Jimi Hendrix: Jilly had insisted on it and it had seemed pointless to argue, anyway Jimmy was a perfectly ordinary name and no-one but themselves knew that the poor little scrap’s middle name was Hendrix)—when baby Jimmy was six months old and Pris and Michaela had got used to having him around, Jilly succeeded in walking out into the sea at Puriri with half a bottle of vodka and a whole bottle of Valium inside her and not coming back.

    They had three blissful months during which, after a certain initial period of shock and self-recrimination, they thoroughly enjoyed having Jimmy Hendrix Petulia to themselves. Sleepless nights, teething and all. Then Jilly’s parents turned up. Or rather, they were located by the helpful and busy New Zealand Police, who most certainly hadn’t been either busy enough to manage to prevent old Mrs Lambert from next-door having her purse stolen from under her arm at ten o’clock in the morning in the middle of the tourist season on the waterfront at Puriri, or helpful enough to catch the culprit as he ran down the main highway in full view with the old lady screaming “Stop thief!”

    The parents claimed Jimmy. The helpful and busy police said they must hand him over. Michaela, who, though she fought against it, had an inbuilt fear of male authority figures and a tendency to defer to their superior knowledge of the world, would have done so. Pris had more sense, a stronger notion of her rights, and a greater loathing of men. She stood her ground. The parents and the police threatened to take Michaela and Pris to court. Pris said they would have to do that in order to convince her and the court that they were fit people to bring Jimmy up, because look at the way Jilly had turned out. The parents took the young women to court. They claimed that Michaela and Pris were unfit to bring Jimmy up because they were Lesbians. Pris certainly was, she was proud of it; Michaela wasn’t but this didn’t make any difference: the New Zealand justice system immediately decided they must be unfit to bring Jimmy up and awarded him to his grandparents.

    Pris stomped around steaming, wanting to do all sorts of things, like getting the best Q.C. in the country and claiming discrimination and proving the grandparents were unfit. Michaela didn’t think it would work and even Pris’s lawyer didn’t think it would work. Besides, Jimmy, when they lost him, had already been old enough to know both of them and respond to them, and live in a definite routine: his little world, totally disrupted by the move to his grandparents’. Did they really want him to have to go through... No, they didn’t. But were the grandparents fit and proper? Pris was sure they weren’t, Michaela was sure they weren’t and even Pris’s lawyer was pretty sure they weren’t. But the lawyer didn’t think Pris and Michaela would be awarded his care if the grandparents lost him, she thought he’d be made a ward of court. Oh: foster parents?—Yes.—Oh.—Michaela and Pris agonized for ages but finally decided to take the lawyer’s advice and just hope that Jimmy would be okay with his blood relatives. Since the grandparents had thoughtfully had a court order made forbidding Pris or Michaela ever to come near the child, that was that.

    Bob and June urged Michaela to come back to Blossom Avenue. Michaela thought she and Pris would be okay, they’d battle on. Pris had quite a good job, she had a B.Sc. and worked as a technician for DSIR in the city, and Michaela had plenty of gardening jobs. Bob and June both loved Michaela but neither of them had a wide enough knowledge of the world and of the varieties of human nature to be able to point out to her that the supportive Pris was the sort of person who thrives on crises. Pris was undeniably upset by the whole thing, and genuinely missed Jimmy. But three months after the court hearing she packed her bags, told Michaela that some friends of hers were starting a women’s commune in Canada and she thought she’d go over and see how they were getting on, and went.

    So that left Michaela, flat broke, with no flatmate and no lover. And no Jimmy. She missed him dreadfully. June and Bob, out of some vague and comfortable belief in their children’s therapeutic value that could have been well founded, who could say, encouraged to her to come down to Waikaukau Junction and see as much as possible of little Robert (known the length and breadth of Blossom Avenue, not to mention all over Puriri Primary School, as Starsky), Ivan (The Terrible: his real name was John but probably no-one but his nearest and dearest knew this fact), and Mason. (His real name, he was named for June’s Great-Uncle Mason Carmichael, who was supposed to die and leave them a fortune.) The therapy might have worked if Michaela had ever received much of it, but she was so depressed she hardly ever stayed for an actual visit, just went up to her kiln.

