Consequences

16

Consequences

Jill’s narrative

    Isn’t it funny how when you’re nervously anticipating A, it doesn’t happen along at all but B ruddy well does? If we hadn’t all been imagining ourselves as the Eighties’ Hercule Poirot, solving The Swimming Pool Murder, some of us might have noticed a few other things that were going on in, as it were, the background. The background to the flaming murder at Pohutukawa Bay, yeah. Not the background to people’s actual lives.

    I still don’t know all the ins and outs of it and frankly, I don’t want to, ta. I was right, however, about Polly going off the rails when she got back from the farm. Though the implications of that didn’t dawn on me, alas. First—um, was it? Yes, it was. First she made the big mistake of going out with bloody Leo and giving him the huge brush-off. True, she had been brushing him off for several years, dunno if you recall that. Well, I most certainly should have recalled it. But you know how it is, you get used to situations and you expect them to go on forever. And at the time of course I thought—and I am unanimous in this—that sleeping with the creep would have been much, much worse than not. Silly me. I gather it went more or less like this:

    “This is not the best restaurant in the country,” noted Leo, ushering Polly into the plush, air-conditioned precincts of The Royal.

    “No,” she said faintly.

    “L’Oie Qui Rit is the best restaurant in the country—indeed, in the southern hemisphere; but I, hélas, am persona non grata with la vieille.”

    Polly had been there a couple of times with Jake and knew that the old Frenchwoman who ran it was a Holy Terror. “With Madame?” she said cautiously. “Why?”

    He shrugged. “A small contretemps over the small matter of whether or not I was to smoke a cigarette.”

    “In the restaurant?” said Polly in a hollow voice.

    “Oh, I see that Someone has told you all about Madame’s little pe-cu-li-a-ri-ty, ma mie.”

    “It’s her strictest rule,” said Polly, swallowing.

    “No: never accepting customers who can’t pay is her strictest rule, la gueuse,” he drawled. “—Ah, oui, merci: for two. Schmidt,” he said to the maître d’.

    “Blow,” said Polly as they went through to the restaurant proper.

    “You have forgotten something, mon ange? Or you wish to do pipi?”

    “No: I had a bet with myself that it’d be grey and peach.”

    “Tut, tut: the year before last’s colours. No, pale puce is very much In, this year.”

    “Isn’t it?” said Polly in a hollow voice, picking up her silver-grey, water-lily-shaped napkin from the pale puce tablecloth.

    “Indubitably. –You had better order a stiff one, my dear,” he said as a waiter swanned up to them: “the food here is un-speak-able.”

    “Didn’t it get an honourable mention in that foody column in Metro a bit back?” she replied without much interest.

    “Précisément,” he drawled.

    Swallowing a giggle, Polly said to the hovering waiter: “Would you mind describing how you do a margarita?”

    “Pardon?” he replied blankly.

    “At this hotel,” said Polly, not waiting for Leo to come to her aid because she knew he wouldn’t: “How do you do a margarita at this hotel?”

    The man had recovered himself and replied stiffly: “The Royal does an excellent margarita.” He described it fully.

    “Real rock salt?” said Polly suspiciously.

    “Certainly, madam,” he replied with an effort.

    “Good; I’ll have one, thanks.”

    “Certainly, madam.”

    Sir, it then transpired, required a vodka. But Sir didn’t require a glass, he required to see the bottle. Unopened.

    “Will he ever recover?” said Polly faintly as the man eventually tottered off after Leo had made him open the bottle and pour from it before his very eyes. And then leave the bottle.

    “Oh, undoubtedly. The moment I order the most expensive champagne on the list.”

    “Don’t,” she said, biting her lip.

    “But you do like champagne, ma mie?”

    “Yes, I love it. I love the bubbles,” said Polly simply.

    “So?”

    “The most expensive one,” she said, lips twitching, “won’t necessarily be the best.”

    “Almost undoubtedly not, I should say,” he drawled, looking round at their fellow-diners. “Look at all the Japs,” he added loudly: “the place is crawling with them!”

