20
The Great Detective
Nat and Micky played two holes in an almost total silence. Then, glaring at his ball, which was right on the edge of the green, after five strokes getting down the fairway on the Third—actually better than his usual level, because the Third had a nasty dog-leg in it—Nat grunted: “You found out any more about Macdonald, yet?”
Micky sighed. “No more than I told you before.” That had been after his meeting with Hamish (and his dinner with Marianne) in July. “We seem to have come to a dead stop.”
Nat grunted crossly. He whacked his ball far too hard and it shot off right across to the other side of the green and trickled down into the rough. “Sod it!”
They walked over to Micky’s ball, which was about two yards from the pin, and Nat said: “You that bloke onto it?”
Micky sighed again. “Yes; and he’s been down to Heards Crossing, since you insisted on it.” He looked mournfully at his ball.
“Well?” said Nat irritably,
“It’s like I told you: there just isn’t any evidence, after eighteen years. Dammit, Nat, the pub’s changed hands about four times since then; and the motel we think Becky stayed in’s been pulled down—I mean, what did you expect, for Christ’s sake?”
Nat said obstinately: “Did he talk to the locals?”
“Yes, of course he did; and they all know the Macdonalds, there’s been Macdonalds round Heards Crossing for over a hundred years; but no-one remembers that particular year—why the Hell should they? There weren’t any disasters or—or local anniversaries, or anything like that, to make it stand out.”
Nat scowled at Micky’s ball. “You gonna play this, or just stand there admiring it?”
Micky wasn’t that keen on golf. He hit his ball nonchalantly. It stopped two inches short of the hole.
“Knock it in, for God’s sake!” said Nat crossly.
Micky knocked it in.
They walked over to the rough. Nat glared at his ball.
“Now who did I see play a shot just like that, quite recently?” said Micky thoughtfully. “On TV: Susan and Allyson and I were watching some tournament or other… Ballesteros, was it? He—”
“Shut up!” said Nat crossly. He hauled out his niblick.
Micky looked it with interest. “Now, Ballesteros used a—”
“Shut UP!” Nat was very keen on golf and bitterly resented the fact that he wasn’t much good at it. He whacked his ball furiously. It shot up into the air almost perpendicularly, bounced hard on the very edge of the green, flew up into the air again and whizzed off at a tangent, ending up in the rough again about ten yards away.
“Bugger!” He hurled his niblick into the rough.
“When Ballesteros played that shot,” said Micky, still in a voice of mild interest, “he—”
“SHUT UP ABOUT BLOODY BALLESTEROS!” yelled Nat at the top of his voice. He stomped over to retrieve his ball.
Micky, who enjoyed getting the last word and enjoyed getting a rise out of Nat, looked after him thoughtfully. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t use his niblick,” he murmured. Nat ostentatiously ignored him. Micky chuckled to himself.
After six more shots, and after a lot of language and a lot of grass had flown around, Nat, sweating profusely, holed his putt from the very edge of the green.
“Ha! Howzat?” he cried, beaming.
“Almost as good Ballesteros,” said Micky in a voice of mild surprise.
Gritting his teeth, Nat strode over to pick up his ball.
Micky chuckled to himself again.
After the Fourth, which Nat usually played very badly indeed but on which he achieved par today, he was in a very good mood, so Micky said, as they strolled slowly over to the next tee: “Why don’t you let this Macdonald business drop, Nat? We’ve done all we can. Short of getting a written confession out of the bloke, I don’t see there’s anything else we can do.’
He looked cautiously at his friend’s bluff, ruddy face and was concerned to see it take on an expression of real distress.
“Nat—” he said gently, putting a hand on his arm.
Nat stopped striding blindly in the direction of the Fifth; in fact he stopped dead.
There was a rustic seat not far away, under a large puriri tree—the golf club had a large proportion of elderly members. “Come and sit down,” said Micky.
They sat down, and he asked: “Is it Carol? Is she worse?”
“Not worse,” said Nat gloomily. “The same.”
“Oh,” said Micky dubiously.
“Only that is worse, isn’t it? She oughta getting better by now.”
Micky didn’t say anything.
Abruptly Nat told him about Carol’s strange behaviour over Veronica’s baby.
“Oh,” said Micky dubiously: his own girls had both told him breathlessly about Aunty Veronica’s Baby James, and had expressed vociferous disappointment at their grandmother’s vetoing their plan to go up to Kowhai Bay to welcome mother and baby home last week. “Um, well, not all girls are dotty about babies, you know, Nat.”
“She was dotty about Sharon when she was born,” recalled Nat gloomily. “So was Rosemary.”
Micky replied cautiously: “They were very close, weren’t they? She’s probably missing her.”
“Yeah.”
There was a gloomy silence.
“Have ya tried Scotland?” asked Nat abruptly.
“No,” said Micky firmly.
“There just might be—”
“No, Nat.”
There was another silence. Finally Nat growled: “’Smy money.”
“‘Yes, and it’s my responsibility to see you don’t chuck it away on wild goose chases.”
After scowling at his feet for some time Nat said: “I’ll have to talk to the feller.”
“What—Macdonald? For God’s sake, Nat!” cried Micky.
“Only thing left to do!” said Nat, turning purple.
“You’ll do no such thing! Christ, do you want to wind up in court?”
“He wouldn’t do that,” said Nat sulkily.
“I wouldn’t take a bet on it!” replied Micky with feeling.
Another gloomy silence.
Finally Micky said: “Did you talk to Peter and Veronica?” –After the discoveries of July Nat had said he would talk to them, after all.
“No. Did go round there once, but—well, they making plans for the baby, and stuff. I could try them again—maybe if I sound him out first?”
“Yes; you don’t want to risk upsetting Veronica. Is she feeding the baby herself?”
Nat gave a sigh of reminiscent enjoyment. “Yeah. Boy, is that a sight for sore eyes!”
Micky, who didn’t share his taste for large blondes with huge mammary glands, just smiled tolerantly.