    Then, when Michaela was thirty-four, June found her a Real Job! Associated with art, what was more! How it came about was this way. Blossom Avenue contained only five houses: if you started from what was laughably known as the main road (the muddy, rutted back road that wound down from the highway past the dairy factory and eventually got you to the obscure intersection known as Waikaukau Junction)—if then, you started from the main road and began to proceed with due care up the muddy ruts of what was laughably named Blossom Avenue, the first house you came to, on the left, was Number 2. Number 2 was a large, relatively modern house, built by the Alingtons. The Alingtons were almost mythical figures in Blossom Avenue: they were hardly ever there, as he was in Foreign Affairs, not a diplomat but a Commercial Attaché. Most of Blossom Avenue hadn’t been aware that there were such things. Some had latched on to the fact the Alingtons had built Number 2 as an investment—though it was investment that was being very slow to bear fruit. Number 2 was set well back from the road, on a flat piece of land. Opposite there was no Number 1. The next house, which was on the right, was actually a fair way up Blossom Avenue, and it was Number 3. It had been let to students for many years. The current students had a goat, which spent a large portion of its time on Number 3’s front verandah—possibly all that need be said about Number 3.

    After Number 3 there was a wide field on the right, planted with small scrubby pine trees, that looked like a Christmas-tree farm. No-one ever harvested these trees. Then came a large property, containing wide expanses of mud, rusting trikes, a distant chook house, and an old saggy wooden villa. Not all that much different from Number 3, actually. This was Number 9, and it was owned and inhabited by Meg O’Connell and Bill Coggins and their four kids. Of which only the youngest was the offspring of them both.

    As far up as Number 9, which was quite a walk, with the ground rising all the time, there was nothing at all on the left except a great slope of coarse grass and wild turnip. Which was beautiful when it was in bloom, though it did bring on Meg O’Connell’s hay fever. Opposite Number 9 on the other side, just below the rise before the road took an abrupt turn to the left and disappeared between high banks—eventually to wander off and discover the Butlers’ house—was Number 10, a big old two-storeyed house that had been empty for years.

    This, then, was Blossom Avenue. Not a fruitful area for job-hunting, one would have thought, and indeed up till this time it hadn’t been. But Meg O’Connell and Bill Coggins were teachers, and Meg was actually a Senior Mistress at, of all places, St Ursula’s, a very, very nice private school for girls down in the city, or rather in one of its more exclusive suburbs. At the time St Ursie’s, as it was familiarly known, certainly by those who were forced to play netball or hockey against it, was gaining an excellent academic reputation under the guidance of its extremely capable headmistress, one Phoebe Fothergill; and duly expanding. St Ursie’s, in fact, needed an assistant art teacher, and kind-hearted Meg thought that if June could encourage her friend the potter to apply— After some hesitation (on the score of Michaela’s lack of suitable clothes, not her ability), June did.

    This could well have been counted as the third great stroke of luck in Michaela’s life. She hadn’t even had to go out and battle for the job, it had been more or less handed to her on a plate. Which was just as well, for Michaela had almost reached the end of her tether, though neither Bob nor June realized it—variously teaching art at Puriri High and working on your screen printing all night and most of the weekend, and turning out orders for fifty horrible cutesies a week without fail while bringing up three voracious and energetic boys does tend to absorb a fair amount of attention.

    During her interview with Michaela Daniels Phoebe Fothergill did recognize the signs of a person near the end of her tether, because not only was she a highly intelligent woman and a competent headmistress, she was—as indeed she needed to be in order to be such a successful headmistress—an expert in human emotional states. So she hired Michaela on a rather provisional basis, with plenty of mental reservations, and making a note to keep an eye on her. They had a lot of girls wanting to do art, Michaela’s speciality was pottery, a skill which the permanent art mistress lacked, and Phoebe Fothergill was the sort of person who, within reason, liked to give capable people who needed a bit of luck a chance.

    Michaela didn’t like snooty girls from nayce backgrounds who only took art because they fancied they had artistic leanings or wanted to wear pretty smocks or some such crap. However, to her surprise not all the St Ursie’s girls were like this, in fact by the time they’d got to the Sixth and Seventh Forms Phoebe Fothergill had more or less knocked even the sillier ones into the shape of the pleasantly spoken, good-mannered women they were shortly to become. If rather on the nayce side. So it wasn’t as bad as she had thought it would be. And the pay was good—at least, to Michaela, used to gardening at three dollars an hour, it was good.

