Fancy's Fiddle

18

Fancy’s Fiddle

    Jayne and Andrew had had a really lovely day out, but as he wasn’t too sure of his ability to navigate them back to civilization with the aid of the map of National Park he’d managed to buy from a Taupo service station, hadn’t strayed too far from the beaten track, with the result that he hadn’t been able to kiss her. Well, he could have, but with tourists popping up from behind every other bush, hadn’t liked to risk embarrassing her. Unaware that Jayne wanted to be embarrassed in that way.

    She’d agreed to make it an all-day trip, so he’d booked them in for dinner at The Chateau. The food was very nice and as Jayne was in a perfectly respectable floral frock and all the other lady diners, were, too—nearly all middle-aged tourists, no different from the ecolodge guests—she didn’t stick out like a sore thumb. Andrew blenched at some of the prices on the wine list—not that he was mean, but he was quite sure that if the wines really were decent neither of them would appreciate them—but having ascertained with relief that she wasn’t really into wine, plumped thankfully for a New Zealand sparkling rosé priced at only ten times what you’d expect to pay at the bottle store. He couldn’t have said if it was good, but at least it wasn’t noticeably bad, and she seemed to enjoy it.

    “They didn’t seem all that busy, did they?” said Jayne as he headed the 4WD down the mountainside into a starry velvet night.

    “No, well, it is February: most people’ll be back at work.”

    “Mm. I suppose Tamsin’ll have to go up to Auckland and enrol, soon. She’s very sensible: she wants to finish her B.A., but she’s definitely going to do a hospitality course: she’s found a good one that she can do as an evening class.” Jayne told him all about Tamsin’s course. Andrew listened to the tone rather than the informational content, smiling—though unable to help the bitter reflection that he’d never heard ruddy Katrina sound a fraction as interested in anything their Bruce or Melanie wanted to do.

    Then she just stared out of the window into the dark.

    “All right?” he said eventually.

    “Mm,” replied Jayne in a dreamy voice. “Could you stop, Andrew, so as we can see the stars?”

    “Of course!” He drew right over, making sure they weren’t going to end up in the inevitable ditch, and switched his headlights off. He’d assumed she’d just sit there, but Jayne got out. Somewhat feebly Andrew followed her. Okay, she was genuine, she did want to look at the stars, it wasn’t an excuse for nooky. Well, blow!

    “Don’t stand in the road, people speed on these deserted country roads,” he said, taking her arm. “Look out, there’s sure to be a ditch.”

    “Heck, yes!” gasped Jayne, wobbling and grabbing at him. “New Zealand does seem to have a lot of ditches!”

    “It’s because it’s such a rainy country: stops the roads flooding,” said Andrew feebly. “You okay?”

    “Mm. Ooh, it’s lovely!” she breathed, tilting her head back and gazing up into the spangled sky.

    “Uh-huh.” Andrew wasn’t too sure he could stop himself jumping on her, if she stood so close with her head tilted back like that. He turned and looked back towards the summit.

    “Can you see the lights of the hotel?” asked Jayne uncertainly.

    “No, not looking for that… No—nothing. I was looking for a glow in the sky from the crater lake, but presumably it’s not at that stage. There was a report in the paper that said the level of the lake was rising and it might be about to burst its banks again. Back in the Fifties there was a shocking disaster: the eruption took out the Tangiwai railway bridge and the overnight express from Wellington to Auckland plunged off it. Christmas Eve, I think it was. Half the passengers died.”

    “Christmas seems to be the time for volcanic disasters,” said Jayne in a shaken voice. “There was the Boxing Day tsunami two years back, too.”

    “Mm. Cyclical movements of the tectonic plates down in this part of the world, I suppose.”

    “Yes,” said Jayne with a shudder. “Ugh, it’s all interconnected under our feet, it gives you the horrors!”

    It didn’t give him the horrors, but then, he was used to the idea of volcanoes. “Yeah, but it’s a long way down. And there’s an early warning system in place, if the lake is about to go up.”

    “Really? How will they warn people?”

    “Um, ’tisn’t just that, though there’ll be radio and TV messages—not that there are any settlements really close. There’s been regular scientific monitoring, and some sort of embankment system, or something, to divert the hot mud.”

    “Lava?” she said dubiously.

    “No, not if it’s like the last one. More like a torrent of mud and debris. Travelling with huge force: like a giant avalanche, only mud, not snow. Um, sorry,” he said as she shuddered again. “The last one was about twelve years back, but there hasn’t been a really bad eruption since that one in the Fifties.”

    “I see,” said Jayne in a small voice, looking round them at the peaceful night. “It seems unbelievable that—that all this peace can suddenly turn on you. It makes you think how impermanent and unsafe life is, really.”

    “Yes, it does,” said Andrew huskily, “and, um, I didn’t bring the subject up deliberately, but duh-do you think I could kiss you?”

    “Yes,” said Jayne simply, holding up her face.

    Andrew’s knees trembled but he grasped her arms and kissed her very gently. “Nice?” he said eventually, drawing a shaking breath.

    “Yes, very,” said Jayne faintly.

    “I— Um, I don’t know what you might have heard, but I did have a thing with Caroline Walker, and it was meaningless!” he said, more loudly than he’d meant to.

    “I see,” said Jayne faintly. “I suppose lots of people do silly things when they’re on holiday or—or kind of at a loose end.”

    “Yes,” said Andrew with tears in his eyes, “but this isn’t one of those, Jayne! I—I fell for you the moment I first set eyes on you, and—and I know you don’t really feel the same, but—”

    “Yes, I do!” she gulped.

    “What?” he croaked.

    “I—I do feel the same,” said Jayne dazedly. “Did you really think I didn’t?”

    “Yes,” said Andrew feebly. “You— I mean, you were nice to me, but then, you were nice to everyone—that awful bloke in the designer shirt at the Briggses’ barbecue, and—well, even Sir Jake.”

    “I didn’t kiss them, though,” said Jayne limply.

    “Didn’t you? Good,” said Andrew in a vague voice, pulling her firmly against him and kissing her again.

    Jayne just shut her eyes and kissed him back, lost in the moment, not even putting her arms round him, just standing there in the warm night, kissing him.

    Finally Andrew drew a trembling breath. “I think that proves it!” he gasped. “Blokes in designer shirts can get lost!”

    “What?” she said blankly.

   “‘Never mind!” He took her hand gently. “Come on: shall we get back in the car?”

    Obediently Jayne got back in the car and let him kiss her again. When he suddenly buried his face in her breasts and said in a muffled voice “These are very nice,” she grasped his back strongly and pulled him against her.

    Andrew produced a muffled: “Mm!” and groping for her hand, placed it on his fly.

    “Oh, Andrew!” gasped Jayne.

    “Mm; rub me,” said Andrew faintly. When she did he kissed her frantically, panting. “Uh—no; too good, stop!” he gasped at last, pushing the hand away.

    “Wasn’t that okay?” said Jayne dubiously.

    “It was too okay! Um, look,” he said, biting his lip. “I know you’re back sharing a room with your sister, and, um, well, Aidan wouldn’t disturb us but the house isn’t very private… Well, um, could we—do you think we could go to a motel, maybe?”

    Jayne took a deep breath. “Actually, I’ve still got the key of the Turpin house. The man made me pay for the whole month. Dad and Jan were so keen on us going back to the ecolodge— Well, anyway, we could go there, if you like.”

    “If!” said Andrew with a laugh. “Come on, then!”

    “Um, but the road’s terrible,” remembered Jayne lamely. “Only a dirt track, really.”

    “It’ll stretch the four-wheel-drive’s legs nicely, then!”

    “Oh, yes. Good.”

    Good was what it was, all right! He drove them carefully back to Taupo, resisting the temptation to fondle her leg, and keeping both hands firmly on the wheel.

    “Um, should we—should we go to the chemist’s?” said Jayne in a trembling voice as they drove through the township.

    “No, that’s okay,” replied Andrew calmly. “I've got some condoms. Not that I was taking you for granted, but—”

    “No, it’s only sensible,” said Jayne in considerable relief.

    This time he did take a hand off the wheel for a moment, and patted her knee gently. “Yes,” he agreed gratefully.

    Down at the far end of their road the surface became a dirt track, all right. “Hang on!” he gasped, trying to steer down what was possibly the main set of ruts.

    “This is it!” gasped Jayne at last.

    It all looked the same to him: scruffy second growth. “Sure?”

    “Yes, that stick’s marking the top of the path.”

    Okay, if she said so! He drew up by the stick. The so-called path was just another dirt track, narrower. “Um, I could try taking her down the path.”

    “Dad’s taken his four-wheel-drive down it,” conceded Jayne dubiously.

    “Yes, but how many years ago?”

    “Just recently, silly!” she said with a laugh.

