6
Scores Of Unwanted Admirers
“This is getting ridiculous!” said Tom violently to his Headmaster.
“You said it,” Bill Coggins agreed mildly.
“They’re coming out of the bloody woodwork! Every time I turn round, there’s another of ’em!”
“Yeah; scores of ’em. All over the show.” Bill strode over to his front window. He waved his arm at the view of mud, rusting trikes, rutted Blossom Avenue, wild turnip field, and the end wall of Tom’s ancient two-storeyed wooden house. “All over the show,” he repeated.
“Scores of ’em,” agreed Tom with a silly grin.
“Yeah.” Bill returned to the fireplace and began filling the pipe that his deluded life-partner was convinced he’d given up.
“Where’s Meg?” asked Tom, apropos of this action.
“Who knows?” Bill sucked the object. “Not here, anyway.”
“Mm. Did you mention a drink just then?”
“No,” said Bill definitely.
“What a lie,” said Roger, coming to in the best armchair and ceasing—momentarily, momentarily—to rock back and forth “bonking” in it. –This choice piece of the innocent idiolect of Number 9 Blossom Avenue never failed to rouse in Tom a sort of tender amusement which was, as he himself quite realised, closely akin to simple love.
“All right, go and get it,” Bill ordered the offspring.
“If I do, c’n I have one?”
“Just—GET—IT!” roared Bill.
Roger shambled off towards the kitchen.
“He is old enough,” said Tom fairly. “Well, tall enough.”
Roger’s progenitor merely sniffed slightly.
After a moment Tom admitted: “I never knew it was gonna be like this.”
Bill eyed him sardonically. “No, you thought you were the only male on earth that fancied Mima Puddle-Duck, eh? Specially now you’ve got her decked out in those tight fuzzy jerseys all the time.”
“Well, you don’t have to look!”
Bill sucked his pipe thoughtfully “Hard not to. Well, impossible, really.” He sat down on the sofa. “Hard if ya do or don’t, if ya get my drift.”
“Don’t be so bloody—” roared Tom, breaking off abruptly as Roger returned with three glasses of beer. On a tray. On a tray? Had the boy gone MAD?
“Bloody what?” he asked mildly. “Not that one, Tom, that’s mine, I’ve tasted it.”
“Ugh!” cried Tom, recoiling.
“Bloody what?” insisted Roger, ignoring this pantomime.
“Indecent,” said Tom weakly.
“Oh: Dad, ya mean,” he said resignedly.
“Yes. –Tell me, Rog,” he said affably as the lanky figure in the torn jeans and grimy brown jumper—not Bill, the thin one—sank into the best armchair again: “why in God’s name are you serving drinks on a ruddy tray?”
Roger went very red. “Jemima gave it to Meg. She thought it’d be nice, because we didn’t have one.”
“See? There’s another of ’em!” said Tom darkly to Bill.
“Yeah. All over the show. Springing up out of the bloody woodwork,” agreed Bill mildly. He drank beer in a peaceful fashion.
“Are you gonna stand there towering over us all day, Tom?” asked Roger politely. “Carry on, of course, if it’s stroking your ego.” –Bill sniggered.
“Look here, you’re not allowed to say that sort of thing: not until you’re at least forty-two!” complained Tom.
Smirking, Bill explained to his lanky offspring: “Got the pip. It’s because of all these admirers that keep on hanging round Mima Puddle-Duck. Scores of ’em.”
Roger drank deeply. “It’s hormonal,” he said.
Caught unawares, Bill gave a yelp of laughter. Smirking, Roger picked up the Playboy he’d momentarily discarded, and immersed himself in it.
Tom sat down in the second-best armchair—since Bill, as usual, was occupying the entire sofa. He drank some beer. He pouted. “There was another one round here this morning!” he complained.
“Oh, yeah?” replied Bill, yawning ostentatiously.
“Who was it?” asked Roger. “Your brother Ralph?”
“No.”
“Yes, it was, I saw ’im,” said his Headmaster. “All toffed up. Country wear for gents. Tweed jacket. Tweed hat.”
“Moleskin waistcoat,” contributed Roger, sniggering inside his Playboy.
Bill sniggered too. “Looked a right prick,” he summarised.
“He always does; but I know what you mean,” said Tom, breaking down and grinning. “Anyway, I didn’t mean him.”
“Adrian Revill,” suggested Roger.
“No!”
“Yes, it was, Tom: I saw him.”
“He only came up—” Tom stopped.
“Go on,” said Bill mildly. He put his glass down and sucked at the pipe.
“He came up from Number 3 with some biscuits he’d made. He thought Jemima might like them, they’ve got rosewater in ’em and he remembered she likes—” He had to stop, Bill was roaring with laughter already.
“See?” said Roger mildly, when Bill had recovered.
“Yeah. Scores of ’em,” agreed Bill, wiping his eyes.
“Coming out of the woodwork,” agreed Tom, grinning sheepishly. “Yeah, well, I didn’t mean him: he’s a young twerp.”
“Looks like Whassname,” objected Bill.
“Mel Gibson,” said Roger in a bored voice. “I wouldn’t of said he was a Young Turk, though: he’s pretty wet.”
“Not Turk, TWERP!” roared Tom. “Are you DEAF? –It’s all that pop music you let him listen to,” he added to Bill. Bill rolled his eyes frantically. “Have you been studying local political movements of the Sixties and Seventies in social studies at school, Rog?” Tom added nastily.
“Nah. In history,” said Roger. Sniggering hoarsely, he retired into his Playboy.
“Well, who was it, if it wasn’t Ralph or the Young Twerp?” asked Bill.
“That American,” suggested Roger, now sounding bored.
“No. It was that bloody mate of Ralph’s. Jemima met him when he dragged us off to The Giggling Goosey with the Yank.”
“Thought you reckoned you had a good time that night?” said Bill, eyeing him cautiously.
“Yeah,” he admitted, looking sheepish. “We did. In fact some of us drank so much ruddy French grog that it didn’t dawn on us until later what was Going On Under Our Very Eyes.”
“How can an eye be very?” asked Roger sepulchrally.
Jumping, Bill conceded weakly: “I’ve always wondered that. –Well, go on, Tom, for cripes’ sake! What was going on under your eyes, very or not?”
“This cunt that’s a mate of Ralph’s.”
“Yeah?” said Bill, eyeing him cautiously. Tom had a fair vocabulary but that was one he didn’t usually—
“Hugh Something. One of the bone-setters from the bloody Mater.”
“Uh—ri-ight.” As Tom then pulled an even sourer face than he’d been pulling a minute back, Bill added in alarm: “For God’s sake! You’re not telling us that Jemima encouraged him, are you, Tom?”
The shabby old living-room of Number 9 Blossom Avenue tingled with silence. Roger even looked up from his Playboy.
“No,” said Tom shamefacedly. “NO, you pair of dills! Stop looking at me like that!” he bellowed.
Coggins père et fils more or less stopped looking at him like that.
“All over ’er like the proverbial, was ’e?” said Bill resignedly.
“Yeah. His excuse was,” said Tom on an acid note, “that he was meeting Ralph and they were gonna go on up to the Butlers’ and look at Michaela’s pots and Bob’s screen-prints.”
“Why?” asked Roger blankly.
“God! The boy’s a cultural nullity!” he cried wildly.
“We know that,” agreed Bill placidly.
“And if we hadn’ta done, we would of by now, you say it often enough,” added Roger mildly.
“They were gonna look at their stuff because they reckon they’re interested in art—geddit?” said Tom heavily.
“I thought Ralph was only interested in food, grog and BMWs?” objected Bill in mild surprise. “Oh, and in f— a bit of the other,” he added, glancing at Roger.
“In food, grog, BMWs, f’a bit of the other and gawping at Jemima’s tits—yeah. Not necessarily in that order,” said Ralph’s younger brother nastily.
There was a short silence.
“So this Hugh joker—?” prompted Bill delicately.
“They have many interests in common,” noted Tom sourly.
“I geddit.”
“We, in our simple way, at Number 10 Blossom Avenue,” explained Tom in a very sour, not to say pissed-off voice: “had assumed that the Yank’s sad after-dinner story about the impoverished potting genius at the far end of Blossom Av’ had moved Ralph’s stony surgeon’s heart. Not to mention this Hugh type’s. And that when they said they’d take a dekko at her pots they were doing it out of, uh—well, not altruism, flogging the stuff off to the galleries at ten times what they’d paid for it entered into it somewhere—but out of something that had nothing whatsoever to do with Jemima’s mammary equipment!”
“But it did?” deduced Bill keenly.
“Got it in one,” he returned sourly.
“Well, two,” murmured Bill.
Silence fell.
“Don’t ask them in,” suggested Roger hoarsely.
“Don’t be a tit,” replied Tom tersely.
“Tell Mima Puddle-Duck to freeze ’em solid,” suggested Bill.
“What?” he screamed.
“No,” said Bill with a silly grin. “I can’t imagine it, now you come to mention it.”
“We are speaking of the girl that helps snails across the road,” he reminded him heavily.
“Yeah. Into my cabbages and silverbeet,” noted Bill sadly.
