After The Lahar

19

After The Lahar

    Pete and Bob sat on the end of the jetty that was the furthest point of the ecolodge’s Rewarewa Trail and stared blankly at the lake while their floats bobbed gently in the water. The weather had really closed in but as they were both shrouded in heavy yellow plastic hooded raincoats they were managing to ignore it.

    Pete wasn’t in the best of moods himself but as he was aware Bob wasn’t in the best of moods he waited for some time before uttering.

    “Young Neil still mucking around with them DOC types down the Whangaehu?”

    “Yeah, so what?” snarled Bob in reply.

    Pete swallowed a sigh. “Can’t hurt to get in good with them.”

    “Ya think? His professor rung up to say what the fuck’s he farting around for and where are them results from the lake?”

    Pete gulped. Neil and Tamsin had pushed off to Auckland in mid-February to enrol at university—re-enrol in his case—and to sort out a flat, but they’d been coming back every weekend for the last month; and last weekend, just coincidentally, Neil had spent most of the Saturday with the Department of Conservation types and their mates that were monitoring Ruapehu’s crater lake levels and the Sunday had been the day she chose to bust her banks. So they’d let him come with them to test what the huge lahar was doing to the Whangaehu River. Largely, drowning it in volcanic mud, common sense would suggest, but however.

    “Well, shit, Bob, Ruapehu doesn’t turn on a huge great lahar every day of the week, hadn’t he better get the experience while ’e can? If ’e does wanna end up working for them.”

    “He’s gotta get the ruddy degree first,” replied Neil’s father sourly.

    “Yeah. Um, this flat of his, does it allow pets?”

    “If ya mean dogs, no. The dame in the next-door flat, she’s the landlady, see, and she’s got a cat. And in case you were volunteering me to babysit Tamsin’s ruddy Dalmatian—”

    “No!”

    “That’s good, ’cos I’ve already told him it’s their responsibility and they can sort it out themselves.”

    “It’s a perfectly nice dog,” said Pete feebly.

    “Pete, Neil’s spent most of his life letting his mother decide stuff for him or dumping it on me if it’s too hard. I’ve got nothing against the dog, and I like Tamsin, but it’s their problem.”

    “That’s what Jan said,” he admitted glumly.

    “There you are, then.”

    “But Tamsin’s already rung the boarding kennels in Brizzie to arrange for them to fly it over.” Pete waited. There was a considerable silence, during which he decided that Bob wasn’t gonna say it. Then he said it.

    “Couldn’t Libby do that?”

    The fact that Libby had flown back to Queensland two days since was one reason for Bob’s bad mood—yeah. But as she’d only gone in order to put her ruddy house on the market and pack her clothes Pete wasn’t too down about it. “Tamsin doesn’t trust her to do it right.”

    “What is she, helpless?” he snarled.

    “Pretty much, yeah,” replied Pete unemotionally. “Woulda let the fucking airline upgrade ’er to Business Class and paid through the nose according, only Jan and me jumped on that one, you betcha. Mind you, she was all shook up because of Ruapehu playing up.”

    “The lahar?” said Bob limply. It was a bad one but there had been no actual eruption, just the giant river of mud from the crater lake sweeping down its predicted path—for once the boffins had got it right.

    “Yeah. Thought the whole thing was gonna go up, I think. Somebody musta given her an earful about the way she can play up, but it wasn’t me,” he noted pointedly.

    Bob hunched himself up within his plastic raincoat, scowling.

    Pete sighed. “I suppose she’ll end up dumping the thing on ’er mum, like usual.”

    “Eh? Aw—the Dalmatian. Yeah. Um, how big are they, anyway?” he asked weakly.

    As a matter of fact Pete had never seen one in the flesh, either. “Uh—well, biggish. Stand about as high as a Labrador, I reckon.”

    “Holy Hell, Pete! Do ya realise how much a thing of that size eats?”

    Pete did, yeah, but he sincerely doubted that young Neil Kenny did. “Uh—well, you wanna chew Neil’s ear, go right ahead. He’ll probably tell you it’s Tamsin’s dog and she’s an automaton—uh, that’s wrong. Auto-something person, anyway.”

    Neil’s father had turned purple. “Has he been giving you cheek?” he choked.

    “Nah, ’course not, he’s not fifteen any more, Bob!” replied Pete quickly. “No, Tamsin had a go at me ’cos I asked her if her and Neil might fancy the loft until me and Jan get our cabin built.”

    “Autonomous, it’ll’ve been,” decided Bob sourly.

    Pete eyed him sideways. Bob Kenny wasn’t as illiterate as he liked people to assume—well, particularly dames in fancy frocks and clashing earrings, but yeah. But he’d always known that, so he didn’t comment. “Dare say. Anyway, it kind of got into the conversation. Evidently I’m living in the nineteenth century and these days people don’t have to do everything with a partner and don’t have to go along with everything their partner does and don’t have to be in a couple—well, there was a lot of it in there. More jaw-cracking words, too.”

    “Don’t tell me the pair of tits are splitting up, just when we thought everything was settled?”

    “No. You and me are living in the nineteenth century, Bob,” said Pete with a certain relish. “We might think that, but no. See, these days a girl—beg ya pardon, woman—can make up her own mind about her future and doesn’t need a bloke for anything.”

    “Not unless she wants ’er kids to be clones, I’d of thought,” replied Bob sourly. “And if you dare to breath the words ‘sperm bank’, I’ll bloody throttle ya!”

    Pete hadn’t been going to. “Dunno what that is, actually. Something to do with AB?”

    Bob was blank for a moment. Then his mind gave a him a vivid picture of his Dad’s old Daisy and it came to him: “artificial breeding.” “Not cows, you moron, people!” he said angrily. “Are you taking the Mick? ’Cos if so—”

    “No,” said Pete feebly. “Honest. –I see, sperm for people. Um, women, I suppose. What a flaming disgusting idea.”

