Family Life

18

Family Life

    Elspeth clung to Mirry’s hand and jumped up and down, waving madly. Jake, looking harassed, turned and waved back. Polly, looking serene but very pregnant, turned and waved and smiled.

    “There—that’s that!” said Hamish in some relief, as the Carranos were swallowed up by the mysterious regions beyond the “Passengers Only Past This Point” notice.

    Elspeth, who had already expressed extreme disappointment at not being able to see the planes from inside the International Terminal, tugged at Mirry’s hand. “Come on: let’s go and look at the planes!”

    Mirry looked doubtfully at Hamish.

    Hamish looked at his watch. “It’ll be a whole hour before their plane takes off,” he said, not sounding very pleased about it. As usual, it was stiflingly hot in the International Terminal; Mirry, who had remembered this, had worn jeans and her violet singlet under a large, fuzzy bright pink jumper, and had taken the jumper off as soon as they got inside out of the wind and drizzle. She had also peeled Elspeth out of the pink parka with the green and silver patches that had once been hers, and removed her jumper, so that Elspeth, too, was comfortable in jeans and tee-shirt. Hamish, who had forgotten the horrors of Auckland International Airport, was wearing ancient tweed slacks, a woollen shirt, and a heavy natural wool jumper. He looked hot and irritable; the more so since the plane’s scheduled departure hour had necessitated their rising considerably before the sun did on a nasty, cold August morning in order to drive all the way in from Kowhai Bay. But in a weak moment he’d promised Elspeth—who had had great difficulty in grasping what Aunty Polly was going to do in Cambridge, even though she’d seen her father depart to innumerable conferences—that they could see the Carranos off.

    “Take your jumper off, Hamish,” Mirry suggested.

    Hamish scowled.

    By now Mirry knew that he had some peculiar prejudice, which must be a British one or a Scottish one, because it certainly wasn’t a New Zealand one, against hauling his jumper off over his head in public. “It is awfully hot in here,” she added.

   Hamish hauled his jumper off over his head; his curls emerged looking all ruffled, and Mirry thought he was terribly sweet, but didn’t dare tell him so. She slipped her hand inside his arm.

    “Well,” he said in a resigned voice, “where’s this observation deck, then?”

    “Upstairs!” cried Elspeth, who’d already sussed out all the signs. “Come on!” She towed them off to the escalator.

    Mirry said in a warning voice: “Don’t expect too much, Elspeth: there isn’t much of a view, really.”

    Elspeth ignored this and said: “Can I go on ahead? Can I, Daddy?”

    “Aye, go on,” said Hamish resignedly. Elspeth shot on ahead.

    “I suppose she can’t get lost?” he said, without much interest.

    “No,” replied Mirry. “There isn’t  anywhere to get lost, really.”

    “Oh,” said Hamish when they got there. It was an echoing pale grey space, almost completely devoid of amenities. Elspeth was hanging over a safety rail staring at a view of ranked grey roofs.

    “I bet that’s the best view of roofs you ever had in your life!” said Mirry.

    “Aye!” he agreed with a chuckle. “Really boring roofs, too!”

    “Yes, aren’t they?’ she said pleasedly.

    There were two other groups in the echoing spaces of the strange observation area with a view of the airport roofs: a Japanese couple with a mountain of hand luggage, sitting on a row of hard plastic chairs that were bolted down in a position which must give them no view at all, not even of roofs, and a hot, cross-looking New Zealand family of dad, mum, two large teenagers, a skinny boy of about Elspeth’s age, and a little girl of about seven clutching a Cabbage Patch doll with a grubby face. The mum had sat down on another row of hard plastic chairs which did face the runways but was probably too low to give a view of anything but roofs and grey sky; the dad was telling the skinny boy that if he did that again he’d get a clip round the ear; and the teenagers, a boy and a girl, were draped over their plastic chairs in the sort of sitting position assumed by teenagers when disassociating themselves from their surroundings. They were arguing loudly about the history of Split Enz.

    “Shall we sit down?” said Mirry with a smile.

    “Aye, why not; there doesn’t seem to be any point in standing up,” replied Hamish.

    “No!” she agreed with a loud giggle.

    They sat down. After a minute or two Hamish took her hand. He suddenly felt—God knew why, at this precise moment—absolutely and completely happy.

    Eventually Elspeth gave up looking at nothing—or, presumably, grey roofs—and came over to them. “I can’t see Aunty Polly’s plane! Where’s Aunty Polly’s plane?”

    Hamish replied simply: “You can’t see it from here.”

    Mirry stood up, tiptoed, and peered. “I think that’s its tail—over there.”

    Elspeth tiptoed. “Where? I can’t see it!”

    “Stand on the seat,” said Mirry’.

    Elspeth stood on the seat and tiptoed. “Ooh, yes!”

    She stayed up there for quite some time, apparently content just to stare at the tip of the Qantas jumbo’s tail—if it was it: it was quite impossible to tell. Mirry leaned her head against Hamish’s shoulder and he put his arm round her and they didn’t say anything at all.

    Finally Elspeth gave a sigh, and reported sadly: “I can’t see Aunty Polly or Uncle Jake.”

    “No,” agreed Mirry.

    “Ooh, look, there’s a plane! Is that their plane, Mirry?”

    “No, that’s a Singapore Airlines plane.”

    “Aw,” said Elspeth in disappointment. ‘‘What’s it doing?”

    “I think it’s just, um, turning round, or something.”

    “Taxiing,” said Hamish unexpectedly.

    Mirry jumped,

    “Yes, taxiing,” agreed Elspeth smugly, in the wake of prolonged perusal of Jill Davis’s collection of ancient Biggles books.

    After a while she reported: “It isn’t doing anything.”

    “No,” agreed Mirry.

    Elspeth got down from the seat and went over to the far right-hand end of he glassed-in observation enclosure and peered hard at the Singapore Airlines plane.

    The skinny little boy, who’d spent some time trying to get the up escalator to swallow his cheeseballs packet, without success, and then some time trying to go down the up escalator, with slightly more success, drifted over to her side and took a Transformer out of his parka pocket.

    “Pee-yew! Pee-yew! Pee-yew!” he went, horribly high and nasal, shooting at nothing—or possibly at grey roofs.

    “Shall we go and have a coffee or something?” suggested Mirry weakly.

    “Aye; I don’t think I can stand the excitement here much longer,” Hamish agreed.

    After some persuasion Elspeth agreed to an adjournment in search of food. Hamish, who was very hungry, got himself a coffee, a filled roll, a small savoury, and a dish of something that called itself trifle. Mirry looked in vain for fruit juice, and chose a Coke. Elspeth had a Coke, a small savoury, a pink lamington and, on second thoughts and dodging back in the queue to get it, a vanilla slice.

    Hamish ate his savoury, which was hot, with enthusiasm. He ate half his filled roll with enthusiasm. Then he said: “This bread’s rather leathery,”

    “Don’t eat it,” replied Mirry mildly.

    “Look,” said Elspeth with interest: “She’s got a milkshake.” A plump Polynesian lady at the next table did, indeed, have a milkshake.

    Hamish opened his mouth to tell his daughter not to make personal remarks, but Mirry said interestedly: “So she has! I didn’t know you could get milkshakes here.”

    Weakly Hamish took another bite of his filled roll.

