Modified Rapture

35

Modified Rapture

    Outside the sun had set, but it was still quite light. Marianne breathed deeply. “That’s better!” she sighed. “Air conditioning never feels like real air, does it?”

    “No,” agreed Micky, thankful to see that she seemed to have got over her earlier disgruntled mood.

    She balanced on one foot and wiggled the other.

    “Sore feet?”

    “Mm—I’ve been on them for hours.”

    “Come and take the weight off.” He led the way to the car.

    “You’ve got a new car,” she discovered.

    “Yes,” agreed Micky, unlocking the cream Mercedes. “I got fed up with that damned sardine tin. –Besides,” he added when they were in the car, “I think this suits my image better.”

    “Oh,” said Marianne, wondering what he thought his image was.

    “Sober and respectable, but not dull,” he said, his mouth twitching.

    She smiled uncertainly.

    “Where shall we go? What about that little place we went to before?”

    “The Chez Basil; oh—no,” she remembered. “It’s closed on Tuesdays.”

    “I don’t really know the local restaurants.”

    Marianne said awkwardly: “To tell you the truth, I really don’t feel terribly much like going out: I’m rather tired.”

    Trying to sound casual, Micky replied: “Shall we just go back to your place, then?”

    “Judith’ll be there,” said Marianne dully.”

    Did this mean—? Micky’s heart leapt. “Well—my place? It’s a bit of a drive, but... I could do us an omelette, or something.” –Susan had taken herself off firmly to her grandparents’, in order, as she delicately phrased it, to give her father a clear run.

    Marianne sighed deeply. “That’d be nice; I feel kind of battered: I seem to have had people talking at me non-stop for weeks.”

    Micky’s mouth twitched. “I promise not to talk non-stop at you.”

    He was as good as his word; in fact they scarcely spoke, all the way back to town. Micky didn’t drive very fast, although the roads were almost deserted: he saw that Marianne had wound her window down a little, was leaning her head back against the head-rest, and seemed to be at peace.

    He installed her on his sofa, gave her a drink, and went into the kitchen. When he came back she’d taken her high-heeled sandals off and was lying back with her feet up and her eyes closed. Her glass was on the coffee table, empty.

    “Marianne?” he said softly.

    She opened her eyes with a little start.

    “I thought we might have some pâté, to start with.” He set down a platter of brown bread and pâté.

    Marianne ate pâté without saying very much. She’d begun to ask herself what she thought she was doing, alone with Micky Shapiro in his flat, miles from home. She hadn’t come up with any sort of answer, yet.

    Micky’s few, unexceptionable remarks were answered in monosyllables. His fever of anticipation began to abate somewhat and he began to think about the probable rather than the desirable outcome of the evening: it looked as if he might have to drive Marianne all the way home to Puriri and then come all the way back...

    “Well, now for the omelettes!” he said, with a kind of forced cheerfulness.

    “Mm,” she agreed. “Would you like a hand?” she added, without noticeable enthusiasm.

    “No, no; you stay there; I can manage,” said Micky quickly.

    He didn’t bother to set the table: they ate the omelettes on their laps, Marianne still on the sofa, and Micky opposite on a smart but uncomfortable yellow leather chair.

    “Nice?” he said.

    “Mm; delicious,” she replied.

    Apart from that, and agreeing that she would like a second and a third glass of Chablis, she didn’t say anything.

    “I was thinking of fruit for dessert,” he said, “but Susan seems to have got down on it.”

    “Never mind,” said Marianne, smiling her lovely smile. “I’m quite full, really.”

    “Well—uh—coffee, then? And I’ve got some Turkish Delight, if you’d fancy it.”

    What on earth had he said? She’d gone scarlet!

    “Yes,” she said huskily. “I’m very fond of it.”

    When he was in the kitchen making the coffee it dawned on him. His hand shook and he dropped a piece of the percolator into the sink with a crash. It must have been one of their things... Oh, damn, damn, damn!

    “It’s just the plain sort,” he said, offering her the box.

    “Good. I don’t like the sort with nuts; they spoil the texture.”

    “Yes,” Micky agreed.  “Shall I put a record on? What would you like?”

    Music was, of course, the one aspect of the civilized life in which Maurice had not been able to educate her. However, after a goodly period of working with Hamish, Caro and Charlie, all of whom talked music with the blithe assumption that their audience both understood and shared their tastes and Peter, who rather too obviously made no such assumption, she was now aware of what she felt to be her deficiencies in that area.

    “I don’t mind,” she said in a strangled voice. “I don’t know anything about music, I’m afraid.”

    “Oh,” said Micky, rather taken aback. Most of his former girlfriends had known nothing about music, either, but this hadn’t stopped them having very definite musical tastes, which they’d attempted relentlessly to impose on him. He opened his record cabinet, and hesitated.

    “What a lot of records you’ve got,” said Marianne in a polite voice.

    “Yes... I’m going in more for CDs, these days,” he murmured absently. His mind was a blank. He bit his lip. Not Mahler, obviously. Chopin? No... Ridiculously, he felt his ears redden. Finally he put on some Vivaldi.

    “That’s pretty,” said Marianne shyly after a minute or two.

    Micky smiled in relief, and picked up his coffee cup. He hadn’t seized the opportunity to change his seat to one next to her. Now he wished he had.

    Marianne stretched out her hand to the Turkish Delight, hesitated, and offered him the box politely.

    “No, I’d better not,” he said regretfully. “Too many calories.”

     “I can’t resist it,” she confessed, taking another piece. “It’s the rosewater, I think.”

    “Have you ever had in it anything else?” he asked idly.

    “Yesh,” said Marianne thickly. She swallowed, and smiled. “Peter brought some delicious little biscuits to work once; they had rosewater in them.”

    “He cooks, doesn’t he?” murmured Micky.

    “Yes; Veronica says he does all the cooking.”

    Micky’s mouth quivered. “I think he’d have to, if he didn’t want to starve, living with her.”

    “She doesn’t like cooking,” said Marianne. Her voice was rather firm; Micky failed to take it as a warning sign.

    “No, and it doesn’t like her! Pat and I stayed with her once, in Sydney: after she’d burnt the toast three mornings running we decided to have breakfast out.”

    “Why should she want to be good at cooking?” said Marianne, nostrils dilating. “Lots of women don’t like it; I don’t much like it, if you want to know!”

    “I didn’t mean—” he began.

    “And Veronica’s good at lots of other things!”

    “Yes, I know; she—”

    “She’s very clever; and anyway, she could afford to hire a cook, if she needed one!”

    “Doesn’t need one, though, does she?” He chuckled. “She’s got one!”

    Marianne went very red. “I like Peter and Veronica!”

    “Yes,” he said uncomfortably. “Of course.”

    “People are always making snide remarks about them,” said Marianne in a trembling voice, “but I think they’re a lovely couple! It’s easy to make cheap jokes at their expense, because they’re—they’re so different.” Micky remembered Nat’s remarks on the subject. His lips twitched. “But I think they suit each other perfectly!” said Marianne defiantly. “And people who laugh at them are only jealous!”

    “Yes,” he agreed faintly.

    She took a third piece of Turkish Delight. He watched hopefully: perhaps it would exert a soothing effect. She took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “Besides, it’s an absolute cliché to think the woman has to do the cooking and—and be domestic!”

    “Yes—”

    “Gender,” said Marianne firmly, “has got nothing intrinsic to do with social rôles.”

    Micky’s shoulders shook. “You’ve been reading a book!” he gasped.

    “So what if I have? I suppose you think I have to be illiterate, just because I’m a secretary!”

    “No, of course not,” said Micky quickly, going rather white. “I didn’t mean to imply— I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

    Marianne was very red. “You didn’t hurt my feelings,” she said in a hard voice. “You insulted my intelligence.” She got up and picked up her cup and saucer. She placed them on her plate and reached for his cup and saucer.

    “No—Marianne—wait—” he said, moving them away from her. Marianne didn’t. reply. She turned for the kitchen.

