Unpopular Misconceptions

3

Unpopular Misconceptions

January: The Barbecue

    “That it?” says Ken Armitage, grin, grin. “Long drink of water, weird Pommy haircut flopping into the eyes?”

    “Got it in fourteen, Ken, so just drop dead!”

    So me old cobber replies: “Why’dja do it, Jake?”

    “Which? Invite ’im to this here barbie so’s he could make a total tit of ’imself—mind you, he thinks we’re all provincial nobodies, words to that effect—or let ’im rent that top chalet of mine? Or,”—glare at the spectacle of the tit hanging onto her arm—“let ’im get anywhere near Polly?”

    “All of the above,” the bugger replies airily.

    “Why do ya think? It was all her idea!”

    “Mm.” He eyes her thoughtfully. “Sort that helps lame dogs over stiles, eh?”

    Or gives wounded maggies cake and cotton wool—something like that. “Yeah. Dare say.”

    “Wouldn’t of thought a lady lecturer’d be that type!” the bugger says cheerfully. “Isn’t she into Women’s Lib, all that crap?”

    Glare. “Only on the surface!”

    “Ri-ght.” More thoughtful staring. “So you didn’t let that top chalet to the Pom so’s to shove ’er off onto him, after all?”

    “What? No! What the fuck are you on about, Ken?”

    “Just a thought. Well, thought the gilt might of worn off the gingerbread. Not that she isn’t a very attractive girl.” This time the bugger’s positively eyeing her up, sod him! Well, yeah, in that long tightish flame-coloured dress she really looks something. And makes all the other dames at this fucking barbecue that I wish I’d never thought of look flashy, overdressed, and downright common.

    “Jesus, Ken! I’ve barely known her four months!”

    He narrows them very blue eyes that the distaff side have been known to fall for in a big way—them as are unaware that Magda von Trotte’s long since got them painted hooks of hers securely into him, not that she isn’t pretty decent as far as she goes, Magda—well, married a wealthy gay wool-broker for what he could give her, yeah, but it was mutual, she does housekeeper for him and hosts his ruddy dinner parties and apart from that they go their own way. “Right, so you’re counting, now, are you?”

    “What the flaming Hell is that supposed to mean?”

    Shrug. “Work it out, Jake.” Strolls off to chat up something over-lipsticked, frizzy-haired and American-footballer-shouldered that doesn’t know about Magda.

    Oops. That’s poor ole Rog Browne over there looking lost. S’pose I oughta go and look after him. Well, it’s obvious the R. Jablonski technique isn’t working with young Debbie Cohen—should never have invited her, really, she’s far too young for me, only just left school. Well—thought it might be restful, as a matter of fact, after bloody Marama’s how’s yer fathers. Talk about a cock-teaser! Only Debbie’s a bit too restful, actually. Bit over-awed, too. Well, her dad’s really well off, think they’re the Cohens that own CohenCorp and, um, National Foods, would it be? Something like that. But that doesn’t mean she’s used to moving in ruddy Jake’s circles. Only the thing is, tonight it isn’t actually the big-business types from overseas, it seems to be all his old cobbers! Old Ron Carewe and them, cripes! Sixty-five if a day, hands like hams, big red blobby noses, and minds to match! Not that old Ron isn’t a well meaning enough old joker, and his wife’s a really nice lady, but the sort that crams it all on when she’s asked out: size of a house, covered in flashing rings and bangles and stuff, and frills and drapes till they come out yer ears! No wonder Debbie’s looking a bit stunned. Never been to her place, but her mum came to one of our tennis tournaments—kid can’t play for toffee, her and her partner dipped out in the first round—and she’s a very elegant lady. Coolly elegant, ya know?

    Rod squared his handsome shoulders. “Come on, Debbie, that’s ole Rog Browne over there, looks a bit lonely: let’s go and talk to him, eh?”

    “Where? Ooh! Um, okay, let’s, Rod!”

    The kid had gone all pinkish. Cripes. What the fuck did Rog Browne have that R. Jablonski didn’t? Numbly Rod led her over there.

    Yeah, well. Did he even see her? He was looking round for Polly, that was what. Well, he wasn’t the only one, but some of them had more sense than to hope she was gonna look their way while she was involved with Jake. Never mind the blighter must be twenty years older than her, he had what it took. And he wasn’t talking about his millions, either.

    Oh, dear, Rog is looking lost again! But if I go over to him he’ll think I’m encouraging him, and I’m not! And so’ll Jake, drat it. I wish I’d never even mentioned that blimming chalet! Every time I go out to the car he’s out there, drooping like a—a heron or something, hoping for a ride! And believe you me, intellectual conversation of the Oxford variety all the way into town has really begun to pall! Cripes, it is the 1980s, wouldn't you think they’d’ve got past the “Hamlet is a real person and language doesn’t exist” stance by now? And I’m not a literature bod, I don’t care what so-and-so wrote in the Journal of Oxford and Cambridge Crap about bloody Hamlet’s motives or, come to think of it, bloody Sartre’s bloody boring cardboard cut-out characters’ so called motives, either! And if that stupid scene with the gay with the knife isn’t a flaming indication that J.-P. S. was actually a repressed homosexual, then I dunno what could be! No wonder he never committed to S de B., silly cow. Imagine spending your life languishing after a bloke that wasn’t even interested in you as a woman! No, well, compare it with that thing of Dirk Bogarde’s that Jill forced on me—not the autobiog, that was really good, that novel. The scene with the great big blackfeller—was he a Sikh? Something like that—raping the weedy whatever-he-was. Really silly, I’d’ve excised it if I’d been his editor, but I suppose they calculated it’d appeal to a certain percentile...

