Harmonic Vitality And Othello's Occupation

24

Harmonic Vitality And Othello’s Occupation

    Pam Easterbrook looked limply at the huge and elaborate tray of breakfast. Mucked-up sloshy-looking scrambled eggs, fancy thin-sliced ham, possibly that prosciutto stuff, rolled up in silly little rolls tied with, ye gods, chives, orange juice in a champagne glass—it had better not be that Buck’s Fizz muck, her insides did not need grog at this hour of the morning—la-de-da croissants instead of honest toast, and a crystal bowl of wafer-thin slices of rockmelon—their season was over, the man was mad!—mixed with wafer-thin slices of kiwifruit—they weren’t in the shops yet, their season hadn’t started, the man was mad!—and whole blueberries, she was past knowing or caring if they were in season. Judge McLintock’s silver coffee-pot: it’d probably poison her, he was the type that bought that sort of thing for show, had its insides ever been cleaned? And of course a flower in one of those excruciatingly thin bud vases with the bubbles in the glass, or, as this was the McLintock house, in the crystal. It wasn’t a gerbera, like what had been In for about ten years with the trendies but she had a suspicion were Out, now, you didn’t see so many of them on the pristine teak desks of the really up-market Q.C.s in town, it wasn’t a rose out of the McLintock garden—their season was over, really, but there were one or two stragglers hanging on in the more sheltered spots, in amongst the Western Australian grass trees and the agapanthuses—what it was, was a white Singapore orchid and the man was MAD.

    “Sit down, Aidan,” she said grimly.

    Trying to smile insouciantly—Judge Easterbrook hadn’t used that precise tone with him before—Aidan perched on the side of the bed. “Darling, I was hoping the invitation might be to get in beside—”

    “You can drop the airy darling shit.”

    “—beside you. All right, I’ve dropped it,” he said glumly.

    “Okay. First off, there’s cream in this egg, isn’t there?”

    “Yes,” he muttered.

    “Right. My metabolism does not need cream at all. Once a week on a lovely pudding it can cope with, just, but otherwise it puts it straight on the hips, as I think you should have realized by now. –Shut up, I haven’t finished,” she warned.

    Aidan subsided with a mutter of: “Sorry.”

    “Okay, second. This fruit is over the top and down the other side, and so is this flower, and don’t tell me you got them off Taupo Organic Produce!”

    “Um, no. Indirectly,” he mumbled. “Through them.”

    “Through them, from that fancy shop in Newmarket that supplies the Gov’s mansion—right? Right?”

    “Mm. Think so. Well, Bettany said— Sorry,” he muttered.

    “That was stupid, wilful extravagance,” said Pam grimly.

    “I wanted to do something nice for you!” he cried.

    “Yes; but while A is true, B is not necessarily untrue,” said Pam grimly. “I appreciate the sentiment but not its manifestation.”

    Aidan was now very red. “Thanks, me Lud!”

    “Just breakfast in bed with a flower out of the garden would be more than enough, Aidan.”

    “Toast and cornflakes, I presume!” he said crossly.

    “Yes,” replied Pam baldly. “What’s up with you? –No, let me rephrase that. It’s the Othello’s occupation’s gone syndrome, isn’t it?”

    “No! I said, I wanted to do something nice for you!”

    “And I said, while A is true, B is not necessarily untrue. Go and get my briefcase.”

    “Eh?” he said numbly.

    “It’s over there on that weird-looking chair. Get it.”

    Aidan stumbled over to the weird-looking chair—it was that, all right: sort of carved all over and— Weird, right.

    “Here,” he said sulkily, holding the briefcase out.

    “I can’t take it with a ruddy great tray on my knees, you clot! Open it. Ignore the legal bumf; it’s that thing with the plastic comb-binding and the shiny cover.”

    “Uh… This?” he said weakly, fishing it out.

    “Yes. From David. And don’t blame me; it is possibly genetic but I can assure you it’s not from the Easterbrook side! I wasn’t going to give it to you until I saw which way the wind was blowing, but as it’s manifestly blowing in the direction of a total melt-down, either in galloping depression or galloping extravagance, or possibly both, you’d better read it. I do fully recognise it may result in galloping mania, but that’s better than the other options.”

    Aidan dumped the briefcase and sat down on the edge of the bed near her feet, looking sulky. “At least you didn’t say ‘the other alternatives’.”

    “No, because I did Latin to Stage II, allee same like you, Aidan, ’member?” said Judge Easterbrook sweetly. “Not to mention some basic English. –I’ll eat the fruit and one of these croissants, but I just can’t face scrambled eggs full of cream at this hour, even without the hips and the cholesterol considerations. And I’m sorry, but I have to ask this. Did you scour the inside of this bloody ostentatious coffee-pot of McLintock’s?”

    “Yes,” he said, scowling. “And scalded it. Several times.”

    She looked at the imitation Victorian silver coffee-pot—bad imitation—again. “No. I’m sorry, Aidan, but I really can’t drink coffee out of it.”

    “But— All right, I’ll make you a fresh lot.”

    Pam sighed. “Will you stop running about like a cut cat! Just sit down, shut up, and read that thing of David’s. And have a croissant and this ham stuff.”