“Yes, but couldn’t she— I mean, if you told her— Well, I don’t know,” floundered Roger. “She wouldn’t need to—um—encourage them.”
Tom sighed heavily. “She doesn’t know she’s doing it.”
“Young Twerp,” muttered his proud father.
“He’s too young to understand,” said Tom, sighing again.
“I am not! Just because she’s nice to everybody! Well, I don’t see how you can call it encouraging them,” ended Roger sulkily.
“Exactly,” said Tom sadly.
Roger looked at him dubiously, obviously not knowing if he was supposed to go on sulking or not.
“All she has to do is smile at the silly buggers and they go through hoops,” clarified Tom sadly. “Sol Winkelmann’s just as bad. –Well, no, not as bad as those two. He wouldn’t leap on her if you put them together in a locked room for five hours. Not if she didn’t want him to. But I wouldn’t trust that Hugh type with her for five minutes. Or bloody Ralph.”
Roger’s ears were now rather red; he looked uneasily at his father. Bill cleared his throat. “He is your brother, Tom.”
“Yeah, that’s right, I’ve known him all my life,” he replied nastily.
“Where are they, anyway?” asked Bill.
Tom shrugged. “Pushed off up to the Butlers’ place. Well, had to substantiate their bloody story, didn’t they?”
“Where’s Jemima?” asked Roger in alarm.
“In the bath with the door locked. I sincerely hope. Well,” he said with a silly grin, “she usually does lock it, she’s so bloody modest! Unless I specially ask her not to, of course.”
“Of course,” agreed Bill, grinning from ear to ear.
“In fact,” said Tom, holding out his glass suggestively: “If someone got me another one of these, I might work up the strength to go and see if she’s finished.”
“You’d better get him one, in that case, Rog,” noted Bill.
Grinning amiably, Roger took their glasses, put them on the tray, and shambled off.
“Sorry,” said Tom, wrinkling his nose, when he judged him to be safely out of earshot.
“Gotta grow up some time,” replied Bill mildly. “And if he will hang round in a joker’s sitting-room when a joker’s having a serious, man-to-man conversation with ’is mate, what can he expect?”
“To grow up sooner rather than later, apparently,” said Tom. Sighing, he got up and wandered over to the front windows.
“See any scores of them?” asked Bill meanly.
“No. Well, Number 3’s goat. Can ya count it?”
“It misses Jemima, now that she doesn’t live down there. Well, it is a billy.”
“True. –Oh, no, it’s all right, it’s coming over here. With a look in its eye as of a goat that scents silverbeet,” Tom added, very meanly.
“WHAT?” howled Bill. He shot out of the room faster than a speeding bullet. Well, almost as fast as a speeding blotting-paper spitball.
“Where’s Dad?” asked Roger, returning with a fresh tray-load.
“Gone out to kill Number 3’s goat.”
“It keeps coming up here. It’s lonely now Susan’s away a lot and Jemima doesn’t live there any more. She used to talk to it,” he explained.
“Yeah,” said Tom, sighing. He collapsed onto the sofa, since Bill had so kindly vacated it. Roger handed him a fresh supply—a reflex action, doubtless. Tom drank deeply.
“Rog,” he said cautiously, once he’d absorbed a goodly portion of the magic fluid.
“What?”
Tom lost his nerve. Gulping, he said: “Uh—do you have blotting-paper at school?”
“No,” said Roger simply. “We don’t need to blot anything.”
“No; it would be difficult to blot a computer,” conceded Tom sadly. Ah, gone were the days...
“That American was up here the other day,” said Roger abruptly.
“What?”
“You were at work. It was when I was at home. –Swotting,” he said defiantly.
Tom made the obligatory rude noise but added anxiously: “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I never thought of it. Anyway, he didn’t come to see Jemima. He came over here and said was it right that you just went up the end of the road to the Butlers’.” He stopped.
“And?” said Tom faintly.
“I said it was but he was never gonna make it in those shoes.”
“Shoes? He musta been mad!”
“Yeah. Well, anyway, I lent him Dad’s gumboots. He said they were Wellingtons!” he reported scornfully.
“They’re like that. Probably been reading A.A. Milne under the misapprehension that it was required reading for the Colonies.”
“Yeah. Or Culcha or something.”
“Yeah. That or Evelyn Waugh.”
Roger’s eyes lit up. “Or Alec Waugh!”
They sniggered madly.
“Have you still got that thing?” asked Tom.
“Um—yeah. Twin was reading it, I don’t think he got very far with it. Do you want it back?”
“No, I don’t think it’s suitable reading for Mima Puddle-Ducks, you’d better hang on to it.”
Roger beamed.
“So—so Sol Winkelmann—it was him, was it? Not his brother?”
“The thin one. That looks like Jack Klugman,” said Roger promptly.
“Who?” he asked dazedly.
“He’s on TV,” explained Roger tolerantly.
Tom sighed. “Let us say, the thin one. It was him?”
“Yeah, I just said.”
“Mm. So he went up to the Butlers’?”
“Yeah. He wanted to see Michaela, he said he went round her place but Ole Ma Lambert reckoned she was up here.”
Tom looked at him wildly. “That makes two!”
“What? Oh, that old joker? I think he’s Susan’s grandfather, or something. Yeah, he was up there—um, I forget. Tuesday, I think it was.”
Michaela with scores of admirers coming out of the woodwork, too? Tom drained his glass. He got up. “I’m going home,” he said weakly.
“Yes. Um, Tom?” he said hoarsely.
“What?” replied Tom nervously.
“Um—I could sort of keep an eye on Jemima, if you like. When I’m home,” he said, blushing madly.
“Actually, I’d be grateful if you would, Rog—ta. It hadn’t really sunk in when I bought the place how isolated you are, here. I get the collywobbles sometimes, thinking of her working on her lecture notes all by herself when I’m at school.”
“No-one ever comes round here,” Roger assured him.
“No,” agreed Tom, shuddering slightly.
“I’m usually home by four.”
“I know. Thanks, Rog.” He clapped him lightly on the shoulder and went out, manfully ignoring the blushes.
“OY!” he said to his Headmaster.
Panting slightly, Bill replied crossly: “That bloody creature dragged me down to their place like greased lightning, it musta thought I was gonna feed it, just about wrenched me arm out of me— What?”
“Should Rog evince a desire, nay an intention, of coming over to our place during the week when he’s home doing his blessed swot, so-called, pray do not stop him. Or rib him about it, he’s a decent little sod.”
“Why not?” replied Roger’s progenitor simply.
“I just SAID!” he roared. “He’s a decent little sod!”—Bill merely stared.—“He’s going to keep an eye on her,” said Tom sheepishly.
“No reason she should be any the less safe at your place than she was all by herself at Number 3 before—”
“All RIGHT!”
Inexorably Bill continued: “Before you got yer ’orrible mitts on ’er mammary equipment.”
“You’re never gonna forget that one, are you?”
“Two,” Bill corrected him.
“All right,” said Tom, smiling a foolish smile. “Those two. –Where the Christ was I?”
“Singing Rog’s praises as the defender of the Pewer, or something.”
“Yeah.—What he needs is a girlfriend.—Yeah, well, anyway, if he wants to come over and defend her, for God’s sake let him.”
“I thought you didn’t want scores of admirers—?”
“No. And I don’t want to come home to find her raped or strangled over her bloody lecture notes, either!” he replied angrily.
“Safe as houses up here.”
“All right! Then I don’t want to come home to find her having tête-à-têtes with bloody Ralph over the bloody afternoon teacups!” he bellowed.
“Now ya talking. This I can relate to. Rog can go over there and do ole Ralphy in the eye any old time, for mine.”
Tom sighed slightly. “You still haven’t forgiven him over that roof, have you?”
“Nope. And I’m not about to, neither!” his Headmaster returned smugly.
“Reflect on this point,” said Tom heavily. “Would Ralph have been more use up on the roof, telling us all what to do and getting in everyone’s way, or out in the ruddy BMW with Mima Puddle-Duck”—“Like he was,” interjected his Headmaster sourly—“Like he was,” agreed Tom smoothly, “driving untold miles in quest of purely notional galvanized nails?”
Bill tousled his untidy pepper-and-salt curls. “You got a point.”
“Mm. Only trouble is, so had he.”
“Noticed that,” his Headmaster returned smugly. “That It? It’s bloody nippy out here, I’d quite like to get indoors before we hear two little brass tinkles as they—”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“—fall off, frozen solid,” finished Bill inexorably.
Tom was about to go but he bethought him of something. “Did Rog mention to you that Sol Winkelmann was up here the other day?”
“Mighta done. That’s the skinny one, eh? Um—yeah. Think he did. Said him and Jemima had afternoon tea with him, or something.”
“WHAT?” screamed Tom. He rushed off in the direction of his house. Without even bidding his Headmaster farewell!
Shaking his head sadly, Bill took them both indoors before there could be two cold brassy tinkling noises as they fell off, frozen solid. “Gawd, it’s nippy out there!” he said to Roger, shuddering.
Roger replied mildly: “It’s not that hot in here, with you blocking the heat like that.”
