Strategic Planning

15

Strategic Planning

    Patty was very flushed. “It—it’s real kind of you to include me in, Jan, but I don’t think I’ve got any right, really, if it’s about the business.”

    “It’s a family business, and you’re family,” replied Jan firmly.

    “See? That’s just what I said!” cried Libby. “And me and Jayne are coming, and we don’t know anything about the commercial side of it, at all!”

    “I did show them the books, but they both blenched,” said Jan drily.

    Patty gave a feeble laugh. “I get it! Well—well, gee, if—if you’re sure, Jan?”

    Jan was very sure. And since what seemed like the right Americanised phrase fortunately came to mind, added that any input from Patty would be very welcome. At which Patty went very pink again and looked desperately shy. So there you were: Americans were as—as varied as the rest of humanity, and she, Jan Harper, was a prejudiced tit.

    The ecolodge was full, so was the bunkhouse, and the loft was too small, so unless they wanted to sit on the lawn or down on the landing stage for this so-called strategy meeting that Coral Kenny had decreed was to happen (or she was gonna die in the attempt), it was Sean and Molly’s still unfinished new house or nothing. Jan hadn’t said it was far too soon for anything like a strategy meeting, because Coral Kenny with the bit between her teeth was unstoppable, and at least having a talk with all of them present was better than her deciding on some hugely efficient but completely inhuman business arrangement that young Sean and Neil, to name only two, would never be able to cope with. Not to mention Molly: she had a little boy by the ex, and she and Sean were planning to start their own family; in fact if him and Pete hadn’t got carried away finishing the crafts salesroom that occupied the entire frontage of the new house—where Jan had originally been under the impression it was only gonna occupy half of it—the new nursery might be actually finished instead of lined with Gib-board but not even plastered over the cracks yet, let alone painted or wallpapered, and the poor girl might have been pregnant as they spoke. Which, since she’d been buying tampons last week when she and Janet went to the supermarkets together, Jan was ruddy sure she wasn’t.

    So they were sitting in what Pete, the idiot, had just referred to as Sean and Molly’s “front room”. A physical impossibility—quite. Actually it was at the back of the house, which meant it had quite a nice glimpse of the lake: a silver lining, quite. It was a large room—just as well—and featured two well-sized sofas. The one currently holding Jan, Libby, Patty and Tamsin was a huge, creaky old rubbed plush thing that was one of the few pieces of furniture Molly’s bloody ex hadn’t bodily removed from her old home, presumably because you couldn’t have got twenty dollars for it at auction. Neil and Bob were on, or rather in, the squashed tan corduroy thing that brought the words “dead cat” forcibly to Jan’s mind whenever she laid eyes on it. It had originally belonged to Sean’s parents, Dan and Katy Jackson. In the days when they had four kids swarming all over it—yeah. It had been a very comfortable sofa in its time. Now it was just a squashy thing that you sank into at grave risk of having to be hoisted out of it again by a derrick.

    There was a selection of easy chairs. Pete had been favoured with the La-Z-Boy, or something of that ilk, that one of Sean’s paternal aunts had very thankfully passed on to him, regardless of her husband’s wishes or feelings in the matter. Covered in Hunting Stewart tartan, and the foot rest would no longer go down. A possible rival to this offering was a large, puffy but flat-armed easy chair of the sort that had been extremely popular around about the Eighties-early Nineties—God knew why, people’s arms hadn’t suddenly become ten inches longer in the later 20th century. It was almost impossible to relax in the thing, comfortable though its foot-thick rubber foam was, because unless you slumped right down on the base of your spine your elbows wouldn’t reach the arms. Back in their day such chairs had almost inevitably been covered in very pale grey vinyl or very dark brown vinyl—possibly real leather in the more upwardly mobile sectors, but Jan Harper personally had never seen one—but as this one had belonged to Sean’s Aunty Rosalie it was in pale lilac vinyl. Molly had hospitably urged it on Jayne and she was now visibly discovering its drawbacks.