    Micky hurried after her. “Marianne; please; I don’t want to quarrel with you,” he said, as she set her crockery down on the bench.

    Her back to him, Marianne gripped the edge of the bench hard. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m not in a very good mood. I think I’d better go home.”

    Micky swallowed. “No, don’t do that,” he said hoarsely. “Look—I never meant— Look, the fact is I’m so used to teasing Susan and Allyson... I didn’t mean to insult you; it was only a joke.”

    “I realize that,” said Marianne tightly. “I’m not used to that sort of joke.”

    “No,” he said uncomfortably. “I’m sorry.”

    The slim back heaved in a deep breath. “If I could just ring for a taxi—”

    “No,” he said miserably. “If you really want to go home, I’ll drive you.”

    It dawned abruptly on Marianne that she didn’t have nearly enough money for a taxi all the way up to the Hibiscus Coast. Her ears burned. “No; if you wouldn’t mind lending me the money for a taxi—”

    “Nonsense; I’ll drive you.”

    “No—please don’t: it’s too far.”

    He had to suppress an urge to grasp her by the arms and shake some sense into her. “It isn’t too far; and what the Hell else do you suppose I’d be doing with my time?”

    Marianne flushed. “I don’t know... Listening to music?” she said in a small voice.

    Micky said tiredly: “Look, it was my idea to come down here; the least I can do is drive you back.”

    “All right,” she agreed in a thread of a voice. Her eyes had filled with tears. She swallowed convulsively.

    “I’ll get my keys,” he said dully. “Do you want to use the bathroom or anything before we go?”

    “No—yes—I might as well.” She waited until his footsteps had retreated. Then she hurried into his guest bathroom.

    The guest bathroom was done out in pale puce imitation marble, except for the floor, which was darker puce tiles. Every surface that could possibly have a deep maroon fluffy thing on it did have. Marianne used the toilet and washed her hands in an automatic sort of way. She looked at herself in the mirror. She burst into tears and sat down on the fluffy maroon toilet seat cover. She cried for some time into a fluffy maroon hand towel.

    Micky fidgeted uneasily in his tiny lobby. Finally he went and tapped on the bathroom door. “Are you all right in there?”

    “Yes,” she said huskily. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

    Uncertainly he retreated.

    Marianne came out after a while. Although she’d redone her make-up Micky was pretty sure she’d been crying. She avoided his eye.

    “Come on,” he said weakly.

    It is not in the nature of brand-new Mercedes cars to break down in the middle of nowhere—or anywhere else, for that matter, which was one of the reasons why Micky had plumped for a Merc. However, even the best-behaved car can’t do anything about it when its owner has been so preoccupied with his unsatisfactory love life that he’s forgotten to put petrol in it. They ran out about 10 K or so from Puriri. What made it worse was that they were on a back road: Micky had said that it was such a nice night, why didn’t they go that way; and Marianne had said that that would be nice, but the road went right round the back of Puriri and came out north of Kowhai Bay; to which Micky had replied that that didn’t matter—he was desperate to remain in her company, even though she was very quiet and preoccupied. Marianne was dreading going home and meeting Judith’s sardonic eye: being escorted home at ten in the evening by an attractive gentleman is several degrees more embarrassing, when you’re in your late twenties, than being escorted home at ten in the morning by the same. So she’d said that that’d be nice.

    Micky went scarlet with a mixture of anger and embarrassment when he looked at the bloody petrol gauge. “I don’t believe it!” he choked.

    “Haven’t you got a can of petrol in the boot?” she asked timidly.

    “No; that’s a damned dangerous practice.”

    “Oh. Well—didn’t we pass a service station, a little while back?”

    “It was shut,” he said grimly.

    “Oh. There were some houses...”

    “Yes,” agreed Micky, sighing. “I’d better start walking.”

    “I’ll come with you,” she said quickly.

    “There’s no need—”

    “If you think I’m going to sit out here all by myself in the dead of night you’ve got another think coming,” said Marianne grimly. She got out of the car.

    Feebly Micky retrieving an empty plastic container from the boot.

    She walked grimly beside him in her high-heeled sandals for about a mile, all the way back to Waikaukau Junction. At least, thought Micky in a sort of guilty relief, the road hadn’t been re-metalled lately—in fact, not within living memory, from the look of it—so the deep ruts that formed its surface were filled with dust, not stones, and relatively comfortable to walk in. He’d offered her his arm but she’d said, very politely, that she thought she’d manage better on her own.

    “There’s a light up there,” said Marianne.

    “Yes; come on.”

    They headed silently up Blossom Avenue.

    Darryl, John and Timothy had watched A Night at the Opera at Rutherford Hall. Then, a little shamefacedly, they’d watched a Hammer horror movie about twin female vampires that, despite what John felt uneasily ought to be very nasty psychological overtones indeed, managed only to be very silly in an innocuous sort of way. It seemed to have been shown for its amusement value: the audience laughed uproariously all the way through it. Then Darryl had announced she was starving, and did they want to come back to her place for something to eat? John and Timothy were both starving, too, so they’d piled into the old purple VW and gone back to her place.

    Darryl had a huge bean casserole in the fridge. “I made too much,” she said sheepishly. “Keep forgetting there’s only me here, now.”

    Timothy looked wistfully round the big old kitchen. “Don’t suppose you’re looking for a flatmate, are you?”

    “Yeah; you looking for a place?”

    “Yes; I’m living in town and it’s costing me a fortune to get up here every day.”

    Darryl beamed. “You can move in tomorrow, if you like!”

    Timothy cautiously enquired the amount of the rent; as there were four large bedrooms, and it was customary to charge each occupant in proportion to his or her room, he grinned from ear to ear when she told him, and closed the deal immediately.

    “You’ll need your own transport,” she added vaguely, dumping plates on the big kitchen table.

    “That’s okay; I know a bloke who’s selling his Cortina,” he replied in an equally vague voice, discovering Gottfried. “There’s a hen in this box.”

    “A bantam,” corrected John.

    “Don’t disturb her; she’s asleep,” said Darryl.

    “No, she isn’t: she’s looking at me.”

    “It’s the light,” explained John. “She needs her cover over her.” He arranged a large wooden clothes-horse neatly over Gottfried’s box and draped it with an ancient grubby blue curtain. “There you are, Gottfried; you go back to sleep,” he recommended.

    Timothy made no comment on the fact that Dr Aitken seemed to know his way around Darryl Tuwhare’s domestic arrangements rather well. He got down on his hands and knees and peered cautiously under the curtain. “She’s settling down,” he reported.

    “Yeah; you can put that thing over her even in the daytime and she’ll think it’s night-time,” Darryl explained. “Chooks are dumb.” She got a lettuce out of the fridge. “You wanna make the salad dressing, John? Yours is better than mine.”

    John retrieved the olive oil from a cupboard. He looked at it suspiciously. “Is this the bottle I gave you?”

    “Yeah; why?” said Darryl’s muffled voice as she bent to a cupboard.

    “You’ve hardly used it.”

    “No,” she agreed with a grunt, straightening. “Olive oil costs an arm and a leg; so I thought I’d keep it for special occasions.”

    John began to make sauce vinaigrette. “It’s good for you.” –Gianni’s dictum.

    “Yeah; still costs an arm and a leg, though,” she replied, dumping a couple of dusty bottles on the table.

    “What’s this? Home brew?” asked Timothy with interest.

    “Nope; carrot wine. Sybil made it—one of my old flatmates. Dunno if it’s any good; I’d forgotten it was there till just the other day.”

    “It’ll probably explode,” said John, eyeing the bottle uneasily.

    “No; if it was gonna do that it woulda done it in the cupboard—broken the bottles,” said Timothy seriously, taking the corkscrew off Darryl. “We had a batch of home brew last year that did that. Made a Helluva mess; couldn’t even give it to the pig.”

    “Pig?” said Darryl.