    Aidan opened his mouth to say “Prosciutto, not ham stuff,” thought better of it, and meekly allowed her to hand him a croissant which she’d brutally halved and stuffed with the prosciutto. Not pointing out that one did not eat them like that, never mind what she might have had served up to her at poncy law conference breakfasts at poncy hotels or nosh-houses attached to poncy wineries on the other side of the Tasman—or, for all he knew, here as well.

    He looked at the shiny full-colour cover on the comb-bound volume. “Proposal for what?” he muttered. “The boy’s run mad!” He opened it. “Blah, blah, blah…” he muttered, reading the list of contents. He looked up. “At least he knows that a proposal of this length needs a list of contents at the front.”

    “Mm; and the difference between a list of contents and an index,” said Judge Easterbrook drily, eating fruit gingerly with a silver McLintock spoon. “Is this a fruit spoon?”

    “Why?” replied Aidan, scowling.

    “It’s got frilly edges, never seen one before,” she replied calmly.

    “Oh? My grandmother—” He broke off. “I found the set in a drawer. I dunno what they’re supposed to be for, and I’ve no idea what Granny used hers for. I thought they were pretty, that’s why I chose one for you!” he said crossly, going very red.

    “Yes. Just read,” replied Pam mildly.

    “Look, if he’s fed up with that silly job—”

    “He is, yes. Read it.”

    Sighing, Aidan flipped though it. “What? Are these those damned thermal pools we went to?”

    “Read it, Aidan, don’t just look at the pickshas.”

    Sighing, he turned back to the list of contents. The boy was mad, that was what. He turned over. No executive summary. Was there any need to waste paper by giving each section header of a relatively short proposal document a separate page? He turned over…

    Pam watched him out of the corner of her eye, eating croissant that she could taste was stuffed with butter. At least he’d stopped snorting. She finished the croissant and looked glumly at its brother. Um—no. She tasted the orange juice very gingerly.

    “What’s wrong with the orange juice?” he said crossly.

    “Um, ’tis just orange juice, is it?”

    “Yes! Fresh-squeezed! Oh. Um, not Buck’s Fizz: the proximity of the egg, the prosciutto and the croissants has possibly misled you.”

    “Mm.” On second thoughts she didn’t offer him the last croissant: he was a lot slimmer than her but after all they were the same age: his metabolism didn’t need the damn thing either. She drank orange juice slowly—it was really lovely—watching him out of the corner of her eye. He turned back, frowning, and re-read something.

    “I don’t think much of his figures!”

    “No, well, he’s never done anything like that before.”

    “Pam, if he’s proposing handing this to those Yank bosses of Patty’s, the figures have to be spot-on!”

    “Mm. If you’re interested, we could think of hiring an accountant to go over them.”

    “It’ll need more than an accountant, it’ll need proper market research!”

    “Well, yes, but this is just a preliminary proposal.”

    Frowning, Aidan went back to it.

    Pam finished the orange juice and leaned back against the horrible dark brown McLintock pillows. Would he be insulted if she offered to bring down some ordinary white sheets? Or even those pale pink things David apparently considered suitable for one’s aging mum’s birthday present. Probably, yeah. Especially if she did it on top of refusing to eat his over-the-top breakfast.

    “Um, some fresh coffee would be nice,” she ventured, as he was just staring into space.

    “Mm-hm. –Have you got any capital?” he said out of the blue.

    Pam went very red. “Not much, no!” she gasped. “Well: two kids, and I had to put a lot of my earnings into the bloody house Bruce wanted. And the flat cost megabucks, but I wanted something reasonably near town, couldn’t face the long haul on the motorways.”

    “Calm down. Just wondered,” he said, patting her shins absently.

    “Mm.” She threw the covers back on the Aidan-less side of the bed. “How much coffee do you put in that little thingy?”

    He came to with a jump. “Stay there, I’ll do it!” And rushed out.

    Pam looked thoughtfully at David’s proposal for “Taupo Harmonic Vitality”. It was only a proposed name, in fact a “[Proposed Name]”, but gee, it managed to beg several questions, didn’t it? Nice suggestion of “holistic” without actually using the word, which felt a bit twentieth-century these days, slight hint of yer Vedics and Indian guru stuff without being near weirdo or long-haired hippie; but was the word “vitality” a little too hard-edged and off-putting—too suggestive of the gym and exercise—while at the same time the whole thing was too vague? Didn’t call itself a “spa”, well, fair enough, in this area it would be misleading: there were numerous real spas, i.e. actual mineral springs, bubbling up naturally out of the ground, in the Rotorua-Taupo thermal area. And David wasn’t proposing at all to compete with them: in fact at one point he suggested an agreement with the one that had a lovely website—the one that he’d got the pickshas off—but that was, if her memory was correct, nothing but yer basic hot pools that had been there forever. Certainly since the glorious May holidays when she was about eleven and Dad had got a whole two thou’ out of Grandma’s estate—it was so long ago she couldn’t even remember if it had been pounds or dollars—and blown a bit of it on taking the whole family down to Taupo for a week. The rest of course had gone on the bloody mortgage…

    “What is it? Hate the whole idea?” said Aidan, coming back to find her frowning into space.

    Pam jumped. “No. Brooding on mortgages.”

    He sat down beside her legs, and handed her a coffee. “If that bloody flat’s bleeding you dry, let me make you a loan.”

