Ring In The New

11

Ring In The New

    Next morning Phoebe Fothergill got up rather late, dragged herself blearily into her neat yellow and white bathroom, looked blearily at the baggy, hungover countenance in the mirror, pulled a horrible face at it and told it: “You’re a blithering idiot, woman.”

    Then—for she was really a very strong-minded woman—she had a warm shower, got into shorts and a tee-shirt, drank a glass of chilled grapefruit juice and went for a run. When she came back she had another glass of grapefruit juice followed by a cup of black coffee and a piece of toast on which, after some deep breathing, she spread Vegemite. But no butter or marg. Even Phoebe wasn’t that strong-minded.

    Then she got herself a third glass of grapefruit juice and retired to bed—which looked out over the harbour—to read the morning paper.

    ... Ooh, the New Year’s Honours list, how exciting. ...Good God. Well, it had to come, of course. ...Good GRIEF! Cor blimey, in fact!

    “Ooh, Phoebe,” she said to herself, grimacing. “You been done—well, half-done—by a very-nearly-almost knight!”

     At this she got up determinedly, threw the paper to the floor and marched into the bathroom to have a proper shower before getting properly dressed. In the shower she laughed suddenly.

    “Well, at least now I don’t have to go to bed with Westby in order to find out whether getting your K makes ya do it different!” she gasped.

    Next morning Tom Overdale opened his morning paper with great pleasure. All crisp and crackly, newly delivered: to the huge surprize of Bill Coggins and Meg O’Connell it was actually possible to get the paper delivered at Waikaukau Junction. True, it was officially part of Puriri County. Which didn’t mean the paper always did get delivered.

    What, no train crashes, great floods, Channel disasters, or even explosions in obscure Indian chemical factories on the front page? Aw, how disappointing. He turned over. Sigh, yawn.

    “Don’t read it if it’s that bad,” suggested Jemima, momentarily glancing up from Bleak House. John Aitken had recently discovered she hadn’t read it. How he had got her to read it, Tom had no idea. She had steadily resisted every blessed suggestion he himself had ever made as to her intellectual pursuits—at which stage he’d actually got the point. What the fuck did Aitken have that he didn’t?

    “I’ve gotta keep up with World Ee-vents!” he complained. “How else am I gonna be a well-rounded personality?”

    “Not by reading that rag, that’s for sure.”

    “All right, how else am I gonna be a warped personality?” he whinged.

    “That’s more like it,” said Jemima, firmly retiring into Bleak House.

    Tom sipped orange juice. Ugh, God, horrible: natural fruit juice at this hour of the morning! He read on: Jesus, it was mind-bogglingly cretinous...

    Ooh, the New Year’s Honours list, how exciting...

    “FUCK ME!” he roared.

    Jumping, Jemima protested: “I thought I just did, a little while ago. What on earth’s the matter?”

    “Look!” he croaked, thrusting the paper at her with a palsied hand.

    Jemima looked without interest. “Oh, dear, Polly’s going to hate that.”

    “Eh?”

    “They’ll call her ‘Lady’; help, she’ll never hear the last of it at work! Still, she’s not teaching next year, I mean this year, she’s only supervising some theses.”

    Tom had snatched the paper back. “Cor blimey, just shows you don’t actually have to vote for ’em, eh? All it takes is money.”

    “He did endow Puriri Hospital.”

    “Spare me the list of Jake Carrano’s benefactions to the country, the world, the universe,” he sighed. “Anyway, not him: look!”

    “Ooh, help! ‘Sir Ralph’.”

    Suddenly Tom had a helpless sniggering fit. Jemima joined in but he had a fair idea that she didn’t grasp all the implications, most of which were along the lines of: Had Bill seen this, and: Was there another epic in there somewhere?

    “This is it,” noted Polly as the phone shrilled in her parents’ passage.

    “Mm. Shoulda forced Dave to accept that bloody answering-machine,” he grunted.

    “Yes. Well, at least we’ve warned all the aunties,” she said glumly.

    “Yeah. –I suppose we oughta get up.”