    Polly didn’t bother to say “Ssh,” she knew that’d make him much worse. “Yes, well, there you are. And there’s lots of Americans, too.”

    “How can you tell? –Apart from the shouting, of course.”

    “The tailoring.”

     Leo looked carefully around the room. “Ah: the case of the dog in the night.”

    Giggling, Polly agreed: “Exactly!”

    “What a leet-le beetch it can be, at times,” he drawled offensively, showing her the tip of his tongue between his white teeth.

     Polly replied calmly: “What a leet-le beetch it can be, at times.”

    Leo raised his eyebrows. “Mais naturellement. Would you come out with me, else?”

    “Probably not. –I will say this for you, Leo,” she said, leaning her elbows on the table: “you’re not boring.”

    “No? A few more years in this frightful country, and I soon shall be, don’t worry.”

    “I don’t know why you don’t take off for Paris: haven’t you got cousins there?”

    “Oh, thousands of them. But somehow, you know, there is Something keeping me here,” he drawled maliciously.

    “Rubbish,” said Polly, going very red and looking away from him.

    “I cannot stand the thought of life without the daily sight of Madeleine Depardieu’s three chins and hairy mole,” he explained.

    Polly bit her lip with a strangled giggle.

    Leo had been glancing through his menu. He closed it and said: “You choose what to eat; I wish to see whether you have perfected the imitation of the good colonial mum.”

    “What imitation?” she gasped, taken aback.

    “But the imitation you have been practising with notre cher Roger, what else?” he drawled.

    “I have not!”

    “Cr-rra-ap, my dear: you have told him what to wear, where to live, what to buy to sit on, what to eat and drink and as far as is humanly determinable, how to just plain breathe, almost without ceasing for the last twelve months.”

    “Rubbish,” said Polly with a pout, shooting him a look under her lashes.

    Lips twitching, he said: “Do please tell me what to eat, Polly, I would so like to know what it feels like to have one of those managing colonial mums!”

    “Give it here,” she said resignedly, reaching for his menu. Leo watched in amusement.

    After some time of frowning perusal, she sighed and said: “Now, listen, Mervyn: you’re not to touch the shellfish, you know what it does to your tummy. Remember last Christmas at Aunty Gladdie’s!”

    Gulping a bit, he managed to whinge: “But I loike shellfush, Norma, I reckon I’ll be all right!”

    “That’ll do,” said Polly repressively. “You can have this lamb thing, it sounds all right.” Sighing heavily, she added: “I don’t know why we had to come to this place at all. Fancy muck.”

    “It can’t hurt for once, Norma,” he whinged.

    “What, with your stomach? –Yes, he’ll have the lamb chops,” she said as the waiter came up to them. “Without chips, greasy chips have never agreed with Mervyn’s stomach.”

    “Aw, Norma!” he whinged.

    “That’ll do, Mervyn, you know they bring on your heartburn. –I might as well have the chops, too,” she said heavily to the waiter.

    “Yes, madam,” he replied faintly. “Uh—would you like starters?”

    “He won’t,” said Polly before Leo could speak.

    “Now, Norma, one little shellfush cocktail—”

    “Certainly not! You’d be up all night!”

    “Aw, well... What say I just have the avocado, then?”

    Polly looked hurriedly at the menu—though not, to the waiter’s confusion, at the page which listed the appetisers. “You will NOT! It’s got shrimps on it!”

    “Aw, Norm’... Oh, all right, then,” he said sulkily.

    “I’ll have a small tomato juice, thanks, and he’ll have a small grapefruit juice,” she said.

    “It’s too acid!” objected Leo, shoulders beginning to shake.

    “Rubbish, Mervyn, it’ll get your juices working!” replied Polly huffily.

    Leo broke down and had a fit of hysterics all over The Royal’s pale puce tablecloth.

    “I think that’s it, thanks,” she said, smiling at the waiter, and handing him the two menus.

    “Uh—yes. Thank you, madam,” he said, eyeing the Leo warily. “Uh—would you like to order a wine?”