    Blow, Rog is looking lost. Those macho idiots have just about finished mucking round with the flaming barbecued trout: I suppose we could have some... The thing is, it’s Lombard Street to a China orange that he’ll remark on how huge they are compared to the ones they get in flaming England and those blimming Good Keen Men’ll come out with something like “Those tiddlers? We throw them back, mate!”

    Sighing, Polly went over to Roger, and led him over to the smoking rank of barbecues on Jake’s patio. Gee, he said: “Goodness, are these trout? They’re huge!”

    And old Ron Carewe, who at least had the merit of being perfectly genuine, gave that jolly chuckle of his and said: “Compared to the ones you get in England, would this be, Rog? They’d just be tiddlers, out here!”

    So ruddy Jake, who knew bloody well what he was doing, had to chime in: “Yeah, we throw those back, Rog, mate!”

    So there ya were. He was looking disconcerted but trying to smile, poor thing, and the Good Keen Men were looking smug.

February: Academe

It’s Enrolment Week, Dear Diary. Bright and early on Monday morning Kevin McCaffery, Professor of French and Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, tells me breezily not to worry that the University Calendar announces to the prospective student body that Course Cards have to be signed by the head of the department concerned. I take it that that’s official, then. N.B. If I’m signing bloody course cards for him all week, what is he going to be doing?

    Later. A strange, eager person in French workman’s bleus who introduces himself as Albert Fletcher, with a moist, warm handshake, informs me that Kevin will “of course” be signing course cards of Third-Years, M.A.s, and up. Yes, well.

    The feeding frenzy of innocent freshpersons fighting to sign on for a year of Kevin McCaffery’s First-Year French curriculum had ended. It was probably the only soi-disant university in the entire world, let alone the Southern Hemisphere, reflected Jill Davis acidly, sneaking up the back stairs in case Kevin was in at work today, where students were exposed to both Vol de nuit and Pêcheurs d’Islande in the same year; and how they managed to absorb those gems of French Culcha into their consciousnesses alongside the Americanised media-brainwashing they’d been exposed to since their cradles, God only knew. Let alone alongside Hiroshima mon amour, which Leo, with his usual blithe disregard for Kevin’s sacred curriculum, also favoured ’em with in their first year. She tried Leo’s door. Unlocked, as usual. He wasn’t in, but then she hadn’t expected he would be. She retrieved the volume he’d borrowed from her shortly before the end of last term—over, be it said, her anguished shrieks of “LEAVE THAT ALONE!”—and took it tenderly off to her own office and bunged it on the shelf where it langed to be. Then she went off to the hot little windowless cupboard which the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics expected its Ph.D. students to believe was an office.

    “So you were there!” she discovered triumphantly.

    Rod wriggled. “Yeah, but so what? It musta been about the most bloody boring barbie ever. –Well, flaming Norah,” he said heatedly, as Jill’s cold grey eye bored into him inexorably, “he’d asked the flaming local M.P.!”

    “Ah,” she said deeply. “And?”

    “And half the types he’s done business with for years! And their wives!”

    “Ah.”

    “Will ya stop saying ‘Ah!’” cried poor Rod. “It was just Jake’s old mates!”

    Jill perched a hip on his desk. “We have to ask ourselves,” she explained affably, “if the down-home mateship of this boring barbie was calculated to impress poor old Roger.”

    “No, it bloody wasn’t,” he said heatedly, “because Jake planned it before he’d even met him! Do you actually want something?”

    “A blow-by-blow description of this bloody boring barbie, what else?” replied Jill affably.

    “Ya better go and ask poor ole Rog, then: he’d be glad to give ya one. ’Cos he told me,” said the young man, eyeing her sardonically, “that it was giving him a pretty good insight into the local mores.”

    Jill choked. “Apocryphal,” she managed to croak.

    “No, it isn’t, he’s that sort of bloke. Look, can I get on with my work? Because in case you haven’t noticed, Dr Davis, some of us haven’t actually got our Ph.D.s yet and still have to do some hard yacker! ’Course, in three years’ time I’ll be swanning round the place gossiping while post-grad students are trying to get a bit of work done in their hard-earned holidays, too,” he noted acidly.

    “That reminds me: haven’t you got a holiday job this year?” replied Jill, unmoved.

    “I did have. Now I’m working on my thesis,” he said pointedly.

    “All right, a hint’s as good as a nudge to a blind man!” replied Jill huffily, getting up.

    Rod gulped but managed to say: “Good. Push off, then.”

    “You might at least tell me the salient points!” she complained loudly.

    “Didn’t notice any of those. Wasn’t that sort of party. Rog was bored out of his skull, I did get that. Well, said something to me about sex demarcations. Mighta been because all the middle-aged moos were on one side of the room gossiping about their innards while all the middle-aged jokers were on the other side of the room swapping fishing yarns,” he ventured.

    “Got it,” she croaked. “So a good time wasn’t had by all?”

    “Wasn’t by me,” the Michelangelic Roderick replied succinctly. “Naff off.”

    Jill opened the door wide. “I suppose I’ll be reduced to asking Browne!” she said with annoyance.

    “Yeah, an’ he might even spot you’re laughing ya head off at him, too, and whadd’ll ya do then?” he sneered.

    This crack was so much on the nail that Jill replied: “Choke on your bloody computer, Jablonski!” And retreated to the staffroom for coffee.

    Rod hunched over his work. What the fuck had the moo expected? It had been a ruddy boring barbie for Jake’s old mates. And poor old Rog had, visibly, enjoyed it about as much as anybody would’ve expected. …So why had Polly dragged him along?

