Girl Talk

8

Girl Talk

    “I’ll pick you up at ten-thirty, then,” said Margaret Prior firmly.

    “Aye,” agreed Sylvie weakly. She responded faintly to Margaret’s good-bye, put down the phone, and retreated to the family-room of the ultra-modern house in Kowhai Bay. “That was that Prior woman.”

    Hamish grunted.

    “She’s taking me to the Puriri Golf Club tomorrow—don’t know why the Hell I agreed!” She gave an annoyed laugh.

    Hamish did not respond.

    “She’s one of those damned women that won’t take no for an answer!” said Sylvie loudly and aggressively.

    Hamish put down his newspaper and got up.

    “Where the Hell are you off to?” demanded Sylvie, glaring.

    As Mirry had gone down to her parents’ farm in Taranaki for the first week of the May holidays he was only going to his study to get away from his wife. “Ma study,” he grunted, not looking at her, and went out.

    Sylvie sat down on the very comfortable modern sofa with a flounce, and looked about her. There was absolutely nothing to do, since she’d already looked apathetically at the newspaper that her husband had just discarded. She got up after a few moments and turned the television on. An American comedy: there was a manic roar from the laugh track. She turned it off again and sat down discontentedly. She didn’t even have any sewing to do for Elspeth—for in order to sew, one must first go out and find a shop that sells fabrics, and Sylvie hadn’t yet worked herself up to the point of doing this.

    In any case Elspeth, no doubt under the influence of the dreadful children at that school—the only primary school within a radius of fifteen miles of Kowhai Bay—had turned unexpectedly bolshie in the matter of dress, and was refusing to wear any of the pretty frocks and neat skirts her mother had made for her, clothing her scrawny body instead every morning in a pair of jeans and a sloppy, shop-bought, cotton-knit top. Originally it had been the one pair of jeans and the one bright pink top, purchased for her by Polly as something to run about and play in. For the first two solid weeks of their sojourn in the new house Elspeth had worn nothing but these garments; Sylvie’s half-hearted remonstrances had had no effect, and she’d given up, without the energy to expostulate further. Finally Hamish had noticed his daughter’s unvarying attire of his own accord, and had asked her mildly if she had nothing else to wear.—“No!”—“What about some of those—er—dresses and things you used to wear back in Scotland?” he’d asked vaguely. Elspeth had burst into tears and told him that none of the girls at school wore sissy dresses. Hamish had asked her doubtfully what they did wear. Elspeth had told him.—“Oh; and haven’t you got any of those?”—“Only these!” cried Elspeth, bursting into tears again.—“I’ll have a word with Mummy.”—“It won’t do any good: she doesna understand!” wailed Elspeth.—“E-er... I’ll have a word with Aunty Polly.”—“Yes! Now, Daddy! Ring her up now!” Polly had confirmed Elspeth’s account of what the girls at school all wore instead of sissy dresses, and told him what shop to go to.

    So Elspeth now had several pairs of jeans and slacks, all non-sissy, and a far greater assortment of brightly coloured tops than any woman would have thought it necessary to provide her with. Also several necklaces—which she was not allowed to wear at school, for fear of strangling herself on the adventure playground—and an assortment of bangles. Hamish’s stock had gone up enormously; Sylvie’s, not unnaturally, had sunk in proportion.

    Sylvie sat in sulky silence for a while. Forced inactivity, however, was slightly worse than finding herself something to do, so she eventually got up and wandered over to the bookcase, which still housed the books that Liz Beckinsale had most reluctantly left behind on her husband’s three-year posting to Japan. Mrs Beckinsale’s taste ran to modern feminist novelists, old-fashioned feminist novelists, populist sociology and psychology, travels in remote areas, mostly by female explorers, and modern biographies—usually of leading women writers, scientists and explorers. After glaring for some time at the rows of unfamiliar names on the paperback spines Sylvie seized on a title that she recognized and retired to the sofa with Pride and Prejudice.

    Quite some time later she came to herself with a start, recalling that tomorrow was Monday, and the first day of Elspeth’s school holidays. She climbed the stairs to the little turret room that Hamish had made his own—disconcertingly half a storey lower than Elspeth’s little turret room at the opposite side of the house—and informed him with savage glee that as she was going to golf with Margaret tomorrow and had no idea when she’d be home, he would have to look after his daughter—all day.

    Hamish had two important meetings on the morrow, but he was damned if he was going to climb down, admit this to her, and beg her to make other arrangements. So after breakfast he loaded a puzzled but willing Elspeth into his second-hand but inordinately expensive station-waggon (“My Daddy’s got a new car”) and took her into work with him. There Marianne, with her usual calm good sense, provided her with vast quantities of paper and pens, showed her where the ladies’ toilet was, and put her into the empty office next to her own that in term time was occupied by Peter’s junior lecturer, a lackadaisical young man who would shortly be considerably surprized by his superior’s refusal to support his application for a job at the new Institute. Elspeth had a marvellous time and gathered immense food for more boasting at school (“I went to my Daddy’s work”). Hamish’s stock went up again.

    During five and a half holes Margaret Prior, who was really a Christian, not just a lip-service one, endured patiently Sylvie’s complaints about the muggy local weather on a beautiful, sunny, fresh May day with a brisk but pleasant breeze; the quality of the light in New Zealand—Margaret herself was wearing her usual golfing glasses: sunglasses with a cord to hold them round her neck; her shoes, which pinched; the hired clubs she was playing with—far inferior to the ones she’d had twelve years back, before she’d married him; the quality of the golf course—far inferior to the splendid, professionally designed ones she’d played on in Scotland; the presence of several large trees around the course; the presence of two fat, slow men on the course in front of them; and other, more general topics, such as her husband’s moodiness and unhelpfulness, her daughter’s uncooperativeness, the unsuitability of Puriri Primary School, the distance they were from the city, the shocking quality of the food here, the unavailability of ail the goods she was used to in Scotland, and the total ghastliness of the Beckinsales’ house. Then Margaret took four strokes to get out of the rough and Sylvie holed a putt from the very edge of the green. In awed tones Margaret informed her that even Derek, her husband, had never managed that hole in less than par.

    By the end of the eighteen holes Sylvie was talking with an appearance of actual enthusiasm about golf courses she had known, matches she’d played in, and the possibility of maybe taking up her golf again seriously. Margaret betrayed neither surprize nor, indeed, any undue emotion at this last extreme statement.

    Sylvie gave an off-hand laugh. “Of course I’m terribly rusty!”

    “Yes, your swing needs working on,” agreed Margaret tranquilly. Sylvie glared.

    Margaret appeared not to notice the glare, and stowed her clubs away in her car.

    Sylvie gave another laugh—an annoyed one, this time—and said: “I’m mad to even consider the idea, really! How the Hell would I even get up here? It’s miles from anywhere!”

    True, although it called itself the Puriri Golf Course, it was about five miles out of the actual township.

    “You’ll have to get yourself a little car,” said Margaret tranquilly.

    Sylvie hadn’t driven herself for over eleven years. She glared.

    “A Honda City’s nice,” said Margaret thoughtfully.

    Sylvie made a Scotch noise.

    Smiling serenely, Margaret led the way into the clubhouse for lunch.

    At lunch they encountered two young women who—of course, thought Sylvie sourly—turned out to be friends of Polly Carrano’s.

     “It’s Jill, isn’t it?” smiled Margaret, hovering with her laden tray next to a slim, brown-haired, very neat-looking young woman in a tailored pink shirt and fawn slacks. When this young woman agreed that it was, Margaret promptly said her own name (the young woman having obviously forgotten it) and reminded her that they’d met at dear Polly’s wedding.

