More Dates

17

More Dates

    Helen Weintraub drank the brandy her husband had forced on her without saying that she didn’t need it, or was he trying to turn her into an alcoholic, or any of the other protests that she usually made when he offered her anything more than a pre-dinner sherry.

    “Honestly, Nat, I don’t think I can cope any more,” she said faintly.

    As she’d already said this, or something like it—which had led Nat to give her the brandy in the first place—he merely replied soothingly: “I know, old girl. We’ll work something out, eh?” and laid a heavy hand on her knee.

    “It’s not that she’s naughty, exactly,” explained Helen; “it’s just that she’s—she’s so uncooperative; and Miss Fothergill says she’s wagging school again; and it’s setting Melanie such a bad example!”

    “Yeah,” said Nat sympathetically, squeezing the knee. Carol Rosen’s initial apparent lack of reaction to the shock of her parents’ and sister’s death had turned into a quiet sullenness that none of the Weintraubs had been able to penetrate. She was not, as Helen had just said, naughty; but although she always did what she was told, she never did anything of her own volition, and always did have to be told; such matters ranged from making her bed in the mornings (which even Melanie did without having to be told) to doing her homework—which was extremely important, as she was in the Seventh Form this year and had to pass her exams if she wanted to go to university; and even to going to bed after she’d done the homework, which in Helen’s opinion someone who was now seventeen certainly shouldn’t need to be told. Her own Lindy and Pauline had been very well trained indeed long before that age. These might have seemed small matters to an outsider who didn’t have to cope with them day in, day out, but after six months they had run even the stolid Helen ragged.

    Helen sighed, and drank more brandy.

    Nat sipped the one he’d poured himself as a matter of course and said cautiously: ‘‘This wagging school: what does she get up to, do ya know? Hanging round with boys?”

    Helen sighed again. “No; Miss Fothergill said that one of the girls’ mothers saw her in the Public Library in town; as far as we can tell she just goes there and reads.”

    “Oh,” said Nat, a trifle disconcerted; boys would have seemed a lot more natural to him than immuring oneself in a library. “Have you asked her about it, old girl?”

    “Yes,” said Helen heavily. “She said there was no point in going to school because she doesn’t learn anything there.”

    “Oh,” said Nat cautiously; he himself had learnt practically nothing in his last year at school, either—except the sort of thing that senior boys communicate to one another in the Prefects’ Hut. “We-ell, do ya reckon we oughta let her leave? Or change schools, maybe? I mean—”

    “No!” said Helen energetically, going very red. “St Ursie’s has got one of the best Seventh Form programmes in the country! It’s not the school, Nat! It’s her!”

    To Nat’s horror she gave an unmistakeable sob. He put a heavy arm round her and drew her firmly against him on the couch. “Come on, old love; no need for that; we’ll work something out. The poor kid’s had a pretty rough time of it, ya know.”

    “I know!” said Helen, with another sob. “And I—I have made allowances—really, Nat! Only— She’s so hard! It’s—it’s like... She’s like granite, or something! She doesn’t respond at all.”

    “Yeah, I know,” replied Nat heavily. “S’pose it’s her way of dealing with it all, or something.”

    Helen blew her nose fiercely. “Yes, only it doesn’t make it any easier to cope with!”

    “No.”

    There was a long silence.

    “What about your mother?” said Nat tentatively.

    Helen sighed. “She’s offered to have her; but I don’t think... Well, you know what happened last weekend!”

    “Mm.” Last weekend Helen, Nat and Melanie had gone down to The Chateau to give Helen a bit of a break; she didn’t ski herself, and though Nat used to, he certainly wasn’t in condition for long days on the slopes any more; but Melanie adored it, and was more than happy to spend all day on the nursery slopes while her parents relaxed in the bar, or the lounge, or in their room.—Melanie, of course, wouldn’t have believed for a minute why they spent so much time in their room.—Carol, however, on being closely interrogated, had claimed that she didn’t much like skiing, though at first she’d maintained that she didn’t care, one way or the other, so it had been arranged that she should go to her grandparents on the Saturday. Normally they could have taken her on the Friday night, but for once they were celebrating Shabbat with Granny Goldberg, and Carol, showing the first sign of animation the Weintraubs had seen in her for the past six months, had refused categorically to participate in “all that mumbo-jumbo”. She had her bike, and the Cohen residence was only fifteen minutes from the Weintraubs’ house, so Helen had told her just to bike over to Grandma’s on Saturday morning. Carol had never turned up.

    Lady Cohen had rung the Weintraubs’ number and got no answer. By three o’clock, very annoyed indeed, Sir Jerry had got the Rolls out and driven over. There had been no answer when he thundered on the front door, so he’d used his emergency key (all the family had keys to one another’s houses). No Carol. They kept ringing her all evening, after checking with the Woollastons to see if they knew where she was: they didn’t, and Penny Woollaston reported sadly that Carol wasn’t talking to her any more and she didn’t know why, they hadn’t had a row, or anything.

    Finally she answered the phone, at half-past ten at night, when Sir Jerry was giving it one last try before ringing the police. “At the library, of course,” she’d said to an infuriated demand as to where she’d been. Sir Jerry had informed her that she was a mannerless little baggage, and her grandmother had been almost ill with worry about her, and why the Hell hadn’t she let them know, and didn’t she realize she was supposed to have come to them that morning? “I changed my mind,” said Carol in an indifferent voice.

    Helen had attempted to bawl her out on their return, but it was well-nigh impossible to bawl out someone who just stood there saying at intervals: “I’m sorry, Aunty Helen,” in a voice of calm indifference. Helen had rushed upstairs in a fury and collapsed onto her bed in a storm of mixed rage and sobs; Nat, turning purple, had informed Carol that if they had one more performance from her he’d tan her hide for her, seventeen or not! “I’m sorry, Uncle Nat.” Nat had rushed upstairs to comfort Helen, who’d refused to be comforted and told him he was spineless, useless, and several other adjectives, and why didn’t he do something?

    Now Helen added dully: “I finally got it out of her that she doesn’t like it at Mum’s.”

    Nat gave a sigh that was so heavy it was almost a groan. “No reason, I suppose?”

    In a trembling voice Helen replied: “All she said was—was that she doesn’t like the smell!”

    “Eh?”

    “Mum’s pot-pourri, I suppose,” said Helen weakly.

    “God!” groaned Nat, writhing his fingers in his iron-grey curls.

    “I think she’s a wee bit jealous of Damian, too,” said Helen listlessly. “Dad does spoil him rotten, of course,” she added fairly. Damian was living with his grandparents and had apparently adjusted perfectly well to the change in his circumstances. Unfair persons like his cousin Allyson Shapiro attributed this to the fact that he had electronic circuits instead of feelings. Their grandmother, of course, could have told her that this wasn’t so and that when he first came out of hospital Damian had cried a lot in the night and refused to be separated from a very old rug that his mother used to keep in their sunporch; but naturally she told her no such thing: Damian would probably never have recovered from the shame of having these facts published, and Allyson was incapable of keeping anything to herself.

    Nat grunted. Then there was another long silence.

    “Look, Helen,” he said awkwardly: “Do ya reckon—well, maybe psychiatric help?”

    Helen blew her nose again. “I talked to Miss Fothergill about that—she’s been very good about it all, Nat; and she had a talk with Carol; but she suh-said—” Her voice shook.

    Nat hugged her into his side. “Come on, old lady.”

    Helen swallowed. “She said Carol has to want it herself; she said she could give us the name of a very good man but she ruh-really didn’t think it’d be any use at this stage; she said it’d be too precip— precip—” She gave a sudden sob.

    “Precipitate; yeah,” finished Nat. “Don’t cry, old Hell’s Bells.”

    Helen gulped a bit, but added: “She said in her experience the best thing would be to let Carol work it through herself in her own way. She has had a lot of experience, you know, Nat; there was that awful case—when was it—when Pauline was in her last year at school; you remember, those poor girls.”

    “Eh? Aw, God, yeah; that bloke who went nuts and shot his wife. Yeah, ghastly case.”

    “Mm. Those girls were both at St Ursie’s: I remember Pauline said the younger one went right off the rails for a while; anyway, Miss Fothergill got them both through it all.”

    “Yeah.” Nat lapsed into a thoughtful silence. “I reckon she’s right, ya know,” he said at last. “We’ll just have to let Carol handle it in her own way.”

    “Yes,” said Helen in a trembling voice. “Only I don’t think I can take any more of it. I’m sorry, Nat!” She turned her head into his solid chest and began to bawl her eyes out.

    Silently the scowling Nat reminded himself that Helen was coming up for the Change, and that it wasn’t fair on her to expect her to cope with a sulky teenager on top of their own Melanie who, frankly, they should never have had at all: Sir John Westby had had a fit, because Helen had had such a Helluva time with Pauline, only Helen had gone all soppy and been determined to have the baby. As it turned out she’d been perfectly all right and had popped on time and with no trouble, but the strain of it had nearly killed Nat.

    “Look,” he said determinedly: “ya won’t have to cope, old girl; she can board at St Ursie’s—they do have boarders, don’t they?”—Helen made a sobbing noise that could have been an affirmative.—“Yeah, thass right, that Whatsername, pal of Melanie’s, she’s a boarder, eh? Well, Carol can board there. She can come to us in the weekends if she wants to.”

    Helen said shakily into his chest: “Do you think she’ll go?”

