High Society

22

High Society

    “Here, royalty-to-be doesn’t have to slave away for a crust like the rest of us slaves, ya know!”

    “Go away, Bill,” replied Polly in a firm voice.

    “That’s a fine way to greet an old mate what’s come to congrat-chewer-late you on—”

    “Liar. Come to worm out more about the murder, you mean.”

    Bill came in. “Yeah.” He perched a hip on her desk. “Whodunnit?”

    “Try asking Mike Collingwood,” said Polly drily.

    “But I don’t know him!”

    “In that case, sucks.”

    “No, look, I’ve got a bright idea.”—Polly looked at him in trepidation.—“What I reckon, the young engaged couple”—he leered at her; she blenched—“oughta give a select dinner party, see: me an’ Angie, and this Collingwood type! Plus his wife or whatever, I suppose.”

    Polly replied with an attempt at severity: “He’s divorced. And he hasn’t got a whatever, as far as I know.” She was about to add “And push off,” when there was a tap at her half-open door. Glaring at Bill, she called: “Come in!”

    “Um, excuse me, Dr Mitchell, but, um—” The girl glanced uncertainly at Bill.

    “Don’t mind me, I’m just an illiterate engineer: I’ll sit here and watch,” he said instantly.

    The student went very red.

    “What is it?” asked Polly kindly.

    “Um—well, Professor Barlow said I’d better see you... Um, well, you see, I did some credits for Linguistics One last year, but—”

    When the student had gone, Bill, who had not been silent during the unfortunate girl’s explanation of her problem, said loudly and scornfully: “Professor Barlow!”

    “No-one else had seniority.”

    “Dennis Barlow is the greatest tit under God’s good sky!”

    “I thought you reckoned that was Kevin McCaffery?”

    Bill’s mouth twitched but he grunted: “Nothing to choose between ’em.”

    “Why aren’t you enrolling, Professor Michaels?” Polly returned severely.

    “Only Masters and Ph.D.s in Engineering, today. Told off that tit Chris McAlister to do ’em. I reckon he might just be capable of signing ’is name. And if they’ve got as far as their Master’s they’ll be able to show ’im the right place on the Course Card to sign it.”

    Biting her lip, Polly said: “Why did you recommend him for a readership, if he’s that bad, Bill?”

    Bill replied glumly: “No-one else had seniority.”

     Polly broke down and laughed like a drain. When she’d recovered she admitted: “We were planning to ask you and Angie to dinner, actually, Bill.”

    He went rather red. “Oh.”

    “If you’d like to, that is. We’re in at the penthouse at the moment, but we could have you up to the house if you’d—”

    Bill had recovered himself: “Ooh, no: the penthouse, please: Angie’d hardly be able to bear herself if you invited us there! High-ee Socier-tee!”

    “Literally.”

    Bill smiled but said: “This your idea, or his?”

    “Is this germane, oh illiterate one?”

    “Very. Don’t fancy being an unwelcome guest at that joker’s board.”

    “No, well, he doesn’t much fancy socializing with a load of intellectual tits from up the varsity. Actually, I seem to recall the exact phrase was: ‘a load of half-arsed intellectual tits from up the varsity.’”

    Bill was distinctly broad in the beam. He got off the desk, grinning, and rubbing his posterior. “Aw, well: in that case me an’ Angie’ll be okay!”

    “That’s what I said,” agreed Polly, smiling.

    “You sure?”

    “Yes. I think the two of you might get on quite well. Either that or you’ll hate each other’s guts. You’re a bit alike.”

    “Christ, is that a compliment?” he said in horror.

    “I don’t think so. –Push off, I’ve got work to do. I’ll give Angie a ring about the dinner.”

    “Hang on.” He bent and swiftly kissed her cheek.

    “What was that for?”

    “From Angie. Congrats on the engagement.” He smiled, and put a big hand under her chin. “And this here’s from me.” He put his mouth very gently on hers.

    After a moment Polly moved slightly and laid her cheek against his. “Thank you, Bill,” she said softly, gently touching his hair.

    Bill replied gruffly: “And by God, if that joker lets you down, Polly, he’ll have me to deal with! And ya can tell ’im that, if ya like!”

    Polly merely replied placidly: “You’ll be at the end of a very long queue, then.”

    “Eh?” Bill straightened, smiling.

    “Well, Vic was first, of course: he usually is, when there’s blocks that might need knocking off. Followed closely by Bert and Dad; and then—um, Bob, I think.”

    Bill said weakly: “Bit slow off the mark, wasn’t ’e?”

