Sage Counsel

11

Sage Counsel

    Jan looked dazedly at the gushing Joan Hutchins. She looked dazedly at the bland faces of Livia Briggs and Bettany Throgmorton. What? Even though this was the twenty-first century there could hardly be two tall, dark handsome characters in their forties called Aidan round these here parts! Not and food snobs as well. Livia took another piece of scone with homemade strawberry jam and organic cream and nodded blandly over it. Bettany just smiled and nodded blandly. Okay, the minute the Joan female pushed off she was gonna kill the pair of them!

    The Joan female did push off, at long last—bridge: evidently types like her came down to just about the most laid-back dump in the country in order to play bridge with the types they saw every week in the Big Smoke, in the intervals of afternoon tea at Taupo Shores Ecolodge—and Jan was able to say: “Tell me that wonderful chef that she was on about wasn’t that Aidan Vine type that fancies Libby and I’ll strangle the pair of you!”

    “Of course it was, darling,” replied Livia mildly.

    “Then how the Hell did the two of you manage to sit there poker-face?” she demanded heatedly.

    “We are both actresses, Jan,” Bettany reminded her, breaking down and grinning. “It was funny, wasn’t it?”

    “Funny!” Words failed Jan.

    “Darling,” said Livia uneasily, “it’s just a bit of fun—well, he was restless and at a loose end anyway, and with his father dying—and, well, it’s reaction, isn’t it?”

    “Yes. He’ll play at catering for a while, and then give it away,” added Bettany.

    “Of course,” agreed Livia. “I’m sure he isn’t serious about it; it’s just another aspect of mid-life crisis, isn’t it?”

    Jan drew a deep breath. “I’m sure he isn’t serious about it, too! Just tell me this: do either of you know if he’s given Libby the idea he is serious about it?”

    Livia licked her lips. “Well, um, Joan did say he had a nice waitress—it sounded like Libby.”

    “Of course it was Libby: she spent the entire evening with him and we thought it was a date!” cried Jan loudly.

    “Oh, help, I see what you mean!” gulped Bettany.

    Livia did, too, judging by the expression on her face, actress or not. She managed to croak: “Jan, dear, I’m sure Libby won’t imagine he wants to settle down here and run a home-catering business,” but as it was only too glaringly apparent that she didn’t believe a syllable of it herself, Jan wasn’t precisely comforted.

    She got up and, advising them coldly not to ask her to join them next time they had the Joan female in tow, retreated to the kitchen. Where she wasn’t precisely comforted, either, by Janet’s telling her smugly she wasn’t needed and she and Jayne had everything under control.

    In her wake the two former actresses exchanged guilty looks and Livia admitted: “I suppose I shouldn’t have encouraged him. –Well, no, I didn’t precisely encourage him: he does strike one forcibly as the type that’ll do the opposite of what a woman advises, doesn’t he?”—Bettany nodded her mop of thick black curls feelingly.—“Yes, quite. But I told Joan,” admitted Livia, swallowing, “exactly what I thought she’d need to know in order to, um, push the right buttons. Oh, Lor’.”

    “Your friend was in Graceland again the other day,” said Coral Kenny brightly. “The nice man, who bought the four tiki mugs.”

    Jayne looked at her dazedly. Could she mean Andrew Barker? This wasn’t the right shop, though she knew they were both Coral’s, and she hadn’t even been there that time he’d bought the mugs!

    “Janelle said she recommended it. Well, it’s nice enough,” allowed Coral.

    She must mean Andrew. Jayne was now very pink. “Um, yuh-yes, we had a nice afternoon tea there,” she stuttered.

    “Yes, Grace Hutton said you all seemed to be enjoying yourselves. She said there were two other ladies with him the other day,” said Coral on an airy note.

    Jayne was now a glowing puce. “Um, they’ve got Aidan’s sister and her husband and a cousin staying with them.”

    Coral looked dry. “If you say so, dear. Now, are these pendants what you’re looking for?’

    Jayne was looking for something special for Tamsin: it wasn’t her birthday until September but if she found something really nice she’d put it away until then. She might not have said it otherwise but since it was for Tamsin she replied: “Not really, I’m afraid, Coral. I was hoping to find something, um, not quite so mass-produced.”

    Casually Coral turned one paua shell pendant up to display the back. “Sterling silver,” she noted casually.

    “Yes, but Tamsin likes, um, a more natural look!” said Jayne desperately.

    “She’ll regret it later if you give her junk jewellery,” said Coral kindly.

    “Mm, but you can’t tell them, at that age!”

    “No,” she said heavily. “Neil’s just as bad. His father tried to give him those onyx cufflinks his father left him for his twenty-first. Mind you, we only kept hold of them by the grace of God: those sisters of his got down on everything decent when his father died, and he just let them!”

    Jayne had had the true story from Dad, so she ignored the more controversial aspects of this speech and replied nicely: “I’m sure he appreciates them now, Coral: he was wearing them the other day when he took us to dinner at a nice hotel in Rotorua.”

    “There you are, you see? Three years down the track and he’s thanking his lucky stars he’s got them! Everyone needs something nice!”

    “Mm. Um, well, maybe a bigger one?” she said weakly.

    Happily Coral produced her largest, shiniest, most polished-within-an-inch-of-their-lives paua shell pendants.

    “Um, no,” said Jayne lamely. “They’re very nice but I honestly don’t think she’d like them.”

    “A lot of the nice American ladies buy greenstone,” said Coral.

    There was a large notice that said: “Please Ask about our GREENSTONE (New Zealand Jade)”, but Jayne had seen the stuff all over the Rotorua-Taupo area and so she knew that most of it wasn’t New Zealand jade, it was plastic. The minute you picked it up you could tell from the weight and the feel. “Um, I don’t think so, thanks.”

    “Just hang on.” Coral went through to the back. Jayne looked limply at the awful green plastic jewellery under the counter—it was a horrid colour, too, too much lime in it—and wondered if she was ever going to get away and what, exactly, had gone on at Graceland between Andrew and that awful cousin of Aidan’s that had been with them when they’d all had dinner at the ecolodge that time.