    Molly herself was in a cane armchair from a little suite that belonged to a whole different generation—not to say mind-set. The armchair was the sort of chair that was miles too shallow and too low for a bloke but suited the average woman nicely—so long as she wasn’t wearing pantyhose, which would snag horribly on it. Molly was in jeans, so that was all right. Tamsin had noted with delight that it was the exact same style as the white cane suite in their garden room, upon which Sean had asked in a sour voice if she knew of any human bums over the age of five that’d fit onto the sofa. Tamsin had gone very red and glared, to the mystification of the company, all of whom except perhaps Patty were by now well aware that Tamsin wasn’t the sort of girl to let a clot like Sean Jackson put her out of countenance, but the mystery was resolved by Jayne’s squeaking: “No! She made a lovely cushion for it and Peter, her Dalmatian, always sits on it!” and collapsing in giggles with a gasp of: “Sorry, darling!” Which went down very well with Sean, who stopped looking sour and grinned widely, noting: “See, only fit for a dog’s bum, what’d I tell ya?”

    Sean himself and Coral were sitting on a pair of straight-backed dining chairs he’d brought in for the occasion. Coral with hers drawn up to the little uneven cane coffee-table that was part of the set with an ominous ring binder and a notepad in front of her.

    The room, incidentally, as yet had no rugs, let alone the endemic, nay almost mandatory EnZed body carpet, but only polyurethaned radiata pine floorboards, which would have made it somewhat noisy but for the fact that all participants except Coral were wearing either sneakers or rubber jandals with shorts or jeans. Coral was in a smart, narrow-cut floral frock, sleeveless but several levels up from a sunfrock, and high-heeled black patent sandals, but no-one who knew her would have expected otherwise. Patty had looked somewhat taken aback on being introduced, however.

    “Um, would anyone like something to drink?” ventured Molly with her pleasant smile.

    “Not now, dear,” said Coral firmly just as several misguided males were brightening and opening their gobs. “This is a business meeting.”

    Molly swallowed. “I see.”

    “I think we’d better get your glass blowing side of it clear to start with, Molly,” she said kindly. “Then it won’t complicate the picture.”

    “Um, all right,” replied Molly in mystified tones. “Um, I think those figures I gave you a copy of are right. Um, well, the accountant seemed to think they looked okay for our last tax return, eh, Sean?”

    “Yeah, that’s right,” he agreed easily.

    “The figures themselves are irrelevant, Molly, dear, that’s my point,” said Coral firmly. “Your glass blowing needs to be treated as a completely separate enterprise from the shop.”—As this last word was uttered poor Bob might have been observed to wince.—“Anything you spend on materials and electricity and so forth will need to be kept strict account of, naturally, just like you have been doing,”—Molly and Sean both went rather red and avoided everybody’s eyes—“and that’ll be legitimate debts of your sole-trading enterprise as Molly Molloy Glassware. Then when you sell your work through the crafts shop that’ll be a standard commercial arrangement, just as it would be with any other supplier.”

    “Buh-but I thought the shop was gonna sell everything for me?” she faltered.

    “That wouldn’t be sensible, Molly: it’d mean you had all your eggs in one basket and if you and Sean ever decided to go your separate ways it’d be very difficult to sort out what was owed you.”

    “But I don’t want to go on doing all the marketing stuff, Coral!” she blurted desperately.

    “No, that’s right,” agreed Sean. “See, our arrangement was she’d come down here and I’d look after all the business side of it for her.”

    “Not in writing, of course, Mum,” put in Neil on a snide note.

    “That’ll do, Neil. Life would be a lot easier if everyone had the sense to put all their arrangements in writing from the outset.”

    “Have a heart, Coral,” said Bob heavily.

    “Bob, you’re merely here as a spectator, and as we all know how much business sense you’ve got, please don’t interrupt.”

    “No, don’t, ole mate, or we’ll be here till next Christmas,” put in Pete, as he reddened angrily and opened his gob again.

    Sighing, Bob leaned back into the squashy grip of the horrible tan sofa and crossed his arms on his chest.

    “Anyway, writing or not,” said Sean very mildly, “Molly isn’t gonna do any more accounts and the shop is gonna manage her business for her.”

    Coral looked grim, picked up her notepad and made an extensive note. “And were you envisaging selling her work on a commission basis?”

    “Dunno,” he admitted cheerfully. “Whatever’s the usual.”

    “This sort of arrangement isn’t usual at all!” she snapped.

    “No. Well, Mum sells a lot of her stuff on commission through the boutiques, s’pose that’s what we had in mind.”

    Acidly Coral launched into it. She’d lost both Sean and Molly, it was blindingly apparent, before she was halfway through her first sentence.