    Elspeth had quickly eaten up her lamington and drunk her Coke. Then she had eaten her savoury. Then she had attempted to extract the custard filling from her vanilla slice in order to eat the pastry and the custard separately, and been forcibly prevented by both Mirry and her father, neither of whom had been impressed by her explanation that that was how everybody ate them at school. So she had eaten that up normally. She looked wistfully at Hamish’s trifle and said: “I wish I’d had a milkshake instead of a Coke.”

    “Yeah; they were awfully small,” agreed Mirry.

    Hamish put down the rest of his filled roll and pushed his plate away. “You can have my pudding, Elspeth, if you like.”

    With an extreme effort, which quite plainly showed, Elspeth replied: “Are you sure you don’t want it?”

    “No; you can have it.”

    “Ooh, thank you, Daddy!” Elspeth ate up Hamish’s “trifle” hungrily, not noticing that its custard was exactly the same as that of her vanilla slice, that it had no jelly or cake in it, and that its fruit was only half-a-dozen tiny cubes of tinned Wattie’s Fruit Salad.

    “We could have trifle for pudding one day, if you like,” said Mirry thoughtfully.

    “Ooh, yes!” cried Elspeth.

    “It’s quite easy to make; it’s in the Edmonds book.”

    “Can we have it tonight?” said Elspeth hopefully.

    Mirry looked at her watch and said: “No; there won’t be time for it to set.”

    Elspeth’s face fell.

    “Tell you what, though: we could make it this afternoon and then it’ll be ready for tea tomorrow.”

    Elspeth beamed and said: “Choi-oice!” in a sort of basso profundo.

    “What did she say?” asked Hamish weakly.

    “‘Choice’; the kids all say it,” replied Mirry, getting up and picking up her fuzzy jumper, Elspeth’s parka, and Elspeth’s jumper. “Come on: we’d better go back, the plane must be about due to take off.”

    “I presume that’s an expression of approbation?” said Hamish drily as his daughter shot off back to the misnamed Observation Deck.

    Mirry giggled and took his arm. “Extreme approbation!”

    “Give me those damn woollies!” he said, taking her pink jumper, Elspeth’s parka and Elspeth’s jumper from her and adding them to his own jumper. He wadded them up and held them under his right arm. He put his left arm around Mirry. “What’s the betting we won’t be able to see the bloody plane when it does take off?”

    “About fifty to one,” she admitted on a glum note.

    They did, however, catch a glimpse of the Qantas jumbo taxiing out to the runway, and a very quick glimpse of it as it shot across the very small piece of runway that was visible between two grey roofs; and it made an absolutely frightful racket; and Elspeth appeared to be quite satisfied.

    “Well, that was the airport!” said Mirry cheerfully, when they were all in the fawn Volvo station-waggon that had cost Hamish a fortune.

    “Aye.” He leaned across to buckle her in. Suddenly he smiled into her slanted brown eyes, and hissed her.

    “Da-ad!” protested Elspeth—she was approaching the covered-with-embarrassment stage.

    “Don’t look if you don’t like it,” said Hamish mildly.

    Mirry giggled.

    Hamish kissed her again.

    Elspeth gave a loud groan.

    Mirry giggled again and said: “Ooh! No—that’s enough! Ooh!”

    Hamish chuckled and withdrew his hand reluctantly from her fuzzy pink left tittie. Fortunately Elspeth had lost interest in the proceedings and was looking out of her window, so she didn’t have to be covered in embarrassment all over again.

    At dinnertime next day the Edmonds trifle was a great success. Hamish already knew, of course, that Mirry could produce excellent vegetarian meals, but he’d been tickled to find, over the last few months, that for Elspeth’s benefit when they were en famille she could also produce the traditional sort of solid family fare that his Macdonald relations in Taranaki all served. Really, the trifle could just as well have been one of Aunty Kay’s—or perhaps Aunty Maureen’s: Mirry had a much more generous hand with the sherry and the whipped cream than her mother had.

    “This trifle is just like Aunty Maureen’s,” he said happily, cleaning his plate.

    Mirry gave him a second helping when he asked for it but privately made up her mind that it’d be fresh fruit or plain yoghurt for a while, now.

    “Who’s Aunty Maureen?” asked Elspeth, eating her second helping with relish.

    “Polly’s mother,” explained Mirry.

    “I don’t know her, do I?” asked Elspeth doubtfully; she’d met an awful lot of Macdonald and Field “aunties” on her visits to Taranaki.

    “No,” said Hamish. “The Mitchells’ farm is over on the East Coast.”

    “Where’s that?” said Elspeth, looking to see how much Hamish had left in his dish and wondering if she could beat him to the last remaining helping of trifle.

    Hamish floundered. “E-er...”

   “I’ll get the atlas!” said Mirry, bouncing up. After discovering Elspeth’s staggering ignorance of New Zealand geography she’d gone to the bookshop in Puriri and bought her an atlas which, the nice lady in the shop assured her, was the one that all the Third-Formers at Puriri High used. Luckily Elspeth, who’d accompanied her rather sulkily, was terribly chuffed at this, and now used the atlas eagerly.

    “Look,” said Mirry, opening the atlas and showing her the map of the North Island. “Here’s the East Coast.”

    “It’s a long way from Taranaki.”

    “Yes, isn’t it?” she agreed, very pleased that Elspeth had grasped the scale of the atlas at last.

    “Where’s Aunty Maureen’s farm?”

    “Uncle Dave’s and Aunty Maureen’s,” corrected Mirry, looking in vain for Totara Crossing, which was the nearest settlement to the Mitchells’ farm. “Um...”

    “Is Uncle Dave Aunty Polly’s daddy?”

    “Mm, ’course.”

    “Why haven’t I met him?” said Elspeth wistfully.

    “Well, it’s a long drive to their place,” replied Mirry in a vague voice, peering at the map.

    “Further than Grandpa Ian’s?”

    “Mm-m...”

    “It looks about the same to me.”

    “No, it’s further, and the roads are funny—you can’t just go straight there.”

    “Why not?”

    “Um... I can’t find Totara Crossing on this!” said Mirry to Hamish, going pink.

    Hamish had been waiting in some amusement for her to admit this. “No: it’s too small. Look—Uncle Dave’s farm’d be about here, Elspeth.”

    Elspeth looked and said: “How big is it?”

    “I don’t know,” said Hamish weakly.

    “Bigger than Grandpa Ian’s?”

    “E-er—I don’t really know.”

    “Can I have the rest of the trifle, Mirry?”

    “‘Please’.”

    “Please, Mirry?”

    “Yeah—go on, then.”

    A bit surprized that Mirry hadn’t said, as she usually did, to ask her father if he wanted some more, Elspeth ate the trifle up quickly before she could think of it.

    “Actually...” said Hamish slowly.

    “Mm?” said Mirry, collecting up his plate and her own.

    “Maybe we could go down there some time.”

    “When?” squeaked Elspeth, going pink with excitement.

    “What about next week?” It would still be Elspeth’s school holidays, and they hadn’t made any definite plans.

    “It’d be rather short notice,” said Hamish doubtfully.

    “Aunty Maureen wouldn’t mind,” said Mirry confidently. “Why don’t you give them a ring?”

    “Aye...” He flushed. “Do they know about us?”