Ignoring this, Bill continued to stand shivering in front of the fire. “Here, have I got this right: you and that Sol type went over the road and Mima Puddle-Duck gave you afternoon tea that day he was round here?”
“Yes. Vegemite and peanut butter on those rye cracker things; he’d never had Vegemite before.”
Bill wasn’t that surprized. Gulping slightly, he said: “Why in God’s name didn’t you warn me you never told Tom?”
“What?”
“Uh—no. I admit that was a bit unfair,” said Bill sheepishly.
“Jemima could have told him,” pointed out Roger.
Bill gulped. He eyed him cautiously. Roger was re-immersed in his Playboy. Oh, well, he was very young...
“Not if she thought he’d do his nut, though,” said Roger from inside the Playboy.
Jumping, Bill conceded weakly that maybe he wasn’t all that young after all. Not any more.
It was true that Sol had been to see Michaela. On the Wednesday. More out of a cowardly desire to keep well out of Phoebe’s orbit so as the fact of its being Wednesday could not possibly come up between them, than anything. Actually it was relatively easy to keep out of her orbit between the hours of eight-thirty and four-thirty, since she was at school then. Still, he calculated that if he spent enough time up at Waikaukau Junction, he couldn’t possibly get back until around five-thirty.
The hire-car was a little Japanese thing. Even though enormous vehicles twice the size of limos with huge tail fins were no longer the accepted style back home in the good ole U.S. of A. either, Sol had never actually driven anything that small. He guessed he could just be thankful it wasn’t a Mini, he thought as an ancient yellow one shot by him on the Northern Motorway. Or a Volkswagen bug, he thought as an ancient purple one shot past him on his other side. Driving on the wrong side of the road, which was something Sol had not admitted to the nice girl at the car-hire firm that he had never done before, was not that easy. At all. Your head got kinda muddled, ya know? So it was real fortunate that it was freew—no, motorway you had to call it out here or they didn’t know what you were talking about—well, most of ’em; Phoebe did, of course—it was real fortunate that it was motorway for more than half the way and a four-lane main highway for most of the rest of the way after that.
It was, however, a trifle unfortunate that the native inhabitant of Puriri from whom he stopped to ask the way, once old Mrs Lambert had told him that Michaela was down at her kiln and given him very muddled directions how to get there, should have described what to the native inhabitant was the easy way of getting to Blossom Avenue at two o’clock on a busy shopping Wednesday in Puriri town centre.
Groggily Sol followed the directions. Up the hill, then you didn’t need to cross the traffic to get back onto the highway to go south. It took him so long to ease into the stream of traffic that was also heading north that he might just as well have waited the few extra minutes and gotten into stream of traffic heading south.
Up the hill you sure had a magnificent view of the Gulf waters out to your right—today shrouded in a sort of grey murk that Sol guessed wasn’t smog but—uh—raincloud?—and of miles of undulating wet, green farmland to your left, today shrouded in a sort of grey murk. The highway, however, headed straight on. So perforce did Sol. Though all those cars that had been heading north seemed mysteriously to have disappeared. This was also the way to Susan and Alan’s orchard, he remembered. He had begun to feel like he was almost driving to the orchard, when a turnoff finally appeared on his left. Only this couldn’t be it, surely?
Yes, it could, there was actually a real signpost: it indicated that if you turned sharp left and travelled at an angle of approximately fifteen degrees to the road you had just come on, you got to the Puriri Golf Course. Which was what the old guy had said. Sighing, Sal turned sharp left and continued to follow the instructions of one, Eddie Hipgrave, who not only had lived and worked in Puriri all his life and was used to its peculiarities, but also never played golf and, now that he’d been retired for some time, very rarely drove at all, and certainly not on back roads that, whilst being reasonably well paved up until the palatial entrance to the golf course, suddenly deteriorated into— Omigod!
The only thing he could be thankful for was that they weren’t his springs, Sol decided, as he bumped and juddered the rest of the way—it was quite a long way—at about ten miles an hour to Waikaukau Junction. Prudently he stopped to ask the way at Number 3 when he got there but there was no-one home, John Aitken and the students who boarded there must all have been in at college—no, varsity. Feeling quite proud of his use of the local vernacular Sol continued on up the road—very cautiously—and prudently asked the way, since Number 10 looked closed up and empty, of a tall, skinny boy at Number 9. The twins’ brother, he guessed. The boy forced a pair of Wellington boots on him, telling him scornfully that out here you called them gumboots. And you couldn’t miss the Butlers’, it was right at the end of the road and there weren’t any other houses up there.
Sol bumped cautiously on. He kept to the ridges between the ruts as best he could, because he calculated that if he once got stuck in the ruts that would be It. The road turned left, and then sharp right. Now it was in a kinda—would you call it a cutting?—between two high clay banks, over which much undergrowth draped and dripped in a way that Sol might have thought very pretty if he hadn’ta been thinking of his kidneys on these bumps, and whether Hertz outlets in New Zealand charged you extra for ruining the springs of their neat little Japanese cars that weren’t designed to go where only an SUV shoulda gone, and that kind of thing.
After a while the road wound out of the thing that might have been a cutting and Sol saw to his left a heap of planks and bricks that might have once been a house. He guessed that couldn’t be it. The road wound on slightly uphill, through a clump of large, dark, untidy trees that looked a bit like Monterey cypresses, and debouched before a slight rise to the left, against which was set a house. He guessed you coulda called it a house.
It was mainly single-storeyed, though at one place there was a gable with a window let into it that was probably an attic room. Unlike all the other wooden houses that Sol had seen in New Zealand—and the houses were nearly all wooden—this one was not composed of horizontal clapboards. Or not except for a couple of small stretches. Mostly it was very wide vertical boards. Nor was it white or pastel like the older New Zealand houses, or greenish-grey or greyish-fawn like the modern or restored ones. It was very dark brown, almost black. When Sol opened his door cautiously he could smell it. Tar? No... Creosote! It sure was. A creosoted house. Its window surrounds were painted white, which he guessed smartened it up some, only that all of the windows were different sizes and styles.
The house appeared to have three front doors, all painted a cheerful scarlet. There was no path at all, so Sol couldn’t tell which of the doors might have regularly been used. Sighing, he removed his shoes and assumed the gumboots.
At the first door he tried there was no answer. At the second came a faint yell, in what was maybe a soprano, so it probably wasn’t Michaela. He slogged on through the mud and tried the next door. This one was set in a much lower part of the house, which had a flat roof which Sol would not have taken an oath was not a tarred roof. It was a very pretty section of the house, it had window-boxes and a lot of plants outside it, set in beds bordered with large whitewashed rocks. As he knocked a window opened suddenly and a brown-haired woman looked out. “That door doesn’t open: go round the back,” she said.
Before Sol could reply she had disappeared behind her blue gingham curtains. Sol was pretty sure that checkered stuff was gingham—if they had that out here in New Zealand. He looked around him uncertainly. He’d already come most of the length of the house, so— He rounded the end of this section. At the side of the house—the overcast sky gave nothing away but he thought this must be west—there was a large area which was not paved but covered in… Little white shells? Yep, little white shells! They crunched under your gumboots and Sol felt rather guilty about walking on them, but short of walking in the flower beds or in amongst the shrubs there didn’t seem to be any place else to walk. So he walked on the shells.
Suddenly a window opened to his left and the woman said: “That’s right: go on round the back.”
Sol went on round the back. Here the shells were discontinued and there was a large flattish area, partly paved in bricks and partly in large flat stones or actually mostly slabs of cement, not in a pattern but rather as if they’d been put down as and when. There were also many wooden tubs with plants in them, many large ceramic pots with ditto, and not a few statues, mostly ceramic and mostly hideous. A tired-looking wooden table and benches, kind of a silvery grey like creosoted wood went if you didn’t re-creosote it for a long, long time, indicated that this area would be a real nice patio area. In the summer. At the moment it was real damp and depressed-looking. Especially with—Sol blenched—a huge ceramic face leering at you from under that there bush. There was another door, also scarlet and of quite a different design from the three round at the front, and this opened as he looked at it.
“Hi; can I help you?” said the woman.
She would be about Michaela’s age: mid-thirties, Sol guessed. She had a lot of light brown hair, not unlike Phoebe’s in colour but not nearly as neat. It was held back in a ponytail. A long silver earring composed of several leaf shapes dangled from one ear and in the other two coloured studs, one bright blue and one crimson, twinkled cheerfully. She wore no make-up and her face was round, pinkish, and friendly with a nondescript nose, a few freckles and a gentle mouth. She seemed to be wearing jeans but Sol couldn’t see most of her other clothes because of the large grey cotton coat of the sort that men who worked on machine-shop floors wore. She was not an unattractive woman by any means but that coat sure was one of the ugliest garments that Sol had ever, ever seen on a woman.
“Uh—how do you do?” he said with an effort. “I guess you must be Mrs Butler? I’m looking for Michaela—my name’s Sol Winkelmann.”
“Oh—yes,” said June Butler faintly. “You’re the American. Um—come in. Michaela’ll be back soon, she’s just popped up to the kiln.”
Sol wouldn’t have minded popping up in her wake, he’d never seen a potter’s kiln from close to, but since he was being invited— He began to come in but she said: “Take your gumboots off.”