    Unlike the permanent art mistress, not to mention the various part-time assistants they’d had off and on over the years, Phoebe Fothergill noticed with amazement, Michaela Daniels did not rip the school off by (a) doing her own work on its time, (b) using its materials and (c) using its facilities—a not inconsiderable point, the school had an electric kiln, not cheap to either install or run.

    Phoebe was then all the more upset when, after Michaela’s year of slogging, honest and conscientious work for her she had to say to her: “I’m terribly sorry to have to tell you this, Michaela, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to employ you next year.”

    It was at this point that all those years of battling swept back over Michaela with an awful rush and she just looked numbly at Miss Fothergill and didn’t say anything.

    Phoebe gave a tiny sigh. This interview was taking place—as did most of Phoebe’s tricky interviews with staff and girls alike—on the comfortable suite set before the French windows of her study. She had served tea and cakes; all the St Ursie’s senior girls could have told Michaela to watch out: when Old Featherbrain brought out the cakes you were For It. Now she picked up her cup and sipped it slowly, watching Michaela over the rim.

    The study was warm and cosy, though outside only a few sickly rays of sunlight had struggled through the lowering grey August sky. The suite, recently re-covered, was a soft tan velvet, the walls, recently repainted, were washed a soft but warm pale yellow, and the long curtains, also new, were in a William Morris-like pattern of greens and fawns with flashes of scarlet and yellow. On the low glass coffee table with its glowing brass frame stood a bowl of bright scarlet and yellow tulips. It was to be quite a while before the sane and sensible Miss Fothergill could fancy tulips in a room again.

    On the opposite wall the old clock that was Phoebe’s private property ticked with its comfortable clucking sound. Phoebe sipped tea and said nothing.

    Finally Michaela said hoarsely: “Why?”

    Phoebe sighed and put her cup down. “You know that Eileen’s leaving at the end of the year, of course?” –This was the permanent art mistress. Her husband, an English teacher, had got a very good job down in Christchurch, the whole of St Ursie’s knew that: Eileen had seen to it they did.

    “Yes,” said Michaela baldly.

    “We’ve had to hire a new permanent art teacher—one with teaching qualifications.” She hesitated. “I couldn’t suggest you apply, Michaela, you haven’t got your Dip.Ed., have you?”

    “No.”

    Miss Fothergill was going to continue but suddenly Michaela burst out: “But I don’t see why I have to leave, just because she’s going! Is it—is it a regulation?”

    Phoebe Fothergill had to swallow. There was something very touching about that sort of—well, you could call it naïveté if you liked, but it was more like innocence, actually. “No. It’s just that the person we’ve hired to replace her is a potter, so—”

    “So now you’ll need someone who can paint,” said Michaela dully.

    “Yes. Well, whose, specialty is painting, mm.”

    “I’ll ask Bob, he might know of someone.”

    “Thank you,” said Phoebe weakly.

    “Can I stay on for next term?” asked Michaela hoarsely.

    “Yes, of course. The new person won’t be starting until the beginning of next year.”

    “Why did you hire her?” asked Michaela abruptly.

    Phoebe hesitated. “Actually, it’s a man, not a woman. He has excellent teaching experience, a good reputation in the art world, and excellent references from his last school. The Board were all for him, and I had to agree with them that he was the outstanding applicant.”

    “I see.” After a moment she said: “Who is it? Maybe I know him.”

    Phoebe hesitated again. “You do realize this is confidential, Michaela? It hasn’t come out in the Education Gazette yet.”

    “What? Oh, that thing they all read. No, it’s all right, I won’t tell any of them.”

    “It’s Jack Hawthorne.”

    Michaela goggled at her. “His stuff’s putrid!” she gasped.

    Phoebe made an awful face. “I know.”

    The two women stared at each other.

    “He is an excellent teacher.”

    “Yeah, but have you seen any of his pupils’ work?” asked Michaela in a hollow voice.

    “Sheena McKenna was one of his pupils.”

    “Maybe, but is her stuff because of or in spite of him?”