    “Yes,” said Tamsin approvingly as her voice died away. “She’s right, Sean, it’s going to make it incredibly complicated. –Tell you what, Coral, could the crafts shop take Molly on as an actual employee? Artist in residence, kind of thing? Pay her for each piece, but taking into account the expenditure on her materials and power. You could work that out from the accounts she’s given you, couldn’t you? Then of course if she’s to be artist in residence there’d be goodwill on that, she’d be a big attraction, people absolutely love glass blowing, so you’d have to work out how much she was paid for that: maybe an hourly rate, going on the hours her studio was open to the public.”

    “Yeah, but what if nobody came?” objected Sean. “I mean, she could be open, but that doesn’t mean people’d come. We thought she could just be on deck in case, and people could wander over—”

    “In that case, charge them to see her at work and give her a percentage,” retorted Tamsin swiftly.

    “Yes. And it would be better to have set times for the demonstrations,” said Coral thoughtfully.

    An agonised expression had come over Molly’s round, pink-cheeked face. “Coral, I—I don’t work like that!”

    “Nah, artists never do; Mum’s the same,” agreed Sean. “See, if it’s a big piece or if they’ve got an inspiration they might get up in the middle of the night to work on it, or work all evening. Or first thing in the morning; Mum’s often out there in the shed first thing.”

    Coral eyed them tolerantly. “I understand that, Sean, but there’s no reason for the tourists to see her making her real products. Just demonstrations will do.”

    There was a stunned silence, even Tamsin appearing rocked by the depth of Coral Kenny’s commercial cunning.

    Patty cleared her throat nervously. “Uh, I have seen glass-blowers in Mexico and, uh, well, judging by the way they let the tourists have the pieces, I’d say that’s what they do, Molly.”

    “That might work, love!” Sean encouraged his partner in life.

    “Wouldn’t that be a waste of materials, though? You’d have to factor it in,” said Tamsin.

    Coral pounced. “Exactly!” She was off again. Speaking with her accountant’s hat on, Jan had to concede that every syllable she uttered was spot-on; but would the amiable Sean and the absent-minded Molly ever get it to work? It was now blindingly obvious that for all her commercial acumen it hadn’t dawned on Coral that those figures that had gone to Molly’s and Sean’s accountant were almost entirely fudged by her, Jan Harper, on the basis of a few scattered receipts for this and that that Molly and Sean between them hadn’t managed to lose during the previous financial year, considerable interrogation of the artist as to exactly what went into an average-sized piece, and grim elimination of such debits in Molly’s bank statements as supermarket bills. The conclusion being that what was left was probably business expenditure and as she hadn’t sold all that much the EnZed Inland Revenue Department was highly unlikely to investigate her.

    “What do you think, Jan?”

    Jan jumped ten feet where she sat. “Uh—yeah, spot-on, Coral, but let’s face it, will these two commercially inept clots ever manage it? Don’t forget Molly’ll be coping with kids and family life as well. Just imagine an ordinary day when a kid’s got a tooth coming, it’s pouring with rain, a delivery of sand or dyes or something arrives that she has to sign for at the same time as the kid’s screaming, and a Volvo drives up with a blue-rinsed pair of tourists wanting to buy some of the best pieces from the shop and the pan on the stove boils over. Or if you like, the soup she’s defrosting in the microwave.”

    “Yeah, or the drier breaks down and she can’t get ole Steve Garber from Taupo Hardware & Electrical on the phone ’cos he’s having his bloody lunch break and then when she does he won’t admit it’s his fault and then she can’t get a repairman for love or money!” agreed Sean.

    “I can fix your ruddy drier, Sean,” said Bob heavily.

    Sean blinked. “Uh—ta, Bob, but it was last spring, actually, when we were using the loft—in between renting that place of Miser Ron Reilly’s down Rimu Street and getting this place up. –Pouring cats and dogs,” he elaborated unnecessarily.

    “It was our bloody drier: thirteen months old to the day, and I told bloody Steve that if he ever wanted our custom again he’d get out here pronto, in person, with a replacement for the thing, and no arguments. Funnily enough he was here within twenty minutes,” said Jan grimly.

    “Heck, thirteen months?” said Jayne in awe. “Our new freezer did that! Bill was absolutely furious with the firm, but they made us pay to have it fixed.”