Sol took the borrowed gumboots off and came in.
“Oh, my,” he said with a smile, “is that early music?”
The music tinkled softly and the room, which he guessed was a combined kitchen, family-room, and workroom, was one of the most charming Sol had ever seen.
“Dowland. It’s nice, isn’t it?” she said. “I usually have it on when I’m working. Sit down.” She waved him to a seat over by the pot-bellied stove that stood against the wall opposite the door. “I was just going to make a cup of tea; would you like one, Sol?”
“I sure would; thank you, June,” he replied politely, very glad to be given an indication of how she expected to be addressed. So few Kiwis did that.
He looked about him with great interest. One end of the room, the end facing onto the shell-paved area, contained the kitchen bench, the cooker, the refrigerator and, besides a large corner dresser laden with willow-pattern china which he immediately coveted, many built-in cupboards. Its windowsills were crowded, between the blue and white gingham curtains, with plants, ceramic pots, glassware, objets of all kinds… Also towards that end of the room was a large old varnished table that he guessed must be the table where the family ate. It had six chairs round it, all wooden, but all of different designs. A longish rug in a faded Persian pattern—maybe originally a hall runner—acted as a kind of room divider. Then, set facing the big black pot-bellied stove, there was a large old sofa, a rocking-chair, and three easy chairs—the one he was sitting on, one occupied by a large tabby cat and one by a heap of books. The pot-bellied stove gave out so much heat that before June had finished making the tea he had to remove his tweed jacket.
There was a clear area of flooring between this sitting area and the back door, and Sol could see that the room had maybe originally been two rooms, because here the floor of small polished pine boards that formed the kitchen end met a stretch of much wider polished boards in a darker wood that formed the other two-thirds of the floor. The boards did not meet evenly, and someone had laboriously inlaid the slots between them with a much paler third wood, its grain running at right angles to that of the other two. It had little dark flecks in it and Sol would have liked to get down on his hunkers and look at it real close, he had an idea it was the same kind of wood that that little occasional table in Phoebe’s front hall was made of.
The rest of the long room, to the right of the door as you entered, was occupied firstly by a scrubbed oblong wooden table at which June had evidently been working. It held at its nearer end several lumps of clay draped in damp cloths, some wet clay models of nasty little pixies, some drying ditto, several sets of rather pleasant clay mugs in various stages of manufacture, and many tools, bowls, brushes and so forth which must be what June used to model or glaze or whatever. The far end of the table supported a large drawing-board set about with lamps. And a black cat, fast asleep.
Then beyond that was another sitting area with an old wooden-framed settee that Sol wouldn’t have half minded owning himself, and several chairs that in no way matched it. Also a lot of bookcases with books of all shapes, colours and sizes, and the record-player. And another cat, a white one, asleep in a shabby armchair.
It would have been hard to sum up what the walls were covered in, as so much of them was hidden by the bookcases and an assortment of prints, paintings, engravings, woven hangings, macramé work, and Paisley shawls. After a while it dawned that there were three basic wall coverings: varnished vertical boards at the kitchen end, a dark blue and crimson diamond-paned wallpaper in the middle section (though directly in back of the pot-bellied stove the wall was covered in blue slate), and then another wallpaper, flowers and leaves in dark greens and blues with touches of gold on a deep plum background, all round the far end of the room.
On the benches, the tables, and bookshelves were set many vases of greenery and flowers. Mainly jonquils: the room smelled wonderful.
He glanced up, and became immediately entranced by the ceiling. It was very narrow varnished boards, running the length of the room, but where these lengths of board were joined, quite haphazardly, were inset little blocks of polished stone. Not valuable stone, he wouldn’t have said. Just in mottled fawns, greys and russet.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” said June.—Sol jumped, and smiled at her.—“Bob did it when we first moved here. We only had this room, then.”
Sol thought wildly: What about a bathroom? He didn’t like to ask. On second thoughts he didn’t dare to ask. “Yes, it’s real pretty. You lived here long, June?”
June put the tray of tea on a little coffee table near the pot-bellied stove and sat down on the sofa, smiling at him. “Fourteen years, now. We bought it when we finished Art School and Bob landed his job at Puriri High. There was only an old bach here,”—Sol didn’t know what that was, but was too polite to ask—“and we got another one that was going to be pulled down and moved it here, and joined them up.”
“I get it. And Bob did that inlay on the floor, huh?”
“Yes. Well, some of our friends helped him. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
“It sure is; what kind of wood would it be, June?”
“Rewarewa.” She looked at his face and added quickly: “Native honeysuckle. It gets too much wear, there, really: we’ve got coats and coats of polyurethane on it.”
“Yeah,” said Sol, leaning back in his armchair with a sigh. He looked up at the ceiling. “You folks sure are handy,” he said wistfully.
Awkwardly June explained: “It’s trial and error, mostly. We got a lot of books from the library and read up about it, and then just set to.” She smiled at him. “It was mostly error, for ages. Bob used to get so ratty, everything kept going wrong. And people kept telling us awful stories about couples who’d started off doing up old houses and their marriages had broken up.”
“Kind and helpful; not to say encouraging.”
“Yes. Well, it was my relations, mostly,” she admitted: “they never did like Bob. Bob’s mother’s okay, though: she’s been very good to us; and she’s marvellous with the kids.”
“That’s good,” he said, smiling at her. “My nephew’s mother-in-law’s like that: a real boon. Mind, she does tend to boss Ruthie round, some—that’s her daughter.”
“Bob’s mother’s not like that, thank goodness. But she does keep trying to give us elaborate appliances that we haven’t got any use for. Rather than very basic things that we could really use!” She laughed.
“Like a grindstone,” said a deep contralto.
Jumping, Sol twisted round and perceived that Michaela had entered, not by the back door, but by a door in the far wall that he hadn’t noticed, mainly because it was covered with wallpaper with a paisley shawl on top of that.
“Hullo, Michaela, how are you?” he said, getting up.
“I’m okay. Sit down,” she said, flushing slightly. Sol didn’t think it was him, he thought it was because he’d stood up for her. He sat down again, smiling at her.
“Yes: Bob’s just taken up carving,” explained June. “He keeps blunting his knives and chisels. So Ida—that’s his mother—gave us a hairdryer each for Christmas.”
“Appropriate,” explained Michaela, grinning. She came and sat on the sofa beside June.
“Yes; also tasteful,” said June with her nice smile. “His and hers. Bob’s is blue and mine’s pink. Only I don’t like pink, so we swapped.”
“Ida doesn’t know,” said Michaela.
Sol choked.
The two women smiled pleasedly at him. Sol decided they were both real sweet. Even if Michaela’s ancient grey flannels and awful grey sweater, not the one she’d worn to Phoebe’s but a much heavier one, were almost as horrible as June’s grey coat.
After their tea Michaela took him up to her kiln—a fair way from the house, which Sol would have understood if he could have seen her stoking the fire. She also had a large shed up there, which, he was very relieved to see, was locked. Even the windows, which were small, with small panes of glass, were bolted shut. This was where she had her wheel and stored her clay and the finished pots. Sol would not only have locked and bolted it, he would have filled it with alarm systems and—
“You can just leave me here, Michaela. For hours.”
“All right,” said Michaela obligingly: “I’ll go and give June a hand with those mugs, the gallery wants them by Friday.” She went.
Sol just looked and looked. Occasionally he touched. Sometimes he stroked gently. One large symmetrical round pot he just picked up and cradled.
“Can I buy this?” he said when she eventually came back with a tray of mugs.
“Yes,” said Michaela, putting the tray on a workbench.
“Five hundred, is it?” He’d discovered that all of the pots on one side of the room bore labels on their bottoms, inscribed in a flowery hand. Not Michaela’s, he found himself hoping.
“No, fifty,” replied Michaela in horror. “It’s those round dots that June does: they do look like extra noughts.”
Experiencing considerable relief that the flowery hand was June’s—he should have known, it went with the pixies—Sol said firmly: “No, fifty isn’t nearly enough.”
“Yes,” said Michaela, going very red.
“Crap. Two hundred and cheap at the price.”
“No: I looked in that place in Puriri. They had a lot of casseroles about that size and they were all between fifty and seventy dollars. With lids.”
“This is not a casserole,” said Sol faintly.
“No, it hasn’t got a lid,” she agreed.
“This is a poem in the shape of a pot. I can’t possibly offer you the price of a casserole of the same size, Michaela, that’s ridiculous!”
“Two hundred’s far too much,” she said obstinately.
“Not for a work of art. I couldn’t possibly pay you fifty for this pot, Michaela. Hell, that wouldn’t even pay your rent for a week, would it?”
Michaela shook her head. “But it didn’t take me a week to make it.”
Sol stared at her in exasperation.
Suddenly she held her head on one side and said pathetically: “I don’t really know what I should charge. Only I think two hundred’s far too much.”
Sol was seized by a wave of pity. Shaken, he put down the pot carefully on a bench. He ran his hand across his thinning hair. “Look, this Priestly guy that Phoebe seems to have taken against in a big way, or that guy her school board made her hire to teach art at her school: how much would they charge for a pot of—of similar size and design?”