    “Not really, he’s working somewhere in the wop-wops at the moment and it took Mum ages to get hold of him. Um, let’s see: yeah, old Great-Uncle Nev was the next, and then Uncle Harry.” She smiled. “He’s knee-high to a grasshopper, but game with it. And then my cousin Andy Field, that’s his eldest son; and—”

    “Thadd’ll do; I get the picture!” he groaned, grinning from ear to ear.

    “And Roger, of course.”

    “Now, thass funny. ’Cos I had him pegged as the underlying cause of the ‘half-arsed intellectual tits from up the varsity’ remark.”

    Polly clapped her hand over her mouth with a squeak.

    Grinning, Bill said: “Though isn’t there a little bird in the offing?” He waggled his eyebrows. “A little bird was telling me!”

    “Madeleine Depardieu,” said Polly in tones of deepest gloom.

    Bill shook his head, smirking. “Nope: Madeleine’s off me because when she said ‘Isn’t it exciting about dear Polly’s engagement—and such a surprise, too!’ I said no, it wasn’t, I’d known about it for weeks.”

    “You bare-faced liar,” said Polly weakly.

    “Yeah. So she’s not telling me any goodies any more. –No, it was Ma Pretty. Though I admit she got it off Defarge.”

    “All she saw was Debbie Cohen popping into Roger’s office to say hullo on the day she was enrolling. And all she saw was all there was.”

    “More than enough! –Thought Defarge never came in for Enrolment?”

    “She doesn’t. She didn’t. Guess why she came in, Bill.”

    Bill simpered. “Ooh, silly me!” he squeaked.

    Sighing, Polly said: “Go and engineer, Bill.”

    Bill ambled over to the door. “Caviar,” he said threateningly.

    “What?”

    “Russian—fish—eggs,” said Bill, very loudly and clearly.

    “Bill, dear, what are you talking about, you funny old thing?” cooed a saccharine baritone.

    Jumping, Bill replied, very weakly indeed: “Oh, hullo, Madeleine. Caviar to the general, and all that.” And retreated.

    “Hi, Madeleine,” said Polly faintly.

    “Polly, my dear!” Madame Defarge sailed in, gushing…

    We’re just about at Mission Bay when she says: “Jake, why is Lady Harding having this do at this yacht club? I mean, why didn’t she ask us to dinner at their place?”

    “God knows. Probably thinks the dump’s all trendy or something.”

    “Is it?”

    “God knows.”

    ... What with the noise, and the heat, not to mention the cigarette smoke—doesn’t like that, Polly—you can see she’s starting to look a bit blue round the gills already. Well, we aren’t gonna hang on here all night watching Phyllis Harding get pickled, that’s for sure!

    “Some more champagne, Polly?” –Poor ole John Harding’s sitting there with ’is eyes on stalks but Phyllis hasn’t even noticed, of course. Not that he’d do anything about it, mind you: quite a decent type, old John. Well, thick but decent.

    “Just a wee bit, thanks, John.” She smiles at the poor old buffer and his ears go all pink.

    The so-called champers is Goddawful muck. Australian, I think. Acid as Hell. Don’t suppose a bloke could get a straight Scotch in this dump. Oh, well. Anyway, one of us has got to drive, and by the look of her—

    “Don’t drink too much fizz, Pol, ya know it’ll give you a headache.”

    “It’s only my second glass.”

    “Third, but who’s counting?”

    Phyllis lets out one of those screeches of hers. “Jake, darling!”—Hardly know the bloody woman.—“You’re turning into a positive kill-joy in your old age! Isn’t he, Polly?”—Tact, right. Poor little Polly doesn’t know what to say, so she just tries to smile. John doesn’t care, he’s goggling at her anyway.—“Now, tell me, dear, where on earth did you meet this naughty chauvinistic man?”

    Tact, again. No, well, she doesn’t know about the Leo do—no-one does, except those dykey varsity females she told before I could stop her. He’s pushed off to France, and good riddance. Poor wee Pol’s telling her we met at that bloody party of his. Ma Harding starts trying to get all the gory details out of her, only there aren’t any. Then she wants to see the ring, only guess what, I haven’t given her one yet. More shrieks of horror. Someone shoulda told her that that green satin abortion she’s got on kinda reflects off her face: makes her look like Frankenstein’s Daughter or something.