    “Never mind all that!” said Coral sharply. “That isn’t the point!”

    “Uh—no, sorry,” said Jan sheepishly. “But it is in a way, Coral. That’s what life is like with a young family. You totter from crisis to crisis and the last thing on your mind is keeping track of receipted invoices from the deliveries for the business, never mind if it ought to be.”

    “Yes, especially when the kiddy’s teething,” added Jayne with tremendous sympathy. “Tamsin was absolutely dreadful.”

    Coral frowned. “So was Neil. Well, yes, I have to admit I didn’t manage to do much until he was at school. Let me see… Very well, let’s take your scenario, Jan.”—Jan quailed but managed a pale, feeble smile.—“Molly is in the kitchen with the baby crying and the soup in the microwave; then the delivery arrives. But Sean’s in the shop, so he accepts delivery and makes sure he has all the paperwork. Then the tourists arrive, so he lets them browse. Then the drier breaks down. All Molly has to do is turn the microwave off and ring that idiot, Steve.”

    “Only if it’s still under warranty, Coral,” put in Bob unexpectedly.

    “Yes, and to check that, she has to find the ruddy paperwork for the thing!” said Sean loudly.

    “Um, I have sorted out all your paperwork, Sean,” said Jan on a weak note.

    “Good. There you are, then!” said Coral with satisfaction.

    “And if it isn’t under warranty any more, Molly, just ring me,” said Bob reassuringly.

    “Yeah, or give me a bell, lovey: no need to panic,” added Pete. “Well, it could still all go pear-shaped; I mean, if there was a storm the power might go off, but I get it. Ya mean Sean’s gonna be in charge of the shop fulltime, don’tcha, Coral?”

    “Yes. I don’t mean he can’t close up to cope with domestic emergencies—real ones,” she noted in a steely voice. “But that is the preferred scenario, yes.”

    “Um, yeah. Um, Coral, in that case the place’d have to keep us all,” said Sean weakly.

    “I’m coming to that. In this day and age—” Several people quailed visibly but she only went on to say that communications were paramount and Sean and Molly had to keep their mobile phones recharged and on their persons at all times. In which case a reasonable amount of Sean’s time, just until the place got going, could still be spent doing odd jobs for the ecolodge—on a simple hourly wage basis. And of course the crafts shop would be seasonal but there no doubt would be some custom all year round, especially if the marketing was handled properly, and there was absolutely no reason they shouldn’t sell over the Internet.

    “Eh?” croaked Sean.

    “Galloping ahead of yourself, Mum,” put in Neil on a tolerant note. “She’s right, though, Sean, it’d really widen your market.”

    “Uh, well, yeah… Um, but that’d be bank stuff and everything,” he said glumly.

    “I can manage that,” returned Coral grimly. “Now, this is the set-up I envisage—”

    She was off again. What it amounted to was that she’d do all the hard bits and manage the marketing entirely, and be a full partner in the enterprise. There would be the advantage of referrals from her shops, too.

    The two young people were looking somewhat crestfallen.

    “Um, I do think she’s right,” said Jan. “If you want to concentrate on the crafts shop, Sean, rather than the ecolodge, it’ll have to be commercially viable, and that means you need someone with Coral’s experience. Mind you, even with Fern Gully’s rich clientèle just over the way to buy up all your most expensive pieces it’ll take all of three years before you can realistically expect to make a profit.”

    “But I—I’m making a profit now,” faltered Molly.

    “Mm. Not enough to feed a family on, Molly, in fact it’s only a fraction of the minimum wage, isn’t it?” replied Jan as kindly as she could.

    “That’s right, Molly, dear,” agreed Coral briskly. “We need the shop to pay you and Sean a decent income after all the costs are covered, including a reasonable rent to Taupo Shores Ecolodge: after all, you are on their land. Which brings me to—”

    Oh, God, here it came. Jan sank back into the big old sofa and avoided everybody’s eye, especially poor old Pete’s.

    Coral hadn’t, according to herself, costed it properly, but— And it was clear that Pete was managing less and less these days.—Don’t say anything, Bob, you can’t live on the smell of an oily rag!—The ecolodge was doing quite well but it wasn’t maximising its potential. …Regular timetabled launch trips, and they could introduce kayaking! (The clients drowning themselves, that’d be a good one, what about the fucking insurance costs?) …Stop panicking, Neil, no-one was advocating waterskiing, with those frightful noisy boats! …Aquatic wildlife tours—Neil perked up slightly—and twice as many double rooms!