    Even though this was, indeed, food for thought, Rod wrenched his mind off it and got firmly on with his work. No skin off his nose, if she was trying to make Jake jealous. Well, thank God she wasn’t trying to do it with him, Rod, as the meat in the sandwich, that was all!

    “God Almighty,” said Jill weakly some fifteen minutes later in the faculty staffroom. “What in Christ are you doing here?”

    Her colleague replied smoothly: “Looking for free coffee, ma chère. Oh, and I see you have made me some!”

    She watched sourly as Leo took the remains of her pot of coffee. “Can’t you afford your own? Blew all our cash on the fleshpots of Montmartre these hols, did we?”

    He winced delicately. “Please! Ça va de mal en pire, le dix-huitième, tu sais. Main’nant c’est tout plein d’Arabes et de Portugais.”

    Firmly Jill replied in her own vernacular: “Cor, love a duck, it was full of them last time I went back ’ome to Blighty, and that weren’t yesterday, neither.”

    Leo looked at her with dislike and said nothing,

    “Weren’t you supposed to be over there for several weeks, yet?” said Jill hazily, picking up her morning paper that she’d already more or less read and feigning interest in it.

    He sat down heavily at the other end of the staffroom’s old sofa and said: “Yes.”

    “What was it? Ran out of cash, Maman spotted you getting off with something choice and very young and not necessarily female, or she tried throwing one moustachioed female cousin too many at you?”

    “Yes.”

    Jill buried herself in her paper.

    “Actually,” said Leo with a laugh in his voice, “it was Tante Élisabeth. She has a wonderful moustache of her own, tu sais, but even that somehow could not persuade me to concede that her daughter Rosalie would make me the perfect wife.”

    “I bet she can cook, though,” she murmured.

    “Yes, but I abhor moustaches, even on a male! And avec ça, fat thighs—no, really!”

    Jill lowered the paper and said with terrific cordial interest: “So you don’t like fat thighs, Leo?”

    As she was looking at him and he was on her right, Leo was pretty sure that she hadn’t spotted that a tall, thin young man with lank brown hair was standing in the doorway to their left. With his mouth open. And a lovely pink blush mounting up his cheeks.

    “Ça dépend. Burying oneself amidst mountains of pale pink flesh is not totally unpleasant, if it be surmounted by a pretty face without a moustache. Preferably female. And then of course occasionally one comes across the pretty lady who enjoys to have one sit on the fat thighs—tout comme un petit garçon, tu sais?” he said with a delicious shiver.

    “Not actually. –It sounds delightful, though!” she said hastily.

    “Oh, it is,” he drawled, perceiving with delight that the skinny newcomer was about to retreat. “Who is that thin, red-faced young man over by the door?”

    “Roger Browne,” said Jill without flickering an eyelash. “Come on in, Rog, it’s only Leo.”

    “Yes, do come in, dear boy. And tell me: who are you?” said Leo, staring hard at him.

    “If you ever came to Departmental meetings,” said Jill, giving in and turning her head to smile at the unfortunate Browne in question, “you’d know he’s our new lecturer.”

    “But of course!” he cried, rising gracefully. “Enchanté, mon cher!—Leo Schmidt.” He held out a limp hand.

    “Salut, Leo,” replied Roger unemotionally, shaking it. “Comment va?”

    “Pommy New Chums forty, Schmidt naff all,” noted Jill. “He’s drunk all the coffee, Rog, you’ll have to make a fresh pot if you want some.”

    Roger went over to the sink-bench and began to be deprecatingly inept. Jill was inured to this sort of behaviour from her male colleagues: she ignored it. Leo, though not above descending to it himself, also ignored it.

    By the time Roger had made his coffee and timidly brought a cup over to join them, what with the bumbling and ineptitude from his direction and the stream of squalid and doubtless apocryphal holiday reminiscence from Leo, Jill was feeling thoroughly peeved. So she said brightly: “Guess what, Leo! Last month as ever was Rog went to a genuine Kiwi barbie at your mate Jake Carrano’s palace up at Pohutukawa Bay! How was it, Rog?”

    “And why?” added Leo swiftly.

    “Yes, well, I was working up to that,” she admitted.

    “Oh—well,” he said with a feeble smile, “as to why, I went because I was invited, and as to what it was like—well, I suppose it was fairly typical.”

    “Of what, mon cher?” drawled Leo.

    “Of New Zealand society, I suppose,” he said uncomfortably. Neither of them reacted to this so he added on a desperate note: “Though it was all rather more, er, down-market, I suppose you’d say, than I’d expected.”

    “I wouldn’t say that,” said Jill definitely.

    “Moi non plus,” agreed Leo, wincing.

    “Uh—well, you know!” said Roger with an awkward laugh. “Jeans and potato salad!”

    “Didn’t anyone tell you how much your macho host is worth?” asked Jill tenderly.

    “No—I mean, of course I know he’s a millionaire!”

    After some urging, and some chocky bikkies that Jill self-sacrificingly produced from her briefcase—Leo normally fell on anything sweet, so good-bye, chocky bikkies—they more or less got the R. Browne version out of him. Lively, it wasn’t.

    “And did your host eventually notice your existence?” Jill asked idly.

    “Of course! In fact he was very welcoming.”

    “Genial,” drawled Leo.

    “Hostly,” agreed Jill.

    Leo’s amber eyes sparkled. “Match point,” he murmured. “Dis-moi, why do you leap so rapidly to the defence of ce cher Jacob, Roger? Bouleversé by his so-macho charm?”

    “No! Um, well, it was very decent of him to let me rent that cottage,” said Roger limply.

    “And so near to Polly, too!” he noted.

    “Jealous, Leo?” said Jill instantly.

    “Non, non. Just curious. So many possibilities spring to mind. Isn’t speculation wonderful?” he sighed.