    Andrew smiled: it was incredibly nice being called silly in that companionable way by Jayne. “On your head be it. And hang on, or it will be on your head!” He bumped slowly onto the path.

    “Actually that wasn’t any worse than the so-called road,” he admitted, pulling up by the house.

    “No; Dad pulled out the little Christmas trees,” explained Jayne seriously.

    Excited and nervous though he was, Andrew found he was laughing as he got out of the car.

    “Heck,” he said as, with due precautions as to the misshapen concrete slab that served as a back step, Jayne opened the back door and switched the light on.

    “Yes: the bits that they managed to finish are very up-market.”

    “Ugh, it’s as bad as the kitchen in that place me and Aidan are in! –Um, sorry; you don’t like it, do you?”

    “No, of course not! My kitchen’s really nice. It’s separate from the family-room, you see, and Bill said I could choose the style, so long as it wouldn’t show us up in front of the neighbours,” said Jayne blithely, unaware of her audience’s stunned reaction to this insight into her marriage, “so I chose a nice sunny yellow for the cupboard doors, and a paler yellow for the walls, and a bright white trim. I really love yellow in a kitchen! Bill wouldn’t let me have the Spanish tile pattern vinyl I wanted for the floor: he said it’d look as if he was too mean to have it redone since the Seventies, so he chose a matte sandstone effect. It looks good, actually.”

    “I see,” said Andrew faintly. “What about the family-room?”

    “It was horrid, I never sat in there, only now Tamsin’s re-done the old lounge-room as a lovely garden room for me: I use it all the time!” Smiling, Jayne told him about the black and white colour scheme, Peter the Dalmatian, and the pot plants.

    “It sounds lovely, Jayne,” he said kindly.

    “Yes. I’ll miss it, and my garden, but Dad’s really keen for me to settle over here, and if Tamsin decides to stay on there’ll be nothing to keep me in Brisbane, really. Well, Mum’s there but she’s absorbed with her second husband and their house.”

    “What about her granddaughter?” said Andrew limply His own mother had nine grandchildren, and saw them all regularly. And would in fact have seen a lot more of Melanie and Bruce when they were little, if Katrina had let her.

    “She’s never really been interested in Tamsin, and she’s too critical, she’s alienated her. She doesn’t understand that young people feel their opinions and choices ought to be respected.”

    Ugh, what a very vivid picture that conjured up! He could see Katrina taking exactly the same tack in the years to come!

    Jayne looked at his face and smiled uncertainly. “Um, would you like a coffee or something?”

    “Uh—no, not really,” said Andrew, coming to. “You have one if you like.”

    “No, I don’t want one. –Oh, dear! I’ve just remembered, the bed’s stripped!”

    Andrew smiled a little at this mundane note—though it was a bit of a relief to realise she did accept that bed was the next step! “Well, let’s make it,” he said mildly.

    “Righto,” agreed Jayne gratefully, leading the way.

    The bedroom was pretty appalling, he registered dimly: Katrina at one point had gone in for bunches of stuff over the windows, too, and the fancy patchwork quilt was definitely a cousin of that hand-dyed thing he’d ruined in the wash. He hadn’t exactly envisaged that their first act together, so to speak, would be domestic bed-making, but, though his excitement hadn’t abated, there was something strangely reassuring and comforting, really, to be bed-making with Jayne.

    “There!” she said pleasedly, patting the last plumped up pillow in its fresh pillowcase into place.

    “Yeah,” said Andrew on a weak note. “Done.”

    Jayne looked at him expectantly, but he was just standing there, rather flushed, looking hopeful. Suddenly she realised he felt even shyer than she did. She wasn’t quite up to walking over to him and putting her arms round him, though she’d have liked to; instead she sat down on the bed and patted the place beside her. “Come on.”

    More flushed than ever, Andrew came on.

    Comparisons might have been invidious but, he realised dimly, quite some time later, she was a lot more passive, not to say compliant, than Caroline, about a million times keener than Katrina and, in fact, the perfect woman! She hadn’t given him any orders or corrected his technique like Caroline, or got on top when he hadn’t been expecting it, also like Caroline—not that it had turned out bad, but it was disconcerting to be taken over like that—and she had wanted his tongue, unlike Katrina, and had in fact shrieked very loudly once he’d got it up there: “OH! Andrew! I love it! Oh, Andrew; oh, Andrew!” Instead of snapping: “Don’t do that!” He’d got so excited that he’d known he wouldn’t be able to hold back once he was actually inside her but as a matter of fact that hadn’t mattered either, because the minute he’d entered her she’d let out a shriek, put her legs right up, and come like fury on him. Whereupon Andrew let go and came like fury into her. Which was a very nice change from being shouted at to slow down—Caroline—or being told to get it over with—Katrina. A very nice change. Pretty close to Paradise, in fact!

    “Pa’dise,” he mumbled, hugging her into his side.

    “Mm,” agreed Jayne in a muffled voice. “Lu’ly.”

    See? The perfect woman!

    “They’re at it again,” noted Wal Briggs out on the lake, waggling his line a bit.

    This could have meant almost anything, but Pete took it to mean that Livia and Jan had their heads together again, so he just grunted.

    Wal reeled his line in and inspected the hook morosely. “Bugger.” He baited it again and chucked it back in, though without hope. “Livia’ll be telling her the latest about Aidan.”

    “If ya mean he’s dumped Libby, we know, and three cheers!” retorted Pete with some spirit.

    “Not that. Pam Easterbrook’s told him that son of hers is his, at last.”

    “Eh?”

    “Uh—aw, no: think I only told Jake about that, you’d pushed off.” He told him the story, ending: “Like I say, she’s told the pair of them the lot. Aidan seems to’ve taken it quite well. Apparently didn’t freeze her to death, which I gotta admit my money woulda been on. They all seem to be seeing quite a bit of each other.”

    “Right,” concluded Pete without much interest. “Still in the McLintock house, is ’e?”

    “Um, yeah. Oh: see whatcha mean! Nah, they haven’t moved in together. Far too early for anything like that.”

    “That didn’t stop ’im with Libby,” he noted sourly.

    “No, well, possibly it’s different with a dame you’ve just found out ya had a kid with, twenty-six years back!”

    “That sort of thing does give a bloke pause, yeah,” he said drily.

    Wal gulped. “Shit, Pete, I’m sorry! Didn’t mean you and your Patty, at all!”

    “No, all right, ya didn’t,” said Pete with a sigh. “Thing is, she keeps saying she doesn’t wanna muscle in on the business and it oughta come to Jayne and Libby and young Tamsin, and she’s gotta give them three months’ notice at this bloody job of hers, and that sorta crap. –American crap,” he elaborated sourly.

    Wal hadn’t seen that much of Patty: he looked at him dubiously. “Ri-ight… Wouldn’t’ve said she seems all that Americanised, really, Pete.”

    “No, but she’s gotta be, eh? I mean, she grew up there, and bloody Namrita’s completely reverted!”

    “Maybe, but it sounds to me more like Patty genuinely doesn’t want to grab anything off the other girls.”

    “In that case how the fuck do I persuade her she’s got as much of a right as any of ’em?” he said loudly and crossly.

    Wal stopped pretending to fish and reeled in. “It’ll take a bit of time, Pete. Don’t think talking’ll pay much toll. Just keep on including her in, whenever ya do stuff.”

    “Yeah. Well, we are pretty much booked up till the end of March—not the bunkhouse, of course, but the main rooms. There’s enough to do. She likes helping Jan in the kitchen.”

    “Good! Bit the same type as Jayne, eh?” he encouraged him. “Livia was saying she’s a real asset in the kitchen!”

    “Huh!” retorted Pete bitterly.

    Wal gaped at him. “Isn’t she?”

    “She sure isn’t one in our kitchen, mate, because she’s moved back to the flaming Turpin dump! –Yes!” he said angrily as Wal gaped at him. “With that bloody Andrew type! I’d like to wring ’is bloody neck!”

    That’d be what Livia was getting an earful of as of this min’, then. “I geddit,” said Wal feebly. “Um, Andrew’s a pretty decent type, Pete.”

    “Look, a couple of weeks back he was doing that flaming female with the flashing earrings that was staying with them!”

    “She threw herself at him, old mate. And, uh, Livia did say that she thinks he’s the type that needs more encouragement than what a nice woman like Jayne ’ud probably give him. What I mean is, did she ring him up after he came back from Aidan’s father’s funeral?”

    “Dunno,” he said sourly. “Probably not. So what?”

    “So the Caroline female was on the spot, more than ready, willing and able, and before you condemn the poor bastard for being human, just put yourself in his shoes. Or put it another way, remember that summer you were living on the boat? Mid-Sixties, musta been, just after Alison pushed off to Queensland. Jake had already busted up with that mad bitch ’e was married to. We met those three nice little dames in that milk-bar just off the main drag, ’member? The dump that calls itself Graceland these days!” he said impatiently as Pete just shrugged.