    “Too—acid!” gasped Leo through his giggles.

    “Yes, we’ll have champagne. Would you ask the wine waiter to come over?” replied Polly blithely.

    “Certainly, madam.” The unfortunate man tottered off.

    “How did it feel?” she said.

    “Ooh, it was a rr-real kinky thrr-rill!” he assured her, wiping his eyes.

    “I bet.”

    “And now you have ordered me lamb, which I abominate, refused me the frîtes, which they do not badly here, and ordered me a grapefruit juice, which I find too acid!” he said, pouting horribly, amber eyes sparkling at her.

    “Serves ya right,” said Polly in a hard voice.

    “Couldn’t we change our order?” he asked plaintively.

    “No: everything else is even fouler, didn’t you look at the menu?”

    “But would not leathery steaks smothered in pulped mango and peanut butter”—Polly winced—“be preferable to leathery sheep smothered in mozzarella cheese and green peppers?”

    Calmly she replied: “That’s the noisettes. I ordered the chops.”

    Leo said faintly: “Côtelettes d’agneau à l’anglaise?”

    “Yes.”

    “Darling, they’ll be slathered in yicky white sauce with horrid little pieces of chopped celery and carrot floating in it!”

    “Yes.”

    “Merde de merde,” he whispered.

    “Yes.”

    Leo gave in and had another giggling fit.

    On Violet Macdonald’s front verandah he kissed her gently. “That was very pleasant,” he murmured.

    “Yes, it was, actually,” admitted Polly.

    “Not the dinner!” he said in horror.

    “No,” she admitted.

    Leo kissed her again. He slid his hands up from her waist and cupped her breasts. “Mmm... One could go inside,” he noted.

    “One could, if one wished to meet Aunty Vi in person,” she agreed.

    Swallowing, he said: “At twelve forty-five? She wouldn’t?”

    “Of course she would.”

    Leo sighed. “You should have come back to my place.”

    “No, I shouldn’t,” replied Polly simply.

    He was beginning: “Alors, one more kiss—?” when a light snapped on behind the stained-glass panel in the front door and a sharp elderly voice cried: “Is that you, Polly, dear?”

    “See?”

    “I see why you decided to spend the night here, yes,” he agreed grimly.

    “It’s okay, Aunty Vi!” she called. “I’ve got a nine o’clock appointment in town tomorrow, that’s why I decided to spend the night here,” she said to Leo.

    He made a rude noise, pinched her chin, said: “Keep it up, darr-ling. Soon you won’t have to make an effort at all to be the managing colonial bitch!” and ran down the path.

Jill’s narrative

    An elderly aunt is an excellent prophylactic when one doesn’t intend to sleep with the guy one’s just had dinner with. Dinner and what I gather was a fairly extended session in his car, ugh. And since Leo isn’t simple-minded, he must have flaming well realised when she told him to pick her up from old Violet’s place that she had no intention of yer actual intercourse! I’d feel sorry for him but subsequent events sort of nullified that.

    No, well, a beast he is but a bloody attractive beast, even I can see that. Therefore holding back had the sort of effect on a very red-blooded female that you might expect. Well, it was all pretty harmless and I’m not denying she handled it. Hurt feelings apart. All notions of fidelity to the man one’s supposed to be in love with, dumped or not, apart. I’m not being mysterious, it was the Michelangelic Roderick. Young enough to be putty in her hands—yeah. Er, unfortunate choice of phrase, in the context, but you know what I mean. And he was far from unwilling: in fact he initiated it, so no-one need feel sorry for him, silly young idiot.

    Some people might have learned a lesson from last year’s encounters to the effect of not fooling around with pleasant young men who you knew bloody well you’d never want seriously, but Polly knew she wasn’t one of those people. So when Rod turned up late one afternoon with a silly grin on his face and said in a silly voice: “Hullo. Brought you some pecans,” she replied: “Ooh, ta.” And asked him in warmly. Very warmly. Possibly the vodka she’d been drinking was a factor—yeah.