    Phoebe gave a choke of laughter. “You’ve probably got a point! Oh, dear. I wish— Well, the other applicants were really hopeless.”

    “They must have been,” said Michaela numbly.

    “His work is very much appreciated in certain circles.”

    “So are June Butler’s pixies on toadstools in chewing-gum grey,” pointed out Michaela grimly. She stood up. “Thanks for telling me, Phoebe; I won’t tell anyone.”

    Phoebe got up, too. Michaela was holding her hand out: she took it, and held it gently in her own large but well-shaped, manicured one. “I’ll be very sorry to lose you, Michaela: I’ve enjoyed having you here, and I know the girls have, too.”

    “Thanks,” said Michaela gruffly.

    “If I could have thought of any way to keep you on, believe me—

    “That’s all right,” said Michaela, even more gruffly. She attempted to draw her hand away but Phoebe held on.

    “I’ve told you so far in advance because I want to give you plenty of time to look around for something else.”

    “I’ve lost all my clients,” replied Michaela.

    “What? Oh, your—your gardening clients?”

    “Yes. They get fed up when you tell them you can’t do it any more, because they rely on you, you see. So when they get someone else they won’t switch back.”

    Phoebe squeezed her hand and released it. “I really meant another teaching job. I’d be very happy to give you an excellent reference.

    “I haven’t got the qualifications,” said Michaela simply.

    “No, but you do have teaching experience, now; that counts for a lot. And—” She hesitated, but there seemed no point in not saying it, if it could help the poor woman. “You’re extremely honest, Michaela, quite unlike most art teachers; in my experience they only seem to be in the system in order to rip it off.”

    “I know. All my lecturers at Art School were like that,” said Michaela simply.

    “Mm. Well, I’ll certainly put it in your reference.”

    “There aren’t that many schools that teach art.”

    “No-o... There are plenty of night schools, though: you could teach pottery there, you know.”

    “Yes. If I can crack the system.”

    “Mm. Had you thought of applying at the Art School?”

    Michaela looked at her in horror.

    “You are very talented; and now that you’ve had teaching experience—”

    “They hate me.”

    “My dear—” said Phoebe weakly.

    “I’m not in the in-group, you see. Professor Barrington wouldn’t even give me a reference when I applied here. He said to go to the Registry and get a copy of my  academic record.”

    Phoebe had encountered this Barrington at various educationists’ does. She wasn’t surprized.

    “And Ken Priestly wrote an awful review of my last exhibition.”

    “I know. I went to it the day after I’d read it.”

    Michaela goggled at her.

    “His stuff stinks,” said Phoebe inelegantly. “I’ve never told you this because I— Well, it didn’t seem quite the right sort of thing to say, while you were employed at the School, but I’ve got one of your pots. I bought it at that exhibition.”

    “I only sold three.”

    “Yes. It’s the big brown knobby one.”

    “The puriri tree.”

    “Is that what you call it?”

    “Yes. It was a dead one. With fungus and things. It doesn’t look like a tree, of course.”

    It didn’t look much like a pot, either, but Phoebe was very fond of it. She said now: “I’m very fond of it: I call it Old Brown Blobby: I hope you don’t think that’s rude.”

    “No; that’s a good name for it.”

    “Yes.” She hesitated, then said: “Have you exhibited since then? I might have missed one, I was in the States for a term, you know.”

    “No. None of the galleries will have me.”

    “Why, in God’s name?” said Phoebe faintly.

    “I think it’s because of what Ken Priestly wrote. Well, before that it was a bit hard finding a gallery, but not impossible.”

    “But— After your year in Japan!”

    “Mm. It was too long—I was away too long. And then all the ones that didn’t get it were jealous of me, of course.”

    “Ken Priestly was the runner-up!” cried Phoebe.

    Michaela replied simply: “No. An art student was the runner-up. Ken Priestly was third.”

    “What a shit,” breathed Phoebe.

    “They all are,” replied Michaela without visible emotion.

    Phoebe looked at her in horror and indignation.

    “I’ve got used to it,” said Michaela. “I wouldn’t care, if I could earn enough to eat and pay for the roof over my head; only they won’t even let me do that.”

    Phoebe replied dubiously: “I suppose you could always turn out more commercial stuff—coffee mugs, that sort of thing—for your bread and butter?”