    “Why? Mum will’ve fed the kids”—she looked at his little travelling clock—“Ouch! Hours and hours ago. And Dad’ll be well out of it: he’s not dumb.”

    “Very true, Lady Carrano,” he said meanly.

    “And it’s not lunchtime yet. Well, not quite.”

    “How did we get back from Vic’s place last night?”

    “I rode back,” said Polly in a virtuous voice. “Since I’d ridden over there.”

    Jake groaned. He tried to think up something really squashing to squash her with but before he could there was a tap on the door.

    It immediately opened—too bad if they’d been doing it—and his mother-in-law said: “Jake, dear, there’s a man on the phone for you.

    “Who is it, Maureen?”

    Maureen’s eyes were round as saucers. “It’s Television New Zealand!” she gasped.

    “Mum, that’s the Press!” cried Polly. “We told you to tell them he wasn’t here!”

    “Not the television, dear,” protested Maureen.

    Polly groaned loudly and buried her face in her pillow.

    Jake tweaked his wife’s curls. He looked at his mother-in-law’s round pink face, and thought better of asking her to tell the man, Television Fucking New Zealand or not, that he wasn’t taking any calls.

    “All right, Maureen,” he said, sighing. “I’m coming.” What with the fog and the grog he just about threw back the sheet, but stopped himself in time. “Uh—chuck us me dressing-gown, wouldja, Maureen?” he said sheepishly.

    Pinkening, Maureen gave him his dressing-gown and retired precipitately.

    “I warned you,” his wife moaned into her pillow.

    “You did indeed, Lady Carrano.”

    He went out before she could biff the pillow at him. He heard it hit the door, though.

    Next morning Michaela and Hugh had a very belated breakfast. Starting with scrambled eggs and coffee, but leaving themselves the option of fruit afterwards, if they felt like it. Over it Hugh told her rather a lot about his sad and unsatisfactory life and how Caroline and he were totally unsuited both sexually and temperamentally. He could hear himself doing it but he had no impulse to stop.

    “I do enjoy my work,” he ended, grimacing, “but it’s come to mean less and less to me, lately.”

    “I think it sounds interesting. Cutting up bones and things.”

    He knew she was interested in the structure of things now, so he didn’t take this remark at face value. “Yes. But there comes a point where one recognizes each problem as it comes along—at least in kind—and it’s only a matter of applying a known solution in a specific way.” He shrugged a little. “There’s a limit to the number of variations you can reasonably expect, you see.”

    A more flippant woman, or one more into current speech habits, might have said “Been there, done that,” at this juncture; and in fact in the past at least one had. But Hugh wasn’t surprised when Michaela didn’t, only thought it over, frowning a little, and replied slowly: “Yes. It’s a bit like pots.”

    “Yes: you work through all the possible—uh—permutations of a particular style; yes, I see that. Only you can always drop that style and go in for something completely different, with pots. I mean, like you and your new slab pots.”

    “Yes.”

    Hugh made a face. “I think I’m more at the stage of being sick of the clay itself.”

    “That’s bad,” said Michaela simply.

    “Mm.” Part of his mind was asking itself uneasily what the Hell he thought he was doing, getting involved with this simple-minded potter who must be twenty years his junior, but Hugh ignored it. “Want some fruit?” he asked, smiling.

    She looked wistfully over at the pawpaw in the fruit bowl on the bench. “Um—could I have a bit of that?”

    “The pawpaw? Of course. Hang on,” he added, getting up.

    She looked in awe at the result: half a well-sized pawpaw in a soup bowl, its seeds neatly removed, and its innards sprinkled with a little raw sugar. “This is too much,” she said faintly.

    Wilfully misunderstanding, Hugh replied: “Well, just leave it if you can’t get through it.” He hid behind the morning paper, smiling. In its shelter he heard Michaela say dubiously: “We could share it.” He didn’t reply. Michaela said: “Well, all right...”

    “Good?” he asked after a little, lowering the paper.

    She nodded hard. “Lovely! It’s a super breakfast; thanks, Hugh. You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble. I mean, just toast would have been fine.”