    “No,” said Pam, going very red. “I mean, thanks, Aidan, it’s very nice of you,” she said in a strangled voice. “But I didn’t mean me. I forced my accountant to work out how much the thing was gonna set me back, all-up, if I paid it off over the years at the usual bloody rate, and there was no way I was up for that, so I’ve been skimping on everything else to pay the bloody thing off in lumps. Um, no: I was thinking back to when I was a kid and poor old Dad’s mortgage, and—well! Just generally meditating on the madness of this society, I suppose, slaving away all their lives under the delusion they’re paying for a hunk of real property they’ll never actually own. All they’re doing is subsidising the fucking banks!”

    “Yes,” agreed Aidan succinctly. “I’ve put milk in yours, darling.”

    “Mm? Oh—ta.” Pam sipped coffee out of a great big cup, and sighed. “Nice. –This a McLintock fancy cup?”

    “Mm-hm. The house is full of that sort of junk. In the unlikely instance that the mortgage does get paid off, the rest of the dough seems to go on unnecessary consumables, doesn’t it?”

    “Pointless,” replied Pam with a sour grimace.

    Aidan bit his lip. “Darling, don’t brood over it. I think all we can say is that it’s human nature. All societies own property in one way or another, don’t they? Even the Aboriginals.”

    “What did you call them?”

    “Mm? Oh: that’s nayce white Australian-speak these days. Though it’s deemed much naycer not to refer to them directly at all. The documentaries on the nayce TV networks, as far as my observation goes, avoid the substantive altogether and go for a phrase such as ‘Aboriginal community.’ –No, true!”

    “All right, I won’t batter you to death with a pillow,” said Pam weakly. “Well, yeah, they had no land tenure as we understand it, but they lay claim to stretches of territory, don’t they?”

    “You’re right. Built into our psyches, innit?”

    “I suppose,” she said with a sigh.

    “Drink your coffee up,” he said, patting her leg.

    Obediently Pam drank her coffee, absent-mindedly eating the last croissant with it.

    Aidan was reading the proposal again. After a bit she ventured: “Well?”

    He put it down, looking very wry. “How many synonyms are there for ‘balance’ and ‘harmony’?”

    “Um, yeah, seems to have drained the thesaurus dry. No, well, ’tis what the sort of dames that go in for these things are taken in by.”

    “Uh-huh. Is volcanic mud even safe on the skin?”

    Pam cleared her throat. “Dunno. But he’ll have done some research on all of the muck he’s proposing slathering them in—don’t forget he has got a chemistry degree. Um, and the thing is, he doesn’t specify that it’s gonna be local mud.”

    Aidan gulped.

    “Well, yeah, carefully worded hypocrisy is the hallmark of the twenty-first century. You’ve only got to look at those print-outs from the spas and health farms and so on in the appendix.”

    “Most of them struck me as both earnest and naïve.”

    “That as well,” replied Pam calmly.

    Swallowing, he turned back to them. “Uh… Yeah. Not simultaneously.”

    “Ya wanna bet? But do you think a place like that could work, down here, Aidan?”

    “We-ell—just over three hours’ drive from Auckland?”

    “If you hit the speed limit all the way, yeah!”

    Aidan now knew that she didn’t like driving. So far she’d refused to let him fetch her, though. Mind you, he wasn’t giving up on that one. “Mm,” he said, patting her shins again. “I think it could be a goer. Taupo Shores Ecolodge gets a lot of custom from Auckland.”

    “Uh—well, most of what custom it does get, I suppose, yeah.”

    “Uh-huh. But this would be an all-year-round enterprise.”

    “Aidan, it can be bloody cold down here in winter!”

    “Yes, but the ‘roaring log fires’, unquote, would take care of that, wouldn’t they? Not to mention the central heating, whether or not it uses geothermal steam as in one of the appendices!” he said with a smothered laugh.

    “It isn’t unknown round these here parts. But what about the idea itself? Is there gonna be a market for weekend and week-long stays at a very up-market carefully uncategorised establishment? –Whether or not joined up with one of those Californian ones in the appendices that’d probably be called a spa over there, or maybe a health farm, like that thing where Patty works.”

    “Well, the market research would presumably show us that, darling. But just looking at what he’s got here I’d say there would be, yes. And the market, as he so rightly points out, wouldn’t be limited to New Zealand. There’d be well-off Aussies with more money than sense lining up for it as well.”

    “Aidan, most of them travel in couples. How many Aussie blokes, however well off and senseless, are gonna let the little woman drag them to a ruddy spa for pampering, for God’s sake?”

    “These days? You’d be surprised!” said Aidan with a laugh. “And I think that’s partly why he’s avoiding the word ‘spa.’ –Um, no, honestly, Pam: he’s looking to the future. This sort of spa is looking at ten years on for all the couples that are currently in their twenties and thirties and relentlessly, nay religiously, going to the gym every week. They won’t want cordon bleu with their pampering, they’ll want organic whole foods and minceur everything with skinny Japanese mushrooms on it!” he ended, his shoulders shaking slightly.

    “Don’t joke!” said Pam crossly.

    “I’m not, actually. There is a growing market for that sort of thing. Even the home and gardening shows over there have started using skinny Japanese mushrooms—in fact I saw one show that had a segment on how they’re grown. Uh—no, think that was on the trendies’ network, come to think of it: the one that has the subtitled foreign films and the European soccer matches and song contests. –Not apocryphal,” he added wryly, looking at her face. “No, well, skinny Japanese mushrooms, sushi, wheat grass drinks—!”