    “Yeah; there was a bunch of engineering students in that flat.”

    “Oh,” said Darryl, as if that explained it.

    John grinned. “What’s the connection between engineering students and pigs?”

    Timothy laughed. “I could spell it out for you!”

    Darryl chuckled.

    “No—really—go on!” said John, laughing.

    Timothy began to operate on a bottle of carrot wine. “Well, they were keeping the pig in the back yard, ya see.”

    “Didn’t the neighbours object?”

    “Yeah; so then they hadda keep it in the kitchen. –Shit! What’d this pal of yours use for corks?” he panted. “Granite?”

    “It’s gone in,” ascertained Darryl.

    “Yeah, but will it come out?” He stuck the bottle between his knees and, getting rather red in the face, heaved at the cork. “’S coming!” he panted. “Ah!” The cork came out with a loud pop. “It’s not fizzing,” he ascertained, as if that were, marginally, a hopeful sign.

    “No-o...” agreed Darryl.

    Timothy sniffed the cork.

    “What’s it smell like?” she asked.

    “Alcohol.”

    “Promising!” she said, chuckling.

    “Yeah; get us some glasses, wouldja?”

    “Go on about the pig,” said John, perching on the edge of the table. –Darryl recognized, but without animus, that no-one had told him about Polynesian cultural taboos. Ninety-nine percent of the population of New Zealand shared his ignorance, anyway; she reached for the glasses calmly and forgot about the matter.

    “Yeah; well, they kept the pig in the kitchen for quite a while—”

    “Didn’t the landlord object?” croaked John.

    “Nah; it was an old place that belonged to the university—they’re pulling it down soon to build that new hostel there was all that row about in the papers. The bloke that was s’posed to be administering it never came near the place.”

    “I see,” said John.

    “Wasn’t it a bit unhygienic?” asked Darryl, pushing her hair back behind one ear with a hand that held a glass. She held the glass out to Timothy.

    “No, they had paper down. Jeffy was quite a clean pig, really.”

    “Jeffy?” said John, staring.

    “Named him after a friend of theirs that was a real pig!” He grinned, and poured a trickle of pale gold liquid into the glass. “Looks all right,” he admitted.

    “Is this whole story a leg-pull?” demanded John suspiciously.

    Timothy laughed. “No—honest!”

    “What happened to this Jeffy in the end, then?”

    “We ate him.”

    “What?” cried Darryl.

    Timothy took the glass off her. “Whaddelse would ya do with a pig?”

    “Did you slaughter it yourselves?” asked John, getting interested.

    “Jo-ohn!” cried Darryl, revolted.

    Timothy was shocked. “No, of course not. That’s illegal; we sent him to the Works, of course.”

    John laughed helplessly.

    Darryl looked at him blankly; Timothy grinned tolerantly, and cautiously tasted the wine. “Shit!” he gasped.

    “Is it ghastly?” asked Darryl.

    “No,” he croaked. “Got a kick like a mule, though!”

    “Good,” said Darryl, grabbing the bottle and pouring herself a slug. She swallowed, and gasped. “Crikey!”

    John wiped his streaming eyes and took the bottle out of Darryl’s nerveless hand. “It’s probably poisonous,” he said grimly. He poured himself a slug. He tasted it. It didn’t taste bad. “I think it’s about ninety proof,” he said.

    “Yeah,” agreed Timothy. He sipped his again. “Your pal distil it, or what?” he asked Darryl.

    “No-o... She just mucked round with bloody great plastic dustbins and that.” She looked doubtfully from him to John. “That’s not distilling, is it?”

    John chuckled. “I think even Darryl would have noticed a still!” he said to Timothy.

    “Yeah.” Timothy drank some more. “Kinda grows on you,” he decided.

    “Like some deadly fungus,” John agreed. He drank some more.

    Darryl grinned, but protested: “It’s not that bad. It tastes okay. Well, it doesn’t taste of carrots, anyway.” She drank some more.

    Timothy said thoughtfully: “Reminds me of some homemade rice wine I once tasted; that same undertone of, um...” He sipped. “Decaying vegetation,” he decided.

    “With an overtone of mould,” agreed John.

    “Come on,” said Darryl, grinning, grabbing the bottle. “Let’s go in the front room; we can have a game of Trivial Pursuit while the casserole’s warming up.”

    They followed, carrying their glasses.

    They’d only just set out the board for their game (not in pairs, since there were only the three of them) when there was a knock at the door.

    “Who on earth’s that?” said Darryl crossly, heaving herself up from the sagging sofa.

    The outside light wasn’t working but in the light from the passage she could see them quite clearly: Hamish’s secretary and an ageing yuppie in a zoot-suit.

    “Marianne!” she said blankly. “What the Hell are you doing here?”

    “Hullo, Darryl,” said Marianne weakly. “I didn’t realize this was your house... Our car’s run out of petrol.”

    “Oh,” said Darryl. “Look—you better come in.”

    They followed her across a wide shabby hall and into a big shabby living-room. John Aitken was sitting in an enormous battered armchair. One of the M.A. boys—Marianne, in the stress of the moment, couldn’t remember his name—was perched on an ancient velvet pouffe, nursing a brindled cat.

    “Marianne,” said John, staring. He began to get up.

    “Don’t get up,” said Marianne quickly.

    “Hullo again, Miss Davies!” said the student cheerfully, not seeing at all surprised to see her.

    Marianne gave him a distracted smile.

    “Their car’s outa petrol,” said Darryl. “That was what you said, wasn’t it?”

    “Yes,” said Micky firmly, before Marianne could speak. He took Marianne by the elbow and explained: “We’re about a mile up the road. Could you possibly let us have enough petrol to get us into Puriri?”

    Uneasily Darryl replied: “I’m a bit short, myself... Look, come on out and we’ll see if I can manage it.”

    She only had enough to get into Puriri herself. Micky suggested that perhaps the service station further down the road—could they knock up the owner? She replied that it had closed down years back.

    “Oh,” he said.

    Marianne shivered suddenly.

    “Look, come on back in the house,” said Darryl.

    They went back inside, and Marianne sank gratefully into the embrace of the sagging old couch.

    “Here,” said Darryl: “have a drink.” She looked round. “Where’s John?”

    “In the kitchen,” replied Timothy, with his cheek against the brindled cat’s fur.

    “JOHN!” bellowed Darryl.

    John’s beard appeared in the doorway. “What?”

    “Get us a couple of clean glasses.”

    “No, really,” protested Micky. “Please don’t bother—”

    “It’s no bother,” said John, disappearing.

    “Siddown,” Darryl said hospitably to Micky.

    “Look, if I could just use your phone?”

    “Well, ya could’ve, but I’ve had it cut off. –It was either eat, or subsidize the ruddy phone lot.”

    John reappeared with two clean glasses, as Marianne said faintly: “They are extortionate, aren’t they?”

    “Yeah,” agreed Darryl, filling a tumbler with a pale gold liquid. “Here: get this down ya.”

    “Thank you.” She drank deeply, and shuddered.

    “Here,” said Darryl to Micky.

    He took the glass but said desperately: “Look, this is very kind of you, but— What about your neighbours: would they be able to let us have some petrol, do you think?”

    “Well, there’s the Alingtons—but they’re in China.”

    Micky began to feel he was in some sort of crazy nightmare: Kafka with Irish overtones, it felt like.

    The boy with the cat chuckled. “Then there aren’t the Alingtons,” he pointed out. He refilled the empty glass in front of him.

    “No,” agreed the mad hostess. “There’s Bill and Meg, up the road,” she said to Micky, “but I think they might’ve already gone to bed; they’ve got a houseful of kids, and they’re both teachers—work somewhere in town.”

    “What is the time— Oh.” It was five to eleven.

    The bearded fellow who’d been at the Institute’s party—which now seemed as if it had taken place in another life—reappeared with a steaming casserole, which he set neatly on a crumby breadboard on the coffee table, beside a game of—

    “Trivial Pursuit!” said Marianne, beaming. She raised her glass again.