    Jill Davis agreed to this, and introduced her companion, a stocky, blonde young woman whom Sylvie would have put down as British, but who turned out, somewhat disconcertingly, to be a German, with quite a strong accent. Gretchen was as neatly dressed as Jill, in a pale blue tee-shirt and grey slacks. As Margaret was wearing a tailored cream shirt and tan slacks, Sylvie began to feel somewhat overdressed in her olive-green woollen jumper, paisley scarf, heavy tweed skirt and thick stockings—as well as far too warm: the clubhouse was very modern, with a wall of glass facing north, which Sylvie had naturally assumed was south, then being gently put right by Margaret.

    The two young women responded to the introduction with: “Of course! We’ve met your little girl`!” and Sylvie, who hadn’t listened to Elspeth’s account of her picnic in the park with Polly and her friends, then had to pretend she had.

    Jill and Gretchen, however, after asking nicely after Elspeth, Polly and the babies, appeared to have no real interest in matters maternal: they plunged avidly into a discussion with Margaret of the soil types, climate, and vegetation, native or acclimatized, of Kowhai Bay. It turned out that they’d recently bought a house there, and were keen gardeners. After that Gretchen told them about the marvellous garage she’d found in Puriri which thoroughly understood the workings of her very sensitive Porsche; and then Margaret introduced the topic of books. As they all, even the very foreign Gretchen, who Sylvie felt obscurely shouldn’t have, seemed to have read all the latest prize-winners, Sylvie, who'd never heard of them, began to feel very out of it. None of them seemed to have the slightest interest in subjects such as the iniquities of the local supermarkets or the inconveniences of modernistic houses with odd turrets and unexpected storeys half a flight down from the main living area, and she didn’t quite dare to introduce these topics.

    Books led on quite naturally to the new BBC serial that TVNZ was screening on Sunday nights. Margaret and Jill had both read the book: in its way it was quite a classic; Gretchen hadn’t but she was going to read the paperback. Had Sylvie seen the serial back in Britain?

    Sylvie had; she didn’t reveal that she’d found it dead boring, and only watched it because there’d been nothing much else on in that particular time-slot. Gretchen enthused over the leading man, whom Sylvie had thought was a completely uninteresting bald, fat, short individual, and began to praise his character acting in some film or other. Margaret said that his new film was going to be on at the Film Festival, and had Sylvie joined the Film Society? Sylvie had never heard of the Film Society. You must! They had the forms at the library in Puriri. Sylvie didn’t reveal she hadn’t darkened the doors of the brand-new Puriri County Library.

    A little later Margaret looked at her watch and said she really must— She had a Baptist Women’s meeting this afternoon. Jill and Gretchen pressed Sylvie to play another nine holes with them. Sylvie had had time to reflect can how stiff she was going to be tomorrow after her round this morning, and refused this offer, but in a doubtful voice, as if she might be persuaded; and in the end agreed that she wouldn’t mind walking round with them. The main inducement being not the company of the very pleasant Jill and Gretchen, but rather the thought that her husband might have come home early expecting to be able to dump Elspeth on her for the rest of the day.

    When they’d dropped her off at the very modern house in Kowhai Bay Road and Jill was heading her ancient Holden for home, Gretchen said explosively: “Vell! Polly was qvite right about her, nicht wahr?”

    During the time Gretchen and Elspeth had been running races and climbing trees in the Park Jill had absorbed quite a lot of information from Polly about Sylvie Macdonald. She replied thoughtfully: “Yes.”

    “Vhat on earth does she do all day, all by herself in that great big house?”

    “Not very much, I should imagine,” said Jill drily.

    “She does not efen garden! ‘I haff a man who comes in to do all that!’” quoted Gretchen scornfully.

    Jill drew up at the foot of their very steep drive—even steeper than the Beckinsales’, as the small settlement of Kowhai Bay consisted of Kowhai Bay Road itself, which led down a little valley to a tiny crescent of silver sand that was the actual bay, two parallel streets on either side of it running down to the cliff tops, and a number of short side streets clambering up the sides of the gully from Kowhai Bay Road to meet them.

    “Don’t go up the drife!” warned Gretchen.

    Jill  hadn’t been about to do so. She agreed tranquilly: “No.”

    “That hussband off hers must be a real no-hoper!” said Gretchen, getting out energetically and slamming her door. –Her accent might have been strong, but she had an excellent vocabulary and a good grasp of the Kiwi vernacular.

    Jill had been introduced to Hamish in the S.C.R.. She got out less energetically and said mildly: “I thought he seemed quite nice.”

    Gretchen gave a scornful snort and hauled her golf bag out of the back seat.

    Jill’s clubs were in the rust-bucket’s boot. She went round to it and said calmly: “Be fair, Gretchen. There’s obviously faults on both sides. And from what Polly’s told me, they were hopelessly mismatched from the word ‘go’.”

    Gretchen gave another snort, but a much milder one. Going up the drive she said thoughtfully: “Ve must do what we can—don’t you think?”

    Observing with relief that the accent was less thick—always a sign that Gretchen had calmed down—Jill agreed.

    “I shall get her a brochure for the Film Society myself!” Gretchen decided.

    “I think you’ll have to do more than that to actually get her to go. From what Polly’s said I think you’ll have to drag her along kicking and screaming.”

    “Then l vill do that,” said Gretchen calmly, but with immense determination.

    Wryly Jill perceived that her housemate, having got the house-buying project out of the way, and now obviously finding the garden project insufficient to occupy the whole of her considerable energies, had embarked on a “Save Sylvie Macdonald” project. She experienced a fleeting moment of sympathy for Sylvie Macdonald.

    “We must have that poor little girl round,” she said mildly.

    “Vhat? Oh, ja—poor wee scrap!” agreed Gretchen.

    Jill repressed a chuckle at the way this piece of the vernacular came out in Gretchen’s accent, and unlocked the front door.

    “It must be her school holidays—perhaps ve could take her to the zoo.”

    “That’d be nice.”

    Gretchen marched in a determined manner to the phone. “I vill ring her mother up right avay!”

    Jill didn’t bother to point out the difficulties of contacting someone who had just started renting someone else’s house; if the phone was on at all in that house, Gretchen would get through.

    Sylvie went inside and made herself a cup of tea, finding she was immensely thirsty in spite of the drink with Jill and Gretchen after their nine holes—something that called itself a Scotch but was full of ice: since Jill, who was English, had been drinking something exactly the same as if it was normal she hadn’t quite dared to complain. After that she looked hopefully in the fridge; but not surprisingly, since she hadn’t done any shopping today, there was nothing much in it. He had eaten those sausages for his breakfast, she registered crossly.

    So he had: Hamish and Elspeth, now that the weather was somewhat cooler, had taken to having cooked breakfasts now and then. Sylvie could do little about it, as she herself had taking to sleeping late, leaving it to Hamish to see that Elspeth got off to school. After she’d missed the school bus several times, fallen over once and badly scraped her knee right through her jeans when running to catch it, and been picked up by a kindly Mrs Nicholson from down the road and given a lift twice before she even got to the bus stop, Hamish had decided it’d be simpler if he dropped her off. The school was a little way off the main road, but he did have to pass through Puriri township on his way south to the city. Enquiry at the school had revealed that it was quite all right to drop her off as early as eight-fifteen. Nice Miss Stanley, her teacher, had seized the opportunity to buttonhole him and interrogate him about his daughter’s previous schooling. Hamish replied in horror that he thought his wife had been into all that—she had certainly said, in a martyred way, that she intended to. In a startled voice Miss Stanley said No, she hadn’t; and she really would like to speak to either Mr Macdonald or Mrs Macdonald... Hamish had made an appointment for after school the very next day; since Sylvie had then taken to her bed with a migraine it had been he who had kept the appointment. Miss Stanley, while thinking what a nice man he was (not being immune to his smile), worried quite a bit about what the little Scotch girl’s home life was like, and kept a sharp eye on her from then on.