    “Aw. Yeah. Turned it into a coffee bar. What about it?”

    “Jake got off with the older blonde that was a bit more forthcoming and I took on the brunette—Margie, that’s right: her hubby was an engineer over at Wairakei at the power station, on shift work. Which left that shy little blonde bit for you. She wasn’t married,” he said drily. “And in case you’ve forgotten, all the girls were on the Pill by that time. Two points that apparently weren’t enough encouragement, ’cos when that red-headed bitch Sue Whatserface walked in in a miniskirt and six-inch heels you let ’er get her hooks into you, never mind the fact she was complete with an eight-year-old son, father unknown!”

    “Harris,” said Pete crossly, “and the father wasn’t unknown, the whole of Taupo knew it was that Aussie bloke that was staying at the motel she was working at that summer! That nice little blonde bit was a dead ringer for Alison, with marriage in ’er eye, ya drongo!”

    “If you’d bothered to get to know her a bit better, Pete, you’d have found out she wasn’t like Alison at all. Really sweet,” said Wal with a reminiscent smile.

    “Sounds like it was just as well for you that I didn’t!”

    “In the end, yeah. Well, Margie wasn’t free all the time. I’m just trying to say she was more Jayne’s type. Sort that waits for the bloke to make the first move. –Clara!” he said, clicking his fingers. “That was it! Not a name that usually crops up in that generation. You could’ve had her instead of doing that flaming female Sue.”

    Pete opened his mouth angrily. Then it dawned that Wal was quoting his own words back at him. He closed his mouth again, glaring.

    “See? Any bloke can be weak enough to let a tart like—”

    “YES! All right!” he shouted. “It doesn’t mean he’s right for Jayne!”

    “This’ll give ’em the chance to find out if he is,” said Wal placidly. “Ya might as well give up, they’re not biting.”

    “What? Aw.” Glumly Pete reeled in. There was nothing on his hook. “Ya do realise flaming Jake’s got a job in London lined up for him?” he said sourly.

    “Uh—oh.” Wal took a deep breath. “You’ve known Jake for a good fifty years, Pete. If ya don’t fancy your eldest daughter swanning off to the other side of the world, ask him not to offer him the job. Or contrariwise, dare say he’d be quite willing to get rid of him for you by sending him off tomorrow.”

    “And then she takes up with someone worse!”

    Trying not to sigh, Wal replied: “Yeah, well, like I say, Andrew’s a decent type. Give him a chance.”

    Scowling, Pete started the outboard.

    “Where are we going?” said Wal on a weak note as he headed for, apparently, Turangi.

    “Pick up a few fish,” he grunted.

    “They’re not likely to be biting—”

    “Nah!” he retorted scornfully.

    “Would these be some you prepared earlier, old mate?” asked Wal blandly.

    As he’d expected, Pete didn’t get the reference. “Might of. So what? Saw one of them Fisheries types: had a flaming four-wheel-drive: heard ’im coming miles away, then ’e launches his dinghy what ’e might of imagined was quietly, scaring all the fish for a radius of two miles, just incidentally, never mind a few illegal fishermen. So I sat out in the sun with me coarse tackle and the tit comes up and tells me the spot’s too hot, the fish won’t bite with the sun full on the water, so I said me grandson wanted me to take ’im fishing next weekend only I’ve never done much of it and where’s a good spot?”

    Wal choked. “And he swallowed it?”

    “Why not? Only a young bloke, in ’is twenties. Serve ’em right for sending ’im out. So I tried this real likely-looking spot ’e pointed out, but he was still hanging round, checking the mouths of the little streams, so I come home without the fish. They’ll be all right: in that nice big cage I converted from a possum trap, plenny of water flowing through it.”

    “When was this?” asked Wal on a resigned note.

    “Eh? Earlier today. Why?”

    Why? Because he might very well still be hanging round! However, as Wal was aware Pete had got out poaching because he was pissed off over Jayne taking up with Andrew Barker, he said nothing, and let him take him over to where half a dozen well-grown trout were paddling around placidly in a large metal cage in the lee of an overhanging bank. Before you could say “You’re nicked!” they were in the bottom compartment of Pete’s converted chillybin and the false bottom and the remaining frosties were on top of them.

    “Coming home for lunch?” asked Pete airily. “Thought we might have fish, for a change.”

    “Yeah, all right, Pete, you can drop the Good Keen Man impersonation, I get the point,” said Wal heavily. “But just let me reiterate this.”

    “Reiterate all ya like, only just mind ya do it over the side,” he replied airily.

    “Will ya DROP IT?” shouted Wal.

    “Shut up, ya drongo, if ’e is still round these here parts he’ll hear ya,” replied Pete on a weak note.

    “Andrew Barker is okay. If he does fancy Jayne on a permanent basis you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

    “Finished?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Good.” Pete headed the dinghy for the ecolodge, looking sour. It didn’t actually help, in Wal’s opinion, that they had to pass the Turpin house and gee, there were Jayne and Andrew sitting outside it. They waved. Feebly he waved back, but bloody Pete pretended he hadn’t seen them. Shit.

    “I’d say it was okay,” conceded Jan. “Judging by the continual smirk on both their faces.”

    “I’m so glad, Jan, dear!” cried Livia. “I always thought Jayne and Andrew would be right for each other!”

    Had she? Jan didn’t argue the point. “Uh-huh. Just see if there’s a cucumber in the vege crisper, would ya, Livia?”

    Obediently Livia found the cucumber for her. “What about Libby?” she asked as Jan rinsed it, dried it, and commenced slicing it finely.

    “Well, you just saw her, Livia. Gone down the Rewarewa Trail with Patty, a picnic and four sets of wrinklies.”

    The “wrinklies” were around their own ages. Livia swallowed. “Er, yes. Not that, dear. How is she?”

    “After being dumped by Aidan Vine, ya mean? As a matter of fact she’s not as down as I thought she would be. I wouldn’t say she was a box of birds, but on the other hand I wouldn’t say she was in the dumps, either.”

    Livia brightened. “That’s a relief!”

    “Yeah. Uh—blow: yesterday’s yoghurt’ll still be in the dairy. Well, I certainly didn’t bring it in, and Libby’s avoiding the dairy now that Bob’s looking after the goats, and Pete and Patty spent most of yesterday at Miser Ron Reilly’s junk yard—don’t ask why,” she warned—“and Jayne never made it over to this side at all—”

    “Will it be all right, dear?”

    “Eh?” said Jan feebly, stopped in her flow. “Yeah, ’course it will, yoghurt’s nature’s way of preserving milk. I was gonna say, and since Janet usually avoids Bob, she won’t have gone near the dairy. Though don’t ask me why she avoids him.”

    Livia gave a smothered giggle. “My dear: it’s obvious: he’s a very attractive man!”

    “But— No, you’re right,” conceded Jan with a feeble grin.

    “But why didn’t Bob bring it in this morning? Or is he avoiding Janet?”

    “Well, yeah, but he knows she usually has Sunday off.”

    “He’s not avoiding Libby, is he?”

    Jan made a wry face. “Well, like I say, she’s avoiding him, and he’s not that thick: it’s on the cards he’s noticed. He came to that meeting Coral got up, and she never even looked at him once, let alone addressed a word to him. –Come on, let’s bring it in.”

    Livia pattered in her wake as she strode off to the back door. “But darling,” she hissed, “does he know she’s broken up with Aidan?”

    “Put it like this: Big-Mouth Pete said to him, in front of me and Patty and Neil, I might add: ‘That ponce Vine’s dumped Libby, didja know?’ and the poor man turned scarlet and growled: ‘Ta for that, Pete, I’ll mark it in me diary,’ and took off for the goats’ paddock. Bloody Pete wasn’t abashed but Patty was, and poor young Neil went about the colour of a ripe tomato. Talking of which, want some?”

    “That’d be lovely, if you can spare them, Jan, dear, but aren’t you going to make your lovely pasta sauce?”

    “Yeah, but there’s a huge oversupply this year. You’d be doing me a favour.”

    Livia accepted gratefully and Jan added: “I was planning to start the sauce today. Don’t fancy cutting up five thousand tomatoes this arvo, do ya, Livia?”

    “Of course, darling! I’d be glad to help!”

    Jan sagged. “Ta. This superfluity of female descendants Pete’s got these days doesn’t seem to have resulted in more getting done in the kitchen, funnily enough.” She unlocked the dairy, waited while Livia cooed over the “pails” of yoghurt, put the lids firmly on the so-called pails and lifted a couple of pairs by their convenient long loops of handles.

    Eagerly Livia took one in each hand. “What darling little pails, Jan! Where did you get them?”