    Rod smiled uneasily. “You okay?”

    “Very slightly pissed,” replied Polly with precision. “Come in anyway.”

    Rod came in, though he knew it was bloody stupid of him. Specially as she seemed to be only wearing a floral sarong—was it one of the ones she’d lent Leo and that mate of Gretchen’s brother’s, back before Christmas? Red with yellow flowers. She had a large yellow hibiscus behind one ear. It wasn’t the same shade of yellow, quite a lot paler, but it did look quite good with it.

    “You look very Hawaiian,” he said inanely, following her into the sitting-room.

    “I pinched this off one of His Macho Thick-Brained Lordship’s flaming shrubs, any objections?” she replied with a glare.

    “No: pinch as many of ’is ruddy hibiscuses as ya like, for mine,” replied Rod with an assumption of ease.

    “I will!” she promised, inspecting the contents of his paper bag. “Ooh: great big ones! In their shells! Super! Where on earth did you get them?”

    Rod had had to make a toll call to his second cousin down on the farm in the South Island who was getting into exotic nuts. Joe had thought he was crackers, of course, making an expensive phone call over a few nuts. “My cousins down in Nelson sent them up,” he said casually.

    “Yum!” replied Polly, beaming. “They’ll help wash the vodka down!” She put the bag of nuts on the coffee table next to the vodka bottle and sat down on the sofa.

    “Um, yeah. Here,” said Rod, producing a pair of nutcrackers from the back pocket of his jeans.

    “Gee, all that and a boy scout too!” said Polly with a loud giggle.

    “Um, yeah,” Shit, she was pissed, all right; maybe he oughta clear out.

    “You could grab a glass, if you like,” said Polly, carefully selecting a nut from the bag.

    “Ta,” said Rod weakly. Her good glasses were in the bottom of the big old kauri dresser she used in here as a bookcase. She’d stripped it and given it a coat of polyurethane, it looked really good. “Hey, this dresser must be worth quite a bit, ya know,” he said, hunting for something that looked approximately like a shot glass.

    “Thanks, but His Worshipful Macho Antique Expertness has already told me that,” she said sourly.

    Oops. Grimacing, he grabbed a tumbler and brought it back to the table. Obligingly Polly filled it two-thirds full.

    “Neat?” said Rod in a weak voice.

    “It’s real Russian vodka, Leo gave it to me. Would your Polish heritage allow you to drink it any other way?”

    His specific Polish heritage’d probably guarantee he’d turn into a certified alcoholic before he hit forty, if he drank much of that stuff. “I will if you will,” he said with an uneasy grin.

    Polly moved up on the sofa, patting the place beside her. “Sit down.”

    All right, he would. Rod sat down.

    She poured an inch into her own tumbler. They were Scandinavian of some kind, she’d bought them not long since as a cocktail set, complete with a great tall glass and a sort of giant swizzle stick meant for stirring, and if you asked him, the Scandawegians didn’t know what a cocktail was, because they weren’t like any cocktail glasses in the books he’d consulted. She mainly used them for whisky, though they weren’t proper whisky tumblers, either: not wide enough. Probably just as well.

    “Go on,” she said, handing him a nut.

    “Uh—yeah!” Rod cracked it for her.

    “Ta.” Polly ate it. “Lovely!” She picked up her vodka glass. “Perdition to ’em, eh?”

    “Uh—yeah, I’ll drink to that,” said Rod weakly.

    They drank to that. And ate quite a few nuts. And drank quite a lot more of the vodka. And ate more nuts. By this time it was getting dark but Rod didn’t point this out or suggest putting the light on.

    “You look good in that Hawaiian thing,” he ventured.

    “Ta. You look good in your chest and jeans!” said Polly with a giggle.

    “Hah, hah,” said Rod with a sheepish grin. “How does it stay up?”

    “Good luck, abs’ly no good judgement!” replied Polly with a loud laugh.

    “Uh-huh.” Experimentally he removed the hibiscus from behind her ear.

    “Was that the wrong ear?” said Polly muzzily.