    Coral came back with a large box—no, a drawer, it had a handle on the front. Inside it were lots of containers which Jayne recognised dazedly as proper jewellery cases. She began opening them, in a very casual manner.

    “Ooh!” gasped Jayne. “Those are beautiful!”

    “Yes. Very fine quality, though the experts say,” said Coral lightly, picking the long, pale green drop-earrings up, “that the very dark green is rarer.”

    “Oh, no, these are wonderful! Translucent!” she gasped.

    “Yes, aren’t they?” agreed Coral, holding them in the light. “Try them on, Jayne, see what they look like on.” She handed them to her and suggestively repositioned the mirror that stood on the counter next to a horrid display of cheap key rings and small earrings made of minute chips of paua shell set in black glue.

    The light was coming in through the glass door and the shop windows behind her and there was only one word for how the long green pendants looked. “Beautiful,” said Jayne with a deep sigh. “I’m sure she’ll love them. I’ll take them, Coral: thank you very much.”

    Not blinking at being thanked for selling her the most expensive pair of earrings in the shop, Coral settled them in their white satin-lined box, noting casually that the setting was gold, of course. She was perfectly genuine: the earrings were, indeed, real New Zealand jade. She did have some in the darker shade but they were all smaller; she’d found that the nice American ladies preferred the pale jadeite that was about the colour of a Granny Smith.

    “Of course the Maoris didn’t wear earrings as we know them,” she said chattily as she wrapped the box. “I have seen an old picture in a magazine of a Maori lady wearing a greenstone earring, almost the exact same colour as these. But it was about this long,”—she held her finger and thumb about ten centimetres apart: Jayne gaped at her—“and about as thick as my forefinger. Just the one, it looked striking on her. I think she might’ve been a Maori princess.”

   “It sounds fabulous,” she said dazedly.

    Coral gave a very slight sniff. “If you like that sort of thing. That second wife of your dad’s, she was into native jewellery and stuff. I was only a teenager back then, but I remember her quite well. That look was popular—Indian muslins and those scruffy-looking Afghan coats: you know—but I wouldn’t of said she got away with it.” She gave Jayne an artless look. “About 1974 when she took off, wasn’t it? This kid of hers can’t be Pete’s, if you ask me.”

    Far from asking her, Jayne was simply gaping at her.

    This time Coral’s sniff was distinctly audible. “Might be anyone’s, according to what I saw of her,” she elaborated. “And I never heard that she tried to get maintenance out of him. Is the daughter after something, Jayne?”

    “No, I think that she just, um, wants to find her father,” faltered Jayne. “She’s an American and they seem to be quite well off: Namrita’s second husband’s a professor.”

    “Glad to hear it. Though what good it’ll do her to get to know him beats me! You hear a lot about people trying to track down their natural parents these days, don’t you? I can’t remember anybody bothering back when I was a kid.”

    “They say it’s psychological,” said Jayne faintly. “It’s hard to imagine what it would be like, not to know who your real parents were…”

    “I dare say.” She put the wrapped parcel in one of the white plastic shopping bags printed with a map of New Zealand and the words “Kenny’s Souvenirs” and told her the price.

    Jayne just smiled and handed over her Visa card.

    Coral didn’t allow her relief to show. Not only with regard to the purchase, but with regard to Neil’s girlfriend’s mum’s income bracket. “New Zealand dollars, of course,” she said casually as the transaction was concluded.

    “Yes; it’s less in Australian dollars,” agreed Jayne sunnily.

    No, it wasn’t, that was precisely what the rate of exchange was all about! However, all the overseas tourists said it. Coral just smiled and nodded, and let herself be thanked fervently again.

    After the gloating had worn off, however, she frowned and, coming out from behind her counter, went over to the window and, looking blankly past the display of fake Maori cloaks, fake Maori spears and model canoes that tended to sink, said slowly to herself: “I’d better have a word with Neil… And his bloody father, I suppose!”

    Libby and Jayne had had their breakfast and were all set to take off for Taupo Shores Ecolodge in the MerriAndi. As usual there was no sign of Leanne. Libby would just have gone but the kind-hearted Jayne went to see if she was awake yet and wanted a lift. She reappeared in a couple of minutes, very agitated.

    “Libby, there’s something wrong with the cistern in Leanne’s bathroom, it won’t stop flushing! Didn’t Dad say it was tank water?” she gasped.

    “Um, he said ours was, in the A-frame; I dunno about the house.”

    “We’d better turn it off in case!” she gasped.

    “Yes. Did you try the tap down the side of the toilet?”

    “Yes, but it’s stuck!”

    “We’d better ring Dad. It’s her bathroom so we’ll use her mobile phone,” said Libby on a dry note. The McLeod sisters hadn’t admitted as much to each other in so many words, but neither of them could stand Leanne Gibson. Libby in fact in a jaundiced moment had compared her to her disfavour with Mrs Lucille Polaski, though, true, that had been on a evening on which, with all the ecolodge guests eating in and a party of eight Hamilton foodies booked in, Leanne had elected to dine in state in the dining-room with Norm Fitzpatrick. He, the ute and the cross-country bike were, apparently, still around, though not still kipping free in the bunkhouse.

    Jayne looked guilty but nodded agreement and they went inside and rang Pete.

    “Have ya tried the tap— Yeah. Well, look for the outside tap and see if ya can turn the water off altogether, love. It is reticulated, but there’s no sense in wasting it. Uh—heck. Thing is, I said I’d do the minibus trip over to Rotorua today: poor old Vern’s in dock with a bee-sting on his arm: pointed at one too many hunks of native flora the other day. Lump on ’is forearm the size of a golf ball, throbbing like buggery, and Mrs won’t let ’im drive.”

    “I should think not!” agreed Libby strongly.