    Jill was momentarily unable to respond to this. She was damned sure that at least one of his speculations was the same as hers. Why the Christ was Jake Carrano encouraging this latest and limpest of Polly’s hangers-on? And for God’s sake, surely he must see that poor old Roger was—well, the limpest of ’em all, so far? If he did want to shove her off onto someone else, Roger Browne was hardly the likeliest candidate!

March: The Good Ship Maybelline

    Before I can open me gob to tell ruddy Ken Armitage not to say it, he’s said it. “Who the fuck invited him?”

    “Which one?”

    Grin, grin. “Bloody Schmidt, of course, Jake; who’d ya think I meant?”

    “Coulda been any one of half a dozen of ’em: they’re all round ’er like flies round the honey pot, ya know.”

    “Well, ya better hurry up and put your brand on her, then!” Grin, grin.

    Sigh. “I dunno. Invited himself, far’s I can make out. Me and Polly bumped into him when we having a meal down the Big I—she likes it and it’s handy to varsity, all right?”

    “Not their bloody restaurant?”

    “No! The small place that does pizzas! He was in the bar knocking back the vodka—we made the mistake of going in there first: all right?”

    “Watch your sails,” the bugger says unemotionally.

    Why else am I standing here at this here wheel? “I am!”

    “Why did you mention this do in front of him, if ya didn’t want—”

    “I didn’t! She did! And two seconds later ’e was in it boots and all, do ya want me to draw you a picture?”

    “No, I’ve got it.”

    “Yeah.”

    “Who’s the dollybird?”

    “What, Leo’s? Don’t ask me. Something in Broadcasting, I think. Dumb as they come.”

    He sniffs. “That’s the way ’e likes ’em: don’t offer any competition to ’is gracious self.”

    “Yeah.”

    “So why’s Rog Browne here?”

    “Look, it wasn’t my idea to invite him, either!”

    “Ya don’t say.”

    “Aw, drop it, will ya, Ken?”

    He’s dropped it, thank God. Beautiful day, out on the Gulf… Not much of a breeze, but that’s just as well, actually, because I think this jaunt’s a mistake. I do know Polly isn’t a good sailor, so I shouldn’t have talked her into it, should I? Wouldn’t touch the fizz, though normally she laps it up, so gee, I finally got it out of her that she doesn’t feel seasick at all but she’s got a bit of a headache because her period’s due. Jesus! Why didn’t she stay home with the ruddy cat, lying down in comfort on her own bed, instead of coming out to spend a day in the sun with this jabbering lot? Well, yeah, I did manage to get some Panadol into her and made her lie down in the big cabin, never mind the palaver about what that fucking useless young Puriri doctor that she reckons the bee’s knees mighta said about vitamins and herb tea... Nope, bad idea. Stupid. Dare say the worry that she might get seasick is making the headache worse, too.

    “Did you introduce young Browne to a few of the girls, Jake?”

    “Eh? Yeah. Didn’t work. Well, the kids in the crew aren’t his type, but wouldn’t you think them two from the Group’s Legal Division mighta hit the spot? Well, heck, varsity educations, all that.”

    “Yeah. Pretty girls. too.”

    “Mm. True, they were jabbering on about the local production of West Side Story when I introduced them. So they ask him if he’s seen it yet. ‘No,’ ’e says—giving nothing away, ya see. So they tell ’im it’s fabulous—nothing. Well, they tried.”

    “Jake, you loathe that sorta crap yourself.”

    “Yeah, but if it was me at his age being introduced to two pretty girls, would I of let on?”

    This strikes a chord, and he just about chokes to death over it. “See whatcha mean!”

    ... Must be fiveish—think we might head back. Oops. We definitely oughta be getting back, Magda von Trotte’s jabbering away in German to bloody Leo. Well, poor old Ken can’t speak any foreign languages—and why the fuck should ’e? But Leo must speak—well, of course his mum’s a Frog and his dad’s a Pole and that old Austrian dame they boarded with when they first came out here started him off with the German.

    So poor old Ken comes up to me elbow again and mutters: “Ruddy sod.”

    “Mm. She keeps putting in bits of Hungarian. At least, I s’pose it’s Hungarian: sounds like God knows what.”

    “It all sounds like God knows what to me.”

    “Mm. You wanna steer?”

    “No.”

    Poor old Ken. He’d marry her if they were both free—and there’s no doubt Magda’d leave Bruno, the fairy wool-broker—but Ken’s wife’s got multiple sclerosis.

    “Nothing in it, Ken. Magda’s known Leo for yonks. Knows what he is.”

    “Yeah. Oh, well—she misses Europe, I suppose.”

    “Go and talk to young Lolita: Leo’s dumped her, ya might be in there with a chance.”

    “Tried that. Thinks I’m a granddad.”

    “Sorry about that, mate!”

    “No, you’re not, you bugger.”

    The wind’s freshened slightly, but at this rate it’s gonna take another good hour to get back to the marina. Might use the emergency engine, since it’s there.

    “Where’s Polly got to?”

    Thanks, old friend. “She was lying down: not seasick, got her period. She’s up by the bow, talking to bloody Browne.”

    He peers. He gives me this dubious look. Then he comes out with: “Yeah, well: we’re both old enough to know better, I s’pose!”

     Something like that, ole mate. Something like that.

    “So?” said Jill, having brazenly bearded Browne—ooh, how alliterative!—in his office.

    Roger smiled reluctantly. “You were right: it was all very nautical.”

    “Did they all wear—”

    “Not all. Polly was in her pink cotton slacks.”

    Jill’s eyes twinkled. “Glad to hear she hasn’t entirely gone over to the other side. Any Press photographers in sight, busily snapping for Metro or the Herald’s society page?”