    “Mm.” He popped it in the top of the sarong, just between the twin bulges.

    “Ooh!” she said with a loud giggle.

    “I’ll say,” agreed Rod, putting a hand over one of the bulges, since it was there. “Hey, ’member that time in the car?” he said hoarsely.

    “Which?” replied Polly muzzily.

    He cleared his throat. It had only been once, in his car. “At the Grad Ball.”

    “Ooh, yeah!” agreed Polly with a loud giggle. She looked up at him and smiled into his eyes.

    Immediately Rod bent over her and kissed her.

    About two seconds after that she had his zip down and her hand was in his jeans.

    About two seconds after that he was kissing her tits like crazy and the sarong was dangling onto the floor.

    “Ooh, Rod!” gasped Polly as he mumbled his face between her breasts.

    “Good, eh?” he said thickly into them.

    “Mm-mm—it’s so ni-ice,” she moaned.

     Rod kissed her wetly. “You wanna come?” he said huskily into her ear.

    “Mm. Can you do it properly? Have you got any condoms?”

    “Yeah, thoughtcha knew I was a boy scout?” he said with a grin, biting her ear.

    “Ooh! Do that!” she gasped, clutching his back tightly.

    All right, he would. Experimentally Rod bit her ear again. She gave a squeal and put her legs right up. He could have just got up her right then and there, frankly, but this sofa was bloody narrow. “Um, look, let’s do it in bed, eh?”

    “Good idea,” said Polly faintly.

    Rod stood up, his chest heaving, and held out his hand to her.

    Smiling muzzily at him, Polly allowed herself the delicious sensation of being hauled to her feet by beautiful young, muscly Rod and plastered to Rod’s beautiful young body with his beautiful young penis pressing hard against her belly. He was a good kisser, too: he had quite a nice, squashy tongue that could really fill your mouth. At the same time it could be quite a—an athletic tongue, she recognised muzzily as it wound itself round hers while his hand crept round her bum and—ooh!

    “Like that?” he said in a low voice in her ear.

    “Mm!” squeaked Polly, as his heart thudded frantically against her.

    Rod tickled her arse for a bit, since she seemed to be wriggling and making little squeaking noises. Then he slid his hand further under— “Jesus, you’re wet under there,” he said in a shaken voice.

    “Um, yes,” said Polly weakly. “Am I? That’s you, I think.”

    “Come into the bedroom,” said Rod hoarsely.

    They went into the bedroom. Since her fancy coverlet was on the bed—it was some sort of fake Jacobean embroidery pattern, she’d bought a length of the stuff and made the cover herself—he kindly peeled it back neatly.

    Polly looked limply at perfect Rod preparing the bed neatly and swallowed. He was just so sweet, as well as so gorgeous! She went up to him and pressed against his back.

    “Jesus!” said Rod in a shaken voice.

    “Isn’t skin good?” replied Polly muzzily.

    “I’ll say! Come on!” he said hoarsely.

    “Don’t forget to use a condom,” replied Polly, getting into bed.

    “No. Uh—bugger! Hang on!” He staggered back into the other room, grabbed the condoms from his jeans pocket, and hurried back. He wasn’t so far gone that the thought didn’t cross his mind that she might have passed out in the interval, but she hadn’t, she was lying there smiling at him—

    Rod pulled the condom on with shaking fingers and rolled on top of her. “I’m not gonna last,” he warned grimly.

    “No,” said Polly in a vague voice, hugging him. “That’s okay.”

    He began to kiss her but it was too good so he just got up there. Jesus! “Don’t move,” he said through his teeth.

    “I’ve got to!” gasped Polly, sliding up and down on him. “Oh!” she shrieked, clenching helplessly on him.

    Rod was just about aware that she was squeezing him like crazy as he pumped furiously into her, let go and exploded like a rocket up there, yelling his head off.

    “Aa-eeeiii-AH!” shrieked Polly, with a last wild contraction on his softened penis.

    Rod just lay on top of her, panting, as his poor little feller fell right out of her.

    “All ri’?” he managed eventually.