    What? “Look, Coral,” croaked Jan, “we’re barely—”

    Swiftly Coral opened the folder and plonked it on Jan’s lap. Uh—oh. Right, the food was only costing them X amount—Jesus, the woman had estimated it pretty nearly down to the last cent—well, she didn’t know how many freebies they got, but them apart—and the advertising was costing them Y, so why not do it for twice as many rooms? Okay, she was right in saying that it was the rooms, not the food, that gave them their main income, but—

    Now she was telling them that there was very little point in thinking about trying to extend their season—she was right, there—but some special winter attractions could be worked out, and she was gonna suggest just a tentative outline—

    “Skating?” croaked Pete as the narrative flowed on. “They’d drown themselves!”

    Bob cleared his throat. “Four inches of ice on a flat slab with your own little generator. Be a doddle, ’specially with our frosty nights.”

    “Yuh—um, it’ll be an eyesore in summer, won’t it?” said Jan very, very faintly.

    “Yes,” croaked Libby, opening her gob, if anyone was noticing, which Jan was pretty sure they weren’t, for the very first time in the proceedings.

    “Yes, but wait!” cried Patty. “Have a gazebo in the middle of it, with a little band playing, and then in the summer you could have plantings round it, and roller-skating for the kids!”

    “Um, they hardly ever get guests with children, Patty,” said Jayne weakly. “Though a little gazebo does sound lovely.”

    “It sounds like something out of Meet Me in St Louis,” corrected Jan on a grim note. “I’ll allow you a gazebo but you won’t be able to magic up a band of any description in Taupo in midwinter, Patty.”

    “Then carol singers? Waits?” she said eagerly.

    “No, it’s not our Christmas,” said Sean tolerantly. “But I like the ice-skating idea, Coral!”

    “Yeah, me, too, so long as the lake’s not involved!” agreed Pete. “And listen! Cross-country ski trekking!”

    “Giant, nay humungous insurance premiums, Pete,” said Jan faintly.

    “Own risk. Small print,” he retorted briskly.

    “That never stopped a Yank with a broken leg yet from suing the organisers, you nit! Oh—shit. Sorry, Patty,” she said lamely.

    “No!” gasped Patty, very pink. “You’re so right, America’s the home of the personal injury suit!”

    “They always have to have someone to blame,” said Libby hoarsely.

    “That’s it exactly it, Libby!” Patty agreed. They beamed at each other,

    “Um, yes, well, you’ve got some great ideas, Coral,” said Jan very weakly indeed, “and I quite take your point that doubling the rooms would just about double our income.”

    Tamsin had picked up the folder. “More than, Jan.”

    “Uh—more than. Though if we have more rooms the council’ll put the rates up—but okay. But we’ve got no available capital and though theoretically raising a mortgage might seem like the way to go—and please don’t use any euphemisms about capitalising on our equity, Coral, if you don’t mind—I’m over sixty and Pete’s turned seventy and neither of us wants or intends to get into debt at our ages.”

    “Just read this outline, Jan,” said Coral kindly. “I’ll summarise it for the rest—”

    “Mum, if this is gonna be anything like that bloody mad stuff ya come out with a bit back—” began Neil, very red.

    “Yeah, drop it, Coral,” growled Bob, also very red.

    “Rubbish,” she said on a lofty note. “It’s only sensible to look to the future, and that’s where many a family business comes a cropper: no successful succession planning, and the family ends up losing everything the founder built up. Now, this is on the assumption that you do want to pull out of running the ecolodge, Sean.”

    Sean’s wide, blond face was very flushed. He looked desperately from Pete to Jan. “Um, well, I don’t wanna make it harder for you, and you’ve been really decent to me and Molly but, um, I don’t think I could run the place, now I’ve seen what you do, Jan. I mean, I thought more of it’d be hard yacker with Pete and, um, taking the tours and stuff. Um, I think I can manage keeping the shop accounts straight, with Coral’s help, but I could never have worked out all that stuff you did when Vern bought his minibus and didn’t want to run the tours himself, like how much he oughta be paid and, um, all that,” he finished miserably. “Or those arrangements you made with the shops about paying to have people come and, um, putting their ads on your brochures, it wouldn’t even have occurred… I mean, I’d just have told them it was a tour of the junk shops and the boutiques and taken them there.”