    “Help, has it got one?” replied Roger with a grin. “No, there weren’t. Oh—there was one other guest who’d held out against the prevailing nautical tone. Very smart, a sort of light greenish-brown outfit. Magda Something.”

    “The von Trotte woman: her photo’s always in Metro. Well, the Herald as well when they hold elegant garden parties for their friends’ kids’ engagements: the husband’s a wool-broker, got pots.” He was looking blank so she elaborated with a sigh: “There was half a page of pics in last Saturday’s rag: I presume you just turned over.”

    “I don’t usually bother to buy it on Saturday,” he said in a vague voice.

    “Come on, Rog! Be a sport! Was Carrano in a navy blazer and captain’s hat?”

    “Well, no. Jeans and a white tee-shirt.”

    “Mas-cu-line,” she approved, nodding. “What about Leo?”

    “I think it was a joke,” he said cautiously.

    “Undoubtedly, but tell me anyway and he’ll never have to know I laughed.”

    He cleared his throat. “White duck trousers, a navy blazer complete with brass buttons, a navy and white striped tee-shirt, a red spotted handkerchief round the neck, and—uh—a captain’s hat.”

    Jill had a horrible sniggering fit, recovering to ask: “Who did he make a pass at?”

    To this Browne replied: “Um, Leo? Well, he had a girl with him. I don’t think he made a pass at anyone, really. He was chatting with Magda for a while.”

    Refraining with an effort from rolling her eyes madly, Jill concluded sourly that R. Browne was as much of a dead loss as she’d sort of hoped he wouldn’t be. Well, for Christ’s sake! Polly’s age, decent degree from a decent college— Well, bugger him!

Mad March Days: On The Beach

    “Why are you encouraging the poor oik?” she groaned, some days later.

    “Ja, vhy?” agreed Gretchen.

    “Yeah, why?” demanded Rod, grinning all over his handsome face.

    “Shut up, Jablonski, you weren’t invited to this ladies’ tea party,” said Jill immediately.

    In spite of himself Rod choked. The ladies’ tea party to which Dr Davis was referring consisted of her in a faded striped tent and sneakers, her pal from the German Department, Gretchen Sachs, in a faded khaki shirt, ancient jeans and Roman sandals, and Polly in jeans and a tight red tee-shirt—not that that was bad—crouched round a small and very smoky fire on the little beach at Pohutukawa Bay. In two seconds Rod was going to rearrange this fire for them: women, whatever they might think, could not build fires.

    “I’m not encouraging him, don’t be silly. The poor man’s lonely,” said Polly, going rather pink. “He doesn’t know a soul out here, and—um, well, all our ways are strange to him.”

    “Ja, so you invite him to barbecues and fancy yachting parties giffen by Jake Carrano in order to make him feel effen more like a fish out off water,” noted Gretchen.

    “Should’ve invited him to this,” said Rod, casually dismantling Jill’s fire.

    “OY!” she shouted, but too late.

    “This off course would not reinforce the idea that all your vays are strange,” noted Gretchen cordially.

    “It would. That’s why I didn’t ask him,” said Polly, as Rod built up the fire and got it going again in a trice. “–Macho fire-maker,” she added acidly.

    Grinning, Rod took the grill of sausages off Gretchen and placed it neatly near the flames. “Good little grill, this, where’d ya get it?”

    “Bognor, at a small ironmonger’s near my Aunty Emmy’s place, about a million years ago,” explained Jill coldly.

    “Ooh, never actually heard anybody say that before!” he noted pleasedly, cerulean blue eyes sparkling.

    “What, Bognor?” replied Jill extra-coldly.

    “No, ironmonger’s!” choked Polly, suddenly laughing like a drain. “Sorry—Jill! Are we making you feel our ways are strange?” she gasped.

    “Strange but true,” noted Gretchen heavily. She looked hard at Rod looking at Polly’s faded and very tight red top.

    “Um, I don’t think you’ve got that quite right, Gretchen,” said Polly weakly.

    “She’s got the implication right, however she may have misapplied the idiom,” said Jill grimly, readjusting the sausages.

    “Out here we say ‘hardware shop’, Jill, or sometimes even ‘hardware store’,” Polly explained kindly.

    “Really? I was under the impression that out here you generally said ‘Mitre 10.’”

    Rod broke down and had a helpless sniggering fit, admitting when he was over it: “Don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone but you say Bognor, either.”

    “The young these days haff no respect,” said Gretchen severely, just as Jill was about to tell the smart-mouthed little toad where to put it.

    “Right, and that reminds me,” he said with a grin, “if you’ve finished that Nature I lent you, Gretchen, I’d quite like it back, it belongs to the Life Sci. common-room.”

    “Ah: this would explain vhy it hass printed on it very large in red ‘Life Sciences Common-Room: Do not Remove,’” said Gretchen calmly.

    Unmoved, Rod replied: “Yeah, Rick lent it to me.”

    “Rick Cooke? Does he want to share the flat, Rod?” asked Polly.

    “No. Might have to accept Jake’s offer and use that last chalet of his: Jack and me can’t really swing the flat’s rent on our own.”

    “Doesn’t he know anyone that needs a room?” asked Polly.

    “No. Anyway, do I want the place filled with very young Anthro students?” he said with a wry grin.

    Drily Jill pointed out: “You should’ve thought of that before you went flatting with a very young Anthro student. He’s the son of the dreaded Don Banks, right?”

    “Also off Marjory Banks, she iss not dreaded,” stated Gretchen.

    “Shut up, you Aryan clot,” she sighed. “We all know that: the woman’s been doing typing for us on Puriri Campus ever since they built the place. And well before we were forced to join up with your Teutonic lot and become the Faculty of Lang. and Ling.,” she added pointedly.