    “That’s okay. I usually make myself a decent breakfast in the weekends. Well, I get my own every day, in any case: Caroline rarely surfaces until I’m out of the house. And I don’t think Mitsy ever gets up till noon.”

    “That’s your daughter, isn’t it?”

    “Mm.”

    “And you’ve got a son, too, haven’t you?”

    “I’ve got a male offspring who’s fixated on rugby: yeah.”

    “Does he live at home?”

    “No, he’s grown up, thank God—well, legally. His brain is that of a retarded ten-year-old. A retarded rugby-fixated ten-year-old.”

    Michaela looked at him dubiously. “Has he got a job?”

    “Oh, yes: he’s twenty-four, you know. Yes, he works for—well, you won’t have heard of it. A large sporting-goods shop which gives him plenty of time off to practise rugby, play rugby, get fit for rugby and coach others in rugby. In return for which he lends them the honour of his illustrious name by appearing in their fucking ads on TV.”

    Michaela frowned in a puzzled way. “Do you mean he’s an All Black?”

    “No, he wouldn’t need a job at all if he was an All Black,” said Hugh nastily. “He’d be getting too many sponsorships and kick-backs and God knows what—until it got too blatant and he had to retire in a blaze of glory, whereupon some miserable hack would ghost his autobiography and he’d live off the income from that and his TV appearances until they offered him a job at actual Television New Zealand as a sports-caster. –No, ” he said to her bewildered expression: “he’s an Auckland Rep.”

    “Oh! Tom and Jemima know one of those!” she said, enlightenment spreading all over her face. “He works at Tom’s school. Jemima says he’s a twerp.”

    “Well said, Jemima,” replied Hugh drily.

    “Yes. Has your daughter got a job?”

    “No,” he said, sighing. “Twenty-one and dumb as they come. Never done a day’s work in her life. Caroline informs me she doesn’t need to.”

    Michaela stared at him, mouth slightly open.

    Hugh’s lips twisted sourly. “I can afford to support her, you see.”

    “Lucky her!” said Michaela with a sudden grin, attacking the remains of her paw-paw.

    Hugh went back to the paper. “Oh, Gawd: look at this, bloody Ralph’s got his K! No wonder he was slinging the bubbly round last night!”

    “What?”

    He folded the paper back and showed her the paragraphs accompanying the New Year’s Honours list.

    “That means he’ll be a ‘Sir’, doesn’t it?”

    “Yeah. Well, more accurately it means Audrey’ll be a ‘Lady’, and Caroline’ll nag me to death on the topics of why haven’t I been bashed on the shoulder; why should anyone think Ralph’s better at his job than I am; why shouldn’t I have been bashed on the shoulder, I’m the same age as him, and—uh—associated topics,” he ended weakly, catching sight of her face. “I’m sorry, Michaela, you don’t want to hear the gruesome details of our up-market lifestyle on this side of the Remmers tracks, do you?”

    “No. –I thought this was Parnell, not Remuera?”

    “Yes, but the right part of Parnell: the Remmers side, see? –Oh, by the way, your cousin’s husband’s been knighted, too, did you know?”

    “Yes, Aunty Vi rang me up and said he was going to be; well, she rang up Mrs Lambert, and I was there,” said Michaela glumly.

    She had mentioned this Aunty Vi before, so Hugh replied with a laugh in his voice: “How in God’s name did she get your number?”

    “From Aunty Maureen: Polly’s mother,” said Michaela sadly.

    “And dare one ask where Aunty Maureen got it from?” He lowered the paper and twinkled at her, expecting her to say that the woman had winkled it out of her.

    But Michaela said glumly: “Out of Polly’s address book. Polly was awfully cross with her.”

    Swallowing, Hugh said: “I gather she belongs to—er—an older generation of New Zealanders?”

    “Yes, she’s in her sixties.”

    That wasn’t what he’d meant, but he smiled, and let it go.

    “Well, what do you want to do with the rest of the day?” he said, after he’d shown her how to load the dishwasher.

    She looked at him longingly but obviously didn’t dare to speak.

    “Go on, spit it out!” he said, laughing.

    “Um—well... Could we go in your spa pool? You said you had one,” she reminded him. “The neighbours wouldn’t see us, would they?”