    “I’m not even gonna ask,” said Pam on a grim note. “Look, most of the custom will be local: will it be enough to keep the place going?”

    “Judging by these ads from your local posh mags that he’s appended, I’d say so, yes,” said Aidan seriously, turning over to the relevant appendix. “See?”

    Pam looked at them weakly. She never bought shiny mags and when Susan brought one home never bothered to look at the ads—well, the so-called articles were quite putrid enough, they screamed “quid pro quo”…

    “Cripes. Okay, the well-off segment’s being indoctrinated. –’Specially so as they can nip down to Taupo—or up, I suppose—and have their balance reset with massages, saunas, wraps, fully equipped gym, gourmet vital diets and classes in same.”

    “Yes,” agreed Aidan succinctly.

    There was a long silence.

    “Just paying this fully qualified staff he’s on about’ll take megabucks,” she said limply.

    “Mm.” Aidan smiled a little. “Well, I’d say that one motivation is to get his pet dietician and food biologist over here, wouldn’t you? I suppose neither of them’ll take a wage out of the place until it really takes off.”

    “Mm. Plant biochemistry, not food biology as such,” said Pam, clearing her throat.

    “I think it’s the same thing where vitality and inner balance are concerned! And she’ll certainly be able to help him analyse his puh-huh-humpkin wraps!” Aidan collapsed in hysterics.

    Pam smiled feebly: she was over that one. “He got it off a Californian website,” she said when he seemed to be running down.

    “Don’t start me off again!” he gasped.

    “Reading between the lines, I think they use the pumpkin to eke out the citrus: I think that one was in Orange County—”

    Aidan was off again.

    “Yeah,” said Pam limply. “Well, one of the New Zealand ones wraps them in green tea—”

    “Just don’t,” he said feebly, grabbing a clump of tissues from the box on the bedside cabinet and blowing his nose. He began looking through the proposal again, smiling. Pam just watched him silently. Finally he looked up and said: “It’s not at all bad, you know.”

    “No,” she agreed in considerable relief. “Um, does the possible site he describes sound like this dump to you?”

    “No, sounds like that dump further round, halfway to Outer Woop-Woop, where Libby and her sister were camping out,” said Aidan cheerfully. “A much sunnier location.”

    “Oh,” said Pam, going rather red.

    He looked at her anxiously. “Pam, it was a fling, thought you understood that? She is my type, not denying it. But it was over before we got together.”

    “Mm. Sorry. Sometimes it just comes all over me that she’s quite a bit younger than me.”

    “Uh—about six or seven years younger than us, I suppose,” said Aidan limply. Good grief, even the sanest women were paranoid when it came to age! Well, social brainwashing, yeah, but really!

    “Still young enough to have kids,” said Pam on a glum note.

    Aidan’s jaw dropped. Finally he managed to say: “Just, I suppose, with considerable risk of producing a Down’s Syndrome infant. Surely you don’t think that’s a consideration, with me?”

    “Is it?” croaked Pam, swallowing.

    “No, you silly cuckoo! Good grief, I’ve done all that—and just discovered I’ve got a grown son into the bargain! If you must know, I’m looking forward to seeing his kids!”

    “Really?” said Pam limply. “Me, too. I—well, I suppose it might be biologically possible, but I just couldn’t go through all that again.”

    “Nope, me neither. Never been able to understand why any bloke’d be up for another round of nappies and sleepless nights when he’s over forty. –One grasps that they’re demonstrating to the world they still can, but one would’ve thought the much younger second wife had already demonstrated that.”

    “Yeah.”

    “I admit I’m not sure exactly what I want, except that it includes you, but I am damn sure I don’t want to start a second family! I suppose I want to do something… productive. And absorbing. And very far from the rat race,” he ended, smiling at her.

    “Mm.” Pam swallowed hard. “Has it occurred that this proposal of David’s is intended, amongst other things, to provide you with just that?”

    “Yeah,” he admitted, grinning. “Not only that, either: intended to get his ageing dad off the steak, cream and butter, and onto a sensible modern vital diet!” He collapsed in hysterics again.

    Pam was rather flushed. She just waited the fit out. “I think it’s a bloody good idea,” she said grimly once he was blowing his nose.

    “Mm? Mm! –Give me that tray.” He took it off her and dumped it on the floor. “Shove over a bit.”

    Pam shoved over and he propped himself on the pillows beside her, stretching his legs out.

    “Which is the bloody good idea, Pam?” he said on a sly note. “Getting me onto a sensible diet, or employing me as chief cook and bottle-washer?”

    “I meant the sensible diet, as I think you bloody well know! Um, but the other does seem a good idea to me, Aidan,” she said cautiously. Was he gonna balk because he didn’t want the Easterbrooks telling him what to do? The old Aidan of their clerking days would have.

    “Don’t worry, darling, I’m not going to throw a hissy fit because the suggestion’s coming from David,” he said mildly. Not noticing her sagging jaw, he went on: “I’d like to see some credible market research and I’d like to get the feedback from Chaparra Homestead, but the idea certainly appeals, yes. I’d want to look seriously at real Japanese cuisine, I think. Well, famous for longevity and a slimming diet, the Japs, aren’t they? And I love sushi.”