    “Bi’ my ear,” replied Polly muzzily.

    All right, he would. Groggily he bit it.

    “Other one,” she croaked.

    Groggily he bit the other—

    “Eee-ee-uh!” she shrieked on a high-pitched note. He felt her body jerk beneath him. Cripes.

    “That it?” he gasped.

    “Mm. Ta.”

    About ten centuries later he rolled onto his back, drew her into his side and said groggily: “Does that often happen?”

    “What?”

    “That you keep on coming like that. Um, contracting. When your ear’s bitten.”

    “Mm. Us’lly,” said Polly, yawning widely. “Only that ear.”

     Uh—right. Weird.

    “Weird, huh?” she said sleepily.

    “Mm,” agreed Rod with a smile.

    They both woke early, with splitting headaches.

    Rod sat up and held his curly head in his hands. “Musta been the vodka. Remind me not to do that again,” he said weakly.

    Polly gulped, tried unsuccessfully to stop herself, and burst out laughing. “Ow, my head!” she gasped finally.

    “Sorry,” he grinned. They smiled into each other’s eyes.

    There was a little pause. Then Polly said uncertainly “Rod—”

    “It’s all right, you were pissed out of your brain, it didn’t mean anything,” said Rod heavily.

    Polly made a face. Not too pissed to remember it all, she hadn’t been. “Mm. It was awfully good, though,” she admitted.

    Sneakily Rod slid his hand onto her thigh.

    “Don’t tempt me.”

    For answer he grabbed her hand and put it on his cock.

    “Yes,” said Polly, swallowing hard. “I mean, I know, only don’t.”

    “Are you wet?” he said conversationally, rubbing the hand up and down on him, since it was there.

    “I am now,” she admitted.

    “Cummere,” he said, snuggling down and pulling her hard against him. “I wanna fuck,” he said in her ear.

    “Even with your headache?” replied Polly feebly.

    “Mm. One more round, eh?” said Rod, putting his tongue experimentally in her ear.

    “Yes,” said Polly huskily, giving in entirely and hugging him fiercely.

    He sat up, grabbed a condom, wrenched the packet apart bodily, pulled the thing on, fell on top of her and shoving it up there, fucked like crazy and came like a rocket.

    Then he rolled off her, panting, shoved his face in there and got his tongue up in the wet.

    “Do it!” she shrieked, and clenching terrifically, screeched her head off.

    “Crumbs,” he said feebly about fifteen centuries later.

    “Mm,” admitted Polly, swallowing hard. “Thanks for that.”

    “Shit, it was my pleasure!”

    “No; I mean sort of, um, keeping doing it with your tongue, until I’d, um, finished.”

    “Until I’d got the last twitch out of ya? Yeah,” said Rod, rolling onto his back. “Look, Polly, I know you were full of vodka last night but if you, um, can react like that, I mean, um, well, respond like that to the R. Jablonski technique, couldn’t we keep on with it?”

    “I can’t. It’s just sex. I mean, I like you as well, only—”

    “Then why not?” he cried, raising himself on an elbow, very flushed.

    “Because,” said Polly heavily, “it wouldn’t be fair to you. I know I’m not in love with you.”

    “If it’s the bloody age difference—”

    It was, partly, of course. There were about six years between them and in your twenties that counted for a Helluva lot. “It is partly that,” she said honestly. “But that wouldn’t count if I was in love with you. But I’m not. I dunno why not, you’re awfully nice. Well, too nice, I think.”

    “Thanks!” he said angrily. “What the Hell’s a bloke supposed to make of that?”

    “Rod,” said Polly with a sigh, “I can’t explain it. It’s just, um, a matter of temperament, or something. Well, um, you’re the sort of nice person that peels back the bedspread before we do it, never mind how eager you might feel.”

    “Eh?” croaked poor Rod, staring at her.

    “I’m not saying I didn’t appreciate it; I did, it was very thoughtful!” she said hurriedly.

    “Then what are you on about?”