    “No, it’s quite private. All right, Pink Pearl, if that’s what you’d like to do.”

    “Yes. Um, I was just thinking,” said Michaela, going very red: “maybe I’d better ring up Tom and Jemima and, um—”

    “Let them know you’re not still at Ralph’s?”

    “Yes.”

    “There’s the phone,” he said, smiling. Perhaps a gentleman would have left the room at this point, but Hugh had been aware for some years now that he wasn’t one of those.

    “Hullo, Tom,” she said in a small voice. “It’s Michaela here.”

    The phone said something and she replied: “No. I’m at Hugh’s.”

    The phone said something else and Michaela, going very red, said: “Yes.”

    “WHAT?” squawked the phone.

    Hugh wondered if he should dash to the rescue but Michaela said loudly: “Yes. And anyway, so what?”

    The phone definitely said something but Michaela didn’t reply, just stood there, scowling. After it had squawked at her again she said into it, not sounding as if she was replying, however: “Well, I just thought I’d let you know where I was. So as you wouldn’t think I might need a lift. See ya.” She hung up.

    “That was Tom, I gather,” said Hugh on a dry note.

    “Yeah.”

    “Ignore him, he’s a tit from way back.”

    “That’s more or less what he said about you!” she revealed with her slow smile.

    … “I think we could drive you home now, Pink Pearl,” he said regretfully as the sky darkened at last and the Parkinsons’ old mum who was staying with them for the holidays finally stopped watering the bloody back lawn—why she took it upon herself to do so Hugh had no idea, but she did it every summer holidays—and retired indoors. Hotly pursued, he very much hoped, by a horde of mozzies.

    “Has she gone inside?” asked Michaela, glancing up from her cross-legged pose on the rug with his T’ang Potter.

    Hugh withdrew his head from the curtains. “Yeah. Michaela, would it— Well, you know the family’s away; I don’t want to keep you from your work, but would it be a terrible imposition if I came on back with you?”

    Michaela replied slowly: “To stay, do you mean?”

    “Mm. Just for a day or so, you know!” he said with a nervous laugh. “You haven’t got a boarder at the moment, have you?”

    “No, Bryn’s gone home. Um—I’ve got a lot of work to do,” she said slowly.

    “Well, couldn’t I help? I’m not too hopeless now, am I? I could do the more boring bits for you—well, some of them: chop wood and—uh—work the clay and so on.”

    “Ye-es...” Working the clay was an emotional necessity to Michaela but she was incapable of explaining this. “I like working the clay. I suppose there might be a few things you could do,” she added dubiously.

    Hugh’s heart beat very fast but he was damned if he could tell whether it was fear of rejection per se or fear of rejection by Michaela.

    “I’m not used to having anyone in the flat... I mean, you know. I mean, Bryn just does his own thing.”

    “Yes. I would try not to distract you.”

    “Mm. I get up very early. Because of the light.”

    “In that case, all I can say is I would try to stop myself from trying to distract you!”

    “No; the thing is, I’d want to be distracted.”

    “Is that bad?” he murmured.

    “It is for me; because if I didn’t get the work done then, I wouldn’t get it done at all.”

    Hugh was rather flushed. “I see; in other words, I’d be a damned nuisance.”

    Frowning, Michaela said: “It isn’t that. I’m no good at explaining things...”

    She didn't elaborate so he said “Well, if I just come over when it’s convenient, then?”

    “Do you mean just while your wife’s away?”

    “What? No! For God’s sake, this wasn’t meant to be a bloody one-night stand, I thought you understood that?”

    “Not really. Well, you never said so.”

    Hugh was about to retort should he have spelled it out, but didn’t, realising that he should have. “I’ve got a lot of respect for you, Michaela—and admiration. I—well, you know my situation. I can’t promise anything. But if you’d like to, I’d like it to go on as—as long as possible.”

    “The thing is, I’d get used to it.”

    “Used to it?” he echoed blankly.

    “Yes. You know: sex and that.”

    Weakly he returned: “Would this be entirely bad? Quite a few people do it. Or so I’m led to believe.”