Nat went up to the Riabouchinskys’ the very next Saturday. Unfortunately he had to take Melanie, the minute Helen discovered where he was bound; but she herself, as Nat very well knew, had a meeting of her bridge club committee at two that afternoon, and couldn’t go with them.
On the way Melanie made Dad buy her a triple-header ice cream—lime, passionfruit, and raspberry ripple with a chocolate topping, sprinkled with nuts.
When they got over the bridge Nat said tolerantly: “Which way ya wanna go, sweetheart?”
“Ooh, the coast road, Dad, please!”
So the drive up took three times longer than the maroon Jag would have taken on the motorways; but it was a beautiful spring day and Nat always enjoyed the coast road as much as Melanie did, so he didn’t complain.
As it happened they’d timed it just right, because Veronica was just going to feed the baby when they got there. It wasn’t exactly a scheduled feed, but as they’d decided to dispense with their Karitane nurse in the weekends there was no-one there to boss Veronica and James into keeping to the sort of timetable that, according to Polly Carrano, was totally artificial and unnatural. James was hungry and Veronica’s boobs were full, so it was definitely chow-time.
The heater was on and the sun of early afternoon, as Veronica had predicted it would once the big old tree was removed, was warming the living-room, so Veronica just leaned back in her comfortable armchair and hauled up her jumper. Since she didn’t wear a nursing bra when the Karitane nurse wasn’t around, Nat, in the armchair opposite, watched with unaffected enjoyment. Melanie, perched on a little antique stool beside him, turned purple but couldn’t drag her eyes away. In her playpen Sharon was engrossed with Koala and Teddy and a pile of plastic blocks, and didn’t notice what was going on—fortunately, because when she did notice she got rather jealous.
Afterwards James went to sleep and Veronica yawned hugely. Peter chuckled and declared that she’d better have a wee lie-down.
“Yeah; maybe I will have a nap, she agreed, yawning again. “See ya later, you two.”
When the door closed after her Nat stood up abruptly. “Peter, I need to talk to you.”
“We go to my study—da?” replied Peter tranquilly. “Melanie: you will look after little Sharon—yes?”
Melanie beamed . “Righto, Uncle Peter! Can I take her out of her playpen?”
“Yes; but be very careful not to let her go near the heater.”
“Yeah, of course,” said Melanie earnestly.
“She does not understand at all about heaters, but we are troying to teach her, so if she troies to go near to it, you say ‘Hot!’ very sternly, okay?”
“Hot,” agreed Melanie. “I getcha.” She went over to the playpen and made cooing noises at Sharon,
“She’ll be okay,” said Nat reassuringly. “She’s quite a responsible kid; she likes babies, don’tcha, Mel?”
“Mm,” replied Melanie abstractedly, getting down on her hands and knees. “What’s that you’re building, Sharon? Is that a big tower?”—Two blocks, precariously balanced.—“Aren’t you a clever girl, then?”
In Peter’s study Nat looked round him in a hunted way at the blue flocked Victorian-pattern wallpaper, the crimson and dark blue flowered Victorian-pattern carpet, the dark woodwork of the huge old carved desk—heavily restored and its brass drawer handles definitely not the originals: Polly had advised Veronica never to let Jake get a look at it, he’d explode—the painted cream woodwork of the door jambs and window frames, and the plain dark blue velvet curtains next to Peter’s head.
Feebly he offered: “This is a nice room.”
“Da; we are very pleased with it; but you have not, I think, come to talk about interior decoration?”
“No. It’s about Carol,” said Nat abruptly.
“Yes? You would loike a brandy? Or a perhaps a vodka?”
“I could go a vodka, ta,” admitted Nat.
Peter opened one of the bottom cupboards in a dark wooden Victorian dresser, the shelves of which he was using as a bookcase, and took out a bottle with Russian writing on its label, and two shot glasses. When Nat had tipped his vodka down his throat, shuddered, and held out his glass for a refill, he said: “What about Carol, Nat?”
“Jim wasn’t her real father; think she oughta know who is!” jerked out Nat.
“Ah. And do you know who her real father is?”
“No. No-one knows: that’s the ruddy problem!”
“I see.” He also saw that the good-hearted Nat was very disturbed, so he didn’t attempt to discuss the pros and cons of revealing to Carol that she wasn’t Jim Rosen’s daughter. “You are sure that Jim was not the father?”
“Yeah; whole family knows. Well, not the Rosen kids, of course; everybody else does, though. Besides, old Jerry told Micky all about it at the time.” –The cautious Micky had finally revealed this fact to him.
“Micky?”
“Pat’s ex. Aw—dunno that you’d of met ’im: Micky Shapiro. Family lawyer—at least, the firm is. Dent, Foreman, Shapiro & Overdale.”
“Ah, yes, of course: they are the Institute’s lawyers, too. But I h’yave not met this Micky; although I believe he did come up to the Institute one day to talk to Hamish.”
“Yeah; that’s why,” said Nat obscurely.
Peter looked puzzled.
Nat elaborated: “Sounding ’im out; pretended he had to see him on Institute business, but that was just a blind.”
“Let me get this straight, Nat: Micky Shapiro came up to the Institute to sound out Hamish Macdonald about Carol’s paternity?”
“Yeah,” said Nat, giving him a wary look.
“And what makes you think Hamish moight be Carol’s father?” he asked calmly.
Nat turned purple and said defiantly: “Hunch! S’pose you think that’s stupid—being a varsity type!”
“No, I do not think that at all,” replied Peter tranquilly.
“Spotted ’em at your wedding reception,” revealed Nat. “Micky thinks I’m exaggerating it—but she’s a dead ringer for ’im, Peter!”
“Yes. I, too, spotted that at the reception,” agreed Peter.
“Eh?” gasped Nat.
“Yes; also Belinda.”
“Belinda?” gasped Nat.
“Da; only we agreed not to discuss it, so we h’yave not.”
Nat ran his hand through his iron-grey curls. “Always did say there were no flies on Belinda,” he said weakly.
“Mm: she is a very sharp woman.” Peter poured them each another vodka, said: “One moment, Nat; I go to check on Melanie and Sharon,” and disappeared.