    “I don’t know, exactly. Only that I—I seem to go for the sort of macho idiot that, um, picks you up bodily and throws you down on top of your bedspread, never mind if you made it yourself and it’ll have to got to the drycleaners, and, um, gets on with it.”

    “Him, ya mean,” he said sourly.

    “Um, well, yeah.”

    “Look, he’s dumped you! Can’t you forget him?” he cried angrily.

    Polly sat up and hugged her knees, sighing. “Apparently not. Have you still got a headache?”

    “What? Yes!” he said impatiently.

    “So’ve I. It’s not a cure for it, apparently.”

    Apparently it wasn’t a cure for anything else, either, no matter how much she’d liked it—and he was in no doubt whatsoever she had. Sighing, he got out of bed. “Got any Panadol?”

    “Mm. In the bathroom cabinet. Get me some, too? –Ta,” said Polly on a glum note.

    When he’d gone home she lay face down and had a good cry.

Jill’s narrative

    So who does she run off and ’fess up this one to? No, not yours truly—not first off, no. Give you three guesses. No? Poor bloody Browne, that was who. He didn’t burst into tears, one gathers, but it was a near-run thing. Then she came into town and favoured me with the lot. I was on my balcony, making the most of the fact that the place was like an oven in summer.

    I groped for the top of my togs. “What?”

    Mitchell replied simply: “I’d had a lot of vodka, like I said, and—um, Rod just looked at me and I, um, gave in.”

    “Not that! Telling poor bloody Roger!”

    “Um, yes. It was stupid,” she said lamely.

    Good word for it. “Polly, why are you telling me all this?”

    “Probably out of a subconscious wish to be chastised and absolved,” she admitted with a sigh.

    “Well, go elsewhere. Look, I can understand why you did it with the peerless Michelangelic Roderick—well, it was right on top of not going to bed with Leo, I suppose that was a factor, too—but why in God’s name did you spill your guts to Roger?”

    She swallowed. “I don’t know. I never meant to; but somehow it all came out.”

    “Quite apart from anything else, he’s the last person who’d understand!”

    “Yes, I know.”

    Silence fell.

    “I suppose,” Polly admitted unwillingly at last, “that I was hoping that he would understand: that I’d been wrong about him all along, and— You know.”

    “Do I?”

    She went very red. “He is quite attractive… I suppose I was hoping he’d turn out to have the sort of mind I could—I could envisage putting up with on a permanent basis.”

    “Have you been going about with your eyes and ears shut all year?”

    “No. Only— Well, I just thought I’d give it one last—you know.”

    After a moment I managed to say: “Setting aside the well-known fact that R. Browne’s a hidebound thinker if ever there was one, and about as liberated as my left boot”—I was barefoot, so she gulped, serve ’er right—“could any man on God’s earth have been liberal-minded about that sort of behaviour from the woman he’s in love with himself?”

    “Probably not, given that God’s one of them and Made Them All. –I know it was stupid to tell him; I knew it at the time, really, but…” She sighed.

    There was another silence.

    “Well, that rules him out, then!” I concluded.

    “Mm.”

    Oh, Gawd. “Now don’t start bawling, you know I can’t cope with bawling females.”

    After a moment Polly admitted: “I think you’re right, and maybe I only did it with Rod because it had been such an effort not to with Leo.”

    “Ya don’t say! Gee, it’s just like a game of Consequences. The macho millionaire dumps you, you feel all deserted, not to say frustrated, and get up a flirt with Leo, this frustrates you more so you roll in the hay with the first feeble young male who offers—!”

    “Yes,” she admitted, gulping. “Don’t laugh.”

    I seem to remember I sniffed, in my blindness. “Bloody hard not to. –It is Consequences, you know.”

    “Is it?”

    “Well, isn’t it?”

    “I don’t know. I’m not sure what Consequences is,” she explained. “I mean, I know it’s a game of some sort, but I’ve only read about it in English books.”

    Eh? After an appreciable period I was able to admit faintly: “I think I do believe that.”

    “We can’t all have aunts in Bognor Regis and go to Cambridge University,” said Polly with a laugh in her voice.