    I’ll just take a wee sip of— No, I won’t: acid ersatz champagne. Ugh. Polly’s in her best pale green dress, the one she got in Hobart. Now, she can wear green. It knocked old John Harding for six, straight off. Mind you, hasn’t stopped ’im telling her at great length all about some bloody race his bloody boat was in—actually it seems to have encouraged him, if anything—but he’s doing it with a gleam in ’is eye.

    Thank God, here’s the nosh at last! What do they do out there in the kitchen, raise the bloody cows from birth? All a ploy, makes the locals buy more bad booze. ...Christ!

    “What on earth is that, Jake?” Poor old Ken. Practically the first time ’e’s opened ’is gob tonight. Knows John through business, of course, but I don’t think he knew how bad Phyllis could be. Magda’s not with him tonight, and no bloody wonder!

    “Calls itself Weeters Ally Fasson D’Escar-gott, or something.” –It connected with someone, anyway, ’cos Pol tries to smother a splutter.

    “They look dead,” says Ken, sounding all interested, the bugger. He’s ordered the avocado with shrimps, about the only thing they can do to that is smother it in a mixture of bought so-called mayonnaise and—heh, heh—Harding’s Tomato Sauce, which by the look of it, they have.

    “Don’t eat them, Jake, you can die from bad shellfish,” says Polly, getting all upset and looking as if she’s gonna cry.

    “They’re all right: they’re those Japanese tinned ones.”

    “Oh,” she says in relief, beaming.

    “How can you tell?” asks John the thicko, kinda coming to.

    If Polly wasn’t sitting there beaming at me I’d bloody well tell ’im, because I’m a bit pissed off with his wife, his wife’s choice of dinner venue, his wife’s thumping great hints about the age difference between the two of us, and his wife’s innuendo that Polly’s after me money. Not to mention the way that every time the hag takes her eye off that bloke next to her, think ’e’s the Head Eunuch—no, can’t be, Head Whatsaname, one of those French things—he goggles at Polly, too!

    “Tell by the look of ’em: boiled within an inch of their lives.”

    “Oh,” he says, totally blank.

    Phyllis does the giggle-giggle bit and says: “Well, of course you can’t expect the local standards to be quite up to Maxim’s, Jake!”

    The Head Whatsaname grabs her glass before she can knock it off the table with that bony elbow of hers—she’s had seven helpings of fizz: why in God’s name doesn’t John stop her?—and bleats: “Send it back, why don’t you, Jake?”

    I don’t send it back, ya nong, because they wouldn’t know what was wrong with it if I did, see? Oh, dear. What can ya say?

    Ken’s pretty pissed off, too, so he comes out with: “Jake only sends things back in five-star places.”

    “Naughty man!” shrieks Phyllis, but you can see she’s really rabid—good.

    If any of us had thought the bloody band had struck up before, we were wrong, see, because now it really strikes up, ouch! Ugh, God, not only is the lead singer off-key, but the back-up group are screeching in another key altogether, and there’s something wrong with the drums. Christ. Very wrong. “WHAT?”

    “I SAID,” Phyllis screeches, leaning across the table and looking and sounding more like a parrot in a filthy mood than ever: “that Blue Fitup are straight from SYDNEY!”—Straight from the loony-bin, more like.—“Aren’t they FAB?”

    “NO!” I roar, and Pol collapses in helpless giggles. Well, ya can see we’re in for a merry evening of it, all right!

    Jake ate bland tinned Japanese oysters smothered in melted marg and garlic, grinning.

    “Here,” he said with a wink, shoving a little box at her. “Thought I’d better give ya this now, if these friends of yours are coming to tea tonight; they’ll think we’re barmy if you’re not wearing one!”

    “Like that reporter from The Woman’s Weekly,” agreed Polly in a feeble voice, taking the little box in a nerveless hand.

    “Yeah—or bloody Phyllis Harding the other day!”

    “You’re the one that said we’d better accept their invitation and get it over with.” She opened the box.

    Jake said rapidly: “I know these days it seems to be the idea to choose the ring together; but, uh, s’pose I’m old-fashioned, or something. Anyway, if ya don’t like it we’ll buy something else.”

    Polly stared at it numbly. It was a huge square-cut emerald, the deepest, truest emerald green imaginable, surrounded by small diamonds. Smallish. In comparison. Help!

    “Want me to put it on?”

    “Mm.”

    He slid it on. “Fits okay, does it?”

    “Mm.” She took a deep breath. “Jake, this is totally overboard.”

    “Look, how many times are we gonna get engaged?”

    “Once,” admitted Polly feebly. “It’s glorious,” she said numbly.

    “Good!” he grunted, pulling her against him. “Wharrabout a kiss, then?”