    Elspeth’s stock had gone up a bit when she began to arrive at school in “my Daddy’s car”; it went up even more when she discovered that Whetu and Henare Taylor from up the road also went to her school and were terrifically pleased to be offered a lift. After a little while Hamish began to find it perfectly normal to be dropping off three and occasionally four children (the little Nicholson girl sometimes needed a lift, too) at Puriri Primary School at about eight-fifteen in order to get into work by about nine o’clock. Elspeth was around the same age as Whetu Taylor and Melodie Nicholson and was soon fast friends with them; they were all frightfully patronizing to little Henare, who besides being only seven, was a mere boy.

    Having drunk her tea, Sylvie, again thinking how stiff she was going to be on the morrow, went and had a long hot shower. At home in Edinburgh she’d always had baths instead—he had insisted on having a shower attachment put in over the bath but she’d never used it. But somehow—perhaps because the Carranos’ vulgarly flashy guest ensuite had only had a shower over a horrible little pond-thing that Polly called a “shub” but that Sylvie had firmly refused to call any such thing—somehow she’d now fallen into the habit of taking showers instead.

    After that she went and had another glare at the almost empty interior of the fridge. She was extremely hungry after all that exercise and fresh air, in spite of the lunch of ham, assorted salads and French bread that she’d gulped down almost without noticing it. Scowling, she went over to the big freezer and looked in. On an expedition to the supermarket Polly had provisioned it for her with an immense variety of precooked foods and frozen meals; Sylvie had trailed listlessly in her wake, rousing herself only twice: once to say feebly “Not that foreign muck!” when Polly had tried to include some frozen pizzas and lasagna in the shopping, and once to say plaintively: “I don’t know what the Hell you think I’m going to do with all this frozen stuff.” Polly had returned cheerfully: “Cook it, of course: didn’t you notice the microwave in that kitchen?” Sylvie hadn’t; nor did she know how to operate the thing.

    She got out a frozen steak and kidney pie and glared at it suspiciously. The package had very clear instructions about how to cook it in both a normal oven and a microwave oven. In a normal oven it would take about forty minutes—after you pre-heated the oven. In a microwave… Sylvie went over and looked carefully at the microwave. Then she put the pie carefully on the bench next to it. She went back to the freezer and got out a big bag of frozen peas. Then she peeled some potatoes and put them on to boil. After that she picked up the pie and re-read the instructions, comparing them suspiciously with the well-labelled controls on the microwave…

    When Hamish and Elspeth came in twenty minutes later the family-room was full of the delicious smell of steak and kidney pie. Elspeth bolted for the kitchen. “Mummy, what’s for dinner?”

    “Steak and kidney pie,” said Sylvie, a certain note of grim satisfaction in her voice, wiping her hands on her apron. “Go and wash your hands before you eat—and mind you go to the lavvy first, too!” she added, raising her voice as Elspeth shot off bathroom-wards. She looked grimly at her husband, who had followed Elspeth towards the smell of food rather as a non-dominant sheep follows the lead sheep towards better pasture, and added, still on note of grim satisfaction: “You’d better wash your hands, too.”

    “Aye!” agreed Hamish, considerably startled to realize that his presence was expected at his own table. “Aye, I will!”

    Hamish did not think, looking round somewhat dazedly at his board—covered for the first time since they’d been in the house not only with a tablecloth but with edible food prepared by his wife in which he was expected to share—that this, as the genial Sir Jerry Cohen would have phrased it, was nice; but he did think that it was a bit of an improvement.

    The pie, in the nature of frozen, shop-bought steak and kidney pies, had an awful lot of gravy, two pieces of kidney, and not very much steak; but Sylvie, who was starving, Elspeth, who was very hungry after her unexpected and rather long day at Daddy’s work, and Hamish, who was both hungry and dazed, never noticed its deficiencies.

    “Mum,” sighed Veronica, “do we have to have this Goddamn engagement party?”

    Lady Cohen looked up from the cookery book she was reading in preparation for later consultation with Jimmy Cooke, her good-natured chauffeur and general factotum, who helped out with the cooking when it was anything she and Mrs Bond, the lady who did housework for her, couldn’t handle between them—and with anything else that needed doing, on the not-infrequent occasions when Mrs Bond had one of her migraines. She refrained from pointing out that Sir Jerry had been planning the engagement party for the last five weeks—since mid-April, in fact, when they’d had a trans-Tasman call from an ecstatic, super-growly, and almost incoherent Veronica and an ecstatic, very Russian, and almost incoherent Peter.

    “I think Peter would like to be introduced formally to your friends and relations, wouldn’t he, dear?” she said mildly.

    Veronica opened her mouth to say they weren’t her friends, they were her parents’ friends, and anyway Peter didn’t give a damn about all that crap. Then she shut it again and went rather red. Then she mumbled: “Yeah, I s’pose so.”

    “Mm. –This fish dish sounds nice. Listen to this, dear.” She read out the recipe, forgetting that Veronica couldn’t cook.

    “Sounds okay,” Veronica offered lamely.

    Lady Cohen looked up suddenly, recalled to herself. “I tell you what you could do, Veronica, if you wouldn’t mind: you could make a start on the silver: Mrs Bond isn’t really to be trusted with it, she will use that awful Silver Dip, and then she never rinses it properly afterwards.”

    As her mother knew perfectly well, Veronica for some strange reason had always had a passion for polishing silverware—and indeed, brassware and anything else that could be polished—so she said obligingly: “Okay,” and went off to the dining-room to get it.

    When she was back in the kitchen with a load of assorted silverware, sitting at the kitchen table cosily next to her mother, who was still reading cookery books, she polished busily for a while. Then Lady Cohen became aware that her motions were growing slower and slower, although half the cutlery and the big rose bowl, which had always been her favourite, still remained to be done. Lady Cohen appeared to be absorbed still in her cookbook, but if Veronica had looked at her, which she didn’t, she would have seen that her mother had forgotten to turn the pages.

    “Mu-um?”

    “Mm?”

    There was a little silence. Belinda Cohen wondered if she should say “What, dear?” and decided to wait. Then Veronica said: “Mum, when you were young—”

    Lady Cohen realized tranquilly that this was going to be the conversation she’d had at intervals over the last twenty-seven years (Lindy, Helen’s eldest, being now almost twenty-six) with all her other three daughters. “Mm?”

    Veronica gave a little off-hand laugh. “Well, I mean did you—did you ever think about having kids and that sort of thing before you married Dad?”

    Ignoring the “that sort of thing”, which was of course merely a euphemistic elaboration of Veronica’s main theme, Lady Cohen replied calmly: “No, dear; when I first met your father I hadn’t thought about having children at all.”

    Veronica put silver polish on her cloth, pulled the heavy rose bowl towards her and began to apply the polish with great concentration. Abandoning the cookery book, her mother picked up another cloth and a handful of cutlery and also began to apply polish.

    “When did you—when did you—I mean, well, when did you actually want to, Mum?”

    “Not until after we were married, dear, when I realized how much Jerry wanted children.”

    “Oh,” said Veronica. She’d unthinkingly assumed her mother had always been the maternal type.

    “He wanted them quite dreadfully,” said Belinda Cohen dreamily, gazing off into space.