    “But that’s a huge commercial opportunity for the shopkeepers, Sean!” said Coral sharply.

    “Yeah, that’s what I mean. Jan could see that, but it’s the sort of thing I’d never have thought of.”

    “Not a huge opportunity,” said Jan feebly, “but yes. Well, if building up a list of suppliers and selling the crafts is what you fancy, Sean, don’t feel you’re letting us down. Um, I wouldn’t have brought it up if you were still keen, but our situation has changed a bit. Well, for a start, if we were making twice as much we could afford to offer at least one of the girls a job.”

    Very relieved, Sean replied: “Yeah, that’s right, and they are family.”

    “Good,” said Coral briskly. “Now, this is what I—”

    “Shut UP, Mum!” cried Neil, turning purple.

    “Er—it isn’t as bad as you seem to think, Neil,” murmured Jan, laying the outline down.

    “It better not be,” he replied, glaring at his mother.

    Briskly Coral plunged into it. It was a full succession plan, all right. Talk about yer family business! Jayne would lend Pete and Jan the capital to expand—Jayne looked surprised but beamed and nodded—on a proper footing, of course—and Tamsin would become assistant manager, learning the business from Jan, with an eventual view to inheriting.

    Tamsin had gone very, very red. “That isn’t fair!” she said sharply. “It ought to be the children who inherit, not the grandchildren!”

    “Succession planning for a family business is different, Tamsin,” said Coral firmly.

    “I don’t care! It oughta be shared between Mum and Aunty Libby and Patty!”

    “That doesn’t seem fair, if you’re managing it, Tamsin,” said Libby dubiously.

    “No, I agree,” agreed Patty, very red. “Though maybe I could talk Mom into letting me put some of my trust fund into it, that could help even things out.”

    “She won’t do that until Hell freezes over, lovey,” said Pete tolerantly.

    “No, uh, thing is, she isn’t the sole trustee, Dad!” she gasped. “Mr Michaels, he’s the family lawyer—like, it’s Goldbloom, Michaels, Eisenblatt, only there aren’t any Eisenblatts in the firm these days and our Mr Michaels, he’s the third generation, only they’ve kept the old name— Uh, sorry! I mean, Mr Michaels, he’s joint trustee with Mom and he thinks I should be allowed some of the capital before I’m thirty-five, if I’ve got a legitimate enterprise I want to invest in. Only when I’m thirty-five, see,” she added with a beaming smile, “it’ll all come to me anyroad, and then I could invest in the ecolodge!”

    “Good,” said Sean stolidly, while the rest of them were still blinking, even Coral.

    “That sounds good, yeah,” agreed Neil. “Then you and Jayne’d both have an interest in it.”

    “And I know!” cried Jayne loudly. “Libby could sell that house that Mum made her buy and put the money into the ecolodge!”

    “Well, great!” cried Patty, beaming.

    “Yeah, good idea, Mum!” cried Tamsin. “Then we’d all have an interest in it and Pete and Jan could leave their interest to whoever they liked!”

    “No—” began Coral, frowning.

    “It does seem fair, Coral,” said Jan peaceably. “I know they don’t understand the financial ins and outs of it, it, but there’s plenty of time to explain it all to them.”

    “You want to be able to pass on a viable business, not see it split up,” she warned.

    “Yes, exactly, but with several people involved in ownership there’s always the risk of that. We’d have to have an agreement that all shareholders had to give the others first option if they wanted to sell.”

    Coral conceded that that would help.

    “Um, doesn’t it have to be a company, to have shares, though?” said Sean dubiously.

    “Yeah, I was wondering that,” admitted Neil.

    Coral took a deep breath.

    “A family business is usually a private company,” said Jan quickly. “You do have shares but they’re not available on the stock market.”

    “Yeah: they call it a mom and pop company, back home,” put in Patty.

    They frequently did here, too, if they’d heard of the concept of a family company at all: most of the literature was American. “Yes. Owned by spouses,” said Jan briskly.

    “I get it!” beamed Molly. “Mom and pop: husband and wife; of course!”

    “Does that mean you can only have two partners in it?” asked Tamsin dubiously.