He was back five minutes later, holding a plate of very thin biscuits and smiling.
“They okay?” said Nat.
“Yes: they are playing a very noice game with Sharon’s fuzzy ball. Teddy is, I think, being goal-keeper,”
Nat chuckled. “Goddit!”
“Have one of these excellent biscuits, Nat; Belinda made them.”
Nat took a biscuit and began to eat it.
“Delicious, no?” said Peter, also taking a biscuit. “She has given me the recipe but so far I have had no success with it: one must have the mixture exactly roight and then the oven must not get too hot.” He chuckled. “Also it does not help if one’s little girl pulls the neighbour’s cat’s tail just two minutes before the biscuits are due out of the oven!”
“No, it wouldn’t,” agreed Nat dazedly—he himself wasn’t encouraged to puddle around in his wife’s kitchen.
Peter finished his biscuit and propped a blue velvet cushion comfortably behind his back—unlike Veronica, he was very much a cushion-y person, and there was a whole row of cushions in the bay window, some in blue velvet and some in a blue and cream flowery Sanderson linen that matched the fabric covering the window-seat, a small armchair, and a very pretty little footstool that Nat considerately hadn’t put his feet on. “Now,” he said firmly, rather as if he was examining a shy student who had to be encouraged: “you tell me all the evidence that you and this Micky know—da?”
In a somewhat disjointed manner that Peter would have marked down a student for, Nat told him everything that he and Micky knew and quite a lot that he, Nat, only guessed. Peter’s excellent brain had no trouble in winnowing out the chaff from this recital and grasping the few grains of solid fact.
“So-o,” he said slowly at the end of it. Nat looked at him hopefully. The afternoon sun had moved slowly on and was now highlighting the little bunch of freesias in a blue vase in the bay window, and Peter’s nice but undistinguished side-face. The smell of freesias was very strong in the little room.
“Those freesias smell good,” said Nat.
“Da; we have them in the garden; but alas, no voi-lets; so I plant some for next year.”
“Helen likes freesias,” he offered.
“So? You have them in your garden, too?”
“No; it’s too dry, or something.” –Nat wasn’t a gardener.
“Then I give you a big bunch for Helen when you go—you remoind me, okay?”
“Uh—yeah; ta,” said Nat, rather taken aback.
“The crux of the matter seems to me,” said Peter abruptly, “to be the whereabouts of Hamish in August—eugh—eighteen years ago; that is correct?”
“Yeah; the August holidays.” Nat looked hopefully at him. “You reckon you could find that out, Peter?”
“Poss-ib-lee,” said Peter slowly.
“Micky worked it out he musta been finishing his doctorate, from the dates in the university calendars and all that,” he reminded him.
“Mm, you say,” murmured Peter-.
“I can’t see there’s any way of finding out short of asking the bloke!” said Nat desperately.
“No-o,” agreed Peter slowly. “Not after all this length of toime.”
“Micky reckons Becky mighta said something to Belinda; only what with Veronica having the baby, and everything... Well, we didn’t want to mention it to her until we had a bit more proof.”
“No,” agreed Peter. “But I think the fact that Hamish’s family does live near this very obscure—eugh—”
“Heards Crossing.”
“Merci—this very obscure Heards Crossing; that, I think, is sufficient supportink evidence to justifoy speaking to Belinda.”
“Do ya really? Micky thought we needed something more definite.”
“But then Micky is a lawyer, is he not? They are always over-cautious. And then, I think perhaps,”—he twinkled kindly at him—“that Micky is not convinced of the resemblance between Hamish and Carol?”
“No,” growled Nat, going very red.
“But then, he has not, I think, seen them together, as you and I have? –No. But if he had, he would realoize that it is not just a matter of features or colouring, though those are remarkably aloike, da?”—Nat nodded hard.—“Yes: not just a matter of those, but also of manner, and gesture, and their whole bone structure, is it not?”
“Yeah—absolutely!” beamed Nat. “Ya really think there’s something in it, then, Peter?”
Peter sighed. “I am very nearly sure of it, moy dear Nat.” He hesitated. “Of course, I did not know Becky when she was young, but I have seen the family albums. She was a little, sweet, dark girl, yes?’
“Yeah; nice little thing: big dark eyes, black curls. Young Sharon’s gonna be just like her, I’d say.”
“Yes. And a sloight figure—no?”
“Yeah; quite small—you know—but not skinny.” Nat thought about it. “Really nice tits,” he added. “Never used to need a bra; don’t mean she was flat, but... well, kinda French-looking, y’know?” he added with an awkward laugh.
“I know exactly h’what you mean,” said Peter glumly, “and that is precoisely the toype that Hamish admoires; you could be descroibing his present girlfriend.”
“Jesus!”
There was quite a silence in the warm little room with the scent of freesias strong in it.
At last Nat sighed heavily and said: “I’d better speak to Belinda, then.”
Peter returned tentatively: “Would you prefer me to do it, Nat?”
“Wouldja really? Ya wouldn’t mind?”
“Not at all; Belinda and I are quoite en rapport. –We get on very well together,” he added, as Nat was looking a bit blank.
“Yeah,” said Nat, a trifle limply. “Thanks, Peter. It’d be a real load off my mind!” He gave an awkward laugh.
“Not at all; that is settled, then. Ah: ‘on the same wavelength’, I think is the equivalent English expression to en rapport!” He looked at Nat’s expression and swallowed a laugh. “You see, I enjoy not only her very sharp moind, but also the mère de famille thing—eugh, the managing Jewish mother bit, no? Not being on the receiving end,” Peter ended, now with a definite laugh in his voice, “but as an observer; you see?”
“Yeah, I do flaming see!” Nat admitted, forgetting to be humbly grateful to him.
“But seriously, I think if Belinda does not know anything more—and I very much doubt, from her manner to Hamish, that she does—well, in that case, I think I know of a way to ask Hamish about that voital August.”
Nat goggled at him. “Do ya really? But Micky said— Well, he reckons that if—if we kinda accused him, or anything—well, Macdonald could take us to court.”