    Veronica looked at her sideways, trying to imagine her father, who, when she hadn’t made him lose his temper, rather resembled a genial frog, as a passionate young Jewish husband. She couldn’t quite manage it.

    “Of course,” added Lady Cohen, “he always wanted a boy—though he never actually said he was disappointed, dear Jerry. And then, after you were born the doctor said I mustn’t have any more babies...” She swallowed a sigh.

    Now rather embarrassed, Veronica didn’t know what to say. She tried her best to look sympathetic.

    “So of course, being Jerry,” added Lady Cohen with signs of a return to her more everyday, brisk manner, “he went off and had a vasectomy, so as I’d be quite safe; it was quite unusual in those days, dear—of course, he had it done privately.”

    Veronica polished her rose bowl furiously, disconcerted to find her eyes had filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Mum,” she said in a growly voice.

    “Oh, no, dear,” she said cheerfully: “you were a lovely baby; very happy, hardly ever cried—and very pretty, of course, very pink and plump, with lovely fair curls.”

    Perhaps because of this sentimental picture of her younger self, perhaps merely because of the cosy atmosphere of feminine confidentiality which now prevailed, Veronica suddenly revealed: “Peter really wants kids.”

    “Yes, dear,” returned her mother placidly.

    There was a silence. Veronica polished furiously and Belinda Cohen polished placidly.

    “He hasn’t—he’s never... We’ve never actually discussed it!” she blurted. “I mean, he just seems to assume... He’s never actually asked me if it’s what I want!”

    “No; they don’t.”

    Instead of condemning this grossly sexist and outdated attitude, Veronica was silent. Lady Cohen had almost finished the cutlery before she said: “I thought—well, for Heaven’s sake, it is the nineteen-eighties! Shouldn’t you talk over that sort of thing, in a modern marriage?”

    Lady Cohen held up a fork and examined it critically. “I don’t think Peter is a particularly modern man, Veronica.”

    “No,” agreed Veronica in a shaken voice.

    After a while she picked up the polishing cloth with a hand that trembled slightly, and admitted hoarsely: “He’s awfully passionate.”

    With complete satisfaction Belinda Cohen registered that her wayward youngest daughter appeared to have more than met her match in Peter Riabouchinsky and, with great relief, that there’d be absolutely no fear of her ever wanting to look outside her marriage for sexual satisfaction.

    “I suppose I do want to have his babies,” she muttered.

    “Yes, of course, dear.”

    “Mum,” said Veronica hoarsely, tears starting to her eyes: “what if I can’t?”

    Belinda Cohen looked at her narrowly and said in a neutral voice: “Is there any medical reason why you shouldn’t, Veronica?”

    “No!” replied Veronica in a shocked voice. After a while she added dubiously: “Of course, I was on the Pill for years... I went off it last year, though.”

   Lady Cohen didn’t bother to point out that the two of them had scarcely had the opportunity to try, as yet: she’d realized that Veronica’s fear wasn’t a rational one. She just said calmly: “You’re very like Mum, you know, dear.”

    Veronica looked at her hopefully. “Am I really?” Granny Goldberg, still hale and hearty at the age of eighty-nine, if a little arthritic, had had nine children, also all hale and hearty: seven boys and two girls. Like Veronica, she was a fair woman, tall and broad-shouldered: it was she who was descended from those big blond Prussians.

    “Yes: just the same physical type.”

    “Oh,” said Veronica, starting to look much more cheerful.

    When Sir Jerry carne home, about an hour later—a bit early, he was burning to sound out Veronica on the subject of a suitable wedding present—he was disconcerted to find his house apparently deserted: the sitting-room was empty, so was the sun-room. Huffing and puffing a bit, he went upstairs. No-one in the boudoir. He stomped downstairs and made his way crossly to the kitchen.

    “Ah! There ya both are!” He beamed.

    His wife and youngest daughter were seated at the kitchen table, surrounded by a litter of cookery books, silverware, biscuit tins, and cups of tea, with several ancient photograph albums open on the remaining available space on the table.

    “Hullo, darling; how was your day?” rejoined his wife placidly, as she had done for nearly forty-seven years now. She tilted her cheek for his salute.

    Sir Jerry bussed it enthusiastically, and, seeing with some surprize that his prickly youngest daughter had also absent-mindedly tilted her cheek, bussed it also. Then he pulled up a chair very close to Veronica’s, and said cheerfully: “Well, what are you two up to, eh?”

    Veronica replied in a vague voice: “Polishing the silver for the party,” and turned another page in the big album before her. She stared at the photo of a little dark-haired, dark-eyed boy in a sailor suit.

    Sir Jerry peered at it and laughed. “Oh, you’ve found that old thing, have you?”

    Veronica looked at the caption dazedly: “Jerry, aged 4”; and said incredulously: “Is that you, Dad?”

    Sir Jerry laughed again, and Lady Cohen, getting up to make a fresh pot of tea, said enthusiastically: “Yes; wasn’t he a lovely little boy?”

    Veronica opened her mouth to say “Yes,” found she couldn’t, and gave a strangled sob.

    “Here—Vronny!” said her father in alarm. He attempted clumsily to put his arm round her.

    “Don’t, Dad!” gasped Veronica, pushing him away. She shoved back her chair, jumped to her feet, and ran clumsily out of the room.

    Sir Jerry looked at his wife in startled enquiry.

    “It’s all right, Jerry,” she said placidly. “She wants to have a baby, that’s all.”

    “Ah!” said Sir Jerry sapiently; he was, after all, the father of four girls: “Gone broody, eh?”

    “Mm.”

    “’Bout time,” he grunted,

    “Mm.” The electric kettle screamed , and she began to make the tea.

    Sir Jerry said thoughtfully: “Very like your mother, isn’t she?”

    “Yes, dear.”

    Marianne said, in what she recognized with some annoyance was an awfully dopey voice: “I didn’t realize...”

    Caro gave her a cheerful grin. “I don’t advertise it; you know what they’re like: once they know you’re a solo mum with a kid—!” She shrugged.

    “Yes,” said Marianne faintly—she didn’t, really.

    “You’ll follow me, then?”

    “What? Oh; yes, fine; and I’ve got your address, in case I lose you.” She gave Caro a weak smile and they went off to the distant, lowest-in-the-pecking-order carpark where the university had grudgingly allotted them space. Caro got into her ancient, battered blue Holden and Marianne got into her neat, silver-grey Honda City and prepared to follow her.

    After getting on very well with Marianne for several weeks Caro had plucked up courage and asked her home to tea; this had, of course, necessitated the disclosure of the existence of ten-year-old Danny. She already knew Marianne well enough to be quite sure that however surprized she might be she would not ask any prying questions.

    And sure enough, Marianne didn’t ask any questions whatsoever; apart from asking Danny how he liked his school. But somehow, when Danny, who quite obviously had fallen for pretty Marianne in a big way, had dragged himself off to bed most reluctantly at his half-hour later than usual, school-holiday time, and Marianne and Caro were sitting cosily in the little sitting-room that was also Caro’s bedroom, with the heater on, because it was a bit nippy, and drinking the last of the very nice white wine that Marianne had shyly presented her hostess with—somehow, Caro found herself pouring it all out into Marianne’s sympathetic ear.

    “It was all a bit of a shock to the system, really!” she ended, with an off-hand laugh that didn’t come off.

    “Oh, Caro!” returned Marianne, not trying to hide her horrified sympathy.

    And indeed, finding after five years of marriage and a child that your handsome young husband is in love, not with your best friend, which would have been quite bad enough, but with your best friend’s brother, would have been enough to shock systems much more robust than that of Caro Webber, whose brusque, cheerful manner covered her shrinking soul in rather the way a hermit crab’s borrowed shell covers its soft body.

