Pot Bouille

4

Pot Bouille

    Freedom! One more errand, and then out of this dump for the rest of the week! Unfortunately Maisie Pretty’s almost bound to be on duty in the faculty office. On the other hand, if little Dawn’s there by herself there’ll be the usual inane interchange: “How are you?”—“Fine, thanks, how are you, Dawn?” meanwhile wondering what else to say to the kid. You don’t want to sound patronising or talking-down and you certainly don’t want to come on like academic to mere typist, like some that could be mentioned— Oh, well. On the whole talking to Maisie’s easier, you just let yourself sink into total hypocrisy...

    Do I honestly wish Jake wasn’t in Sydney on business this month? We-ell... I do miss his nice, warm, solid body, and the sex, and not being able to tell him things about my day, or just thoughts. But I can’t say I miss being told what to do and having decisions made for me—not about the big things, actually it might not be bad if he’d make decisions about the big things!—but little, everyday things. Okay, I don’t know zilch about wine, but he’s a bit too fond of the “You’ll like this” line. And I am capable of choosing my food for myself! And he’s too blimming apt to assume… That his attitudes are the right ones? Something like that. ’Tis a bit of strain, having to be on the lookout all the time for the macho bullshit in order to jump down his throat. ’Cos if I don’t, you can be sure his macho thick head’ll take it for granted I agree—without even thinking about it, yep.

    Ouch, Ma Pretty in person.

    “Polly, dear! How are you today?” Narrow scrutiny, not nearly veiled by the motherly smile, looking for the blue shadows under the eyes and the love-bites on the neck. Yeah, all right, Maisie, take a good look, there’s a beauty on the right-hand side just under the jawbone—see, Jake got a bit carried away on our farewell night before he took off.

    “Hi, Maisie. Can I leave this with you? It’s not urgent.”

    “Ooh, dear: not one of your awful statistical things with all the maths and the funny squiggles, I hope?” –Coy giggle.

    Dunno what either of us could do about it if it was, Maisie. “No, it’s just a couple of tutorial exercises for my First-Years.”

    “Righto, then, dear, leave it with me!” The nosy hag comes up very close. “How are you in yourself, Polly, dear?”

    Does the woman imagine I’m pregnant or—or goodness knows what! About to throw myself on her bosom and burst out with the full details of the thing with That Man? “I’m fine, thanks.”

    Another narrow, searching look. She’s seen the hickey, what else is she looking for? “That’s good, dear. Now, will you be in tomorrow?”

    No, Maisie, because if you can read that timetable ya made poor little Dawn type up, Friday’s my classless day this term! “No, probably not.”

    “Oh, dear! Now, I think Professor Barlow… Just a minute, Polly.” Darts off and fusses in a pile of small scraps of paper that’s her system, not the word, for recording messages.

    Nothing’s happened except that Maisie’s got pinker and more flurried and the scraps of paper have got very mixed up, Christ!

    “I’ve just spoken to Dennis. If it was important, I’m sure he would have mentioned it, Maisie.”

    “Ye-es… Oh, well, there’s nothing here: I must have been thinking of something else!” Merry laugh.

    “Yes. Well, I’ll see you later.” Nice smile. (Hypocrisy: see?) Gee, I’ve managed to get one foot over the threshold.

    “Wait! I know what it was! It was that nice Dr Nilsson from the English Department!”

    Unlike flaming Dennis Barlow in every respect. “Erik? Did he leave a message? He’s got my home number, I wonder why he didn’t ring me.” Help, why did I say that?

    She’s pounced. “But that’s just it! He did, dear! He rang your number and he couldn’t get any reply!”

    Aw, gee, where could I have been, Maisie?

    “Is there any other number where I might be able to reach you if it was urgent, dear?”

    Blimey O’Reilly! If Maisie imagines I’m gonna dish out Jake’s unlisted number— And look at the woman’s face! Pure as the driven snow!

    Take a deep breath. Don’t manage to smile at the cow. “I could give you my Aunty Vi’s number. But I think you’ve got it on file anyway.”

    “Yes, I think I have,” she agrees sadly.

    Look, enough is enough! I’ll blimming well say it! “Are the Faculty records all on the database management system now, Maisie?”

    She breaks into a terrifically flustered speech in which pressure of work, having to take her annual leave over Christmas, Dawn having to have time off over Christmas, the intricacies of the system, pressure of work, the special typing Professor McCaffery asked her to do (that’ll be a lie, Kevin’s the Dean, he’s got his own secretary), the intricacies of the system, pressure of work, the very difficult thesis typing she took on over the long holidays (off her own bat, and she makes the poor students pay through the nose for it), the intricacies of the system, the dilatoriness of the Computer Science Department who promised to show her and Dawn exactly— and (voice lowered, with a very silly giggle), the fact that Professor McCaffery doesn’t really understand the system, dear, all get inextricably mixed.

    “Oh, dear,”—I’m completely in hypocritical mode, now—“I do hope Kevin won’t be too cross about it. He did say definitely at the last Faculty Meeting that the system was going to be up this week.”—Who’s fooling who, here?—“Sorry, Maisie, I’m running late. See ya!”

    And I’m outa there. Phew!

    Erik now: goody! You nip across the wide paved courtyard and dodge through an alleyway and you’re in another courtyard, in front of the Faculty of English and the Humanities: ’tis actually the next building but gee, our building doesn’t interconnect with it, even though the two faculties have a common student body: aren’t these university architects wonderful?

    There is a theory that it’s because money was running a bit low when the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics building was put up that it’s merely a slab, built around its lift-wells. Other, ruder theories of course range from bribes to the Senate Building Committee, through sheer incompetence on the part of the architect. ’Tis hideous, true: glass and concrete with a token bit of brickwork, and it certainly pales into insignificance beside the glory of its neighbour, that Leo reckons was designed by an architect born in Macao but exposed in early childhood to the style of the more affluent local suburbs—Pakuranga, for instance. This last might explain the expanses of dark brick, yes. The many roof levels have got a slightly Chinese look as to architectural style but a Mediterranean look as to colour and detail: curved terracotta tiles, yep! Well, Chinese and Mediterranean? What else but Macao? It’s almost impossible to find your way around it, not to say determine which of its wings might be the main wing or where the front entrance is, but see, I now know to go in at the door with the little palette-shaped pool just outside it, so I do.

    Then you ignore the terracotta-tiled lobby with its pool—larger, with even more papyrus plants—and go up this short flight of varnished pine stairs. Mysteriously, they lead only to a small landing with a closed door which says “No Entry”, but this isn’t true. There’s a blue-grey vinyl-floored corridor inside, you turn right, go up another short flight of stairs, open the door labelled “E201-E218”, go down another corridor and there on the right is a door labelled not only “E215” but also “Dr E. Nilsson”. Yeah—simple, hah, hah.

    It’s ajar, good, lovely Erik is in! “Hullo, Erik! Were you looking for me?”

    He’s got a sad face, a bit like one of those lovely, droopy-faced dogs, but he looks up and smiles like anything. I wish I knew of someone nice for him, he’s just been through an awful divorce and his wife’s gone back to England—she is English—taking their two little girls with her. He’s too nice to have got an injunction and stopped the bitch. He’d be about the right age for Jill: he must be in his late thirties, but she’s not interested in being a bloke’s domestic slave. Mind you, Leo’s wrong about her: she isn’t interested in women, either, there was definitely a Mr Wrong in her past, back in Pongo, but no-one’s gonna tell the sarky bastard that: let him assume what he likes, Jill doesn’t give a stuff. No, well, someone really nice for Erik, and not too young for him, but not too dim.

    “No, aren’t you looking for me?” he grins. “Unless you merely turned right instead of left at the fourteenth papyrus plant and got hopelessly lost?”

    “Good one! No, Maisie Pretty had some garbled message, but if you didn’t want me I’ll go away again.”

    “That hen! Does she ever get a message right? I merely asked her to tell you I’d found that article you were interested in.”

    “The Agatha Christie one? Ooh, good!”

    “Don’t jump for joy just yet,” he warns, opening a desk drawer. He hands me a photocopy with a very wry look on his face.

    “What?”

    He winces. “I did try to warn you, Polly: the fellow’s not into linguistics, he’s only one of us humble literary bods.”

    “Then what’s he doing writing about her use of language?”

    “Nursery rhymes,” he corrects mildly.

    “That’s language!”

    “Not to him. It’s more imagery,” he says with a faint laugh in his voice. “Oh—and psychology, of course.”

    “Pooh!”

    “Yes. Well, there it is, for what it’s worth.”

    “Thanks, Erik. It was nice of you to go to the trouble.”

    “That’s okay. If you really want to thank me you could have a go at”—oops, here we go—“a bit of Dickens.”

    Try to edge unobtrusively towards the door. “I have read David Copperfield. Um—well—some of it.”

    “Yes: when you were at school; don’t you think your tastes might have changed?”

    “Not that much.”