    “She’ll go,” said Nat grimly.

    She sighed, and leant more heavily on him. After a while she said in a voice that was so growly it could have been her sister Veronica’s: “Thanks, dear.”

    He swallowed a grin, and kissed the heavy, still-blonde hair that Helen usually wore in a neat French roll, but tonight was in a very ruffled French roll. After a while he said thoughtfully: “Might have a word with Micky,”

    “Micky? Micky Shapiro?”—This was Patricia’s ex.—“What good can he do? He’s never had a thing to do with bringing up his own girls!”

    Nat forbore to point out that this was entirely the acidulated Pat’s doing, and replied mildly: “Sees ’em in the weekends, doesn’t ’e? –No, ’s not that; more a legal thing...” His voice trailed off.

    “Oh,” said Helen vaguely, without apparent interest.

    Nat was very relieved that she wasn’t interested, because as soon as he’d opened his mouth he’d wished he hadn’t. He knew perfectly well that if he breathed a word of what he was thinking to Helen, she’d be unable to stop herself blabbing it all to Pat; and that’d never do, anything Pat knew her bloody cronies soon knew, and then it’d be all over town.

    He gave Helen a hearty slap on her meaty thigh and said: “Well! That’s that! Why don’tcha pop up and have a bath? I’ll bring you up a cuppa, if ya like.”

    “Ta, Nat,” replied Helen, getting up.

    Nat duly brought her up a cuppa and sat on the fluffy peach toilet-seat cover to watch his large, pink wife drink it in the bath.

    At the educational establishment run by the capable Miss Fothergill, Melanie’s schoolmates were utterly and deliciously scandalized by her account of her parents’ bathroom habits: “Far out! Ya mean she lets him— Far out! …Aw-uh, come off it, Mel, everyone closes the door when they— Heck! Ya mean he doesn’t care if you” (awed whisper) “see it?” Gales of giggles. Melanie’s set at St Ursie’s was not very liberated; and nor, obviously, were those of their parents. The only girl in their form who remained immune to this sort of breathless confabulation was Sushila Carter, whose mother was a potter and whose father was an English lecturer and who was at St Ursie’s under protest, at her grandmother’s insistence and expense. After listening in disgust to the umpteenth such discussion Sushila went and asked Miss Fothergill if she could please be in a different study group from Melanie Weintraub and “Those Girls.” “Why, Sushila?” said Miss Fothergill mildly. Sushila informed her that they were retarded adolescents (a favourite phrase of her father’s) and she couldn’t stand it. Miss Fothergill replied placidly that most girls were very silly at that age, and she would put Sushila in a different study group, but she didn’t honestly think it’d be much better. Sushila looked at her in surprize. Miss Fothergill, who was a very sensible woman, as Helen Weintraub had discovered, twinkled at her and said: “We all have to learn to suffer fools gladly, Sushila.” Sushila went bright pink—she was not Indian as her name might have suggested, but Caucasian, her parents having been into Flower Power, ashrams and sitar music very early—and was Miss Fothergill’s devoted slave from that moment.

    If Nat’s plan to re-do the master bathroom went through—he was gradually wearing Helen down—Melanie’s pals would soon be even more deliciously scandalized, for Nat had his eye on a huge circular bath that was plenty big enough to take both his and his wife’s substantial forms—together.

    “It’s all speculation, Nat,” said Micky Shapiro dubiously.

    “Ye-ah...”

    “You haven’t got a single shred of evidence!” Micky twinkled at him.

    Nat retorted, grinning: “The legal mind!”

    “Yeah,” agreed Micky, grinning back.

    The two men who had married the two eldest Cohen girls had always got on very well together even though they were very different types, and hadn’t seen Micky’s divorce from Pat as any reason either for breaking up a perfectly good friendship or for Nat’s dismissing Micky as his lawyer.

    Micky pursed his pleasant, rather crooked mouth, and lapsed into silence. Nat fell silent, too, staring hopefully at Micky without really seeing him, he was so used to him. If he had really looked, he would have seen one of those charming faces which manage to be very attractive without being in the least regular. Everything about Micky’s face was just the tiniest bit crooked; his female admirers, who were many, considered that this was a large factor in his charm. His nose was narrow, longish, pointed, and just not quite straight. His face was heart-shaped, but the two sides didn’t quite balance. His eyebrows definitely didn’t match, and his hazel eyes were set at slightly different angles. His light brown hair, silver at the temples now and starting to recede at his wide brow, was parted on one side, and this added to the lop-sided effect. Nat would also have seen, on this particular day, if he’d been the noticing kind, that Micky was looking rather tired and that there were bluish shadows under those attractive, not-quite-symmetrical hazel eyes.

    “You haven’t even got any dates,” said Micky at last.

    Nat bent forward urgently: “No; but you oughta see the two of them! She’s the spitting image of him, Micky!”

    Micky gave a tiny sigh, and did not point out that even if Carol Rosen was the spitting image of Dr Hamish Macdonald, there were probably hundreds of gingery men of Scottish descent in New Zealand whom she resembled just as nearly, not to mention thousands of them back in Scotland. Nat had obviously got a bee in his bonnet, and as he was as stubborn as a mule it was going to be the Devil’s own job to get it out again.

    Shortly before Helen’s confession that she couldn’t cope with Carol, Veronica and Peter had had a house-warming party in the new place up at Kowhai Bay and naturally had invited both Hamish and the Weintraubs. Veronica was definitely not into entertaining teenagers, so Carol hadn’t been there, but Nat had been forcibly struck all over again, as he had at Veronica’s and Peter’s wedding, by the amazing resemblance between her and the Director of Sir Jerry’s Institute. The more so since after the tragedy Carol had lost weight, and her cheekbones now resembled more than ever Hamish’s own bony prominences.

    Micky frowned a little and rubbed his slightly skewed nose. “Well, lessee: who in the family might know something about it? Belinda?”

    Nat’s square, ruddy face reddened further. “Don’t like to worry her; not until there’s something a bit more definite.”

    “Mm,” agreed Micky. “I suppose Helen doesn’t—?”

    “I’m damn sure she doesn’t know a thing!”

    “No; and Pat doesn’t, either, I’m positive.”

    “No,” agreed Nat feelingly.

    Micky sighed. “Becky always maintained she never knew the bloke’s name, didn’t she?”

    “Yeah.”

    He hesitated; then he said: “Look, Nat: that could be true.”

    Nat replied obstinately: “Jim always reckoned that she did know, only she’d never tell him.”

    “Mm; well, you knew him better than I did, of course.”

    Nat grunted, got up, and moved restlessly over to stare out of Micky’s office window at a view of rain, and a windy grey street.

    “What about Veronica?” said Micky. “She always got on pretty well with Becky, didn’t she? You reckon she might’ve told her something?”

    Nat came back slowly to the modern pale grey leather easy chair that Micky kept for his clients, and sat down again. “She was pretty young at the time,” he reminded him.

    “Twentyish?” said Micky doubtfully—his last girlfriend had been twenty-three. “That’s not that young.”

    “No-o.” Nat’s oldest daughter, Lindy, was now twenty-seven.

    “Anyway,” said Micky hopefully, “she might’ve told her later—you know what women are!”

    “Ye-ah.” Nat certainly knew what most of them were, but he couldn’t imagine anyone confiding anything in the prickly Veronica.

    Micky rubbed his nose again. “Do you reckon you could sound her out?”

    “No,” said Nat frankly.

    Micky sighed. He didn’t reckon Nat was capable of it, either. “What about getting Helen onto her?”

    Nat shook his head. “She’d tell Pat.”

    “Ugh, God, yes!” realised Micky, wincing. He hesitated. “S’pose I could have a go...” He knew that Veronica didn’t much like him, but he hadn’t realised that this was because of, not in spite of, his charm: Veronica instinctively distrusted charming men—which didn’t mean, of course, that she hadn’t slept with a good many of them, in her time.

    Nat returned: “She’s close as an oyster, ya know.”

    “Mm.” Micky sighed again. “We-ell… That husband of hers? What’s he like?” His firm had handled Veronica’s and Peter’s new wills, but Micky didn’t deal personally with such straightforward matters.

    “Peter? He’s all right...” returned Nat slowly. He chuckled suddenly. “You ever met him, Micky?” Micky shook his head. Nat chuckled again. “Well, you oughta see the two of ’em together! He’s a little fat feller: comes about up to ’er elbow! God knows what she sees in ’im!”

    Micky raised his crooked eyebrows slightly. “Sounds as if she wears the trousers.”

    “Actually,” replied Nat dubiously, “from what old Jerry’s let slip it sounds more like he rules her with a rod of iron.” He met Micky’s eye and gave a dirty laugh and a wink. “Well, some sort of rod!”

    Micky sniggered.

    Nat added cheerfully: “Always been that type, of course, Veronica: hot as Hell for it.” He gave a rather wistful sigh. “S’pose you’ve never… eh?”

    Micky jumped. “Me? Shit, no! She scares the pants off me!”

    “She could scare the pants off me any time she liked!” replied Nat frankly, with a juicy laugh.

    Micky recollected himself and gave a lawyer-like cough. “Yeah, well. Do you reckon you could pump him about Becky?”

    “I could give it a go.”

    “Good,” said Micky, frowning.

    Nat looked at him in mild surprize. “Whassup?”

    “I’d like to take a look at him myself,” said Micky slowly.