    “Yeah. Think it’s a Yank thing. –Sounds to me like they’ve had a big row,” he said morosely.

    “Nope! See, first off she tells her old granddad where he gets off and half an hour later the two of them are over in the loft, measuring!”

    Bob gulped.

    Pete sniffed slightly. “Yeah. See, what it is, these days a woman’s gotta state ’er position. Then she goes off and starts ordering the bloke round and choosing curtain material same like they always done since Eve redecorated Adam’s fig leaf for ’im.”

    “Yeah, hah, hah,” said Bob feebly.—He was, however, trying to not to grin, Pete saw with considerable relief.—“So it is all on again?”

    “It was never off. But being one of those auto-something people was definitely in there.”

    “Uh—aw. Yeah. The ruddy dog. Autonomous or not, I’ll speak to Neil,” he said grimly.

    Pete scratched his narrow jaw. “Yeah, well, ya might have to, ’cos it looks to me ruddy like Jayne’s making up her mind to go to London with flaming Andrew Barker. And they got six months’ quarantine for dogs going into the UK.”

    Bob did know about the quarantine, actually, but he was pretty rocked to discover good old Pete did. “Um, yeah,” he said feebly. “Right. So it’s gone that far, has it, Pete?”

    “In a month—yeah. Apparently,” he said grimly.

    Jayne and Andrew had taken Tamsin, Neil and both his parents to dinner before the two young people went up to Auckland, so Bob had at least met the bloke. “Um, I thought he seemed okay,” he said awkwardly.

    “He’d be a lot more okay if he wasn’t thinking of taking Jayne off to the other side of the fucking world before we’ve hardly seen anything of her!”

    “Yeah. So he’s decided not to chuck in his job?”

    Pete shrugged crossly. “He’s back at work and Jayne’s up there in Auckland with him: whadda you think?”

    “Um, he could still pack it in. Hasn’t she told you anything?”

    “No!” he snapped.

    Bob sighed. “Sorry I spoke.”

    “Come to think of it,” said Pete in an evil tone, “Jayne can’t take the fucking dog, ’cos his flat’s in a poncy building that doesn’t allow pets!”

    “Right,” he said grimly. “Don’t worry, Pete, I’ll sort the pair of young idiots out.”

    What he meant was, first he’d bawl Neil out and then he’d take the dog himself, but as there didn’t seem to be any other solution and as Pete and Jan had just had an argument over whether Pete would take the ruddy dog, which Jan had won—

    Pete grunted, and waggled his line a bit.

    Looking sour, Bob reeled in, rebaited, and chucked it back in again.

    Then they just got on with sitting there sourly staring at the grey lake in the grey drizzle.

    Aidan had briskly told his father’s lawyers to settle the estate and get it over with. He had already given the firm advance notice that he was resigning as senior partner but he had efficiently notified them it was definite and refused the giant bribes that were immediately offered. He had efficiently nipped over to Sydney, sold the car, put his flat on the market and sent all its horrible contents, except for his wine, his books, his CDs and electronic gear and one picture he was rather fond of, to auction. He had efficiently had the remaining items professionally packed, insured, and, having heard more than enough horror tales of the speed of trans-Tasman sea freight, dispatched the wine, with a prayer, by sea, and had the rest sent air freight—at enormous expense, he owned a lot of books—to Auckland. He’d given his elder daughter a large cheque to shut her up on the subject of her grandfather’s estate. And he’d visited a very nice shop that stocked professional kitchenware and bought a large number of things like Italian coffee-pots and Italian pasta-makers and really good stock pots that he was pretty sure were unavailable on the other side of the Tasman, or only available at immense expense. And had duly had them air-freighted to Auckland at immense expense.

    Then he dashed back to Auckland and efficiently arranged for everything to be trucked down to Taupo.

    Everything was duly delivered to the McLintock house. Aidan then went into a flurry of activity, unpacking and checking. Nothing precious seemed to have suffered any damage, thank God!

    Then he checked the time, rang Aprylle’s Auckland flat and reported, rang David and reported, and last but not least, rang Pam—she’d be home from work, by this time—and reported. Asking what she was having for dinner produced the expected reply, and he rang off with a shudder.

    He made himself a lovely dinner, drank quite a nice Coonawarra red that was the last of a case and that he’d only just remembered to rescue from the built-in so-called wine cellar—refrigerated cupboard—before closing the door on the Sydney flat for good, listened to one of his favourite Mozart CDs and went to bed feeling extremely virtuous and very, very pleased with himself.

    The feeling lasted for three more days of frantic activity: unpacking books in quest of his old favourites and finding there wasn’t nearly enough shelving in McLintock’s bloody house, selecting the favourite favourites and arranging them and rearranging them, refiling his CDs, repositioning the electronic gear, unpacking the kitchen stuff and hauling out the pieces he’d definitely want to use right away and repacking the rest because there was no storage space in the McLintock dump…

    On the fourth morning he woke up to find, like Othello, that his occupation was gone and he had fuck-all to do. Shit! He didn’t even have a Desdemona, she was up in Auckland, judging away like nobody’s biz.

    He could go out and, uh, well, it was raining. Go out and look at the garden in the drizzle? Ring the McLintocks’ bloody land agent and try and get a definite price for the house out of him? He didn’t even like the dump, if he did buy it he’d have to have it completely—well, all the windows re-glazed, that was for sure, this dark glass was more than depressing, it was suicidally depressing. Shit! And all the teak panelling stripped from the inside, it made you want to cut your throat, too. Or painted? White? It’d still be hideous but at least it wouldn’t be dark. And possibly the dark teak floors would look marginally more acceptable if the walls were white. But none of that could be done unless the McLintock brothers could be forced to make up their minds to sell. Shit.