“I don’t know, I never go to their exhibitions.”
“I guess I can understand that,” he admitted, smiling.
Michaela smiled back uncertainly.
“Will you accept a hundred fifty?” he said weakly.
“All right, then,” she growled, very red.
“Good. And to make up for the extra fifty you could show me the kiln, okay?”
“All right. It’s not working at the moment.”
“Good, then I can look inside it.”
“It’s fire bricks,” she said uncertainly.
“Uh-huh. You show me, okay? And—and tell me how you load it and—and everything. If you would?”
“All right,” said Michaela dubiously.
Sol got out his wallet. “But first I’m going to pay you.” He had changed some traveller’s checks, because he’d figured Michaela wouldn’t have facilities for dealing with credit cards or checks of any kind.
“A hundred-dollar note,” she said, holding it in awe. “I’ve never seen one of these before.”
Sol didn’t know that he was that surprised. “If it’s a forgery you can sue the Bank of New Zealand, that’s where I got it.”
“I’d better put it straight into my Post Office account,” she said uncertainly.
Looking at her sturdy grey-clad figure standing there holding the little bit of coloured paper, he was overcome by a piercing awareness of the impermanence of all things. “Yes,” he croaked. “Sure. –I’ll drive you right into Puriri.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“Only first let’s look at the kiln, huh?”
“Yes.” She led the way.
Sol reflected as he sloshed in her wake that she was a very restful person to be with. Very... direct? Yes, but it was more than that. Not uncomplicated, that would have been quite wrong: no-one who could produce work like hers was uncomplicated. Perhaps it was that she didn’t clutter either her conversation or her life with unnecessary junk? ...Yeah. Maybe.
That had been the Wednesday. God knew how he was gonna get his pot back home to the States—cradle it all the way on his lap, he guessed.
It was on the Saturday following Sol’s visit that Tom had given his morose report to Bill. He was in no doubt that they’d be in for another visitation as Ralph and Hugh made their way back from the kiln. He had silently determined the he’d answer the door himself and send them off with a flea in their ear, but unfortunately he was in the bog when they arrived.
“Hullo, Michaela!” said Jemima in relief, finding they’d brought her with them.
Patting her sturdy shoulder, Ralph said: “We thought we’d bring her down for a decent feed. Mustn’t let genius starve, eh?” He gave a jolly laugh.
“You don’t have to feed me, Jemima,” said Michaela awkwardly.
“Have you had your lunch?” asked Jemima.
Reddening, the incurably honest Michaela replied hoarsely: “No. But it’s all right.”
“Her friends have gone to—is it his mother’s?” Ralph said to her.
“Yes. Ida’s place,” she said to Jemima. “She asked me, too, but I couldn’t, I’ve got to do old Mrs Foskett’s lawns this afternoon.”
“There’s plenty of lunch,” replied Jemima in a vague voice.
“Thanks,” said Michaela gruffly.
They all came in and Hugh Morton said politely: “Are you sure this isn’t a nuisance, Jemima?”
“No; it’s only a vegetable ragoût. But isn’t Caroline expecting you, Hugh?” she added shyly, pinkening. Not because she thought he was an admirer but because he was Ralph’s age and Jemima, who still called the professor of French Professor McCaffery when she wasn’t reminding herself consciously that since she was on the staff now she had to call him Kevin, had great trouble in addressing persons of that age by their first names. Especially male persons. Jemima, even more so than Michaela, had an ingrained fear of older male authority figures. Though she fought against it, too.
Hugh shrugged a little, smiled at the flushed, luscious young thing that Ralph’s undeserving cynic of a younger brother had somehow managed to snare, and said: “No, Caroline wouldn’t know what to do if I walked in on her at Saturday lunchtime expecting to be fed.” To Jemima’s face of dawning horror he added calmly: “It isn’t that sort of marriage. –My coat’s a bit damp, it’s started to rain. Can I hang it somewhere where it won’t ruin your floor?”
“What? Oh!” said Jemima, jumping. “Over here, on the coat stand. It doesn’t matter about this floor, these mats are just down until we sand it. But Tom thinks we’d better do the walls first.”
“He hasn’t got you doing it, too, has he?” asked Ralph in horror, peeling off his Burberry.
“Yes; I usually do the fiddly bits. It’s hard work, though, it makes your wrists ache.”
Frowning a concerned physician’s frown, Ralph took Jemima’s hands in his.—Hugh, watching sardonically, admitted to himself that old Ralph was bloody quick off the mark, you had to give him that.—“Let me see... Does that hurt, my dear?”
“Um—it is a bit achey,” admitted Jemima.
“They’ll soon toughen up,” said Michaela.
“Either that or she’ll develop permanent RSI,” put in Hugh drily.
“Try to do a little with both hands,” decided Ralph. Not neglecting to squeeze them. “And rub plenty of cream into the skin, or you’ll find your fingers are raw at the end of the day. Shall I write you a prescription?”
“God sends him supplies of prescription pads in order for him to supply his sister-in-law with free hand-cream, of course,” said Hugh to the ceiling.
“Not sister-in-law,” said Jemima in a strangled voice, turning puce.
“It’s amazing how soon your wrists do toughen up,” said Michaela calmly.
“Well,” said Ralph, releasing Jemima reluctantly, “lead on, little not-sister-in-law! Where are we? Upstairs?” He looked hopefully at the dark brown staircase which led to Jemima’s bedroom.
“No, in the kitchen. Tom’s been working on the other half of it after school this week, it’s nearly finished now.” She led the way.
During the lunch that followed, which was, indeed, a delicious vegetable ragoût, Hugh observed that Tom had it bad for the luscious Jemima, all right; serve him right, a case of how were the mighty fallen, from all he’d heard. Ralph observed that the succulent mammary glands of the glorious Jemima were just where and how they oughta be: encased in a fine white knit jumper with—heh, heh—braces that had to go round the outside of ’em in order to hold the jeans up. She’d answered the door in a huge fluffy scarlet cardy over the white thing but soon—we thank Thee, oh Lord—had to take it off in the warmth of the big kitchen. Which now featured a black pot-bellied stove which gave them hot water through a wetback arrangement. It was set on a floor of old recycled brick scattered with—
“Are these the rag rugs that the old lady made?” asked Michaela.
“Yes: Mrs Morton. You know, Ralph: next-door to Tom’s old flat,” explained Jemima. Ralph agreed eagerly that he did. Sourly Hugh reflected that he’d probably agree to anything she said, however unlikely.
Michaela got down on her hands and knees. “They’re not hooked,” she discovered.
“Knitted?” suggested Ralph. Hugh waited for him to get down, too, but he didn’t. Odds-on he would if Jemima did, of course.
“No: she makes a big plait and then she sort of sews it. Round in a circle,” said Jemima uncertainly.
“I see!” cried Michaela. She sat up, rather flushed. “I could do that; it’d be much better than hooking: you wouldn’t need a backing.”
“Um—yes,” Jemima agreed uncertainly.
Ralph, eating vegetarian food—the ragoût was accompanied by a large crusty loaf of wholemeal bread and a huge salad that featured finely sliced cabbage and carrots, large pieces of silverbeet, sliced apples and a few walnuts—reflected drily that this would probably be doing his waistline, not to say his colon, a lot more good than the pork pie and bottle of beer that were waiting for him in the fridge at home; and observed idly that (a) poor old Tom really was in a bad way, he looked sort of sick if he or Hugh so much as glanced at her; and (b) Jemima really was a delicious piece, nicer—if that was possible—all pink and, as she’d artlessly informed ’em, just out of the bath, with her hair in a big fat plait, than she had been in the glorious tight white thing on Monday night; and (c) oops, deary, suspicion confirmed: poor old Hugh! At his age, too! Heh, heh, heh.
Michaela observed wistfully—aloud—that it was a lovely vege stew: she wished she could cook. And this was a nice drink; it wasn’t wine, was it? Tom replied, with a perfectly straight face, for Jemima had on an earlier occasion remarked that it was very sweet for beer, that no, it wasn’t, it was cider.
Ralph then told them a long and mildly amusing story about his quest for real cider in little pubs all over the remoter parts of rural England and northern France, observing meanwhile that old Hugh had better take a grip: if he didn’t close his mouth and stop goggling at her like that Tom was gonna clock ’im one, God knew he wasn’t a patient man at the best of times.
Hugh observed resignedly that there Ralph went again—and if he thought Jemima was impressed by his bloody traveller’s tales, he had another think coming! And wondered uneasily what Caroline was going to say when he arrived home with that huge salt-glazed thing that was sitting in his car boot wrapped in sacking. Probably tell him to leave it in the garage. Well, he wouldn’t, it was too nice! He’d take it to the surgery, that’s what he’d do! And put it in his office; no point in shoving it in the bloody waiting-room for the hoi polloi to gawp at... God, this salad was horrible, real rabbit-food.
“These are nice apples,” said Michaela abruptly to Tom, crunching salad.
“Mm; from my uncle’s tree, down at Ngaruawahia; God knows what they are. We got a carton load a while back; these are the last of them, we’ve been stringing them out all winter, haven’t we, sweetheart?”