    Michaela explained: “And then when you wanted to stop I’d have to start all over again.”

    “I—” Hugh broke off. He took a deep breath. “Setting aside the fact that I might not want to stop, do you mean emotionally, or what?”

    “I get used to people,” said Michaela earnestly.

    He rubbed his forehead. “Mm. Well, I don’t see there’s much more I can say, Michaela. I’d try not to get in the way of your work, and I’d like to go on seeing you, but—but if you feel you can’t cope with having me around, then... It’s up to you.”

    “Would you—I mean, say you wanted to come over or something. Would you just come? Or—or would you ring up and leave a message for me?”

    He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what she wanted him to say. “Uh—well, whichever you wanted. How would you like to arrange it?”

    “It would be better if I knew. Then I wouldn’t have to stay at home all the time in case you came.”

    “Stay— Good Christ!” After a moment he asked dazedly: “Is that what that bloke used to expect you to do?”

    “Yes. He used to get really wild if I was out when he came.”

    “I don’t think I’m that sort,” said Hugh feebly. “At least, I’ve never thought of myself as that sort. Surely you can’t seriously imagine that I’d carry on like that?”

    “I don’t know,” said Michaela vaguely. “I don’t know much about men, really. I’m no good at all that stuff.”

    “All what stuff?”

    “We-ell, you know. Feminine stuff.”

    “Well, thank God for that!” he said with a sudden laugh. “I’ve had enough of all that feminine stuff to last me three hundred lifetimes. It’s the last thing I want from you, I do assure you!”

    “Well, I suppose we could try... If you come for a few days you could mend the shed roof.”

    He brightened. “Whatever you say! But I’m not much of a carpenter.”

    “It doesn’t need a carpenter, it needs tar. I know how to do it, it’s easy. Only I was wondering how to fit it in.”

    “Well, I’m pretty good at helping you to fit things in!” said Hugh, chuckling. “I’ll just shove a few things into a kit-bag!”

    “Okay.”

    He hurried out, his blood fizzing. Probably he was doing the bloody stupidest thing he could possibly do. But he knew he had to do it.

    Michaela stared blankly in front of her, scowling. Hugh was all right, and sex with him was good. He made her feel lovely when they were in bed. Only she did have a lot of work to do. And she didn’t want to get all involved, it never worked out.

    But when he came back into the room her heart raced and her body felt hot and excited and she smiled eagerly at him without either meaning to or being able to stop herself.

    “So you’re going,” said Abe in a grumpy voice.

    “Uh-huh.”

    Abe waited for him to say “Sure looks that way,” because when he did he was gonna clobber him, but good: he’d had it up to here with— But Sol didn’t.

    “What’s so good about a dump like that? What’s it got that you haven’t got right here?”

    “Clean air?”

    They were out in the boat on a glorious fine Florida day, but Abe missed the opportunity to point this out and instead retorted: “Oh, sure! Like the smog over the city that morning Susan drove us over that bridge of theirs, huh?”

    “I’m not gonna live in the city. And you ever seen downtown Miami on a fine spring morning?”

    Abe ignored this last. “No, you’re gonna live up that Carter’s Bay dump! Boy, that’s an even worse dump than that Wai-cow dump! Boy, you just gotta lost your marbles to wanna go bury yourself in a dead-and-alive hole like that, fella! Hell, there ain’t much more than one man and a dog and a gas station there, and now I come to think of it I never saw no dog, neither!”

    “Plus also the boat refuelling station at the marina in Kingfisher Bay. And I’m not sure I will settle in Carter’s Bay itself. I thought further along the Inlet.”

    There was a moment’s silence. “Near that Kingfisher Bay, huh? Say, now, that Jake Carrano was telling me he’s putting in a golf course up there: there’d be a real good opportunity for a sporting-goods store there, Sol!”

    “Yeah.”

    “Don’t display no enthusiasm here, will ya, Sol!” roared Abe.

    “You’re scaring away the snook.”

    “What snook?” replied his brother sourly, reeling in his line.

    Sol noted neutrally: “Kingfisher Bay’s full of ageing yuppies with wives in Gucci sailing clothes. Plus the tourists.”