    … He could drive over to Taupo Organic Produce and buy some lovely vegetables and maybe a duck and make— Well, what? For one? Hardly worth the bother. Book himself in for lunch at Taupo Shores Ecolodge? With his luck, Pete’d be serving and he’d look at him as if he was a beetle. A faithless, fornicating beetle that deserted defenceless women. The stupid thing was, he was bloody certain the man hadn’t wanted him to take up with Libby in the first place! He couldn’t ring Pam, she’d be in court all day. Blow. Nor David, he’d be teaching all day, in fact it was almost impossible to get him on the extension that was ostensibly his. Aprylle was supposed to be at her classes, or swotting, so it was pointless to ring the flat she and Susan were sharing… He rang. Just his luck, he got Maura. Not Moira, no: he’d already made that mistake: Maura. In the nasal but muddy accent of the under-educated New Zealander the two were well-nigh indistinguishable—however. Maura reported that neh, Aprylle was out. –She wasn’t a Maori, in which case the negative syllable would have been at least excusable. She was a pale, thin pakeha girl with a bad posture which Aidan’s grandmother would have described as “poking”. Stood with the concave tummy and the bony hip-bones thrust forward—quite. The silver metal hoop in the nose and the stud under the lower lip might have been quite the usual thing these days but this didn’t mean he had to like ’em, did it? Apart from these visible features she was, as far as Aidan had been able to determine, completely characterless. He thanked her and hung up.

    Then he just sat there and sulked.

Hi, Jan, said the email.

    How is everything at Taupo Shores Ecolodge? I hope you and Dad are continuing well. Poppa Josh saw a report on your mountain’s lahar on TV, and he’s gotten real keen on coming out there for a vacation but Mom doesn’t want to, so maybe the two of us will come together and she can stop over in Honolulu. That apart, things are pretty much the same here. Work hasn’t changed. I did ask if they might be interested in supplying Chaparra Homestead products through the ecolodge and they will cost it, but at the moment they don’t think it would be viable because of the freightage costs.

    It’s Tuesday, so at least I was able to wash the stuff out of my hair soon as I got home. Whistler’s Brother is chirpy as ever! Tell Dad I took his advice and put a real piece of branch in his cage and he loves it! First off he stripped all the bark off with his beak, just like Dad said, and now he’s sitting on it. I can see what Dad meant about it exercising his feet better.

    Dean and Rowan are still real interested in the ecolodge but like I say I honestly don’t think they’ll be able to swing a vacation there in the near future. I promised I would pass on Rowan’s latest to you, so for what it’s worth, here it is: I get my money out of Mom (how, he couldn’t say), and we all emigrate and take over the ecolodge (meantime you and Dad retire) and turn it into a branch of Chaparra Homestead, complete with the mud wraps and Jacuzzis and massages and all! The garage gets turned into a gym and Rowan and Dean live in the loft above it! Don’t ask me why he’s fallen in love with the loft, sight unseen! I did say it sounds like you get a lot of rain and will the guests want to hustle between the main building and the garage, but he didn’t even hear me. Some scheme! It’s good for a laugh, I guess!

    Well, that’s all for now. Love to you and Dad, and take care of yourself, Jan.

        Patty

    Jan didn’t laugh, in fact she sighed. For two pins she’d pretend she’d never received it. But nobody was offering her two pins so, as Pete hated reading stuff on the computer, she printed it out for him.

    He was in the shed, gloating over the bloody green marble that he’d taken to some place some old mate had recommended and had professionally sliced in two. Not free, gratis and for nothing—no. Then he’d got the silly moos at the Taupo Public Library that fell all over themselves to fulfil his Good Keen Manly demands—Christ knew why, she knew for a fact that one of them was gay, one of them was happily married with grown kids, and another was about Tamsin’s age and covered in hoops and studs—to get him a load of books on the right way to polish your genuine antique marble slabs good…

    “Here,” she said heavily. “From Patty. And don’t blame me.”

    “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He peered uncertainly at the garbage at the top.

    “Pete, it’s an email, ignore the garbage!” said Jan loudly. “Start here!”

    “Bloody unnecessary,” he muttered, peering.

    “You need glasses.”

    “I do not!”

    Sighing, Jan sat down on one of the battered wooden things that periodically came and went, ours not to reason why nor where. And certainly not whence.

    “Be careful,” he said, not looking up, “that thing’s got a wobbly—”

    “Leg, quite.” She waited, wobbling slightly to while away the time, while he scowled his way through it.

    “Well, shit!” he reported.

    “Yeah.”

    “What’s this here?” he said, pointing.

    “Uh—Jacuzzis? Um, sort of indoor spa baths, Pete,” said Jan limply.

    “Fuck me,” he invited.

    “Yeah. Well, it isn’t the first time the idea’s been mooted, is it?”

    He just looked at her morosely: maybe he’d forgotten his enthusiasm for a health farm, back on Patty’s first evening with them. Jan took a deep breath. “I can’t see it’d possibly work. The clientèle at Chaparra Homestead sound at least as up-market as the types that come to Fern Gully Ecolodge, and given that Fern Gully’s scratching to find enough servile staff in EnZed—” She shrugged. He just went on looking morose, oh, Hell. “Pampering and servility are what these types want, Pete. Though I suppose types like Livia’s mates might fancy it to dry out, or whatever it is they call it, after they’ve overeaten themselves on Aidan Vine’s cuisine. –Detox!” she remembered, snapping her fingers. “Um, detoxification. Seems to be the latest euphemism for a good dose of senna pod tea.”

    “Castor oil, my ole gran used to prescribe… Is that why dames go to these health farms, then?” he said dazedly.

    “Yeah, pretty much. Lose a few pounds, I mean kilos, and get really, really pampered and covered in goo from head to foot. Especially the face, that’s why Chaparra Homestead produces all those expensive creams and muck. Bit like Elizabeth Arden, but they sound even dearer. Don’t think our population’s big enough to support it, frankly. I mean, Livia’s mates are all very well—okay, putrid,” she said to the face—“but finding enough clients year-round’s another matter.”

    “Polly might know a few more, though.”