    Pete smiled a little. God knew why, but Libby had really taken a shine to the wizened Vern Reilly. “No, well, that’s me out for the plumbing until this evening. Don’t suggest Sean: he’s already buggered up the cistern in their new bathroom. Anyway, he’s slated to take fourteen of ’em down the ten-mile track. Six of ours and eight from Fern Gully, to be precise: they’ve run out of stuff for them do, just like me and Jan said they were gonna. Given that that fake rock wall they were thinking of hasn’t eventuated: the head honcho from London said they didn’t want anything that artificial. Presumably bloody ex-army obstacle courses with nets and radiata pine logs and old tyres don’t count,” he added drily.

    “Stick to the point, Dad,” said Libby calmly.

    Pete grinned. She sounded just like Jan! Well, Jan before she’d got to the bellowing stage—yeah. “Just putting you fully in the picture. It’s probably something simple, but the thing is, ya don’t wanna muck round with a cistern if ya don’t know what ya doing.”

    “No,” said Libby with a shudder. “They’re awfully complicated!”

    “Yeah. Leave it with me, lovey, I’ll jack someone up. Leanne coming over with you, is she?”

    “No, she’s gonna stay here and sunbake and then she’s going out with a man called Mike Short. Um, I think he’s something to do with boats.”

    Something to do with boats and not short of a few bob—yeah. “That was quick,” said Pete limply. “Uh—owns a boat hire business, takes the tourists on launch trips round the lake, fishing trips, that sorta stuff. Really successful.”

    “I knew I’d heard his name before: Bob sometimes works for him, doesn’t he?”

    Pete had been under the impression that Bob had blotted his copybook with her, whether it was just over the goats or because she hadn’t taken too kindly to him getting off with that ginger-haired Canadian dame he wasn’t sure, so to hear her mention his name just casually like this was very promising. He brightened. “Yeah, that’s right! Well, leave it with me!”

    Half an hour later the MerriAndi drew in to the Taupo Shores landing stage to a view of a shabby figure in elderly jeans and a droopy canvas hat sitting waiting for them. It got up, unfolding a considerable length of leg that certainly wasn’t Pete’s, and came to take the bow rope off Jayne. “Gimme that.”

    “Hullo, Bob!” replied Jayne, beaming at him. “How are you today?”

    “Okay,” he admitted, securing the boat. He held his hand out to her and Jayne alighted gracefully, smiling.

    “Tamsin said they’re going to start on the far end of the lake today, is that right, Bob?”

    “Uh—yeah. The Turangi end. Don’t ask me why: I was under the impression ’e was gonna work ’is way down. –Pete said your cistern’s running.”

    “Yes—well, the one in Leanne’s bathroom, in the house.”

    “Yes. Where is Dad?” asked Libby with a frown.

    “Gone to Rotorua. He said you could run me over.”

    “Where to?” she replied blankly.

    “The house, of course. Fix the cistern for ya.”

    “That’s very kind of you, Bob!” said Jayne quickly. “Neil and Tamsin have got your launch, haven’t they? Yes, you take him over, Libby: Jan and I’ll cope.”

    “Cope better without me, you mean,” said Libby drily. “I hope Dad said we’ll pay you, Bob.”

    Bob went very red. “Don’t be mad,” he said hoarsely.

    “Nonsense, Bob, of course we can’t let you do it for nothing!” cried Jayne warmly. “I know the children haven’t realised it, but Dad said you usually take the tourists on lots of launch trips over the summer: you must be making quite a big economic sacrifice, letting Neil have the launch!”

    “Um, not really.”

    “You are, you said so yourself!” said Libby crossly.

    Bob was very red again. “I might of mentioned it but it’s not a flaming sacrifice.”

    “Not when it’s your son, of course,” said Jayne with her lovely smile. “But in essence, I mean. Now, last time we had to have a plumber at home it cost eighty dollars an hour—”

    “Eh? Balls!” said Bob loudly.

    “Yes: all the tradesmen charge that sort of price these days,” she said serenely.

    “Ya not paying me eighty dollars an hour to fix a flaming cistern, Jayne!” he said loudly.

    “There is an alternative,” put in Libby drily.

    “What?” replied the unsuspecting Jayne.

    “A miracle may occur and Leanne’ll offer to cough up her share, in which case we’ll each pay him a third of eighty dollars.”

    Jayne had choked and put her hand over her mouth. “Ya won’t,” said Bob on a weak note. “It’s only a cistern, and whaddelse do you imagine I’d be doing today?”

    Jayne recovered herself. “Working for Taupo Organic Produce, and don’t argue,” she replied, serene but firm.

    “That’s true,” agreed Libby. “But we’ll come down to seventy-five, if you insist.”

    “I can afford it,” Jayne assured him.

    Bob knew that. He had the feeling that most of ruddy Taupo knew it. Certainly bloody Coral did: she’d rung him and harangued him only the other night. Neil being onto a good thing and not to let a girl with a well-off mother slip through his fingers had been the gist, so he’d hung up on the mercenary cow.

    “Seventy-five, then,” he growled. “And ta.”

    “You haven’t done it yet,” noted Libby drily. “Have you got your tools?”

    Bob picked up his bag. “Yeah.”

    “We’ll see you later, then,” said Jayne, awarding him the smile again.

    “Yeah. So long,” he agreed, casting off and hopping aboard. “Want me to take ’er?” he said without hope to Libby.

    Sure enough, she replied: “No,” and gunned the engine. Bob sank onto the fancy red-edged white upholstery, telling himself glumly that she was still wild with him and he was a complete mug.

    After quite some time he ventured: “She always like that?”

    “If you mean Jayne, she is always scrupulously fair, yes,” replied Jayne’s sister grimly.

    “Um, yeah. Um, Pete reckoned the husband, um, walked all over her.”

    “He did, he was the Little Hitler type.”

    “Yeah. I’d of said she could stick up for herself,” he ventured dubiously.

    Libby sighed. “She wasn’t sticking up for herself, you idiot: she was sticking up for you!”

    “Aw,” said Bob numbly. “Yeah. See whatcha mean.”

    “But she has got plenty of money,” she said kindly.

    “Um, yeah,” he croaked.

    They forged on. There was a breeze and the lake had a slight chop but nothing to worry about.

    “Handles well,” he ventured after quite some time.

    “Mm.”