    She kissed him enthusiastically, and he began to believe that maybe she did actually like the bloody thing. After a bit he said cautiously: “It is insured, but for Chrissakes don’t go taking it off to wash your hands in the bogs in restaurants or shops, will ya?”

    “No, I’d hate to lose it.” She held up her hand and admired it. “I won’t ask how much it set you back.”

    “Not that much, considering.”

    “Considering what?”

    Jake coughed. “Well, it’s South American.”

    “Emeralds are, aren’t they?”

    “Uh—yeah,” he agreed, blinking a bit. “Lot of them—yeah. Um, well, belonged to a Brazilian bloke I was doing business with. Didn’t have anyone to give it to at the time, mind you, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

    “What exactly was he paying you off in emeralds for?” said Polly limply.

    “Never mind. –Nothing illegal!” he said quickly.

    “Nothing illegal over there, ya mean,” she said slowly.

    He shrugged.

    “You’re incorrigible!”

    “All right, don’t have it,” he said glumly.

    “No,” said Polly, holding up her hand again and admiring the stone: “you’d have to cut it off me, now.” She sighed deeply. “Now I see why women go crazy over jewels—why people have gone crazy over jewels for the whole of human history!”

    “Uh—yeah. Well, that’s not all bad, I s’pose.”

    “‘Tiffany’s! Talk to me, Harry Winston!”” she chanted with a laugh.

    “Yeah. Well: take a look-in at Tiffany’s when we’re in New York—sure.”

    “It’s a song, you clot. Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend: Marilyn Monroe. I don’t want to go to Tiffany’s: this is more than enough!”

    “You’d look good in diamonds, actually. Tell ya what, a nice necklace from Tiffany’s’d put ruddy Phyllis Harding’s nose out of joint, eh?” he said, his eyes shining.

     Polly took a deep breath. “Stop it now, Jake.”

    “Eh? Aw. Yeah. Well, anyway, ya like the ring.”

    “I love it!” she beamed.

    Good: that was a start.

    “Who’s feeding the kids?” he asked, handing Bill Michaels a hefty whisky.

    Bill shrugged. “Who cares? Babs reckoned she was gonna do some sort of ’orrible eggy nosh-up in the big pan, I suppose they’ll all eat some of that.”

    “Babs? Isn’t she the younger girl?” asked Jake.

    “Thinks in clichés, see?” noted Polly.

    “Ooh, yes!” agreed Angie brightly. “Sex-stereotypical clichés!” They giggled.

    Mildly Jake noted: “Betcha won’t be able to say that by har’ past nine. –No, well, isn’t she?”

    “Yeah,” confirmed Bill, “but Helen’s idea of feeding the five thousand is to grab a loaf of bread, break it in half with ’er bare fists, dump half a pound of butter on it, and walk off with it. –Eating it,” he explained.

    “She’s the tall, beautiful one we saw at the beach, Jake,” explained Polly.

    “Eh?” gasped Helen’s proud father.

    “Shut up, Bill,” said Angie. “She is quite good-looking,” she admitted to Jake, “but she’s not interested in boys at all. It’s quite worrying, really.”

    He got up, smiling, and went over to the windows. “Doesn’t need to be, at her age. Give her time, eh? She was doing all right when we saw her, eh, Pol?”

    Polly bit her lip.

    “What was she up to?” asked Bill resignedly.

    Polly swallowed. “Um, well, it was on Taka’ beach. A man was trying to launch his trailer-sailor. You know, on the boat ramp near the Mon Desir.”

    “He knows it well,” said Angie sourly. “The pub, anyway.”

    “And it had slipped, I think. –Was that it, Jake?”

    “Yeah.”

    “And Nellie Dean was righting it with ’er bare hands,” said Bill in a doomed voice. “Say no more!”

    Polly was silent.

    “Well, was she?” demanded Angie resignedly.

    “Your husband just told me to say no more,” she replied, twinkling.

    Grinning, Angie retorted: “Ignore him, I always do! –She was, wasn’t she?”

    “Of course she was!” groaned Bill.

    “You’re the one that gave her a dinghy when she was barely walking, so shut up!” said Angie smartly.

    “She was, yes,” conceded Polly, smiling. “Jake was immensely struck by her, he called her a bronzed Amazonian Valkyrie.”

    “Not failing to mix his metaphors,” noted Bill.

    “I thought he was doing pretty good, really, for one that left school at fifteen. I mean: referring to two different pantheons in one breath?”