“Ah, but I shall not accuse him!” said Peter, twinkling. “He shall accuse himself!”
“Eh?”
“What I shall do,” said Peter, twinkling even more, “is—when Veronica is a bit mare herself again, you understand—I shall have a noice little dinner party; all people in their mid-thirties to early fifties: you see? And after dinner—with which we shall have much woine—we shall play a little party game; a little game of Where were you at such-and-such a toime, so many years ago—da?”
“Brilliant!” cried Nat, slapping his thigh. “By God, you’ve got it, Peter!”
“Yes, I think I have,” Peter agreed, very pleased with himself.
Nat’s enthusiasm died away. “Uh—if Veronica doesn’t spot ya and kill ya first.”
Peter shrugged. “I do not think she will. In the first place, she is very milky at the moment: you must know what that’s loike; and it is not in her nature to be suspicious.”
“Just as bloody well,” Nat admitted limply.
When Nat was safely out of the house getting takeaways—Helen never felt like cooking after one of her Bridge Club Committee meetings—Helen rang up Peter and thanked him for the enormous bunch of beautiful freesias.
After Peter had said it was nothing but he was very glad she liked them, and Helen had explained that they were her favourite flowers, but she also adored boronia, which had a scent not unlike that of freesias, and Peter had said voi-lets were his favourites, and Helen had said yes, she knew, and then had to explain the scent-changing thing that Veronica still hadn’t admitted to him; and after they’d had quite a chat about the wellbeing of James and Veronica, and about Sharon’s sibling rivalry as compared to Lindy’s when Pauline had been a baby; after, in fact, quite a lot of shilly-shallying, Helen said abruptly: “Peter, did Nat say anything to you?”
“About what, moy dear Helen?’
He heard her swallow. “About whatever’s on his mind.”
“He mentioned a—eugh—a small problem.”
“Is it a woman?” demanded Helen hoarsely.
“Moy dear Helen! No, absolutely nothink loike that!”
She swallowed again. “He’s been acting so funny lately… Do you absolutely promise me it isn’t a woman, Peter?”
“I absolutely promise,” said Peter gravely.
“Then what is it?” asked Helen blankly. “It’s—it’s not his health, is it?”
“No, it is not his health; it is nothing personal at all, Helen.
“Please tell me, Peter,” said Helen in shaking voice that was not at all that of the commanding Prussian that Peter thought he knew and didn’t really care for.
“I can’t tell you, moy dear,” he replied gently, “because it is something that concerns two other people. I understand that you have been worried, but I can assure you that I will have it sorted it out very soon.”
“And—and it really isn’t a woman?”
“No. I think you and I both know that Nat is no angel—da? But it is nothink at all loike that. He is devoted to you, moy dear, I am quite sure of that; and I think, also, that you know it, too. He is truly happy in his home, and would not change that for the world. Some men just naturally stray from toime to toime, but these things mean nothink to them. At heart he is a home-bird—da?”
“Ye-es… I suppose he is quite the domestic type, in his way.”
“Of course! So now you will cheer up—mm? And there will be no more of these foolish thoughts, okay? Nat, he is the sort that—eugh—that mulls the things over in his mind, and becomes frustrated when he cannot solve them. But soon I shall have got this finally sorted out for him, and I will tell you all about it, okay?
“Yes—will you? Good. I mean, thank you very much, Peter,” said Helen hoarsely.
Peter attempted to make Veronica put her feet up on the sofa while he finished getting the dinner that evening, but since she’d slept for most of the afternoon she declared that she was as fit as a flea, what was he on about? and came into the kitchen with him.
“What’s this?”—lifting a butter paper on a small pan over another pan of simmering water.
“Do not touch moy sauce!” shrieked Peter.
“Sorry.” She inspected another pot. “What the Hell’s this mush? Something for Sharon?”
“Parsnip purée; now I add some butter—so.”
“‘Fine words butter no parsnips!’—always wondered where that came from!” exclaimed Veronica pleasedly.
“That is a very peculiar expression,” said Peter. He thought about it for a while. “Very English.”
“So are parsnips,” said Veronica. ‘‘What’ve ya got in the oven?”
“Papillottes de veau; and do NOT open it!”
“I wasn’t going to.”
After a while she said: “Shall I set the table?”
“I have done that; but perhaps you could check to see that Sharon has gone to sleep; she was very toired, because she and Melanie had a lovely game with her fuzzy ball all afternoon.”
Veronica came back a little later looking pleased. “She’s out like a light; we oughta have Melanie round more often!”
“I think that is a very good oidea,” replied Peter sedately.—Veronica gawped at him.—“Melanie loves children. Also, I think we should invoite Damian much more often, now that we are settled, and Baby has come; after all, Sharon is his sister, is she not?”
“Yeah, all right,” agreed Veronica weakly, not saying anything about galumphing teenagers.
Peter let her get all the way through her avocado starter and almost through the papillottes de veau with their mushroom sauce, the pommes de terre julienne (“Ya cut these chips a bit small, didn’tcha?) and the parsnip purée (“Pasternak, you eat there, Veronica.”—“Eh?”—“Pasternak means parsnip.”—“Geddouda here!”), before he mentioned his idea for a nice little dinner party. “If you are sure you would feel up to it, moy darlink?”
“If you would, ya mean!”
“Pardon?”
“’S you that’s gonna be doing the cooking, not me!” said Veronica, grinning.
“Oh—that is nothing,” he said with an airy wave of his hand.
Veronica knew damn well it wasn’t nothing, he’d be in the kitchen all day beforehand. “How many were you thinking of inviting?”
“We-ell; two or three couples, perhaps.” He sighed. “A pity that Polly has this blood-pressure trouble, or I would ask them.
“Yeah; poor old Polly; she was right as rain, too, right up to last week; then Bruce said she had to go into hospital and stay there.” Veronica chuckled. “She’s bored stiff! She’s got a great pile of work in there, but all these ambulatory mums and old men keep coming in and jabbering at her!"
Peter laughed. “Well, the Carranos are out—poor Polly! But I thought perhaps Hamish; and we must insist that he brings little Mirry, too; what is the point of being coy about it when he invoites Charlie to his home and Charlie tells the world?”