    Jesus! As usual, the woman had bounced back. I lay down again and buried my face in my folded arms.

    “Um—have you heard from Gretchen?”

    “Mm. Driving round in circles in the vicinity of Roto-wat.”

    “Ro—Oh! I see!”

    “One claim is that they’re aiming for Waikaremo-wat, of course,” I added affably.

    “Yeah,” she said weakly.

    “Since you’re here, make yourself useful: do my back.”

    She obliged, noting that some of the pot-plants on the balcony looked a bit dry.

    “Probably.”

    “I quite like your flat,” she offered, rubbing in suntan lotion.

    “Dank in winter, boiling hot all summer—you can have it. I suppose its one advantage is that it hasn’t got a garden that I’d have to slave over. Less of an advantage when one wants to hang the washing out, of course.”

    “Yes—um—couldn’t you share their washing-line?” she asked, peering over the balcony at the garden below, which belonged to the downstairs half of the house.

    “No: that sort of thing never works out. They start off all generous and altruistic, and then when you both need to use the damned thing on the same day, inevitably become grudging and terri— torial. Look, Mitchell, if you’re angling for an invite to get out of Browne’s vicinity—”

    “No, I’m not! Um, thanks very much, Jill. Only I thought I might stay with Aunty Vi for a bit.”

    “God: why?”

    She made a face. “To get away from Roger, of course—why else?”

    “That’s understood—but why your Aunty Vi?”

    “She lives in Mt Eden, it’s handy for varsity.”

    “It’s handy for being nagged to death. Or are you in a masochistic mood? –If so, I could oblige.”

    “Don’t be silly. Anyway, I can always spend all day in at work.”

    “Look, for God’s sake, come and sleep on my spare bed! I know it’s full of lumps, and I know those Aryan masochists kidnapped its elegant coverlet,”—ancient unzipped sleeping-bag, right—“but it is summer, after all!”

    “No, really. I think I’m taking up far too much of your time, as it is.”

    Instead of taking the time to really think over the implications of all what she’d been and gone and done I just replied quickly, having been brainwashed into manners in my formative years: “Rubbish!”

    “No, it isn’t, Jill: I know you’re pretty busy with your research. –Do you want some tomatoes?”

    I sat up groggily, once again clutching at the top of me bathers for the benefit of them what might be down below in the garden with periscopes. “Huh?”

    “I bought a whole lot at a stall on the way down. But Aunty Vi and I can’t eat them all between us.”

    “Oh. Well, thanks, if they’re really going begging.”

    Polly nodded seriously. “Yes. I’ll get them.” She disappeared into my hot sitting-room.

    “Oy—hang on.”

    Her face appeared round the French window. “What?”

    “What about the Michelangelic one?”

    “I’m going to Aunty Vi’s in order to avoid him, as well!” she admitted with a giggle.

    “I see,” I sighed. “Well, go on.”

    “Mm? Oh, the tomatoes!” Polly went back inside.

    I followed slowly but the brain wasn’t mulling over the salient points, unfortunately.

    “Look, forgive me for insisting on what might seem an inessential, nay trivial point,” I said, when approximately ten pounds of large, ripe tomatoes were gracing the sink-bench: “but which of them did you ask to feed the mog?”

    To which Mitchell replied simply: “Roger, of course.”

    “God—give me—strength!”

    “Well, I had to ask one of them, and his place is closer.”

    “Get out,” I moaned.

    She gave a loud giggle, and got.

    Yes, hilarious. Just think about it! That made three males she’d alienated in the short space of—well, I dunno, but it was a bloody short space. You may say Browne was negligible, and I’d be the last one to argue with that. And young Rod was well under the thumb, added to which there’d always been other romantic interests in his life, with those looks, you better believe it. But even the negligible worm can turn when its feelings are hurt.

    And as for Leo—well, he wasn’t negligible at all, and it was a bloody big mistake to treat the rat as if he was. As was very shortly to be proven, because not very long after this, all Hell broke loose.