    “Steve Garber’s. Down the back.”

    “Taupo Hardware & Electrical? Does he stock pots and pans, though?”

    “Down the back with the camping gear, Livia,” said Jan clearly. It still hadn’t sunk in. “These are not pails. These here are billies. Gen-yew-wine EnZed billies.”

    Livia gasped. “Great heavens! ‘Billy tea!’ Is that what they are?”

    “Yeah. Almost entirely ousted by yer convenient thermos, but good ole Steve still stocks them. They’re much easier to scald than plastic bowls, which is why I use them. And they make a really convenient amount of yoghurt for something like a cucumber salad or a curry, rather than having to break up a big bowlful and have it go all runny.” –She’d clearly lost her, but Livia very kindly made the appropriate trilling and admiring noises anyway.

    Aw, gee, when they got back to the kitchen the macho men were in there with silly grins on their faces and a load of poached trout.

    “PETE!” shouted Jan, turning purple. “You’re the blimmin’ end!”

    “Yeah,” agreed Wal with a silly grin. “I did try telling him getting nicked for poaching isn’t gonna help, either with Jayne or with Patty. –He does know about Jayne and Andrew, love,” he said to his helpmeet’s astonished face, “but he doesn’t approve, geddit? I have tried to explain Andrew’s a very decent type.”

    “Yes, of course he is! But—but what’s Patty done? She’s a lovely girl!”

    “Nothing. That’s the point. He can’t think of a way to persuade her that she won’t be a burden if she stays on here permanent.”

    “But surely, Pete, dear, if you, um, follow Coral’s plan,” said Livia, “the ecolodge will be able to support her? With more cabins?”

    Scowling, Pete replied loudly: “I don’t wanna enlarge the bloody place, if ya must know!”

    Wal looked at Jan’s face. Pretty obviously this wasn’t news to her. “Pete,” he said heavily, “if you want the girls in it with you, the place’ll have to be big enough to support them.”

    “No! ’Cos if me and Jan retire, it could support them now!”

    “Y— Um, you’ve got government super, and Jan’ll be eligible for it in a few years, but, uh, that’s not much to live on,” said Wal weakly.

    “We don’t want much,” he replied grimly.

    “Um, I suppose you could go on growing your own veges… But if you hand the ecolodge over to the girls, where would you live, Pete?” he said weakly.

    Pete looked defiant. “Build a cabin a bit further over, why not? Down near where the Rewarewa Trail comes out, maybe, ’s’nice down there.”

    “Yeah, except that you got two miles of mud to tramp through to get there in winter!”

    “’Bout quarter of a mile, if ya don’t go along the trail, but we could dump a load of gravel on it.”

    Wal didn’t argue the point. “Okay, but who manages the ecolodge if you and Jan have retired?”

    “Libby and Patty, of course. Tamsin can do her course, then she can join in. Jayne doesn’t need to work, but she could help out in the kitchen, if so be as ruddy Andrew Barker’d ever let her!”

    “Uh—well, it’s a bloody sight simpler than Coral’s plan,” he allowed weakly.

    “Too right!” replied Pete grimly.

    Wal looked uneasily at Jan but she was looking completely neutral—ouch! “Uh—look, Pete, I gotta say this,” he said uncomfortably. “Libby and Patty are two vigorous women, young enough to tackle most of it, but they’re not gonna be capable of the sort of hard yacker you’ve done round the place over the years. I don’t mean the initial construction, but plumbing jobs, mending the roof, that sort of thing, as well as the vege garden. Well, Christ, to name no other, the ecolodge has got that big front sweep and a long gravelled drive: who’s gonna shovel the next load of gravel? This sort of place needs a bloke involved full-time.”

    “Have you finished pouring cold water?”

    “Uh—pretty much, yeah.”

    “Then give us a hand to clean these fish.”

    Wal looked limply at Jan. “Some of us thought he was keen on Coral’s plan.”

    “He’s gone off it. And Mr and Mrs Morton and her brother, Mr Davidson, were the last straw. No worse than any other lot of wrinklies we’ve had over the y—”

    “The bastard put his hand on Libby’s bum!” shouted Pete furiously.

    “It was two nights back,” said Jan tiredly to the Briggses. “The main rooms were all occupied by the usual sort and someone was celebrating something, forget what, and none of them were the abstemious type that sticks to the small glass of sherry before dinner, so they all had a few and then a few more, and as a matter of fact so did we, since they were paying. And so did Libby. I’m not saying she gave Davidson the eye, nothing like it, but she was giggling at his feeble jokes, and when he politely ushered her out he—”

    “Put his hand on her BUM!” shouted Pete. “Don’t wrap it up in clean linen, Jan!”

    “I wasn’t gonna. There was nothing nasty about it, it was only a few steps less harmless than taking her arm—”

    “It WASN’T!”

    “All right, to a doting dad it wasn’t,” said Jan tiredly. “He’d gone pretty lukewarm about Coral’s master plan anyway, as it dawned that twice as many of them’d double the aggro, but this really brought it home to him.” She shrugged. “Apparently. –Pete, we’ve got three outside bookings for lunch, and for all we know, any of them could be a retired policeman!”

    “Balls. Won’t recognise trout when they see it, anyway.”

    “Give up, Jan,” said Wal kindly. “Let’s have ours in here. And tell ya what: make it a buffet for the rest of ’em, eh? Just shove the stuff on the big table and tell them to help themselves.”

    “Oh, all right; why not? They can fight over the chicken stew and the filo roll. And there’s a big bowl of hummous—I’ll just put it out with a spoon. Likewise the cucumber salad.”

    “And a tomato salad, Jan!” trilled Livia.

    “But the chicken’s got tomatoes— Oh, why not? They’re in—”

    “The spare fridge in the back passage, dear?” she chirped.

    “Uh—no. The garage. This is Planet Huge Tomato Surplus, Livia. –Pete! Give Wal the garage keys!”

    “We’ll bring in the ones for the sauce, too,” decided Livia.

    “Y—um, some,” said Jan feebly as they went out.

    “It’ll dawn,” grunted Pete.

    “Yeah,” said Jan with a sigh. She went over to his side and looked at the trout he was cleaning. “They are beautiful fish, Pete, but please don’t do it again. Not with the girls staying.”

    “Eh? They won’t care!” he scoffed.

    “Maybe not, but I think they’d all be very upset if you got nicked. Well, Tamsin might be okay, though her generation takes anything to do with wildlife very seriously. But Jayne’s had enough upsets, hasn’t she? And neither Libby nor Patty strikes me as the sort that can take that sort of stress in their stride.”

    “Aw. Stress,” he said glumly, drooping over the fish. “I getcha. Okay, I won’t.”

    Jan put an arm round his wiry shoulders and leaned on him rather heavily. “I don’t wanna see you nicked, either, you clot.”

    “Don’tcha? Good. Um, you don’t really wanna double the size of the ecolodge, do ya, love?” he said hopefully.

    Jan sighed. “No, to tell you the truth, sensible though it seems, and viable, horrible word, though Coral’s plan undoubtedly is.”

    “Then we won’t. It is still ours, for Chrissake! And the crafts shop stuff can go ahead regardless, can’t it?”

    Er—that was actually a question: he hadn’t grasped the financial side of it at all! “Yes, that’s quite separate: if they do what Coral says they’ll start turning over a decent profit in about three years, sure enough.”

    “Good. Let’s just let the girls take the ecolodge over as is, eh? You and me can camp out in the loft again, while we put up a bit of a cabin.”

    “It can be a cabin with a ruddy great pot-bellied stove this time, Pete.”

    “Yeah, ’course!”

    “Um, shit, the girls’ll think we’re mad, chopping and changing like this,” said Jan feebly.

    “Pooh, we hadn’t decided on anything in the first place!”

    “No, but it’s all started to feel a bit like some sort of crazy square dance. Though that might be due to the amount of changing partners that’s going on, on the emotional scene.”

    “Eh? Look, you agreed that Vine was all wrong for Libby!”

    “Mm, but nevertheless. –Well, anyway, let’s be sure before we say anything to the girls, okay?”

    “Yeah. Still have to work out how Patty can swing it,” he said, frowning over it.

    Well, exactly. Not to mention, as Wal had so rightly pointed out, how the girls’d manage without a full-time bloke. Well, Pete could do some of the jobs for a bit, but even with Sean’s help he’d been struggling to finish regravelling the ruddy drive earlier this summer.

    “Mm. Listen, her stepfather sounds like a reasonable man. Why not write to him—after you’ve talked to her, of course—but why not write to him and see if he can persuade her bloody mother to let her have her money? Um, I could help decide what to say, if you like, but you’re her father, it’d be better coming from you.”

    “It won’t work: Namrita’s a pig-headed bitch and always was; but I’ll give it a go.”