    “I’ve tried that. They sold all right but I found that my real stuff was getting awfully slick. So I stopped.”

    “Mm; I can see that would be a danger.”

    “I do do some coffee mugs,” confided Michaela abruptly. “There’s a shop in Puriri that takes them. Only if I did a lot more of that sort of stuff it’d be the same story all over again.”

    Phoebe had been struck by a thought during this confidence. “Mm...” She smiled at her suddenly. “Well, I’d better let you go, Michaela. But do keep an eye out for jobs in the Gazette, won’t you?”

    Michaela looked at her in horror.

    Mildly Phoebe added: “I realize that this’ll mean braving the staffroom; you could always do it at the end of the day, when they’re less likely to be in there.” She twinkled at her.

    Michaela had gone very red. Now she grinned, but remained very red. “Yes. –I didn’t know you’d noticed.”

    “It’s my job to notice that sort of thing,” murmured Phoebe.

    “Yes, I suppose it is.”

    Phoebe registered once again as she offered this reply how nicely spoken she was: a good girls’ boarding school, of course, and the family was quite well off, weren’t they? Should she mention the family? No, if they weren’t rallying round now it was highly unlikely that anything she said would make the slightest difference; and it would very likely embarrass the poor woman.

    “I’m no good at talking about that sort of stuff,” Michaela added abruptly.

    Phoebe’s wide mouth twitched. “Nor am I, really.”

    “Yes, you are; I think you’re very good at social stuff,” said Michaela—admiring, but glum, noted Phoebe with some amusement.

    “Mm; but that’s something I’ve learnt over the years. I still have to force myself to participate in chat about—well, you know: cats, and, um, food-processors—that sort of thing!” She laughed.

    “Yes,” said Michaela, grinning. “Can I ask you something?” she added.

    “Yes,” replied Phoebe simply.

    “Is a food-processor the same as a blender, and is a liquidizer the same thing?”

    Phoebe’s jaw dropped. Few things phased Phoebe Fothergill, but at this Phoebe’s jaw dropped. For a moment she thought Michaela was taking the Mickey—but no, she was perfectly serious. Weakly she formulated an appropriate reply.

    “I see,” said Michaela thoughtfully. “Thank you.”

    “Tell me,” said Phoebe, unable to stop herself: “wasn’t there anyone else you could have asked?”

    “Only June. I did ask her but she wasn’t sure. They did have a food-processor once, Bob’s mother gave it to them for Christmas, only Starsky mixed concrete in it.”

    “Concrete?” said Phoebe faintly.

    “Yes. He was building a model aerodrome, and he got some gravel from the creek and some mud, because he didn’t have any cement, and mixed it all up with some PVA glue.”

    “Good-bye, food-processor,” said Phoebe drily.

    “Yes. It was quite a clever idea, really. Anyway, June knew it was a food-processor because that’s what it said on the box, but she wasn’t too sure about the other ones.”

    “I see.”

    “And anyone else would have laughed. Well, I don’t think Meg would, only I thought she mightn’t know, either.”

    Phoebe thought this was all too likely. “Mm.”

    “It’s not that I care about them laughing, only I thought they wouldn’t give me the answer.”

    “No, they probably wouldn’t have.”

    “It’s not that I’m thinking of buying— I’m sorry,” said Michaela abruptly.

    “Don’t be. Most people lose all intellectual curiosity round about the time they start taking a breathless interest in—er—cats and food-processors. It’s most refreshing to meet one who hasn’t.”

    “I think that must be why they’re so boring,” said Michaela slowly.

    “I’m pretty bloody sure it must!” gasped Phoebe.

    Michaela gave her a startled look.

    “Oh, dear! Thank Christ there’s Louise’s office and a nice long corridor between us and the bloody staffroom!” gasped Phoebe.

    “Yes; their feelings would probably be hurt if they heard you going on like that,” said Michaela serenely.

    “Yeah. That’s why I don’t do it unless I’m pretty damn sure of my company,” replied Phoebe, grinning all over her face.

    Michaela was very red again. “Thanks,” she said gruffly. “I never knew you were like that.”