“Yes,” said Jemima. “His neighbour gave us a lot of apples, too, but they had codlin moth, so Tom used the best bits for chutney.”
“I know a place where you can get windfalls,” said Michaela.
“Where?” asked Tom eagerly.
“Um... You go down the road towards the golf course,” she said vaguely.
“Elizabeth Road.”
“Is it?” said Michaela blankly.
“It isn’t called that on the map,” pointed out Ralph. He ate a piece of walnut with due caution, rather hoping that Jemima wasn’t noticing the caution. She had wonderful teeth, herself. Something that bloody Tom always had gone for, mind you.
“No; but it’s on the plans,” said Tom mildly. “I looked at ’em when we bought this place.”
“By the way, what happened about that subdivision?” asked Ralph.
“He’s building it further down. Next to the golf course. On the old Waikaukau road,” explained Tom.
“Eh?”
Tom shrugged. “Go and look, if you don’t believe me. Got a bloody great notice up: ‘Willow Plains. Fucking Up-Market Trendy Town-Houses for Yuppies. Send Only Money’.”
“Ooh, Tom, what a lie!” cried Jemima, giggling madly. Ralph observed, with a mixture of gloom and relish, that that wasn’t half bad.
“Well,” Tom conceded, “he is calling it Willow Plains. Presumably because it’s not particularly flat and there isn’t a weeping willow in sight.”
“I’d have said it was even harder to get to than this dump; what in God’s name made him change his mind?” pursued Ralph.
“Who?” cried Hugh wildly.
“Jake Carrano.”
“Oh. Yes, I think I did hear something about a new subdivision up this way.”
“That and a new motorway,” muttered Tom sourly.
“Is that by-pass going through after all?” asked his brother.
Tom shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Jake Carrano, I expect,” said Ralph.
“Meg said—” began Jemima. She stopped, reddening.
“Go on,” prompted Hugh.
Jemima looked at Tom. He said in a nasty voice: “You can keep your cheque-book in your pocket, Hugh, Blossom Avenue is not for sale. Carrano’s bought up all that land next to us and up Elizabeth Road to the north, as far as the eye can see. Its new name is the Maureen Mitchell Memorial Reserve.”
“Who in God’s name’s Maureen Mitchell?” asked Ralph faintly.
“His mother-in-law,” replied Tom with satisfaction.
Hugh choked, but Ralph preserved his cool. In fact he drawled: “He’s so relieved to have her out of his hair, that he doesn’t mind throwing his money away on memorials?”
“No; as far as I’m aware she’s still alive,” replied Tom mildly.
“Polly’s mother? Yes, of course she is, she’s staying with them at the moment. Her father couldn’t come because of the lambs,” said Jemima.
“Spring,” agreed Michaela. “They’d be late lambs, though, wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t know,” said Jemima simply.
“Maybe it’s crutching time,” murmured Tom. Nobody picked up this gauntlet, unfortunately.
“Why in God’s name ‘Memorial’, then?” pursued Ralph.
“The euphony of the phrase appealed to him, why else?” drawled Tom.
Ralph stared at him with a piece of well-buttered wholemeal bread halfway to his mouth.
“This is a man who has named his new subdivision Willow Plains,” Tom reminded him.
“Surely they had some sort of bloody publicity agent to do that?” said Hugh faintly.
“No,” said Jemima calmly: “Jake chose it, he likes to choose their names himself.”
“You people really do know the Carranos, don’t you?” Hugh said weakly.
“Polly’s in Jemima’s department at varsity, hasn’t that sunk in yet?” Tom returned nastily.
“It’s beginning to,” Hugh admitted, grinning sheepishly.
“You know what the next thing’ll be, don’t you?” said Ralph.
“A heart attack?” suggested his brother, eyeing the amount of butter he’d put on his bread.
“Quite probably,” Ralph agreed through a mouthful. “No, I was referring to the—er—Maureen Mitchell Memorial Reserve.”
“What about the Er Maureen Mitchell Memorial Reserve?” returned Tom, beating Hugh to it by a whisker.
Ralph waved his hand airily. “Wee picnic areas with barbecues. Concrete toilet blocks.”
“Painted an environmental green that’ll clash quite hideously with that field of whatever-it-is,” said Hugh dreamily.
“Wild turnip, you urban oaf,” Tom elucidated crushingly. “Cruciferae.”
“All that kow-towing during your formative years must have been quite exhausting, Ralph,” noted Hugh.
“Mm. Wazsh,” Ralph agreed through his butter and bread.
“Some of us,” said Tom loftily, ignoring these meaningless witterings, “would prefer the odd wee picnic area or concrete bog block to being entirely surrounded by terraced yuppie town-houses.”
“Terraced?” said Hugh in horror.
“Such was the original plan. All up and down the valley,” replied Tom with satisfaction.
“Meg was awfully upset about it,” contributed Michaela.
“That’s our neighbour from over the road, Hugh,” explained Jemima kindly.
Hugh smiled gratefully at her. “I see.”
Ralph finished his butter and bread and pushed his plate aside with a sigh. “And is he going to terrace Willow Plains, pray tell?” he drawled.
“Who the fuck cares?” replied Tom.
“You could ask him, Ralph,” said Jemima. She gave a sudden giggle. “At the golf club!”
“Nyergh, nyergh,” said Tom to his brother. “Blossom Av’ five, R. Overdale nil.”
“I thought it was love forty to Blossom Avenue?” replied Ralph very, very blandly.
Hugh choked. Jemima gasped, and put her hand over her mouth. Her ears went very red and her shoulders shook.
“Go on, Ralph, you can make the coffee on the strength of that one,” said Tom, grinning,
Smirking, Ralph got up and began making coffee.
Hugh ate a piece of bread. “What about that stretch over the road, with the, uh—”
“Christmas trees,” said Michaela,
“Uh—yeah.”
“Carrano’s bought that, too. Tough tit,” said Tom kindly.
“What’s he going to do with it?” asked Hugh faintly.
“Sell the trees next Christmas, I imagine: he isn’t entirely slow,” drawled Tom. “And then run a few steers on it, I rather think.”
“He’ll have to fence it, first,” said Michaela simply.
Jemima was goggling at her boyfriend. “Is he really, Tom?”
Tom shrugged. “Those trees are going to waste. Well, apart from the odd one or two that Bill and Meg or June and Bob nick round about December the twelfth every year.”
“I don’t think... The ducks won’t like having cows all over the field. And nor will Billy,” she said sadly.
“Billy? Oh, one of your neighbours’ kids?” said Hugh.
“No. Our goat. I mean at the house where I used to live,” said Jemima, reddening. “He sometimes goes in that field.”
“Or across it. In the direction of Bill’s silverbeet,” murmured Tom. He looked at Hugh’s face. “Oh, it’s all go at Blossom Av’,” he assured him.
Hugh smiled. “Yes, I rather thought it might be. That’s why I wouldn’t half mind building a place up here.”
Jemima swallowed. “Would Caroline like it?” she said in a squeaky voice.
“No, she’d hate it. That’s partly why I think it would be a damn good idea.”
Jemima was looking very pink and distressed. Tom put his arm around her shoulders and dropped a kiss on her silky black head. “I think he only means a bach, darling.”
“Mm. Then I’d have somewhere to go in the weekends apart from the bloody golf club.”
“Or my bloody pool,” said Ralph from the bench.
“Serves ya right for heating it,” Hugh retorted.
“Quite. –That reminds me: would you and Jemima like to come over tomorrow afternoon, Tom? We’re having a few people round—bit of a dip, hot spiced wine, rum toddies, that sort of thing.”
“A recipe for instant pneumonia,” murmured Hugh.
“Or instant paralysis!” put in Michaela, with a laugh.
“We can’t, thanks,” replied Tom with considerable satisfaction. “We’ve got old Mrs Morton coming up for afternoon tea.”
“Yes; she’s dying to see how we’re getting on with the house,” explained Jemima.
“Oh, well. ’Nother time, eh?” replied Ralph easily. He looked, the other two men didn’t fail to observe, really cheesed off. Hah, bloody hah.
As they retreated reluctantly down the ruddy ruts that indicated where a drive might one day go at Number 10 Blossom Avenue towards their mud-spattered up-market vehicles, Hugh admitted sourly: “Jesus, he’s a lucky bugger.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t thing so. I don’t think wee Jemima would go for that at all,” drawled Ralph.
Reddening, Hugh said angrily: “Don’t be so flaming crude! Not to mention so relentlessly anal!”
“It’s my age,” sighed Ralph.
“You’ve used that excuse before. Twenty years ago,” Hugh pointed out nastily.
“Dear lad, you mistake: ’tis not an excuse, ’tis but a reason.”
Glaring, Hugh said sulkily: “Well, I think he’s ruddy lucky.”
“That was, dare I say it, most patently obvious, Hugh.”
“And yours wasn’t?” he retorted immediately.
“Not at all. But at my age one becomes al-most proud of the fact.”
Hugh’s lean, dark face was very flushed. “Bullshit. You’re the same bloody age as me, for Christ’s sake!”