    Judge Easterbrook winced. “Yeah. –Aidan,” she burst out, “what in God’s name was that, that you said?”

    “Eh?”

    “You said you weren’t gonna throw a—a something because it was David making a suggestion for you.”

    “Throw a hissy fit: no, of course not.”

    Pam just goggled at him.

    “Uh—oh! Well,” said Aidan, beginning to lose control of his mouth, “it’s not as bad as a dummy spit: that’s when one well-publicized television personality and/or politico leaps up and hurls himself bodily at another—”

    “What is it?” she cried.

    “Uh—can’t think of the Kiwi equivalent!” he admitted. “Well, it’s when one reacts adversely and emotionally, nay, temperamentally, with the concomitant verbal and sometimes physical display.”

    “‘Throw a wobbly,’ I suppose,” said Pam very limply indeed. “I can’t believe you said it.”

    “American or possibly Canadian in origin, I think. –I looked it up once. I like it. Graphic.”

    “Evidently. What was the other one?”

    “Oh, that’s genuine Astrayan as she is spoke, darling! A dummy spit, or to spit the dummy. Imagine a very cross baby in a temper tantrum.”

    Pam was. She nodded numbly.

    “Interesting, language, isn’t it?” he said, leaning his head back against the pillows and smiling at the ceiling.

    “Mm. Um, Aidan,” said Pam very cautiously indeed, “Andrew mentioned that you, um, write children’s books.”

    “Did he?” he said mildly. “Big-Mouth. When was this?”

    “Um, that evening you cooked that Italian lamb roast for us and him and Jayne. You were in the kitchen and we were chatting.”

    “Mm. Well, yes, I do—well, have done.”

    “Then why not go on with that?”

    “Ah… Not motivated enough? Used to do it as a relief from the legal crap. Always felt I never had enough time to devote to it.” He shrugged.

    “You’ve got stacks of time now! Why aren’t you doing it?” she cried.

    “Uh… Temperamentally we’re not very alike, I think, Pam,” he said slowly. “Doesn’t mean we’re not compatible, don’t get your knickers in a knot,” he added mildly, patting her thigh. “Well, I think I’m not doing it because I don’t need the relief from the legal crap and because there’s no urgency about it.” He shrugged. “Manic-depressive tendencies? Slightly bipolar? I dunno.”

    “Othello’s occupation’s gone, like I said,” said Pam on a grim note. “I think you’d better seriously consider cooking for David.”

    “Mm. Well, vital diet for him, keep on doing a bit of the other stuff for Livia and her mates? –Well, Hell, darling, I can’t do just minceur stuff, I’d go stir-crazy! There is a challenge in devising tasty and nutritious slimming meals, yes, but it’s a limited one!”

    “Now who’s getting their knickers in a knot?”

    “Yeah. Wouldn’t be impossible, though, would it? Well, if he buys that place further out for Taupo Harmonic Vitality, I’ll definitely make an offer on this place. Get on with ripping out the bloody tinted glass, that’d give Othello an occupation. Um, nice striped awnings over the windows instead?”

    “You could buy it anyway!” said Pam strongly.

    “Ah, but then do I want to settle down here all on my ownsome? Well, with the prospect of you coming down for the weekends, that’d be lovely, darling, but then there’s the whole week to fill…”

    “Aidan, you could get a really nice garden going—I’m sure Hugh and Bettany Throgmorton could give you lots of tips, not to say cuttings and stuff—and you could do the house up really nicely, and—and think about writing a cookbook!”

    “There are too many cookbooks on the market as it is. Um, well, I have thought of the other stuff. But do I want to start a garden if I’m not going to stay here?”

    “You’re arguing in circles,” warned Pam grimly.

    “Mm.” Aidan stared at the ceiling. Pam just stared at him in flushed and baffled annoyance.

    Finally he said in dreamy voice: “A harmonic vital cookbook might be interesting… A bit different. Wouldn’t want to give any secrets away, but— Mm. That CSIRO diet cookbook was a huge success, it’s made a fortune for the buggers.”

    Pam didn’t ask, she said just quickly: “Well, there you are!”

    “Mm…”

    Oh, help. It sort of began to penetrate, round about this point, that he wasn’t a self-motivator at all, was he? He’d always seemed so dynamic, back at Wal’s, but… Oh, heck. That rushing off to Sydney had been almost entirely reaction against his bloody father, hadn’t it? Probably he’d never have gone at all if bloody Sir Simon hadn’t rubbished the idea. And—well, he’d been young, energetic and athletic, of course he’d struck dumpy, naïve young Pam as dynamic—the blimming sports car alone would have done it! reflected Judge Easterbrook ruefully. But he wasn’t. Even his company law publications— Well, he was in the profession by that time, it was expected of him, and of course old Gordy Sieff had asked him to edit that first thing, hadn’t he? Yikes.

    “What are you scowling for?” asked Aidan mildly. “There’s no drastic hurry, is there?”

    That was probably what Othello had said, too, as he lounged round Venice slowly going bonkers. “Uh—no, I s’pose not.”—Reactive, not proactive, in the modern jargon, wasn’t it?—“Um, Aidan, I know David’ll want to talk to you about this himself, and actually I’m not supposed to bring it up, but would you be prepared to invest in the idea?”