    “Uh—Pete, this is the mad pipe dream of a California gay we’re talking about, here.”

    “Right,” he said heavily.

    Jan bit her lip. “I could suss the scene out on the Internet, I suppose. See what the competition is, and if there’s likely to be a market.”

    He brightened. “Yeah, why not! Hey, it’d solve the cook problem, eh?”

    “Uh—yeah, it would. Prune juice and carrot sticks are about the most these health farms serve,” admitted Jan, tottering back to her computer.

    Pete came into the kitchen about two hours later to find her stirring something at the stove. “That marble’ll look good. Haveta find some really nice wood for the base, eh? Ya want drawers?”

    “Drawers’d be good. Have a look at those print-outs on the table,” said Jan in a strangled voice.

    He picked up the sheaf of papers. “Colour? Though you reckoned that was throwing good money down the… Shit! Whaddis this? Pokeno?”

    Jan gave a muffled snort.

    “Look, is this a joke? ’Ve you faked this lot up on yer bloody computer?”

    “No!” she gasped, breaking down entirely. “Help! Don’t make me have hysterics, Pete, I’ll ruin the soup!”

    “It’s not me that’s making you have hysterics… Pokeno? Halfway between Papakura and nowhere!”

    Jan groped in the pocket of her apron. “Halfway between Papakura and Huntly,” she corrected, blowing her nose, “but you’re not wrong. The thing is, it’s only about twenty miles from the Auckland CBD. Really well placed to grab the ladylike clientele that fancy yer three-hour spa packages for couples at five hundred-odd bucks a throw.”

    “Couples? Ugh! –Green tea?” he ascertained. “Thought that was Japanese?” he said vaguely.

    “Uh—external, in this instance, not internal. –Never mind, it’s all mad. But you see, Pokeno’s really well placed for the affluent to nip down and spend a lot of money on being relaxed before nipping back to the rush hour and the rat race.”

    “If you say so… Twelve hundred nicker?” he gasped. “For a day in Hamilton?”

    “Um, no, think that one was for a group, Pete,” said Jan feebly. “Dollars.”

    “Uh—aw, yeah. Corporate package for six? What the Hell are they on about? Sounds like a bloody orgy!”

    Jan had to swallow. “Um, I think they mean for lady execs, love. But just in case a mixed group might fancy it, or a group of six corporate gays, I suppose, they aren’t specifying ladies. Though I think that one was on the women’s section of one of the websites.”

    “Mad,” he said definitely. “Cripes, here’s one in Warkworth! Flaming bloody Norah! It’s the back of beyond, too! Don’t try telling me it isn’t: I been up that way with Jake!”

    “An easy hour’s drive from Auckland if the roads are clear,” said Jan firmly. “It’s practically all motorway these days. Actually that sounds like a really nice place—well, so does the Pokeno one,” she admitted feebly.

    “You’re joking! Over two thou’ for five nights? And not a group!”

    “Mm. Four hundred-odd a day, that’s nothing compared to what bloody Fern Gully charges for bed and board, without the massages and stuff.”

    “‘Face and body peeling’,” discerned Pete, shuddering. “Here, is this Vedic stuff that yoga stuff? Namrita used to be into that.”

    “Um, I’m not sure. Might be meditation. Lots of these places have a gimmick, you see.”

    “Yeah. –They do feed them, they reckon their food’s mouth-watering,” he reported dubiously. “Could be anything.”

    “Yes. The word ‘Vedic’ does suggest vegetarian to my mind but then, I’m stuck in a twentieth-century mind-set,” said Jan drily.

    “Yeah, like them ones we had in the bunkhouse, that time!” he remembered.

    “Uh—no, that was vegan. Though I wouldn’t bet it’d be essentially different.”

    “Well, Patty seemed to know quite a bit about diets and stuff. Could be a goer,” he said dubiously.

    Jan turned the heat off under the soup, and leaned against the bench. “Mm-mm… What I found really interesting was that there does seem to be a market, or the places wouldn’t be offering their services, but in our general area—well, from Auckland to Taupo—there really only seem to be the two places that are going in for it in a big way: charging highish prices and offering longer-term sessions: full day or more. The one in Hamilton seems to do up to three-hour sessions, like most of the ones in the bigger cities. They’re all more the pop-in-after-work style, little more than glorified massage parlours. –Not brothels, before you start.”

    “Wasn’t gonna,” he said virtuously. “Ladies’ massages, I getcha. Why not tell Patty about it, love? Pigs might fly and bloody Namrita might even let her have her dough! Or no, tell ya what: if it looks like there’s a market, these Chaparra Homestead types might be keen!”

    Keen on buying them out of Taupo Shores Ecolodge? Then where would they go? Never mind, the whole thing was a pipe dream! And Patty would probably get a laugh out of the web pages she’d saved.

    “Righto, I’ll email her the pages. So the marble’s coming on good, ya reckon?”

    “Yeah; needs more polishing, mind,” he warned, “but the surface is starting to look real good!”

    Yes, well, no health farms need apply, that was him happily occupied for the foreseeable future—well into winter, to be realistic.

    “What sort of soup is it, love?”

    Jan twitched. “Eh? Oh—parsnip, from those frozen monsters. Don’t panic, it’s got a bacon bone in it.”

    “Sounds okay,” he conceded. “Anyway, only us and them two in Room 6 in, eh?”

    Quite. They had had a bunkhouse full of geology students for a week, come to look at the lahar, and in fact had had a week where they could have let every room ten times over—wrinklies wanting to come and gawp at the river of mud, yeah. Or rather, since the weather had been bad, at vistas of grey mist and drizzle. Even the TV news helicopter hadn’t managed to produce much more than vistas of grey mist and drizzle, with a few completely confusing shots of what could well have been a river of grey mud if there’d been anything in the picture to give you an idea of scale. Since then things had slackened off. Though they were fully booked for Easter.