    “Bound to: Mum knows, and she always tells Aunty Maureen everything—they’re twins,” she reminded him.

    “Oh, aye; I’d forgotten.”

    “Twins?” said Elspeth in astonishment.

    “Yes; my mum—your Aunty Kay—well, her and Polly’s mum are twins.”

    “Old twins!” said Elspeth in fascination.

    “Mm; that’s why Polly had twins; it runs in the family, you see.”

    “Oh,” said Elspeth, accepting this without understanding it.

    So Hamish rang up the Mitchells, and of course Dave Mitchell answered, which he always did if he was in the house, and after brief enquiries after everybody’s health they had a nice wee chat about the weather, and Dave and Vic Mitchell’s Chinese gooseberries, which was what Dave still obstinately called the kiwifruit that they were doing very well out of recently, and Bert Mitchell’s exotic fruits over on the next property, and Bob Mitchell’s career with the Min. of Ag. as a Farm Adviser; and a much longer chat about the sheep that were much closer to Dave Mitchell’s old-fashioned heart than the newfangled horticulture that most of the farmers round their way were going in for lately.

    Then Hamish asked to speak to Aunty Maureen, and she came on the line and said pleasedly: “Hamish, dear!” and they had a nice long chat about everybody’s health, and Hamish assured Maureen several times over that Polly was perfectly well, and that Bruce Smith, who was Polly’s G.P. as well as his, had said it was perfectly all right for her to fly, and that Jake was taking the greatest care of her, and of course they were travelling First Class there and back.

    Naturally Maureen greeted his request to come and stay with cries of joy. On second thoughts she added that since Vi, her older sister, who lived in the city, was coming down that week, too, perhaps Hamish could give her a lift?

    Hamish replied that of course he could, but was she sure it wouldn’t be too much of a houseful for her?

    Maureen, who remembered nostalgically the days when Polly was tiny and the three boys were all still at home—at least in the holidays, for of course they’d all gone to boarding school and then done the Ag. course at Massey—replied fervently that of course it wouldn’t, it’d be lovely to have some young people in the house again!

    When she hung up Dave Mitchell anxiously: “Are you sure you’re not taking on too much, old lady?”

    “Of course not!” replied Maureen with huge scorn. “—I think I’ll give Hamish and Mirry that big back room that Polly and Jake had last time.”

    The old wooden farmhouse was a rambling, single-storeyed affair that generations of Mitchells had added to over the last hundred years.

    “Yeah,” agreed Dave. “That’d be nice; gets the afternoon sun.”

    “Yes; and Elspeth can have Polly’s old room!”

    “Yeah; she’d like that, I expect.

    “And then Vi can have her usual room.”

    “Mm.”

    They finished what they’d been about to do when Hamish rang, which was load the dishwasher: Dave Mitchell, in spite of his sister-in-law Kay Field’s claims to the contrary, was neither mean nor living in the last century, and although he consented to his wife’s retaining the old wood-burning stove that she’d cooked on all her married life, he bought her as many other mod-cons as he could force her to accept.

    Maureen discussed blankets, eiderdowns, and the rival merits of flannelette and cotton sheets for a while—it got awfully cold at night on their East Coast farm—and Dave attempted to persuade her that since all the beds had electric blankets, cotton sheets’d be okay. Maureen decided dubiously that Hamish and Mirry probably wouldn’t mind cotton, but that Elspeth would probably prefer flannelette; and Vi certainly would.

    “Yeah, and this time if she reckons the bed’s damp I’ll give ’er a flea in ’er ear!” added Dave sourly: Miss Violet Macdonald usually treated her gentle sister to an unending stream of criticism whenever she invited herself to stay.

    Maureen replied mildly: “Just ignore her, David: you know what Vi is,” and Dave Mitchell, who certainly did, made a sort of growly noise.

    “It will be nice to see dear Mirry again!” added Maureen enthusiastically. “Goodness, I think the last time I saw her was at Polly and Jake’s wedding!”

    “Yeah—prob’ly was,” agreed Dave, settling himself in his armchair with his New Zealand Farmer and looking unenthusiastically at the five-millionth article about a new milking-shed design.

    Maureen was knitting jumpers for Polly’s twins. She’d finished Davey’s, which was cherry-red with a pattern of white sheep: Davey now had a mop of dark curls not unlike his father’s. She knitted a few rows of dark green ribbing for Johnny’s jumper—he had his mother’s grey-green eyes, and fluffy pale fawn hair which was just like his Uncle Vic’s at the same age—and said thoughtfully: “Polly hasn’t said anything to you about Hamish’s divorce, has she?”

    “No; last I heard Sylvie was still digging in her toes.” Dave turned over a page in his Farmer. He looked unenthusiastically at a picture of a Merino sheep. The bloody things were Australian, of course.

    Maureen sighed. “Oh, dear; poor little Mirry.”

    Dave cleared his throat cautiously. “She is a bit young for ’im, Maur’.”

    “Nonsense, dear!” said Maureen, fluffing herself up like a cross, plump hen. “Look at Polly and dear Jake!”

    Dave concealed a grin, remembering the fuss there’d been when Maureen and her sisters had first discovered—unfortunately via a ruddy stupid paragraph in a gossip column and a silly photo of the two of them at a trendy night-club—that Polly had got herself mixed up with someone whom Violet Macdonald, at least, had not hesitated to stigmatize as “that crook of a millionaire”.

    “Yeah,” he said mildly, “that seems to be working out okay.”

    Maureen was used to her husband’s temperate manner of speech, so she didn’t protest that it was more than seeming to and more than okay, but allowed her ruffled feathers to subside. After a while she said: “Hamish is a dear boy.”

    “Got a Helluva temper, though,” murmured the placid Dave, remembering Hamish’s teens.

    Maureen was about to counter this allegation with a repetition of the lovely way Hamish had looked after her at Polly’s wedding reception, which was one of her favourite stories about her cousin Ian’s son, when Dave cried: “Good grief! The cunning beggar!”—shaking his Farmer and beaming all over his gaunt, craggy face.

   “What is it, dear?”

    “Article here by young Bob!” said Dave, chuckling. “No wonder Vic told me not to miss this issue—cunning beggar!”

    Maureen came and perched on the arm of his chair and looked with great interest at the article by their youngest son, who was pushing forty, but would always be “young Bob” to his father.

    After that Dave got on the phone to Vic, who lived with his family in the farm manager’s house: Vic and Dave farmed about two-thirds of the old farm together; Bert did his own thing on the flatter land that was his portion on the other side of the ridge.

    “Ya cunning devil! Why didn’tcha let on?”

    Vic replied in kind; the conversation went on for some time, because Dave then got going on the idiocies of the article on Merinos—“Whadda they think this is? Aussie, or something?” As an afterthought he imparted the news that Hamish was coming down. Vic wondered if he’d be able to sort out that bloody do with Customs about the new tractor that was still in bond. Dave replied with satisfaction that he’d said in the first place Vic should’ve got it through Wrightson’s, instead of trying to bring it in directly, and why didn’t he give Hamish a ring? Vic was pushing fifty but still a lot more modern than his father, who was in his seventies now. He replied doubtfully did Dave think Hamish’d mind?