    “Not bad, when ya look at it like that,” conceded Bill, grinning. “That reminds me— Oy, Carrano, you become a fixture by that window, or what?”

    “Eh? No, sorry: I was just waiting for a gap in the conversation to ask you lot if you want the curtains left open. Only it had gradually started to penetrate that there wasn’t gonna be a gap,” he ended, grinning.

    “Not with Bill around!” agreed Angie feelingly.

    “Yes—open,” said Polly firmly. “Come and sit down.”

    He came and sat beside her on a pale grey sofa and watched dubiously as Michaels bounded up and began rummaging in the large canvas bag he’d arrived with. It went well with the dinner jacket.

    “Here!” he announced, straightening with a grunt.

    “Put that away this instant, William Michaels!” screamed Angie, turning bright scarlet. It went well with the yellow curls and the bluish-grey dress, Jake noted.

    “She’s tee-ed off, she called me Will-yum,” Bill pointed out, winking slowly.

    “It’s that Metro magazine with that feeble article,” realised Polly weakly.

    “Is that the one about me and Wal Briggs and John Westby?” said Jake.

    “Yes. ‘Can illegitimacy prevent one’s rise to fame, fortune and a possible trial for murder?’” she misquoted in a hollow voice.

    “Well, old John isn’t, but—yeah. They don’t actually come out and say that, mind you,” Jake explained, grinning.

    “No, but isn’t it fascinating how they manage to say it without saying it?” replied Bill.

    “It’s their specialty, it’s a rag, put it away, Bill!” sighed Polly.

    “As the actress said to the bishop.”—His audience choked.—“No, listen: what it says—”

    Angie got up. “I apologise for this frightful object. Come on, you, I’m taking you home, you’re not fit for decent human company!”

    “But it’s only Polly and Jake!” said Bill in surprise.

    Choking, Polly gasped: “You’ve been promoted, Jake!” and went into a gale of giggles.

    “Siddown, Woman,” said Bill in a threatening tone to his wife.

    Angie glared. “Well, just behave! Some people have feelings!” She sat down, but went on glaring.

    “Eh? No, they can’t have, see, it says here that Jake never allowed the stigmata—hang on, that’s wrong! Heh, heh, Freudian slip, eh, Metro? –Great God Mammon,” he explained, winking. “Where was I?” he said over Polly’s choking fit. “Aw, yeah: ‘never allowed the stigmata of his early life to influence him in business decisions.’ –Why would you, anyway?” he wanted to know.

    Jake shrugged. “Don’t ask me, I never wrote the thing.”

    “It’s like when Wal Briggs goes into court, Bill: he doesn’t stand there weeping gently and saying under his breath ‘I never knew who me mum was,’” explained Polly kindly.

    “I thought he— Oh, no, it was the knife-man that had a mother and father, eh?”

    “No, it was the eminent gynaecologist who knew his parents, Bill,” she explained kindly.

    “Aw, yeah. The snip and pull joker, eh?”

    “That’ll do,” said Angie faintly.

    “Sorry: scrape, snip and p—”

    “Look, do you want caviar tonight or not?” demanded Jake heavily.

    “Yeah, ’course, why else do ya reckon I came?”

    “Apparently to put your host through an inquisition,” said Angie acidly.

    “Well, if ya do,” said Jake heavily, “drop the gyny bit: the ladies are turning green.”

    —Angie observed with great interest at this point that Polly was certainly greenish.

    “Sorry, girls,” said Bill feebly.

    “On behalf of all men, I hope,” said Polly grimly.

    “On behalf of the chauvinist pig ones, anyway,” agreed Angie even more grimly, glaring.

    Unabashed, the burly engineer replied mildly: “And now that we’ve got that little lot out of the way, is it true what it says here?” Before his gasping wife could say anything, he said: “That you jabber Polish like a native Pole.”

    “Polish? No, of course I don’t, what a silly idea,” replied Jake in Polish.

    “HAH! See?” cried Angie.

    “I could have told you that, Bill,” said Polly weakly.

    Bill fumbled in his breast-pocket. He produced a ball-point pen. They watched with foreboding. Laboriously he made a tick on a page of the magazine. “Good: Point One verified,” he said. “Now, Point Two: can you actually—”

    Angie leapt up, wrenched the magazine off him, and rushed out of the room with it.

    “Oy!”

    “I hope she doesn’t block the bog,” said Polly weakly.

    “Shit, is she—” Jake rushed out.

    “Does it block?” said Bill mildly.

    “Yes; wouldn’t you think that with a drop of sixteen floors it— Well, yes: it does.”