    Caro gave another laugh, which turned into a snort and then a burst of tears. Marianne handed her a clean, pressed hanky.

    “Ta!” gasped Caro, sobbing into the hanky, which smelled deliciously of Arpège, having been in Marianne’s handbag next to her little scent spray.

    When the sobs had abated Marianne said: “Shall I make us a cup of coffee?”

    Caro nodded convulsively. “Good idea.”

    Coming back with the mugs of coffee Marianne said: “So was it after that that you decided to come back to New Zealand?”

    Caro was a local girl; she’d already revealed gloomily that her elderly parents lived not very far away but were a dead loss as far as baby-sitting their only grandson went, so Danny was attending the local Community Centre’s school holiday programme, which was a lot cheaper, being subsidized by the Council, than his normal after-school care, but still— Marianne had made a murmuring noise of understanding, silently comparing Caro’s situation with a certain horror to her own large, cheerful family circle, where all the Davies sisters and sisters-in-law and not a few cousins, not to mention assorted neighbours and friends, baby-sat each others’ kids as a matter of course, and all the grannies and grandpas and aunties and great-aunties were only too happy to have the kids round, and would have been very offended at any suggestion that their young relatives could be thought to be a burden, or a nuisance, or not wanted... Were Caro’s parents not very well? Marianne had tactfully enquired. “Fit as fleas, the pair of them,” Caro had replied glumly.

    After which she’d revealed, in a would-be cynical voice that didn’t deceive Marianne for one instant, that Mum and Dad seemed to bear her some sort of a grudge for (a) having decided to go to university in the first place, (b) having gone to Australia, (c) having married Perry, (d) having stayed over there in Australia with him instead of persuading him to come back to New Zealand with her, and (e) having subsequently divorced him. The first and last of these crimes being, apparently, by far the worst. Marianne, for all her beautiful manners, had not been able to produce anything but a weak “Oh” in answer to this.

    “I know he sometimes wets the bed,” Caro had suddenly said explosively—Danny, of course, not her ex-husband—“but he’s got a rubber sheet, and he always changes the bedclothes himself, he’s very good about it.” Marianne had responded sympathetically with the story of her sister’s sister-in-law’s eldest boy, who had also wet the bed after his parents had separated, and Ngarita said Lorraine had almost been in despair over it; only then he’d suddenly stopped, for no apparent reason at all. It had been after this that Caro, rapidly drinking another glass of wine, had told her all about Perry.

    Caro now sipped coffee and replied gloomily to her guest’s enquiry: “No—wish to God I had come back then. No; Danny and me went down to Melbourne after that.”

    “I see; Melbourne’s a nice city, isn’t it? Only it gets very hot in the summer, of course.”

    “Mm; I’ve known it stay at forty-odd for a week at a stretch,” replied Caro in an absent tone.

    “Ugh!” responded Marianne simply.

    Caro drank more coffee, glared at the heater, and said abruptly: “I got myself into a stupid fix, that’s why I came home.”

    Marianne just looked at her kindly.

    Caro gripped her mug very tightly and said fiercely: “I’m such a fool over men!”

    Marianne made a little sympathetic noise that anyone less disturbed than Caro was at that precise moment would have interpreted as meaning “Aren’t we all?”

    “I always seem to pick the wrong ones... I suppose I’ve got some sort of self-destructive urge!” she added bitterly.

    Recognising this statement as the kind of thing that girls who had been to university were inclined to produce, Marianne merely responded gently: “I don’t  know… I’d say luck comes into it a lot.”

    “He beat me up,” said Caro abruptly.

    “Oh, Caro!”

    “And what’s more,” added Caro grimly, “he started in on Danny: that’s when I walked out on him.”

    “So I should think!” said Marianne militantly.

    Caro looked at her a little doubtfully, and said: “I don’t mean just the odd spanking; I’ve been known to give him a wallop or two, myself, when he goes too far.”

    Marianne’s extended family all cheerfully handed out spankings as needed without ever thinking twice about it. “Yes, of course; but that’s quite different, isn’t it?”

    With a little shudder, Caro agreed. She drank some more coffee, turned the mug round and round in her hands, and suddenly said hoarsely: “He took his belt to him: the buckle end.”

    Marianne felt abruptly sick. She put her own mug down quickly on the hearth, since Caro didn’t have a coffee table. Shakily she said: “Oh, my God...”

    Having already registered that Marianne never swore, Caro gratefully recognized the depth of her new friend’s sympathy. They sat in silence for quite some time.

    “That’s why I came home. At first I just moved out on him; only he followed us.” She shuddered again. “Then I moved again, and got an injunction. Of course it didn’t do any good: he found us again, and said he’d get some of his mates on to me if didn’t...”

    “Mm.”

    “So then I came home.”

    “Yes.”

    Caro then revealed jerkily that she’d gone back to her maiden name, which she was pretty sure he didn’t know; but she’d got an unlisted phone number, just in case, and she didn’t really think he’d follow her all the way over here, he was too mean to pay the fare, and anyway she didn’t think he’d go to that much bother... Marianne made another sympathetic noise, and Caro said explosively: “Thank God I didn’t marry him!”

    “Yes.”

    Caro shuddered again, and said: “What did I think I was doing? Fancied a bit of rough, or something, I suppose! I knew he— I mean, you only had to look at him to see what type... Jesus, why am I such an idiot about men!”

    Marianne didn’t entirely understand the implications of this speech, and was a fraction embarrassed by what she did understand, but she made another sympathetic noise.

    Caro gave a little sigh, and went on looking into the heater, but with a much more peaceful expression on her face.

    After a while Marianne said in a very tight, strained voice: “I was engaged once—a couple of years ago.”

    “Didn’t it work out?”

    “No… We weren’t compatible, really.”

    Caro felt very curious but refrained from asking just what she meant by this cliché—it was obviously costing the reticent Marianne a lot to tell her even this much.

    Marianne gave a little sigh. “It was awful; we had to send the engagement presents back; and Mum and Dad didn’t understand, of course, but they were very  supportive.”

    Mm,” said Caro, with some envy. Marianne didn’t reply, so she added awkwardly: “You were very sensible: much better to break it off then and there if you—if you thought it wasn’t going to work out.”

    “Yes... What Mum and Dad couldn’t understand was— I mean, there was nothing wrong with him—Nick. I mean, him and Dad got on very well, and everybody liked him...”

    “Yeah, but that’s not the point, is it?” said Caro, a little gruffly. “I mean, it’s your life!”

    “Yes,” agreed Marianne, looking at her gratefully. “It was just…”

    “Mm?” said Caro, hoping desperately that she wasn’t betraying her now quite rampant curiosity.

    “Well, we didn’t have anything in common!” said Marianne, quite forcefully, for her. “I suppose it sounds silly, but… Well, he was interested in—in all the usual men’s things, I suppose: football—he was in the First Fifteen at school; and the races—not that he was a gambler at all, mind you; and—and—well, the occasional glass of beer with his mates—you know; just—just ordinary things. And cars, of course.”