    The boy with the cat picked a card out of the box and read out a question about an obscure aspect of Australian Rules Football.

    “Ronald Reagan!” answered Marianne. She giggled. Micky saw that she’d drunk all her drink. He sniffed his cautiously, and recoiled.

    The bloke with the beard began dishing out steaming beans onto dinner plates.

    The boy read out another question, to which Micky knew that the answer was Marilyn Monroe.

    “Ronald Reagan!” said Marianne. She and the boy both giggled.

    “We could go and see if Bill and Meg’s lights are on,” said the mad dark woman, draining her glass.

    “Yes,” Micky agreed limply.

    They went out onto the verandah and peered. Micky could just make out the shape of a house on the rise, silhouetted against the sky quite some distance away. No lights showed.

    “They musta gone to bed,” Darryl decided, leading the way back indoors.

    “Yes,” he agreed. “Isn’t there anyone else?”

    “Nope; well, not round here. There’s the Butlers at the top of Blossom Avenue, but I’m pretty sure they’ve gone down to her mum’s place. It’s her birthday.”

    “Blast!”

    The bearded bloke handed him a plate of beans and a fork. Micky looked at them in a hunted way.

    Lifting her glass, Marianne said to the dark woman: “What is this? I’ve never tasted anything quite like it.”

    The answer was so appropriate that Micky didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but felt dangerously like doing both: “Sybil’s homemade wine.”

    Marianne must have refilled her tumbler, or someone had: it was now almost full again. She took a hefty swig. “Shtrong,” she ascertained.

    “Yeah; got body, eh?” said the dark woman through a mouthful of beans.

    Marianne began eating beans from the plateful in front of her.

    “Look,” said Micky desperately: “when you’ve finished your meal, could you possibly drive us in to the service station in Puriri?”

    “What’s the time?”

    “Ten past eleven.”

    “It’ll be closed.”

    “They both will,” said Marianne, addressing her escort for the first time since they’d arrived. “The other one closes at seven.”

    “Yeah,” said the dark woman. “Siddown,” she said to Micky. “We’ll think of something.”

    This seemed in the highest degree unlikely to Micky; especially since she was embarking on yet another huge glassful of the sibylline vitriol.

    “I think I’d better try knocking up your neighbours,” he said.

    Marianne picked up a Trivial Pursuit card and asked the boy with the cat to name the Marx Brothers.

    “Karl,” said the beard definitely. They all giggled. “That’s one,” said the dark woman.

    “Ronald Reagan,” said the boy.

    Marianne giggled. “That’s two!”

    Micky went out as the dark woman said “John Curtin” and she and the beard howled with laughter.

    He rang the bell, hammered on the door, rang the bell again, and hammered on the door again. No answer. Was it perhaps the wrong house—that of the Alingtons who had mysteriously vanished to China? He went round the back, and fell over a piece of machinery which turned out to be a child’s trike. He hammered on the back door. No noise from the house, but there was an agitated quacking from the back yard. He went round the front and tried again, but with no result. Feeling a complete tit, he called out: “Hullo! Is anyone at home?” There was a dim quack from the back, but that was all. He returned to the house of the mad dark woman.

    “Any luck?” she said.

    “No; they seem to be out.”

    “Aw, yeah, they sometimes stay overnight with some friends of theirs down in Albany—it’s Tuesday, isn’t it?”

    “Yes,” said Micky wearily, sitting down.

    “That'll be it; they have these mad ludo tournaments, them and these friends. I think Tuesday usually is their day for it.”

    Micky observed that they were now all playing Trivial Pursuit. There was a second open bottle of vitriol on the coffee table. Marianne’s glass was full again and she’d finished her plateful of beans. Her face was very pink. He sighed. “Look,” he said. “I think the best thing would be if we were to take your car into Puriri.”

    “Thought of that,” she replied. “Only then we’d all be in Puriri.”

    Marianne giggled.

    Micky reddened crossly. “No; if you could drive us up to Marianne’s I could ring the A.A. from there.”

    “Are you a member?” asked the boy, stroking the cat.

    “Of course!” he replied impatiently.

    “I’m not,” said the dark woman.

    “That doesn’t matter!” he replied in annoyance.

    “I know!” said Marianne. “If we go home to my place, you could shiphon the petrol out of my car— No, you couldn’t, it’s up at the Insh’tute.”

    “If I get hold of the A.A.,” said Micky, “they should be able to let me have enough petrol at least to get to the nearest all-night garage. Where is it, does anybody know?” he ended, on a desperate note.

    Through a mouthful of beans the dark woman informed him that it was down the main road: just before you got to the motorway. “Oh,” said Micky in relief. “Yes, I know.”

    “But what about Darryl’s car?” said the beard.

    “Well— Look, it’ll be okay; trust me,” he said.

    “Anybody want more beans?” said the hostess—Darryl, apparently.

    Micky sighed. He drank some of the vitriol. It was even worse than he’d expected. He put it aside.

    The beard and the boy both wanted more beans.

    Marianne giggled. “No, thanks; I’m full,” she said. She put her hand on her stomach, and giggled again. “I feel all warm inside,” she said.

    The mad Darryl glanced at the beard. “Tanked,” she explained tolerantly.

    “Yesh,” he agreed. “Shome people can’t hold their liquor.” The boy giggled.

    The beard finished off his beans, and went out. He came back with a large bowl of salad.

    “Want some salad?” Darryl said hospitably to Micky. “—You haven’t eaten your beans!” she discovered.

    “No; I’ve had dinner, thanks.”

    “Mustn’t waste ’em.” She scraped them back into the casserole dish and put the plate on the floor. The brindled cat jumped off the boy’s knee and ran eagerly to lick the plate. Micky felt slightly ill, even though he hadn’t eaten anything off Darryl’s crockery.

    They all began eating salad and playing Trivial Pursuit again. Micky experienced a strong impulse to tear his hair out by the roots and scream loudly. He went out onto the verandah and stood in the dark, breathing very heavily.

    It was well past midnight by the time he got them into the little purple car. The boy at first said he’d come, then he said he wouldn’t, could he kip here? The beard by this time was already in the car; the dark woman, who’d been hunting for her car keys, had just reappeared. She said the boy could and John might as well, too. However, he refused, as he had some papers at home that he had to take into work first thing. They had an argument over whether she could, would or should get up in time to drive him home on the morrow to collect his papers. Finally—having got out of the car—he decided that he would go home, and got in it again.

    Micky insisted on driving. He had an argument with the car’s owner over this. Having won that one, he then perceived that at some time during it Marianne had got into the driver’s seat. He then had to persuade her to get out of it. This was difficult, as no-one gave him any support and Marianne giggled at everything he said. Finally he lost his temper and roared: “Get over into the passenger’s seat before I tan your bottom for you!”—as if she’d been one of his daughters, when young.

    Marianne giggled. “He thinksh he’sh mash—masterful,” she said to the world at large.

    “More like a male chaush— chauvisht— M. Shee P., if you ask me,” replied Darryl.

    “Assolutamente,” said the beard. “I mean asserlutely.” He chuckled.

    “Move OVER, Marianne!” roared Micky.

    “Aw right; keeper hair on,” said Marianne in a priggish voice, moving over.

    At Marianne’s place Micky rang the A.A.—a trifle disconcerted to find the phone was in her bedroom. The room smelled deliciously of her scent, and in spite of being annoyed with her for getting drunk, furious with himself for running out of petrol, and fed up with the bibulous Darryl and Co., Micky experienced considerable excitement, and found he was unable to drag his eyes away from the double bed. The A.A. weren’t too keen on the whole thing. Couldn’t he stay the night, they said. Micky became very cold on the subject of the number of years he’d paid his dues. All right, but it might be a while, they said.