    “So who says they won’t want a round of golf?”

    “Uh—nobody. Well, I guess if Jake Carrano thinks they can use a golf course, they can use a golf course.”

    Abe eyed him warily.

    “Question is, do I wanna cater to the golfing or even the sailing needs of ageing yuppies with wives in Gucci sailing clothes?”

    “Who cares what their wives wear, it’s your ready-made market!” replied Abe angrily. “And anyroad, Pat says they don’t wear that Gucci stuff, it was some Australian guy’s stuff the boutiques were full of for leisure wear. And there wasn’t a single boutique up there, even that Royal Kingfisher Hotel only had that one place that sold mostly tourist junk, remember?”

    “Possibly I should open a combined boating-golfing-supplies store and leisure-wear boutique, then,” drawled Sol.

    “Yeah, and possibly if ya had the business brain of a roach ya would!”

    “Ooh, gee, that was below the belt,” he murmured.

    “The opportunity’s there, the market’s there, a guy ’ud have to be stupid not to go for it, Sol!”

    “Yeah.”

    Abe breathed heavily. Sol reeled in a hefty snook.

    Finally Abe said: “Well, what did old Jerry Cohen say?”

    “That he guessed I’d find the trade there was seasonal. But I might do good enough in the summer to keep the place afloat for the rest of the year, providing I can save on overheads. And that in the off-season the Royal Kingfisher Hotel’s getting to be a favourite conference venue, had I thought what sort of business I might do in relation to that.”

    Abe rubbed his nose. “Conferences, huh?”

    “Yeah. And before you ask, the hotel’s got the food and liquor side of it well sewn up.”

    Abe merely sniffed.

    “As far as I can see the only place that’d do any good in conjunction with a conference centre in the middle of nowhere in mid-winter ’ud be a combined nightclub and brothel,” said Sol sourly. “Oh, with a hire trade in blue movies. Only I’d guess the video store in Carter’s Bay’s got that sewn up.”

    “What about the wives?”

    “Huh?”

    “During the day! What about the wives?”

    “Oh. Would many guys take their wives? –Well, I guess there’s day tours, I know the tourists take those.”

    “One of them boutiques with the fancy knits and the yarns,” said Abe slowly. “Like Susan and Allyson took us to: where Pat bought all them sweaters. Hand-knits, ya know?”

    “Ye-ah... Well, I guess hand-knits might have more appeal than golfing accessories, uh-huh.”

    “And then there was that other place— Now, we oughta get Pat in on this, guy!”—Sol cringed.—“You didn’t come that day, I guess you— I dunno, was that the day you went by yourself to visit with that nice lady potter? Anyroad, Belinda took me and Pat to this real nice little—now, gee, I guess it was some kind of a craft boutique. It had them fancy knits, too, but other stuff as well, pots and wood-carvings and such.”

    “Wood-carvings?” said Sol in a hollow voice.

    “Not that fake Maori crap! Say, that’s even more hideous than that fake Hawaiian stuff, huh? Sorta junk poor Edie useda buy by the ton.” He sighed nostalgically. “No, this was real toney: high class, ya know? That was where Pat bought that big wooden bowl.”

    “Oh. I thought she got that at some kind of gallery.”

    “Uh—maybe it did call itself a gallery... Nope, I can’t remember. But you oughta ask Pat, she’d know the sort of stuff! Sells like hot cakes. Provided you got the real high-class clientele, and by the sounds of it this here Kingfisher Bay sure is the place for that!” He beamed at him.

    “Ye-ah... I don’t know anything about that trade...” Sol stared at his line in an absent manner. Nothing was biting. Abe embarked on a long and boring story about a guy he’d met at golf—apparently this guy’s handicap was even higher than Abe’s and for a long time Sol thought this was the point of the story—this guy had worn a real English-type sweater and when she picked him up Pat had said why didn’t he wear one like that—because he introduced her to the guy in the clubhouse—so the guy said— Sol finally gathered that the point of the story was that the guy had bought the sweater at the golfing supplies shop in his hometown.

    Abe looked at him expectantly.