    “I let Janet go home. Can you wash your hands and lay the table, Pete? I’ll email these to Patty while I think of it.”

    “Righto. Give her my love,” he reminded her. “And tell ’er to keep on hanging in there.”

    It would be of more practical use if she could give the girl some sound advice on how to get her dough out of her bloody mother—however. Agreeing mildly she’d do that, Jan returned to the office.

    As it turned out they got four more customers turning up on spec for lunch: two sets of wrinklies in newish silver-grey Japanese vehicles that had been to the now officially-named “Crafts on Taupo Shores”—Coral’s idea, combining with-it, up-market and the keyword that people using the phone book would look under. So she told them it was table d’hôte in the off-season and gave them parsnip and bacon soup followed by tagliatelle with home-frozen tomato sauce à la David Easterbrook lightly dotted with fresh goats’ cheese à la Bob Kenny and the last of the basil from the pot on the kitchen windowsill, take it or leave it. They all without exception lapped it up like lambs. So, as Pete put it, there ya were. No sweat.

    David had failed completely to persuade Patty to stay in New Zealand. At the time he hadn’t wanted to come on too strong: after all, they’d only just met. Now he felt angrily, with her on the other side of the Pacific responding to his eager emails with calm chat about her pet bird and her gay neighbours, that he’d been a bloody idiot and he should have made a real push to persuade her that it didn’t matter if she didn’t give the bloody health farm three months’ notice if she was never gonna see the bloody place again, and that as she’d been born in New Zealand, she oughta see about getting a New Zealand passport, and—well, quite a few things like that. Instead of just agreeing like a wimp that it would be silly to rush into anything. Shit, when you found something that you just knew was right, it wasn’t a question of rushing! And as for the age difference—what the Hell did a few years on either side matter? So what if she’d be forty when he was “only” thirty-six? Shit, she’d be seventy-five when he was seventy-one, and when ya looked at it like that it was meaningless!

    He’d had the usual long and exhausting day with classes of so-called hospitality students who could barely write their names. One of those days on which you tried not to tell yourself your mother had been right all along and there wasn’t enough challenge in the job and you should never have taken it—yeah. Though there was a certain challenge in devising classes—lectures would have been a misnomer—that were pitched at the level the students could take whilst still containing a certain amount of informational content. David was beginning to come to the sour conclusion that this challenge wasn’t sufficient.

    He got home to his dull little concrete-block flat in a one-storey block of six dull little concrete-block flats at around the usual time after the usual struggle with the rush hour, nodded to Whatserface from Number 2, skinny sallow-faced dame in her thirties, who was getting out of her car as he drew in, got out, said “Hi,” to Whatserface from Number 4, scrawny middle-aged dame, who was locking her car, didn’t enquire after the health of her ruddy black and white cat that liked sitting on your car’s bonnet leaving grime and hairs all over it, and trudged inside to the usual welcoming nothingness. Marginally better than trudging inside to be met by a pouting Kylie with the complaint: “You’re late! I thought we were going out?”

    He didn’t feel like cooking, not that there was much to cook, as he hadn’t done much shopping for a while. Last Saturday he’d meant to drive over to St Luke’s, it wasn’t far and the prices at the big supermarkets there were reasonable, but somehow the idea of jostling for the red-lighted red capsicums and the green-lighted lettuces and green capsicums and the red-lighted meat with all the other Saturday shoppers hadn’t appealed. He looked in the freezing compartment of his fridge-freezer but funnily enough it was still full of that ruddy casseroled oxtail he hadn’t fancied last night or the night before or— Yeah. And the only reason he’d made so much of it was that ruddy St Luke’s had had oxtails on special, and you so seldom saw them— Yeah. Not stopping and asking himself when, realistically, he was gonna eat four oxtail casseroles for four. …He should really get a decent chest freezer, this little one was pretty useless. No, he bloody shouldn’t! ’Cos if he did he’d only fill it up with flaming oxtail casseroles that he was never gonna get through! Bugger!

    He shut the freezing compartment’s door crossly and went to glare at his wine rack. Crap, crap, and more crap. Boy, that had had been a really nice red that Dad had given… them.

    David felt his cheeks go very red. He barely knew the man, it was a—a biological accident, why the fuck was he thinking of him as “Dad?” Just because Mum was having a thing with him—which proved she’d gone barmy, if it needed proving. Menopausal madness: you said it! Not that he begrudged her a fling, of course. But shit, Aidan Vine? Wasn’t once fair warning? Never mind he’d got rid of his flat in Sydney and brought his stuff over here, it’d last six months or a year at most and he’d get fed up with boring, pedestrian little New Zealand and push off back to glossy Sydney and the lifestyle he was used to. Never mind what he might claim about the Aussies not having standards, either: David was bloody sure their culinary standards, at least, were higher than ours, and the Sydney bookshops were better and there was more good music and to name only one, how was Dad gonna cope without an opera house? –Bugger! Aidan. No, well, good old Bruce had always been “Bruce”, whether because Mum had always called him that and he’d just copied her or… Probably he’d guessed all along who his father was and hadn’t wanted Vine’s son to call him “Dad”. And you couldn’t blame him.

    He grabbed a bottle of red, scowling, opened it and poured. Ugh! Scowling, he refilled the glass and went back into the sitting-room—the one good thing about the flat was that, though it was nominally open-plan, there was in fact a tall cupboard and a high bench, breakfast-bar style, cutting off the view of the kitchen from the living-dining area—and sat down at his desk. There wouldn’t be an email from her…

    There was. –Why the Hell did she never say “Dear David?” He always put “Dear Patty” but it hadn’t seemed to sink in that it wasn’t just New Zealand usage, he meant it!

Hi, David,

    How is everything with you? I heard back from Jan and Dad and they’re real keen on Poppa Josh’s idea for him and me to come out for our summer vacation this year. Mom’s already made her booking for Honolulu, so we’re going ahead with it! That apart, things are pretty much the same here.