    “And my linguistics lot,” said Polly meekly.

    “And your linguistics lot,” she conceded.

    “So he iss this Banks?” asked Gretchen, determinedly returning to the subject.

    “Uh—yeah,” said Rod feebly. “Ya wanna make something of it?”

    “No,” said Jill: “we were merely about to warn you to stand well back should Banks, Senior, turn up at your place with a shotgun.”

    Rod eyed Dr Davis drily. “He’s given up trying to make Jack do a B.Com. And while no-one’s claiming he’s reconciled to the fact that he’s gay, he’s given up on that one, too. Well, might’ve cut him out of his will, like he was threatening at one point, but so what, Jack doesn’t want the old bastard’s dough anyway. That cover it?”

    “Yes; thank you,” said Gretchen before Jill could speak.

    “He’ll leave it all to Marjory and she’ll give it to Jack anyway, she dotes on him,” said Polly placidly, “but silly old men like Don Banks always imagine their word is law. Are we ever gonna have this picnic?”

    “Barbie,” corrected Rod.

    “No, I came down here for a quiet picnic: I’m hopeless at lighting fires;”—Rod smiled—“all this housewifely hot food bit was Jill’s idea.”

    “Well, where is the picnic?” he said on a hopeful note.

    Polly looked round her vaguely. She found a plastic bag. Certainly it said “Tip-Top White Toast-Sliced Bread” on the outside, but Rod watched hopefully as she delved in it.

    It contained three small peaches, three hard-boiled eggs, and a small greaseproof-paper-wrapped package which when unwrapped yielded three small sandwiches, made not of Tip-Top white bread, toast-sliced or otherwise, but of a damp, dark rye.

    Rod inspected one of these sandwiches. “These haven’t got anything in them!” he announced aggrievedly.

    “No; they’re not sandwiches, they’re to eat with the eggs,” she said calmly.

    “Is this all?” he demanded.

    “They said they’d bring something.”

    Rod looked aggrieved.

    “Vhat did you bring?” asked Gretchen in a bored voice.

    “Nothing, he wasn’t invited,” said Polly.

    “I could nip up the dairy—”

    “Don’t be a clot!” said Jill loudly. “We’ve got masses of food, there’s another packet of snarlers and a whole loaf of bread in that hamper. We won’t mention the Tupperware container of sliced, soused cabbage that’s the Aryan contribution, but I think there should be some mustard: Gretchen, did you bring that mustard your mother sent you?”

    “Sent Senf,” murmured Polly to herself, but they all managed to ignore this, although Rod’s beautiful face looked for an instant as if it was about to explode.

    Gretchen agreed she had brought it, and duly produced it. Rod immediately took it off her and inspected it narrowly.

    When he’d decided that the sausages wouldn’t be done for ages yet and had ambled off for another swim, Jill said on a resigned note: “I suppose there’s no point at all in asking what he’s doing here when he lives up in Puriri, where there’s a much, much better beach?”

    “No: no point at all,” agreed Gretchen.

    “Shut up. –MITCHELL!” she hollered.

    Polly had been hugging her knees and staring out to sea. She jumped a foot. “What?”

    “What’s Rod doing here?”

    “He often comes down here,” she said vaguely.

    “Do not ask vhy,” Gretchen recommended. She got up. “I’m going for a svim.” She removed her khaki shirt and ancient jeans, revealing a neat blue bathing-suit of sufficiently old-fashioned cut, and ran down to the water.

    There was a short pause.

    “I can’t stop Rod coming here: this is a public beach. And he quite often comes down to the Bay to see Jake: they’re quite close, you know.”

    Jill sighed. After a moment she said: “Very well, let’s leave the question of the total misguidedness of encouraging the Michelangelic Roderick there. Why are you foisting our new lecturer relentlessly on Jake Carrano?”

    “I’m not. We thought he seemed very lonely.”

    “‘We’?”

    “It’s not just me, Jake feels sorry for him. He said to bring him along to whatever I thought he’d enjoy.” Polly looked vaguely round the tiny beach of Pohutukawa Bay, which was completely devoid of amenities, and to which the only access was a steep track down the cliff. “He has been down here once or twice, but I think he thinks it’s scruffy.”

    Jill sighed. “It is scruffy, gloriously scruffy, and dare I say it? You have no more in common with the fellow than you do with the macho millionaire! Er—well, decent degree,” she admitted weakly.

    “Mm. Rog isn’t dumb,” said Polly on a glum note, “but he hasn’t got any…”

    “Sense of humour?”

    “No, he has, sort of. Um, no; I think I meant… leaven.”

    “Good word for it.”

    After some time had passed during which Polly just stared out to sea Jill ventured: “Polly, do you apply the sort of, well, intellectual rigour, for want of a better expression, that you do with Roger or, um, any of the types that hang round you in the S.C.R., in your dealings with the macho millionaire?”

    “Eh?”

    She sighed. “You heard. But don’t answer if you don’t want to.”

    Polly wrinkled her brow. Jill watched her dubiously, not sure if this was just Mitchell presenting a pretty picture of pretty Polly wrinkling her brow—she was bloody good at that. They’d been taken in by it throughout her B.A., but she’d been Senior Scholar, topped her year, so the shades had fallen from their eyes. The one good thing that could be said for Mannie Halliday was that he hadn’t let her get away with a thing in her M.A. tutorials.

    Finally she said: “I don’t think I do. Not in intellectual things, anyway. Well, things of the mind. But it’s hard to say, because he doesn’t spout the same sort of boring, woolly-minded garbage as Rog or—or any of the varsity types.”