    “I geddit,” said Caro sympathetically. “Never picked up a book from one year’s end to another, I suppose?” –Marianne had already revealed to her that she was quite a reader, only she didn’t know quite—quite what books to choose, and if Caro didn’t mind—? And Caro, who naturally found nothing abnormal about being interested in books, had cheerfully agreed that she wouldn’t mind at all. Marianne had already experienced a few shocks at Caro’s suggested reading matter, which had so far included Lisa Alther’s Kinflicks, a translation of a French book which she had just not been able to get into (Caro had silently reproached herself for being a nit, it was far too soon for Beauvoir), Schindler’s Ark, which Marianne, after a difficult start, had been unable to put down and had bawled her eyes out over, and Sir Maurice Black’s Pioneer Days, which Marianne, who had never read a history book before, had balked at, but soon been utterly absorbed by. “I never knew history could be so interesting!” “Writes damn well, doesn’t he?” Caro had agreed, grinning, and forbearing to point out that Schindler’s Ark, though disguised as “a story”, was mostly history, too.

    Now Marianne replied on a dubious note: “No-o… I mean, of course he wasn’t a reader. Most men aren’t, are they? But it wasn’t that, exactly… I can’t explain it, really, only when it came to the crunch I just couldn’t face spending the rest of my life with him.”

    “No,” agreed Caro understandingly.

    “He couldn’t understand why, of course—he was awfully upset, poor Nick!”

    “Mm,” agreed Caro not so understandingly.

    Silence fell. After a bit Caro got up and produced her bottle of duty-free port—only Australian: she was very broke, what with having to sell the heavily-mortgaged marital home in Sydney for very little more than they’d paid for it, two scary months of unemployment in Melbourne before she’d found another job, Perry’s casual attitude towards Danny’s maintenance, and the fact, which she had not revealed to Marianne, that her brutal boyfriend had cleaned out the joint bank account which in her blithering idiocy she had agreed to open with him.

    “I shouldn’t, really—not if I’m driving...” murmured Marianne.

    “Just a small one?”

    “All right, then; thank you.”

    When she had drunk her port, rather fast, she said jerkily: “There was the sex thing, too.”

    “Oh, yes?” said Caro hoarsely, trying not to let her eyes start out of her head. This topic would quite probably have been broached already by any of her university friends, but...

    “He— I suppose it’s me, really!” said Marianne in a rather squeaky voice.

    “What is?” said Caro baldly.

    “Well, I thought he was a bit... rough,” said Marianne faintly. “I didn’t enjoy it, really.” She’d gone very red and wasn’t meeting Caro’s eye.

    Caro, whose fault had always been enjoying it far too much—which was why she’d rushed into what she’d thought was the safety of marriage in the first place—replied tightly: “Is that right?”

    “Mm.” She twisted her port glass round and round, and added squeakily: “I hadn’t had much experience, of course... He said I was too slow.”

    “Did he, just?” exclaimed Caro in what the amazed Marianne recognized was grim indignation. She gaped, as Caro jumped up and went over to her untidy array of bookshelves—sagging strips of particle board on concrete blocks. “Here!” she said energetically. “Take these!”

    Marianne took the proffered well-worn paperbacks limply, and looked down at their titles rather blankly. She turned purple.

    Caro said earnestly: “That one’s awfully good—even if it is written by a man!”

    “Yes,” said Marianne faintly; the word “orgasm” had seemed to jump off the cover at her. Unlike Heather Freeman, she read the much more advanced sort of women’s magazine, which frequently mentioned this and other such topics; only...

    Caro sat down again, finished her own port, absently poured herself another and said earnestly: “You’re supposed to be slow: that’s half the enjoyment’“

    “Oh,” muttered Marianne, not knowing if she was glad or sorry she’d brought the topic up.

    “Look,” said Caro, still earnest: “these blimmin’ Kiwi and Aussie jokers, they don’t know the first thing about it: they haven’t the faintest idea of what women’s sexuality is all about!”

    “Oh,” said Marianne faintly.

    “You read those,” ordered Caro firmly. “They’ll put you on the right track!”

    “Yes,” said Marianne faintly, patting the books into a neat pile.

    Caro leaned forward and said urgently: “Promise, Marianne!”

    Marianne looked her in the eye, blushed, and replied: “I promise.”

    “Good!” said Caro, satisfied: Marianne would be the last person in the world to ever break her word.

    So Marianne did read those books—rather slowly, for one of them was very long and another was full of scientific words that she wasn’t quite sure of and had to keep checking up on. And when she eventually gave them back to Caro, quite two months later, she said in a small voice “You were quite right Caro—about Nick, I mean. He did it all wrong.”

    “Toleja!” said Caro, terrifically pleased with herself.

    But although Marianne now knew quite a lot about what it should be like, she was still not quite convinced that it could be like that for her. And since all the men she seemed to meet at work were quite old, like Sir Maurice Black, or, like Hamish and Peter, married or something, or gay, like nice Ron from the University Library’s  Serials Department, well, there didn’t seem to be much hope, really.

    And though she went religiously to the Tennis Club when it was the tennis season, all the unattached men there were either very old, or very young indeed: it was practically unheard of for a man of Peter Riabouchinsky’s age, for example, to be unmarried and not gay; most New Zealand men got married between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-four—which might have had something to do with the high divorce rate. At twenty-six, Marianne concluded gloomily, and not altogether incorrectly, she was over the hill.

    Heather Freeman ate a small piece of biscuit, swallowed and said: ‘You don’t understand, Mum!”

    Normally they were the best of friends, and understood everything each said to the other without need of explanation or interpretation. Which, considering that they generally discussed nothing more controversial than strange new recipes in the Woman’s Weekly, knitting patterns, the mild iniquities of their neighbours, television personalities and the Royal Family, was not altogether surprising. Even Heather’s sojourn at Teachers’ Collage had not caused a hiccup in the smooth flow of their daily intercourse: the curriculum was not exactly intellectually demanding and in any case Heather was an expert at closing her eyes and ears to anything that wasn’t nice.

    Mrs Warburton glanced at her in some irritation: she wanted to solicit Heather’s opinion on a new crochet pattern for a baby’s bonnet—a heavy hint, of course: the only baby closely connected to them was Heather’s cousin Gloria’s son, now eighteen months, and a bit past the bonnet stage. She sipped her tea, and frowned.

    “He’s so mean to me, Mum!”

    Mrs Warburton took another swallow of tea and said cautiously: “How do you mean?”

    Heather reddened, and said. “Oh, Mum! You know!”

    Since Mrs Warburton’s own sex life had been in abeyance for a dozen years, now, and had not been particularly torrid or, in her opinion, even interesting, before that, she didn’t immediately grasp that Donald was being mean to Heather in “that way”. She ate another biscuit, looked sideways at the magazine open at the crochet pattern on the settee beside her and repeated: “How do you mean, Heather?’

    Heather sought refuge in her teacup, a very pretty one, English china with pink roses on it.

    Her mother looked at her vaguely, and then back at the crochet pattern. She took a piece of cake.

    Heather put down her cup in its saucer with an audible rattling noise. “You know, Mum! Those—those things!”

    “What?” said Mrs Warburton vaguely, now quite obviously reading the crochet pattern.

    “Mum! You’re not listening to me!” said Heather in what was perilously near a wail.

    Mrs Warburton did look up at this. “What on earth’s the matter, Heather?”

    Sulkily Heather glared at the pretty body-carpet: cream, pink and fawn roses on a pale green background. Mrs Warburton recognized with annoyance that Heather was going into one of her sulks—just like her father!

    “Well, don’t tell me if you don’t want to!” she said in the disagreeable voice she usually reserved for her husband, and turned over the page of her magazine.

    Heather looked sulkier than ever. Mrs Warburton finished her cake and went on reading the magazine.

    Finally Heather said in a strangled voice: “I wish I could get a divorce! I hate him!”

    Mrs Warburton had just found a very odd recipe for left-over ham and fresh pineapple—it was an Australian magazine—and was rather annoyed to be interrupted. “Don’t be silly, Heather,” she responded firmly.