    “Who—Peter Riabouchinsky?”

    “No! This Macdonald character! Don’t suppose you could—uh—ask us both round to dinner or something?”

    Nat scratched his iron-grey curls. “We hardly know the bloke…” He gave Micky a pathetic look and added: “And Helen’d get suspicious: ya know what they are; she wouldn’t give me any peace till she’d got it all out of me.”

    After eight years of blessed freedom from the acid Patricia, Micky was beginning to regret his bachelor status—though not to the extent of tying himself up to a moronic typist half his age, so the affaire with the twenty-three-year-old had recently broken off rather abruptly. He grunted.

    Nat scratched his chin slowly. “Maybe if I tell Peter the whole story…”

    “Yeah?”

    “Well, he is a foreigner, of course,” he said cautiously. “Still, might talk him into getting Veronica to invite us all round to their place.”

    “Ye-ah,” said Micky. “That might work... No, tell you what, Nat! I’ll go up to Puriri and see Macdonald! Make some excuse about the Deed, or something.”

    Since Sir Jerry had seen no reason to change the firm of solicitors his family had dealt with for eighty years just because his daughter Patricia, whom he’d always considered a fool, had decided to divorce her perfectly good husband, Micky’s firm still acted for him, and of course had done so in the setting up of the Pacific Institute of Political Studies.

    “Not a bad idea. But I thought you weren’t dealing with that yourself?” replied Nat.

     Micky grinned. “Nah,” he agreed. “Catch me letting that old wind-bag drive me into an early grave!”—Nat chuckled at this familiar description of Sir Jerry.—“No, but Bob won’t mind.”

    “Good!” said Nat heartily. “Then you’ll be able to see what I mean: she’s a dead ringer for him!”

    “Mm; and I’d better take a look at Carol, too; haven’t seen her for ages. Tell you what, Nat, why don’t you and Helen bring her and Melanie over for lunch next Sunday? The girls are coming; we can all—” He looked doubtfully at the rain streaming down his windows: it wasn’t barbecue weather: “Dunno—have a game of Trivial Pursuit, or something, eh?”

    Nat loathed games that were supposed to exercise the mind. Nevertheless he agreed enthusiastically, wrung Micky’s hand painfully, and departed, casting an approving glance as he went at Micky’s attractive secretary, and wondering if Micky was up her.

    Micky wasn’t: Sheryl was a very respectable young married woman from Birkdale. He pressed his intercom buzzer and asked her to come in.

    “Yes, Micky?” –The firm had recently gone frightfully modern and all the partners except the oldest and crustiest were called by their first names; it seemed to go with the peach and grey décor. This didn’t prevent the secretaries from preserving an attitude of grovelling servitude towards their bosses in all other matters, however.

    Micky asked Sheryl if she’d see if Bob could spare him a moment, and would she look out the Deeds relating to the Pacific Institute of Political Studies for them.

    Sheryl beamed fulsomely, said “No problem!” and should she bring in coffee?

    Micky agreed absently to this; when she’d gone he pulled over a scratch pad and wrote down the current year, and “17”. On reflection he crossed out “17” and wrote “18”. Then he subtracted that from the year. Then he frowned a bit, dialled the firm’s Information Centre (which used to be called the library but had also gone modern and got itself all pale grey and lemon, with computers) and asked Julia if she could possibly find out some information for him about someone who’d done a degree in Scotland, he thought. Julia replied cheerfully that she’d give it a go. Although she was very young, Julia did not have quite the right servile attitude and was rapidly getting sickened by her surroundings, though not quite to the point of wishing she hadn’t given up her less well paid job in Cataloguing at the University Library; she would very soon apply for a job as Val’s assistant in the Institute’s library.

    Micky gave her the meagre details of Hamish Macdonald’s academic career he’d got out of Nat, ending: “Do you think you can manage that?” Julia replied cautiously that she might have to go up to varsity and do a bit of research. Micky said that’d be fine, and could she possibly get started on it this afternoon?

    Julia replied joyfully that she could, hung up, put on her raincoat and shot out of her stiflingly warm, centrally-heated, air-conditioned and windowless Information Centre into a chilly, grey, damp day, breathing in grateful lungfuls of fresh, if damp and gritty, air. She walked up to varsity through Albert Park, thoroughly enjoying herself, since, not being acclimatized in any way to the law firm’s ambiance, she was very sensibly wearing bright red gumboots.

    Nat went peacefully back to his palatial office in CohenCorp’s downtown office tower. Since it was Wednesday he was due to work late. He dealt competently with a load of paperwork until half-past five, when his secretary (fiftyish, thin and vinegary but very competent), went home. Then he picked up his phone and dialled Accounts. Everybody in Accounts had gone except Brenda, who was in charge of the Girls, and who quite often worked late on Wednesdays. The Girls all thought Brenda Collier was wonderful: she was in her mid-forties, and her husband was a paraplegic, he’d had one of those awful football accidents about three years after they’d got married, and Brenda had stuck by him ever since. They’d only had the one kiddie, of course: Nevil. Sir Jerry had found him a place in the firm, and he was just finishing off his B.Com., and doing very well.

    Nat said: “Ready?” and Brenda said: “Just about; I’ll be five minutes.”

    Nat said: “Okay; I’ll meetcha out there, then;” and Brenda replied: “Fine.”

    Nat went into the basement carpark and collected his maroon Jag and drove it off to a much bigger, public carpark, where he parked it neatly beside a blue rental Mirage. He got out of the Jag, locked it carefully, and got into the Mirage. Then he drove out to a motel on the airport road.

    Five minutes after him, Brenda took the lift down to the basement carpark, got into her unremarkable silver-grey Sunny, and drove it out to the same motel on the airport road.

    There they had a nice hot shower together, which was something that always relaxed Brenda wonderfully, drank a couple of stiff gin-and-tonics, which always relaxed Brenda even more, and made love enthusiastically on the motel’s king-size bed. Then, after a bit of a rest, Brenda made a cup of coffee. Then Nat hauled on his pants, buttoned his raincoat up to his chin and popped out to get some takeaways—chicken and chips today, they liked to vary it a bit, and it was sometimes Chinese and sometimes fish and chips; occasionally Brenda let him treat her to a proper meal brought in from the restaurant next to the motel. After the meal Brenda made some more coffee, very milky for Nat, and they watched TV for a bit, sitting up in bed. Then Nat started tickling her, and that led to what it always led to. After another rest Brenda sighed regretfully but pleasurably, looked at her watch and said she’d better be going. Nat sighed too, and tried once more to represent to her the good sense of letting him take a nice little flat somewhere, where they could both pop in whenever they could manage it. Brenda, who was already far too fond of him, refused with her usual good sense, kissed him firmly, got dressed, and drove off in her Sunny.

    The Girls in Accounts would have found it very hard indeed to credit a word of what Brenda did on Wednesday nights—not just because of her niceness, but because not one of them was a day over twenty-five, and Brenda and Mr Weintraub were both a-an-cient.

    Nat sighed, got dressed slowly, drove back into town and picked up his Jag. At home he tranquilly asked Helen how her bridge party had gone, didn’t listen to a word of the detailed reply, and said he’d turn in, he was bushed. Helen replied, with some annoyance, that he shouldn’t let Dad work him so hard; to which Nat returned vaguely that he didn’t mind, really, it was usually only once a week, or so...

    Micky Shapiro went home that night to his ultra-smart but very empty bachelor flat, looked in the fridge, decided he couldn’t fancy an omelette, drank two chilled beers in front of the TV, decided it was all crap, and turned the set off. He thought of ringing one or two of the names in his address book, but couldn’t work up the energy. Finally he rang his daughter Susan (now just twenty, and flatting—to Pat’s annoyance).

    Something giggled into the phone, gasped and said: “Ow!—Yeah, hullo?”

    “Is Susan there?”

    “Susan who, dear?” said the voice; Micky decided provisionally it was male.

    “Susan Shapiro; that is her flat, isn’t it?” said Micky crossly.

    “Aw, Susie, ya mean? –SUSIE! Pho-one?” cried the voice, making a quite unnecessary interrogative of the last statement. “Stop it!” it added—apparently not to Micky.

    Susan’s voice said breathlessly—not to Micky: “Who is it, Dallas?”

    “Darling, do I know? Some unidentified male voice—y’know?” Dallas giggled. “One of your many admirers, I suppose?”

    “Hullo?” Susan’s voice said cautiously into the phone.

    “It’s Dad; who the Hell was that?”

    “Dallas,” said Susan simply. “Friend of Tony’s.”

    The flat, Micky now recalled, boasted both a Tony (male—of sorts) and a Toni (female—he thought). He sighed and said: “Well, never mind that; look, can you come over this evening?”

    “What for?” said Susan cautiously.

    “I want to talk to you about something.”

    “About varsity?” said Susan, even more cautiously.

    “No, not about varsity; if you want to fail all your units, that’s your affair.”

    “I got an A for my last Anthro’ paper!” said Susan indignantly.

    “Good; well, look—can you?”

    “Um—well, I was gonna set Tony’s hair tonight; is it important?”

    “Yes, it is rather; can’t you put her off?”

    “Eh?”

    “Toni; can’t you put her off?”

    “Oh,” said Susan, realizing that Dad had got Tony and Toni mixed up yet again. “Hang on. –TO-O-NEE-E!”

    Faintly Micky caught the reply: “Yo?”