    He gets up in his earnestness—I tell ya, these literature bods! And says urgently: “Polly, if you like Zola, you’ll like Dick—”

    “No! ‘Life is too short to stuff a mushroom!’ See ya!” And I’m off.

    Right: it’s a lovely day, you do sometimes get gorgeous weather in early May, though it can pour, so I’ll put my sunglasses on and go to the park! Um—nip over the road and through the main building, yes, it’s gone two, everyone’ll be in class.

    Ooh, here’s the floral clock, isn’t it gorgeously kitschy? Still wrong, natch! Right, over here, past the fountain and head towards the steep path that goes down to the Art Gallery and downtown, and here it is! My tree! A big Moreton Bay fig on the edge of the lawn with the ornate Edwardian band rotunda. An old tree, its base is a mass of wrinkled grey elephantine roots, lovely. There’s a few of them in the park and they are miraculous beings. No-one around, good. Pick my way through the roots and pat the trunk. “Hullo, Tree.”

    Aw, gee, at this a body emerges from the other side of the big tree and says sardonically: “Hullo, Polly; communing with nature, now, is it?”

    Blast! Tall, handsome, cliché of a white shirt, boringly conservative tie, and boringly conservative grey slacks: flaming Mike Collingwood, it would have to be him!

    “Hullo, Mike. Creeping up on innocent members of the public like a Real Detective, now, is it?”

    Shit! Loud laugh from the far side of the tree and here’s yet another large male figure in a white shirt and grey slacks! Shorter, plumper, looks nice.

    “How many of you are there, hiding behind there?”

    Mike just looks down his straight nose and sniffs. But the other man says eagerly: “Just us! Hullo! We weren’t hiding, we were resting our weary bones and deciding whether to slack off for the arvo. Hey, Mike, ya wouldn’t like to introduce us, wouldja?”

    Mike doesn’t look as if he would, but he says in a bored voice. “John Blunt. Colleague. This is Bob Mitchell’s kid sister: Polly.”

    Yeah, yeah. All right, Bob’s my youngest brother—they’re all loads older than me, him and Mike are about nine years older, I was an accident—so see, since he’s known me since my cradle he’s entitled to patronise me.

    Do my best to ignore the bugger and smile at his mate. “Are you a detective, too, John?”

    “Too right! Been working on a case with this bloke, here, for me sins!”

    Mm, well, he’d be a bit older than Mike, I think, in his forties, but he’d have been working for him, not with him, Mike’s a bloody bright bloke. He’s done well in his chosen profession, I’ll say that for him, got to be Detective Chief Inspector, but it hasn’t done anything for his disposition. Or his ruddy hidebound attitudes, they were bad enough to start with, but now! Unfortunately their central office or Pleece HQ, or whatever unlikely thing they call it, is right over there at the end of the street. An architectural abortion, in fact very probably designed by the same architect as our Faculty building. A small point which I'd overlooked when I set out to have a lovely walk through the park by myself.

    So Mike yawns and stretches and actually lowers himself so far as to admit: “Been up all night for the last five nights in a row on the case, he means. Then spent the morning listening to the Old Man tear it to shreds. Come on, John, if we’re gonna get some lunch and slack off, let’s do it.”

    “Haven’t you had your lunch yet, either?”

    “No,” John agrees, grinning hopefully. Don’t think it’s dawned that Mike wasn’t gonna invite me if his life depended on it. “Wanna come with us, Polly? Where’s somewhere you’d like?”

    “Um, that place in the Art Gallery’s nice.”

    Mike sniffs. “Too poncy.”

    John Blunt gives him a dirty look, good on him! No, well, it isn’t too poncy for flaming Mike Collingwood, I dunno what impression he’s carefully given the blokes at work, though I can guess, but in fact he’s got very up-market tastes. But on the other hand, poor John probably wouldn’t enjoy it, it and its quiches, so I offer quickly: “There’s a great place in High Street that does lovely tacos.”

    John admits he’s never had them but ruddy Mike stigmatises them as gut-burners.

    “These ones aren’t, they’re really nice! And you can choose your fillings!”

    “Come on, let’s go,” says nice John quickly.

    Mike shrugs, but he comes.

    Yes, all right, Mike, it is a vegetarian dump and shut up, they’ll hear you! Most of the fillings have lentils or beans in them, they’re very good for you. John doesn’t know how to eat a taco. “Look, like this, John! Careful—oops!” Mike doesn’t think it’s funny, or anything is, but he eats his salad and burrito with refried beans up hungrily, so sucks to him! Me and John have a really lovely time, so who cares if he’s sulking? I can’t see why, exactly, but for the last ten years I never have seen Mike Collingwood look cheerful, so there’s nothing I can do about it, is there? It’s since his marriage went down the tubes. Even Bob, thick though he is, could see she was all wrong for him, a bleached-blonde gold-digger who latched onto him because of his looks and his promising career, but good grief, she was eyeing other blokes up at the wedding reception, the writing was on the wall, wasn’t it?

    Saturday morning. I’m gonna get over to the other side and go for a lovely drive all by myself for a treat—down the Great South Road, ’cos it’s one of my favourite places in all the world! And this arvo I’ve gotta have afternoon tea with Aunty Vi, I deserve some consolation, don’t I? It’ll take some time to get there from Pohutukawa Bay, but never mind. I’ll just creep out—no, ssh, Grey, you can’t come! Mm, good boy, let’s have a cuddle. All right, don’t, you contrary old thing! Right, now, close the front door very quietly and creep out to the car—Phew! No sign of Roger! Start the car, quick! Um, maybe that bleating noise in the background is him, but I never saw him.

    You might think that all busy roads smell the same, but they don’t: the smell of the Great South Road’s unique! Mm, a wonderful mixture of hot asphalt, grit and lorry exhausts. Not so many lorries on a Saturday, but still quite a few. Possibly the Great South Road itself doesn’t appreciate the vision of a red sun-visor and a red blouse open to a rather low button to show off the gold chain on the tanned chest in the little open car—well, If you’ve got it, why hide it under a bushel? is my motto—but I think the lorry drivers do! Not to mention the hot and sleepy-looking owners of the little junk shops or the man at my green ice cream shop. He’s almost animated, in fact, and gives me a tip for this arvo’s big race. I don’t need the tip, but the green ice cream’s lovely! Mmm! There is nothing like strong artificial lime with creamy ice cream!

    Ooh, this junk shop looks interesting! Ooh! A battered novel, clearly written for boys at the height of Empah: it’s getting hard to find any of this period. Cripes, it seems to be almost completely homosexual in character. Well, as far as I can see it’s about the relationship between a white boy (the nominal hero) and a brown boy who I think is probably actually Burmese and not merely white in disguise like Kim. Ooh, yes, I’ll have it, thanks! Fifty cents for one, or a dollar for the boxful? Um, I don’t need—well, okay. Thanks.

    Drive on... Ah, hah! That junk shop is open, thought it might be closed. That is the most hideous china pot I’ve ever seen, it absolutely must’ve been designed with an aspidistra or mother-in-law’s tongue in mind, and the Puriri Garden Centre’s got just the mother-in-law’s tongue to fit it. How much is it? Fifteen dollars? For an abortion like this? No, it's too good, I’ve gotta have it!

    Ugh, time to head for Aunty Vi’s. Ugh.

    “Yeah, hullo, Aunty Vi.” Pecks me cheek: it’s like being pecked by a little brisk hen. She’s knee-high to a grasshopper but believe you me she’s got the strength of character of ten normal women ten times her size. Duly criticises the hair—merely in a plait, but the sun-visor apparently does not improve it—the depth to which the blouse was unbuttoned, “was” being the operative word, officiously does it up for me, the jeans, and the high-heeled sandals with the jeans. Ending: “Go and wash your hands before afternoon tea. –And just you mind your manners with Miss Milsom, Miss!”

    What? “Not Miss Milsom!”

    “That’ll be quite enough of that. Off you go.”

    Oh, God. Miss Milsom’s the sort of elderly lady that looks at you in your jeans sitting in your old aunty’s sitting-room with your knees only very slightly apart and makes pointed remarks about the way the Queen was taught to sit as a girl.

    The ordeal’s over at last. Of course it’s still light, in fact still afternoon, though it feels like half past midnight and pitch black. Aunty Vi wants me to stay for tea but honestly! I know the poor old duck’s lonely (well, according to Mum; actually she’s such a busybody she doesn’t have time to be lonely), but heck! After two hours of Miss Milsom in full spate? Added to which, once she’s got me to herself she’ll be sure to start in on Jake.

    “I can’t, Aunty Vi, I’ve got a lot of work to do this weekend.” –All lies, ulp! And I finally escape from the little old lady and her delightful old villa and her extremely nice Grammar Zone suburb and her stiflingly repressed—and repressive—opinions and her maddening habit of being right all the time and letting you know it. Well, yeah, I do feel a bit guilty, but not nearly enough to make me change my mind. But I will just nip into the City Campus: I’ve got a couple of books on reserve.