    “Good.” Jan still felt as if they were all involved in some sort of daft square dance—actually that bloody G&S thing kept going through her head: “Hop and skip to fancy’s fiddle, Hands across and down the middle—” but she had to admit she felt a lot better now that the notion of a monster ecolodge, Coral Kenny-style, had been shelved. And if, several years down the track, the girls did want to expand, well, that’d be up to them, wouldn’t it? She and Pete would be well out of it by that time.

    “They’ll need Patty anyway: Libby can’t cook,” she said firmly.

    He brightened. “Too right! I’ll tell ’er that!”

    “Yeah, do that,” replied Jan, grinning. She picked up the two packets of pitta bread she’d been intending to pan-grill lightly, standing over them for every second, for the clients’ lunch, said cheerfully to them: “Ta-ta, you’ve had your chips, mates, it’s Sunday buffets from now on!” and bunged them in the freezer.

    Over at the sink bench Pete sagged slightly over his illicit trout. It didn’t seem to of occurred to anyone but him, Pete M. (Mug) McLeod, that one of the big problems in this here family business settlement crap of Coral’s was getting Jan to stop doing far too much in the kitchen, followed by getting her to give up the reins of the kitchen. Conceding the buggers could have a regular buffet on Sundays was a huge step in the right direction. True, it had been suggested before, but this time it was gonna stick. And he was the bloke that was gonna see it did!

    Pam handed her son the mobile phone, looking airy. “It’s for you.”

    “Nobody knows I’m here,” replied David dazedly.

    “Logically, they only have to know my number, not where we are physically, but as a matter of fact it’s Livia.”

    Resignedly David took the phone and said: “Hullo, Livia.”

    Instead of the expected horrible cooing noises in reply he got a masculine clearing of the throat and then a cautious male voice said: “’Tisn’t her, actually. I mean, ya can speak to her if ya like, only it’s me wanted to speak to ya.” –In the background considerable cooing and squeaking was going on, so she must be there, all right. Was this the husband? He’d only met him a couple of times but he didn’t think it sounded like him.

    “Um, yes?”

    “Well, Livia reckons you’re a bit of a whizz in the kitchen—like yer dad, eh?” –In the background Livia gave a little shriek.

    “I can cook a bit, yes,” said David feebly, wondering who the Hell it was.

    “Right. And you’re at the Tech Institute, that right?”

    It had been renamed and now called itself a university, but David didn’t bother to make the point: many older people still used the old name. “Mm.”

    “Good, well, I was wondering if you’d fancy a bit of a holiday job cooking up about fifteen cartons of tomatoes for us. Sauce, she usually makes. Not like Wattie’s, I don’t mean; for spaghetti and stuff.”

    “Pasta sauce, Pete, dear!” trilled Livia in the background.

    Pete? Pete Who? “Uh, look, I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I teach at the Tech, I’m not a student; I’m not looking for a holiday job, thanks.”

    “Bugger, thought I’d cracked it, there. Thought we could pay you in tomatoes, see. Well, wouldja like the bloody things anyway? Thing is, Jan’ll half kill herself trying to turn ’em into sauce if someone doesn’t take ’em off our hands.”

    “Um, you did say fifteen cartons, did you?

    “Yeah, be about ten pound per carton, give or take.”

    “I see. Look, I’m sorry, who are you?” said David on a desperate note.

    “Livia Briggs,” said his mother sepulchrally from her position supine on a sunlounger with a sunhat over her face.

    “No, it’s a man!” he hissed, putting his hand over the phone.

    “She’s changed her sex, then,” said Pam from under the hat.

    David glared at her. “Um, sorry, what?” he said feebly to the phone.

    “Pete McLeod, ya don’t know me: I run Taupo Shores Ecolodge. Wal and Livia are friends of ours, ya see, and when I said we gotta get rid of these ruddy tomatoes or Jan’s gonna martyr herself, she thought of you and your dad.”

    “Pete, darling!” squealed Livia in the background.

    “Eh? Aw. Sorry. Um, well, seeing a bit of him, aren’tcha?” he said to David.

    “Yes. –I see, you need some help with the catering side of your business, is that it?”

    “Talks like a book: thought you said ’e wasn’t as poncy as ’is dad?” said Pete McLeod’s voice lugubriously—not to David.

    “You’re being silly, Pete, darling, he’s a perfectly nice boy!”

    “He can’t be a boy, Livia, ’cos he teaches at the flaming Tech, ya had it wrong. –Are ya there?”

    Jumping slightly, David acknowledged: “Yes, I’m here. What exactly is the problem, Mr McLeod?”

    “Thought I said? Too many tomatoes. See, she usually makes sauce—all right, Livia, pasta sauce!—only this year we got too many tomatoes.”

    “I see. Well, you could freeze some: just blanch them lightly and pack them tightly into containers, they’ll freeze well enough to be used in sauces or stews.”

    “Hang on. –Now he’s talking cookery stuff, I toleja this was a barmy idea!” he said crossly, not to David.

    “I’ll speak to him, Pete, dear!” she trilled. “David, dear? It’s Livia!” she said brightly.

    Who else? “Yes, hullo, Livia,” he said resignedly.

    From under the hat his mother said sepulchrally: “Changed back, has she?”

    “Ssh! –Sorry, Livia, Mum’s being flippant. Your friends have got a glut of tomatoes, that it?”

    “Not too many if someone could give them a little help, David, dear,” she said in soulful tones—who she thought she was kidding, God knew—“but far too many for Jan to deal with alone. Good heavens, the number of hot jars she has to do for just one cartonload is tremendous, not to mention the onions and—and lovely herbs, and things!”

    Livia Briggs hadn’t struck David Easterbrook as a domesticated woman, admittedly, but he blinked, rather. “Uh, yeah. Hasn’t she got any kitchen-hands?”

    “One woman, but she doesn’t come in on Sundays, and it’s no use saying she could do it for her, because she can’t cook. And it’s very technical, isn’t it? One can chop and so forth, but really, it needs an expert to be in charge. Jan was saying the big jars all have to be sterile, one had no idea; it’s more like science than cooking, really!”

    “Yes, preserving is,” said David heavily. “Look, I don’t want to be rude, but if they don’t want to chuck the tomatoes out, can’t they pay someone to give them a hand?”

    “Darling, that is precisely the problem,” said Livia, lowering her voice.

    “Oh. Um, hang on, will you?” He put his hand tightly over the phone and said to his mother: “Mum, take that hat off your face and pay attention. Do you know some mates of Livia’s who run an ecolodge?”

    “Uh—yeah,” said Pam groggily, raising the hat and blinking at him. “I’ve met them, can’t say I know them. I’ve forgotten their surnames. Pete Something and Jan Something. He’d be seventyish, I think, and I suppose she’d be in her early sixties.”

    “Uh-huh. And how affluent are they?”

    “They’re not. According to Livia, just managing. They do quite well at this time of year but during the winter they don’t get much custom at all. She had them and all their guests over for a barbecue a while back: rallying round, I think. Why?”

    “Because she appears to want me to bottle their tomatoes for them.”

    “Eh?”

    David eyed her drily but said into the phone: “Sorry, Livia. Mum reckons they’re only just managing to keep going, that it?”

    “That’s it precisely, darling!” she trilled in patent relief. “So I thought, if you might be at a loose end—?”

    He wasn’t at a loose end: his term had started and he already had marking: he was only coming down in the weekends in order to see something of his mother and his newly-acquired father. Though it was true he had no classes on Mondays: he could make it a long weekend, at a pinch. “I could probably manage a bit of bottling or freezing, yeah. I’ll come over and grab some cartons, okay? Where is the ecolodge?”

    Livia burst into breathless explanations but Pete’s voice said “Gimme that!” and he came back on the line, made sure David had a map, gave him the address and assured him that he could have as many of the tomatoes as he fancied.

    “Well?” said Pam with a yawn as he rang off.

    “I’m going to go over there, grab umpteen cartons of tomatoes, bring them back and bottle or freeze them, apparently.”

    “Don’t think this dump’ll have anything like preserving jars,” she warned, yawning.

    “Freeze them, then. Why didn’t you warn me that Livia Briggs is as mad as a hatter?”

    “Self-evident,” said Pam, yawning.

    “Yeah. Just tell me one thing,” said David heavily.

    “Mm?”

    “If this Pete and Jan are such mates of Livia’s on the one hand, and Aidan’s a mate on the other, why didn’t she ask him to cook up a hundred kilos of tomatoes for them?”

    Pam was rather red. “Um, well, he was seeing a bit of one of Pete’s daughters.”

    “When?” asked David feebly, staring at her.

    “Well, up until quite recently. Well, um, they were still together when I met them at Livia's barbecue, and then when I, um, spoke to him he told me that he’d broken up with her.”

    “That makes it clear enough.”