    “Can your hair wait? I gotta go round to Dad’s tonight.” There was an even fainter reply; Susan bellowed: “WHAT?—Turn that radio down, Chris: I can’t hear a thing!” The thumping noise in the background which was so much a part of the ambiance of Susan’s flat that Micky hadn’t consciously noticed it abated somewhat. “I SAID— oh, there you are!” said Susan.

    “What is it, Susie, Petal?” drawled another voice of doubtful sex.

    “Gotta go over to Dad’s tonight: he’s got the wind up about something; do ya mind if we put your hair off till tomorrow?”

    “No prob!” said the voice. “Any time suits me—y’know?”

    “Good,” said Susan. “That’s okay, Dad; I’ll come right over.”

    “Fine,” replied Micky weakly. “Uh—have you eaten, yet?”

    “Heck, no!”

    It was half-past eight: Micky refrained from rolling his eyes. “Good; well, could you pick us up some takeaways on the way?”

    “Um, I haven’t got much cash on me,” Susan admitted.

    “Oh. Well—well, I’ll go out, then.”

    “No, don’t do that, Dad,” said Susan. “It’s a foul night.”—Gloomily Micky realized that he’d been relegated to the category of ancient persons, like grandparents and such, who had to be protected from the elements.—“Why don’tcha just give the pizza delivery place a ring?”

    “Uh—who?”

    Belatedly it dawned that the Aged Parent had never heard of this modern service. Susan explained kindly what it was, gave him the number, read out the menu from the copy her flat kept by the phone, told him the prices, told him the best one to order, and rang off.

    Micky rang the pizza delivery place and ordered a large “La Scala”.—“It’s got black olives and anchovies,” said the pizza delivery place in a warning voice.—“Yes,” said Micky weakly, aware that too much salt was bad for him but unable to withstand the craving that had immediately developed in him when Susan described her favourite pizza.—“Righto,” said the pizza delivery place. “It’ll be about half-an-hour—okay?”

    “Lovely,” said Micky weakly. “Thank you very much.”

    He put the phone down and said to it sadly: “I remember the days when there was no such thing as ‘takeaways’ and you just went and queued for fish and chips on a Friday at Mr lanopoulos’s fish and chip shop.”

    The phone, which was pale yellow and very trendy, merely sneered at him.

    Susan ate pizza hungrily, drank a great quantity of her father’s very nice Cabernet Sauvignon—after remarking that it was “a bit sour”: they usually drank very sweet Chateau Cardboard so-called “Sauterne” and sparkling whites at the flat—and helped herself to the last of her father’s Weight Watchers’ ice cream, after telling him that he shouldn’t eat this, it was probably full of chemicals.

    Micky replied mildly that he didn’t eat it, he’d bought it for Kerrie.

    “Where is she?” said Susan suspiciously.

    “Gone.”

    “For good?”

    “Yes.”

    “Good.”

    After making decaffeinated coffee—“You shouldn’t drink this stuff, Dad; don’t they filter it through asbestos, or something?” Susan leaned back at her ease on the very trendy pale grey leather couch and said: “What didja want to see me about, Dad?”

    Micky took a tiny sip of his Cognac and said: “Are you sure you don’t want a brandy?”

    “Honestly, Dad! You’ll have a hobnailed liver by the time you’re fifty!”

    This would be in four years’ time. Micky replied gloomily: “Probably.”

    “Are you all right?” asked Susan in surprize.

    “Yes, I’m fine,” said Micky.

    Susan investigated the box of chocolates on the heavy marble coffee table. “Can I have one of these?”

    “Help yourself.”

   She bit into a Parfait Amour sweetmeat with a crystallized violet on top of it, choked, and gasped: “What on earth have these things got in them?”

    “Parfait Amour; Kerrie chose them.”

    “She would,” said Susan, swallowing and making a face.

    “Yeah... Listen, Susan, I don’t want this spread all round the family—”

    “Come off it, Dad!”

    “I particularly don’t want you to breathe a word of it to your mother or your sister,” said Micky firmly.

    “Da-ad!” said Susan, going pink with indignation.

    “That coffee’s perking its head off; go and rescue it, would you, sweetheart?”

    “All right,” said Susan obligingly, a little surprized at the endearment.

    She came back with the coffee and stood over him. “You’ll get this when you tell me what’s going on,” she said firmly.

    He saw that her wide blue eyes were frightened, and said gently: “It’s nothing drastic, sweetheart; only a bit confidential, that’s all.”

    Susan gave him his coffee and sat down on the couch again with her own. “Shoot.”

    Micky leaned his head back against his pale yellow leather armchair’s head-rest, and sighed. Have you ever—well, wondered about your cousin Carol?”

    “How’dja mean?” replied Susan cautiously.

    “We-ell... That red hair; she doesn’t look like anyone else in the family... “

    “You don’t mean Aunty Becky’s little mistake, do you?”

    Micky gaped at her.

    “I’ve known about that for yonks,” said Susan airily. “Everyone knows.” She absent-mindedly took another Parfait Amour chocolate. “Een Uh-uh-ee,” she added.

    “What?”

    Susan swallowed. “Even Melanie; everybody knows!”

    Micky frowned. “Does Carol?”

    “Shouldn’t think so,” said Susan. She tasted her coffee cautiously. “Ugh, Dad! This stuff’s the Pits!”

    “I know,” said Micky, drinking his. “Listen, darling: this is important: are you sure Carol doesn’t know?”

    Susan frowned. “I honestly don’t think so, Dad; Grandma told me and Allyson and Melanie once not to mention it to her.”

    Micky put down his coffee and rubbed his nose. “When was that?”

    “Eh? Yonks ago!” said Susan airily.

    He frowned. “Be serious, Susan; you’re not a child any more.”

    Susan went pink. “Um, it was last year, I think; before the accident, anyway.”

    “Mm?”

    She frowned in concentration. “It was in Grandma’s boudoir; were talking about it—at least, the others were—and Grandma must’ve overheard them... Yes; it must’ve been last year, Dad, because Melanie had her St Ursie’s uniform on; I can see it in my head!”

    Melanie’s birthday fell in the middle of the year and, the New Zealand primary school system being what it was, she had had a fifty-fifty chance of ending up in a class that was either rather older or rather younger than she was. She had started at St Ursula’s in the Third Form last year at thirteen and a half, a little older than most of her form-mates. Micky knew this, and he knew that his elder daughter had a very visual memory, so he accepted her statement.

    “Mm—so Carol didn’t know as of last year...”

    “No,” said Susan, drinking more coffee and making a face. “At least, Grandma was pretty sure she didn’t. And none of us ever mentioned it to her.”

    “Are you sure of that, Susan?”

    Susan went very red and said in a would-be sophisticated voice: “Well, it isn’t the sort of thing that one normally introduces into casual conversation, is it?”

    “No-o…”

    ‘‘Honestly, Dad; I don’t think any of the others ever breathed a word about it to any of the Rosens. I mean—well—you know. It’s one thing for us to know about it, but you don’t go round telling a poor kid that she’s someone’s bastard, do you?”

    Micky looked at his daughter’s pink, earnest face and said mildly: “No, of course you don’t. Come and give your old dad a kiss, Sue-Sue.”

     She looked surprized, but did so, then sitting down by her father’s feet on his rather awful lemon and grey rug. She leaned her head against his knee and sighed. “Poor little brat.”

    Carol was only three years younger than Susan; but there is an enormous distance between seventeen and still at school and twenty and flatting with your varsity mates. Micky’s wide, slightly crooked mouth twitched. He stroked her crazy blonde mop and said: “Yes.”

    Susan was silent for a while; then she suddenly twisted round sharply and said: “Dad, she’s not yours, is she?”

    “Eh?” Micky burst out laughing.

    Susan gave a sigh of relief, but said rather sulkily: “Well, Aunty Fee’s a bit gingery.”

    “Most of that’s out of a bottle,” Fiona’s brother replied calmly. “Anyway, I can assure you,” he added in a voice that had acquired a slight quaver, “that there was never anything between your Aunt Becky and me.”

    “I didn’t really think there was,” said Susan, settling her head back against his knee, “only to hear Mum talk you’d think you were the Lothario of the Western world, or something.”

    “Mm.”

    Susan scowled at the rug. After a while she said vaguely: “This rug’s really vile, Dad. Who chose it? Did you?”

    “No—Jillyan.”

    “The interior decorator one?”

    “Mm.”

    “That explains it! –‘Jill-yan’, with a Y!” said Susan scornfully.

    Micky didn’t point out that in his opinion this was only one degree worse than “Allyson” with a Y—Pat’s choice.

    “Mind you, ‘Ally-son’ is pretty vile, too,” said Susan.

    Micky jumped. He had had this experience of finding his mind in tune with his firstborn’s before, but it was distinctly spooky all the same. “Yes.”

    Susan picked at the geometric design of the rug. “Do you know who he was, Dad?”

    “No; I don’t think anyone knows: that’s the problem.”

    She frowned. “Why is it a problem?”

    “Well, your Uncle Nat’s got this crazy theory into his head...” Micky swallowed. “He—uh—he thinks that maybe—uh—Hamish Macdonald is Carol’s father.”

    “Who?” said Susan blankly.

    Micky cleared his throat. “Hamish Macdonald—Dr Macdonald from the Institute.”

    “Dr— You don’t mean Dr Macdonald from varsity? The Pol. Sci. Dr Macdonald?”