Veronica grinned. She hadn’t been in to work yet, but Charlie had very kindly come to see her a couple of times—complete with bunches of flowers and boxes of chocolates—and so she’d had a first-hand account of the dinner with Hamish and what the six-foot-plus Charlie hadn’t scrupled to describe to the five-eleven Veronica as “the four little girls.”
“He’s got quite a sense of humour, you know, when he lets himself relax; let’s invite him, too.”
“Certainly, moy dear,” said Peter smoothly. “But we must have a woman for him.”
Veronica pushed her empty plate away and gave a huge snort of laughter.
“Did I not phrase that quoite roight?”
“Not quite, ya Russian nong!” she choked.
“But you know what I mean.” He pulled her plate towards him. “Did you enjoy this, moy dearest?”
“Yes, it was scrumptious! My compliments to the chef!”
He got up. “Now I go to get the salad, and you troy to think of a woman to invoite for Charlie, okay?”
When Veronica had said “Yum! Lots, please!” to the garlicky, oily salad he knew she loved, and had remarked approvingly with her mouth full of mixed endives belges and lettuce, “Dunno ’ow ’oo gesh uh sho crishp,” and Peter had replied tranquilly: “I h’yave moy methods, Watsonia,” which always reduced her to helpless giggles, he said: “Well?”
“Eh?” said Veronica, wiping her eyes.
“A woo-man—for Char-lie,” said Peter with exaggerated patience. “This milk in your tits, it turns your brain to jelly, no? –Odd; because it turns moy prick to—”
“Shut UP!” said Veronica with a yelp of laughter. “You think of someone for Charlie, if you’re that keen.”
“What I think,” Peter murmured, the curly mouth twitching a little, “is someone in, say, her early thirties—around his own age, da? Not very tall... And brown hair, brown eyes, and a figure that is rather full in the, eugh…” He looked hard at his wife’s promontories and made a gesture front of his own chest. “So; and noice round hips, but in between, I think a noice slim waist that he may put his long American hands round—no?” He described a very exaggerated hour-glass in the air.
Veronica gawped at him. Peter ate salad with an unconcerned air. After a few moments she said uncertainly: “You got someone in mind to fit those particulars?”
Peter looked up, twinkling. He didn’t say anything.
“Brown hair... Short—you did say short, didn’t you?”
“Words to that effect, ouais.”
Veronica frowned. “And a big bust...”
Peter ate more salad and said through it: “An’ ’ipsh.’ He swallowed. “Eat your salad, Véronique—it goes limp.”
Veronica ate salad. She choked. “Good God! Not Caro Webber?”
“Ah, the penny has dropp-èd through all that mooshy jelly between those ears.”
“Mushy yaself! She’s been having a thing with that Goddawful wet architect bloke for months!”
“I do not denoy that, moy darling.”
Veronica looked at him uncertainly.
Peter said serenely: “She may well have been having affaires with foive dozen architects, wet or not; nevertheless I think Charlie would not object if she wished to have an affaire with him.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Certainly not; he is not at all the kind of man to talk to another man about that sort of subject, moy dear.”
“Oh.” Veronica ate salad. “It’s a bit hard to tell that sort of thing, if you’re a woman.”
“Yes: men’s behaviour with other men is very much a closed world; and particularly in this country, I think?”
Veronica looked at him gratefully. “What I like about you, Peter, is that you’re so damned intelligent!”
Peter twinkled. “Oh? I thought that h’what you like about me was moy great big—”
“Don’t say it!” said Veronica threateningly.
“—warm heart,” he finished, looking plaintive and injured.
Veronica gave a snort of laughter, and choked on her salad.
When she’d finished choking and gulping water she said: “How do you know Charlie fancies Caro? I’ve never noticed anything.”
“Well, at first, you know, it was just… just something in the air.”
Veronica frowned.
“Something in the way he looked at her,” said Peter quickly, rather glad he’d refrained from the word “nebulous.”
“Oh.”
“Then I notice—at that cocktail party we had at work, you remember?—that Charlie does not look very pleased when Caro arroives with her architect, and although he is careful to socialoize with everyone else, he does not go near Caro all evening.”
Veronica looked at him limply. “How could you possibly notice something like that?”
Peter gave a very foreign shrug; he didn’t say “Bof!” because he knew she didn’t like him to, but it was there in the shrug.
Veronica sighed deeply. “You’re just the noticing type, I suppose.”
“Da,” he agreed pleasedly. “So, after that, you know, I am fairly sure. Then,”—he twinkled at her—“one day last term, when Little Mother is feeling not so good and stays at home with her feet up,”—Veronica managed not to react to this; Peter’s curly mouth twitched;—“one day last term, I overhear the big row between Caro and Charlie.”
“What big row? Ya never told me a thing about it!”
Peter’s mouth twitched again. “No, because when I get home to moy very noice house I foind my very pregnant woife has taken a big axe to the doining-room wall and is croying because she has discovered the foireplace there is all brick-èd up.”
“Aw. That day,” said Veronica, reddening.
“Mm.” He reached over the little round table and patted her hand.
Veronica sighed. “Go on, then, tell us about the row.”
“We-ell… The immediate cause of the row is not, in itself, significant, I thi—”
“Tell us anyway, ya pontificating Russian Deputy Bloody Director!”
Peter chuckled, and told her.