    “Uh—yeah. Sweaters’d be a good idea, sure.”

    Eyeing him warily, his brother said: “You gotta know your market, first: do some market research, huh?”

    “Uh-huh. Yeah.”—Abe eyed him warily.—“Spend some time in that club bar at that Royal Kingfisher Hotel counting the guys that come in without sweaters, huh?”

    “Okay, Sol,” said his brother in a nasty voice: “you do it your way. See how soon ya can go broke and get kicked out of the country.”

    “Mm-hm... Say, they’re sure not biting today, huh?”

    “You said it,” agreed Abe sourly. “’Bout the first point you’ve been right on this morning, too. No, make it these last six months.”

    Sol reeled in and tidied the tackle away. Abe watched sourly.

    “Could go to Bill’s for some breakfast?” suggested Sol languidly.

    Abe glanced automatically at his watch. “Yeah. Sure, if ya wanna. Sure.” He headed for Bill’s Diner. The boat could probably have found its own way there by now. Blindfold.

    At Bill’s Diner Abe ordered pancakes, bacon, eggs anyhow and sausages. With coffee. And he guessed he’d have a tomato juice to start with, thanks, Kathy. He might have a beer later, see how it went, huh? Sol just had his usual. Which was waffles, two eggs, sunny side up, and bacon. Double order of maple syrup. With a black coffee to start but a beer to wash it down.

    “You ain’t gonna get this at that Kingfisher dump!” announced Abe with satisfaction.

    “No.” Sol looked glumly round the familiar dimness of Bill’s Diner, nodding at a few acquaintances as he did so. “Kiwis don’t go in for this sort of eating place.”

    “Tell us about it,” Abe agreed. “Say, you remember those hotdog things at that place Susan took us—”

    “Yeah, yeah.”

    Abe described their awfulness with relish. Sol didn’t listen.

    Kathy brought the tomato juice and Sol’s coffee. Abe decided his had better be a double order of maple syrup, too.

    “I did ask Susan,” said Sol glumly, stirring his coffee.

    “Huh?” Abe picked up the Tabasco sauce and delicately shook one drop into his tomato juice.

    “About what she thought about how a place like this might do out there. Well, not necessarily at Kingfisher Bay,” he added to his brother’s dropped jaw. “But Carter’s Bay’s a little ordinary town, lot of fishermen in and out, you know: no different from this, really.”

    “Well?”

    “She said that Kiwis haven’t got the habit of eating out. Not just, uh, casual-like, you know.”

    “They got McDonald’s.”

    “Only in the big towns. And Susan didn’t think a place like this’d even get a liquor licence, in a town as small as Carter’s Bay: there’s that old pub there, ya see.”

    Abe gaped at him.

    “I dunno... They have funny licensing laws.”

    “They sure must do!”

    Sol sipped his coffee glumly.

    “Where do the boating people go for breakfast?” Abe asked eventually.

    Sol shrugged. “I guess they take a hamper. Susan always does. Or sometimes just go back to their motel, I guess: motels are quite big over there.”

    “Ye-ah... Now, wait a bit!”—Sol waited in foreboding.—“Say-ee: now here’s an idea! A family restaurant adjoining a motel!”

    Sol grimaced.

    “You reckon that Jake Carrano guy’s got the concessions sewn up, huh?” his brother deduced sadly.

    “More or less, yeah. Susan did say something about one of his companies. They own the hotel, ya see?”

    “Ye-ah... No: how could they stop you opening a restaurant, Sol, that’s crazy!”

    “I don’t guess they could stop me opening one somewheres up there, no. But it wouldn’t be at Kingfisher Bay, that’s for sure, Carrano Development owns all that land. Susan said something about zoning, I guess they’ve sold off some of the residential bits, huh? Only they still own all the commercial sites.”

    “Yeah,” said Abe glumly. “I guess they’d be in good with the wholesalers, too: you’d find yourself ordering five ton of frozen chicken legs that’d never arrive... Nope, you don’t wanna start out by bucking the big boys.”

    Sol sighed. “No. Not that I’d much fancy running a restaurant. A bar and grill, yeah...”