    Dave belonged to the generation of New Zealanders that still thought nothing of travelling halfway across the country and then dropping in unannounced on cousins it hadn’t seen for twenty years: he replied blankly that of course he wouldn’t.

    What with all this, the subject of Hamish’s divorce—or, as Sylvie had refused not only to sign anything but even to read any communications from Hamish or his lawyer, his lack of a divorce—got rather lost.

    But Maureen, having undone her luxuriant silver hair, brushed it out and plaited it for the night, got into bed and lay there worrying for quite some time after Dave was snoring beside her. Poor little Mirry: what was going to happen to her? If Sylvie went on refusing to divorce dear Hamish... She was such a nasty woman, thought the charitable Maureen sadly. Of course, these days, like dear Polly said, people lived in all sorts of relationships; even that lovely Dr Smith that Polly had had for the twins... Only somehow, thought Maureen, knowing perfectly well what she meant, and that she was right, even if Polly wouldn’t have agreed with her, somehow a girl felt safer if she was married...

    The thin, angular little Violet Macdonald sniffed. “Well, of course, young people these days—!”

    Maureen didn’t say anything in reply, merely rocked in the ancient chair in which several generations of Mitchell babies had been nursed.

    “I know Polly and Jake were together for a while before they were married... But you can say what you like, Maureen, that’s different! He wasn’t married!”

    Maureen, who hadn’t said anything at all, went on rocking, and tied in the white wool for the sheep-pattern jumper that she was knitting for Elspeth, who’d been entranced by the ones for the “Twinnies.”

    Violet sniffed again. “And what if that Sylvie Macdonald decides to come back—what then? Tell me that!”

    There was a silence, and Maureen realized uncomfortably that this time Vi was waiting for an answer. She knew if she said something vague like she didn’t know what then, Vi would only get crosser. So she said: “I don’t think Hamish wants her back, Vi.”

    Violet snorted. “Huh! He may not have much say in the matter!”

    There was another silence. Maureen knitted, and made a vague picture in her head of where she might work in the one black sheep in the flock of white, this time—which was, of course, what made the jumper pattern so particularly entrancing to little girls.

    Violet scowled at the antique wood-burning stove which made the farmhouse kitchen deliciously warm on a cold August morning, and wondered for the millionth time why her sister didn’t talk that husband of hers into getting her a decent stove.

    “Maureen!” she said crossly. “Are you listening to me?”

    Maureen replied vaguely: “Mm-mm?”

    “I said,” repeated Miss Macdonald, crosser than ever: “that if that wife of his decides to come home, Hamish may have to take her back!”

    Maureen then did one of her most irritating tricks. She raised her big grey-green eyes from her knitting and said: “Why?”

    Violet reddened crossly, and bridled. “Really, Maureen! Isn’t it obvious? She is his wife, after all’“

    “Yes, but he wants to divorce her,” pointed out Maureen logically. She began to count stitches, not very quietly.

    Violet glared at her.

    “... sixty. Yes,” said Maureen thoughtfully to herself.

    “What I’m trying to say,” Violet pointed out laboriously, “is that if the woman comes walking back into her own house, he can hardly throw her out bodily, can he?”

    Maureen’s busy fingers stopped. She stared blankly into her lap at the bright pink wool (Elspeth’s choice) with its first couple of rows of sheep legs.

    “Well?” demanded her older sister snappily.

    “Surely she wouldn’t... With Mirry there?” said Maureen shakily.

    Violet sniffed once more—rather more with vindication than with disapproval, this time. “Wouldn’t she, just? From what I’ve seen of Sylvie Macdonald—and from what Polly’s said—she’d be more than capable of doing precisely that!”

    “Surely not, Vi,” protested Maureen faintly. Her lip wobbled.

    Vi was so pleased with having got her point over that she failed to notice this sign that her sister was about to go into what both she and Kay, united in their disapproval of Maureen’s spinelessness, though at loggerheads about almost everything else, dubbed her “watering-pot act”. “And where’ll that leave them with their so-called modern lifestyle?” she concluded with grim satisfaction.

    “Don’t, Vi! Poor little Mirry!” gasped Maureen. She began to cry.

    “For Heaven’s sake, Maureen! What are you bawling for?”

    Maureen fumbled for her hanky in the pocket of the old flowered apron she always wore around the house. Her sister watched her crossly, disapproval of the ancient apron almost taking over for a moment from her crossness. Maureen blew her nose. “Poor little Mirry,” she repeated.

    Vi got up abruptly. “I’ll make a cup of tea.”

    Over at the stove she fiddled crossly with the dampers. The kettle was warm, and almost full, so she just put it over the flame. “Why on earth don’t you get that husband of yours to get you a decent stove?”

    Not pointing out that she’d said that a million times, Maureen replied on a soggy note: “I’ve always cooked on that stove.”

    That was what she always said. Violet snorted.

    Maureen blew her nose again.

    The kettle had just started to whistle when Dave Mitchell, having removed his gumboots on the back porch, came in for morning smoko. He shot one glance at his dampish, pink-eyed wife and realized that ruddy Vi had been getting at her again. He came and put a hand on her plump shoulder. “You okay, old lady?”

    Maureen put her work-roughened plump little left hand with the plain gold band and the old-fashioned engagement ring that had been Dave’s Granny’s ring on top of his big, bony hand. She didn’t say anything. Dave scowled at his sister-in-law.

    “Where’s Mirry?” said Maureen faintly at last.

    “They’ve all gone over to Vic and Marilyn’s for morning tea; Elspeth wanted to see Marilyn’s lambs.” Marilyn Mitchell, as usual, had a couple of orphan lambs in her kitchen—which was, unlike her mother-in-law’s, very modern indeed.

    “I see. –Put your slippers on, dear, your feet’ll get cold,” she added automatically.

    Dave retrieved his slippers from where Maureen had propped them to warm by the big old stove. He sat down in the battered old armchair opposite the rocker. “Go on: what’s up?”

    Maureen replied in a trembling voice: “Vi thinks that—that Sylvie might—might want to come back to Hamish.”

    The normally even-tempered Dave repressed a strong impulse to wring his sister-in-law’s skinny neck for her, and said mildly: “Thought she hated his guts.”

    At this Violet swung round and said sharply: “What if she does? She is his wife, isn’t she? And she won’t agree to a divorce, will she?”

    Dave scratched his bony chin.

    “Well?” said Violet aggressively.

    “Doesn’t mean she actually wants to come back to ’im, though, eh? How long has she been back in Scotland, now? ’Bout eight months, isn’t it?”

    “Yes, but her mother’s still in hospital,” said Maureen in a trembling voice.

    “But she can’t last much longer, Maureen,” said Violet, warming the teapot carefully. She looked in the fridge and said crossly: “Where on earth’s the milk?”

    “Isn’t there any left?” replied Maureen in a vague voice.

    “No!”

    “I’ll get some from the dairy.”‘

    “No, ya won’t!” said Dave, getting up smartly. “Pass us a jug, will ya, Vi?’

    Silently Violet handed him a very old-fashioned jug which in her opinion should have been retired years ago.

    When Dave had gone out she said irritably “Why on earth do you bother with that old dairy when you’ve got a perfectly good fridge, Maureen?

    Maureen knew that Vi’d jump on her like a ton of bricks if she let on that she still made butter in the cool old dairy, so she just said vaguely: “Oh… The milk gets too cold in the fridge.”