It was raining cats and dogs that day—as it not infrequently did in late July. Caro was cross anyway, because she’d had a row with Danny, who’d told her that no-one put the hoods of their raincoats up, it was sissy; and he wasn’t gonna wear those gumboots, they were sissy, only little kids wore gumboots, and—that sort of thing; and it had made her late for work. Val had rung two minutes after she got there and sneezed into the phone before she’d got a word out, so that was her out for the rest of the week. Julia at this period had had her interview but wasn’t due to start until the beginning of August, and Jo-Beth Nakamura, about whom Caro’s feet were getting colder and colder as time went on, wasn’t due to start until the third term, in September. Half an hour after she’d opened the library and had had what seemed like every student they’d got queuing for the recommended texts that were on desk loan (Caro didn’t wonder why the Hell they didn’t buy them themselves, she knew damn well they couldn’t afford them), her student helper, a large, shambling male figure in his third year whose one advantage was his height, rang to say he was awfully sorry, he had the flu, but a mate of his could come in and do his shelving, if that’d be any help. Had this mate had any experience of shelving books classified by the Dewey Decimal System? asked Caro grimly. No, he hadn’t, but he was used to using the varsity library. Oh, God, thought Caro, but she resignedly said to send him along. “Righto; gotta go—feel sick again!” he gasped, and hung up abruptly. Caro hadn’t believed in the flu story; she now realized it had probably been true, and naturally felt all the more cross and aggrieved because her suspicions had been unjustified.
Round about morning teatime the fluorescent light tube over her desk began to flicker maddeningly. When she switched it off the room was so dark she couldn’t see. She rang John Blewitt. No reply—John was over at the Undergraduate Reading Room fixing the leak in the ceiling that the Branch Librarian had been trying to get the Campus janitor to do something about since last winter. Caro swore and went to tea, late, leaving her big handbell and a huge notice, “PLEASE RING FOR SERVICE”, on the issue desk. Two seconds after she’d sat down with her teacup, someone did.
The day wore on in this fashion. The rain didn’t abate, and Caro knew perfectly well that Danny wouldn’t put up his hood for his half-mile walk home from school. Then the heating went on the blink just after afternoon tea. John Blewitt, as obliging as ever, but quite obviously annoyed, because their prefab’s heating was always going on the blink, and it wasn’t his fault, it was the clapped-out boiler the University had provided, spent the rest of the afternoon sweating over it.
At five to five, just when everybody else had been heard either actually departing or going to the bog in preparation for their departure, Ron, the Head of Serials at the University Library, who was on late shift today, rang about some of their orders that the library was still having problems with. Caro listened carefully to all of this, and though it wasn’t her area any more, it was Val’s and would shortly be Julia’s, took notes and agreed that they’d chase the orders up, and assured him for the Nth time that as soon as they were in the new building and had their computers installed he could download all the Institute’s serials information from the University’s system onto theirs.
By the time this conversation was over it was bloody nearly five thirty, and Caro was just about to go when That American, looking as if he was set to work through the entire night, and not in the least tired, cross or hungry, like her, came in and said: “Hey, Caro. Say, can you book me in to do a DIALOG search?”
At this point Peter, who’d had a late tutorial with a very thick Honours student, came down the passage to go to the staff Gents, which was just opposite. Since Caro was sitting behind the issue desk, with a small electric heater on six inches from her frozen feet, and since the library door was open and since all the walls in the prefab including those of the Gents were embarrassingly thin, he had a good earful of what followed; besides, not being an inhibited Anglo-Saxon, he listened.
“Can I what?” said Caro, glaring.
Charlie, a little taken aback, politely repeated his request.
“Oh, yeah; and exactly which databases where you thinking of searching?” said Caro with huge irony.
Not recognizing the irony, Charlie told her, and for good measure produced a piece of neatly typed paper—he’d asked for an electric typewriter two days after he arrived and Marianne, regarding this as a perfectly normal requirement, had ordered him one. On the piece of paper he had listed the subject he wished to search for, the databases he wished to search, and the search terms he thought would be most useful. Caro looked at this effort and—instead of being grateful that for the first time in her life she had a client who not only knew what a database search was but knew how it was done—went scarlet with fury.
“You can’t do this,” she said in a strangled voice, holding on to the shreds of her temper with a supreme effort.
“Oh? Why would that be?” said Charlie politely. “I’m not quite up to date with the ERIC search terms, I guess; but those others are pretty much okay, aren’t they?”
Caro said nothing.
Anxiously he continued: “I think I am right in assuming you can access all those databases from New Zealand?”
“Oh, sure, Mister Perfect Bloody American, you’re quite right in assooming that!” cried Caro, scarlet to the roots of her hair. “But what do you imagine you’re going to access them ON?” She pointed a furious, shaking hand at the very ordinary grey telephone on the issue desk. “Does that look like a modem? –No, it does NOT!” she swept on before Charlie could answer. “Have you ever seen anything resembling a modem in my office? –NO! You can assoom as much as you like, but it won’t get you onto your precious American databases from this neck of the bloody woods, Mister Perfect California Library User!”
By the end of this outburst Charlie was also scarlet to the roots of his hair. He got very formal, which he tended to do when he was very angry indeed, and said: “I hardly think the deficiencies of this institution are an excuse for attacking me on the grounds of my nationality, Caro; and I would appreciate an apology from you before this discussion gets quite out of hand.”
At this point, if Caro had burst into tears, as she felt like doing, things would quite probably have taken a very different and much more satisfactory turn. But Caro had absolutely no intention of letting herself down like that in front of him.
“The deficiencies of this institution?” she cried. “It may have escaped your notice, Mr Bloody Perfect, but I’ve been sweating blood for the past bloody year to maintain even a minimal standard of service in this dump—WHICH I was not hired to do, I might add! Not to mention slogging my guts out over the information system for the new library—which includes full DIALOG access, just by the way—and for which I have had not one offer of help from all you so-called bloody research experts on our so-called pathetic academic staff! So there! And now you bowl up here half an hour after the library’s closed and expect me to run round catering to your bloody unreasonable demands like a flaming lapdog—and you’ve got the cheek to expect me to grovel to you because YOUR bloody Institute hasn’t given me the money or the facilities to provide anything halfway approaching an information service in this freezing, draughty HOLE!” She kicked the prefab wall beside her viciously. “I’ll apologize to you when the moon turns blue, and not before, Doctor Roddenberry!”