    More water fled beneath their bows. “Um, heard you were helping that Sydney lawyer type with his catering stuff,” he ventured.

    That meant Dad had been shooting off his big mouth about it. “Yes. So what?” replied Libby pugnaciously.

    Bob licked his lips. “Um, nothing, Libby. Um, well, I wouldn’t think he’s gonna take it up seriously, ya know.”

    “Why shouldn’t he? He’s building up quite a client base and he’s thinking of buying the house off the McLintocks and getting a really nice garden in, so as he can use his own garden-fresh produce.”

    Bob had seen the bloke precisely twice. Once when he’d rolled up in his bloody Beamer to collect Libby round about the time he was due to milk the goats: when he’d realised what was happening out there on the sweep he’d lurked in the shelter of the garage until the coast was clear, but as the bloke didn’t bother to lower his voice he’d copped an earful of what he was saying, which involved the quality of the lamb available locally and the unlikelihood of the people he was due to feed on it recognising it was too fatty and too sheepy and in fact, hogget dressed as lamb. She’d laughed, which had gone over real good: he’d called her “darling” five times in the space of one sentence after that. The second time had been over at Taupo Organic Produce and Vine and Hugh and Bettany Throgmorton had been talking about artichokes and what old Hugh had once eaten in Greece and what poncy Vine had once eaten in Italy, and up theirs. What sort of eating could there possibly be on a bloody thistle? Bob had dumped his load of freshly-picked tomatoes and slunk off unobtrusively in case the Throgmortons, who were really decent types, might of felt like introducing him.

    “Um… Ya see quite a lot of that sort of thing, living in a tourist town like Taupo,” he said uneasily. “People on holiday, out of their usual rut, they often get carried away. Um, well, not only by, um, schemes, often it’s someone they meet, but it’s the same type of thing. They think it’s gonna stick and it doesn’t. Once they get back to their, um, routine, to their ordinary life, I mean, they realise it was just a kinda… pipe dream,” he finished gloomily.

    “I can see you mean well, Bob, but Aidan is genuinely fed up with the law, and fed up with his life in Sydney.”

    She sounded just like her sister: being kind to him. Sort of thing that nice ladies like Jayne did automatically, ’cos they wouldn’t have dreamed of being nasty to a bloke that just did odd jobs and was a weird mate of their old dad’s. Oddly enough Bob didn’t mind it in Jayne but he didn’t in the least want it from Libby.

    “Don’t fucking patronise me!” he said angrily before he could stop himself.

    “I—I wasn’t!” she stuttered. “I’m sorry if it—it came out that way! I just—I was just telling you the truth as I see it.”

    “You told me I meant well,” he said sourly.

    “Um, did I? Um, well, didn’t you?” said Libby limply.

    “No, I didn’t fucking mean well, Libby, I was trying to make ya see that if ya get yourself involved in a stupid holiday romance with a rich bloke like him that can only see the whole of Taupo as a joke, you’re on course to get hurt when it turns out he’s not serious and it’s only a holiday fling to him!”

    Libby took a deep breath and managed not to shout. “It may well be a holiday romance but the point I was trying to make was that he’s serious about giving up the law. The two things aren’t the same.”

    “They are. Different aspects of the same thing. He’ll go back to his real life and he won’t be able to imagine what on earth he was on about!”

    She swallowed. “I see what you mean: you mean it’s like a shipboard romance, don’t you? Well, we are both on holiday. And like I say, I think he is serious about giving up the law, though maybe it won’t turn out to be catering he does in the end. I think you’re letting your own, um, experiences prejudice you, aren’t you?”

    “Who the Hell’s been shooting off their mouths to you?” replied Bob angrily. “Bloody Pete?”

    “Um, no, actually Jan mentioned a lady from Wellington. –She was very sympathetic!” she added quickly.

    “Yeah, well, all right, I made the mistake of taking the bitch seriously. That doesn’t mean I’m necessarily wrong about Vine.”

    “Well, I’m not taking him seriously on a personal level, and on a non-personal level, it’s him that’s got all interested in this catering idea, not me,” said Libby lightly.

    “Look, why have ya got it in for me?” demanded Bob in a shaking voice.

    “What?” she said numbly.

    “That was a flaming nice-lady brush-off if ever I heard one! What have I done?”

    “Nothing,” said Libby lamely, trying to banish a sudden vivid picture of the overripe charms of Mrs Lucille Polaski from her mind.

    “All right, put it another way, what’s wrong with me?” he said angrily. “I don’t drive a fucking Beamer and I’m not a rich lawyer from Sydney, so I’m not good enough for ya, is that it?”

    Libby was now very red. “Don’t be silly,” she croaked. “I don’t care whether or not he’s rich and—and if a Beamer’s a car, I don’t care.”

    Bob gulped. “Yeah, a Beamer’s a car. BMW,”  he said feebly.

    “I see. I’m not interested in expensive consumables.”

    “Then it’s me, not what I can offer ya,” said Bob flatly.

    It was impossible to say it wasn’t him, because that’d give him the wrong impression entirely! “You’re being silly,” said Libby faintly.

    “No, I’m not. Ya must’ve noticed I fancy you. Anyway, I do.”

    Libby swallowed hard and stared out fixedly at the lake. This was totally ludicrous—and talking of holiday romances! Added to which she wasn’t the Mrs Polaski type!

    Possibly because she was avoiding his eye and possibly because she was now observedly breathing hard and was very flushed, Bob didn’t feel as discouraged as he had been. He came up very close and, putting a long arm round her, put one hand over hers on the launch’s little wheel.

    “What are you doing?” said Libby in a trembling voice.

    “Showing you what I can give ya,” replied Bob, pressing it against her bum.

    “Stop that,” said Libby on a gulp.

    For answer he slid his free hand round her front and got a handful of tit.

    “Bob,” said Libby in a trembling voice, “I can’t. I—never mind if it’s only a holiday romance, it’d be really unfair to Aidan.”

    “Give him up,” said Bob into the mass of curls. He nuzzled into her neck and kissed it, just under her ear.