    “Mm, of course,” he said lightly.

    “No, seriously. Have you got enough capital to buy a house for yourself—well, this place or another—and invest in his Harmonic Vitality thing as well? I mean, half the value of your house in Sydney must’ve had to go to Paulette, mustn’t it? And if you’re not keeping anything from your father’s estate, except the cars…”

    “I’m making use of the cars, put it like that. Recycling, if you like.”

    “Mm. I’m bloody sure the McLintocks’ll want a fortune for this place,” she gulped. “I mean, real estate in Auckland’s gone through the roof since you left, and this area’s just about as bad.”

    “It can’t possibly be as bad as Sydney, where the sort of place one would consider isn't available for less than five mill’,” he said drily. “And for bitches like Paulette, ten or so.”

    “That’s disgusting,” croaked Pam.

    “Yes.”

    “Well, uh, these places don’t go for that sort of figure, but, uh, Livia thinks they could get two million for it. It’s a big section, Aidan.”

    “Mm-hm. I’ve got pots, don’t worry. Paulette got the house, which meant I didn’t have to sell all my shares, and they’ve galloped ahead since. And I sold my flat for twice what I paid for it.” He shrugged. “Trendy dump. I’d only added a few minor improvements like a built-in refrigerated cupboard misnamed a wine cellar. Oh, the buyer wanted the Whiteley, so I got rid of that, too. It was a mistake: liked its overall effect, bought it, got it home and then began to see its flaws. Er—Australian painter, darling, Modern. –Ish. Somewhat stylised figure studies, opera houses, so forth. Hugely collectible, especially since his death. Think he painted when he was drunk or high or both: hard to see what else could account for the unevenness and frequent downright sloppiness. It sometimes came off, more often didn’t. Terrifically prolific in things like prints, drawings, so forth, some good, some bad.”

    “What was yours?” said Pam faintly.

    “Big oil painting. Um—about two metres square? Something like that. Figure of a woman—he was into women, surprisingly enough in this day and age. As I say, I began to see its flaws. Anyway, got a bloody good price for it, the chap collects in order to resell.”

    Pam looked at him dubiously. “Don’t you?”

    “No.”

    “Oh, good! I mean, not that I’m into art, I’m not in that income bracket, but—”

    Aidan squeezed her thigh. “Mm. Don’t like them what puts the cash nexus first, last and sideways; you never did. Still got that Don Binney print?”

    Pam went very red. “Yes. I still like it,” she said in a strangled voice, sticking her chin out.

    “Good,” he said mildly.

    She swallowed. “Um, actually—funny coincidence department—I was chatting about art to Polly Carrano at that barbecue of Livia’s, and it turns out Sir Jake’s got the original. They used to have it at their bach, talking of income brackets, but he’s changed the décor, gone all minimalist in the main room.”

    “Want me to buy it off him, darling?” he said, smiling at her.

    Pam turned scarlet. “No! I only mentioned it because it was a coincidence!” she choked. “And—and it shows that someone else likes it!”

    “I never disliked it.”

    “Aidan, you said it was semi-representational poster art and though the man had a sense of line his handling of paint was amateurish and he’d do better to design greeting cards!”

    “Shit, did I? Well, I was an up-myself little jerk in those days. Why in God’s name did you bother to retain it?”

    “It stuck,” said Pam lamely. “I suppose it rankled. And then, I was under the impression that you were an expert. It didn’t make me change my mind about my Don Binney, though.”

    “Thank God for that,” said Aidan feebly. “Well, uh, don’t take my word for anything in future.”

    “I won’t: I’m not twenty-one any more,” replied Pam drily.

    Oh, yeah: it all came back to him. She’d bought the print for herself when she turned twenty-one—with some cash her dad had given her, was that it? In her lunch-hour; then she’d shown it all round the office. The typists had thought it was horrid and modern and had been unable to hide the fact, Andrew had praised it kindly—though Aidan had been able to see perfectly well that he didn’t like it, either: his taste ran to fluffy Renoirs of pale pink nudes and fluffy Monets of pale pink gardens—and Wal had said: “Oh, yeah: Don Binney. Always liked that one.” Which, looking back, was an indication that he must have seen Jake’s original! And after Aidan had done his best to blight the poor girl he’d called him into his office, said: “Shut that bloody door,” and when he’d done so said: “Do us a favour, Aidan, and spare the rest of us your flaming over-educated aesthetic perceptions, wouldja? However correct in this instance they might happen to be. –That’s it, shove off. And don’t let me hear you putting that poor girl down again if ya wanna keep ya job!”

    “What’s up?” said Pam, looking at his face.

    “Nothing,” said Aidan with a sigh. “I shall never be as decent a human being as Wal Briggs if I live to be as old as Methuselah!”

    “What brought that on?” she croaked.

    “Uh—well, actually, the memory of the strip he tore off after I’d done my best to blight your budding aesthetic perceptions, Pam,” he said, pulling an awful face. And not mentioning that in fact old Wal had evidently shared his opinion of the artist!

    “Cripes, did he?”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “Aidan, he’s more than twenty years older than us, he’d have been well into his forties by then, and he’d lived a pretty varied life, what with bumming around the world on a cargo ship and all those jobs he did to put himself through his degree. He’d learned tolerance, I suppose. We were just naïve kids.”