    Bill sniggered.

    “You are awful,” said Polly mildly.

    He waggled his eyebrows. “Just testing the waters, testing the waters.”

    “I think we’ve all realised that, Bill,” she replied coldly. “None of us is particularly thick.”

    “‘None of us is’: boy, she’s mad now,” he noted.

    “Not yet, but I’m getting on that way,” said Polly with a sigh. “Can’t you just drop it?”

    “But it said he can do compound interest in his head: I wanna know if it’s true!” he whinged.

    “No-one could do compound interest in their head,” said Polly faintly.

    “Yeah: those maths freaks can: you know, wasn’t there an Indian woman, came out on a tour or something? She could do, uh, some sort of thing with numbers in her head. Think it mighta been square roots or something.”

    Polly turned her eyes up to the ceiling and said: “And pray tell, is the evening going to continue on this level?”

    “I hope not,” said Angie grimly from the doorway.

    Polly looked round and smiled. “Did you get rid of it?”

    “Yes, Jake showed me that marvellous disposal chute in the kitchen, we put it in there.”

    “Straight drop of sixteen floors,” noted Bill.

    “Seventeen: goes to the basement,” explained Jake.

    “What happens to it then?” asked Bill keenly.

    “Don’t, he’ll only tell you!” cried Polly; but too late, Jake had started to.

    After that they had more drinks all round and Bill said in a super-casual voice to his host: “If I invested, say, twenty-five thousand at seven point four percent compound interest for five years, whaddaya reckon I’d end up with?”

    “Poverty, that wouldn’t cover the rate of inflation.”

    Angie and Polly emitted delighted giggles.

    “All right: um, fifteen point four percent.”

    “Poverty, that still wouldn’t cover—”

    “Name yer rate, then,” said Bill, grinning. “But mind you put a point in it.”

    Jake named his rate. Bill gulped but rallied gamely to say: “Go on, then, what would I get?”

    “Before or after tax?”

    “Before,” said Bill in rather a weak voice.

    Jake got out his pocket calculator and worked it out.

    “You could have done that,” said Angie weakly to her husband.

    “Yeah. Lessee.” He held out his hand. Jake handed over the calculator, looking mildly surprised. Bill sniffed slightly. “Jap, eh?”

    “Hai,” agreed Jake very mildly.

    “It’s a nice one,” said Polly.

    “Mm.” Bill fumbled in his breast pocket. He produced a small screwdriver. Angie moaned and closed her eyes.

    “I’ve never seen anybody actually do that before; is it because he’s a varsity professor?” said Jake in a shaken voice to his fiancée as Bill took his pocket calculator to bits.

    “No, it’s because he’s like the elephant’s child, plus it’s because he doesn’t know how to behave when they take him on an outing. –Ooh, look, Bill,” she added in a squeaky voice: “it’s got a silicon chip in it!”

    “Fancy,” agreed Angie.

    “They’re developing these new ones with more functions. Bit more like computers,” said Bill in a vague voice.

    “Well, that isn’t one of them,” said Jake, sounding bored.

    “No,” he murmured.

    Angie drained her sherry glass with a sigh. “I’m going to stop apologising for him, otherwise you’ll be sick of the sound of my voice.”

    “Have another, Angie,” suggested Jake, smiling.

    Angie held out her glass. “Why not, I’m not driving.”

    Bill was reassembling the calculator. He held out his whisky tumbler but didn’t look up. “Why not, I’m not driving.”

    “Who is?” said Polly faintly.

    “Well, if Nellie Dean isn’t fast asleep by ten o’clock, we thought she could come and get us,” said Bill, screwing up minute screws.

    “Ten o’clock? Isn’t that a bit early?” said Jake faintly.

    “Not for one that’s been manhandling trailer-sailors all day,” he replied.

    “Eh? Oh! I getcha,” Jake acknowledged, smiling.

    “Failing that, Col volunteered.”

    At this point Angie said loudly: “We’re going to get a taxi! Look, Bill, if you’ve finished breaking Jake’s toys,”—the millionaire and the engineer exchanged winks—“and if this engagement does meet with your august approval after all, why the Hell don’t you give them that silly present you insisted on lugging up here, and get it over with!”

    “Eh? Aw, yeah. Forgot.” He handed Jake back his calculator and got up. “It’s in here,” he explained, rummaging in the canvas bag.

    “Aw, and we thought it was full of magazines with snippets about Jake that you were going to produce whenever there was one of those gaps in the conversation,” said Polly in disappointment.