They had reached the cars. Ralph leaned on his BMW, sighing. “I was refraining from pointing that out, Hugh.”
Glaring, Hugh said: “A man can look, can’t he?”
“Oh, quite.”
“Well?” he roared.
Ralph shrugged. “Looking is one thing, dear boy. What one must avoid is, er...” His gaze roamed vaguely over the field of pale green Cruciferae. “Vainly coveting a—dare I say it—lifestyle, which one’s own earlier—er—life-decisions—”
“Cut it out, Ralph!” yelled Hugh.
“Which one’s career choice, let us say, not to mention one’s choice of a life-partner, not to say bedfellow, has ruled quite, quite out of the picture some fair few years ago.”
“Bedfellow!” exclaimed Hugh bitterly.
“You chose her. It was you that had that crying need to be old Sir Bertie’s—”
“Shut UP!”
“—partner, not to say son-in-law,” finished Ralph relentlessly. “And look where it’s got you: lovely old house in Parnell, two lovely kiddies—never mind if the girl’s a cretin and the boy thinks rugby morning, noon and night—two shiny cars, one shiny boat, loverly surgery in Remmers—”
“Your life’s so flaming different, I suppose!” cried Hugh.
“Oh, no. Not at all. Quite the reverse, in fact. That is why, dear boy, I can see the danger in your covetous attitude towards Tom and Jemima’s very different style. –I refrain from ‘lifestyle’ this time round, please note.”
“Get flaming stuffed, Ralph!” said Hugh angrily. He got into his mud-spattered up-market, shiny red Japanese four-wheel-drive, slamming the door.
Murmuring: “Get stuffed? Tragically anal,” and shaking his head, Ralph got into his BMW and drove away.
Hugh sat there gripping the wheel for some minutes, scowling. Finally he slammed through the gears and raced off over the bumps and ruts of muddy and eminently desirable Blossom Avenue.
“—Good riddance,” concluded Tom with satisfaction, having reconnoitred cataiously from his front windows.
“They bought some of Michaela’s pots,” pointed out Jemima.
“Mm. Well, silver lining, eh?” he said, grinning.
“Yes,” agreed Michaela, smiling slowly.
“I hope you made Ralph pay through the nose,” he said, grinning at her.
Blushing, Michaela said: “Well, Sol and David both said I didn’t charge enough. So when he thought June’s funny seven was a two and the dot was another nought, I let him.”
“Elucidate,” said Tom, grinning.
“It was really seventy dollars. Only your brother thought it said two hundred. So I let him pay it.”
Tom and Jemima shouted with laughter.
“Then Hugh said the price on his must be a mistake, because it said fifty dollars. And Ralph said I must have left off the one.”
“A hundred and fifty?” said Tom.
“Not for that big salt-glazed pot like ours?” cried Jemima. “It’s worth much more than that, Michaela!”
“No. That other one. I mean, it’s salt-glazed, too. I made quite a few of them. Sort of squarish and squashed. June’s got one in her back yard.”
“Oh, yes: with pansies in it? I love that!” cried Jemima.
“Hugh’s never actually struck me as the pots of pansies type,” murmured Tom.
“Um—no. He said he was going to put it on the desk in his surgery with lots and lots of daffodils in it,” said Michaela dubiously.
“That’d be nice,” said Jemima firmly.
“So you socked him for a hundred and fifty for it?” asked Tom, grinning broadly.
“Yes,” she said guiltily.
“Hooray!” cried Jemima.
“There’s a technical term for this,” said Tom thoughtfully. “Market forces, or something.”
“Ooh, yes: when what they’ll pay sets the price!” agreed Jemima gleefully.
“Well, go on,” prompted Tom: “didn’t Hugh buy the whopping great salt-glazed one, too?”
“Mm. June hadn’t put a sticker on it, because it was too heavy for her to lift.”
“And?” he said eagerly.
Michaela turned scarlet. “Ralph said three hundred and fifty. And—and Hugh said it was very fair.”
“HOORAY!” cried Jemima.
Tom laughed and laughed. He hugged Jemima and for good measure Michaela, too.
When they’d calmed down Michaela fished in the pocket of her battered flannels. “Um, he gave me a cheque. Hugh, I mean.”
“I don’t think it’ll bounce,” said Tom, grinning. “We’ll make him sell that bloody palace in Parnell, if it does.”
“Not that. I’ve never had a cheque, before. Um, can I put it in my Post Office account, do you think?”
Weakly Tom replied: “It’s an ordinary savings account, is it?”
“Ye-es... Well, I think so. They make you go to a special counter now, don’t they?”
“Yes. This means that you have to queue longer regardless of whether it’s banking or stamps you want, because the same number of staff are now pretending to be two entirely separate organisations,” said Tom immediately.
Jemima giggled but Michaela said uncertainly: “Um—yes. I’ve only put money in it, before.”
Tom said sternly to his girlfriend: “Have you got any lectures on Monday?”
“Only in the morning,” replied Jemima blankly. “Two: First-Year Linguistics at nine o’clock and the First-Year English Language stream at ten.”
Tom didn’t remark on this peculiar distinction: she knew his feeling on the matter. “Then what say you meet Michaela at lunchtime and help her bank the cheque? You do know how to bank a cheque, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course. –Yes, I could show you, Michaela. You have to fill in the form. It’s quite easy, really, only there’s nothing to tell you what the words mean.”
Tom looked at her with affection. He’d rather thought she’d see it like that.
“Thanks,” said Michaela gruffly. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble? I’m no good with forms and official stuff.”
“Nor am I. But I can do banking.”
“Good. And you could have lunch together,” prompted Tom.
Pinkening, Jemima agreed quickly: “Yes. It could be a treat, I could take you to The Primrose Café.”
Tom had had something more up-market in mind. The Blue Heron Restaurant, say. He didn’t say anything.
“No. Let me pay,” objected Michaela.
Tom looked at the two flushed faces. “That’s very kind of you, Michaela,” he said firmly. “Just do me the favour of not letting her stuff herself on cream doughnuts, will you?”
“Okay,” said Michaela obligingly, grinning.
“I don’t even like them. Anyway, how do you know they have them there?” Jemima asked suspiciously.
Tom threw up his hands. “All right! I admit the soft impeachment! The craving comes over me about once every six months. But don’t worry, this vegetarian diet you’ve put me on’s sorting that out nicely,” he added acidly.
“It was a lovely lunch, Tom,” Jemima assured him anxiously. “Your ragoût was super.”
“Old Ralph and Hugh thought so, too: it was written all over their faces!” he choked.
“It won’t do them any harm. They both look as if they spend all day in their offices except when they’re eating three-course lunches,” said Michaela calmly.
“Yeah. Well, actually Ralph manages to get in a fair bit of golf. But you’re right about Hugh, I’d say.”
“I don’t think he’s happy,” she said, frowning.
“No, well, you certainly wouldn’t think so if you’d met Caroline—his wife.”
“No,” agreed Jemima sadly. “Fancy wanting to build a bach to get away from your wife! You might just as well not be married at all!”
“Yep!” Tom agreed.
“P’raps they’re Catholics,” said Michaela vaguely.
“I dunno,” said Tom. “But they’re certainly damned unhappy, I’d say you’d hit the nail on the head there.”
“Ye-es... She’s one of those thin ladies that are always on diets,” Jemima explained to Michaela.
“Oh, yes, I know: there’s one at St Ursie’s. She makes you think of sour plums.”
Choking, Tom and Jemima gasped: “Yes!”
“Poor Hugh,” said Michaela.
Tom went over to the bench and began to be very busy rinsing out the coffee-pot. “You haven’t fallen for Hugh, have you, Michaela?” he said in a carefully casual tone.
“Heck, no!” she replied in amazement. “But he’s got an interesting face. Interesting colours.”—Tom and Jemima knew her well enough not to display either incredulity or over-eager interest at this point.—“I was looking at it. Then I noticed how sad it looked.”
“What does it make you think of?” he asked curiously.
“I don’t know...” said Michaela slowly. “Well, sort of that river, I suppose.”
Tom refrained from saying “Still waters run deep,” but it was a Hell of an effort. “Mm?”
Michaela said slowly: “It was down near Wellington. I know a potter down there... It was in winter. The river was very high. And most of it was very fast. But Hugh makes me think of the bit by the bank, where there was a sort of pool. There was a huge branch stuck there. The water was very dark, sort of brown, but you could see the bottom. That river’s full of grey stones. And there was some grass in the water. Maybe it was a water plant. Streaks of green, going sideways. That would’ve been the current.”
“I see,” he said weakly.
“It does sound sad,” murmured Jemima.
“I’m no good at describing things,” said Michaela simply.
“Yes, you are, only you do it with your pots, not with words,” said Jemima. “We can’t all be poets,” she added, sticking her tongue out at her lover.
“No,” he conceded, grinning. “Well, now that we’ve got rid of them, let’s go upstairs.”
“Yes,” agreed Jemima.
“I thought you were going to start stripping the passage wall?” said Michaela blankly.
Tom winked. “Nah. That was a ploy, ruse, wile, dodge, or deception, designed to send Ralph off faster than the cat could lick its ear.”