    “Yes,” said Micky unhappily.

    She laughed incredulously. “Da-ad! That’s crazy! Dr Macdonald?”

    Gloomily Micky recognised that to Susan all the lecturers at the university undoubtedly seemed as old as the hills—not that that was entirely a bad thing. But she was probably quite incapable of perceiving Hamish Macdonald as a human being. “I’ve never seen him,” he said, “but Nat reckons he looks very like Carol.”

    “Well, he has got red hair,” said Susan dubiously.

    “Yes, I know. Think, Susan! Does he really look anything like her?”

    “Um, I haven’t seen that much of him; he doesn’t take the Second-Years much, we’ve only had a couple of lectures with him... I suppose he does look a bit like her; but Carol’s quite pretty, Dad!”

    “And Macdonald isn’t?” said Micky drily.

    Not noticing the dryness, his offspring replied immediately: “Of course not! He’s a man!”

    “Try not to think of Carol as a girl or of him as a man,” suggested Micky, managing not to smile. “Just concentrate on their basic features—their bone structure.”

    Obediently Susan shut her eyes and frowned, concentrating hard… “Heck!”

    Oh, Hell, thought Micky.

    She looked up at him earnestly. “When you think of it like that, he is awfully like her, Dad! They’ve got exactly the same nose—well, his is bigger, of course, but— And there’s something about their chins; and their mouths, too, I think. Do you think Uncle Nat might be right?”

    “I hope not.” he admitted sourly.

    “Um… I don’t see how he can be Carol’s father, though; I mean, he’s Scotch; he’s got an accent you can cut with a knife—y’know?”

    Micky frowned. “Don’t say ‘y’know’: it makes you sound like a half-wit. And it’s ‘Scottish’—Scotch is stuff you drink.”

    Susan gaped at him.

    “The way you speak labels you, Susan; you’re old enough to be aware of that.”

    Susan recovered herself and said indignantly: “The way I speak? What about that ghastly Kerrie? She sounded like Lynn of Tawa, or something!”

    “Precisely,” said Micky coldly. “That’s why I dumped her.”

    Susan gasped.

    “Anyway,” said Micky irritably, “being Scottish doesn’t necessarily prevent a man from performing the act of copulation—or not that I ever heard, anyway.”

    This time Susan both gasped and turned scarlet. After a while she said in a very small voice: “I didn’t exactly mean... What I meant was, Dr Riabou—I mean Uncle Peter—he said he’s from Edinburgh; he’s got a Sco— Scottish degree.”

    “He could have still have been out here eighteen years ago, on holiday or something, couldn’t he?”

    “I suppose so... Aunty Becky was never in Scotland, was she?”

    “No,” said Micky definitely.

    “Blow,” said Susan, “I thought I’d cracked it, there, for a minute.”

    Charitably Micky recognized, having the same sort of mind himself, that his daughter wasn’t being callous, but merely reducing the matter to its logical essentials; and didn’t protest.

    “What gave Uncle Nat the idea in the first place, anyway?” asked Susan after further thought.

    “Um, I think it was just the resemblance; seeing them both at Veronica’s wedding reception,” Micky admitted weakly.

    “Mm-m,” she said thoughtfully. “Uncle Nat’s not the greatest brain since Einstein, of course, but he’s a very intuitive person, Dad: have you ever noticed?”

    “Yes, I have,” said Micky, very surprized that she had.

    “I think he’s got the sort of brain that notices things without knowing it’s noticed them, if you know what I mean; and then he kind of sticks them together; but he can’t tell you how or why he’s done it.”

    “Yes, exactly,” said Micky, thinking of that time Pat had got involved with a gambling crowd and nobody had noticed there was something odd going on but Nat.

    “Like when Mum lost all that money on the gee-gees,” said Susan thoughtfully.

    “Jesus, Susan!”

    She looked at him in surprize. “Shouldn’t I say ‘gee-gees’?”

    Micky smiled weakly at her. “No, not that. It’s just that I was thinking exactly the same thing.”

    She awarded him a serene smile. “We often think of things at the same time; have you noticed?”

    “Yeah,” he said limply.

    After some time, during which she was apparently plunged in further thought but he just sat there hoping there wouldn’t be any more of this second sight, or whatever it was, because it was damned eerie, she said in a puzzled voice: “Dad, even if Dr Macdonald is Carol’s father, well, does it matter? I mean—well, why is Uncle Nat getting all stirred up about it? Is it something to do with the wills, or something?” –Nat and Micky were joint executors of the Rosens’ wills.

    “No; it’s nothing legal; it’s just that Nat’s got the idea that if Carol knew that Jim wasn’t her real father—and especially if she knew who her real father is—well, she might pull herself together a bit; it might make Jim and Becky’s death a bit easier to bear.” –Gloomily he admitted to himself that it was just as likely to make her a damned sight more upset—might make her fall apart entirely.

    “Ye-ah,” said Susan uncertainly.

    “Might make her worse, of course,” said Micky, unable to keep his gloomy doubts to himself.

    Susan jumped. “I was just thinking that!”

    “Hah! Gotcha!”

    They both chuckled.

    They discussed the pros and cons of telling Carol for a little longer, and then they watched Rowan Atkinson on Micky’s TV set (pale grey, to match the décor), laughing themselves nearly sick.

    After that Micky suggested Susan stay the night, as it was pretty late, and really foul outside, and Susan, who’d been about to ask him if she could stay the night, because it was pretty late and really foul outside, jumped and gasped, and said he’d done it again, and yes, she’d stay.

    Micky went to bed wondering if he could possibly bring up the subject of Susan’s dropping that stupid mish-mash of a degree she was doing, and taking up law instead—that brain of hers was being absolutely wasted—only she’d bitten his head off when he’d suggested it, back when she left school…

    Susan went to bed wishing she could work up the guts to tell Dad he’d been right all along about her degree, and she was bored stiff with it, and most of the lecturers—not Dr Macdonald, though—were absolute twits who couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag, and what say she dropped it next year and did law instead?

    The senior partner from Dent, Foreman, Shapiro & Overdale seemed a pleasant fellow, but Hamish couldn’t see why he’d bothered to come up to Puriri Campus himself over what seemed a very minor matter in one of the Institute’s deeds. They couldn’t be exactly overworked at his firm, because Shapiro seemed to have all the time in the world. Now he was chatting about degree courses, and the difference between New Zealand degree structures and British ones. Hamish rather wished he would go, because it was getting on for five o’clock, and he was supposed to be collecting Mirry and Elspeth at five-thirty and taking them into town to a Chinese restaurant for a treat. At least, it would certainly be a treat for Mirry, who adored Chinese food; they weren’t too sure about Elspeth, who’d never had it, but as Hamish said, she had to learn about ethnic foods some time, and as Mirry said, the restaurant’s dessert special was a huge fried dumpling consisting of a large scoop of ice cream within hot, crispy batter, and she was absolutely bound to like that, even if she didn’t like the first course.

    “I suppose it was rather a shock to your system when you discovered the peculiar mixtures of subjects the kids can do for their degrees out here?” said Micky, thinking of Susan’s degree.

    “Not exactly,” replied Hamish amiably—he was very amiable, now that he and Mirry were together again. “I started my own B.A. here, as a matter of fact.”

    “Did you really?” said Micky, trying not to betray the breathless interest he felt in this statement.

    “Mm,” said Hamish.

    “How was that, then?” persisted Micky, hoping to God the fellow wouldn’t think he was bloody nosy, or odd, or something.

    “Oh,” said Hamish with a little laugh: “long story: my father’s a New Zealander—of Scottish descent, of course.”

    “I see; so you grew up here, then?”

    “Aye; more or less.”

    “And what part of the country are your people from?” asked Micky, going a little pink.

    “Taranaki; they’re farmers,” replied Hamish. Under cover of his desk he took a sneaky look at his watch and so he missed the very odd expression that came over the lawyer’s face—Micky, of course, knew that Becky’s little mistake had taken place when she was down in Taranaki during the August holidays; he knew, in fact, far more about the thing than he’d revealed to either Nat or Susan: years back Sir Jerry, desperate for another male to confide in, and furiously prepared to take legal action against the bloody feller if he possibly could, had poured the whole story into Pat’s then quite young husband’s sympathetic ear.

    Micky swallowed, and thought frantically, but he couldn’t figure out any way of tactfully and naturally asking the bloke whether he’d been back for the holidays in the year of Carol’s conception, so he gave his lawyer-like cough, and said he’d better be going, and thanks for Dr Macdonald’s time, and it was good to have got that matter cleared up at last.

    Hamish stood up and shook hands thankfully, not noticing that Micky had craftily left his umbrella under his chair.

    Micky’s car, which was a dark navy Porsche that he was thinking of getting rid of, because he was fed up with having to fold himself up like a collapsible coat-hanger every time he got into it, was parked in the visitor’s slot just outside the Institute’s prefab. There had originally been no visitor’s slot, in fact no parking indicated at all, but their new janitor, John Blewitt, who was proving more than worth his weight in gold, had speedily rectified this; in fact he’d suggested it himself the day before Marianne’s desk calendar reminded her to ask him, and had not only carried out the actual work immediately and competently, but sorted out the pecking order for the parking slots himself, without Marianne having to waste her time on it.