    “Most of the time I can’t afford to be,” replied Phoebe, rather wry. “Look—Michaela, I know you can’t afford to return hospitality, or that sort of thing, but would you care to come to dinner at my place some time? There’s a couple of friends of mine I think you might enjoy meeting. –I promise we won’t expatiate on the virtues of food-processors all night if you do!” she added, grinning.

    “Thank you. I’d like to, but I haven’t got any clothes.”

    “I know. Just wear what you’d wear to school.”

    Michaela looked down limply at her ancient jeans, hand-mended sneakers, and large grey man’s jersey (half the price of the women’s ones) over a large washed-out checked man’s shirt (a fraction of the price of women’s blouses). “Are you sure?”

    “Yes. They won’t care what you wear.”

    “I’d love to, then; thank you very much.”

    “Good. –You’re not on the phone, are you?”

    “No. But Mrs Lambert, she’s my neighbour, she’ll take a message for me or Bryn.”

    “Bryn?”

    “My student. I did have two but the other one gave up his degree. I suppose I’ll have to get another one in, now.”

    “Oh, yes: your boarder!”

    “Yes,” said Michaela, grinning: “only I have to call him my flatmate, otherwise my landlord’d chuck me out.”

    Phoebe chuckled. She made sure there was a note of this number in the files, and for good measure took the Butlers’ number as well. Promising to ring Michaela very soon to fix a date for the dinner, if she didn’t catch her at school before they broke up for the August Holidays, she showed her out. She was quite aware, as she did so, that Michaela didn’t believe for one minute that the invitation was genuine.

    “How’d it go?” asked Louise, coming in about two minutes after Michaela had gone.

    “Pretty bloody,” admitted Phoebe glumly.

    “Mm. She didn’t bawl, or anything?” her secretary asked cautiously.

    “No: she’s not that sort. I thought she was going to pass out, though.”

    “It’s an awful pity,” sighed Louise, leaning heavily on the back of the sofa.

    Phoebe had gone back to her armchair and was staring unseeingly at the tulips. “Mm.”

    “Wasn’t there anything you could do, Phoebe?”

    “Not with the whole ruddy Board lined up against me, no!”

    “Oh: no, I suppose... Was the Queen Mother all for this new bloke?”

    Unerringly identifying Belinda, Lady Cohen, as the St Ursula’s Board member to whom this unlikely appellation was being applied, Phoebe replied glumly: “Too right. She reckons he’s bringing taste back to New Zealand ceramics, or some such damn thing.”

    “Taste?” said Louise doubtfully.

    “It’s those bloody dinky gold edgings he puts on everything. Not to mention the powder blue he goes in for: his last exhibition was composed almost entirely of stuff the identical colour of the hat the Q.M. was wearing at the dratted interview!”

    “Oh, dear. –Some of us yobs think those gold rims are quite pretty.”

    “‘Quite pretty’ describes them rather well,” said Phoebe acidly. “They just don’t happen to be art.”

    “Us yobs don’t really mind that.”

    “Tell us about it.”

    Smiling, Louise Churton replied: “The gels’ mothers’ll love him, by the sound of him.”

    “Mm. The naycer suburbs’ll be awash with quayte pretty pastel vases.”

    “Gold-rimmed quayte pretty pastel vases,” corrected Louise, grinning.

    “Yeah. Why don’t you push off and pretend to be a real secretary, or something?”

    “Just tell me one thing first.”

    “Go on,” said Phoebe with a groan.

    “Did Sir John Westby support the Q.M. in this pro the powder-blue, gold-rimmed bloke stance?”

    “Mm-hm; I think it would be fair to say he let himself be guided in this matter by her irreproachable taste.”

    Gulping, her secretary said feebly: “He didn’t actually say that, did he?”

    “More or less; he is a tit, you know.”

    “Yes,” said Louise weakly. “Um, that reminds me. Isn’t her granddaughter’s baby due soon?”

    “Allyson Shapiro? That’s right. The Q.M.’s really peeved about it—well, not grandchildren as such, I don’t think, but the fact that she’ll still be Allyson Shapiro by the time she has it. Not that it was put so baldly to me.” She shrugged. “Poor Q.M. Probably only consoled by the news that Susan Shapiro’s bloke’s the heir to the Harding fortune.”

    “WHAT?” screamed Louise.

    “Oh, we are behind the times, aren’t we? Yes; Susan’s getting married quite soon. Next week, I think.”