    “Yes. He—he was quite up-front about it,” said Pam miserably. “He likes her but they haven’t got enough in common. And I suppose he is the sort of man who’s used to having a woman in his life.”

    “Mum, you don’t have to justify him to me! I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t gonna go over there and put my foot in it. Well, actually, I was thinking he might like to help with the tomatoes and maybe we could take his boat over, if he’s free.”

    “I wouldn’t,” said Pam faintly.

    “No,” agreed David drily, going.

    The place was a lot smaller and more down-home looking than he’d imagined something that called itself an ecolodge might be. And older: it looked something like thirty years old. It was a longish, one-storeyed structure of creosoted wood, the trim of the verandah and the row of French windows opening onto it painted a null, matte fawn. Its corrugated iron roof was painted a soft, matte green. It was all in quite good condition, but…

    It didn’t say “No Parking” or anything so, rather dubiously, he drew up before the long verandah and got out on the front sweep. Presumably if they didn’t want him lugging cartons of tomatoes out the front they could direct him to the back door.

    He was about to ring the bell when the front door opened.

    David felt himself go rather red, what a tit! It was a shortish, full-bosomed young woman in a pair of very short, tight denim shorts that weren’t the sort of thing the fashion-conscious such as the unlamented Kylie wore, and a very tight orangish singlet that frankly wouldn’t have been a fraction as effective on Kylie’s A-cups. She had a mop of thick brown curls that were about as untidy as his mother’s usually were when she wasn’t being Judge Easterbrook and huge, velvety brown eyes. And very pink cheeks—no makeup at all, unlike Kylie even in the weekends.

    “Hullo—” he began.

    “Ssh!” she hissed, looking desperate. “Are you David?” she hissed.

    “Yes.”

    She nodded. “Hi. I’m Patty,” she whispered. “I’ll come out.”

    David stepped aside but as he’d got a glimpse of the inside, prevented her closing the door while he gaped at the expanse of golden kauri floor and gabled ceiling in the guests’ lounge.

    “Isn’t it great?” she whispered.

    He smiled and closed the front door gently. “Yes, lovely. What’s up, Patty? They fighting over the tomatoes?”

    “Well, not quite, but Jan was real cross when she found out what Dad had done. Uh—sorry, Pete McLeod’s my father.”

    Yeah? So where did that American accent come from? “I see,” he said politely. “I’m quite happy to make tomato sauce for them, Patty. Can’t magic up preserving jars, I’m afraid, but I can make some for freezing. Or just blanch and freeze them, if you like.”

    “Are you sure?” she said, blushing. –She had a really lovely complexion, very clear, just a light tan, and the cheeks naturally pink. And a small, neat nose; call it stereotyped and prejudiced, but David couldn’t stand a big nose on a woman.

    “Eh?” he said, blinking. “Oh—yeah, of course. Mum’s kitchen’s free, she hasn’t made anything in there apart from instant coffee since she took the house.”

    “Well, Livia did say she wasn’t a cook so she guessed her kitchen might be free, yes,” she admitted, blushing again.

    “Right. I hardly know Livia, but she’s a bit of a manipulator, is she?”

    “Well,” said Patty, blushing harder than ever and conscious of a wish that he wasn’t so good-looking, because then maybe she wouldn’t blush so much and maybe he would notice her, Patty Plain, “I don’t know her, hardly, they’re Dad’s and Jan’s friends and I’ve only been here a few weeks, but I’d say so, David, yes. But very kind and well-meaning!” she added quickly.

    Wasn’t she sweet? And obviously bright: gee, what a refreshing change, after the cretinous Kylie! And, thank God, she wasn’t mooning at him like girls tended to do. God knew where they learnt the eye-rolling and eyelid-fluttering and hair-tossing crap—off crap like that ghastly Aussie Neighbours thing, maybe—but they nearly all did it.

    “Yeah, I got that impression,” he said easily. “So, are we gonna go and creep off with eighty kilos of tomatoes behind Jan’s back?”

    “Almost! She’s preserved one huge batch of sauce and Livia’s persuaded her to put her feet up and Libby’s making her a cup of tea and, I guess, preventing her forcibly from getting up!” she admitted with a laugh. “Sorry, I guess you don’t know the set-up? Libby’s one of my half-sisters.”

    “I see. Same dad, is that it? Right,” he said as she nodded the curls. They were really lovely: not as dark as Mum’s had been in her youth and with loads of golden highlights in them. Perfectly natural: he would have taken his dying oath that Patty didn’t tint her hair, never mind the American accent. “So, did you grow up in North America, Patty?”

    “Yes,” said Patty, smiling shyly as it dawned that the good-looking David Easterbrook was one of the very few foreigners who heard the North American accent and didn’t automatically assume you were American, which very naturally if you were Canadian thoroughly alienated you. “California, my Mom’s an American. I’ve only just met Dad.”

    “Really? Me, too!” said David with a laugh. –Why he should so easily be revealing this to Patty, he had no idea, when he hadn’t breathed a word of the discovery of his long-lost father to any of his many friends in Auckland, some of whom he’d known since his early childhood and who would have been entirely sympathetic.

    “Why, yes, Livia did just mention it,” she murmured. “You both like to cook, is that right?”

    “Yes. I’ve always wondered where I got it from! ’Cos Mum reckons stoves hate her and Granny’s idea of food is something beaten into submission and tortured over a hot-plate until it’s limp and tasteless! Though funnily enough she’s a superb baker: makes a sponge that’s light as air and shortbread to die for! Not to mention her scones!”

    “‘Sconns’,” said Patty with a twinkle in her big dark eyes. “Right. I guess they’re a bit of a favourite out here, huh? Jan makes them, too. Well, I guess maybe that was your granny’s generation, David: they never knew from real food until Julia Child came along!”

    “Yeah, and out here she never came along at all!” said David, grinning. “So where are these tomatoes?”

    Patty jumped and blushed a little. “Oh—sure. I’m sorry, standing here gossiping. It’s real good of you to help us out, David. They’re just over this way, in the garage.” She pointed over to the right of the ecolodge as you faced it.

    “Right,” said David, taking her elbow gently. Cripes! He felt himself go very red. Her arm was very, very soft and his fingers had sort of sunk into the flesh. His heart hammered furiously and he was conscious—barely conscious—of two thoughts, the first being that if it turned out she was married or something he’d never set foot in bloody Taupo again and the second being that it was about the biggest hard-on he’d ever had in his life and by God, he’d make her want him or die in the bloody attempt!

    Patty of course was used to polite males who took her arm—though usually they were older—and she didn’t react in a specifically sexual way. But her heart did beat faster and she tried to tell herself it was ridiculous and a good looking guy like him’d never look twice at Patty Plain and anyroad, how old was he? Probably not as old as her, just her luck to meet a guy that was real gorgeous and—and nice, he must be nice or he’d have told Livia and Dad where to get off—and of course he’d just take the tomatoes and make the sauce and she’d never see him again.

    “Here,” she said, unlocking the garage door. “You have to pull it up, it’s not automatic.”

    “I’ll do it,” said David firmly. The things were countersunk but nevertheless bloody heavy. “Jesus,” he said limply as the door went up, revealing ranks of cardboard cartons filled to the brim with huge beefsteak tomatoes. “What’s your Dad got, a tomato farm?”

    “Just about, I guess. They—they smell real good,” said Patty in a distracted voice, picking one up and turning away from him because she suddenly couldn’t bear a second more of it. She held it blindly to her nose.

    David came up very close and took it from her. “Yeah,” he said, sniffing it. “Real tomato smell, eh? Sun-ripened. Pity to turn them into sauce, really!”

    “I guess,” said Patty in a stifled voice.

    He looked uncertainly at her bent head and the curve of her pink cheek, aching to take that one step closer that’d press the hard-on against the very tempting bum in the tight shorts but not daring to. “Um, well, you wanna come on over and give me a hand with them?” he said huskily.

    “Me?” said Patty very faintly.

    “Yeah, you!” he replied, dredging up an unconvincing laugh.

    “I—well, sure: I’d like to. But I—I’m not much of cook, I’m just learning off of Jan, really,” she said, looking up at him with big, anxious eyes.

    “Yeah,” said David vaguely as his senses swam. “Eh? Oh—that’s okay, I don’t need a cook, I just need a kitchen slave to peel and cut when I say so! Reckon you can do that?” he said with a grin.

    “I—I reckon so, David,” said Patty shakily.

    “Good,” he said, giving in to temptation to the extent of squeezing that plump elbow again. This time Patty gave a little gasp and went bright pink—well, hooray! thought David.

    “Hey, I’m not keeping you from the boyfriend or something, am I?” he said in a super-casual voice, bending to the nearest carton.

    “What?” said Patty blankly, watching the wide shoulders straining under the elderly white tee-shirt. “Oh! No, there’s no-one like that.”