    Violet snorted.

    “There’s some fruit-cake in that red tin, Vi; could you get it down?” Maureen knew that Vi didn’t approve of “nibbling between meals” (as versus entertaining guests in her own house to afternoon tea, which was different). However, being herself firmly of the opinion that a man who’d been up since six needed a decent morning tea, she ignored Vi’s scowl.

    When Dave came back with the pretty old china jug filled, Violet had put the fruit-cake on a plate and was making some brown bread and butter to her sister’s placid instructions. “Do you want Vegemite on this, David?” she asked sourly.

    “Yeah; ta, Vi,” replied Dave, hoping that the subject of Sylvie Macdonald had been decently buried.

    Only, Vi being Vi, of course it hadn’t.

    Dave had wolfed three pieces of brown bread with Vegemite and was starting on his fourth when Violet took a stiff gulp of tea—Maureen, as usual, reflecting vaguely to herself that Vi was getting on a bit, but did she have to make that noise?—put down her cup firmly, and said: “I think someone ought to talk to him.”

    The Mitchells didn’t reply.

    “David!” said Miss Macdonald sharply. “You’re a man! You speak to him!”

    Dave chewed brown bread and Vegemite, washed it down with a swallow of tea—Violet, as usual, wondering crossly why on earth Maureen hadn’t told him years ago not to do that, it was vulgar—and said cautiously: “Speak to who, Vi?”

    She took a deep breath and said with exaggerated patience: “To Hamish, of course.”

    Dave held out his cup to his wife for more tea. “What about?” he said. His long, narrow, bony face had assumed the expression of a nervous horse about to shy.

    “About Mirry, of course!” snapped Violet.

    Dave shied.

    Maureen refilled his cup and said, in a voice that tried to he placid but had a wobble in it: “Here you are, dear.”

    “Ta.” Dave took his tea and buried his nose in it without looking at his sister-in-law.

    “David!” said Violet in the voice that in its time had intimidated a floorful of Unesco typists.

    “Don’t see what I can say to ’im,” he mumbled.

    “For Heaven’s sake!” said Violet, who didn’t really know either, but thought that Somebody Ought to Do Something About It. “Tell him—tell him he ought to—to put matters on a legal footing; regularize things!”

    A man who knew Miss Macdonald less well might have tried to point out at this juncture that Hamish’s affairs were his own business. Dave merely replied: “Doing ‘is best, isn’t ’e? Told Sylvie he wants a divorce, hasn’t ’e?”

    “Yes, but he hasn’t done enough!” said Violet energetically.

    Maureen unexpectedly entered the fray. “Can’t he get a divorce anyway, after—after a certain number of years?”

    Her sister and her husband stared at her uncertainly. In their lifetimes the New Zealand divorce laws had changed radically, more than once, and so had all the associated laws about legitimacy, inheritance, matrimonial property and maintenance. None of them could have said exactly what the divorce law was, now; and besides, hardly anyone in their family got divorced: there was Bob, of course, but that had been years ago, and it had been obvious from the start that the girl had been all wrong for him, and they’d both wanted the divorce.

    “Isn’t that different, now?” said Dave weakly at last.

    “Yes, well, never mind that!” retorted Violet briskly, rallying. “The point is that it puts Mirry in a very awkward situation!”

    The Mitchells were silent.

    “What if she has a baby?” she added crossly, not meaning to have said any such thing.

    Maureen’s face took on a pink, soppy expression. Before she could say that that’d be lovely, Violet added hurriedly: “Not that there’s any reason to, these days, if you don’t want to—but you know what young girls are!”

    Dave scratched his chin. “Maybe that’d—uh—well, kinda be just the push that Sylvie needs: show her it’s all a bit pointless, going on digging her heels in.”

    “Ooh, yes!” agreed Maureen, looking terribly pleased.

    Violet scowled. “All right, then, David, if that’s what you think, why don’t you tell Hamish?”

    Dave looked at her scrawny, determined little form in horror. He would have had great difficulty in voicing such an idea even to one of his own sons, close though they were—though he’d have given it a go, if Maur’, had asked him to—but to talk about something like that to a bloke who wasn’t even his own nephew, only some sort of cousin of his wife’s—!

    “All right, don’t, then!” said Violet huffily when it was plain he wasn’t going to. “I just think it isn’t fair or a young girl like Mirry, that’s all.” Incautiously she took another gulp of tea. “Ugh! This tea’s gone cold!”

    “Have some more,” said Maureen pacifically. She held out her hand for her cup. Violet gave her a look, and ostentatiously marched over to the sink to rinse it out first. Maureen had barely touched her own tea, because as usual Vi had made it far too strong. She gave a tiny sigh.

    Miss Macdonald seemed to have given up the Mitchells as a bad job: she didn’t say anything more about Mirry and Hamish, just drank her second cup of tea, ate a second piece of fruit-cake, and said abruptly: “I think I’ll go for a walk.”

    When the noise of her departure had died away and she was really out of the house at last, Maureen gave a deep sigh.

    Dave had noticed she hadn’t drunk Vi’s brew. He was quietly making another pot. “Here ya go, love,” he said, coming over with it.

    “Oh, dear!” gasped Maureen, and began to cry.

    “Here! Steady on; no need for that!” He bent down and put a clumsy arm around her.

    Maureen sobbed, and said something disjointed about babies and poor little Mirry, and that awful woman.

    “Now, look, Maur’,” said Dave firmly: “you don’t wanna take any notice of Vi’s scaremongering. Ya know what she is: always looks on the worst side.”

    Maureen scrabbled for her hanky in her apron pocket, blew her nose, and said: “Yes; but what if she’s right? What if Sylvie does come back—and—and wants Hamish?”

    “She can’t make him take her back; that’s just some stupid bee that Vi’s got in her bonnet. Now, be sensible, Maur’—can she?”

    “No—I don’t suppose so,” said Maureen doubtfully.

    Dave patted her shoulder. “’Course not! And even if she won’t divorce him—well, heaps of people these days just live together, don’t they? Have kids, and everything!” He poured her tea for her. “Here ya go.”

    “Thanks, dear. –Yes, I suppose they do,” she added dubiously. She didn’t know anybody who lived like that.

    “What about—uh…” Dave didn’t know anybody who lived like that, either. He took another piece of cake. “Uh—that doctor of Polly’s!” he added triumphantly, waving the cake at her.

    “Ye-es…” Maureen conceded doubtfully. “Polly really likes him. He’s very good with the mothers and babies.”

    “Well, there ya go!” replied Dave happily to this non sequitur. “Don’t wanna take any notice of old Vi, ya know: she lives in the nineteenth century, half the time!”

    “Mm, I know,” Maureen agreed.

    Dave let her drink her tea. Then he said firmly: “Now, you’re not gonna go on worrying about it, are ya?”

    “No-o.”

    “Anyone can see he’s nuts about her!” he added, going rather red at this introduction of the specifically emotional.

    “Yes, he is, isn’t he?” said Maureen, perking up.

    Dave cleared his throat, wondering if she’d heard the goings-on from the back bedroom last night—mind you, she usually slept like a log, so probably she hadn’t.