    Heather looked at her mother’s massive bulk, the ash-blonde hair (helped along a bit) in its well-sprayed neat curls, the bright pink jersey in a very complicated lacy pattern that had taken Mrs Warburton most of last winter to knit, the bright turquoise  woollen skirt arid the pink fluffy slippers, and felt a wave of despair. Mum was never going to understand! She—she was too old!

    “I’m not being silly,” she mumbled. “You don’t understand, Mum! He’s horrible to me like—like that!”

    Mrs Warburton frowned a little and stared at her.

    “You know, Mum!” said Heather, as red as a beet. Her mother went on staring at her. “Those things!”

    Mrs Warburton flushed dully and replied firmly: “You’ll just have to put with it, Heather.”

    Heather gave a tearful sniff.

    Her mother didn’t say that she didn’t wish to discuss it: that would have been far too direct, almost as bad as actually talking about it. She took another piece of cake in her right hand and picked up the magazine with her left.

    Heather glared at her with sulky resentment.

    Mrs Warburton read her magazine for quite some time. Heather, terribly het up from the enormous effort of confession, felt hot and trembly all over and did not dare even to pick up her teacup again for fear of dropping it.

    Eventually Mrs Warburton, eyes firmly glued to the magazine, said in a very vague voice: “Men are like that.”

    Heather gave a strangled sob and rushed out of the room.

    Mrs Warburton did not raise her eyes.

    A while later Heather came out of the pretty little bedroom that had been hers for twenty-three years, went into the bathroom and rinsed her face with cold water, combed her hair, applied lipstick, and went along the passage to the sitting-room. Mrs Warburton had just turned on Emmerdale Farm, which actually meant that she should have been thinking about getting      the tea; but he could wait.

    “I’m off now, Mum,” said Heather in a strangled voice.

    “All right, dear—bye-bye,” replied Mrs Warburton in a vague voice, without looking  round.

    Heather rushed out.

    Polly Carrano sighed, and said simply: “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”

    Elspeth gave a startled giggle. “Men can’t be beautiful, Aunty Polly!”

    “Yes, they can. Look at him: what else would you call him?”

    Elspeth looked doubtfully at the young man who was one of the builders up at Aunty Polly’s new house. He was sitting astride a windowsill, doing something to the window. Since it was only May, and a very warm May day at that, and the windowsill was in the full glare of the noon-day sun, he had taken his shirt off—a custom not uncommon amongst builders, beautiful or not.

    “He’s taken his shirt off.”

    “Mm.” Polly looked appreciatively at the smooth golden muscles.

    Obviously Aunty Polly hadn’t understood. “You can see his chest.”

    “Of course— Oh.” She looked down at the small, flushed figure that was holding her hand rather tightly and said: “It’s all right for men to do that, Elspeth. Doesn’t Daddy ever take his shirt off? When he’s working in the garden, or that sort of thing?”

    “No,” said Elspeth dubiously. Daddy didn’t work in the garden, but she wasn’t capable of formulating the complicated response that would have been necessary to impart this information in a way that Aunty Polly would understand.

    “What about when he goes for a swim: you can see his chest then, can’t you?”

    Elspeth felt very strongly that that was different, and Aunty Polly ought to see that that was different. She looked dubious.

    Ruefully Polly decided that this would have to be yet another thing that people did in New Zealand. “Well, in New Zealand,” she said firmly, “men take their shirts off a lot when they’re working outside, especially if it’s a hot day.”

    “Aye,” agreed Elspeth doubtfully.

     Polly squeezed her hand. “Come on, we’ll go and say hello.” She led the way over to the house and bellowed in her deepest contralto: “Hey, ROD! HI!”

    Rod Jablonski, who when he wasn’t working in his holidays as a builder’s mate was finishing off a rather abstruse Ph.D. thesis on the vocabulary of the roman policier—which was, of course, how Polly knew him in the first place—looked down, grinned and called: “Hi, Polly!”

    “How’s it going?” called Polly.

    “Hang on—I’ll come down!” He slithered off the windowsill and disappeared from view inside the house, where his mates were gib-boarding madly: the interior of the house was almost ready for the painters and paper-hangers, now.

    “Do you know him, Aunty Pelly?” asked Elspeth squeakily.

    “Mm; he’s a student at varsity,” said Polly absently. Elspeth did not reply; Polly recollected herself and explained: “I used to teach him, when I was working—you know, at Jill and Gretchen’s work?”

    Elspeth naturally found it difficult to grasp the idea of Aunty Polly not being at home with “the Twinnies”, but she nodded obediently.

    “And Jake’s known him for years; he used to know his mummy, a long time ago.”

    Elspeth registered the “used to know” and said timidly: “Is his mummy dead?”

    “Yes, a long time ago. l never met her, but Jake says she was a very pretty lady.”

    Perhaps it was as well that Rod reappeared, grinning broadly and wiping the sweat from his upper lip with the back of his hand, at that moment, for Polly found herself incapable of explaining to a little Scottish girl who was only just ten the further complications of the Carrano-Jablonski story, which included the fact that Rod’s father’s second wife had been Jake’s ex-wife, and that this lady, who, everybody now agreed, had been as mad as a hatter, poor thing, had killed herself rather spectacularly on Jake’s patio shortly before Polly’s and Jake’s wedding—after first trying to shoot Jake. This incident was, in fact, the main reason why Jake had decided to get rid of the old house and build the new one.

    Elspeth looked shyly at the “beautiful” young man whose mummy was dead and who didn’t wear his shirt, because they were in New Zealand and that was all right here.

    “How’s it going?” asked Polly again.

    “Not too bad!” he replied. He looked at Elspeth and added kindly: “And who’ve we got here, eh?”

    “This is Elspeth,” said Polly. “She’s my cousin Hamish’s daughter; did you meet him at our wedding?”

    “Yeah; bloke in a kilt,” agreed Rod, grinning more broadly than ever. “He was at the stag night, too.” He held out a hand to Elspeth and said gravely: “Nice to meetcha, Elspeth.”

    Elspeth put a little paw into his big hand. In this as in the other details of his musculature Rod bore a very close resemblance to Michelangelo’s David, a fact which had been remarked upon more than once by his admirers.

    Crikey! the young man thought, she’s got bones like a bird! He was careful not to squeeze the little hand too hard. “How old are you, Elspeth?” he asked kindly.

    “I’m ten!” said Elspeth proudly.

    “Are you?” replied Rod weakly. He’d have put her down as seven at the most. “Quite a big girl, then.”

    “Aye,” said Elspeth with satisfaction.

    “You fancy coming down to the house for lunch, Rod?” asked Polly, smiling.

    “Too right! I’ll just tell Steve.” He strode over to the house, stuck his head inside a space destined for a French door, and bellowed: “STEVE!”

    “Yeah?” came an answering yell from inside the house.

    “Goin’ down to Polly’s for LUNCH! OKAY?” roared Rod.

    “Yeah—fine! Just don’t take three hours over it!” came an answering roar.

    Elspeth had watched this macho performance with great interest, and some quite obvious reservations. Polly, who had watched Elspeth in considerable amusement, repressed an urge to tell her that men went round roaring at each other in this peculiar way in New Zealand, and said: “Come on Elspeth, I’m starving!”

    “Aunty Polly’s feeding her babies,” Elspeth explained to Rod.

    “Yeah, I know.”

    Since Polly and Jake would never have dreamed of forbidding her to discuss the subject, Hamish had never thought about it one way or the other, and Sylvie never referred to the babies—or Polly, if she could help it—Elspeth then reported: “She’s got milk in her titties.”