    Nope, no reserve slip for Mitchell in the little slot labelled “M” in the primitive but extremely efficient reserve system in the library’s outer lobby. The obscure parking slots assigned to junior lecturers are miles away, of course. Trudge back to the carpark.

    “Hullo, Polly!”

    Well, it is nice to see him but, um— “Hi, Nicky!”

    Nicky Henson. He’s quite attractive: stocky, fawn-haired, about my age. One of those rather nice, square faces. I’ve known him for ages: one of his friends used to be one of my flatmates, way back when I scandalised poor old Aunty Vi by going mixed flatting with three boys at the age of seventeen. She got onto poor Dad about it but he only said mildly: “Safety in numbers, Vi. She’s all right.” Nicky’s lecturing in History. He was involved for years with a girl doing a degree in mixed Political Science and Economics, while he was doing his in mixed Political Science and History, but after an almighty row over her career choice, she flounced off to Wellington to accept a cadetship at the Department of Foreign Affairs, and immediately become far too up-market for Nicky. All her new friends had trim beards and could talk knowledgeably about the Tokelaus and Nauru Island, see? So we, um, had a bit of a thing. I admit I was still mixed up with Mannie Halliday at the exact time—no, well, getting ready to break it off, but varsity rumour to the contrary, it wasn’t the Nicky complication that was the last straw, ’cos he never knew about it. I don’t believe in confessing all to ease your own conscience, because it only makes the other person miserable, doesn’t it? And that’s far more selfish than actually doing it with someone else could ever be. Well, I think so. I know no-one else does, but I can’t help it if my brain doesn’t work like theirs.

    Anyway, he's nice enough but not much drive, a bit boring really, not the sort of person I could ever envisage living with, and I didn’t really encourage him after that, and he found another girlfriend. Only now, according to the gossip in the S.C.R., he’s busted up with her.

    “What about grabbing a drink and something to eat?” –Grins hopefully.

    “Um, isn’t it a bit early, Nicky?”

    “Well—how about a bit of a drive? Lovely day, isn’t it?”

    I have already had a nice drive today. “Um, well, where?”

    “Dunno. Um—the Domain? It’s nice at this time of day.”

    “Um, well…” It will’ve been full of families, earlier, but it’s gone five, the Museum’ll be closed, they’ll all have gone home. “But we’ve got two cars.”

    Yeah, okay, he's gonna drive my little cream Mercedes sports job. Oh, why not, If it’ll make him happy: what else is it for? –It did cost far too much, but Grandad left me some money, and Jake reckoned it was a good price.

    So we drive to the Domain and find a nice shady tree to sit under—an oak, most of them are, the place is as Englishified as all get out, God knows why the early settlers had to plant flaming oak trees when the whole country was covered in standing native timber.

    Yeah, well, he’s looking ruddy keen. But I did sort of expect that.

    “They’ve got geese here now, Nicky, did you know?”

    “Um—no. That right?” He edges closer.

    “Yes, a whole flock. They’re quite fierce, they’d think nothing of giving you a good hard peck if you took any liberties.”

    “Uh—yeah.” –Silly grin.

    “A friend of mine had her toe pecked. She was just sitting on the grass, down by the pond, and the flock came up and one of them pecked her toe. She had sandals on.”

    “Better watch out, then!” –Silly laugh.

    “I’m relying on you to protect my toes, Nicky!”

    “Yeah,” he says vaguely.

     So I look at him with my lips slightly parted and that does it, he takes the hint, lacking in drive though he is, and kisses me. I don’t mind, actually, so I kiss him back. Finally he sighs and leans his head against mine and says into my hair: “Are you still seeing that property tycoon?”

    “Mm.” I’m waiting, but nothing. They can be pretty tiresome, eh? Does he want some sort of prompt, or reassurance, or what? “Have you and Gwen broken up?”

    “Yes. We decided we weren’t really compatible—y’know?”

    What do people mean by that? “Mm.”

    After a while he says: “Is it— How serious is it?”

    Look, I don’t know, and in any case, Nicky, it has nothing to do with this! “Dunno. Um, well, he’s had loads of girlfriends. I think I’m just a new experience for him. You know,”—make a silly face—“a lady lecturer.” Which is about all he’s capable of grasping, so I'm not gonna elaborate.

    “Leo Schmidt says—” Gee, he's stopped.

    “Whatever it was, ignore it. He’s always been jealous of Jake’s success. He’s known him ever since they were boys.”

    “He reckons he’s no good!”

    “Does he?”

    He flushes a bit and muttered: “Well, Leo’s a creep, I’ll give ya that.”

    “He’s dishonest to the very bone, yes.”

    “I thought he a was friend of yours?”

    “He is, more or less. Does that mean I have to be blind to what he is?”

    “No, but if ya know he’s a creep, why do you go round with him?” he cries.

    “He’s the only interesting person in the Faculty.”

    Yeah, right, that goes right over his head. “Interesting!”

    I’m not gonna explain if he’s too thick to get it, so I just say: “Well, look at them! I mean: Kevin McCaffery and Dennis Barlow?”

    “Yeah,” he agrees, grinning reluctantly.

    All right, Nicky, I’ll give you another hint. So I lie back on the grass and smile up at him kind of serenely. “Besides, Leo’s got S.A. None of the rest of them have.”

    Right, that got to him. “No,” he says, sounding quite shaken. “By cripes, you’ve got it yaself, ya know!”

    “I was beginning to wonder, actually.”

    That does it: he gives a silly laugh. “Maybe we better do something about it, then!”

    So we do. It doesn’t amount to more than a lot of kissing and then, with some fumbling, him giving me a come by hand and me jerking him off by hand. Well, not the crowning experience of a young gel’s life, but quite fun, yeah. We always have been quite compatible sexually, but not in any other ways.

    Yes, he does comment naïvely on how much noise I always make, but I’m used to that. He doesn’t appear pleased by it, of course, not like Jake.

    So after a while he raises himself on an elbow and looks at me with that stupid hopeful male expression—makes him look just like Roger, actually, ugh! “Couldn’t you give that bloke the push?”

    I do tell him part of the truth, ’cos I am fairly softened up. “No. It’s no use kidding myself. He’s only got to look at me and I go all wobbly and weak. Actually he’s only got to be in the room, come to think of it.”

    “You reckoned that’s what you were like with that Mannie Halliday type. Only you gave him the push!”

    “Not really. Well, we had an awful row and then he went back to America. Only I’ve often thought that if he’d changed his mind and said he wanted me to go, too, I’d have gone after all.”

    He just sighs, well, poor old Nicky. I can’t help it if I’m all wrong for him.

    “You need someone nice and ordinary, Nicky.”

    “I don’t! I mean, I need you!”

    Twit. “No, you don’t. It’d be all right for a bit, but you’d never be able to put up with me.”

    Well, gee, he cries incredulously: “It wouldn’t be a case of putting up with you, you’re mad!”

    “P’r’aps I am. Isn’t that the point?”

    “No.” Very red and scowling.

    So I sit up and do my blouse up. “The thing is, I don’t seem to be able to want the sort of things everybody else wants. Or… I dunno. React in the way people expect?”

    He sits up slowly, looking sulky, fancy that. “You’re talking garbage. React to what?”

    “Mm... Everything?”

    “I geddit: I’m not broad-minded enough, or something! I suppose you reckon this property tycoon is?”

    “I don’t think I was implying that. But Jake is pretty broad-minded—no, I think I mean large-minded. Nothing much surprises him… Well, he’s known lots of different types of people.”

    “People! Women, ya mean!”

    “Probably.”

    “Don’t do that!”

    “Um, what, Nicky?”

    “That—that stupid tone ya put on, as if nothing matters to ya!”

    Isn’t the whole point that I’m not putting it on, this is part of the real me, you twit? “There you are, see? I’m already driving you mad.” I get up and pull my jeans up. “Don’t let’s fight: it’s been lovely.”

    He gets up, too, and of course turns slightly away to stuff himself back into his pants. “Don’t stare like that! Or doesn’t this property-tycoon type mind you goggling at him when he gets himself back into his pants?”

    “No.” That goes over like a bucket of lead, but it’s true.

    He zips himself up, scowling. “Come on.” And heads for the car.

    Oh, dear. I know we’ve got nothing in common, but— I catch up and grab his arm. “The thing is, he’s pretty unshockable. Well, seen it all, you see?”

    “He’d of had the time to,” he notes bitterly. “Ya mean ya suit each other: that it?”

    “Yes, I think we’re quite compatible, really.”

    He doesn’t get it, he just sighs and said: “Yeah.”

    I give his arm a little squeeze. “Can we just be friends?”

    “If that’s what you want, Polly.”

    I’m slated for lunch with Joanie today, Monday: I’ve got a two-hour gap between classes.