    Whistler’s Brother is chirpy as ever, and like I told you last time, I’m giving him a piece of branch in his cage on a regular basis. I just changed it and he’s gotten right down to stripping the bark off with his beak! I told Chet DeWitt, the head gardener at Chaparra Homestead, all about him and he’s been real kind and helpful, supplying me with the right kind of branches for him.

    I mentioned Dean and Rowan are real interested in the ecolodge, but I didn’t tell you about Rowan’s latest scheme that I mentioned to Jan. I just heard back from her, with some sites she downloaded with some real witty comments, so I’m passing them on to you. Basically Rowan thinks that I ought to get my money out of Mom (how??), and then we all emigrate and take over the ecolodge and turn it into a branch of Chaparra Homestead! So after she was over the hysterics Jan did an Internet search just to see what the competition and the market might be. Well, competition! Dean and Rowan got real cross, to tell you the truth, they thought it was her idea of a joke, so I had to explain it’s a real small country and you just don’t have the population that California has, nor the wealth. But take a look at the attachments, they’re good for a laugh, I guess!

    Well, that’s all for now. Take care of yourself, David.

        Patty

    Who the Hell was this Chet DeWitt, when he was at home? She’d never mentioned him before! Supplying her with branches for her bird? How old was the bastard? And was he married? Not that that’d stop him, would it? In California? And coming out for her summer holidays? What about coming out permanently? She still hadn’t given him any sort of serious reply to that suggestion, let alone explained why she wasn’t looking into applying for a New Zealand passport! Well, shit! …At least he’d see her again. If he could get away: they did have a mid-year break, but it wasn’t very long, and would it coincide with her American summer vacation? And how much leave would the health farm let her take? Hadn’t she already taken most of it? Well, bugger! Why hadn’t she given him any details?

    He was so stirred up that he almost didn’t look at the attachments. Stupid websites, yeah, yeah. Pampering for dumb women, yeah, yeah… Pokeno? Pokeno? Sweet bleeding Christ Almighty! Vedic how much? Jesus, what total crap! Uh, Warkworth. Uh, well, there was some pretty up-market stuff up around those parts these days, yeah… “Mouth-watering”. Could mean anything. No indication of prices for the food, must be all-inclusive…

    David finished his glass of wine and poured himself another. …Taupo: spa. Glorious pics… All bumf… Hang on, though, they’d been there! It was just thermal pools, there was nothing— He flipped back and forth. What? This was just blah, the place didn’t even feed you, there was no accommodation! He got onto the Internet.

    … By God. Some of the most gorgeous shots of the lake and the Taupo area he’d ever seen, advertising, when ya got right down to it, nothing. Well, thermal pools, yeah. And the rest were ruddy motels! Well, one website wasn’t up, so that could have been anything, but whatever it was it wasn’t gonna get any custom, but anyway, it was at the other end of the lake…

    Pokeno and Warkworth were, of course, very handy to Auckland, which was where most of the custom would be, population-wise, and certainly where most of the wealth was. Down in Taupo one would have to think of the longer-term custom: weekends, long weekends and whole-week stays… Hmm… The word “holistic” came to mind, though that was a bit old-hat these days and not quite the desired impression: you’d want with-it but not weird or way-out… Hmm… Just as a for-instance, try searching for Australian health farms… Uh-uh. Try “spa”. Cripes. Okay, more than its share of weirdos, but some really up-market… Pete and Jan were getting a bit of custom from the Aussies, and apparently Fern Gully Ecolodge was getting quite a lot of very well-off Aussies, so…

    Andrew’s phone rang about ten-thirty, when they were already in bed.

    “It’s Libby,” he said to Jayne with a twinkle in his eye. “I think she’s got the time difference wrong.”

    “Ssh! Never mind.” She took the receiver off him. “Hi, Libby.”

    “Hullo, Jayne,” said Libby in a trembling voice. “I’ve sold the house.” Abruptly she burst into tears.

    “Libby! What’s the matter? Don’t cry! –She says she’s sold the house and now she’s crying!” she said wildly to Andrew.

    He put his arm round her shoulders. “Reaction.”

    Nodding hard, Jayne said loudly into the receiver: “Don’t cry, Libby! It’s great that you’ve sold the house! That’s real progress! And you never liked it, did you?”

    More sobs came down the line from Brisbane. Jayne looked helplessly at Andrew.

    “Has she been gypped?” he asked, frowning.

    “I dunno!” she hissed. “Libby, dear, never mind if you couldn’t get your price—”

    “No!” sobbed Libby. “They want va—ha—ha—” More sobs.

    “I think she’s saying they want vacant possession,” reported Jayne.

    “Want me to speak to her?”

    Nodding gratefully, she passed him the receiver without more ado.

    What it amounted to, after Libby was more or less over the gulping and sniffing, was that she’d agreed to vacant possession on the following Monday—it being now Thursday evening—and her books weren’t packed, and she’d run out of money, having maxed out her credit card on, apparently, the shopping Tamsin had made her do. So she couldn’t afford to pay for a firm to do it and anyway, more tears, no firms’d come in the weekend, and what was she gonna do? Further sobs.

    Andrew checked with Jayne. Okay, Libby did have a very low limit on her card, because she didn’t believe in credit, and no, it was highly unlikely that any Australian firm of packers, movers and storers would do anything over the weekend at short notice, not even Grace—not Grace Brothers, these days, but they were the same firm—who were very good. Because you had to book them weeks in advance. Right, bad as here, then, he concluded grimly. They agreed that Jayne would put some money into Libby’s account immediately, and after some confusion over which number on the cheques was the account number, got the details of the account off her—she couldn’t check it from a bank statement because everything of that nature was packed and sent off. So why had she left the books? He didn’t ask.

    Jayne then, firmly but gently overriding all her sister’s objections, arranged for her own neighbours, Jim and Madeleine Cooper, to help Libby obtain some cartons, buying them if necessary, help pack the books, and store them in her, Jayne’s, garage until they could be shipped over.