    “Yes, I know,” said Rod in a strangled voice, preserving his gravity with a tremendous effort.

    Elspeth gave a little skip.

    Rod looked down at the dark head with its two skinny plaits. “Uh—how wouldja like a ride on my shoulders, Elspeth?”

    “Can I, Aunty Polly?’ said Elspeth doubtfully.

    It was then borne in forcibly on both Polly and Rod that Elspeth’s father never extended this privilege to her.

    “You all right, now?” asked Rod at last, panting a little.

    “Aye; ooh, you can see a lot more from up here!” she squeaked.

    “Yeah. Hang on to me—and for God’s sake don’t put your hand over my eyes again!”

    … “He cried,” said Elspeth in awestruck tones, when Rod, after a somewhat extended lunch-hour, for which Steve would no doubt bawl him out ,had gone back up the hill to the new house on the cliff top.

    Polly sighed. “Yes, he did, just a bit, poor Rod.”

    “Daddy doesn’t cry.”

    This was quite obviously Elspeth’s way of saying “men don’t cry”. “Yes, he does, sometimes, Elspeth,” she said gently.

    Elspeth went very red and started to pout.

    “Come and sit by me, Elspeth.”

    Reluctantly Elspeth transferred herself to the sofa next to Aunty Polly. Polly put her arm round her. “Um, men do cry, sometimes; even your Daddy.”

    “No, he doesn’t!” said Elspeth crossly, daring to contradict Aunty Polly in her agitation.

    “Yes, he does, really: I’ve seen him cry,” said Polly, going very red as she recalled that absolutely ghastly scene in Paris when she was barely nineteen, and totally incapable of dealing with a sobbing man of nearly twenty-nine. Her main thought at the time had been: “Why me? Why didn’t he bawl all over that stuck-up Francine, she’s the one that dumped him!”

    Elspeth was silent.

    Haltingly Polly said “It’s just that—well, daddies try not to cry in front of their little girls, because it would upset them; that’s why you’ve never seen Hamish cry.”

    After a while a very small voice said “Can I sit on your knee?”

    “Yes, of course, darling,” said Polly gently.

   Elspeth got onto her knee. After a few moments she leaned her head into Polly’s bosom, covered today with a floppy apricot knit top, and without the offensive nursing bra. A while after that she said in a muffled voice: “I was scared.”

    It took Polly a moment or two to work that one out. “When Rod cried, do you mean?”

    “Mm,” said a muffled voice.

    “It was awful, wasn’t it? Poor Rod!”

    Suddenly Elspeth at up straight and said “She’s a nasty lady!”

    Oops! Little Elspeth must have fallen for Rod’s blond beauty! “Helen Michaels, you mean? Rod’s girlfriend?’

    The scowling Elspeth nodded vigorously.

    Haltingly Polly tried to explain that Helen couldn’t help it if she’d fallen in love with someone else while overseas on her scholarship. It was fairly obvious that Elspeth couldn’t grasp the concept of people not being able to help who they fell in love with.

    “You’ll understand when you’re grown-up,” she said weakly. “After a while Rod’ll find another lady and fall in love with her—and then they’ll get married and have children!” she ended desperately, wincing at this reinforcing of cultural stereotypes.

     Elspeth did not look entirely comforted by this picture.

    “And then he’ll be happy, see?”

    Elspeth wriggled and said: “Can I go and see if the Twinnies are awake now?”

    “Yeah; go on,” said Polly weakly.

    However, she must have been thinking it all over: in the middle of dinner she suddenly said: “Uncle Jake; do you ever cry?”

    Jake looked frantically at Polly. “Tell her the truth, Jake,” she said calmly.

    He swallowed. “Well, sometimes. Not often. Uh—not lately, Chicken.”

    “Oh. Can I have another potato, please, Aunty Polly?”

    Polly gave Elspeth another potato.

    Elspeth ate the potato and said to Jake: “Rod cried.”

    “I see!”

    Polly nodded. “He’s very sad, isn’t he, Elspeth?”

    “Mm!” said Elspeth through a mouthful of roast lamb.

    “What’s up? Not his bloody thesis?” said Jake in alarm.

    “No, it’s Helen Michaels.”

    “She’s a nasty lady!” said Elspeth crossly.

    “Eh? No, she isn’t, she’s nice,” replied Jake simply. He looked at Polly and said: “Found herself another bloke, has she?”

    Polly sighed. “Yes. She’s got engaged to some man she met in Cambridge.”

    Jake grunted.

    Elspeth ate her silverbeet and gravy and said to Jake: “Rod’s going to get over it. He’s going to find another lady—a nice lady—isn’t he, Aunty Polly?”

    “Yes,” said Polly weakly, reflecting that at least some of it had sunk in.

    Actually quite a lot had, as was revealed after tea, when Elspeth was playing with Puppy. Puppy had a much longer name, far too long for such a cuddly, floppy black morsel—Jake, who never did things by halves, had got her a pedigree Labrador pup. Sylvie, as predicted, had refused utterly to let her keep him at home.

    “Men can cry,” said Elspeth to Puppy informatively.

    … “Help!” said Polly weakly, when Elspeth was in bed at last, with Teddy beside her and Puppy by her feet. “I think I’ll crawl off to bed, too—what a day!”

    “Look, if she’s too much for you, sweetheart, she doesn’t have to stay on over the weekend; Hamish can come and collect her tomorrow.”

    “You are going to be at home this weekend, aren’t you, Jake?”

    “Yeah, sure. Said I was, eh?”

    “That’s all right, then,” she said, heading for the master bedroom.

    Jake followed her. He hovered in the doorway. “I mean it: send that kid back home if she’s getting too much for you.”

    Polly laughed weakly, and sat down on the edge of the bed. “No, she’s okay. But I don’t think I’m quite ready to do the ‘motherly advice to ten-year-olds’ bit.”

    “That bloody mother of hers—!” he rumbled.

    “Mm. Actually I don’t think Hamish is much help, either: do you know what, Jake? Rod gave her a ride on his shoulders, and she’d obviously never had one before in her life!”

    “Bloody tit!”

    “Yeah,” agreed Polly,

    “Rod’s a good kid,” he said abruptly.

    “Yes, he was very good with Elspeth.”

    “Mm.” He came and sat beside her, putting his arm round her. “Listen, isn’t it about time you thought about weaning the twins? Think the little buggers might be—uh—draining you dry, old lady!”

    Polly’s eyes filled with unexpected tears. Just now and again—not often, but in her weakest moments—she sometimes felt that Jake would cheerfully sacrifice her for his beloved babies. Not that she wouldn’t have sacrificed herself; only that was a bit different. She swallowed hard. “Mm; maybe it is about time. I’ll talk to Bruce about it—I’ll ring the surgery tomorrow.”

    When Polly was tucked up in bed and he was standing over her making her drink a mug of warm milk with honey in it, she said thoughtfully: “I’m awfully glad we’ve got boys, Jake. I don’t think I’m much good at all this woman-to-woman stuff.”

    “Eh? Aw—Elspeth!” he said, grinning.

    “Mm.”

    “You seem to’ve done okay. Well, her and Puppy’ve got the point that blokes can cry!”

    “Hah, hah,” she said weakly. “Don’t work too late, Jake.”

    He bent to kiss her. “I won’t, sweetheart. Night-night.”

    “Night-night, darling Jake,” said the drowsy contralto.

    Jake went downstairs, smiling a bit. It was just as well that they had boys: Polly never had been much of a one for girl talk.

Next chapter:

https://themembersoftheinstitute.blogspot.com/2023/01/close-encounters.html