    Back in the pretty sitting-room, which featured a lot of bamboo—furniture, patterned curtains (green on white), upholstery (white on green), and a tall, black-stemmed variety in a pot—he found that John was in an armchair reading a book, Darryl was cross-legged on the rug reading a book, and Marianne was lying on the sofa with her eyes closed and her sandals off. There was no sign of Judith—whether she was merely in bed or absent Micky didn’t ask: he had a feeling that the answer might not improve his temper.

    “They’ll be some time,” he said flatly. He sat down in the other armchair.

    “Shall I make shome coffee?” said Marianne sleepily.

    Darryl looked up. Slowly and carefully, glaring at Micky, she announced: “She’s got shore feet.” She returned to her book. Micky looked at Marianne’s feet. He flushed. There were torn blisters on her little toes and the joints of her big toes, and one heel was bloody.

    “Marianne: come into the bathroom and let me fix your feet up,” he said.

    “He’s not pished,” said John admiringly to Darryl.

    “Hadden I better make ush shome coffee?” said Marianne anxiously, getting up unsteadily.

    “In a minute; let me put something on those blisters before you come down with blood-poisoning.”

    In the bathroom she said proudly: “It’sh a enshuite—see?”

    “Yes,” he agreed, pouring Dettol into his basinful of warm water.

    “It’s not that up-market; it hasn’t got a bidet,” she said mournfully, sitting heavily on the pale green fluffy toilet seat cover.

    “No,” he replied absently, beginning to mop her blisters with a hunk of cotton wool.

    “Ouch! –You’ve got a bidet.”

    “Yes,” he admitted. “Two.” Their presence had added something like $5000 to the already inflated cost of his trendy condo; as far as he knew, the one in the guest bathroom hadn’t even been used, since only his unsophisticated daughters ever stayed there.

    “Ouch! Yesh; your flat is very up-market, isn’t it?”

    “Mm.”

    Marianne yawned. “’Scuse me,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand. She giggled. “Maurish shays that’s bourgeois.”

     Micky ignored this—after all, she was drunk.

    “Maurish shays enshuites are bourgeois.”

    Micky ignored this, too.

    “As a mattera fack, Maurish shays your block of flats ish bourgeois.”

    Micky pressed a large piece of Elastoplast onto her bloody heel. “He’s right,” he replied grimly.

    “Why do you live there, Micky? I don’ think it shuits your image.” She smiled. “‘Sober and respeck’ble, but not dull’.”

    Micky opened his mouth to make a pretty sharp reply; then he realised she was quoting his own phrase. “Come on,” he said weakly. “You’ll do.”

    She went straight back to the sofa and lay down. “I feel a bit funny,” she said, with her eyes closed.

    “You’ll feel a damn sight funnier in the morning,” he replied grimly, going out to the kitchen. Her coffee arrangements, he saw with some surprise, were even more “up-market” than his own.

    Darryl looked at the steaming mug he offered her disparagingly. “I’d rather have a drink.”

    “I dare say.” Micky had been struck by the awful thought that if she remained too drunk to drive—which seemed all too likely—he was going to have to ferry her home, and then walk back to his own car. “You can’t have a drink; get this down you.”

    “Yesh; you’re pished, Darryl, you’ll never be able to drive yourself home at this rate,” agreed John. He looked approvingly at the book he was reading. “Thish ish damned good,” he announced to the world at large, and retired into it again.

    “You’re a M.C.P., too!” said Darryl crossly. However, she accepted the coffee.

    Micky’s worst forebodings were justified. Darryl did remain too drunk to drive; he did have to ferry her home; and, as the A.A. man was most certainly “a while”, it was nearly four-thirty by the time he himself got home. Sourly he thought, getting into bed without bothering to wash, that it had been the sort of saga out of which one makes a funny story for dinner parties; only he doubted very much that he would ever be able to breathe a word of the ghastly fiasco to a soul—let alone see anything funny in it.

    The next day was one of Veronica’s days in at the Institute. As Senior Research Fellow she wasn’t required to teach on a regular basis, but it was expected that she would give the occasional lecture and seminar; today she had a seminar with the M.A. class. She came in with a paper in her hand. “Marianne—” she began.

    Marianne squinted at her.

    “God, you look vile; got a hangover?”

    “Yes,” said Marianne faintly.

    “Micky do his famous ‘Come onto my sofa and drink this nice brandy’ bit?”

    “No,” she said in a strangled voice. “He behaved like a—a perfect gentleman, all evening.”

    “Shit—must be losing his touch,” said Veronica, perching a hip on her desk.

    “No, it wasn’t like that!” she gulped.

    “Didn’tcha fancy him? I’da said he was quite your type.”

    “No—it wasn’t— I mean, I was awful!” she gasped. “I got drunk; and I was rude to him!”

    Veronica laughed cheerfully. “That all? Do him good! Thinks he’s God’s gift to women!”

    “Yes, I know— I mean, Allyson told me he’s had lots of girlfriends!” she gasped.

    “Blabbermouth,” ascertained Veronica without heat. “Still, you wouldn’t want him to’ve lived like a monk, would ya?” Before Marianne could reply, she added thoughtfully: “Be bloody boring in bed, I’ve always thought.”

    After Maurice, Marianne thought so, too. “Yes— I mean—” She met Veronica’s eye. “Yes,” she agreed.

    Veronica didn’t appear surprised by this avowal. She asked with interest: “Didja send him off with a flea in his ear?”

    “Not exactly,” said Marianne in a stifled voice. “I was drunk...”

    “You said that,” agreed Veronica, eyeing her in fascination.

    “I said...” Her voice trailed off. “I can’t really remember what I said,” she confessed. “I’ve got this kind of—of a vague picture of being in the bathroom with him... I think he must’ve put sticking-plaster on my blisters, because I can’t remember doing it myself. I said something rude about his flat—at least I think it was about his flat. I do remember it was rude,” she finished unhappily. “I suppose I’ll have to ring him up and apologize.”

    “I wouldn’t bother,” said Veronica, sliding off the desk. “If he’s anything like as bad as you, he won’t remember a thing about it.”

    “No,” said Marianne in a strangled voice. “He wasn’t drunk at all. That’s what makes it so awful.”

    Privately Veronica considered that Micky Shapiro was about the last man who’d ever require any sort of apology from a girl as pretty as Marianne. She refrained from telling her so. She didn’t wonder why Marianne had got drunk, because to her uncomplicated mind it was perfectly obvious that she’d done so because Micky hadn’t made a pass. She did wonder, though, why he hadn’t made a pass.

    “Um—did you want me to do something for you, Veronica?”

    “Yeah; well, really, I wanted that hen that works for you to do it.”

    “Noelene’s away; her husband rang—she’s not very well.”

    “Too much sweet sherry yesterday,” diagnosed Veronica unerringly.

    Marianne giggled, and winced. “What do you need, Veronica?”

    “Eh? Oh! It’s just a transparency of this.” She put a diagram on Marianne’s desk. “For this arvo; it can wait. Come on, let’s grab a coffee.” She shepherded her inexorably off to the staff-room.

    Hamish came in, looking rather pale, shortly after she’d got the full story out of her. “Coffee—thank God,” he muttered. The cup rattled in its saucer as he carried it to a seat.

    Veronica gave a snort of laughter. “Am I the only member of the whole bloody Institute who isn’t suffering from the morning after?” she demanded loudly.

    “Don’t,” said Hamish, wincing. “God, I’ve got a heid.”

    “I thought you could carry your grog,” she said, as Judith came in, looking rather pale. She investigated the coffee-pot. “Oh, my God,” she said hoarsely, “the coffee’s all gone.”

    “Make some more,” said Veronica brutally.

    Judith began making a fresh pot of coffee; rather slowly and carefully. “What the Hell was that muck we drank at Polly’s last night, Hamish?”

    Hamish swallowed coffee and shuddered. “I don’t know what muck you were drinking,” he croaked, “but I ended up on some sort of damned blackberry liqueur.”

    “That doesn’t sound like Jake’s usual standard,” said Veronica with interest.