    “Good,” said Andrew limply. “Jayne, love, I don’t want to be rude about your sister, but is she always this hopeless?”

    Jayne swallowed. “Um, well, she’s never really had to, um, plan stuff for herself before, now I come to think about it. I mean, Mum always pushed her into things… I don’t think she knows how things work. She must have been counting on the money for the house and—and just not calculated in the extra stuff. Oh, dear, I knew I should have gone with her!”

    “Never mind, it’s sorted,” he said comfortingly, putting his arm round her. “Got quite a few books, has she?”

    Jayne swallowed. “Five huge bookcases, all with five or six shelves.”

    Right. Poor bloody Jim Cooper, then!

    “The—the bookcases must be still there,” she said weakly.

    “Uh-huh.”

    “The new people won’t want five giant bookcases—and they’re all second-hand, they’re not matching!”

    “Uh-huh.”

    Jayne looked up at him limply.

    “Don’t dare to ring her back, she’ll go into another flap. If this Cooper bloke doesn’t grab them and shove them in your garage, let’s just agree she can cut her losses, eh?”

    “Righto,” she agreed gratefully.

    Grinning, Andrew said: “And now, as we’re both thoroughly awake, what say we switch the light out, eh?”

    Giggling, Jayne agreed to this proposition.

    Tamsin sat silently at the kitchen table, watching Jan making passionfruit sauce.

    “I see, it’s kind of like jam,” she said at last.

    “Yes. Takes a lot of sugar, of course, but it comes in very useful for puddings. Some years I freeze it, too, but the freezers are rather full of blanched beans, blanched parsnips, and tomato sauce, this year,” said Jan on a dry note. “Which reminds me, you heard from Patty lately?”

    “Um, no. Um, she did send me a web address for an American online hospitality management course that looked good, but it’s too expensive.”

    “Uh-huh. The course in Auckland going okay, is it?”

    “Yeah, not bad. There isn’t much on the accounts side, though, so I’ve signed up for a proper bookkeeping course.”

    “Good!” said Jan, smiling at her.

    “Yeah.” Tamsin watched as she poured the sauce, using her special little jug, into the hot, sterilised jars. Eventually she said: “That’s a neato little jug.”

    “Yes; it’s much easier with a little jug than with a ladle, that’s something no course’ll teach you!” said Jan with a laugh. Carefully she scraped the dregs into a pudding bowl. “We can have this for pudding if I can think of something for it to go on. Ice cream, as a last resort.”

    “Yeah, great. Um, Jan…”

    Here it came. Jan braced herself. “Mm?”

    “Has Mum said anything to you about going to England with Andrew?” asked Tamsin glumly.

    Phew, was that all? “Not lately, but a while back she did say that a trip to England’d be nice.”

    “Yeah. The firm’s definitely gonna send him. Not permanent, though. They wanna send him for six months with this other Kiwi guy, younger, and he’s gonna train him up for a bit.”

    “Right, and then he’ll stay there as Jake’s spy, I get it.”

    “Yeah, that’s right. Andrew thinks he might give it away after that.”

    “Uh, Tamsin, lovey, wasn’t that what he was saying back before Christmas?”

    “Yeah, only see, he’s had time to think it over properly.”

    “So what’s he gonna do instead?”

    “He hasn’t decided. But he’s got really interested in my course, and he’s reading up on running a small business, and Mum’s really keen on living down here!” She looked at her hopefully.

    Uh—Andrew and Jayne managing the ecolodge? That was a new one! Well, Andrew was a nice fellow, there was no doubt the clients would like him, and Jayne of course was popular with everyone, and she could cook. But it took more than that, it took considerable organisational ability. Just organising Janet, willing though she was, was quite a job. And then there was menu planning… Jan found she had to sit down. There’d been no suggestion of this back when they’d had that meeting with Coral—uh, no, that was before Andrew had even taken up with her—was it?

    “Would you, um, envisage running this place with them, then, Tamsin?” she said cautiously.

    “I’d quite like to, yeah.”

    “Uh-huh. With your mother in the kitchen, would this be?”

    “Yeah. She says she doesn’t just wanna stay at home.”

    “Mm. Um, there’s a lot more organisation involved than she’ll have been used to. I know that running a house is no sinecure, but when you’re doing it commercially there’s a lot more stuff like menu planning and, well,”—she looked at the jars of bright yellow sauce—“preparing stuff in advance.”

    “Yes. What I thought was, I could help her with that side of it.”

    “Right. I think that could work very well, actually. Though I must say, I’d prefer to have her down here learning the ropes for the next six months rather than off in London!”

    “Me, too!” agreed Tamsin gratefully. “Only the thing is, it’s your slack period, isn’t it? So it won’t work out too bad.”

    “No, that’s true.”

    “The only thing is,” she admitted glumly, “that Pete doesn’t really like Andrew, does he?”

    Jan cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t go that far. Give him time: he’ll get used to the idea. A lot of fathers are like that: very possessive about their daughters: think no bloke’s good enough for them. And—uh, well, after the example of your father, you can’t really blame Pete for getting the idea that she can’t pick men.”

    She brightened. “I getcha. That doesn’t sound too bad.”

    “No. Um, Tamsin, how definite is this?”

    “Mum’s really keen and like I say, Andrew’s been buying a lot of books on small business management. I think he is serious about it, but him and Mum want to, um, see how their relationship works out. That’s sensible, don’t you think?”

    “Yes. Well, six months stranded amongst a load of Poms’ll either consolidate it completely or bust them up—one or the other,” said Jan on a dry note.

    “Yeah. They do seem sort of… like, comfortable together?” she offered dubiously.

    She was such a level-headed girl that Jan tended to forget how young she really was. “I’d agree, and it’s a really good sign!”

    “Oh, good! Um, one of my books was going on about a jam thermometer.”