    Maureen poured herself another cup of tea and, rather pink and pleased, thinking that Hamish and Mirry obviously adored each other, even if she was a lot younger than him—and that didn’t matter, look at Polly and Jake!—and wondered if David had heard them last night, all the way from the back bedroom—still, he was a very sound sleeper, probably he hadn’t.

    “After all, look at dear Polly and Jake!” she said firmly.

    Dave wasn’t quite sure what the parallel was that she was trying to draw, there; nevertheless he beamed and said: “Yeah—well, there you are, eh?”

    “Yes!” said Maureen, all pink and pleased.

    She seemed to have cheered up, so Dave thankfully let the subject drop.

    But to himself he wondered a little: because he remembered one or two diatribes from a very much younger Hamish who, ask him, had been some kind of John Knox reincarnated, on the subject of Duty and Marriage Vows. Still, he thought optimistically, maybe the bloke had grown up a bit since then: had a few of the corners knocked off him; got his ideas a bit more in perspective.

    Back at work for the last week of the August holidays, Hamish stretched, looked at his watch, and said to Charlie Roddenberry: “Look, how about coming back with me for a bite to eat? Then we can finish this lot off at home.”

    Since they were both super-conscientious, they thought nothing of working during the university holidays—though Hamish would certainly never have dreamed of asking Charlie to do so. Peter, who would normally have been on deck for at least part of the holidays, had immured himself at home with Veronica, whose baby was due in about a week’s time. Pam Anderson had finished all the typing he’d needed her to do and had been given the rest of the holidays off; so besides Hamish and Charlie only Marianne, the typist she’d recently hired, and the Library staff were at work. Plus the invaluable John Blewitt, of course, who’d already fixed the prefab’s heating twice this week.

    Charlie replied: “Gee, that’d be great, thanks, Hamish—if you’re sure it won’t be an inconvenience?”

    “No, Mirry won’t mind,” said Hamish vaguely. “I’ll just give her a ring.”

    He phoned Mirry, who agreed that of course they could feed Charlie: it was Boston Baked Beans, he’d probably like those, being an American, and didn’t find it necessary to mention that as well as Charlie they’d also be feeding Elspeth’s friends Whetu Taylor and Melodie Nicholson.

    Charlie had followed the practice of the environment in which he’d found himself in the matter of students’ names, so he had no idea that bright little Ms Field of the Honours Class, with whom he’d had a couple of lectures and a handful of tutorials this term, was called Mirry. Nor did he have any idea that Hamish was living with one of their own students. So he got quite a shock when Hamish led him into a kitchen that seemed to be full of little girls, and said vaguely: “You know Mirry, of course, don’t you, Charlie?”

    The tallest of the little girls, smiling and going rather pink, wiped her hand on her apron, and held it out to him.

    “Sure!” gasped Charlie, going scarlet and grasping the hand. “How are you, Mirry?”

    “Good, thanks, Charlie!” returned Mirry; grinning—she thought University practice over names was bloody silly, and since Hamish always referred to his colleagues by their given names, she’d got into the habit of thinking of them all that way, anyway.

    Hamish then told Charlie, in a vague voice, to have a seat, which Charlie—who’d been considerably startled by the absence of furniture in the front part of the house—rather limply did.

    Since Hamish apparently didn’t find it necessary to introduce his daughter or her friends to his colleague, Mirry did it for him. Elspeth, who still had the vestiges of her nice Scottish manners, stood up and shook hands and said: “How do you do, Dr Roddenberry?” Whetu and Melodie, of course, just shuffled and said “Hullo.”

    Hamish was searching in the cupboards. “Where’s that malt, Mirry?”

    “In the bedroom, isn’t it?” said Mirry vaguely.

    “Oh, aye; so it is,” said Hamish. He smiled at Charlie, said: “I won’t be a minute,” and disappeared.

    Charlie looked limply at Mirry, who under her apron was wearing a very tight violet sweater (shrunk in the wash) that stopped about three inches above her waist over a longer bright green tee-shirt, which was tucked into the tight jeans, the legs of which were mostly covered by woolly rainbow-striped legwarmers. He looked limply at the brown-skinned Whetu, who although very pretty in the face had a figure that could only be described as stylish stout, but was nevertheless wearing a very short black miniskirt, plus a tent-like pale pink and pale blue abstract-patterned sweater, with three belts—one gold, one silver and one orange—draped around her plump tummy; at the pale and freckled Melodie, who had recently decided that the way Mum made her wear her light brown curls was babyish, and had scraped them up on top of her head in a lopsided bunch with the aid of something like a dozen bobby-pins, five brightly coloured plastic clips, and a diamanté butterfly—a creation that was so startling that that you quite overlooked her fawn Aran-knit jumper and brown slacks; and finally at his host’s daughter, who had on a very short, but very wide fuzzy orange sweater over a much longer white ribbed sweater which came down to her pubic bones, over six inches of tartan miniskirt (actually one of her old Scottish skirts that she and Mirry were recycling), above bright green tights and rolled-down apricot woollen socks.

    Being a father himself, Charlie knew that the latest styles in girls’ wear were a bit odd, but these outfits had an oddness all their own that he wasn’t quite able to put his finger on. Because he had an orderly mind this puzzle was to nag at him, off and on, for three days. However, on the fourth day, when he inadvertently turned The Cosby Show on, he decided that what had characterized the outfits at Hamish’s house had not been so much their very obvious lack of taste (Mary Ann had superb taste and Susie, though odd, was always very smart with it) but the haphazardness of the combinations and the complete lack of anything that could have been called cut in anything that the four of them had had on. The Huxtable family, by contrast, was just so smart, and elegant, and... American, that Charlie darn nearly cried. So he switched the TV off and put on his headphones and listened to some Beethoven, instead.

    Now Mirry smiled at him and said: “Is Hamish doing his slave-driving act again?”

    “Gee, no!” gasped Charlie, taken unawares. Mirry twinkled at him; after a moment he pulled himself together and said, grinning: “I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment!’

    She chuckled, and he decided that Hamish’s little girlfriend was real sweet.

    “Elspeth, we’re going to have a drink,” she said. “Would you get us some glasses? And maybe you girls’d like Coke, or something?”

    Elspeth got out the glass tumblers that Mirry had bought at the Puriri Emporium, along with such exciting items as the sort of “magic” flower that you submerge in a glass of water, a pile of second-hand paperback detective stories, a set of plastic salad servers, and two “Army surplus” satchels.

    “Is that enough?” said Mirry, looking up from slicing apples. “Um…” She began to count on her fingers.

    “Yes; there’s six of us,” said Elspeth before she’d finished. “Shall I get the Coke?’

    “Mm—ta.”

     Elspeth got the Coke out of the fridge that had now been brought over from Mirry’s flat.

    Mirry sliced apples. “Do you like Scotch, Charlie?”

    “Uh—not that much, I guess,” he replied awkwardly.

    “Well, don’t let Hamish force it on you, than!” said Mirry strongly. “I’m going to have a Bacardi and Coke; would you rather have that?”

    “Yeah, I guess I would, at that; thanks, Mirry,” said Charlie with a relieved smile.

    “A-aw, can’t I have some Bacardi?” said Elspeth in a whiny voice, trying it on.

    “Certainly!” said Mirry cheerfully.

    Elspeth, the girls and Charlie all gaped at her.