    “I don’t know what you imagine you’re doing, Bob Kenny,” said Libby very loudly, “but STOP IT!”

    Bob stopped and stepped away from her. “Give him up,” he suggested again.

    “No, I won’t! To think I almost said I liked you! You’ve got the cheek of the Devil!” she snapped.

    “Well, I won’t say it’s the first time I’ve heard it called that,” said Bob very drily indeed, “but just lemme say this: I’m not going anywhere. Don’t pretend ya didn’t like it, them tits were heaving like nobody’s business. So when he’s pushed off to Sydney or wherever, just remember, I’ll still be here. Ready, willing and, in case it’s escaped your notice—“

    “SHUT UP!” shouted Libby.

    “—able,” finished Bob, hitching at his crotch.

    Libby had inadvertently looked round at him. She turned puce and looked away.

    “Sexual tension,” said Bob with satisfaction. “Read it in one of Neil’s books. Been trying to think of the phrase for weeks. Only I thought maybe it wasn’t that: must of been why it wouldn’t come to me—only it is. Between us, I mean,” he elaborated unnecessarily.

    Libby ignored him.

    Bob looked thoughtfully at her flushed cheeks and heaving bosom. “I’m not giving up,” he warned.

    “Shut up. You’re a bloody lecher.”

    At least she wasn’t doing the nice-lady bit any more! “There’s a fair bit of it about,” replied Bob calmly.

    Libby ignored him.

    The rest of the voyage was accomplished in dead silence. Bob simply sat there and stared at her, since he had the chance. She didn’t look round but she was still very flushed and the tits were still heaving like billyo. Cheering, you could of said it was. In more than one way.

    They arrived at the Turpin place’s little jetty to find it decorated by a dame in a big straw hat with a fancy long skirt and one of those blouses that were tied at the waist over a very revealing bikini top. Oops, the skirt was unbuttoned far enough to show you she was wearing the bikini bottom, too. That was flaming Mike Short that had just got out of his Darling Dolly or he, Bob Kenny, was a Dutchman.

    “That your cousin or whaddever she is?” he croaked.

    “Jan’s cousin’s daughter. Yes. And?” replied Libby dangerously.

    “Nothing. Well, quick work.”

    “Dad said that,” she admitted, swallowing.

    “Yeah. Uh, look, talking of holiday romances, that’s Mike Short and he’s notorious all over Taupo,” he croaked.

    “She’s the sort of person that wants a holiday romance,” replied Libby grimly.

    She looked it, yeah. “That’s good, because believe you me, that’s what he’ll give ’er.”

    Flaming Mike greeted him with: “Nice work if you can get it.” –Blatantly giving Libby the eye.

    “You can drop that, I’ve come to fix the plumbing,” replied Bob grimly.

    “Yeah? I’m gonna do a bit of that, meself.”

    “Shut up, Mike, ya not funny,” said Bob angrily over the dame’s shriek and high-pitched giggles.

    “It’s true, he’s come to fix the cistern!” said Libby crossly. “Tell him, Leanne!”

    Leanne gave a throaty gurgle, and eyed Bob up and down. “Libby, dear, he could fix anything of mine, any day!”

    “I’ll take care of you,” said Mike, grabbing her arm and shoving her in the direction of his launch.

    More high-pitched giggles and she fired the parting shot: “Don’t forget to save some for me if there’s any left over!”

    “All right, show me the ruddy cistern,” said Bob feebly as the noise of the Darling Dolly’s giant twin diesels gradually abated.

    Libby took her hands away from her ears. “Gosh, that boat’s noisy! Um, yeah, it’s in her ensuite.”

    Bob followed her silently. As she was in denim shorts that were a bit tight for her the view wasn’t at all bad.

    He fixed the cistern in approximately two seconds. Didn’t even have to turn the water off. Just as well, the tap was probably up where the road woulda been if it hadda got this far.

    “Don’t dare to offer me seventy-five bucks for that,” he said heavily.

    “No,” said Libby dazedly. “We looked inside it but we couldn’t see what was wrong.”

    “No. Matter of knowing what you’re looking at. Wanna flush it again?”

    Numbly Libby flushed it. It obediently refilled itself and then switched itself off.

    “All right, come on, you’ll be in time to ruin whatever Jan and Jayne are making for lunch.”

    “Yes,” she said weakly. “Thanks very much, Bob.”

    Bob’s shoulders shook slightly. “Any time.”

    “Um, hang on, I think I’d better go, since we’re here!” she gulped.

    “All that water running, yeah. Go by all means,” he said mildly, wandering out. He had intended to sit down on the bed but on second thoughts a bloke could only stand so much, so he went down to the boat and thought a few thoughts, not getting any further than what he had before, which was, Aidan Poncy Vine would dump her, sure as eggs were eggs, and he ruddy well would stick around and pick up the pieces!

    She didn’t say anything on the way back so he just sat and looked at her again.

    “We have to pay you something, it’s over an hour out of your morning,” said Libby feebly as he tied up for her.

    “Pay me with a kiss,” replied Bob with a horrible leer, worthy of bloody Mike Short himself.

    This worked in that she snapped: “All right, be like that!” And walked off towards the ecolodge. Raising his eyebrows slightly, Bob went slowly round to the front drive where he’d left the waggon.

    Neil was very red. “Look, Mum, old Pete could have five hundred daughters scattered all round the world, it’s none of our business!”

    “Don’t be an idiot,” said Coral grimly to her only child. “She’s obviously coming over to grab anything she can. That mother of hers was hard as nails: took him for all she could get and then waltzed off taking anything that was worth anything with her.”

    Neil waited for her to make the usual scathing comparison with his paternal aunts but surprisingly enough, she didn’t. “That’s balls. Anyway, so what if she is? It’s nothing to do with us.”

    “It is if you’re serious about Tamsin.”

    “For cripes’ sake, Mum, we’ve only known each other about a month!” he cried.

    “Every second of which you’ve spent in each other’s pockets,” retorted Coral, but quite mildly, for her. “If Tamsin really is interested in helping run the business she needs to stake a claim, and if you’ve got any sense at all you’ll tell her so!”