    “Are you serious about him, Polly?” she asks in a lowered voice over quiche on the Art Gallery coffee shop’s patio. –It’s convenient: she works in the University Library—and the quiche is very nice.

    Not Nicky, no! Would I tell her about meaningless little bits on the side? She couldn’t possibly understand, she’s a lovely Baptist girl that married a guy she’s known since their schooldays. No, she means Jake, of course.

    “I’ve only known him for about six months.”

    Joanie eats a mouthful of perfectly pleasant quiche with a dubious expression on her plump, pink-cheeked face.

    “The asparagus quiche is quite nice, you should’ve had it, Joanie.”

    “What? No, this is nice.” She eats some more ham quiche.

    Uh—neutral topic, neutral topic, quick! “Did Tom’s father manage to sell the trailer-sailor?”

    This strikes a chord: the answer’s yes, and he’s thinking of buying a launch and looking at berths, but that marina near the Bridge is too dear—

    “Mm? Mm, I see...” Wish you got decent salads with the quiche here. There is a place with nice quiches plus a great selection of salads, but it’s been written up in ruddy Metro mag as the best lunch place in town, so you can’t get near it for yuppies.

    She finally runs down and finishes up her quiche. Then she finishes her orange juice. Then she gives me a hard look through her tinted glasses and leans forward over the table. “I bumped into Bettina the other day in Remuera when I was looking for curtain material—”

    Oh, God, now what? We were both at St Ursula’s School with Bettina. Bettina’s the sort of person who haunts Remuera shops, whereas Joanie only goes there in search of curtain material, because surprisingly enough there is a place there that has good bargains. Bettina is also the sort of person who knows the In group, the jet set, the Really Nice People or, if you’re being sarky about them which I generally am, the Remmers and Titters lot. In fact Bettina not only shops at Remmers: she actually, before her divorce, lived in Titirangi for four years. She is the same age as me and Joanie but in New Zealand it’s more than possible to have been married and divorced by the age of twenty-eight. More than.

    Bettina’s mother, she’s even worse than her, it was where Bettina learnt it, apparently knows Jake Carrano. And—

    So I let her retail a lot of second-hand gossip in a suitably lowered and horrified voice and then I say calmly: “None of that’s actually news to me.” –But quite nicely, because I am very fond of Joanie.

    “But Mrs Wootton said those parties of his were practically orgies!” she hisses.

    “How would she know, I’m sure she’s never been invited.”

    Has to swallow, hah, hah! “No-o; still…”

    “Besides, most of the parties we went to in our late teens and early twenties could well have been described as orgies by an unbiassed onlooker.”

    “Polly! I’ve never been to that sort of party!”

    “Rubbish, of course you have. What about that do at—um—Wendy Bagot’s place, if I remember rightly, when we were in the Sixth Form. That time her parents were in Rarotonga. You spent the entire evening sitting on Tom’s knee with his hand—”

    “Polly!” she hisses, fiery red.

    “Well, you did.”

    “That was different!”

    “No, it wasn’t. You couldn’t have known at the time that you and him were going to get married and turn into a respectable suburban couple several years down the track.”

    “We were practically engaged,” she says sulkily.

    “Yeah? Your mum didn’t think so, you should have heard her going on to Aunty Vi about spotty boys with no ideas in their heads except broken-down old cars. And it wasn’t what you thought at the time, either: you spent two years chasing that awful Murray Forsythe before you even started to consider poor old Tom as husband material.”

    “Sometimes you can be just awful, Polly Mitchell!” The poor thing’s all flushed again.

    Mm, last quiche crumb, yum! “Every word I said was true.”

    Joanie’s pink mouth goes all quivery and pouty. I’m ignoring it—well, I am the daughter of that certified watering-pot, Maureen Macdonald Mitchell, aren’t I?

    “All I’m saying is, don’t call the kettle black before you’ve had a good hard look at how black your own bottom might be.”

    “How black my— Honestly, Polly! What a way to put it!” It worked, though: her mouth’s stopped quivering and in fact looks as if it might break down and produce a silly giggle, given the least encouragement.

    “I’d say our parties were every bit as bad as Jake’s so-called orgies, in fact probably worse; he grew up in the Fifties, you know.”

    “Yes, and that’s another thing!” She’s got her second wind. “He’s old enough to be your father!”

    Well, yeah, and that makes it better! I’m refraining, on account of Joanie’s Baptist sensibilities. “Yes. But he’s not exactly past it.”

    “I dare say.” She starts in on her small strawberry tart, looking cross.

    “Anyway, he’s probably not serious.”

    Dunno why she’s sighing, thought that was what she wanted to hear? She finishes the strawberry tart and asks: “Is that a new top?”

    “This yellow thing? Yes; I got it in Whangarei last week when I nipped up to the Clock Museum.”

    “I wish I could wear those bright shades.”

    “I wish I could wear that powder blue!” –She’s blonde, fair-skinned and rather plump.

    “I am quite fond of it… Polly, it’s not going to be like it was with Mannie Halliday, is it?”

    “What do you mean?” Blast—I can feel I've gone bright red.

    “Letting him walk all over you, is what I mean.”

    “Jake isn’t like that.”

    “That isn’t what—” Breaks off abruptly.

    All right, who’s been gossiping? “What what?”

    “Um, well, Val and I were chatting to Roger Browne in the S.C.R. at lunchtime the other day. Well, we were running late, there was hardly anyone there, and he looked a bit lonely.”

    “You are allowed to talk to Rog at lunchtime, Joanie.”

    “Silly! Um—well, we just happened to mention,”—has to swallow, serve ’er right—“Jake Carr—”

    “You just happened to hog-tie Rog and torture him with hot irons, ya mean!”

    “It wasn’t only me, Val was there, too!”

    “Yeah, holding the spare hot iron while you operated. Go on: what insightful comments did he give you?”

    “Um, well, he only said that Jake Carrano’s a very strong personality.”

    “Well, he’s right. And if you and Val were that interested, you could’ve got that out of Rod Jablonski ages ago.”

    “Who? Oh—that student!”—Boy, that’s the Michelangelic Roderick dismissed in a breath, eh? The woman must be blind!—“Don’t be silly, we weren’t interested before!”

    “At least you’re admitting it.”

    “Be serious, Polly! Roger said he’s one of the most forceful men he’s ever met. If you couldn’t stand up to that horrid Mannie, how will you cope with a—a big-business tycoon like Jake Carrano?”

    “In the first place, we don’t know how many forceful men Roger’s ever met—”

    “Polly! I said, be serious!”

    “And in the second place, Jake’s as different from Mannie as you could possibly imagine!”

    She just sighs, drat her, and gets up. “I’ve got to get back to work. Are you coming?”

    “No: Dennis Barlow might have some scheme to waste my free period.”

    “He can’t boss you around, he isn’t H.O.D. yet. Where’s Professor Henderson?”

    I get up. “Locked in his office reading Racine, and good on him!”

    “Oh. Well, that’s— But what’ll it be like next year, when Dennis Barlow’s got the chair?”

    “I shudder to think. Never mind, p’r’aps I’ll’ve been carried off on a white charger and smothered in mink and diamonds by then!”

    Poor Joanie goes very pink. “Polly, that isn’t funny! You’re too nice to—to throw yourself away on an awful man like that!”

    We head back into the gallery. “Did Roger tell you he was awful?”

    “No!” she snaps. “–Where are you going?”

    “Through here: I want to— Ooh, here he is!” That pinkish full-length Saint Sebastian stuck full of arrows. “Isn’t he horrible?”

    She winces and looks away from him  “No! I mean, of course he is, he’s revolting! I don’t understand why you like looking at— And don’t think you can side-track me!”

    Hadn’t thought I could. Hoped it—yes. “Go on, then. You were up to the bit where Rog didn’t tell you Jake was awful.”

    “He didn’t say so, but it was written all over him that was what he thought! And I don’t think it’s funny! You’re going to let him walk all over you and do exactly what he likes, the same as that awful Mannie!”

    I’m more interested in the picture, actually. Funny how it hits you right in the eye, every time. Maybe it’s technically better than I’d know? “You may be right. Only if that’s my nature, I don’t see what I can do about it.”

    “Do about it? You’re an intelligent woman, you can stand up for yourself!”

    Oh, Gawd, here we go.

    “Polly, if you’d stood up for your rights with Mannie Halliday,” says dear Joanie in a trembling voice, “you’d be married to him right now and living in California.”

    Oops, I can’t help laughing! “What an awful thought! I think that proves every cloud has a silver lining after all!”

    “I might have known you wouldn’t want to discuss it seriously! I’m going back to work, I’ve got better things to do than waste my breath trying to get you to see sense!”

    I’ll say. –Ooh, it’s just struck me! “See this pink Saint Sebastian?”

    “What about him?” She winces again. See, not only are the arrows depicted with loving realism, bad enough, but the skin’s that awful pale pink and the figure’s so skinny, and—ugh!

    “Don’t you think he looks a bit like Rog Browne?”