    “I don’t believe it!” Louise glared at her. “You’re pulling my leg, Phoebe!”

   “No; honest.”

    Louise stared at her. Phoebe looked bland. Finally Louise said feebly: “Who told you, anyway?”

    Initially it had been Nat Weintraub, son-in-law to the Queen Mother, who had imparted this interesting piece of family gossip to Miss Fothergill, who in their mutual spare time—well, Wednesday evenings, usually—was Nat Weintraub’s mistress. Phoebe didn’t disclose this to the school secretary: Louise, in spite of her manner, would have been horrified.

    “The Queen Mother in person. She was full of it. Making a virtue of necessity, by the sound of it: I gather the young couple want a very quiet wedding. While she—”

    “Say no more! Oh, dear, poor Q.M.! That’ll make three lots of white satin and orange blossom she’ll’ve missed out on, eh? I mean, what with Pauline Weintraub’s—that was only Registry Office, wasn’t it? And I can’t imagine they’ll have a big fuss for Allyson. Unless they brazen it out and have the offspring as pageboy or something!”

    “Not the Q.M.’s style,” replied Phoebe, grinning. “You wouldn’t like to bring me a fresh pot of tea, would you?”

    “Righto,” said Louise obligingly, scooping up the tray and exiting.

    Phoebe smiled a little. She did feel quite a lot better. But underneath it she also felt quite depressed about having to sack nice, capable, and very interesting Michaela Daniels. Her departure would leave the staff rather thin on the kindred-spirit side and rather heavy on the breathless-interest-in-food-processors side.

    Of course, a headmistress couldn’t play favourites with either staff or gels. So perhaps in one way it wasn’t a pity, if one was being sensible. But Phoebe didn’t know that she wanted to be totally sensible all the time. Most of those who imagined they knew her would have been stunned to learn this. Even Nat Weintraub, her genial, florid, middle-aged lover. He knew she was hot stuff, of course. But any bloke with red blood in ’is veins that got a gander at those tits, those hips and thighs, and that mouth of hers would, in Nat’s opinion, have drawn that conclusion. Unless ’e was blind, or something. But besides knowing she was hot stuff, Nat would most certainly have maintained she was sensible. Down-to-earth type. Ya know?

    Phoebe found she was glaring at the tulips. After a certain period she got up and took the bowl out to Louise’s desk.

    When Louise came in again with a fresh pot of tea, Phoebe was at her big desk, writing. “Don’t you want those tulips?” she said uncertainly.

    “Mm? No; I’m a bit sick of them. Take them home, if you’d like to.”

    “All right; ta.” She put the tray on the edge of the desk. Phoebe thanked her absently.

    Replying politely: “Think nothing of it: we exist to serve,” Louise went over to the door. There she paused, and looked at her boss dubiously. Phoebe was writing again. Louise went out without saying anything.

    “Would it be a fancy do?” asked Polly Carrano cautiously.

    Phoebe was rather flushed, but fortunately Polly couldn’t see this, over the phone. She knew Polly only slightly, from their mutual membership of the University Women’s Association. This wouldn’t have made her hesitate to ask her to dinner, though. Nor, actually, would the fact that not so long since she had more or less steamrollered Polly into agreeing to pre-enrol her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter for St Ursula’s Junior School. And the fact that Polly, who must be in her mid-thirties, was at least ten years Phoebe’s junior was irrelevant. No, Phoebe’s disturbance was caused by the fact that Polly Mitchell, who in her professional life taught linguistics at the university, in private life was Mrs Jake Carrano, wife of the richest businessmen in the country. Even Phoebe felt it was a bit of a cheek, asking a woman whom she knew only slightly and who undoubtedly had a very busy social calendar, not to say three kids under five, to dinner at very short notice. –She would have got the other two kids enrolled for St Ursie’s, too, only unfortunately they were boys.

    In some ways, Polly Carrano was rather like Michaela Daniels, she thought weakly now. That directness... At times it sounded like simple-mindedness; but Polly was, Phoebe knew very well, a highly intelligent person. Perhaps that was it: the sort of brightness that found the usual social circumlocutions unnecessary? Maybe...

    “Ah—no,” she said, coming to with an effort. “No, I was just going to say it’ll be totally casual. No dressing-up; and only a handful of people.”