    “I dare say, but does that imply his thought processes are always impeccably lucid, with no logical flaws for pretty Polly to get those bloody sharp claws of hers into?”

    “Um… I don’t think the question arises,” said Polly weakly.

    “Eh?”

    Polly hugged her knees, staring at the sea. Finally she said: “He doesn’t talk about the same sort of things as the varsity types, the ones that claim to have brains... But actually his thought processes are pretty lucid. But it isn’t entirely that… It’s just different with him. If I said,” she said slowly, “that I don’t even want to judge him, that would give the wrong impression entirely. It’s not like that: I can see what he is, I can see his limitations. Mental and emotional.”

    “Mm,” said Jill thoughtfully.

    “But on the other hand, I’m not sure whether I think that because he never needs to have excuses made for him or because I just don’t want to make them. Well, anyway,” she said with a little sigh, “what I said in the first place puts it best, I think. The question doesn’t arise.”

    “Yeah,” said Jill limply.

    Polly continued to stare out to sea. Finally she said: “He doesn’t irritate me. Not at all. Maybe that’s why I don’t ever feel an urge to pick holes in his mental processes.”

    Jill scratched her head. “Blimey, is that what all romance boils down to? ‘He doesn’t irritate me’?”

    Mildly Polly replied: “I never said that, or even implied it; don’t they teach you at Cambridge University that generalisations are dangerous?”

    Grinning sheepishly, Jill admitted: “Say, rather, vulgar, facile and unnecessary; I think that was more the tack they took at Cambridge University. And if that was a none-too-subtle hint that you’re waiting breathlessly for that poor Oxonian oik, Browne, to correct your usage, could you please do me an immense favour and lay off?”

    “All right. Since it’s you,” she said amiably.

    Jill looked at her dubiously but for some obscure reason didn’t point out, yet again, that if she was serious about the macho millionaire she’d better bloody well stop encouraging Browne—even if only in order to pick holes in his feeble conversational gambits. …“He doesn’t irritate me”? Cor, blimey. So much for centuries of Grate Litracha, eh?

March 4th.

    Term has started. Too busy to write much. Jill was right: I hadn’t met the worst of our colleagues. Madeleine Depardieu is an unspeakably vile hag. Weather still very warm. Had lunch in the S.C.R. with Polly. Why does my tongue always tie itself in knots and render me incapable of anything but platitudes and clichés when I’m with her?

Mad March Days: Casino Tasmania

    Polly’s in that long pale green thing—bought it with her own dough. Wouldn’t let yours truly pay for it. It looks good, but heck! Me wallet’d never have noticed the price of an off-the-peg— Oh, well. One thing: she did let me spring for the tickets for this trip to Tazzie. But it’s bloody obvious she thinks the whole thing’s ludicrous—might’ve known. Well, it is, objectively speaking. ’Tis the way normal adults have fun, though. One of the ways. But according to her, gambling is only throwing your money away and if I want to do that why don’t I chuck it in the direction of Corso or one of them other leftie charities she’s always going on about? All right, I do donate to charity but I don’t particularly wanna publish the fact, do I?

    It’s bloody dim in here, why don’t the cretins put some more lights on? Think they imagine they’re Las Vegas or something—yeah. She had a giggling fit when I mentioned the back room, said something about high rollers and the Mafia that most of them managed to politely ignore, though bloody Leo had the sniggers—and how he tacked himself onto this little jaunt, don’t ask me!—and then when we got in here she had another giggling fit and choked something about James Bond. Well, okay, the table’s brightly lit but there is nothing intrinsically funny about baccarat, is there?

    Uh—bugger me: is that—? No, can’t be, the silly old sod couldn’t even afford the fare—Bloody Hell! It is! Shock of grey curls, same type as Rod’s, and that sharp profile’s an older version of his son’s—if you can imagine young Rod at sixty-odd, mad as a hatter and throwing away every penny he’s got on stupid—

    “Jake, look: that’s old Jerzy Jablonski!” chokes Ken.

    “Yeah. Of all the fucking stupid old—”

    “Where the Hell did he get the dough?” he wonders. Yeah, spot-on, old mate.

    “Perhaps he had a win at the races,” Magda suggests charitably.

    “Perhaps he mortgaged his house!” –Leo. Sly bastard. Is he interested in old Jablonski? No. Though his parents do know him—the Polish connection. Added to which he’s not interested in suburban crap like mortgages; so—

    “Did you know about this?”

    The bastard shrugs. “I saw him earlier this evening, mon cher. The old imbecile is convinced he must win because an angel told him in a dream to trust his luck!”

    And you didn’t stop him? You sodding— I’ve told him what I think of him in Polish before I’ve realised I’ve done it.

    “Que veux-tu? I’m not my brother’s keeper—or, rather, the keeper of every Pole who knows my father slightly. Let him lose—je m’en fous.”

    All right, I’ll have a word with him!

    Does it work? Hell as like! The chairs are slowly filling: that old florid joker’s gonna take the bank. The croupier’s fidgeting: wants to start the game and get his cut. All right, I’m telling him. “Jerzy—”

    Cuts no ice whatsoever. Finally deigns to reply. If he’s gonna come the Polish Count crap, I’ll— Shit! The old bugger!

    Yeah, all right, Jerzy, go to Hell in yer own way, no crook of a nameless blackfeller—whaddever, all in yer Polish lingo but that’d come close—is gonna influence you.

    Get back to them just in time to catch Leo’s: “Merde! Le vieux salaud!” Not disapproving—no. Admiring. With that snigger of his.