    “Uh-huh.” He took her hand tightly, and sighed.

    After some time Pam ventured: “Well, are you sure you can swing it, then?”

    “Mm? Of course: dare say Sir Jake’ll want the going rate, but New Zealand art doesn’t go for anything like the prices the Aussie stuff—”

    “Not the painting! Weren’t you listening?” she cried, turning puce.

    “Yes, but that’s the sort of veto a bloke ignores when it’s the woman he loves in question, cuckoo.”

    Pam was reduced to a gulp and a lame: “Oh.”

    “Anyway, if not the painting, then what?” said Aidan with a twinkle in his eyes.

    “Investing in David’s bloody health farm,” she said limply.

    “Oh! Yes, of course.”

    “Aidan, he might go broke and you’d lose the lot.”

    “Then you’ll have to support me in me old age, me Lud.”

    To his stunned astonishment she replied seriously: “I’ve got super, of course, and you’d be eligible for the old age pension: you were born here; and anyway I think it’s the same for Australian citizens, there’s a reciprocal agreement, isn’t there?”

    “Pam, I’ve got pots! A couple of mill’ invested in David’s scheme will not break the bank, even if he does lose the lot!” he said loudly.

    Pam gulped again. “I see,” she croaked.

    “Didn’t it occur while you were thoroughly putting me down about negative gearing at that barbie of Livia’s that I knew a fair bit about the subject because I’d been doing it?”

    “Um, no, thought it was academic.”

    Aidan went into a painful spluttering fit.

    “All right, no discussion about money is ever academic to you and the rest of the plutocrats, I’ll remember that!” she said loudly and crossly.

    “Yeah, do,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Don’t think it was academic to that chap in the Versace shirt, either.”

    “Shut up.”

    He squeezed her hand, smiling, but did shut up.

    After quite some time Pam said gruffly: “Um, ta.”

    “What for?”

    “Agreeing to invest in David’s scheme.”

    “He is my son,” said Aidan mildly. “Oh, Christ, don’t bawl! Pam, stop it, this is silly!” He put his arm round her sobbing form. Was he gonna have to tell her it was her age? “Look, I probably won’t even have to invest in it: the Chaparra Homestead people may realise it’s a very viable bandwaggon and leap on it! And if it comes right down to the wire—which it won’t—I’ve got super, too!”

    “Yes,” said Pam soggily. “Sorry. Not that. It’s just that you wanted to.” She sniffed juicily. “—Invest.”

    “It’s only money,” said Aidan feebly.

    “Not to them that haven’t got it, you flaming plutocrat. Pass me that box of tissues,” she said soggily. She blew her nose hard. “Sorry,” she repeated. “Never used to be a bawler. Must be the flaming menopause.”

    Heroically Aidan refrained from agreeing with her. “Listen: I’m here, I want to be part of his life as well as yours, and I’m not going away. Got it?”

    “Mm.” She blew her nose again. “Aidan, why did you leave Sydney? I mean, what precipitated it? Um, not if you don’t wanna tell me!” she said quickly as he frowned.

    “It’s not that I don’t want to. Well, there was Mark Hewitt’s death—one of the partners. Fifty-two. Lung cancer. Big chill. Made me rethink my priorities. But I’d been rethinking them in any case. I’d discovered—well, not something illegal, they’re too fly for that. Something immoral, let’s say, that a ring of Sydney legal eagles and stockbrokers are involved in. Uh—I don’t think I’d better tell you the details, though as I say it isn’t illegal, but I will just make the point that of course many law firms have hundreds of millions of their clients’ money to invest. –Not kickbacks, not commissions, nothing that simple,” he said as she opened her mouth. “It wasn’t just the fact that they were doing it, it was the fact that they were so bloody pleased with themselves over it!”

    “I see,” said Pam slowly. “How did you find out?”

    Aidan looked wry. “I’m no financial whizz. The bastards poured Cognac into me at the fucking club and invited me to join them.”

    “Jesus!”

    “I’m glad to say that that was their reaction when I gave them my unvarnished opinion of them,” he said drily. “I spent months trying to find a loophole in their bloody scheme, but there’s no way they can end up in clink unless the law is actually changed. The clients are doing bloody well out of it, can’t get them from that angle— Oh, well. They tried giving me the cold shoulder for several months, then a quorum of them cornered me and suggested I forget all about it and we’d all let bygones be bygones, so I told them that on the contrary, I’d remember every disgusting syllable of it whenever I set eyes on one of their fat, self-satisfied faces and they could look forward to my memoirs in fifteen years or so, and walked out on them. After which I was well and truly persona non grata.”

    Pam was very flushed. “Good on ya!” she said fiercely.

    He gave her a bit of a hug. “Thanks. I’m not completely noble: I did realise, as the cold-shouldering went on, that I’d shot myself in the foot, career-wise, and it was pointless to stay on. Though I suppose I could have just buried myself in the work itself, forgotten about ambition… No, well, the disgust was a bloody strong factor, I’ll admit it. And by that time I was bloody bored with company law. Well—felt I’d drained it dry?” He made a wry face.

    “Yes.”

    “Judging isn’t like that, mm?” he said lightly.