“Listen, your grant’s got nothing to do with me!” cried Charlie, forgetting to be very formal. “And I’m sorry if it’s after hours, but the library door was open! And I still don’t see that that gives you the right to make racist comments about my background and my accent! And what’s more if we were in the States I’d take you to court for that! All I asked you to do was book me in on your system—not even to do the search for me! You New Zealanders are all the same: not one of you ’ud recognise the concept of customer service if it hit you right in the mouth! You’re all a bunch of goddamn amateurs, and Jesus preserve me from the lot of y—”
“If you don’t get out of here right this minute I’ll hit YOU right in the mouth!” yelled Caro. “Get out, get out, get OUT! And don’t come back until you’ve learned to behave like a human being instead of a bloody AUTOMATON!” –The last at the top of her voice, because Charlie was getting out.
“Crikey!” said Veronica at this point in the narrative.
“Yes!” said Peter, very pleased, nodding firmly. He got up and picked up their plates and the empty salad bowl. “I think it is very significant that she accuse him of beink an automaton—no? Now I go to get the cheese.”
“Camembert! Thank God I can eat it again!” cried Veronica when he came back. She watched greedily as Peter cut her a huge wedge of cheese. “I think you’re right about the automaton bit,” she added.
“Da.”
She ate cheese, sighed, and said: “Perfect! This bread’s good too; where’d ya get it?”
“At The Deli, in Puriri.”
“Aw, yeah—in The Arcade,” said Veronica with her mouth full. She swallowed. “Underneath the Cheese Basil.”
“Yes; they also supploy the Chez Basil, I believe.”
“Thought Polly said that that Gary bloke makes ’is own bread?”
“Only on certain days, or if they have very special guests, I believe.”
“Oh.” Veronica ate more cheese and French bread. “What happened next?”
Peter swallowed cheese and replied happily: “Next naughty Dr Riabouchinsky takes his ear away from the door of the Gents and creeps out ve-ry cautiously into the passage.”
Veronica chuckled. “Did Caro see ya?”
Peter twinkled. “No, because first she throws a book on the floor and then she puts her head on the desk and bursts into tears.”
“Ah-ha!”
“Absolutely, moy dearest! Then I go back to moy office, and next-door in Charlie’s office I hear something that confirms my suspicions.”
“What?” said Veronica eagerly.
Peter was very pleased about the eagerness, because it meant that his wife was actually taking an interest in some other human beings besides herself, her husband and their two babies—a trend which he had every intention of encouraging.
“Well, first he walks up and down a lot—very angry, you know? Eugh… stamping—no, not stamping, what is the word?”
“Um,” said Veronica, frowning. “Tramping... no: stomping!”
“Oui, c’est ça! Stomping! He is stompink up and down for quoite a whoile; then I hear him start to talk to himself; first not very loud, so I do not catch the words; then he says ‘Jesus! Jesus H. Christ!’”
“‘Jesus H. Christ,’ eh?” said Veronica interestedly. “Musta been worked up.”
“Oh, yes: he was very work-èd up. Then I hear the stomping stop. Then he says very loud: ‘Fuck!’” He looked triumphantly at her.
“Charlie did?” she gasped. “Hell’s teeth! He went as red as a beet just because Sharon said ‘bugger’, last time he was here!”
“Da. –She copies you; I tell you she would.”
“Never mind that; go on!”
“Well, then he stomps bit more; and he says ‘Oh, Goddamn!’ and then he throws something!”
“Nev-er!”
“Mais si! Something really heavy—a dictionary, perhaps.”
“Never mind what he threw; didja hear anything else?”
“Yes; I save the best for last!” He twinkled naughtily, and sipped his wine.
“Get on with it before I strangle you!” cried his wife.
Peter grinned. “Then, I think, he sits down at his desk, because I hear his chair creak; then he thumps the desk very hard with his fist, several toimes, and he says: ‘Jesus God! Why did I ever have to meet the bitch! Jesus!’ Then he h’yits the desk again. Then he starts to croy.”
Veronica’s was now looking appalled. “Heck,” she said slowly. “Poor old Charlie.”
“Yes,” agreed Peter inconsiderable satisfaction.
“Shit, it sounds as if he’s really fallen for her.”
“Mm.”
“Um, but Peter, listen. I mean, obviously he’s got it bad for her, but— I mean, I know she called him an automaton...”
“But does she really care?” He frowned. “There is nothing one can put one’s finger on; except that I am very sure that that scene I have just descroibed to you arose out of sexual antagonism, far more than out of Caro’s frustration with her inadequate facilities; it is what I felt most strongly, at the toime, you know.”
“Ye-ah,” said Veronica thoughtfully, absent-mindedly eating the last piece of French bread and the last sliver of cheese without asking him if he wanted them. Peter’s mouth twitched but he said nothing.
“Peter,” she said after a while, not looking at him: “when were you planning this shindig of yours for?”
“Not a shindig; a very select little dinner party,” said Peter firmly.
“Yeah: but when?”
“Well—perhaps Saturday?”
“That might give us time.”
“Toime for what?”
Veronica chuckled. “To get the dining-room habitable, ya dreamer! You’d forgotten all about that, hadn’tcha?”
“Ah, merde!” said Peter loudly. The dining-room still had a hole in the wall where Veronica had attacked it, it had no wallpaper and no carpet—in short, it was an interior desert.
“You said after that last time that you’d never have four people eating in this room again,” Veronica reminded him. Their little round table, a heavily restored Edwardian card table that Polly and Veronica had found in a second-hand shop in town (and that Jake had refused categorically to buy), normally stood in the far bay of the drawing room, but tonight they’d drawn it up to the big electric heater that graced the spot where the fireplace lay hidden.
“So I did,” Peter agreed glumly. Their last dinner guests hadn’t coped very well with coq au vin off their knees or balanced on little side tables, and Peter had been covered by embarrassment by the whole thing—though nobody else had, including Veronica. A dear little rug had had to be abandoned after Nat had knocked a glass of burgundy onto it.
“We haven’t even chosen the colour for the walls, yet,” Veronica added.
“No, but I know the perfect colour,” he said, getting up and collecting their cheese plates. “A noice pale fawn!” he said quickly and closed the door on his wife’s loud groan.
When he came back Veronica said: “Ooh!”—and didn’t say anything else for a bit.