    Joanie gasps, chokes, and manages to get out: “You’ve seen him in his togs, you ought to know!” before she goes into a mad fit of the giggles. Concluding: “You are awful.”

    “Yes.” Dear Joanie!

    “I’ve gotta go,” she says with a sigh.

    “Mm. See ya.”

    So she says “Bye-bye” and trots off.

    It’s a pity that the horrible Saint Sebastian has to be wearing a loincloth. Sexist, really, isn’t it? All the ladies in paintings seem to be starkers, except for a few the Pope and his mates ordered hadda have a little wavy cloth painted over the pubes. Think I’ll go and have a quiet admire of the gallery’s Barbara Hepworth, that’ll clean my mental palate!

    The phone rings just as I'm thinking about tea but funnily enough it isn’t Jake. Where is the man? It’s been over a week, now! Last I heard he was heading for Western Australia, on business. What business, unspecified. Developing more ruddy mines in the middle of age-old Aboriginal tribal lands? Planning to chop down age-old irreplaceable jarrah forests for flaming building timbers for ugly suburban boxes?

    It’s blimming Roger. He’s got the bus into Puriri from town, and he’s wondering if I’d care to join him for dinner at the Chez Basil?

    No, I wouldn’t. In the first place he let that plaintive but self-congratulatory note creep into his voice as he told me he’d got the bus from town. In the second place he’s mentioned the fact that he took the bus at all. In the third place, the feebleized drip’s calling the restaurant “the Chez Basil” instead of “the Cheese Basil”, which, please note, he feigned to find very amusing when I said it! In the fourth, he’s still saying “dinner” instead of “tea”. –His native usage, but know what? Somehow I’m not prepared to concede this! And, finally, in the fifth place he hasn’t just come right out and said he’s stuck in Puriri on a warm afternoon and if I don’t fancy joining him there for a meal, could I possibly do him a great favour and give him a ride home?

    “Sorry, I’ve got an appointment down at Brown’s Bay.” –All lies. “See ya!”

    Grey’s come into the passage. There are some grass seeds caught in his short, thick, smoke-grey fur: he must’ve made a nest for himself under the hedge somewhere. “Croak, croak, croak!” Rub, rub, rub.

    “That settles that, Grey! Now all I have to decide is whether it’ll be the Brown’s Bay Chinese or the fish and chip shop!”

    “Croak, croak, croak!”

    “Come on, then, you can have a small helping of meat.” I take one step and he makes a dash for the kitchen, almost tripping me in his eagerness.

    “Hullo,” said a surprised husky tenor voice as Polly was looking at the menu in the window of the Brown’s Bay Chinese takeaway. “What are you doing down here?”

    Rod Jablonski’s voice was rather like David Attenborough’s. A point, reflected Polly, turning and smiling at him, which flaming Roger had remarked upon as if he was the only person on earth to have— Yeah. “Hi, Rod. Wondering if the sweet and sour pork here’s as good as Sid Ching’s in Puriri.”

    “Not nearly. Why not come home with me? I’ve got a decent cray.”

    “Ooh, goody!”

    So they did that, stopping only to buy soda water, white bread and real butter. Polly let him drive the little cream Merc, why not?

    “Rod,” she said in horror as he turned right, not left at the bottom of the road,  “when you said home, did you mean your father’s place?”

    “Yeah. Don’t worry, they’re down in Nelson at my cousin Joe’s. Dad’s drying out. Dunno what Esmé’s doing: fighting with Betty, probably—Joe’s wife. I’m keeping an eye on the dump. Been mowing the lawn for Dad,” he added, looking bland.

    “Behind his back!”

    “That’s it,” he said, grinning.

    It was only five minutes away: they rounded the corner and draw up outside his father’s battered wooden bungalow.

    “Um, your stepmother won’t come back early, will she?” she croaked.

    “Nah. They flew down: got those tickets where you have to book at least thirty days in advance and you can’t change the bookings. You’re safe, don’t worry!”

    “Good!”

    Yeah, thought Rod, good’s the word! Today she was in a bright orange short-sleeved knit top over really tight jeans. Faded ones, but they weren't baggy, they were good and tight. Have a medal, them jean makers!

    “I’ll unlock the boot.” He got out and retrieved his shopping. “A while back,” he said reminiscently, “um, woulda been round Christmas—that’s right, she’d seen that bloody silly photo of you and Jake in Metro—Esmé said the two of you deserved each other.”

    “Was that all?”

    “Nah, but the rest of it was unrepeatable! –Come on, it’s safe. Cripes, ya wouldn’t see me for dust if I thought she might come back early!”

    “No. –Aunty Vi reckons she was always a bit mad,” ventured Polly.

    “That’d be right. Dunno why the Hell Dad married her,” he grunted, leading the way up the cracked apology for a front path. “Watch your step. –Well, dunno why Jake did, for that matter,” he admitted.

    “According to Aunty Vi,” said Polly, negotiating the broken bits of concrete carefully, “she was very pretty back then. Blonde and coolly elegant—the Grace Kelly type.”

    Rod made a rude noise. He operated expertly on the warped front door. “There! Get in,” he said, grinning at her.

    “Will it spring back with a snarl the minute you release it?” she asked with a smile.

    “Something like that. Bit like Esmé, really,” he conceded.

    Polly gave a gurgle of laughter and went in.

    She’d already been exposed to the horrors of Rod’s father’s house, so she didn’t comment on its mixture of Old Poland (Count Jablonski), Fifties kitsch (relics of an aunt of Rod’s late mother), and recent vile (Esmé: the woman was either completely devoid of taste or colour-blind—or both). Whatever influence Rod’s mother had had on the décor was not apparent: she had died when Rod was tiny, leaving nothing behind but the sweet temperament and big blue eyes her son had inherited and a framed photo of a gentle oval face under a blonde, bouffant hairstyle. This photograph normally stood on the mantelpiece in the sitting-room but on Esmé Jablonski’s really bad days it tended not to.

    “Not in there!” she pleaded as Rod opened the sitting-room door.

    “The kitchen’s pretty bad, too.”

    “Yes, but it hasn’t got four different wall-coverings, all of which leer at you!”

    He grinned amiably and they stumbled on down the dim passage past a moth-eaten deer’s head, a huge old carved coat-stand, and a selection of spotted steel engravings in heavy dark frames, and over a selection of faded, grubby garlands of cabbage roses, wonderful dark Persian rugs, and scuffed clutches of sweet wee kittens, shutting their eyes to the darkly effulgent puce end wall. At least, Polly certainly shut hers.

    “This kitchen could be really lovely if you stripped those cupboards,” she said faintly.

    It was an old-fashioned lean-to kitchen with a multiplicity of small cupboards: quite possibly the last of its kind to have escaped the relentless hands of the renovators. It even had its original meat safe, not that they used it. Originally it had probably been painted dark cream throughout, as was usual for its period. It was now a lurid, flickering light greenish shade, just far enough off turquoise to cause a true grinding anguish. One of the walls of the sitting-room was also done in this colour: there must have been a bit left over. The kitchen floor featured a cracked fawn linoleum with small bunches of pinkish and brownish flowers here and there but most people didn’t notice that for quite some time.

    Rod agreed glumly: “Yeah; those little brass door-knobs’d clean up a treat.”

    “I suppose your father won’t— No.”

    “I look at it this way,” he said briskly, opening the ancient, high-shouldered refrigerator: “I don’t have to live here.”

    “True. There’s always the risk you might inherit it, though.”

    “Nah,” he drawled: “Dad’ll leave it to Esmé and she’ll chuck it away on mad get-rich-quick schemes like she did with all that dough her father left her.”

    “That’s a relief,” said Polly, smiling at him, and wondering what the new pong was—she thought it was new. It wasn’t coming from the fridge: it was almost empty and quite clean.

    “Yeah,” he acknowledged, straightening with a bottle in his hand. “Ever had hock and seltzer?”

    “No. It sounds strangely Edwardian.”

    “It is: Dad got it off his strange Edwardian ancestors. It’s the one good trick he’s ever taught me. Ya take an indifferent white wine—doesn’t have to be hock.”—“That’s good,” she noted, reading the label.—“Yeah; and add soda water: see?” Rod operated, finally handing her a tall glass on which were emblazoned the words “Foster’s Lager.” He raised his own glass, which bore merely a line drawing in pale blue of a bunch of kowhai flowers and which she recognised as having come out as one of a line of peanut butter jars many years previously. According to Jill, quite collectible; at any rate, she had quite a collection of them. “Cheers.”

    “Cheers.” Polly tasted it gingerly. “Ooh, it’s good!”

    “Refreshing, eh?” Rod produced a huge crayfish from the fridge. –At least the pong wasn’t coming from the crayfish: it only smelt of itself. What was it? It was really odd. It reminded her of… No, gone again. Um, something like the smell of the outer walls of Jake’s bach? Creosote?

    “Grab that butter, wouldja?” he said. “Think we might as well eat outside, it’s putrid in here.”