    “I suppose it could be, but so far I haven’t burnt out,” replied Pam seriously. “I haven’t had any particularly riveting cases, but they all have their points. Don’t get many knotty points of law, of course, but the other week—” She told him all about the case. Aidan listened with a smile in his eyes. He hadn’t really expected Pam not to be involved with her subject, she was that sort of person.

    “Not thinking of taking early retirement, me Lud?” he asked mildly, having expressed due appreciation of her handling of the point of law.

    “No; only sometimes when my head gets very hot at night,” said Pam with a sigh. “Don’t suggest HRT, thanks, a hot head and the flushes and night sweats are nothing compared to cancer. And it’s normal, for Pete’s sake!”

    “Mm,” he said, squeezing her. “Well, any night you fancy an ice pack on your head, just sing out.”

    “I hope you don’t think that’s a joke.”

    Uh—Christ. Poor lamb. “So, um, gonna carry on until you’re sixty-five?”

    “Dunno. Judges seem to get crusty after sixty, don’t they? Like the port!” she said with a sudden giggle. “But they’re nearly all men. To tell you the truth I don’t really approve of elderly judges and elderly politicians running the country for the rest. Think I’d rather give it away at sixty, make way for a younger person.”

    Mm. Well, they’d both be fifty this year. Ten years commuting between Taupo and Auckland? Ugh. If only the bloody train came this way! Um, figure out a way to get her over to the track? Um, drive her up to Taumaranui?

    “Um, I don’t think I could not work, Aidan,” said Pam awkwardly, looking at his face,

    “Eh? Hell, no, darling, wasn’t thinking that! Just wondering how to manage, if I’m down here and you’re up there. Well, um… Look, I don’t think David’s enterprise’d really need me as chief cook and bottle-washer: I could spend the week with you, then we drive down together for the weekend, I lend a hand with David’s stuff or do a bit of cooking for Livia and her pals, and we drive back together nice and slowly on the Sunday evening. And perhaps investigate the trains, mm? Leave the car at Taumaranui?”

    “I think the train gets there in the middle of the night...” Pam gnawed on her lip. “Aidan, I think you’d be bored to death all week, stuck in the flat. Unless you want to write another law tome: you could use the univ—”

    “Perish the thought!”

    That was pretty much what she’d thought. “No. You’re rushing off at a tangent,” she said firmly. “You’re here now, you need to make a go of it, not dissipate your energies.”

    “But I—”

    “Shut up, Aidan. If this is gonna be any sort of a relationship, you’ll have to learn to give me a turn to point my point of view.”

    “Yeah. Sorry,” he said, swallowing. “Go on.”

    “Reading between the lines, what David seems to be envisaging is that you’d be the guiding hand in the Harmonic Vitality kitchen, cuisine-wise, as well as setting up the cookery classes.”

    “I didn’t read it like th—”

    “Am I allowed to speak or not?”

    “Mm. Sorry,” he muttered.

    “Look at it like a proper school of cuisine, Aidan. You’d be the head of department, see? Set the curriculum, see the assistants keep on the right track and teach the advanced classes yourself. –Look at the proposed curriculum.”

    “Pam, he’s only calling it a curriculum because he’s in tertiary educa—”

    Pam had grabbed the proposal and found the relevant page. She stabbed her finger at it.

    “—himself,” finished Aidan lamely. He read it over dubiously.

    “Well?” she demanded.

    “Um, maybe he is envisaging a properly run school… I don’t know enough about dietetics,” he muttered.

    “No, but you can learn.”

    “Pam, that’s a field where fashions change like the wind!”

    “Or the wind changes like the fashions: mm,” replied Judge Easterbrook drily. “Never mind that, you’re capable of keeping on top of it. You’re used to keeping up with your subject. There’s plenty here to keep you busy all week, and then in the weekends you’d be doing some of the actual cooking, of course, and taking the weekend cookery classes.”

    “And in short, we wouldn’t manage to have a moment to ourselves!” he cried crossly.

    “Rubbish. In any case I usually have some reading to do in the weekends.”

    The bulging briefcase had rather suggested that, yes. Aidan sighed. “Right.”

    “I think we can work it out on that basis. But I don’t think we can work it out if you haven’t got enough to keep you busy all week,” said Pam firmly. “And you won’t be alone, of course: you’ll be working with David and doubtless his Patty, as well. And as soon as Aprylle’s done her course she’ll want to be in it boots and all, naturally.”

    He brightened visibly, and began to read bits of the proposal out to her and suggest things, so she left it at that for the time being. Phew! And she’d thought, in her muddled little feminine way, that once he’d come riding over the Tasman on his white charger and swept her up before him it’d be all sweet music and happy ever after! What a dill!

    After a bit he got a writing pad out of the beside cabinet and began to make notes. Pam went and had a shower. He was still absorbed when she came back.

    “I’ll just take a look at the garden.”

    “Mm-hm. Uh—why?” he said, looking up.

    “Used to be quite keen on raising a few herbs, back in the long ago. Even had a vege garden when the kids were little. Uh—well, do you think you can stand living here?”

    “Mm. I’d quite like to stay next to Wal.”

    Of course he would, yes: whether he needed some sort of father figure in his life, or just someone who was capable of gingering him up a bit— Wal and her both, yeah! Pam went out into the garden, smiling a little.

Next chapter:

https://summerseason-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/08/long-weekend.html