Peter ate a small portion of crème caramel, reflecting that it was an excellent way of painlessly getting milk into the nursing mother’s system—she loathed warm milk, and said that milkshakes made her spew.
When the little table had been cleared and neatly restored to its proper place—Peter’s doing, Veronica would just have left it—and they were sitting cosily on the sofa, Peter with a very tiny cup of very black coffee and Veronica with a huge cup of very weak, very milky coffee, she said: “Who else shall we invite?”
“Let me think... perhaps Magda von Trotte?” He held his head on one side.
“We-ell—if ya promise not to talk German all night like at that do of Polly’s,” replied Veronica dubiously.
Peter chuckled. “Not a word of German shall pass moy lips, mein Liebchen!”
“Very funny.” She drank some coffee. “God, this is revolting!”
“You would prefer the warm milk without the coffee, perhaps?”
“Hah, hah,” she said sourly.
He slipped an arm round her. “That’s better.”
Veronica sighed and put her head on his shoulder. After a few moments she said: “I’ll leak if you squeeze me like that.”
“So? Then I lick it up,” he replied tranquilly.
She went red, and scowled. “Must you say that sorta thing? I mean, it doesn’t matter when it's just us, but you’ve started staying it in front of other people!”
“That verdammt Karitane nurse,” he spotted unerringly. “I think perhaps maybe it is toime to let her go, da? We do not have the toime together to be intimate that we should have.”
“You’re out at work all day, anyway,” said Veronica glumly.
Peter was extremely pleased by this remark and replied instantly: “Ah! But I would not be, if this damned woman is not in moy house monopoloizing moy woife and baby all the day! I get rid of her next week—okay? And we just have noice Mrs Fergusson to come in and help with the housework.”
“Ye-ah; if you promise to be home a lot during the day for the next couple of months.”
“I promise; there is much marking to do at this toime of the year and I can always bring it home with me.”
Veronica gave a deep sigh. “Great! And Mrs Fergusson knows all about babies, so if anything crops up, we can always ask her.”
“Absolutely! Kiss me?”
Veronica kissed him tenderly. Peter hugged her tight. “Ah! That’s so much better!” he said at last.
“Good.” She snuggled back against his shoulder, picked up her coffee and drank it without remarking either on its milkiness or on the fact that it was now tepid.
“And after a whoile we get a nanny for the two little ones—when Little Mother is ready to do some intellectual work again—no?”
“Mm.”
“A noice young girl,” said Peter firmly. “Then we can tell her what we want her to do, and not voice versa.”
“Yeah—too right!” agreed Veronica fervently. “So how many does that make?”
“Pardon?”
“Guests: we’ve got Hamish and Mirry; and Charlie and Caro; and Magda—I s’pose that means Bruno?”
“I think we just ask her to bring a companion, moy darling; then she can bring Ken Armitage, if he’s free.”
“Yeah—good idea. –That’s a funny marriage,” she added.
“Who? Magda and Bruno? Da; it is a... I don’t know an English expression: mariage de convenance?”
“A marriage of convenience,” said Veronica. “Yeah; that’d be it; I’m damn sure he’s not up her.”
“You put these things so daintily, moy dearest!” said Peter, chuckling.
“Anyway, that’d be three couples, plus us.”
“Mm-m.” Peter was mentally comparing ages and experiences. Who would recall eighteen years back? Mirry was too young; Ken Armitage, who was a friend and contemporary of Jake’s, was a bit too old—though of course he would remember eighteen years back as well as anyone, but Peter wanted the atmosphere to be right. Caro and Charlie were a bit young; how old would they have been, eighteen years ago?—about fifteen?—that was just possible for the party game, he supposed; and there really should be someone nearer Mirry’s age, he didn’t want her to be left out in the cold.
“Ah! I have it! Erik and Pauline!” Erik Nilsson was within a few years of Hamish’s age, and Pauline Weintraub would be two or three years older than Mirry.
“Yeah, that’d be nice,” Veronica agreed, a little puzzled by his triumphant tone.
“You think that will work? That we will be a noice cosy party?”
Veronica thought it over. “Magda’s too old, really.”
“But so am I,” said Peter tranquilly.
“I’m sorry, Peter!”
“That is quoite all roight; but we invoite Magda and Ken—or Bruno, of course—to balance your elderly husband, okay?
“Yeah; but NO German!”
“Magda will not talk German in such a small gathering,” said Peter calmly, moving her hand up his thigh. “Mm, that’s good.”
Veronica made a small noise of content.
“Veronica, when was it, that you change your scent to please me?”
“Eh?” cried Veronica incredulously. “How the Hell didja ferret that one out, ya cunning Sherlock?”
“I h’yave moy methods, Watsonia. –Actually,” he admitted when she’d stopped giggling helplessly, “Helen let it out by accident, just today, on the phone.”
“Why the Hell were ya talking to Helen about— Gawd, let it pass,” she groaned.
Peter chuckled. “We were talking about flowers—I gave Nat some freesias for her, you see; and—”
“Yeah, yeah; say no more!” groaned Veronica, “Mighta known I couldn’t keep anything secret from you—ya ferret out everything, sooner or later!”
Peter chuckled complacently.
In spite of his detective abilities, the fact that Veronica had kept her counsel about the scent business for so long didn’t suggest anything to him—except possibly that she’d felt shy about it. And he still hadn’t the faintest idea of what she’d done for Pauline, two years ago: she hadn’t breathed a word to anyone about Pauline being pregnant. In fact, he’d got so used to thinking of himself as the one with interpersonal skills that he didn’t even stop to think, as the intuitive Nat had done, that his wife was as close an oyster when she chose to be.
Veronica, who could have solved the whole puzzle of Carol’s parentage immediately and put poor Nat out of his misery and—if Nat’s theory about Carol was correct—possibly helped to bring Carol out of hers, fell deeply asleep that evening with her husband’s face, as usual, in her boobs.
But the great detective, though warm, comfortable and nicely relaxed, lay there for some time working out dainty elaborations on his dinner party scheme which might not only help to bring Charlie and Caro together but also establish whether Hamish was Carol’s father once and for all.
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