    Polly’s very sympathetic, puts her arm through mine and sorta hugs it, well, can’t be all bad, eh? But of all the silly old sods! An angel told him in a dream? That’s so bloody mad even Leo can’t’ve made it up. That wreck of a house in Brown’s Bay is all the stupid old bugger’s got left, and now he’s gonna lose every last red razzoo he managed to raise on it!

    ... Gee, he does. Fancy that. Polly’s very upset. Well, yeah, so am I, sweetheart. But what can ya do?

    Oh, all right, I’ll give ’im time to calm down and then I’ll—well, something. Buy up the fucking mortgage meself, if I have to. Beard him in ’is den—yeah. Him and Esmé. Ugh.

Dear Diary,

    I had better confess and get it over with. Today was one of the most humiliating of my entire life. Possibly they were all only little things—yes. But affectively, their impact can only be described as crushing. It did not help that most of it took place in front of an audience. We were in the faculty staffroom at the City Campus, having a last coffee before facing the city rush hour, and Jill Davis was interrogating poor Polly about her recent trip to the casino in Hobart. True, I didn’t know that they had one there, nor that it’s apparently the only one in the Antipodes, but as Albert Fletcher apparently didn’t know either, and he’s lived here all his life, I don’t feel too bad about that. It was glaringly obvious that Polly didn’t want to talk about it, especially in front of Albert—not that she dislikes the poor, wet creature, in fact there seem to be very few human beings whom she does dislike, bless her charitable heart. Added to which, Leo went on the trip, and if damned Jill really wanted to know, she could have asked him, couldn’t she?

    Jill managed to get out of Polly that Jake won about fifty thousand dollars at some game or other—some name like backgammon, but it wasn’t that. She raised those eyebrows of hers and drawled: “Unto them that hath it shall be given?” To which Polly replied crossly: “I made him give it to Corso, if you must know!” This is a local charity—she has mentioned it before.

    At this Leo went ostentatiously into a fit of the sniggers, emerging from them to ask in that special sweet voice he uses when he wants to be particularly offensive: “How do you know he did, ma chère?” Alas, when poor Polly replied crossly that she’d watched him write out the cheque and posted it herself, he merely went into further paroxysms of mirth. Silly Albert didn’t make it better by noting that he could have cancelled the cheque afterwards, although one has to concede that it was the logical thing to think.

    Leo then favoured us with an account of the scene at the gambling table when Jake spotted Rod’s father, old Count Jablonski, about to gamble his house away. I had thought you could only gamble with chips, and incautiously said so, at which Polly snapped that the poor old man had mortgaged his house, and Leo explained kindly that one brings cash money, which he would have got from the big bank, and exchanges it for chips. Albert obligingly giggled—the poor creature has a crush on Leo. Doubtless he’s unaware of what Leo says of him behind his back, though as he is most certainly aware of the sorts of things he says of everyone else behind their backs— However.

    Apparently Jake failed to talk the old man out of the whole idea and he lost heavily, after having done his best grossly to insult Jake. Polly was looking very cross, so Leo shot a malicious glance at her and drawled: “It was only something about crooked businessmen and Blacks without a name, though it seemed to, eugh, strike a chord with ce cher Jacob. Do I mean strike a chord? Possibly strike home.” At which Jill told him he was an offensive git and pointedly handed her packet of biscuits to the rest of us.

    Well, I’d shown up my ignorance, but that wasn’t too bad. It got worse, however. It’s a long drive up to the Hibiscus Coast, and I could hardly remain mumchance the whole way. I remarked inanely that “Hibiscus Coast,” was  a pretty name, adding: “They’d be a native plant, presumably?” Well, for goodness’ sake, one sees enough of the things—Jake’s shrubbery, around his patio pool, is bursting with them, and they spread halfway down the slope below his place as well. Polly laughed. Hawaiian. Introduced. The name also introduced, quite recently, in an endeavour by the local councils to foster tourism. Ouch.

    But I digress. If I don’t get it down it will undoubtedly fester for the rest of my life. Both points, really. The first and lesser of them was the Polish thing. After we’d driven quite some way in silence I asked if I’d been mistaken in thinking that Leo at one point had implied that Jake could speak Polish. No. One of the old nuns who brought him up was Polish. Oh, dear. It should have occurred to me, yes, though she didn’t go so far as to say so in so many words.

    We had reached the little settlement of Pohutukawa Bay and Polly, as usual, had asked me kindly if I wanted to stop at the “dairy”—the little corner shop—for an ice cream, when I put my foot in my mouth yet again. Not over the ice cream thing’s being a leg-pull: I have now gathered that it is the norm, out here. Nor over the damned “hokey-pokey” thing, q.v. Well, Jill assures me that that is an entirely local usage, which has not even crossed the Tasman, and that she doesn’t particularly care for chunks of unexpected porous butterscotch-like substance in her ices, either.

    I must stop these continual digressions: they merely betoken a loss of nerve!

    There was a cat sitting on the doorstep of the little shop in the westering sun, and I girded up my loins and confessed how startled I had been by the racket on my roof a couple of nights back, and then the dustbin’s being knocked over with a loud crash, but of course it must have been cats. Thank God I didn’t admit that at first I’d been frightened out of my wits, convinced it was huge “bikies”, probably Black, wielding chains and knuckledusters. We had been passed on the road by a gang of them only the previous day, which was doubtless why they’d sprung to mind. They were so bearded and tattooed that not much skin was visible, but most of them were Caucasian. No, well, the mind plays odd tricks on one, and I had just woken up. And I have been subjected to Mother’s harangues about “Blacks” for years.

    There was a strange silence and then Polly choked: “No! Possums!” and collapsed in gales of giggles.

    That was it, Dear Diary. Piffling? Not worth agonizing over? Not to me, alas.

Later.

Small, tree-climbing marsupials. Introduced from Australia.