    Polly grabbed the butter and said with relief: “Yeah. What is that pong?”

    “Borer bomb. Turned out bloody Esmé let it off under the house just before they went. First night I was here I was almost asphyxiated.”

    She looked at him horror. “You might have been poisoned!”

    “Nah: fortunately it dawned what it was, so I nipped back to my place. I’ve brought my tent over—see?”

    “Yes; that was sensible,” she said, sagging.

    “Yeah. I did wonder whether the cow meant to asphyxiate me, but I think that was just the fumes getting to the brain,” he said, grinning. “At least it’s driven out the stink of mould and boiled cabbage, eh?”

    “Mm.” Polly looked at the tent. “Can I go in?”

    “Help yaself.” Rod looked with interest at the expanse of blue denim bottom as she crawled into the tent.

    “Is this your own mattress?” she asked, emerging.

    “Yeah—well, off the bed here, yeah. I’ve got a ground sheet under it, of course.”

    Of course! The Good Keen Men always did! “Yes,” she agreed, smiling at him.

    “Mrs B. next-door just about had kittens when she found out I was sleeping out, she’s been trying to make me go over there.”

    Polly glanced at the neat house next-door and said cautiously: “I thought your father wouldn’t have anything to do with them?”

    Rod was building a little fire. “Eh? Aw—no. Well, stupid bloody old fascist. Esmé’s had a row with them, too. But Mrs B. and me get on all right.”

    This wasn’t all that surprising. In fact Esmé Jablonski was probably the only female in the world who wouldn’t get on with Rod: he was not only gorgeous, but very, very sweet. “Is Mrs B. the one with the cat that’s always getting stuck up a tree?”

    “Mm. Well, both sides, really!” he acknowledged with a laugh. “Only Tiddles Bernstein gets stuck oftener than Stripey Wilson: she’s dumber!”

    She smiled. “But it’s always you that gets them down.”

    “Only when I’m here!” said Rod with his cheerful laugh. “Their kids are all grown up, too: it’s an ageing population round this area, you know.”

    “Mm, as bad as round Aunty Vi’s way,” she agreed. “There are some young families, but they’re mostly the one-child yuppy type that can afford to buy those restored Gizz villas.”

    “Gizz?” he said blankly.

    “Sorry! It’s the awful land agents’ ads round her way. ‘GZ’: Grammar Zone!” she gasped, giggling madly.

    “Gizz, eh?” he said with relish. “I’ll remember that one. Shall I boil the billy?”

    The crayfish was already cooked. “Not billy tea?” she croaked.

    “Ya gotta have Good Keen billy tea when ya build a fire, Polly! No, well, there’s only one bottle of plonk: never get much in when I’m at Dad’s, he drinks it. I mean, I know he’s not here right now, but I’ve got into the habit of it. But I won’t make billy tea if ya don’t like it,” he ended on an anxious note.

    Sweet: see? She sat down beside him, cross-legged. “Clot. I’ll have some if it’s going. Shall I perform the surgical operation?”

    “Eh? No!” Rod grabbed the crayfish in alarm.

    Polly went into a fit of the giggles, gasping: “You’re—as bad—as my—brothers!”

    “Good Keen Men one an’ all,” he agreed mildly. He spread out a newspaper and rapidly dismembered the crayfish on it. “Help yaself.”

    “Ta.” Polly chewed hungrily. “Mm!” she approved, smiling at him. “I once offered to skin a pig for Bert,” she said reminiscently. “I was only about ten at the time: too young to realise the error of my ways. I had a lovely skinning knife, too: I’d swapped it with Witi Dawson for my brand-new school-bag. Dad was wild when he found out.”

    Rod eyed her sardonically. “Walloped the living daylights out of you, did ’e?”

    “No, it was just a couple of smacks,” she admitted, all smiles. “I was screaming at the time that Bert had made me give the knife back, maybe that had something to do with it.”

    “Yeah, that or the fact that your dad and your brothers are all soft as butter where you’re concerned.”

    “I wouldn’t say that. Bob can be quite hard on me. But his mate, Mike Collingwood, he’s even worse: never been known to let me get away with a thing! I bumped into him just recently, actually, and he’s still as bad as ever.”

    It was getting dark. Polly ate crayfish with white bread and butter and stared into Rod’s little fire and told him, she couldn’t have said why, all about the encounter with Mike. Ending: “I can’t make him out, really. He’s very attractive, but… There’s something very cold about him.”

    Rod put a huge slab of butter on a slice of white bread, folded it over and stuffed it into his perfect mouth. Polly was watching him with a hopeful, expectant expression on her face. When he’d choked it down he said: “Cold? Yeah, I bet there is.”

    “What do you mean?” she said blankly.

    “Crikey, how long has ’e known ya? –Don’t answer that. Well, how long have I known ya?”

    “Um, a few years, I suppose.”

    “Yeah. And in them few years, how many blokes have you had it off with? Not to mention that bloody on-again, off-again thing you had with that Halliday creep for umpteen years!”

    “Well, how many girls have you had it off with in the last few years?” she retorted crossly.

    “A few.”

    “A few!” she cried.

    “Look, I’m not saying we’re any different, see?” he said patiently. “All I’m saying is that we’re both the type that—um—that sees a juicy morsel on offer and doesn’t say no to it—right?”

    “Yes,” said Polly in a sulky voice: “I suppose you could say that. And if it’s all right for you, why shouldn’t it be all right for me?”

    “If you’d just listen!” said Rod in exasperation.

    “All right, Dr Freud, I’m listening.”

    “It isn’t flaming Freudian— Well, it probably is, but so what? Look, it’s common sense. You’re the type that goes for what she fancies. And I reckon this Mike joker, from what you’ve said about him, well, he doesn’t fancy that!”

    “What am I supposed to do, live like a nun until blimming Mike Collingwood’s roving fancy should chance to light upon me?” she cried crossly.

    “Nope. Well, I wouldn’t recommend it—no. Only, see, the great Jablonski brain has deduced”—he looked at her with a twinkle in his blue eyes—“that he is probably that type. Double standard?” He raised his perfect eyebrows and grinned at her.

    Polly looked at Rod’s perfect face lit up from below by the orange glow of his little fire, and Rod’s perfect torso in his tight tee-shirt, and was swamped by a wave of simple lust.

    “Yes,” she said hoarsely, licking her lips.

    “What are ya looking at me like that for?” he said uneasily.

    “I didn’t mean to stare. I was just thinking how utterly beautiful you are.”

    Rod choked on the piece of bread he’d just started to chew. “There you are!” he managed to gasp.

    “Where?” replied Polly warily.

    He coughed, banged himself on his perfect chest, and said: “You’re the sort that can sit there and say that sorta thing to one bloke while she’s involved with another bloke—Where is ’e, by the way? No, don’t tell me, I don’t wanna know.—And this Mike joker, he’s obviously the type that doesn’t go for that.”

    “I suppose,” she said crossly, “that I might manage to agree with that—once I’d fought my way through the down-market jungle of ‘blokes’ and ‘jokers’, that is!”

    “Ya left out the Good Keen Men,” he said, unmoved.

    She gave a startled giggle, and Rod smiled at her in some relief and said: “Well, don’tcha think I’m right?”

    “Yeah. That or he just doesn’t fancy me.”

    He sniffed.

   “Hul-lo! Who’s this?” she cried.

    Rod jumped a foot, then saw in relief it was only a cat. “Ole Stripey from next-door. –Hullo, fella, where ya been?” he said to him in a squeaky voice. “I’ve been worried about him, he didn’t turn up for his tea,” he explained, scrambling up. “I’m feeding him while the Wilsons are away.” He put down some crayfish scraps for the interested cat on the edge of the newspaper. “He’ll’ve been out on the town,” he added, sitting down again and hugging his knees.

    Polly looked at him with great affection. “Yes. –You’re so nice, Rod,” she said with a sigh.

    “Eh?” he said weakly.

    “Well—feeding the cat. Not even your own neighbours’ cat, your father’s neighbours’ cat.”

    “What was I supposed to do, let ’im starve?” he said weakly.

    “It’s just that it doesn’t go with the looks or the macho image,” she murmured.

    “For Pete’s sake!”

    “I know—don’t tell me: any decent joker’d feed his dad’s neighbours’ cat!”

    “Well, any decent joker would!” said poor Rod desperately.

    “Mm. Jake says you’re very like your mother.”

    “Oh,” he said limply. After a moment he glanced at her cautiously but she was watching the big striped cat. “Where is he, anyway?” he said huskily, clearing his throat.

    “Jake? Australia somewhere. Cutting down irreplaceable rainforests or mining traditional Aboriginal hunting grounds, or something. –It’s rather odd, being free again,” she said thoughtfully. “You know: being on my own again; not answerable to anyone for my time. He’s very… I don’t know how to put it. Not demanding, as such. Possessive, I think. He claims he doesn’t give me the third degree, but whenever he sees me he asks me what I’ve been up to that day—you know.”