    Neil was redder than ever. “I won’t.”

    “That’s right, don’t discuss anything serious with the girl, you’re just like your father,” she said bitterly.

    “Don’t start in on Dad,” said Neil tiredly.

    Managing to ignore this, Coral said heavily: “Neil, you’re twenty-four. It’s about time you started seriously considering your options. What do you imagine you’re going to do with this freshwater ecology stuff of yours? And don’t mention the word ‘Fisheries’, thank you, they’re not interested in anything but fly fishing.”

    After a moment Neil said on a sulky note: “Dan Jackson’s got a good job.”

    “That’s a commercial venture, Neil: at the most they’d employ you as a technician, all you’d get to do would be to test the water to see if it was okay for their fish eggs!”

    Relatively unscientific though this observation might have been, it was in fact spot-on: Neil scowled.

    “What about that man you spoke to in Auckland?”

    “Eh? Oh, him. Um, it’s mainly marine stuff… They might be expanding into freshwater.”

    “And they’d be paying you to potter round the lake all day, would they?”

    “No!” he said crossly. “It’d be a teaching position, if anything.”

    Coral sniffed slightly.

    Neil glared. “There’s the Department of Conservation.”

    “Those idiots down at Turangi? Trout fishing and saving kiwi eggs? Do me a favour!”

    “They have the responsibility for freshwater conservation, it’s on their website.”

    “Yes, but do they do any?” responded his mother shrewdly.

    Neil bit his lip. “Some. Anyway, that could change. And I don’t have to stay here. I could probably get a job in Australia, water’s a real issue over there.”

    Coral had done her own sort of research into that one, so she was able to reply: “You mean they’ve started paying it lip-service. From what Libby was telling me you probably could get a job over there, yeah. It’d be a three-year contract at most, ’cos that’s what all their government department and research jobs are, and you’d write up a report and they’d file it and that’d be that. –You can take that look off your face, she may only be a librarian but she’s quite bright, and she’s worked in ruddy Australian government departments for twenty years.”

    “That’s a gross exaggeration,” he said, very red.

    “No, it isn’t, Neil, those are the economic realities of scientific jobs in the twenty-first century.”

    “All right, a university job, then,” he said, scowling. “And there are other places in the world.”

    “Yes, but do you want to go there?”

    “I’ll go if that’s where the jobs are,” he said on a defiant note.

    “Right. Leaving your father, the bloody launch and the flaming lake behind.”

    Neil glared impotently.

    Coral bent forward intently. “Listen to me.”

    He didn’t listen that hard because it was pretty much the mixture as before, this time with a good helping of the crap she’d given poor old Dad about grabbing Tamsin ’cos her Mum had dough. Plus and a lot of garbage on what could be done with poor old Pete’s property.

    “Mum, this is crazy. The place doesn’t even belong to Tamsin.”

    “No, and it never will if this daughter of Namrita’s gets her hooks into it!” she retorted feelingly.

    “And me and Tamsin aren’t nearly at that stage, anyway!” he said defiantly.

    “Then what was all that about her maybe finishing her degree at Auckland?”

    “She’s thinking about it,” he said, sticking his round chin out.

    “At least her mother’ll be able to afford the fees.”

    Neil went very red. “She wouldn’t dream of taking her money, she’d pay her back! And drop it, will ya?”

    Coral did drop it for the time being. She wasn’t that dissatisfied with his reactions. He did seemed pretty serious about Tamsin, it didn’t seem to be just a holiday thing. Though if he imagined he’d be happy stuck in a lecture theatre teaching, in Auckland or anywhere else, miles away from the bloody lake and the bloody launch and his bloody father, he had another imagine coming! And managing a flourishing ecolodge run on proper commercial lines would be a very good option for the pair of them.

    Aidan had rung the ecolodge to ask if Libby could get some essential catering supplies, since she was so much handier to the town than he was. Libby hadn’t pointed out that she was only handier because she’d come across in the MerriAndi, though, oddly enough, Janet had. As Jan also needed a few things Janet volunteered eagerly to come too and show her the right brands. It was still early: the breakfasts were done and as most of the clients had booked themselves onto Vern Reilly’s “Antiques and Boutiques” tour today there’d be few or no takers for morning tea and only a scattering of people for lunch, so Jan raised no objection. She reminded Libby that her good skirt needed dry-cleaning, reminded her to see whether anyone else needed dry-cleaning done, gave her Pete’s best trousers, though in the full recognition that this’d give the blighter a really good excuse to serve the clients in his jeans, and saw them off in the ecolodge’s four-wheel-drive with a wry expression on her face.

    “Libby is quite a careful driver,” said Jayne, misinterpreting the expression.

    “Mm? Uh—yeah. Not that. She’s in for an earful, I’m afraid.”

    “She’ll just let it wash over her,” said Jayne comfortably.

    Yeah. Well, that might be a good thing or not, depending on what it was about.

    “We’ll drop off the dry-cleaning first,” decided Janet as they neared the shopping area.

    “Okay,” agreed Libby.

    “Not that place, dear,” she said as Libby tried to draw in by the first dry-cleaners. “They’re not reliable. We always go to Thompson’s. I will say this for Joanne Thompson, she knows her business.”

    “Um, yes,” said Libby weakly, wondering what was wrong with the woman, then.

    What was wrong with her was not immediately apparent: she was on duty behind her counter herself, a large, blowsy, over made-up woman with brassy yellow hair of the thick, coarse-textured variety that lent itself well to a kind of pompadour effect at the front with well-clipped back and sides. On another woman you might have said the style was mannish, but there was nothing mannish about Joanne Thompson. She was very pleased to meet Libby, assuring her that of course she knew who she was—Libby blinked—and asking her in a chatty way how she liked Taupo and how it compared to Brisbane. She examined the long blue sequined skirt carefully, noted that Libby was very wise not to have tried to wash it, and promised everything for tomorrow. She seemed both pleasant and competent, so why those reservations that had most certainly been present in Janet’s reference to her?