    “Yeah. Fairly expensive, not easy to find these days, and liable to get busted in the drawer, but pretty good if you’re new to the job. I have to admit I just do it by eye and feel, and if all else fails, chuck a load of pectin in. But a sauce is different: it doesn’t have to set solid.”

    “So what preserves it?” she asked, wrinkling her brow over it.

    “Mainly the sugar.” Smiling, Jan told her a long, rambling story about the muck Pete had made one Christmas with vodka, sugar and a load of passionfruit, having got the idea off Polly Carrano, who’d got it off a friend who had a huge passionfruit vine…

    “Next Christmas. Maybe. If there’s a glut of the things,” she ended weakly to Tamsin’s shining eyes.

    “Yeah! Great! Hey, Jan, you won’t say anything to Pete yet about Mum and Andrew wanting to run this place, will you? ’Cos they’re not ready for decisions, yet.”

    No, on the whole she wouldn’t, because for one thing he had yet to get used to the thought of the big, bad, horned ram Andrew doing his pretty little fluffy ewe-lamb—it was that, yeah—and for another thing she had to let the idea of them taking the place over sink into her brain, too. It did seem ideal—after all, the man had had a good job with the Carrano Group for years, he couldn’t be broke even after the divorce, and Jayne had her money, so they could hardly go bust over the first few years while they were getting used to it… But then, what about Patty? And where—if anywhere—did Neil fit in? And Libby: what was Pete gonna say if…

    “Could you make us a cup of coffee, love?” she said limply. “It’s been a bit of a shock. We seem to have had a—an avalanche of ideas about the ecolodge’s fate these last couple of months, after more than twenty years of—of just me and Pete.”

    “Yeah, sure.” Tamsin got up, but looked at her narrowly. “Ya do feel okay, do ya, Jan?”

    Jan dredged up a smile. “Yes, of course. I just— I dunno, I sort of had this picture in my head of Jayne and Andrew up in Auckland in one of those nice but not over the top suburbs… On the North Shore, maybe. Katy Jackson’s got a friend who lives at Narrowneck, that’s lovely. Mind you, her apartment block is over the top, but…”

    “Yeah, but Andrew’s pretty much had it with working in the rat race.”

    “Mm.” Could one work in— Never mind. She let Tamsin make them mugs of instant without protest or pointing to the coffee-pot that was sitting on the stove, and let her give her two spoonfuls of sugar for the shock without protest and downed the resultant muck—no worse than Janet’s or indeed, anybody else’s—gratefully.

    Aah! That was better! Nothing like a shot of caffeine in brown dye to brighten up the little grey cells! “Not an avalanche, more like a lahar.”

    “Eh?”

    Jumping, Jan realised she’d voiced that one. “A giant mudslide of volcanic rubbish,” she said weakly.

    To her relief, Tamsin merely smiled tolerantly and said to the older generation: “Oh, right, I geddit. Of ideas about the ecolodge—yeah.”

    The ecolodge and some others—yeah. Where was ruddy Neil Kenny, today? After a refill and a slice of fruit-cake she worked up the guts to ask. Aw, gee, down the Whangaehu River with the Department of Conservation types.

    “The thing ish,” said Tamsin through a mouthful of fruit-cake, “I realise he has to have his space.”

    Uh—ri-right. Oh, right: do his own thing. More than most females did, about a prospective mate, that was for sure! Jan nodded encouragingly.

    “I don’t envisage he’ll ever want to give up freshwater ecology, he’s too into it for that. But Coral’s right in saying he won’t want to stray far from home: I’ve seen that syndrome before,” she said wisely. “So if he can get his name and his work known with the DOC it’ll be the ideal solution for us. He can be based here: it’ll suit both of us, if we decide we want a long-term relationship, and of course the main focus of his research after he’s finished his Ph.D. will probably be the effects of volcanic disturbance on the freshwater ecology of the region. But volcanology-related research is very much global-based, these days: half of those scientists who came to observe were from Hawaii, y’know?—and one of them had spent years at Mt St Helen’s—so I’d envisage that in the foreseeable future he might well be spending fairly long periods overseas. There are always fellowships available if you know where to look.”

    Jan nodded numbly.

    “Wan’ another slice? I’m gunnoo, it’s gorgeous!” Tamsin ate hungrily. “The ecolodge will give us a base, you see. I think Neil’s got the sort of temperament that needs that.”

    “Yeah. He always has come home to his dad’s place for the varsity holidays,” said Jan limply.

    “Exactly: he needs to feel physically grounded as well as psychologically and mentally.”

    Uh—yeah? She didn’t need to ask, because Tamsin was kindly explaining that a stable relationship would give him the psychological side, being able to continue with his passion for freshwater ecology (not using so emotive an expression, of course) would give him the mental bit, and having a permanent base at Taupo Shores Ecolodge would— Right. Goddit.

    Remembering herself at twenty-one, Jan Harper just looked limply at the girl.

    “Don’t you think?”

    Shit, was that a question? Hurriedly Jan agreed she did.

    Tamsin beamed at her. “I knew you’d see it! You’re so different from most of your generation!”

    Cripes, the accolade. Jan smiled weakly at her.

    “Hey, Jan, could you show me how you make these great fruit-cakes? Or, um, is it the wrong season or—or something?”

    It was for that one, it was the last of a big batch of Christmas cakes that she’d soused in— Never mind.

    “’Course it isn’t! A good fruit-cake never comes amiss! Doesn’t Jayne make them?”

    “Nah, Dad hated them, he only liked sponges. Hers are ace, mind you.”

    Good, she could make some next time she came down, then. Or in six months’ time—yeah.

    Jan still felt as if the place had been hit by a lahar—or rather, as if they were wading through the muck it had left behind, trying to get back to some semblance of normality—but she pulled herself together and told her which cookbook to get down. Strike while the iron was hot—quite.

Next chapter:

https://summerseason-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/08/more-volcanic-debris.html