    Micky drove sedately away in the Porsche. He didn’t like speeding, and was quite happy to let teenagers in souped-up Holdens burn past him on the motorway, honking their horns and sneering; the Porsche had been bought as an indicator of his well-off bachelor status and he was as fed up with it as he was with the bachelor status. He drove off campus, along the road a bit to where University Drive ended in the middle of nothing, turned carefully in the turning space there, drove sedately back and parked under a tree near the building site, which he’d previously marked down as ideal for his purpose. There was, of course, a chance that Macdonald’s secretary would leave before he did—but it was a chance he was prepared to take. He had a clear view of the Institute’s prefab, but it was right on the other side of the campus, so he got his field glasses out of the glove compartment.

    Pretty soon a tall, blonde, very pregnant woman in whom he recognised his ex-sister-in-law Veronica came out arm-in-arm with a shortish, plumpish fellow; joyously Micky realized the aptness of Nat’s description of Peter Riabouchinsky. He grinned to himself as the pair got into a big pale yellow Mercedes—now, that was more the sort of car, decided Micky approvingly—and drove off, rather faster than Micky in his Porsche had done. Next came a dark, skinny girl in a neat navy poplin raincoat and a short, plumpish, brown-haired one in a bright yellow plastic raincoat of the sort usually worn by yachties (the librarians, Val and Caro). Navy Raincoat got into a black Honda City and drove off sedately; Yellow Raincoat got into a clapped-out looking old blue Holden and started up with an audible grinding of gears. After that there was a pause.

    Then three young people who were obviously students rushed out, looking at their watches, and darted off in the direction of one of the other university buildings. –Three First-Years, late for the first sitting in the hostel dining-room after a painful tutorial with Charlie: since Peter was very much over-burdened with the Second- and Third-Years, Charlie had more or less taken over with the First-Years. These young people had discovered to their horror that Pol. Sci. was different from Sociology, Women’s Studies, Education, Polynesian Languages and Culture, or Art History, all of which featured in their various “peculiar mixtures of subjects”, as Micky had characterised them, and that Dr Roddenberry expected you to work.

    Then there was another pause. Micky looked at his watch. There were still four cars parked outside the prefab. Then the front door opened again and disgorged a tall, thin bloke with huge specs in a heavy tweed overcoat (Charlie himself, who’d discovered that the New Zealand winters, even in the north, were a Helluva lot colder than the Californian ones and that what he’d thought of as his winter clothes, back in May, were not at all suitable for June and July), and a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman who looked up at the sky, made a face, and tied a see-through plastic rain hood of the fold-up variety over her hair. (Pam Anderson, whose car was in dock.) They appeared to have a short argument. (Charlie insisting on giving Pam a lift.) Then they both got into the bright scarlet Mustang, which Micky, who was of rather the same generation as it was, had been looking at with a sneaking admiration which he refused to admit to himself, and drove off smoothly.

    Two seconds later Macdonald came rushing out looking at his watch and scowling, and got into the big fawn Volvo station-wagon—woulda cost him a packet in Godzone country, reflected Micky—and roared off too fast.

    That left a very elderly but spotless Rover (John the janitor’s baby) and a neat little silver Honda City, which was a secretary’s car if ever he’d seen one.

    He drove the Porsche sedately over to the prefab and parked in the slot marked “PIPS VISITORS ONLY”. (It had taken him a moment or two, the first time, to work out what “pips” meant.) He tapped at the Secretary’s office door, went in, and, apologizing nicely for disturbing her, explained that he thought he’d left his umbrella here. Where had he left it, did he think? asked Marianne. The crafty Micky had earlier expressed such interest in the Institute that Hamish had been forced to offer him a guided tour, during which Micky had dropped heavy hints about the beautiful countryside and what a lovely place for a holiday New Zealand was, to which Hamish had unfortunately failed to give satisfactory replies. So he replied he rather thought he’d left it down in the library. This temporary facility consisted of two offices with the common wall taken out, lined with shelving that the University Librarian had let them have on loan and that the helpful and capable John Blewitt had refused to let Caro have anything to do with putting up, to her unconcealed astonishment.

    Marianne got her keys and they went down to the library. Micky immediately started chatting to her about her job, and how did she like it, and where had she worked before? Duly feeling a bit stunned by Marianne’s composed reply that she’d been Mr Carrano’s PA. And how did she get on with Dr Macdonald: was he a good boss to work for? asked Micky casually, heading for Caro’s slit of an office off the far end of thelLibrary.

    The intelligent Marianne could now see that he had some ulterior motive and, since she didn’t perfectly understand the workings of the Endowment Trust, was afraid that Sir Jerry Cohen had sent his lawyer to spy on Hamish. So she answered very enthusiastically—the more so because of Hamish’s recent amiability.

    “‘Scottish, isn’t he?” said Micky casually, bending to look under the visitor’s chair in Caro’s office.

    “Yes,” agreed Marianne, squatting to look under the desk. Micky involuntarily noticed, as her neat dark skirt rode up, that she had very nice knees. “It’s not here.”

    “No,” he said, standing up and hoping he hadn’t got red in the face. “Maybe I put it down...” He wandered slowly—insofar as it was possible to wander in a six-foot by eight-foot cubicle—around Caro’s office, inspecting all the surfaces. “Of course,” he added in a vague voice: “I believe he is actually a New Zealander...”

    “What? –Oh, Dr Macdonald!” said Marianne, who’d been checking to see that he hadn’t hung the brolly behind the door on Caro’s hook; Mr Carrano had had a business associate, Mr Armitage, who always did that and forgot he’d done it; Marianne had quite got into the habit of reminding him about his umbrella every time he came—except in midsummer, of course. “Yes; his father’s got a farm in Taranaki.”

    “Oh, yes?” said Micky idly. “Dairy farm, I suppose?”

    “No, I believe it’s sheep, actually,” said Marianne, rather surprized but polite. “It’s a hill-country farm, I think.”

    “Oh, yes; over near Eltham, would that be?” said Micky, moving a pile of books. on Caro’s windowsill and not looking at her.

    “No; I think he said it’s near a place called Heards Crossing, actually,” said Marianne, still polite but definitely puzzled.

    Micky knocked over the pile of books. “Damn!”

    Marianne came over to help him pick them up.

    Micky said in a trembling voice: “Heards Crossing, did you say?”

    “Yes,” said Marianne, fortunately concentrating on picking up books and not on the conversation, which under normal circumstances she would have realized had gone more than slightly past the polite chat stage. “It’s a very small place, I believe; you’ve probably never even heard of it—l hadn’t.”

    “No,” said Micky hoarsely and untruthfully: Heards Crossing was the very small town where Becky had had a holiday job almost exactly eighteen years ago.

    After an abortive and, on Micky’s part, sketchy search of the library proper, during which Marianne wondered whether she should report this encounter to Dr Macdonald tomorrow and he wondered how the Hell he could pump her further without arousing her suspicions, and whether there was any point in doing so, anyway, as he’d probably got most of what she knew out of her already, they returned to Marianne’s office.

    “What about Dr Macdonald’s office?” said Marianne. “You did have it with you when you first went in there, I noticed.”

    “Did you?” said Micky, startled.

    Marianne gave a little laugh. “Yes!” She unlocked Hamish’s office and told Mr Shapiro about Mr Armitage and his umbrella habit.

    “Oh,” said Micky with interest: “that’d be Ken Armitage, would it?”

    “Yes; do you know him?”

    “Yes,” said Micky, hunting along Hamish’s windowsill. “The firm handles his legal affairs; we’re both Grammar Old Boys, too—though Ken’s a good bit older than me, of course!” he added hastily, for no good reason he could think of.

    Dr Macdonald’s pretty, dark-haired secretary smiled at him, but without the grovelling fulsomeness of his own Sheryl, and said: “That’s always a great bond, isn’t it?”

    Micky smiled back and looked at her properly for the first time. He very much liked what he saw: the neat cap of glossy dark hair, the frank brown eyes, and the pretty pink blouse which, unlike Sheryl’s creations, was neither screamingly bright satin, nor embarrassingly revealing, but on the contrary, a very soft shade and high to the neck in a sort of Russian style, with pretty little toggles fastening it at the neck and on the left shoulder—and made out of something that looked soft and warm. (Viyella: unlike Dent, Foreman, Shapiro & Overdale’s luxurious accommodation, the prefab was draughty and rather chilly in spite of the extra heaters that the invaluable John had scrounged from goodness knew where.) Marianne’s earrings were not the dinner-plates sported by Sheryl, Kerrie, Jillyan and their ilk, but tiny coral roses (a present from Maurice Black), and her nails were not the puce claws Micky had expected, but short and in the same shade of coral as her earrings and lipstick. The neat dark navy skirt came below those very nice knees, and although it did have a row of buttons all down the left-hand side they were all decorously done up except the bottom one. Her  shoes were dark navy, too, with little French heels (Maurice was rather short).

    Involuntarily Micky took another look at the hands and saw that her only ring was a pretty little pearl affair (a present from Maurice) on her right hand.

    “Were you sitting over here?” asked Marianne.

    Micky started. “Oh! Yes—that’s right.”

    Marianne stooped. “Here it is!” She retrieved the umbrella, which was the collapsible sort—full size male umbrellas not fitting very well into Porsches—before he could.

    “Thank you very much; I’m sorry to have put you to all this trouble,” he said, taking it and smiling at her again.