    “Jake wasn’t there; we were trying out his liqueurs,” explained Judith. “He’s got an incredible collection.”

    “So that’s where you got to last night,” said Marianne.

    “Yes,” said Judith, setting a cup down on a saucer very gently.

    “Was Hilary in on this wing-ding?” asked Veronica with enjoyment.

    “Yes,” said Judith without elaboration.

    “Drank you under the table,” pointed out Hamish thickly. He drank more coffee, and shuddered again.

    Caro came in. “God, I feel dreadful!” she announced.

    Veronica sniggered meanly.

    “Is that coffee? Thank Heavens!” Caro said to Judith.

    Charlie came in. “Geeze, I feel lousy,” he said to Caro. “What was that stuff we drank last night?”

    Veronica whooped.

    When she’d finished Hamish said pointedly: “Where’s Peter today?”

    “House-husband,” replied Veronica briefly. She eyed him sardonically. “Some of us went home and had a civilized dinner last night.”

    Hamish subsided. Not one of them felt strong enough to ask Veronica who’d cooked the civilized dinner.

    “Your father-in-law’s on line two, Hamish,” Marianne said over the intercom, early that afternoon. “Shall I say you’re in conference?”

    Hamish’s head had stopped aching. It was throbbing instead. Marianne had considerately made him a cup of hot Bovril for lunch, but he hadn’t been able to get much of it down. He didn’t feel in the least like talking to John Mackay—or anyone—but he sighed and said to Marianne: “Put him through.”

    “Oh—that’s good news,” he said dully to John’s news that he’d chosen a house.

    “Aye; Sylvie seems to like it,” said John cautiously.

    “Good.”

    John coughed. “I wondered—mebbe Elspeth would like to come and see it, this afternoon?”

    “Aye; no doubt she would,” he said without interest.

    John was far from making excuses for his daughter’s behaviour over the last year—or, indeed, the ten or so years previous to that. Nevertheless at this moment he felt a certain sympathy for her: Hamish could be very irritating indeed.

    “Well, shall I pick her up from her school, or what?” he said crossly. “Is she expecting to come up to you at work this afternoon?”

    “Oh—what day is it?” he replied vaguely.

    “Wednesday; what in God’s name’s got into you, Hamish?”

    “I’ve got a hangover,” said Hamish mournfully.

    John chuckled. “Oh, well; there’s some excuse for you, then! –It’s Wednesday,” he repeated.

    “What? Oh, aye; she’ll be going to Margaret’s, then.”

    John arranged briskly to contact Margaret Prior (who’d probably like to see the house, too, now he came to think of it) and to collect Elspeth, and rang off. He ignored Sylvie’s uninterested expression and told her to expect to see her daughter this afternoon. Sylvie’s reaction was a shrug and “I don’t suppose she’ll want to come.”

    “I’m not giving her the option,” Elspeth’s grandfather replied grimly.

    Margaret had managed to get Sylvie and Elspeth together twice after Elspeth came back from her holiday on the Macdonalds’ farm. Neither episode had been particularly successful. On the first occasion Margaret, at Sylvie’s insistence, had accompanied them to the zoo. The weather was very hot, the zoo was very crowded, and both Elspeth and Sylvie were very nervous. In Elspeth this manifested itself in sulks; in Sylvie, in a short temper. On the second occasion Sylvie had taken Elspeth to the cinema, followed by hamburgers at McDonald’s. Sylvie had apparently loathed every moment of this expedition; whether Elspeth had enjoyed it Margaret had never managed to ascertain. Her misguided attempt to get all parties together for lunch at her place had been unhesitatingly spurned by both Sylvie and Elspeth, and politely refused by Hamish. However, since John Mackay’s arrival in New Zealand things seemed to be going a little better. John—though slightly hampered by his own house-hunting and the fact that Elspeth’s school term was well under way—was making sure that Elspeth saw her mother at least once a week. Margaret had been present on several of these occasions: neither Sylvie nor Elspeth had displayed any enthusiasm. But at least they were both there. John had said dispiritedly to her: “I suppose we can hardly make them like each other.”—“No,” Margaret had admitted uncomfortably. Being a good Christian she felt that Sylvie ought to get on better with her own child; being a very sensible person, as well, she couldn’t but admit the justice of John’s remark.

    After putting John Mackay through, Marianne stared glumly at the sheet of paper in her typewriter. It was as blank as she was. A great pile of notes in Hamish’s awful writing, with bits circled and arrows pointing up or down the text, odd bits stapled on, and asterisks spattered all over the place, referring to Heaven knew what, sat beside the typewriter and looked at her menacingly.

    Charlie came in. He glanced with distaste at Hamish’s notes. “This some of Hamish’s stuff? Gee, you oughta throw it back at him, Marianne.”

    Marianne sighed. “I’ve tackled worse in my time. At least it hasn’t got those squiggly maths things in it.”

    Charlie said—for about the thousandth time: “What this place needs is some word-processors.”

    Marianne didn’t say that they’d ordered them, because Charlie knew that. She merely said dully: “He wouldn’t use one if he had one.”

    “No. Uh—I—uh—just looked in to say I’m off home.”

    “All right,” said Marianne dully.

    Charlie disappeared, looking sheepish. It was not his habit to go home at two-thirty in the afternoon; only, he had such a splitting head...

    Marianne sighed. She looked at Hamish’s manuscript. She sighed again, and looked at her watch. Most likely he’d be with a client, or— No, he wouldn’t, she was just putting it off. The Institute had two phone lines; she rang Micky on line one.

    His secretary said was she a client? Marianne winced; if she had been a prospective client, that would’ve put her off right away.

    “No,” she said firmly. “Would you tell him it’s Miss Davies, please.”

    “Oh,” said the secretary. “Well, I think he’s busy. Just a minute.” Marianne winced again.

    Micky came eagerly on the line. “Marianne? Is that you?”

    He didn’t sound cross; Marianne’s heart did something odd, rather as it used to when she heard Maurice’s voice on the phone. Obscurely feeling that she shouldn’t be feeling like this, she said stiltedly: “Yes; how are you, Micky?”

    There was a smile in his voice as he said: “I’m fine; what about you, though? Are you at work?”

    “Yes,” said Marianne. She hesitated. “I have got rather a headache, though.”

    Micky chuckled. “You shouldn’t have drunk that stuff at that Darryl woman’s place last night!”

    “No,” she agreed. “Micky—”

    “Yes?” he said, as nothing more seemed to be forthcoming.

    In a very small voice Marianne said: “I’m awfully sorry about last night. I’m afraid I was rude to you.”

    “Rude to me?” echoed Micky blankly. “I don’t think—” He chuckled suddenly. “With two daughters like mine, you’d have to work awfully hard to be rude enough for me to notice it!”

    “Yes; I mean— Anyway, I’m sorry.”

    Micky opened his mouth. He gulped. He’d damn nearly said “My dear girl, there’s nothing to be sorry about.” But that would have been quite the wrong tone; and anyway, he didn’t in the least want to take that tone with Marianne; what the Hell was wrong with him? “It was all a bit of a disaster, last night, wasn’t it?” he said huskily.

    “Yes,” she agreed softly.

    “Look—shall we just forget about it:  make a fresh start?”

    “Mm; that’s a good idea,” said Marianne in a squeaky voice.

    “Good; then what about dinner on Friday?”

    “I’m afraid I can’t manage this Friday. –I’m free on Saturday,” she added quickly.

    “I’m not,” said Micky gloomily. Charles, one of the partners in the firm, was having one of his infrequent dinner parties. Since Charles’s wife was even duller than he was and had even less sense of humour, it wouldn’t be exactly a lively affair. “What about Sunday?”

    “It’s my nephew Bobby’s birthday; I promised I’d go.”

    “Blast,” said Micky.

    “I could manage it next week,” said Marianne, riffling through her desk diary. Her cheeks were hot and her hands were sweating slightly. She was sure he was thinking she was making excuses deliberately.