    “Not partners, in a company!” snapped Coral. “Shareholders!”

    “You’re revealing your commercial feet of clay,” said Neil wryly to his girlfriend.

    “She is?” cried his mother, very flushed. “Have you been deaf, all your life?”

    “Deafened, more like, Coral,” said Bob into the sudden silence. “Leave him alone, you’ve known for years he hasn’t got a commercial brain. –See,” he explained to the scowling young people, “a small business, it can be a sole owner, like Molly’s glass blowing, or a partnership, with only two people in it, or a private company; dunno how many that has to have but the experts reckon it gives ya better tax advantages. After you’ve paid all the ruddy government fees it seems to let you in for,” he ended, eyeing his ex-wife very drily indeed.

    “That’s right, Bob,” said Jan quickly. “Taupo Shores is set up as a company, even though it’s only got Pete and me in it at the moment.”

    “Exactly!” said Coral with a vicious glare at her ex. “It’ll make it very easy to redistribute the shares when other people buy in. Tamsin’s shares can be offset against a percentage of her salary.”

    “Er—yeah,” agreed Jan limply. “Well, when we get down to the nitty-gritty, yes. Um, Tamsin, it’s not that we don’t fancy the idea, but I am a qualified accountant, you know. I know lot of people manage a family business without that level of qualification, but you do need to know a fair bit about the financial side.”

    Coral retrieved her folder and produced a sheaf of brochures from it. Okay, Tamsin could do a tertiary course, or an evening class, or— Yeah. They did all look pretty good, even if there were all up in Auckland. But what about this B.A. she was supposed to be finishing?

    Jayne had picked up one of the brochures. “This looks good. It would be sensible to do a course here, darling, rather than in Australia, because then you’d learn the New Zealand aspects of it.”

    Tamsin nodded eagerly.

    “Yes,” said Coral briskly. “Company law here isn’t exactly the same as over there.”

    “Corporation law, she means, Patty,” said Libby kindly.

    “I see. I guess the basic accounting procedures would be the same, though?” she ventured.

    “Of course,” said Jan quickly before ruddy Coral could tell her they weren’t and she’d better give up any idea of investing in the business and go home to the States. Which it was all too apparent she was about to: both Neil and Bob had gone very red and were glaring at her.

    “You’ve been working on the administrative side of your health farm, haven’t you?” said Tamsin eagerly. “I think it’d be very similar! You did an office administration course, didn’t you? You and me could share it!”

    “Um, much as we’d like to have you, Patty, I don’t think there’ll be enough work for the two of you, even with double the number of rooms,” said Jan feebly. “Um, well, I think possibly a part-time office assistant, if the place does really well, but I doubt that it’d run to more than that.”

    Patty’s round face had fallen ten feet. “No,” she said sadly. “I guess not, Jan.”

    Pete directed a glare at his partner in life. “Why the fuck are you putting the kybosh on it before we’ve hardly started?”

    “She’s being realistic,” said Coral grimly. “You can’t even afford a permanent waitress at the moment, can you? Under a revised management system and with proper marketing you’d fill all the rooms, but you won’t make a profit if you double your management personnel.”

    “‘Management human resources,’ these days, I think,” said Libby sourly into the glum silence that had fallen. “Most of us only want to make enough to live off, Coral, we’re not entrepreneurs like you. I don’t see why Patty shouldn’t share the office stuff with Tamsin and do the waiting as well.”

    “Libby, what about you?” said Jayne in distress.

    “I don’t have to be in it,” replied Libby firmly. “If there’s any money left out of the house once I’ve paid off the mortgage and paid you back that seven thousand you’ve apparently forgotten about, the ecolodge can have it, but I don’t have to have a job as well.”

    “I—I wasn’t expecting you to pay me back,” said her sister in a trembling voice.

    “I realise that, Jayne, but I’ve no intention of accepting that money as a gift: it’s yours.”

    “Actually it’s bloody Dad’s,” said Tamsin sourly.

    “It’s Jayne’s now!” retorted Libby loudly, very flushed. “And I’m paying her back!”

    “Um, maybe you could just be a sleeping partner, Libby; I think that’s the expression,” put in Molly timidly.

    “Yeah, ’tis,” agreed Bob. “And you two ning-nongs needn’t laugh!” he added grimly to the young male peer group.