    Now that she was involved with Maurice, Marianne fancied herself immune to other men, so she smiled back into the pleasant hazel eyes and said: “That’s quite okay; you really need a brolly in this weather, don’t you?”

    “Yes; it’s been terribly wet this winter, hasn’t it?” agreed Micky, feeling he sounded like a twerp.

    “Mm, shocking,” said Marianne, leading the way out of the office and locking it again.

    Micky watched this performance with some surprize; none of the firm’s offices were ever locked. “Do you always lock up at night, here?”

    “Yes,” said Marianne, returning to her desk but politely not sitting down. “There’s been quite a bit of petty theft and some vandalism on campus lately, so we always lock up. Of course John—that’s the janitor—well, he always checks everything, he’s very good; but Dr Macdonald says it’s only sensible for everyone to get into the habit of locking up when they go.”

    “Very sensible,” he agreed, admiring the way her hair came down smoothly into her nape just above the Russian collar, and blissfully unaware that Dr Macdonald had only thought it sensible once Marianne had suggested it to him. He looked at his watch, hesitated, and said: “Uh—would you have the right time, I wonder?”

    Marianne informed him that it was four minutes past six. Micky tutted and pretended to adjust his watch. “Uh—I don’t suppose you’d care to come for a drink, would you?”

    She blinked, obviously startled.

    Micky produced a rueful smile. “I hate drinking alone; but it’s been such a foul days I could just do with something to warm me up, couldn’t you?”

    Marianne didn’t have a date tonight, because Maurice was escorting his wife, who was a Friend of the Gallery, to some do at the Art Gallery. She said hesitantly: “We-ell... “

    “I suppose you’ve got a date,” said Micky sadly.

    “No,” said honest Marianne. “Well, it would be rather nice; thank you very much.” She smiled her sweet smile at Micky and to his surprise he felt his colour rise as he smiled back.

    She excused herself nicely to go and “freshen up”. Micky asked the way to the Gents, and was amused when Marianne, who had inspected all of the facilities without exception with an eagle eye when they moved in, informed him apologetically that it was a bit primitive, and it was supposed to be for the staff but they couldn’t always stop the students using it, especially in weather like this. It was certainly primitive compared to the facilities at Dent, Foreman, Shapiro & Overdale, but absolutely palatial compared to those at Grammar, so Micky really didn’t notice its deficiencies. He bared his teeth critically at himself in the dark, cracked little mirror, smoothed the blue stains under his eyes with his forefinger and noticed crossly how they and their accompanying wrinkles returned, and thought gloomily, though quite without intending to, that he must be a good twenty years older than her.

    They went to The Tavern in Puriri, which was a lot nearer than the much nicer old pub, which was about five miles further north, and which Marianne hadn’t like to suggest driving up to on a such a cold, wet, dark night.

    Micky chatted smoothly over drinks; to Marianne’s relief he didn’t try to pump her any more about Dr Macdonald, and she began to wonder if her suspicions had been wrong, and he wasn’t spying for Sir Jerry Cohen, after all. After a while the suspicion that he’d been trying to chat her up flitted into her mind; only it hadn’t felt quite like that... And he wasn’t flirting with her now—thank goodness!

    The clothes had been a fairly good indication to Micky of the approach he should take with this quiet, pretty, pleasant girl, and so he didn’t attempt any of the meaningful looks, grubby innuendoes, and silly laughs he’d produced without effort to hook the ghastly Kerrie. Not that he was at all sure he was making any sort of an approach, yet: Kerrie’s determination to marry him had been a nasty shock, and he rather thought he was off younger women. Not that Marianne—which he thought was a very pretty, old-fashioned name, unaware that Marianne’s mum had got it out of a Barbara Cartland—was as young as Kerrie, of course. He began to wonder how old she actually was. She was rather unsophisticated, which made it harder to tell; late twenties, perhaps?

    He’d been relieved when she didn’t ask for a Fallen Angel, or a Crème de Menthe Frappée, which had been Kerrie’s favourite pre-dinner drink. Instead, when he said that he himself was going to have a whisky, Marianne said shyly that she’d like one, too. (Maurice had been very tickled to find, when he introduced her to Black Label, that she quickly developed a taste for it.) “Ice and soda?” Micky assumed. Marianne, pinkening, replied that she’d really rather just have a little water in it. Micky then had a hard job to persuade the girl at the bar first that he didn’t want that one (Bell’s) or that one (Teacher’s), but that one (Black Label) and then that he didn’t want either soda or ice, and certainly not a slice of lemon, in either of the drinks. Looking sulky, she had finally given him a little jug of water, which in Micky’s opinion was ideal. He was pleased, if a little surprized, to see that Marianne didn’t drown her whisky, and that she obviously really did like it.

    After a while Micky worked up the courage to say: “Marianne... That’s a very pretty name; rather Jane Austen-ish, isn’t it?”

    Marianne had avidly read every single one of Caro’s Jane Austens and then gone out and bought the whole lot for herself (scouring the town: the University Bookshop had had two, which were set texts). She pinkened prettily, laughed, and said: “Sense and Sensibility! Yes; but I don’t think I’m like Marianne Dashwood, really.”

    “Aren’t you?” said Micky, twinkling, but not meaning anything at all by the remark, except to draw the girl out a bit.

    Marianne then remembered that she herself was not the self she’d thought she was, eight months or so ago, and that Marianne Dashwood ended up with a much older man, and that she might not have been noted for her good sense but she certainly had a passionate personality; and turned scarlet.

    Micky observed this with considerable astonishment. “Are you more the Elinor type?” he said kindly.

    “Yes! I mean, No!” she gasped. “At least... I think I’m a bit of a cross between the two of them,” she ended weakly.

    Micky smiled. “Well, that’s rather a good way to be, isn’t it? A nice balance, I’d say.”

    Marianne swallowed, and agreed huskily that she supposed it was, really. She sipped her whisky, and added cautiously: “Do you like Jane Austen?”

    “Very much,” said Micky, quite truthfully.

    “Really?” said Marianne, going all pink with gratification. “She’s my favourite, author!” She took another sip and added shyly: “I didn’t think she’d appeal to men, really.” (Maurice had admitted that he found her a bit tepid.)

    Micky’s mouth twitched. “Why not? Do you think we’re too crude to appreciate her?”

    She’d thought precisely this: Maurice’s tastes in fiction, as in most things, were rather robust. “No!” she gasped.

    “Have you ever read Proust? Or Henry James?”

    “No,” said Marianne shyly.

    “You ought to try them; I think they’d show you that men can write just as delicately; though not in the same style, of course.”

    “I will,” said Marianne. She sipped some more whisky, and said calmly: “Have you ever read Les Liaisons Dangereuses?”

    Micky choked, and gaped unbelievingly at Hamish Macdonald’s little secretary.

    “Didn’t I pronounce it right?” said Marianne, crestfallen.

    “Uh—no, that was right,” he said weakly. He looked at her cautiously. “You do mean Laclos?”

    “Yes, of course,” said Marianne. “I’m reading it in English, of course.”

    “Uh—are you doing a part-time degree, or something?”

    “No; a friend lent it to me.” –Maurice; Caro’s tastes didn’t run to Laclos and she would not have supported for one instant the theory purveyed by Jill Davis of the University’s French Department to her fascinated Third-Years that Madame de Merteuil was an early feminist.

    “Are you enjoying it?” said Micky weakly.

    She gave a little laugh of pure enjoyment and said: “Yes; it’s delightful, isn’t it?”

    Micky had certainly thought so in the far-off days when he’d done Third-Year French; he’d done a combined B.A. and LL.B., which was quite a good trick, because they let you cross-credit English and Latin. In fact it was one of the few texts he had kept from his undergraduate days. “Yes, I’ve always enjoyed it,” he returned, still rather feebly.

    Marianne smiled, and sipped her whisky.

    “Uh—would you like some peanuts, or something? Crisps?” suggested Micky, forgetting that her generation always said “chips”, not “crisps”.

    “Peanuts’d be nice; thank you, Mr Shapiro,” said Marianne politely.

    For some obscure reason Micky didn’t dare at that moment to ask her to call him Micky instead, so he went off to get the peanuts.

    At the bar he had more than enough time to wonder whether she’d been leading him on a bit, there; there were one or two bits in Laclos that, while in fact very funny, weren’t at all the sort of thing that nice girls who liked Jane Austen usually took in their stride. Frowning a little, and wondering if she was perhaps a university-educated bitch who’d been taking him for a ride, he made his way back to their booth through the hoarsely bellowing male throng occupying all of The Tavern’s standing room.

    She smiled, thanked him politely, and took a few peanuts.

    Micky crunched a mouthful, swallowed, drank the last of his whisky in a gulp, and said: “I’d have thought Laclos was a bit off for you.”

    “Off?” said Marianne in mild surprise.

    “Mm—a bit ripe; that scene where the hero writes the letter, for instance...” He looked at her narrowly.

    “Letter? Oh, you mean—” Marianne went into a trill of laughter. “But that’s funny!” she gasped.

    Micky beamed; she was obviously perfectly genuine about it. “Yes, isn’t it!” he agreed. He met her eye, and they both dissolved in laughter.