    “Can I really?” said Elspeth in a squeaky voice, going bright red.

    “Yes; on your eighteenth birthday,” said Mirry, still cheerful. Charlie gave a shout of laughter and the three girls gave loud groans.

    Hamish reappeared and said with a grin: “Well, you all sound very pleased with yourselves! How about a malt, Charlie?”

    “Uh—no, actually I thought I’d join Mirry in a rum and Coke, thanks, Hamish.”

    “I thought it was a Bacardi and Coke,” said Melodie, speaking voluntarily for the first time since Charlie had entered the kitchen.

    “Bacardi is a kind of rum, honey,” said Charlie kindly.

    “Oh.”—The girls hadn’t noticed Charlie’s accent, because they weren’t at the noticing age, yet; but the endearment alerted them.—“Are you an American?”

    “Uh-huh; from Los Angeles.”

    “Ooh! Have you been to Disneyland?” breathed Whetu.

    “Sure; taken my kids there loads of times,” said Charlie easily.

    Melodie came up quite close and said: “Have you got kids?”

    “Yeah, but they don’t live with me: they’re with their mother—Stateside,”

     The girls looked a bit blank so Mirry kindly said: “He means back in America. Are those pies ready now?”

    “Whetu hasn’t finished hers,” said Elspeth officiously.

    “Come on, Whetu: the apples are ready.”

    Whetu’s plump brown fingers laboriously patted a grimy piece of pastry into a little foil pie-dish.

    “Is that your top?” asked Mirry, looking at another piece of greyish pastry with a greyish pastry rose on it.

    “Yes,” Whetu admitted shyly.

    “It’s really pretty,” said Mirry admiringly.

    “My granny taught me how to do that,” said Whetu, suddenly becoming confidential. “She makes loads of pies.”

    Melodie said aggressively: “Mum never makes pies. She always buys them at the supermarket.”

    “So do we, quite often,” said Mirry peaceably. “Only it’s nice to make them yourself sometimes, if you’ve got the time.”

    Hamish had been pouring drinks. He handed Charlie his. Charlie thanked him politely and watched Mirry distribute apple slices carefully amongst the six foil pie dishes on the kitchen table.

    “My granny used to make pies, too,” he said suddenly.

    “Did she?” said Whetu, shy but interested.

    “Uh-huh. She made great pies... Gee, her peach pies were just dandy... Do you know how to make peach pie, Mirry?”

    “No. At least, not if you make it differently from apple pie,” said Mirry, putting the top on one of her apple pies. “See, girls? You just put a little bit of water on the edge; and then you kind of pinch them, like this.” She pinched the edges of her pie slowly while the girls watched.

    “Granny does that,” said Whetu in satisfaction.

    Charlie said slowly: “I don’t think Granny’s peach pies had lids on ’em, like that.”

    “Oh; more like a flan?” said Mirry with interest.

    “l guess so.”

    Hamish looked on in some amusement as Mirry and the girls put the tops on the other pies and Charlie told Mirry a long, involved story about his Granny’s pies. Mirry didn’t know what “pecan pies” were, so Charlie had to explain. Even after he’d done so, it took Mirry a while to latch onto the fact that what Charlie called “p’conns” were what Kiwis called “pee-c’ns”.

    “Oh, yes: I know! You can get those here—they’re lovely, aren’t they?”

    “Yeah; my favourite nut, I guess; though filberts are real good, too.”

    Mirry didn’t quite have the strength, what with showing three ham-fisted little girls how to make small apple pies for a good half of the afternoon, to ask what these were. “They’re awfully dear, though.”

    “P’conns?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Gee, that’s a real pity; they’re a real affordable nut in the States.” He told Mirry quite a lot about the growing habits of pecan trees, which, since it involved rows of cotton plants and grazing geese, she didn’t entirely believe.

    “Hey; now how’s this for an idea?” he said, when the girls had finished their pies and Mirry had dissuaded them from putting them in the oven right away. “I could make a pecan pie and you folks could come over for dinner and help me eat it!”

    “Us, too?” said Melodie.

    “Yeah, sure, Melodie.”—Charlie, being a well-brought-up American, had repeated all the girls’ names on being introduced to them, and he now had no trouble in remembering which was which. “You, too, Whetu.”

     Mirry knew that Whetu’s mum was a bit strict, so she said quickly: “We’d take you ln the car and bring you back, if your mum lets you, Whetu; I’ll ask her for you, if you like.”—Whetu nodded convulsively.—“That’d be lovely, Charlie! We’d love to, wouldn’t we, Hamish?”

    Hamish chuckled. “Aye; thanks very much, Charlie—if it won’t be too much of a crowd for you?”

    “Gee, no; it’d be great!” replied Charlie, beaming at him. “I could show the girls my slides of Disneyland—would you like that?”

    “Ooh, yes!” they cried.

    Elspeth came up close and said: “I’ve been to Disneyland.”

    “That so?” said Charlie, wondering whether it’d be a good idea to invite Caro and Danny, too. “It’s great, huh?”

    “Yes; I went in the teacups!”

    Hamish goggled: he hadn’t thought she remembered a single thing about their trip out.

    “They’re good, huh?” said Charlie. “My Susie likes them, too.”

    “Did you go to the Small World?”

    Charlie beamed with what to Hamish’s stunned eye appeared to be perfectly genuine enthusiasm and replied: “Oh, sure; that’s one of my favourite rides—it’s just great the way the boat kinda glides along, huh?”

    “Yes, and then you see all those little dollies!” said Elspeth, getting all pink and excited.

    “Yeah, and the music plays It’s a Small World; it’s real pretty, isn’t it?”

    “‘It’s a small, small, world!’” sang Elspeth in a tiny but true soprano.

    “That’s right, honey! You’ve got a real true ear, there!” said Charlie, pleased. “Now, how does that start, huh?” –Elspeth had sung the concluding line.

    ““It’s a small, small world, It’s a small, small world,’” said Melodie doubtfully. “We had it at school last year, didn’t we, Whetu?”

    Whetu hummed, and nodded.

    Charlie’s wide mouth twitched. In a very pleasant light baritone, he sang the opening bars of It’s a Small World. Elspeth joined in. After a while, a little uncertainly, Melodie and Whetu joined in. When they got to the second chorus, Hamish joined in, in a beautiful clear tenor. Charlie almost stopped singing out of shock. Mirry unashamedly goggled.

    “I didn’t know you could sing, Hamish!” she said when the song was over.

    “You’ve got a reel nice tenor, there,” said Charlie with tremendous interest. “Trained, too, isn’t it?’

    Hamish laughed. “I haven’t sung for years! I did take lessons, once upon a time—in my undergraduate days!” He laughed again.

    “You oughta try out for the University Choir,” said Charlie earnestly.

    “Yes, why don’t you?” urged Mirry.

    “Er-er—isn’t that just for the students?’

    “No!” cried Mirry. “Dr Schenke’s in it! From the German Department, Hamish! He sings solos; he’s got a lovely deep voice—a bass, I think.”

    “Bass-baritone,” corrected Charlie. “Yeah. They’re real short of good tenors, Hamish; why don’t ya give it a bash, huh? Listen; you could come along with me: next practice is the first Thursday of Term.”

    “Are you in it?” said Hamish weakly.