Jemima sighed. “He’s been reading Roget’s Thesaurus again,” she said heavily.
Beaming, Michaela replied: “That’s it! I couldn’t think of its name! Phoebe’s got a super big dictionary, her friend Jim was showing it to me, only I knew that was wrong, because it hasn’t got synonyms, has it? You had to read it with a magnifying glass.”
Tom’s face lit up. “I’ve got that!”
“Oh, God,” said Jemima heavily. “There’ll be no holding him.”
“Well, at least we’ll able to talk about something when the woman comes to dinner!”
Groaning, Jemima said: “Ignore him. Come on, Michaela, let’s go up and sit on the window-seat.”
“I can’t, I’ve got to get over to Mrs Foskett’s.”
“I’ll drive you later,” said Tom. “I need to go into Puriri to get some cream, anyway.”
Michaela stared at him. “Truly?”
“Mm.”
Making a face, she admitted: “I can never tell if you’re telling the truth or not, Tom.”
“I’m famous for it,” he replied smugly.
“His face usually looks blanker than usual when he’s telling a lie,” explained Jemima kindly. “Only I can’t always tell, either.”
Tom broke down and had a helpless sniggering fit. When he’d recovered he said weakly: “I really do need some cream, Michaela. Phoebe’s coming to dinner tonight.”
“And Sol,” agreed Jemima. “Another of your admirers, Michaela!” she added with a giggle.
“He bought that big grey raku pot. You know, with the raku clay,” the potter explained.
“Yeah. What a waste, letting it go out of the country,” said Tom glumly.
“He said he might bring his sister-in-law over,” said Michaela hesitantly, “only he hasn’t, yet.”
“Well, there’s plenty of time,” said Jemima comfortingly. “They’re out here for a while, Susan said.”
Susan had also said: “Unless Mum gets bored and drags Abe off to Timbuctoo or somewhere at the drop of a hat,” but both Jemima and Tom refrained from reporting that to Michaela.
“Well, that makes three!” said Tom with satisfaction. “Ralph and Hugh, and Sol—maybe you’ll work up a market in Florida, Michaela!”
“Hah, hah,” replied Michaela without animus.
“Scores of admirers, in fact,” said Jemima with considerable satisfaction.
“Yep!” Tom agreed. “Which reminds me, Michaela: who’s this David bloke that’s hanging round you?”
“David Shapiro.”
“Is he a relation of Susan’s?” asked Jemima dubiously.
“I don’t know,” said Michaela simply. “I don’t really know Susan.”
“Well, describe him,” said Tom feebly.
“Um… well, he’s very old. And tall. Thin.”
After a stunned moment Jemima said: “You don’t mean Susan’s grandfather, do you? Old Mr Shapiro?”
“He is old. He’s a friend of Polly’s.”
There was a short silence.
“Of Polly Carrano’s?” said Jemima cautiously.
“Yes. She was at Phoebe’s place, too. She brought him.”
Tom went all limp. “Let me get this straight. Polly Carrano—with or without a putative grandfather dubiously attributed to Susan Shapiro—was at this shindig of Phoebe Fothergill’s?”
“Dinner. Yes. All yellow. Except for a big emerald ring.”
“Never mind her colour scheme, Michaela!” he cried wildly. “At this do, where according to your own report Phoebe showed off some pot of yours and most of those present talked about raku ware or some such blessed thing for hours on end, you met Polly Carrano?”
“Yes. And David.”
“Shut up about this bloody David!” he hollered, bright red. “Why the fuck isn’t Polly round here buying up your whole bloody stock?”
“Tom,” murmured Jemima reproachfully.
“Well, WHY?” he bellowed.
“I don’t know. She did say she’d come. Perhaps she’s changed her mind.”
Tom looked at her limply.
“She’s got one of my green things, from before I went to Japan... She’s sort of my cousin.”
“What?” he whispered.
“Um, not really, her mother and my mother are cousins.”
“WHAT?” he screamed.
“Stop it, Tom!” cried Jemima indignantly. “You’re upsetting poor Michaela! People can’t help who they’re related to!”
Tom just goggled.
After a moment Michaela said in a trembling voice: “If she’s got Aunty Maureen staying with her like Jemima said, I expect she’s busy.”
“‘Aunty Maureen’,” he echoed feebly.
“Stop it right now, Tom Overdale!” shrieked Jemima, suddenly turning puce.
“I’m sorry. –I’m really sorry, Michaela,” he said, reddening. “It was bloody rude of me. And it’s none of my business whatsoever. But—but glory be, she could get you into the trendiest galleries in town! Not to mention that place out at bloody Parnell!”
Michaela said in a voice that shook: “I haven’t even seen her since I was about fourteen. And—and you can’t ask people to do things for you, just because they’re related to you. And it—it isn’t anybody’s business, if she married Jake Carrano and he’s got lots of money!”
“No,” he conceded, grimacing.
“You said practically the same thing, Tom, when Ralph insisted on lending you all that money for the house!” said Jemima crossly.
“Mm,” he admitted, pulling a face.
There was a short silence. During it Jemima glared at Tom and he just looked like a tit.
“Anyway, David’s a friend of hers,” said Michaela uncertainly.
“What? Oh,” said Tom limply. “Yes. Is he filthy rich?”
“No, I think he’s quite poor. He came up on the bus.”
“To look at your pots?” asked Jemima kindly.
“Yes. And you know those photos I showed you? From Toshiro.”
“Mm?”
“He’s going to get someone to translate the words. He can speak Japanese but he can’t read handwriting very well. But he knows lots of Japanese people.”
“I see. That’ll be lovely, Michaela: then you could write to them!”
“Ye-es... But they can’t read English.”
“No: you could write it in English and he could get someone to translate it into Japanese!”
“I don’t think I could ask him to do that.”
“Why not?” demanded Jemima.
“Well, don’t translators usually charge quite a lot for that sort of work?”
Tom had more or less recovered. “Did this David ask you for money?”
“No.”
“Well, there you are, then.”
Jemima saw that the lost and hunted look which had come over Michaela’s face when Tom had abused her about Polly was creeping back. It was a look which she’d noticed rather often on Michaela’s face in the days when she’d first known her, and which she had very much hoped never to see there again. “Come on, Michaela, we’ll go upstairs. It’ll only take Tom ten minutes to run you into Puriri to Mrs Foskett’s place. –Tom, I’d love a cup of tea.”
He blinked.
Jemima just looked at him.
“I’ll get you one,” he said weakly. “Earl Grey?”
“Yes. With skim milk,” she said firmly.
Shuddering slightly, Tom said to Michaela: “Fancy a cuppa?”
“Um—yes, thanks. If you’re making one.”
“Oh, I’m making one,” he said weakly.
Jemima led Michaela upstairs. The sun was out again: it was just starting to come onto the window-seat. They sat down and she touched Michaela’s broad hand gently. “Tell me about David. He sounds nice.”
“Ye-es... I like him, but I wouldn’t call him nice. I think he’s quite a sarcastic person. He’s nice to me because he’s interested in my work.”
“I see.”
“He’s quite a tough and stringy person,” said Michaela gruffly.
“I think he must be Susan’s grandfather, that’s more or less how she described him,” said Jemima thoughtfully.
“Is it? He lived in Japan for ages.”
“Did he? That would create a bond between you.”
Michaela looked at her gratefully. “Yes. No-one else understands.”
“No,” said Jemima gently. She looked out of the window, and swallowed. “Go on, Michaela.”
“Um… He liked the grey pot but he couldn’t afford him.” She went very red. “I mean it.”
Jemima overlooked this. In fact an onlooker would have said she hadn’t noticed it. But this wasn’t so: Jemima’s subject was linguistics but quite apart from this she was, although vague about many things, a noticing and caring person. As Tom Overdale was beginning to discover. “Mm?”
“He can do the tea ceremony,” said Michaela abruptly. “Not well, of course, but...”
“He could use that lovely little black bowl you made,” murmured Jemima.
“Yes. He knows the Idemitsu collection.”
Jemima had no idea what she was talking about. She continued to make encouraging noises and from time to time looked shyly but sympathetically into her face.
When Tom came upstairs with the tea it was still going on. He drew a little table up quietly and poured for them, not saying anything. Michaela talked for quite a long time, her wide grey-green eyes vague and far away. She drank three cups of tea and ate five homemade seedy biscuits without, Tom would have sworn, being aware that she was even doing so.
“I’m glad you’ve found a friend,” murmured Jemima at last.
“Yes,” said Tom.
Jemima eyed him nervously. He was aware that she was waiting for him to say something sarky about Michaela’s scores of admirers. With an effort, he refrained. He was rewarded by the tremulous, grateful smile that broke over Jemima’s speaking countenance.
Tom sighed. He removed his specs and polished them busily. All this cohabitation business with Jemima Puddle-Duck was, as in his simple male peer-group way he’d attempted to indicate to Bill what felt like aeons ago but had only been around eleven this morning, turning out a lot more complicated than he’d envisaged. It was good, though. Very, very good.
Next chapter:
https://theamericanrefugeeanovel.blogspot.com/2022/11/michaela-and-her-admirers-part-1.html
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