    Jake was sitting beside her on her sofa again. Here he pinched the flesh of her soft upper-arm. Polly squeaked and giggled.

    Angie had been watching this by-play with approval. Now she turned her head, saw the parcel her husband was producing from his canvas bag, winced, and said: “He insisted on wrapping it himself: you know what they are at that age.”

    “It’s the right shape, anyway,” noted Jake.

    “Ah-hah! Wait!” said the donor, laying a finger to the side of his nose. He handed his host the bottle-shaped, brown-paper-wrapped package and said: “It’s for you more than her.”

    “Uh—ta.”

    “On account of my weak stomach,” explained Polly, smiling at Bill.

    “Yeah.”

    “Eh? I thought you drank anything,” said her fiancé, goggling at her.

    “I do. It’s not drink: you’ll see.”

    “Eh?”

    “Unwrap it!” urged Polly.

    He unwrapped it slowly. “Strewth!” he said. He peered into it.

    “It’s his hobby,” she explained.

    “I can see that. Clipper ship, eh?” he said to Bill.

    “Yeah.” Bill came over and stood beside him. “See—” He pointed.

    After a little Polly got up, smiling. “Come on,” she said to Angie. “Let’s get the tea.”

    In the kitchen she said: “We’re honoured, Angie.”

    Angie made a face. “He wouldn’t have produced it if he hadn’t approved of Jake, you know what he is.”

    “Mm.”

    “Did you warn him before we came?” asked Angie curiously as Polly opened the fridge.

    “No.” She looked up, and smiled. “I fully intended to, but when it came to the point I found I couldn’t describe Bill!”

    “He is pretty indescribable,” agreed Angie drily.

    “Mm.” Polly dived into the depths of the enormous refrigerator. She emerged, grunting, with a large dish covered by a huge silver dome—Angie was pretty sure it was silver, too. “Gawd!” She dumped it on the bench, panting.

    “What is it?”

    “The caviar, of course.”

    “Oh, Polly!” cried Angie in reproach.

    “Jake can afford it. It’s Beluga, he reckons. He had it flown in. Only if I was you I’d let Bill taste it and make a fool of himself by saying something really dumb before you tell him that.”

    “I will,” promised Angie weakly. “—Flown in?”

    Polly replied serenely: “He does that sort of thing. I don’t really approve, but I thought for once I’d take advantage of it.”

    “Flown in from where? The Bosporus?” asked Angie, sagging against the bench.

    “No, Harrods, I think.”

    Angie gasped, choked, and went into a fit of hysterics.

    “He just tells Marianne—that’s his secretary, she’s lovely, you’ll like her when you meet her—he just tells her to get whatever it is, and mind it’s the best, and she—”

    “Stop!” she gasped.

    “—makes the appropriate arrangements. He’s got her fully trained: she didn’t know about Harrods or anything like that when she started working for him,” finished Polly, grinning.

    Angie sagged on the bench. “Did he buy that thing you’ve got on?”

    “Yes, it was a surprise.”

    “It surprised me,” she conceded. “I would’ve asked you before, only I thought one of us was being embarrassing enough, out there. Where did he buy it?”

    “I don’t know for sure, but there’s a shop in Double Bay where his name is known, I gather,” explained Polly, grimacing.

    “Aye, aye.”

    “Yes, well, I suppose we can’t expect them to have lived like monks before we came along, the horrors,” said Polly, smiling. “Anyway, that’s probably where it came from. I think he must have said to Marianne ‘greenish’ and ‘goldish’.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Angie, goggling at it. “And either ‘tightish’ or she’s got your measurements a couple of sizes out.”

    “He’d have said tightish, all right,” Polly admitted, lips twitching.

    “Aren’t you afraid your boobs’ll fall out of it when you bend over like that?” asked Angie with interest as Polly bent to the fridge again.

    “Yes. But I didn’t think you’d mind: after all, you are the mother of four.”

    “Not four of those, poor old Barbara’s ages behind the other girls in her class.”

    Polly withdrew from the fridge with a silver platter of lemon wedges in one hand and a silver butter-dish in the other. “Helen’s are good, though. –I wouldn’t worry about Barbara, she’ll grow up soon enough.”

    “Yes,” said Angie rather glumly. “She is into Helen’s old blue bra. —Oy, are you all right?” she asked sharply, as Polly swayed, and grabbed at the bench.

    “Yes, fine!” she gasped.

    Angie looked round wildly, spotted a trendy white bar stool at a trendy white breakfast bar, rushed over and retrieved it, and rushed back with it, shoving it behind Polly’s bum. “Sit.” Polly sat. “Wanna a drink of water?”