    “Sure—back row of the baritones!” replied Charlie, laughing.

    “We-ell… aye, why not?” he said.

    “Ooh, good!” cried Mirry, clapping her hands. “I wish I could sing!”

    “Can’t you carry a tune?” asked Charlie with sympathy.

    She sighed. “Well, can hear it okay in my head, but I can only make a sort of croaking noise.”

    Charlie, Hamish and the girls looked at her sympathetically.

    “Someone has to be in the audience, after all!” she said with a grin. “Come on, what’s another song you all know?” She began to wipe the kitchen table.

    She had to hastily veto Melodie’s suggestion of another song they’d learnt at school, A Pukeko in a Punga Tree—a vile travesty of The Twelve Days of Christmas, usually sung very hoarsely and very off-key—on the grounds that Charlie wouldn’t know that, he was an American. The girls said blankly they’d never heard of Hamish’s suggestion, Brahms’ Lullaby; and Whetu and Melodie didn’t know Over the Sea to Skye, Elspeth’s suggestion.

    Then Charlie had an inspiration. “What about Puff the Magic Dragon?”

    “Yes!” they all cried except Hamish, who looked blank.

    Charlie grinned, and hummed a bit for him.

    “That’s a Peter, Paul and Mary song,” said Hamish weakly.

    “Yeah; I thought you’d recognize it,” said Charlie, grinning rather meanly.

    So, led by Charlie, who knew all the words, they all sang it—except Mirry, who whistled a bit and smiled a lot, meanwhile getting on with the salad.

    Then Hamish, getting a bit carried away, said did they know Peter, Paul and Mary’s Take Me for a Ride in Your Car-Car?

    Of course only Charlie did, so he and Hamish sang it. The girls were terribly over-awed, and couldn’t see at all why Mirry laughed.

    Mirry, wondering with an inward grin what sort of report the rather up-market and particular Taylors and Nicholsons were going to get of “going round to Elspeth’s place for tea”, then cleared the kitchen table firmly, put the pies in the oven, and told Elspeth to take the girls up to her bathroom before tea.

    In their wake Charlie said to Hamish: “Hey, do you know the Beatles’ Michelle?”

    Hamish knew all the Beatles’, songs, so he said aye, as a matter of fact he did. He and Charlie sang Michelle very beautifully, and Mirry blew her nose very hard at the end of it and said it was lovely, and why had Hamish been hiding his light under a bushel all these months?

    Hamish gave a little laugh that failed to disguise how pleased he was at this praise.

    Fortunately Charlie had had some friends in L.A. who were into health food, so he wasn’t disconcerted by Mirry’s home-made baked beans and the accompanying brown bread and huge salad platter. The Taylors and the Nicholsons, like most of up-market Kowhai Bay, were also quite health-food conscious, so although neither Whetu nor Melodie had had this actual dish before they were used to the idea of dried beans as food, and ate up their portions hungrily. Elspeth and Hamish by this time were so accustomed to Mirry’s cooking that they asked for second helpings. The apple pies were a great success, and the girls were particularly pleased with the way their fancy crusts had turned out. Fortunately the baking successfully disguised the greyness of the pastry on those three pies.

    After dinner Mirry and the girls loaded the shiny new dishwasher. –A little while back Hamish had suddenly said—on an evening when he had several essays to mark—that doing the dishes by hand was stupid, and had gone out and bought a dishwasher the very next day.

    Meanwhile Hamish and Charlie disappeared upstairs to his study, which now contained, besides his own desk and chair, a set of extremely expensive second-hand bookcases, which seemed to be worth their weight in gold in New Zealand, and a guest’s chair that was actually one of the basket-chairs from the sitting-room of Mirry’s old flat. Then the girls went up to Elspeth’s room to giggle and watch the portable television set that Mirry had had at her flat. Mirry went up to the big bedroom with the ensuite that she and Hamish were now sharing, with a king-size bed in it, turned the heater on and got under the duvet, because it was freezing in there, and did a bit of reading for next term. Then she got up, switched the heater off, put on her boots and parka and firmly collected Whetu and Melodie. No, she’d promised their mothers to get them home by nine, Elspeth. Never mind that it wasn’t a school day tomorrow, their mothers were expecting them. No, Elspeth, you can’t come in the car: get ready for bed.

    Oddly enough the Taylors and the Nicholsons did seem to be expecting their offspring: Mr Taylor answered his front door and said thanks very much and Mirry deserved a medal; and Mrs Nicholson had her front door open before they were even past the front gate. And she did hope Melodie had behaved herself? Mirry just said with a laugh of course she had, they’d all had a lovely time, and the girls had made their own apple pies for tea. At which the up-market Mrs Nicholson suddenly broke into speech, expressing the worry and difficulty of the school holidays when you were both working, and it was all very well to say her hours were flexible, but they weren’t as flexible as all that—and she couldn’t thank Mirry enough!

    At about ten o’clock Hamish and Charlie came downstairs. Finding nobody in the kitchen, Hamish led the way upstairs again—Charlie confirming his earlier impression that there was practically no furniture in the house, as they went. Mirry was now watching the portable television in the bedroom, which was now comfortably warm, the more so since Puppy, having basely deserted Elspeth in the hope of sharing Mirry’s supper, was on the bed, too. Hamish politely waved Charlie to the basket chair (the second of the two Mirry’s flat had had) and said who wanted a cup of tea? Mirry did, so Charlie accepted, too. They spent the next hour watching a re-run of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, which of course Charlie had never seen before and which he found almost impossible to follow because of the accents. However, his hosts obviously enjoyed it, and Puppy, deciding that Charlie was a dog-person, came and propped his chin on his knee. Charlie was forcibly reminded of the first two years of his marriage, when he and Mary Ann (and Bobo, then only a pup) had had a tiny apartment where the bedroom was so small he’d used it as his study and they and their crowds of friends, all college students like him, had lived in in the big room with the bed and the dining table and an assortment of beanbags and mismatched chairs. So he felt quite happy and at home.

    Driving home, however, he couldn’t help thinking that it was a bit odd, because Hamish must be in his forties, and although Charlie didn’t have a clue what the Director’s salary was, he knew what his own was, and Hamish’s had to be a Helluva lot more than that; so why were they living like that?

    When Charlie had gone Hamish let Puppy out for his run—if you did that he didn’t need to jump on you in the night. When Puppy came back he was allowed to go into Elspeth’s room. By this time Mirry was in bed with the duvet pulled up to her chin. Hamish had a quick shower, switched off the lights and got into bed. Mirry cuddled up to him and yawned.

    “Worn out?” he asked softly.

    “Mm; I don’t think I was cut out to be a cookery teacher. We were at it all afternoon,” said Mirry, with another yawn.

    He kissed the top of her head. “Maybe I shouldn’t have invited Charlie.”

    “No, he was light relief, after the girls!”

    “Aye.” After a while he added: ‘‘He’s good with kids, isn’t he?”

    “Yes; I think he really misses his own kids.” She yawned again. “We must have him round again, soon.”

    “Aye, we will; go to sleep, now.”

    “Mm,” agreed Mirry, closing her eyes.

    Hamish went to sleep cuddling her.

Next chapter:

https://themembersoftheinstitute.blogspot.com/2023/01/new-arrivals.html