    “Of course they’re not very busy at this time of year, winter’s their busy season,” allowed Janet as they headed for the supermarket. “Her and that Maureen Te Hana run it by themselves, he doesn’t come into the shop much these days.” She sniffed slightly. “His mistake.”

    “Oh,” said Libby feebly, wondering why but not liking to ask.

    Briskly Janet ordered her not to go to that supermarket, dear, we always go to the other one.

    The shopping was done, with the exception of the agar-agar and durum wheat flour on Aidan’s list—Libby wasn’t going to find them anywhere in Taupo, though if she insisted they’d try the other supermarket. Libby had thought they’d better, so Janet, advising her with a sniff that men knew nothing about shopping, let her try it. With the predicted result.

    Janet now thought they might have some morning tea! Weakly Libby recognised, looking at her beaming smile, that this had quite possibly been the object of the exercise. Well, Jan had told them not to hurry. What about that coffee bar? Janet thought that it’d be full of tourists—by this time Libby had realised that, never mind that the tourists brought Taupo most of its income, this was a pejorative word to the locals—and Graceland was nicer. Limply Libby drove them to Graceland, not saying that it brought back memories that weren’t entirely comfortable ones.

    Surprisingly enough Graceland wasn’t full of tourists, though there was one family group that obviously were: the kids gorging on cream horns and fizzy soft drinks and complaining that there weren’t any donuts and the adults, a youngish couple and an older woman who was probably the grandma, arguing over whether to try National Park and if they did, whether there’d be anywhere to have lunch. The rest of the customers were middle-aged women in droopy cotton frocks just like Janet’s and two elderly couples, the men in short-sleeved shirts, shorts and knee-socks, and the women in droopy cotton frocks just like Janet’s. This didn’t necessarily mean they couldn’t be tourists, but at least two groups weren’t: four women at one table and one of the couples exchanged recognition signals with Janet.

    “Those won’t be as nice as Jan’s,” warned Janet as Libby looked at the cream horns.

    “Oh—right,” she said limply, as Janet took two grated carrot and tinned asparagus sandwiches and one hard-boiled egg and asparagus one. They wouldn’t be as nice as anything of Jan’s that you cared to name! Oh, well. A cautious look around the room assured her that all the other ladies had at least one club sandwich, so Libby took a ham, lettuce and hard-boiled egg one. Having a sandwich apparently justified you in having a cake or two: Janet took a strange-looking thing that might have been a Christmas mince pie except its top was more raised, and a slice of pavlova, so Libby took a slice of carrot cake. Surprisingly enough Janet didn’t tell her it wouldn’t be as nice as Jan’s.

    Janet thought a pot of tea for two would be nice so they had one. And very fortunately one of the elderly couples got up to leave just as they were looking for seats, so they were able to grab their table, though not without Libby’s having to be introduced to Mr and Mrs Beasley and accept their assurances that of course, they knew who she was! And assure them in return that she was enjoying Taupo. They sat down and Janet proceeded to tell her a lot about Mr Beasley’s prostate operation and what a disappointment Alan Beasley had been to them, not wanting to go into his father’s lawnmower shop but letting that wife of his talk him into a partnership with her brother in a boating and fishing supplies place.

    “But surely that sort of business must do very well here?” said Libby limply.

    Janet sniffed. “It’s seasonal, dear.”

    Right. So that compared badly with selling lawnmowers, did it? Admittedly New Zealand got a lot of rain, so the grass must grow like billyo, but how many motor-mowers would one family need in an average lifetime? Oh, well.

    Janet had eaten her sandwiches, drunk one cup of tea, freshened Libby’s cup and poured herself another and was about to embark on her putative mince pie when she stiffened. “What’s she doing here?” she hissed.

    The woman who had just come in was perhaps Libby’s age or a bit older, very slim, with light brown hair with a lot of blonde streaks in it. It was cut in what was basically the sort of short, layered style, slightly bouffant on top, that was favoured by lots of the ecolodge’s middle-aged clients and, indeed, by many of the ladies in Graceland at this moment, but very much smartened up by some well-managed curled wisps over the ears and on the forehead. The slim, tanned figure was set off by a tight, bright sunfrock. As she was carrying a shopping bag as well as her handbag it seemed obvious that what she was doing here was looking for morning tea. She was rather more made-up than most of the customers and her frock was much nicer than any of theirs, but… Libby looked limply at Janet. “Who is she?”

    Janet’s rather pursed mouth tightened even further. “Cloris Witherspoon!” she hissed. “Anyone’ll tell you what she is, dear!”

    Libby waited but anyone didn’t seem to be about to. “Um, is there something wrong with her, Janet?”

    Janet sniffed. “Divorced.”—Janet, of course, was also divorced: Libby’s jaw dropped.—“And we all know whose fault that was!” she added in a vicious hiss.

    “I see,” said Libby faintly, looking limply at her somewhat protuberant pale blue eyes, sallow skin and underhung jaw, and trying not to imagine what this unlovely combination might be about to produce next: the eyes had an avid gleam in them. Though somewhere at the back of her mind she did recognise that the fact that Cloris Whatsername was an attractive woman and Janet wasn’t was a definite factor in the horrid avidity.

    “Back then,” said Janet in an evil undertone, “she was mixed up with that awful Max Metcalf. A different girlfriend for every night of the week, is what they used to say about him. Drove one of those flashy American cars. You used to see the pair of them on a Friday night, roaring through the town with the top down, bold as brass!”

    “Um, yes,” said Libby, as she’d paused and seemed to be expecting some sort of reaction. “Um, when she was still married?”

    “Exactly! And a fat lot of good it did her. She went round telling everybody they were gonna get married once her divorce came through, and then he went off with a Maori girl from Turangi.” She sniffed. “Half his age, too. So then she threw herself at Andy Drew: had the cheek to turn up at the Lions’ social with him, large as life and twice as natural! So Christine Drew got the Baptist Minister to speak to him and he went back home with his tail between his legs.”

    Libby winced. “Mm.” Why was it that women like Janet never seemed to hear what they were actually saying?