    “The whole of next week’s out for me,” said Micky gloomily. “I’ve got to go down to Wellington for a damn seminar.”

    “The Legal Aid one? I read about it in the paper.”

    “Yes. We were only going to send young Jenny, but she’s so keen on the whole concept that we thought she’d give us a pretty biased report; so we thought one of us had better go, too.” He sighed. “And I’m the only one who doesn’t have to be in court next week.”

    Marianne knew that “one of us” meant the senior partners. “Yes,” she agreed. She tried very hard not to wonder how young “young Jenny” was, and if she was pretty. Of course she’d be very clever, she was a lady lawyer...

    Micky sighed again. “Well, how about Saturday week, then?”

    “Ye-es; oh! I don’t think I’d better: I’ll be helping Judith move into her flat all day.”

    “But you’ll be free in the evening, surely?”

    “Yes, but you know what moving’s like. I probably won’t feel like going out afterwards.”

    Rightly interpreting this to mean that she’d be very tired and in a foul mood, Micky sighed yet again. “What about the Sunday?”

    “Yes, I’ll be free all Sunday.”

    And Judith would no longer be infesting her flat! His heart soared. “I tell you what,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Let’s go for a picnic; I’ll come up and collect you about eleven—how’s that?”

    “That’d be lovely,” said Marianne. “Shall I bring my togs?”

    Micky smiled, remembering the glamorous “togs”. “Yes; but don’t bother about the food—I’ll do all that.”

    By the time they rang off, about two minutes later, both of their hearts were beating rather fast.

    “This is the way to Aunty Polly’s place!” said Elspeth excitedly as Sylvie drove at a sober pace up Pohutukawa Bay Road.

    Sylvie was grimly silent. Beside her Margaret said nervously: “Yes, that’s right, dear.”

    “Can we stop for an ice cream?” asked Elspeth eagerly, as the Pohutukawa Bay Dairy hove in sight.

    “‘May I have an ice cream, please?’” corrected Sylvie grimly.

    “May I have an ice cream, please, Mummy?” said Elspeth quickly. –An attempt on an earlier occasion to convince Sylvie that (a) Dad never made her say “May I, please” and (b) all the kids at school said “Mum” because “Mummy” was sissy, hadn’t gone down at all well.

    “Aye, I suppose so, if you want to ruin your supper,” said Sylvie grudgingly.

    “We won’t be having tea for ages yet,” replied Elspeth airily in the local vernacular. “Dad says it’s far too hot to eat early.”

    Sylvie sniffed.

    “That’s Aunty Polly and Uncle Jake’s place,” said Elspeth to her grandfather at the far end of Pohutukawa Bay Road. “Down there.”

    “Aye,” he agreed.

    “Where’s your place?”

    “Just up here.” Opposite the Carranos’ impressive gates a couple of modern, not very attractive wooden houses stood at the entrance to a little cul-de-sac. Sylvie negotiated the cul-de-sac cautiously.

    “Is this it?” squeaked Elspeth, peering out at another greyish-greenish wooden bungalow with a heavy tiled roof.

    “No,” grunted Sylvie, getting out. “You go up that dratted right-of-way.” She glared at-it.

    Margaret got out, too. “It’s wide enough for the car,” she said cautiously.

    “There’s not enough turning space at the top.” She glared at her father. “He chose it.” She marched up the concreted right-of-way. John’s face was quite neutral as he followed her.

    “Come on, Elspeth,” said Margaret faintly, taking her hand.

    Elspeth hung back. “Aunty Margaret,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

    “What, dear?”

    “I won’t have to live here, will I?” whispered Elspeth hoarsely.

    “No, of course not, dear. I expect your Grandpa would like you to come and visit sometimes, though.”

    “Aye. –With my pyjamas.” –Nighties had recently become sissy.

    “Yes.”

    “Would I be able to bring Puppy?”

    Margaret hesitated. “Er—well... Your mother isn’t very fond of dogs, is she, dear?”

    “No,” said Elspeth thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t be able to stay very long, then; Dad isn’t very reliable about feeding Puppy.”

    “Isn’t he?” said Margaret faintly.

    “No; he’s terribly absentminded. I wouldn’t like to leave Puppy alone with him for more than a night, really. Otherwise I might come home to find him dehydrated.” She began to tow Margaret up the right-of-way.

    “Oh,” said Margaret faintly. She didn’t feel up to pointing out that Hamish had successfully looked after Puppy for most of the Christmas holidays.

    “Uncle Jake says when you take on a dog you’ve got a responsibility for him.”

    “Yes,” Margaret agreed weakly.

    “Or a cat, of course,” Elspeth added kindly, remembering the Priors had a cat.

    “Mm.”

    “It’s quite small,” she ascertained at the top of the right-of-way,

    “Well, your Grandpa doesn’t want anything too big; it’s very pretty.”

    The house was obviously brand-new: a neo-colonial style, two-storeyed—though the upper storey must be built right into the gable—with a pretty little verandah and a brown colour-steel roof. The colour scheme was unfortunate: yellowish fawn trimmed with maroon; but that could be rectified.

    “Where’s Mummy?”

    Sylvie appeared at the landward corner of the house. “I suppose you could put a garage back here—just,” she allowed grudgingly. “You’d still have to back all the way down, though.”

    “Can we go inside, Mummy?” asked Elspeth eagerly.

    Sylvie looked around her crossly. “How would I know? Ask your grandfather—wherever the tarnation he’s got to.”

    John appeared at the seaward corner of the house. “You could have a nice wee vege garden back here.”

    Sylvie snorted. “You could, mebbe!”

    “Can we go inside, Grandpa?” cried Elspeth eagerly.

    “Aye; I’ll show you the wee room you can have.”

    “—When you come to stay,” put in Margaret quickly. John and Elspeth went inside, and she said to Sylvie: “It’s a dear little house.”

    Sylvie sniffed. “Jerry-built.” She went inside. Limply Margaret followed.

    “These walls are like paper,” said Sylvie discontentedly, thumping her bedroom wall. “As for the wallpaper!”

    “I like it,” said Elspeth in surprise.

    “Aye, I dare say. You won’t have to sleep in it, though,” returned her mother, glaring at the small bedroom’s huge pink roses.

    “You could always re-paper it,” said Margaret peaceably. “They’ve got some lovely Laura Ashley papers down at Village Décor in Takapuna.” Sylvie grunted.

    “Grandpa’s room’s got pretty paper,” said Elspeth hopefully.

    Sylvie snorted. His had huge blue roses, on a trellis. The room was no larger than hers.

    “The pattern’s a little large, dear,” explained Margaret.

    “Oh. Is the pattern in my room a little large?”

    “Aye; it’s frightful,” said Sylvie, before Margaret could reply. “Anyway, that room’ll have to be used as a guest room; we can’t possibly have dratted racing cars all over it.”

    Elspeth, who had been thrilled by the racing cars in her tiny room, looked dashed.

    “I expect Elspeth would like to go to Village Décor with you, and help you choose some wallpaper for that room,” said Margaret encouragingly to Sylvie.

    Elspeth’s face lit up.

    Sylvie snorted.

    Elspeth’s face fell.

    Margaret had felt obliged to invite John and Sylvie for dinner, but as John had booked a table at the Blue Heron Restaurant he politely declined for both of them.

    When Sylvie dropped her and Elspeth at the top of Kowhai Bay Road, refusing to go down it as it was difficult to turn in it, Margaret was unable to repress a sigh of relief.

    Elspeth skipped along happily beside her. “I like Grandpa’s house!” she announced.

    “So do I, dear; I think it’ll suit him nicely.” Privately she wondered if it wasn’t a bit isolated: the dairy was only five minutes’ walk away down the slope, but there were no other shops in Pohutukawa Bay, no form of entertainment, and no post office. There was virtually no bus service, either: during the week the city workers’ bus did a loop into the Bay morning and evening; and there was one shoppers’ bus which left Pohutukawa Bay at 10.15 for Puriri and returned at 2.15. In the weekends there weren’t any buses at all. “Does Grandpa drive, Elspeth?”