     After some cogitation Abe said: “Get Jerry to speak to Jake Carrano!”

    Sol replied very drily: “I dunno that I want to manage a bar and grill for Carrano Development.”

    Abe narrowed his eyes. “It wouldn’t be Carrano Development, it’d be one of the other companies, one of the Group’s subsidiaries, I guess... Well, same difference.”

    “Yeah.”

    Kathy brought the food just then so conversation languished for a bit. Then Sol admitted: “I guess I’ll just open a boating-supplies place like I planned... Well, if Sir Jerry’s willing to put money into it, it looks like a sure thing, huh?”

    Abe choked. Purple in the face, he gulped down the remains of his tomato juice. “Did he say that?”

    “Yeah, sure. Didn’t I say?”

    Evidently he couldn’t have done, because Abe carried on at length. Sol eventually had to point out his breakfast was getting cold.

    At long last, when they were both sipping beers (Bud: Abe had not failed to remind him that he wouldn’t get that out there, fella), Abe said cautiously: “At Kingfisher Bay?”

    “Ye-ah... Well, Jerry thinks it’s the best site, yeah.”

    Abe brightened. “Then ya can’t go wrong!”

    “No.”

    Abe took a gulp of beer. “Listen, if that’s all the enthusiasm you can work up over it, don’t go, it’s not too late to pull out!” He detailed the many ways in which it was not too late to pull out. Sol didn’t really listen.

    “I guess my mind’s made up,” he said slowly at the end of it.

    Abe’s amiable, ugly face fell.

    “You’ll have to come visit,” said Sol with a little smile.

    Instead of waxing enthusiastic on the subject of good fishing, maybe take in that place that had the big-game fishing as well, maybe try that trout fishing that Susan reckoned was great, not to mention the subject of little Allyson’s new baby that Nan hadn’t even seen yet, Abe merely said glumly: “Yeah.”

    During the trip home Abe said in a very casual voice: “I guess we better make some calls, huh? Give Susan and Allyson the good news?”

    “Yeah. Do that.”

    Abe noted the extra-dryness of the tone: he wasn’t that dumb. But he continued anyway, on a note of defiance: “Maybe you could call Phoebe, too!”

    “Yeah. Maybe.”

    The boat ploughed on towards Abe’s home marina (and Pat’s probable inquisition as to what he’d eaten and where he’d eaten it).

    “Listen, I’m not trying to pry into your personal business here: if you wanna keep what’s between you and her just between you and her, then—”

    “It was nothing! Just— Look, the two of us were on vacation, we were two adults— Look, drop it, okay?”

    “I thought you got on real well together. You saw enough of her after we got back from the mountain.”

    Sol glared at the sea. After some time he said: “She’s got her own life. I wouldn’t mind seeing her again, I guess, but— Well, I don’t see that…” He stopped.

    “You got interests in common! Shit, any time I call you, evenings, you got your nose in a book, it’s not as if you ain’t the intellectual type!”

    Sol made a sour face. “Not in her league. Did I tell you about that Laura and Jim?”

    “Uh-huh. They didn’t sound that bad,” he said cautiously.

    “No. They weren’t. But— It’s a different lifestyle. …I dunno. They think differently, I guess.”

    Abe took a deep breath. But he was unable to stop himself from letting it out again in a bellow: “THEN WHY THE HELL YOU GOING, FELLA?”

    Sol stared at the sea. “I guess I need to.”

    “You— What sort of an answer is that?”

    Sol shrugged.

    Abe perceived it was the only answer he was gonna get. Silently he began figuring out just when would be the best time of day to ring Jerry Cohen—at the office, get him away from Belinda—and just what to say to Jerry on the subject of okay, Jerry was nominally guaranteeing Sol’s business venture but gee, there was no need to worry: he, Abe, would back him all the way... And whether it would be possible to ask Jerry to kinda keep an eye on Sol, business-wise. Yeah, it would, he decided sourly, but would Sol take it from the old guy? Nope. Uh-uh. No, sirree. Not the Sol Winkelmann they all knew and loved. There were, after all, very few flies on Abe.

Next chapter:

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