    “So after that she got her hooks into Bob Kenny.” She looked at Libby’s dropped jaw. “Well, it was after Coral left him, but he is like that, dear. Well, there was that awful Canadian woman over Christmas, wasn’t there?”

    “Yes,” said Libby, very faintly.

    Janet looked over at the Cloris woman in the smart sunfrock, sniffed once more and ate her mince pie hungrily. “No, well,” she said taking a gulp of tea, “I hold no brief for Coral Kenny, if she has done well enough for herself, but it’s been one woman after another—and not all since the divorce, don’t let anyone tell you different!”

    “Dad said that it was a miserable marriage,” she managed.

    “I’m not saying there weren’t faults on both sides, Libby,” said Janet in a kindly, superior tone. She forked in some pavlova. “Mm! This is nice, dear, you should have had it.”

    Libby picked up her cup in a hand that shook slightly. “I’d have said he was just… ordinary,” she said in a small voice.

    Janet eyed her tolerantly. “Appearances can be deceptive. Some men are just tomcats, and that’s all there is to it.”

    “Well, how many girlfriends has he had?” said Libby on a defiant note.

    Janet gave a titter. “Good Heavens, Libby, don’t ask me! Well, he was a good-looking boy, and the girls all chased him, of course. I do know that when he was sixteen he was going round with Cherie Morpeth, because they lived next-door to Mum and Dad’s place. Her mother was really wild about it, she was spending all her time with him instead of swotting for School Cert. She failed it, hardly surprising, and that meant she’d have to go into the Second-Year Fifth: Mrs Morpeth was furious with her, because of course it was nearly all Maori girls just waiting it out until they turned sixteen. She made her have coaching over the holidays, and you can say what you like, most boys of that age would have found another little girlfriend or hung round trying to persuade her to come out with them, but you’ll never guess what he did! And I do know this for a fact, because George and I were married by that time, and we had that house in George Street—he made a joke of it, of course—and the Inglises were right next-door.”

    She’d paused to sip her cooling tea so Libby said faintly: “What?”

    “He was mowing their lawn for them, you see, saving up to buy that awful old second-hand car that Coral made him get rid of. And if you ask me, the only reason Ian Inglis couldn’t mow it for himself was that the Inglises always did think themselves better than the rest of us! Mind you, any man that was mad enough to marry Valerie Wright was asking for it. They had three little kids and she was older than I was, must’ve been twenty-eight or nine, but that didn’t stop her for an instant!”

    Libby had gone very red. “This is beginning to sound like something out of that stupid Desperate Housewives.”

    “Truth is stranger than fiction, Libby,” said Janet sententiously. “I must say, I said to Mum she’d better not watch it, but she said—well, she was getting mixed up but she was right in essence—that she’d known about young Bob Kenny and that lady with the rich husband for ages, and that the TV was nothing to what goes on behind closed doors in a small town!”

    Libby took a deep breath. “I dare say the woman seduced him.”

    Many explicit replies might have been made to this remark—in fact she herself could think of several—but what Janet Barber said was: “It takes two.” Managing to make it very plain without being indelicate.

    Libby gave her a baffled, annoyed look. Boy, was that Janet all over!

    “I suppose you do see it all in a small town,” said Janet complacently, forking up her pavlova.

    Libby gave the slice of carrot cake on her own plate a look of loathing and said nothing.

    “Appearances can be very deceptive,” warned Janet.

    Another look at Cloris Whatsername had suggested to Libby that perhaps they weren’t all that. Though if her reference was to Bob Kenny, she was right, there! He looked completely harmless and, well, meek. But clearly him getting off with that awful Lucille at Christmas hadn’t been one-off at all, it had been indicative! –Why she should feel so stirred up at these revelations about Bob Kenny when she’d turned him down, Libby didn’t stop to ask herself.

    “Look at Joanne Thompson,” suggested Janet.

    “What?” said Libby dully.

    “Well, I’m not one to tell tales,”—Libby goggled at her but she didn’t seem to notice—“but everyone knows about it.”

    “I don’t,” said Libby on a grim note,

    “No, well, you haven’t been here very long, have you, dear?” she said kindly. “It isn’t only dry-cleaning that goes on in that shop when Len Thompson’s at home doing the accounts and she’s sent Maureen off to the bank.”

    Libby took a deep breath. Okay, Janet was a gossip and a silly hen, but she was Jan's invaluable helper and she didn’t want to be rude to her. “Janet, I don’t see how you can possibly know what goes on without witnesses.”

    Janet looked superior. “That’s where you’re wrong, dear. Just ask Bob Kenny.”

    If the woman said “Bob Kenny” once more she was gonna scream! “What’s he got to do with it?” said Libby crossly.

    “I just said, Libby: appearances can be deceptive. Of course dear Jan says he’s been very lonely since the divorce, especially with Neil up in Auckland for most of the year, and I dare say he has, but what’s her excuse, I’d like to know!” On this triumphant note she scraped up the last of her cream and gulped down the last of her tea.

    Mrs Thompson would be about ten years older than Bob, Libby was absolutely positive. And she wasn't pretty and, frankly, fat. And loud. “I suppose men are like that. If it’s on offer,” she said in a squashed voice.

    Janet patted her mouth with her paper serviette. “Mm. Well, like I say, Libby, dear, appearances can be very deceptive and you haven’t been here long at all, have you?

    “No,” said Libby tightly. “You’re right, I’ve made some stupid assumptions, about small town life as well as—as some of the people here. Have this piece of cake, I’m not hungry.”

    Janet demurred but gave in. “He is quite a good-looking man, of course,” she murmured. “Dear Pete’s keen on seeing you get together, but then, men can’t see other men for what they are. I wouldn’t go on any more trips on the lake with him in your shoes, dear.”

    “No,” said Libby in a strangled voice, her face flaming. “I see. I won’t. Thanks, Janet.”

    “That’s all right, dear, I am an older woman,” she said complacently. “And—well! I’ve worked at the ecolodge for a while now, you know!”

    Yeah. Quite. And seen it all and then some.

Next chapter:

https://summerseason-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/09/never-jam-today.html