    David turned with the carton in his arms and grinned into her eyes. “That’s good,” he said frankly. “Come on, kitchen slave, can you open the car boot?”

    “I, uh, sure: is that like the trunk?” she gasped.

    “That’s right.”

    “Where are the keys?”

    The keys were in his pocket. Perhaps fortunately, his back pocket. Or unfortunately, depending on your point of view. “The back pocket of me shorts, and couldja do it before I get a hernia?”

    “Yeah! Sorry!” gasped Patty in horror, delving in his pocket.

    David Easterbrook wasn’t vain enough to kid himself that she’d enjoyed that: on the contrary, she’d clearly been so flustered she hadn’t even known what she was doing. But he’d enjoyed every last, split second of it! And before she was very much older he was gonna teach her what was what. Because it was pretty plain to Aidan Vine’s son, dumping the heavy carton of tomatoes in the boot of his car and returning for another one with her pattering along beside him—they jiggled when she hurried, that wasn’t half bad—that never mind the crap purveyed on the box by all the crapulous Yank shows, not all American girls knew exactly what it was all about, by no means. And boy, was he gonna enjoy showing her!

    The phone rang just when Aidan was finishing a whisky and wondering whether he’d bother to cook tonight, since Andrew was ensconced with his Jayne along the road and Aprylle had gone off to Auckland with Susan Jones—Susan was enrolling at university next week and they were going to suss out some hospitality course that Aprylle was interested in.

    “It’s Pam; can I come over?” she said in a lowered voice.

    “Uh—yeah, sure! Um, the girls are okay, Aprylle just rang me from town.”

    “Yes. Not them,” said Pam in strangled tones.

    Raising his eyebrows slightly, Aidan replied: “Okay, come.”

    “All right?” he said, opening the front door five minutes later to a view of very flushed cheeks and heaving tits—ooh, er!

    “Yes!” she gasped. “I mean— I dunno where to start!”

    “Come in, sit down, and start with a stiff drink,” said Aidan firmly, grabbing her arm—ooh, er, again—and drawing her firmly inside.

    “It’s not that brown stuff again, is it?” said Pam as he went over to the sideboard.

    He held up the bottle. “No, you twit, it’s Glenlivet!”

    “Then don’t waste it on me, I don’t like whisky.”

    “Sorry, but that leaves brown stuff or the Bacardi that Aprylle voted for. Oh—frozen daiquiri?” he said slyly.

    Pam licked her lips uneasily. “Don’t be silly.”

    “You want one!” discovered Aidan with a laugh. “Well, it’ll be an approximation: sugar, crushed ice, a little lemon and Bacardi?”

    She nodded, going very pink, so he hurried out to the kitchen with the rum bottle. He half-filled the blender, whirred it up and brought the whole thing in.

    “Uh, hang on.” He ferreted in cupboards and drawers and found not only a glass but some straws. Ceremoniously he shortened one with his penknife. “How’s this?”

    “Lovely,” said Pam feebly.

    “Go on, taste it.”

    “Ooh, yum!” she reported with a sheepish laugh.

    “Good.” Since she’d sat down—incautiously, he felt—on one of the hideous McLintock leather sofas, he came and sat beside her. “What’s up?”

    “I honestly don’t know where to start!”

    “Start at the beginning.”

    “I have a strange feeling that the beginning’s in our genes!” said Pam with a mad laugh.

    “Oops. What’s he done?”

    “Found a bird.”

    “Glad to hear it,” said David’s father in a prim voice.

    “Shut up, you birk! Wait until you hear it!”

    “Pam,” said Aidan politely, “I am waiting.”

    “Yes. Um, how much do you know about Pete McLeod?”

    “Uh—Libby’s father? Very little. Owns Taupo Shores Ecolodge, pretty much the Good Keen Man personified, not above killing and eating anything that moves… That’s about it, really. Oh, Andrew’s just got off with his older daughter, if that’s germane.”

    “Oldest.”

    “Older; there are only two, me Lud.”

    “Um, no, that’s where you’re wrong, because there’s another one and it’s her that David’s got off with!” said Pam in a mad, loud voice. “They’re in our kitchen right now making gallons of tomato sauce for the ecolodge, and he—well, I said I’d be out all evening, it—it was bloody obvious how the pair of them felt.”

    “Isn’t she years too old for him, though?”

    “No, you idiot! Different mothers, she’s years and years younger than the other two!”

    “That’s all right, then. Well, stay here for as long as you like.”

    “Aidan, you don’t get it!”

    He didn’t get why she’d rushed over to him, no, though he was beginning to feel bloody glad she had. If she’d stop blathering about their mutual offspring he’d feel even gladder, too. “Mm?”

    “She—she’s a dead ringer for Libby!” said Pam loudly, her cheeks bright red.

    “Uh—oh. Same physical type, you mean?”

    Pam swallowed. “Yes. Big brown eyes like hers.”

    “Same mad mop of curls?” asked Aidan with a smile, looking at hers.

    She nodded inarticulately.

    “Big tits?” he asked, his shoulders shaking slightly.

    “Don’t laugh! It isn’t funny!”

    “Pam, my darling idiot, if you’re trying to say the boy has the same taste in women as his father, all I can say is, three cheers, and I hope he has the sense to grab her.”

    “It isn’t kinky or something, is it?” said Pam fearfully.

    “No! It’s genetic, like I think you said in the first place! Well, in the genes, wasn’t it?” he said on a sly note. “Mine certainly is.”

    “I might’ve known a man’d think it was funny!” said Pam on a note of despair.

    “Pam, my darling idiot, I don’t really think it’s funny, but I do think you’re getting worked up for nothing. She’s about his age, is she?”

    “Mm. Well, possibly a year or two older. Not a very sophisticated type, though, so it’s hard to tell.”

    “Good, she sounds just right for him. Did you like her?”

    “Yes, I thought she seemed very sweet. Totally unlike his usual dumb dollybirds.”

    “Good. Have a top-up.” He topped up her glass.

    Pam drank, and sighed. “He’s never seemed serious about any of the others, only this time he had such a look on his face— I panicked, I suppose. And then, I thought maybe it was kinky: I mean, you had a thing with the sister.” She swallowed hard.

    “No: it’s irrelevant, really,” said Aidan gently. “He just fancies the type—well, good for him! Drink that up and I’ll make you something light for tea. Fancy an omelette?”

    “Not really, I’m not hungry,” said Pam with a sigh.

    “In that case, finish your drink and we’ll think about having dessert first.”

    “No, I said, I’m not hungry,” she said dully, sipping her drink.

    Aidan had to swallow hard. What sort of life had Judge Easterbrook been living, these last twenty-odd years? Well—one with bloody Tom Jones—yeah.

    “Nothing to do with pudding, I was making a dirty suggestion,” he said on a dry note, setting his glass on the foul McLintock coffee table.

    “Drop it, Aidan, I can’t take your stupid jokes at this point,” said Pam tiredly.

    Aidan went very red. “Um, sorry. I thought you, uh, might have noticed that I want to. Many ladies would have,” he noted gloomily. “Ladies that would have got the point that it was a dirty suggestion. –Forget it. But would you mind explaining why you came haring over here just now?”

    “Because you’re his father and you’re sophisticated, and I thought you’d know!” she cried loudly.

    “Oh, God,” said Aidan under his breath.  “Don’t bawl, Pam, you must have bawled enough in the past couple of weeks to fill the bloody lake itself!”

    “I’m not!” said Pam angrily, scrabbling in her pockets. “Bugger!”

    Aidan produced an ironed handkerchief. “Here. –What is that garment, by the way?”

    She blew her nose hard. “A wrap-around skirt. I know it’s horrible but I just rushed over without thinking.”

    “Right. Have another drink.”

    “Why?” she said suspiciously.

    “Well, Hell, the kids are at it, you can’t go home, you don’t want food, what else is there to do on a warm Sunday evening? Watch TV?”

    “It’s foul,” she said grimly.

    “I entirely agree. Cor, we must be compatible to some extent, then!” he discovered.

    “Stop that,” she said grimly.

    “Okay, I’ve stopped.” He refilled her glass. “It is largely crushed ice.”

    Pam drank faked-up frozen daiquiri with a defiant look on her round face. Aidan sipped a second Glenlivet slowly. Finally he got up and saying lightly: “I want food, if you don’t,” went out to the kitchen.

    The pork medallions were sizzling in the pan when she came in and said in a small voice: “Maybe I am a bit hungry after all.”

    “Good,” said Aidan lightly. “There’s plenty.”

    “What is it?”

    “Very simple. Sautéed pork with lightly steamed zucchini sprinkled with herbs, and a vegetable that you’ll probably condemn, but don’t until you try it: silverbeet stalks, flavoured with a little nutmeg. They’re delicious in a white sauce, but that’s butter and starch, so I thought perhaps not. I’ve been eating too much fattening stuff lately.”