    “Yes—ta,” said Polly faintly.

    Angie got her a drink and said as she sipped: “Feeling sicky?”

    “No, just a bit dizzy. I have been a but queasy, off and on, though. Jake reckons it was the crayfish at the yacht club, only it hasn’t dawned on him that I didn’t have any, I never eat seafood in this revolting weather.”

    “It’s okay in here,” noted Angie.

    “Mm, it’s the air conditioning. No, well, you know what I mean: better safe than sorry. One of my aunties once got food-poisoning from seafood that was off, she was sick for weeks.” She finished the water and sighed.

    “‘Better safe than sorry’ would be your motto in all things, would it?” asked Angie keenly.

    “Shut up.”

    Angie’s eyes shone. “Really?”

    “I hope not: I’ve got a year’s teaching to get through. I’ll know by the end of next week.”

    “You could know tomorrow, if you had one of those quickie tests. Or what about that Sir John that’s Jake’s old mate?”

    Polly made a rude noise.

    “Well, your G.P.?”

    “Bruce is all right,” she conceded. “Only if I am, he’d tell me what an idiot I am. And I don’t feel quite ready to be told that, yet. Besides, it might all be nothing.”

    “I’ll remind you of that in nine months’ time,” said Angie drily.

    “I went off the Pill, you see: it was making me as sick as a dog and my period started at the wrong time. I mean, I only went off it—um—well, three weeks ago, I think. Well, you know: when my last period started. Wouldn’t you think—”

    “No, I wouldn’t,” said Angie firmly. “I might have, once, only we’ve got the evidence to prove it. Its name’s Barbara.”

    “Ugh, help.”

    “Bit late to yell for that now, isn’t it?”

    “Mm.”

    “Will he want it?”

    Polly made a face. “In general, yes; but specifically, I don’t know: he’s one of those men that like to plan things down to the Nth detail and we weren’t planning for me to get preggy before the wedding. In fact not before next October.”

    “Oh. Uh—get rid?”

    “No,” she said, pulling a face. “He’d be rabid: all that stuff old Sister Mary-Theresa brainwashed him with in his formative years would come back to him in a rush.”

    “Cor, that wasn’t in Metro. Or the Weekly!”

    Grinning, Polly slid off the stool. “That proves it’s true, then! Come on, can you grab that thing?”

    “Yes. Are you sure you’re okay?”

    “Mm, it only lasts a minute.”

    “Mine all lasted nine months,” replied Angie in a very rude voice. “In fact Col was three weeks overdue: he—”

    “Shut up!”

    “Aren’t you pleased?”

    Polly went very pink. “I would be, if I was sure how Jake was going to take it.” She picked up the butter-dish and the platter of lemon wedges and went out.

    Angie followed, staggering a bit under the weight of the silver plate, eyebrows raised very high and lips pursed in a soundless whistle.

    “Well?” she demanded, some hours later.

    Bill lay back in the back seat of the taxi and belched loudly. “Very well. At least, that fizz was, eh?”

    “Drunken sot,” she replied mildly. “What about them?”

    “Eh?”

    “Bi-ill!”

    “Aw, them!”

    Angie warned dangerously: “You can drop that.”

    “They’re all right, I reckon,” he said pacifically.

    “Really?”

    “Yeah. Well, unless he done the Pohutukawa Bay Swimming Pool Murder, after all.”

    “YOU CAN DROP THAT!”

    “Here, hang on: you’ll deafen the driver!” he said in a shocked voice.

    “Yes, and right after I’ve done that I’ll strangle you! Do—you—think—he’s—all—right?”

    “Yeah, ’course I do, ya nana.”

    “Really?”

    “Yeah, really! What’s the matter with you?” he cried.

    Abruptly Angie burst into tears.

    “Oh, Gawdelpus,” he muttered. “—Don’t mind her, mate, it’s her age,” he said to the taxi driver. “That and the grog,” he added sourly. “Come on, Ange, buck up!” He patted her knee. Angie went on sobbing. Bill attempted to edge closer—it was difficult, as they had their seat-belts done up—and put his arm around her shoulders.

    “Come on, buck up: they’re all right; nothing to bawl about!”

     “I—know!” she sobbed.

    “Then why are you bawling?” he said blankly.

    “That’s—why!” she sobbed.

    Bill rolled his eyes to High Heaven. “God Almighty! Women!”

    The driver wound his window up a bit. “Yeah,” he agreed sourly.