    “Probably thinks ’e needs to,” he muttered.

    “I dare say,” she said in a hard voice. “It never seems to dawn on him that he wants to have it both ways.”

    “Eh?” said Rod cautiously.

    “He doesn’t want any sort of commitment, but on the other hand he can’t stand it if I’ve spent so much as a single minute of the day alone with another male.”

    “Yeah. Well, he isn’t used to females like you.”

    “What do you mean by that?” she said grimly.

    Rod sighed. “I only meant that he’s not used to females that actually believe they might have the same rights as him. He’s used to the dolly type that hang on ’is arm and tell him how marvellous he is.” He paused. “Either that or the married dames that are only too thankful to get offered a bit on the side, so they’re not gonna—”

    “All RIGHT!” she shouted.

    “You asked,” he said calmly.

    “Did I?” said Polly wildly.

    Rod’s lips twitched but he pointed out: “If you wanna educate him to be liberated about women, you’ve got a hard row to hoe.”

    “Yes.” She hugged her knees and stared into the fire. “I don’t know that I do want him to be liberated. Sometimes I think I’d much prefer it if he locked me up in his harem and threw away the key,” she said wistfully.

    “You?” he gasped. “They only let eunuchs into the harems, ya know! How’d ya cope with that?”

    “Not very well, I suppose. I don’t know… When I’m with him I don’t want anybody else. Only, when he’s not here I sort of—” She swallowed.

    “Look, he’s not like that Halliday joker, ya know,” he warned.

    “No.”

    Rod cleared his throat. “More like ya brother Bob’s mate the cold policeman, if anything.”

    “What? Bullshit! He’s a million miles more broad-minded than Mike!”

    “About some things—yeah,” he said pointedly.

    There was quite a long silence, apart from Stripey Wilson crunching a last piece of crayfish shell and starting on an elaborate wash.

    “You’ve known Jake miles longer than I have. Would he like me better if I—if I was the sort of woman that isn’t attracted to other men, do you think?” said Polly at last in a small voice.

    Rod sighed. “I dunno, Polly, I’m no psychologist. He likes you as you are, doesn’t he? I mean, he likes you.”

    “Mm.” Polly stared into the fire. Finally she said: “Other women seem to—to switch off, when they’re in love.”

    “Ye-ah. I suppose. Well, yeah. Only, um, are you?” he croaked.

    “I don’t know. I think I am, in my terms. I mean, it seems to be all I’m capable of. Well, I can’t resist him physically, but the experts reckon love’s more than that, don’t they? And I do enjoy his company—more than any man I know, really. When I was in France I really fell for Jean-Jacques, and if he’d been free… He is terribly clever, and witty, but he hasn’t got Jake’s sort of sense of humour. And then, he isn’t nearly as macho. I know it’s silly, but I do like it. Well, like I say, I don’t want anyone else when I’m with him, but when I’m not, I don’t seem to be any different.”

    “Yeah.” Rod rubbed his straight nose. “I think I know what ya mean. I’m a bit the same. Ya get out and about and— Well, fresh fields, eh?”

    “Yes.”

    “Maybe these experts of yours’d say neither of us had ever really been in love,” he said cautiously.

    “Or maybe neither of us is susceptible to brainwashing by the romantic fallacy!” retorted Polly strongly.

    “Oops,” he said, grinning.

    “Mm… What I feel,” she said slowly, “always seems much—much more real, I think is what I mean—yes, much more real, than anything that tradition or popular culture, or civilisation, if you like, has tried to teach me I ought to feel. I don’t just mean about love or sex: about everything.”

    “Not into idées reçues,” he said with a smile.

    “No,” she agreed, biting her lip. “Has Rog Browne been going on at you about—” He was nodding and grinning. “Ouch!”

    “Yeah. He reckons,” said Rod, eyeing her thoughtfully, “that the innate scepticism of your mind is what makes you such a damn good scholar.”

    Polly made a rude noise.

    “Yeah.” Rod rubbed his nose again. “I get it: if ya don’t really believe in romantic love—”

    “It’s not even a question of belief or not, it’s not a voluntary thing.” She eyed him sideways. “I might say, comme la grâce, if I wasn’t sure you’d slept through those awful Bernanos lectures of Leo’s.”

    He winked but said: “Goddit. The ability to be romantically faithful hasn’t descended on you gratuitement out of a clear blue sky.”

    “Exactly.”

    Rod thought about it. “Crikey,” he concluded weakly, scratching his golden curls.

    “Look out: the cat’s after the crayfish remains!”

    Rod grabbed the newspaper package of crayfish shells from under the nose of the startled Stripey, and thrust it on the fire. The paper caught, flames flashed and golden cinders flew high, and Polly gave a little laugh and said: “I love a fire!”

    “Yeah, me too.”

    They stared into the flames, smiling. After a few minutes he said: “Pretty warm for May, eh? Fancy a swim? I can lend you a tee-shirt, if you haven’t got your togs in the car.”

    She agreed, smiling, and they drove the short distance to the beach.

    “Don’t swim out too far, will you, after all that food?” said Polly on a nervous note. “I’d never be able to bring you in if you got cramp or anything, I’m not much of a swimmer.”

    Rod gaped. “Is that what your macho clods of brothers used to do? Swim out leaving little Polly behind?”

    “More or less, yeah.”

    “Don’t worry, I’m not even gonna go out of my depth. Come on!” He grabbed her hand and ran down to the water.

    She was right, she wasn’t much of a swimmer, just did a fair bit of bobbing and splashing in the shallows. Rod was an excellent swimmer but funnily enough he didn’t mind the bobbing and splashing at all. Talk about your wet tee-shirt contest! Phew!

    Finally she gasped, standing up where the low waves were just starting to break and foam—Rod wouldn’t have half minded doing a bit of that himself, actually: “I’m puffed! I think I might go in.”

    “Yeah, me, too,” he lied, standing up very close to her.

    Polly licked her lips nervously.

   “Don’t do that, it’s a Helluva turn-on. Specially with the two of them in that wet tee-shirt. Um—look, if I do anything, you won’t spill the beans to Jake, will ya?”

    “No,” she said baldly.

    Swallowing hard, Rod cupped her breasts. “Nice?” he muttered.

    “Mm. Ooh!” she gasped as his thumbs stroked her nipples.

    He’d got this far, so he might as well—Rod bent his head and kissed her. Funnily enough she kissed him right back.

    “For two pins I’d do ya right here in the surf, ya know that, don’tcha?” he said in her ear.

    “Mm,” agreed Polly, putting her hand on his cock.

    “Jesus!—Hang on, you could pull me shorts down as well.”

    She eased the shorts down and grabbed it again and after a bit of gasping Rod pulled down the panties which were all she was wearing under that tee-shirt and got his hand—

    “Oh!” she yelped. “Oh, Rod; oh, Rod!”

    Crikey. Was she gonna—? Yes, she was. He didn’t think he was that inexperienced but he’d never heard a girl shriek that loud before. Not to mention the way she clenched on his finger! Just as well there was no-one else down here tonight. He sort of managed to shove the tee-shirt up with his spare hand and sort of managed to crush them against his chest and then he just let her get on with it, standing right there in the shallows of ruddy Brown’s Bay where he’d lived most of his life. Ooh—Paradise—ooh, yes! Ooh, Christ! He let her squeeze the last drop out of him and then they sort of staggered in a bit with his arm round her shoulders and collapsed into the froth of the breaking waves.

    “Jesus,” he said weakly at last.

    “That was nice,” said Polly, smiling at him.

    “Something like that, yeah,” croaked Rod. “Do you always yell your head off like that?”

    “Pretty much, I suppose.”

    Right. Lucky bloody Jake. After a bit he said glumly: “Wouldn’t like to stay the night, wouldja? Do it properly?”

    “Um, I better not.”

    No, right. Was this because a hand job didn’t count, or— Forget it. Now he came to think of it he didn’t have any condoms down here at Dad’s, anyway. “No. Righto,” he agreed heavily.

    Polly drove home reflecting that she ought to feel guilty. Well, Jake apart, it had been mean to lead Rod on when it didn’t really mean a thing to her. But she didn’t, she felt good. It didn’t feel as if she’d betrayed Jake—in fact she didn’t even feel that he’d deserved it. It had been nothing at all to do with what was between them: just something she’d needed to do. Was she deceiving herself? Maybe the whole thing—come to think of it, the episode with Nicky, as well—had just been some sort of a spite against the absent Jake? But if it had been, she’d never know it, would she? Because that certainly wasn’t what she felt.

    She drove carefully, though the roads were empty. It only took a bare twenty minutes. She greeted Grey with a cuddle, refused the second tea he was demanding, and fell into bed, to sleep like a log.