    “That sounds great. Jake’ll be away, but I’d love to come; thanks, Phoebe.”

    “Good. I’ll expect you—oh, any time between seven and eight: the rest of them will probably come early so as to get down on my grog, so just come when it suits, Polly.”

    “All right. I like to say goodnight to the boys, and they usually go down round seven, so I’ll probably get there around eight.”

    “That’d be fine. –I keep forgetting how far oop country you live!” she added mendaciously. The Carranos’ living up at Pohutukawa Bay in Puriri County was one of the reasons why she’d decided to ask them on this particular occasion.

    “Nay, well, us rural folk... I could probably make it in half an hour, I’ve got a wicked new car, but Jake’d have a heart attack if I tried it.”

    Phoebe didn’t point out that he wouldn’t know. “What is it?”

    Polly gave a nervous giggle. “It’s a black Lamborghini. It’s really gorgeous!”

    “Why is it that dratted Meg O’Connell has not conveyed this succulent piece of Puriri County gossip to our staffroom?” demanded Phoebe crossly.

    Polly replied with a smile in her voice: “I can tell you that, actually, because her son Michael told me. I gave him a lift the other day, he’s really keen on cars, and he said he’d told Meg I’d got a Lamborghini, and Meg said if he told another lie like that she’d wash his mouth out with soap.”

    “I can see that this disbelief explains why she hasn’t spread the story around, but why won’t she believe the poor little squirt? Let’s face it, the whole country knows Jake can afford to buy you different-coloured Lamborghinis for every day of the week if he feels like it!”

    “Michael says she reckons they’re racing cars!” gasped Polly.

    Phoebe went into a paroxysm. “Oh, dear,” she sighed at the end of it. “Poor dear Meg: one shouldn’t laugh at their simplicity, really!”

    “Mm! Mind you, she’s lovely, isn’t she?”

    Phoebe agreed feebly that Meg was lovely, said she’d expect Polly on the appointed Thursday, then, and rang off.

    “Oh, Gawd,” she said to Old Brown Blobby. “We’re gonna be a right lot!”

    Old Brown Blobby—it was a habit of his which Phoebe very much liked—just sat there looking incredibly solid, and brown, and salt-of-the-earthish. Mm; nice.

    In pursuance of her solution to the problem of Michaela Daniels, Phoebe would have liked to hold this do in the first week of the holidays. Only that would have been far too short a notice for that social calendar of Mrs Jake Carrano’s. And Polly had to be there (it didn’t matter so much about Jake) if the solution was going to work. So it had to be the third week: Phoebe had booked to go down to The Chateau for some skiing the second week and there would have been no hope of changing the booking in the middle of the season.

    Having got it all arranged she felt a bit better about it. Well, doing something was at least better than doing nothing! And if it was true that the Carranos went in for collecting bits and pieces of modern art, then surely Michaela was in there with a chance, if Polly Carrano had any taste at all! Which, judging by the clothes she wore, she must do. Some of the jewellery was a bit— But then, Phoebe Fothergill supposed vaguely, perhaps He chose that.

     So Phoebe duly rang up Michaela’s neighbour, Mrs Lambert. She sounded practically gaga: Phoebe was in considerable doubt that she’d remember to pass the message on, so she left a second message with June Butler. And departed for some fresh air and healthy exercise still feeling uneasy about Michaela, but also, for she was really a very sensible woman in spite of those from-time-to-time feelings, considering that she’d done all that was within her power to do.

    Michaela, of course—though she got the messages—had no idea either that Phoebe saw her as a problem which needed a solution, or that the dinner party had any sort of ulterior motive except the usual one of getting some solid food into her, Michaela. The which—since June’s, Meg’s, and Tom and Jemima’s dinners all had it as their ulterior motive—Michaela supposed Phoebe’s might well have, too.

    So by the time Phoebe got into her neat little Mazda and roared off down to the mountain, not long after the Harding-Shapiro wedding, Michaela, having no idea that her troubles might soon be over, had counted her pennies and was wondering where her next meal—or next year’s meals, rather—would be coming from. So she was very, very glad to be offered three dollars an hour by Tom Overdale to help with his roof. And was looking forward like anything to getting on with it on Saturday week.

Next chapter:

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