    “I don’t know,” said Elspeth vaguely. “HULLO, WHETU!” she bellowed.

    From the other side of the road plump, brown Whetu Taylor waved and smiled; as she was with her mother she didn’t bellow back. Mrs Taylor—tall and slim, not in the least like her daughter—waved and smiled, too. They turned into their drive.

    “They’ve been to Jazzercize,” said Elspeth informatively.

    “Jazzercize?” Mrs Taylor looked as if she did it all the time; but Whetu certainly didn’t.

    “Yes; they always go on Wednesdays. Then they have their tea when they come back.”

    “Oh. What about the little boy?”

    “He doesn’t go; it’s not for boys!” said Elspeth scornfully.

    “No; I mean who looks after him, dear?”

    “He goes to Paul Duncan’s place.”

    “Duncan?” repeated Margaret vaguely.

    “You know! Next to Jill and Gretchen’s! You know, Aunty Margaret, they’ve got that big spotty dog!”

    “Spotty dog?”

    “Yeah; I forget what you call them: a big white dog with black spots; his name’s Ferdinand; you must know him!”

    “Oh—a Dalmatian?”

    “Yes,” replied Elspeth, not sounding very sure. “He’s a coward; Mrs Duncan says he jumps at his own shadow. He runs away from Terence.”

    “Terence? Oh; is he—uh—Paul’s brother?”

    “Aunty Margaret! He’s Jill’s cat!”

    “Oh, yes,” said Margaret unconvincingly. She reflected that in Kowhai Bay—as, indeed, in all suburbs—there existed a complete sub-culture of children and animals, perceived only by those adults who were forced into close proximity with the sub-teens. Although she’d lived for some years in Kowhai Bay she’d had no idea that Jill’s and Gretchen’s neighbours were called Duncan—let alone that they had a male child called Paul, or a timid dog called Ferdinand. In fact she had never set eyes on a Dalmatian in the whole of Kowhai Bay; but that was perhaps because the cowardly Ferdinand kept to his own garden— She laughed suddenly.

    “What’s the joke?” asked Elspeth suspiciously.

    “I—uh—have you ever read the story of Ferdinand the bull?”

    “No,” said Elspeth without interest.

    Margaret felt incapable of explaining her amusement. She allowed Elspeth to drag her up the steep drive to say hullo to Hamish. This necessitated an invitation to dinner, but fortunately—because her Derek didn’t like Hamish—he refused.

    “Aw-uh, why can’t we go to Aunty Margaret’s?” whined Elspeth, when he’d closed the door.

    “Because bluidy Prior’s home, and I canna thole the nasty wee man!”

    “No, I can’t, either,” agreed Elspeth, heading for the kitchen.

    “Elspeth,” he croaked, struck by a ghastly suspicion: “he hasn’t ever tried to—to touch you, has he? Or—or to kiss you, or anything?”

    “’Course not!” she replied with immense scorn.

    Hamish was about to deliver an anxious father-to-daughter speech on child molestation when she added: “He only likes ladies.”

    “Who the Hell told you that?” he gasped.

    “Uncle Jake.”

    “In Christ’s name; why?”

    “I dunno...” Hamish glared at her. Elspeth looked bored, but explained: “Aunty Polly said he was a nasty man, and would I be safe there. And then Uncle Jake said that. –What’s for tea?”

    Hamish ignored this last. He looked hard at her.

    “And then Uncle Jake said if anyone ever laid a finger on me to tell him and he’d settle his bloody hash for him,” said Elspeth with some satisfaction.

    “Aye, well, he won’t need to settle his bluidy hash for him.”

    “Why not?” asked Elspeth—though not as if she was vitally interested.

    “Because I’ll have killed the brute ma’sel’!”

    “Good,” said Elspeth calmly. “What’s for tea?”

    “Lovey,” he said uncomfortably, “you do understand about... about child molesters, don’t you?”

    “Yeah,” said Elspeth, looking in the fridge. “We did it in Mr White’s class.”

    “Well—uh—well... What does it mean?”

    “It’s when they put their hand on your bottom,” said Elspeth, withdrawing her head from the fridge.

    “Aye... or your titties.”

    “I haven’t got any,” she pointed out.

    “No, well, it’s the same principle.”

    “Or when they show you their dick,” said Elspeth, going to the kitchen door.

    Hamish, as happily unaware as she was herself that before very long at all Elspeth would be at the stage of writhing with embarrassment if anyone else mentioned dicks or titties and refusing utterly to mention them herself—or even bottoms—agreed to this, somewhat limply. He didn’t reprove her for her use of the word “dick”; he was only too thankful that at least she was aware of the problem.

    “PUPPY!” she bellowed, going onto the back porch.

    Puppy came galloping across the back yard.

    “What’s for TEA?” Elspeth repeated loudly.

    “What? Oh—I don’t know. I’m not very hungry.”

    “Let’s have a barbecue!” she said eagerly.

    “No,” said Hamish flatly. They didn’t have any barbecue equipment. Elspeth knew this.

    “Aw-uh!”

    “Feed that bluidy animal.”

    “But what can I have?”

    “I’ll have a look in the freezer. E-er—fish fingers?” he suggested.

    “I hate fish fingers!”

    So did he. He put them back. “Steak and kidney pie, then?”

    “We had that last Friday,” said Elspeth aggrievedly. She stomped over to the freezer. “You haven’t done any shopping!” she discovered.

    “No... I’ve been busy,” he said guiltily.

    “You’re absolutely hopeless!” said Elspeth crossly. “Well, it’ll have to be steak and kidney pie—and we’ll have some of those frozen peas. Are there any potatoes left?”

    “E-er... no.”

    Elspeth said grimly: “It’s about time Mirry came back. She’d keep you up to the mark.”

    “I suppose that’s something Jake said to you, too,” he said nastily.

    “No,” said Elspeth, getting Puppy’s tin out of the fridge. “DOWN, sir!” she bellowed at the blameless Puppy. He looked at her meekly, and wagged his tail. “Aunty Polly said it.

    “Oh,” he said. He sat down limply at the kitchen table.

    “Aunty Polly never runs out of potatoes.”

    “Get on with feeding that damned animal,” he said irritably.

    She did, but then returned to the attack. “Jill says potatoes are good for you.”

    Hamish ignored this. He stared gloomily at the vinyl floor.

    “Jill says you ought to eat their skins, they’re good for you.”

    “We do eat their bluidy skins,” he said sulkily.

    “Only when Mirry’s here,” retorted Elspeth promptly.

    “SHUT UP!” he roared, turning scarlet.

    Elspeth glared. “Have you put the peas on?” she demanded. –It was obvious he hadn’t.

    “Och, bugger the bluidy peas! They taste like nothing on God’s earth!”

    “Well, don’t blame me!” said Elspeth loudly. “It wasn’t me that forgot to do the shopping.”

    “Shut up about the bluidy shopping!” howled Hamish. He got up and stomped over to the cupboard where he kept his whisky. “Och, bugger, is that all that’s left?” he muttered.

    “Nyergh, nyergh!” said Elspeth gleefully.

    “You can shut up right now, or you’ll go to your bed wi’oot your dinner!”

    Elspeth said with dignity: “Come on, Puppy.” They retreated to the back porch. She closed the kitchen door, but through it Hamish heard her say to Puppy: “Talk about a bear with a sore head! The sooner Mirry comes back the better: she’ll sort him out!”

    There was a short silence. Then Elspeth’s feet clattered down the back steps. She whistled shrilly. “Come on, boy!” she bellowed.

    Clutching the remains of his whisky, Hamish collapsed onto a chair. He threw the whisky back in one gulp, and shuddered. “Aye,” he muttered savagely: “the sooner the better!”

Next chapter:

https://themembersoftheinstitute.blogspot.com/2023/01/storm-clouds.html