    Possibly as a reward for a virtuous Saturday of house-cleaning and gardening, followed by a virtuous dinner with Jill and Gretchen—or possibly as an illustration of the adage that unto them that hath it shall be given—the Carrano Group’s head driver, Bob Grey, rang on the Sunday, asking if she’d like a lift to the airport to meet the boss. It’d be no trouble to collect her, the Rolls needed to stretch her legs!

    “Nice to see you in a dress for a change,” the uncomplicated Bob, who was a grandfather and behaved like it, greeted her about half an hour later.

    “I suppose I haven’t got many dresses, really. This is new: do you think black's a bit drab, though?”

    The innocent Bob assured her she looked corker.

    “It needs something to brighten it up, though. Hang on, I think I might pick these.” She removed the last three yellow-centred, flame-tipped roses from the little bush by the verandah steps.

    “That looks good,” Bob approved as she got into the front seat beside him with the roses pinned to her shoulder. “He’ll like that: likes flowers on a woman.”

    “Does he?” replied Polly evilly. “I suppose he likes French scent and mink coats on a woman, as well?”

    “That’s right,” he agreed affably. “And that other fur—chinny-something. Forget its name. Goes for that, too.”

    “I see,” she said coldly.

    Bob merely grinned.

    At the airport he watched with a broad smile of approval as Polly waved frantically and Jake’s heavy face lit up and he dropped his suitcase and rushed forward to envelop her in a bear-hug. In the car he stuck the pair of ’em in the back and considerately put the glass up.

    They’d got down the airport road almost as far as the highway when Jake finally stopped kissing and hugging her, put his arm round her with a sigh, sat back and said: “Well, whatcha been up to while I’ve been away, eh?”

    Polly was expecting this enquiry, but that didn’t mean she knew how seriously to take it—or, indeed, how seriously it was meant. “Oh—nothing much. Work, mainly. I went up to Whangarei one day, and down the Great South Road another day.”

    “Eh?”

    She explained at length about the junk shops and the entrancing smell of the Great South Road on a warm day.

    Jake didn’t listen much: he just looked at her with affection. When she’d run down he said mildly: “Won’t find any decent antiques down there, ya know.”

    “I don’t want any decent antiques,” replied Polly simply.

    “No. But you like the rosewood chaise longue I found for you, eh?”

    “Yes, I love it. –I thought you said it was heavily restored?”

    “Yeah, it is,” he lied.

    “Oh,” said Polly in relief.

    Jake suppressed a sigh and changed the subject. Mainly he changed the subject to fingering her thick, curly hair a bit and getting a hand under one arm and then under one and then sort of into the black dress’s bodice; then he had to sniff the roses…

    When they got home they went straight to bed and, apart from a brief foray for nourishment, stayed there the entire afternoon.

    Polly didn’t volunteer any further details about what she’d been doing, and Jake didn’t ask. Which didn’t mean he didn't notice she wasn’t volunteering. Nor did she ask for details of his time in Australia. Jake told her quite a lot about the business side, whether she wanted to hear it or not. But he noticed the absence of personal questions. He didn’t offer any details, but this was because there hadn’t been any. He didn’t want anyone but Polly. But he didn’t tell her this in so many words, partly because he felt he’d made it clear enough without words and partly because he wasn’t sure it’d go down too well. But he didn’t kid himself he wasn’t bloody pleased she’d come to met him at the airport. Bloody pleased.

Jill’s Narrative

    Looking back it all seems, forgive the cliché, Watson, kind of small and far away. The 1980s... Boy, were we naïve in thems days! Well, just look back. The delusion you could play the stock market forever on that giant debt you’d run up on the plastic—before the Crash, remember? Yep. That was mainly the gents: it allowed them to purchase giant palaces, humungous strangely-shaped swimming pools, giant boats and imported Mercs. Rolex watches also spring to mind. For their part, the ladies laboured under the delusion, as they chucked the provider’s moolah away with both hands, that huge-shouldered jackets over insanely short miniskirts made them look like Joan Collins. Instead of like Danny de Vito in drag. Oh, yes: dinner-plate earrings, remember them? Yep.

    Of course, down at the bottom of the heap we were more into wondering where the next meal was coming from, especially if the Gummint went on slashing back anything that even looked like a social service, not to mention what they were doing to the education system in the name of God-knew-what. I’m damned if I can remember whether Piggy Muldoon came first or the demented Labour cretins that corporatized even more government services and slashed the education budget even further—but it was all the same, regardless of the political label: they were all mad in the Eighties, labouring under the delusion they were Economists not to say macro-economists (nothing to do with macrobiotic rice, ta, though there was a fair bit of that about, too), and, uh, free-marketeers? Something of the sort. Down at the bottom of the heap we just had to put up with it and get on with it.

    Wasn’t it like that in your neck of the woods? You do surprise me. Thought the whole of the so-called civilised world was like that back in the demented Eighties? Just try setting aside all those pre-digested misconceptions the media have been filling your head with over the intervening period and really think back… Yeah.

    In the intervals of coping with corporatization, mad monetarists, and associated follies like the splitting of the good old New Zealand Post Office into two separate and quite distinct corporate entities, both services being housed in the same building but necessitating the joining of two long queues instead of one, most of us in God’s Own Country were busy, as I say, just getting on with it. Life. The mortgage. The acquisition of consumables. Marriage. Kids. Divorce. Stuff like that. Some were even coping with Love. Not me, thanks, never really been into that.

    No, well to get back to our muttons. The year after Polly met the macho millionaire, wasn’t it? Mm. We had a whole year’s grace before the S. hit the F. good an’ proper. No, well, there was some backsliding, but we got through the academic year with no major mishaps. I think Leo Schmidt may have made a heavy pass at Polly and been given the brush-off good an’ proper round about the time of the Grad Ball (held five months after the results come out, don’t ask why). Yes, I seem to recall he was in a terrific sulk around then. Well, a terrific sulk plus drinking far too much, but the latter was par for the course, and as it wasn’t the first time by any means Polly had given him the brush-off, no-one was worried about it, in fact several people seemed quite cheered by it.

    True, the year was rendered fairly horrible for those who had to share the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics staffroom by Rog Browne’s tremendous crush, but after months of hopeless mooning after her, round about the end of the third term he seemed to have got his mind off Polly at last and had even found himself a girlfriend. No, I tell a lie: the girl found him, then bawled all over Mitchell, and she talked the macho millionaire into throwing a select dinner party, to include Browne, the girl and her parents. Browne got the point and asked the girl for a date—or possibly she asked him. And young Jablonski seemed to be concentrating on work at last. Which, as some of us did point out to him, he’d ruddy well need to: post-grad scholarships only last for three years.

    As for Mitchell herself… I’m only a humble spinsterish pedagogue, but if you’d asked me, say in early December of that year—about a week after her 29th birthday, if that was significant, which it possibly was—I’d have said she’d seen sense (all things being relative), decided the macho millionaire was what she wanted a permanent helping of, and decided to go for it. Well: playing hostess for him at a lovely little din-dins where she shoves the benighted Browne off onto someone else?

    I admit I’d managed to avoid seeing much of Carrano, but I’d definitely got the impression that he was keener than ever. Certainly the year had featured that dash to Hobart with him and some of his pals for a wee flutter at the casino (Hobart is where they had it, back then—don’t ask), um, innumerable dinners with him and his ghastly business cronies, um, frightful evening with Sir John and Lady Harding at their gracious ’ome (that’s right, the Harding’s Baked Beans people, or, if your taste tends that way, Harding’s Spaghetti: them), um… Well, you get the picture. Partaking of his way of life. Ugh. Be that as it may, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he’d popped the question before Christmas.

    And as a matter of fact, I still think I wasn’t wrong. But then, Fate with a capital F went and intervened. That sometimes does happen in real life, as well as in yer Classical tragedy. Which I have to admit at a certain point it all began to feel like. Though at others it felt distinctly like a farce—yeah.

    Of course in real life people don’t do anything as cut-and-dried as murdering their dad on the road to Thebes and subsequently marrying their mum. Or in Hamlet’s case murdering his uncle after the uncle had married the mum. Our do wasn’t like a Hamlet: more like an omelette. Er—sorry. But it was tragical-comical, all right. Ever noticed that when something really nasty and unexpected happens people tend to throw themselves into hectic activity? Not necessarily immediately, but after the first shock’s worn off and they’ve had the funeral. Frantic house renovation, actual selling of the house, charity work in the deepest Indonesian rainforest, spate of night classes, joining Weight Watchers, sailing round the world, busting up their marriages? Those that don’t just sink into clinical depression, poor souls. Very often this activity appears to the onlooker to be the exact opposite of what they’ve always wanted, too. Naturally any worried friend who tries to point out that they’ve fallen out of their tree, that now is not a good time for life-changing decisions, and that this is a version of what’s now trendily known as post-traumatic stress is immediately rubbished. Immediately rubbished with the most cogent and logical of arguments, in many cases…

    Anyway, as I say, everything in the garden was looking reasonably rosy, and then Fate Struck.