    After that they got on famously; they talked a lot about books, Marianne not pretending to like anything she didn’t, or to have read anything she hadn’t, and Micky admitting frankly that he couldn’t stand the moderns, and hadn’t read anything much later than Evelyn Waugh. This led not, as Micky expected, to a discussion of Brideshead Revisited, which had been on TV a few years back, but to an examination of the peculiarities of Sword of Honour, which Marianne had found interesting, and quite readable, but rather cold and unsatisfying. Micky agreed, and added some analysis of his own. After this Marianne laughed a little, and told Mr Shapiro about the nice American at work who hadn’t heard of Waugh. Micky laughed and agreed that he was rather an English taste—neither of them at this moment thinking of themselves as colonials from half a world away from England. Marianne, eyes sparkling, then told him that a friend had told her that there was actually a very fine collection of Waugh papers at an American university somewhere in Texas! Micky found this as funny as she did, but wondered silently who the educated friend was.

    Gentle Marianne had not only taken the time to listen to Charlie Roddenberry when he became frightfully casual and dropped names like “Thoreau” (of whom she, unlike Caro, really had never heard), but had seen at once that he was rather out of his depth with the very foreign Peter, who was terrifyingly literate in four languages and knew his way around in several more, and totally at a loss with the not very approachable Hamish, who was very much the British style of academic, and didn’t try to draw his subordinates out, which he would have seen as prying but which Charlie would have welcomed as perfectly natural. She had therefore gently encouraged him to speak of his own tastes and interests whenever she had the chance, and Charlie after a while had ceased to send out his usual verbose smokescreen of unending facts and, recognizing that she was neither chasing him nor getting at him for his American-ness, she was just being kind, had gratefully spoken to her of one or two things that were perhaps closer to his heart than his dislike of monkeys or his taste for shakes and malteds. So Marianne knew that Charlie was in fact very well read, though not in the same way as Peter, of course, and she explained this to Mr Shapiro, not wishing to be unfair to the Institute’s resident American.

    Micky wondered rather sourly if this “Charlie” was the boyfriend—there must be someone, she was far too attractive to be unattached.

    When he suggested “a bite to eat” she quite visibly hesitated.

    He laughed and said: “Come on! It’s such a foul night; you don’t want to go home and have to cook, do you?”

    “No,” said Marianne. “Only—”

    “It’s only a meal I’m suggesting, not an orgy,” said Micky mildly.

    “Yes, I know,” said Marianne, going pink. “The thing is, um…”

    “There’s someone who mightn’t like you to go out with strange men?” said Micky, raising his crocked eyebrows comically.

    She swallowed.

    “Engaged? Spoken for?” he murmured, doing the eyebrow thing again.

    “Mm. Something like that.”

    “Would he be jealous?” said Micky baldly.

    “I don’t know,” replied Marianne honestly.

    His wide mouth twitched. “Well, if I promise not to make a pass at you? You’d only be a few years older than my daughter Susan, you know.”

    To his astonishment she turned deep scarlet and, looking him determinedly in the eye, said: “Age hasn’t got anything to do with it.”

    “Uh—no,” agreed Micky, shaken. He looked at the now bent dark head, and added gently: “Is he an older man?”

    “Yes!” gasped Marianne.

    There was a little silence. Micky realized that the man must be married. He knew that at this moment he could either withdraw entirely or go forward and possibly risk getting himself hurt and risk hurting Marianne, too—there were several scenarios that he could easily envisage, none of which turned out very happily.

    Suddenly she looked up and said: “I really think it would be better if I didn’t, Mr Shapiro.”

    Why this should have determined Micky to go forward he could never afterwards figure out. He leant forward and said quietly: “Look, Marianne: I’ve been divorced for about eight years, now; I’ve got a little black book full of numbers, but I’m not that interested in any of them; and I’ve got two grown-up kids that I hardly ever see, any more. I’m not asking you for anything you can’t give; I’d just like your company over dinner on a very nasty wet night.”

    “All right, then,” said Marianne simply, looking into his eyes: “I’d like to.”

    They ended up at the Chez Basil, because Marianne, when he asked her, said shyly that the food The Tavern wasn’t very nice, really, and that there was a nice little restaurant quite close which she thought he’d like, though the food was a wee bit fancy (a bowdlerization of a comment of Maurice’s). After being Mr Carrano’s confidential secretary for so long she had, of course, automatically sized up Micky’s beautiful charcoal grey suit, in a very modern cut which belied the old-fashioned solidity of the suiting, the moment she laid eyes on him. He was quite obviously the sort of man who was used to nice little restaurants.

    In spite of seven months or so of Maurice’s training Marianne looked at the menu and said: “Ooh, that sounds nice!” to the “Shish-kebabs à la Basil”; Micky looked dubiously at the menu’s flowery description of the sauce and decided that it’d have to be a white wine with that, and ordered crayfish, also à la Basil, for himself. It turned out to be merely grilled with black pepper, a little butter, and a sprinkling of thyme; he was able to say quite truthfully that it was delicious.

    Over the dinner he carefully avoided all controversial topics, and told Marianne about his yacht, quite a bit about Susan and Allyson, and quite a lot about the sailing holidays they sometimes went on together. Marianne said wistfully that she loved sailing, she and her brother had had a little sailing dinghy when they were kids but she hadn’t done much since; she’d been on Mr Carrano’s Maybelline a few times, but you couldn’t really call that sailing, the crew did all the work. Micky expressed interest in this, and mentioned that he’d heard a rumour that Jake Carrano was selling the Maybelline. Marianne replied that he was, he didn’t go sailing much now because Polly—Mrs Carrano, you know (pinkening)—got awfully sea-sick. Micky said that he’d never met Mrs Carrano; what was she like? Marianne then told him, in an artless way that he found quite charming, a lot about Polly Carrano, and how clever she was, and how pretty she was, and how lovely the twins were, and how thrilled Mr Carrano was with them.

    Micky grinned. “End of his career as the playboy of the Australasian world, eh?”

    At which Marianne got quite cross and indignant, and said that of course Mr Carrano had had some girlfriends in the past, but people were so mean, and exaggerated things out of all proportion, and Mr Carrano was devoted to Polly and had never looked at another woman since the day he met her!

    Micky, who had rather wondered if Jake Carrano might be the man in Marianne’s life, decided that he wasn’t. She gave him no clue as to who the man might be, and he tactfully didn’t probe. He did have a fleeting, mad suspicion, when Marianne, on his ordering the caviar and refusing its “Sauce Russe” which undoubtedly had God knew what in it, laughed, and said: “Oh! M— Someone I know always likes it plain, too!” The only person that Micky knew who made a fuss about the way the local restaurants served caviar (when they served it, which wasn’t often) was old Maurie Black, with whom he played backgammon at the Club; but that was absurd: Old Maurie must be about a hundred and two, far too old to appeal to a pretty little thing like Marianne. There must, after all, be a few other men around with civilized tastes.

    “Coffee, sir?” said the gay maître d’, swanning up to them; not surprisingly on such a cold, wet night, the little restaurant wasn’t very busy, and they were getting a very personal service.

    Micky smiled at Marianne. “Would you like a coffee?”

    “Yes, please, Micky,” said Marianne, smiling back—he’d finally plucked up courage over the caviar (about a teaspoonful, which he was pretty sure was lumpfish, anyway—no wonder they tried to smother it in muck) to ask her to call him that.

    Micky refused coffee, and the maître d’ promptly offered him a choice of Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong, or a tisane. Very surprized, Micky said he’d have Earl Grey; no milk.

    “Of course, sir,” the man replied, as if he’d never have dreamed of committing such a solecism and was astounded that it could even have occurred to his customer.

    “Does coffee keep you awake?” asked Marianne, rather shyly.

    Micky laughed. “Yes, I’m afraid so! It never used to; it suddenly hit me, around my fortieth birthday!”

    Involuntarily Marianne wondered how old he was, and though remaining loyal to Maurice in thought as well as deed, thought it was a pity that Micky didn’t have a nice wife to take care of him.

    “Marianne—” said Micky cautiously, sipping his tea.

    “Mm?” replied Marianne, smiling at him over the rim of her cup.

    A great wave of soggy sentimentality unexpectedly engulfed Micky Shapiro. He could have wept on her bosom, right there and then. He blinked, looked away, swallowed, and with difficulty said: “I was wondering— Of course, it’s not sailing weather, but Susan and I thought we might take the boat out next weekend; we could do with an extra crew member; would you fancy it?”

    Marianne went rather red. “Um... well, which day were you thinking of?”

    Micky hadn’t actually thought of taking the boat out at all until this evening—though he knew Susan would be happy to come at any time, she was sailing-mad. “Haven’t decided; either day suits us.”

    “Um, I couldn’t manage Sunday, this weekend.”

    “Saturday’d be nice!” said Micky quickly, beaming.

    “If you’re sure?” said Marianne, beaming back.

    He twinkled at her. “If you’re sure you can trust me not to pounce on you!”

    “Yes, of course!” said Marianne, laughing.

    Wryly Micky reflected that his decision to come on about as strong as an elderly uncle who’d had the op had been the right one. Whether he could keep up this neuter approach for long he wasn’t at all sure, but he’d give it a damned good try. And he’d better warn Susan that Marianne wasn’t like the others, or she’d be coming out with God knew what. “That’s settled, then!”

    “Yes!” agreed Marianne happily. “I haven’t had a good day out in the open air for ages!”

    Yeah, well. It was pretty damned clear, not that it hadn’t been anyway, how she and the unknown bloke spent their time together. Bugger him.

Next chapter:

https://themembersoftheinstitute.blogspot.com/2023/01/family-life.html