    “Oh. Well, it sounds lovely,” she said politely.

    “Good. I usually have Dijon mustard when I do pork like this.”

    “Um, yes. Mustard with pork sounds nice,” she said politely.

    “Judge Easterbrook, what do you eat?” said Aidan heavily.

    Pam went very red. “Well, lean cuisine, usually.”

    “Okay, just be warned: this is food, it’ll taste quite different.”

    “I do know that! But I can’t do it! I follow the recipe and it turns out horrible!”

    “That’s okay, there’s no law that says everyone has to be able to cook,” said Aidan lightly.

    “There bloody well is in this country, if you’re a female!”

    “The population of this country—as, indeed of its big cousin, revolting expression, over the water—is composed of ninety-nine point nine percent total cretins: thought you knew that?” he said lightly. “You always used to.”

    “The relentless brainwashing gets to ya, as the boobs sag and the hair greys and they expect you to start behaving like a granny,” she said glumly.

    “They don’t look that saggy to me.”

    “I should never have mentioned them,” said Pam with a sigh.

    “No, the topic is apt to distract the male mind. How’s that daiquiri holding out?”

    “Finished.”

    Cripes. Well, there had been a lot of ice in it, true. “In that case, lay the table, wouldja?” he said feebly.

    Meekly Pam laid the table.

    The food, to his immense relief, perked her up no end. They had fresh peaches for pudding and as there was a little of the last batch of mascarpone cream left, he added a spoonful of that. Then he got the kirsch bottle and led her back to the sitting-room.

    “You can have a drop of this, but no way am I letting you drive home,” he said severely.

    “That daiquiri’s worn off!”

    “Imprimis, balls, secundus, them daiquiris, plural, and tertius—you are rather pissed, Pam,” admitted Aidan honestly, not having meant to say any such thing.

    “That’s what you said before,” replied Pam muzzily.

    “Uh—when you and David came round? Did I?”

    “No, before. At your flat,” she said, going very red. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

    He swallowed hard. “Did I? I might have, I suppose. And what did you say to that?”

    “Nothing, exactly,” she said muzzily, sipping. “I see, this is what was in the cream!”

    “Uh-huh.” Aidan had now remembered. “It’s coming back to me. Arms round the neck and pressing those fabulous tits against me came into it. Though we weren’t sitting down.”

    “Standing up,” said Pam muzzily.

    “Mm.” Aidan stood up. If it didn’t work, he could always sit down again. Or simply fall on top of her.

    Pam set her empty liqueur glass down on the coffee table and got up, looking determined. “Like this,” she said, standing very, very close, could he bear it?”

    All right: in for a penny, in for a pound. “Actually more like this!” he said, pulling her tightly against him and shoving his cock against her belly.

    “Yes, it was!” she gasped, pressing the tits against his chest and throwing her arms round his neck. She was rather short, and of course rather plump, so this involved a certain amount of tiptoeing and straining—gosh!

    “Yeah, that’s right,” he admitted, kissing her until they were both panting for breath. Phew! He got one hand on the bum and squeezed hard. She gave a little squeak. That wasn’t a bad sign, so he slid the hand gently down the wraparound skirt, hoisted it a bit and then quickly slid it— God Al-bloody-mighty! He fell to his knees, hauled the very damp panties down, and shoved his face in there.

    “O-oh, Aidan! O-oh, Aidan!” shrieked Judge Easterbrook, clawing his back and coming like the clappers.

    Eventually Aidan sat back on his heels and said—not quite limply, no, though he did feel fairly shattered: “Pam, my darling idiot, if you wanted it that much, why didn’t you say?”

    “Couldn’t!” she gasped, clutching his shoulders and panting.

    No. Whether it was the inhibiting effect of years of marriage to bloody Jones, or natural bashfulness, or lack of practice, he wouldn’t have liked to say—all three, quite possibly—but evidently it took half a blenderful of daiquiris, a good helping of protein—he didn’t feel the vegetables had been of much help—and a belt of kirsch to get anywhere near it.

    “Now can I fuck you, please?” he said meekly, kissing the inside of one very squidgy leg.

    “Mm,” she agreed.

    “Come into the bedroom, I refuse to do it on one of McLintock’s bloody awful sofas.”

    “They are horrible, aren’t they? Um, thanks, Aidan. Um, I didn’t mean to come like that,” she said, going very red.

    “No? I was flattered.” Hadn’t he said something like that not so very long since on a somewhat similar occasion? Oh, well! He put an arm round her and they went into the bedroom.

    The next bit was rather quick. Quick but very, very good. Well, it was very exciting that the foul sheets on the foul McLintock bed happened to be dark brown today and very pale pink, squidgy Pam took off her clothes without being asked and lay down on ’em.

    Aidan tore his clothes off. He managed to kiss her nice neat nose. Then he began sort of kissing his way down—Hell! “I’m gonna have to get in there,” he admitted in a strangled voice. He sat up and grabbed the box of condoms. He couldn’t open the first one at all. The second one tore. “Shit!”

    “Aidan—”

    “I’ll do it if it kills me!” he gasped.

    “It’s all right, you don’t need to be nervous,” said Pam in a small voice.

    “I— Okay, guilty, me Lud: I’ve never been so nervous in my life! I’m horribly overexcited, and the phrase ‘premature ejac—’”

    “Stop it, clot,” said Pam gruffly, hugging him. “Let me open the blimmin’ packet.”

    “Okay,” said Aidan meekly.

    She opened it with horrid efficiency. “Third time lucky,” she said mildly. “Shall I put it on for you?”

    “No, human flesh can only stand so much.” His hands were shaking so much he could barely get it on. “Don’t count the seconds,” he warned.

    “Idiot,” said Pam with tears in her eyes.  “Come on, then.”

    “Hug me, darling,” said Aidan in a muffled voice. “Uh—God—” He was nearly in. “JESUS!” He was right in, he was gonna— “Uh-AARGH! AAH-AARGH!”

    About five millennia later he rolled off her squidginess, kindly allowing her to pant for breath, and onto his back. Another five millennia later he was capable of utterance. No, he wasn’t. Eventually he said, very, very faintly: “Ta.”

    “My pleasure,” replied Pam with a smile in her voice.

    Quite some time after that, there might have been a brief doze in there somewhere, anyway he was now lying on his back and her head was on his shoulder, she said dreamily: “You still make a Helluva lot of noise.”

    “Me?”

    “Um, yeah. I used to embarrass Bruce,” she admitted glumly.

    “Eh?” He’d always known that the man was a prize it, but honestly!

    “It’s kind of off-putting to be told to keep the noise down, when you can’t help yourself,” she added.

    “I should bloody well think so! I promise you I’ll never ask you to keep the noise down. I may go into a decline if the noise abates, I can’t make any promises abou—”

    “Hah, hah!” said Pam, bashing him on the thigh.

    “Mm,” said Aidan, getting his arm right round her squidginess. “Ooh, nice… Blow, I’d better get rid of this condom. Fancy another little drink?”

    “I don’t suppose I could have a wee bit more of that lovely liqueur, could I?”

    Okay, she liked liqueurs and she liked frozen daiquiris! Mentally revising his liquor order for the foreseeable future, Aidan got out of bed. “Of course: that’s what it’s there for,” he said gallantly. And shot into the ensuite before he could actually laugh.

    She did stay awake long enough to drink it—yes. And to have a piss—yes. Then she got back into bed, smiled at him, snuggled up, said: “This is nice,” and went out like a light! Oh, well! Smiling, Aidan turned the bedside light out and went to sleep.

    “Hullo, Jan, darling,” said Livia on a weak note, opening her front door around ten of a fine Tuesday morning.

    “Just stay me with flagons of tannin, Livia,” she groaned.

    Gulping slightly, Livia led her into the Mexicanized kitchen, sat her down at the huge and entirely ersatz peasant-style table, and switched the jug on. When Jan was sipping she found the courage to ask: “Who’s looking after the kitchen, Jan?”

    “Patty,” said Jan faintly. “Her one dropped her off around eight last night.” She gulped tea. “Jayne’s doing the shopping, her one dropped her off this morning.”

    “Jan, dear—”

    “The thing is, Jayne falling into bed with Andrew without warning was shock enough to our systems, but Patty’s one’s Libby’s former one’s son! It’s like a mad square dance!”

    Livia waited but Jan just sipped tea. “Actually, Jan,” she said weakly, “Aidan’s doing Patty’s one’s mum again. –I suppose I mean again. It is after twenty-seven years.”

    Their eyes met. “I can’t even laugh,” Jan admitted limply.

Next chapter:

https://summerseason-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/08/after-lahar.html