    “Dad, I wasn’t gonna!” cried Neil.

    “Nor me,” agreed Sean glumly.

    “Good. Mind ya don’t,” replied Bob grimly, not relenting.

    “See, you’d just have money in the place and get a share of the profits—if there were any,” Pete explained on a dry note. “Think what’s being envisaged here is the kind of fiddle Jan worked out for us, where all the profits go on wages to the people that just happen to own the place.”

    “It’s not a fiddle!” said Coral loudly, very flushed.

    “It was, that summer ya had me working in one of your shops, Mum,” said Neil mildly.

    “It was not! You don’t understand the first thing about business!”

    “Everyone’s entitled to a fair wage,” said Jan heavily. “Even if they are family.”

    “They were fiddling the petrol costs,” said Bob calmly to the company.

    “We weren’t!” snapped Coral.

    “All right, Coral, ya weren’t, and Neil really needed the van to drive home from work every evening, not to mention taking that dim bird, forget her name, something weird, all over the thermal area in his time off. –Spiky hair, and these weird black fingernails. Black muck on them, I mean,” he explained clearly.

    Neil was now very red. “Look, shut up, Dad! That was ages ago!”

    “Yeah, drop it, Bob. I was trying to make the point,” said Pete loudly, “about ten million years back, that if Libby only puts money in the dump that doesn’t solve the problem of a job for her, does it?”

    “Pete, she has got a job,” noted Jan cautiously. “Quite a well-paid one, too.”

    “Yes, that’s right,” agreed Jayne on an anxious note. “But it’s not very exciting and she never meets new people, buried in that library all day.”

    “I don’t need to have a job here,” said Patty quickly, very flushed. “I think Libby should do waitress.”

    “Ya both oughta come and work here, love,” said Pete firmly, “but if you’d all shut up and listen, she hasn’t got a job, because she’s chucked the bloody thing in, and good riddance!”

    There was a stunned silence, particularly from Jayne and Tamsin. The latter, to no-one’s surprise, recovered herself first.

    “Aunty Libby, surely you didn’t give up your job just to come on holiday with us?”

    “Oh, dear!” cried Jayne distressfully.

    “No,” said Libby grimly. “They wouldn’t give me the leave I’d earned. They said I couldn’t carry it over and there’d been a stupid memo about it. So I told them where to put it.”

    Everyone else was looking stunned, even Tamsin, but Coral said keenly: “You mean you tried to carry it over from the previous financial year?”

    “Mm. Well, two, really, Coral.”

    “That was very injudicious, without first making sure exactly what—”

    “YES!” said Bob very loudly. “Will ya drop it, Coral!”

    “No, don’t shout at her,” said Libby in a small voice. “She’s right. Only I’m no good at that sort of stuff. And I’d earned it, so no matter how many memos they sent round it was still dishonest of them to take it away from me.”

    “Yeah, too right!” agreed Sean. “Your annual leave? What a pack of rat-bags!”

    “Yes, I think that’s dreadful!” chimed in Molly sympathetically. “But anyway, it means you’re free to come and help with the ecolodge, doesn’t it?”

    Coral gave her an incredulous look but everyone else, even Tamsin, was nodding and smiling approvingly. Jan cleared her throat. “Yeah. Great. We’ll work something out, Libby. You’re good with the boat and the guided tours, you could do a lot of that. And Patty, this doesn’t mean there won’t be room for you if you’d like to join us.”

    Coral took a deep breath. “Realistically, Jan—”

    “We need to get some more facts and figures,” said Jan firmly. “And everyone needs to have a good think about it and sort out what they really want. I think it’s about time for that cuppa, eh, Molly?”

    Molly got up thankfully. “Yes. I’ll boil the jug. Would people like tea or coffee?”

    “Beer,” said Sean firmly. “Come on, Neil, give us a hand.”

    “I’d quite like a cup of tea, Molly, if you’re making one,” said Jayne.

    Jan wouldn’t have minded a stiff gin, actually, but she settled for tea, and Molly followed the two young men out to the kitchen.

    The McLeod sisters were all looking rather limp and even Tamsin was looking rather stunned. “Thanks for doing all that work, Coral,” said Jan on a firm note.

    “Uh—that’s all right,” she replied feebly.

    Jan hadn’t meant to take her aback but on the whole she wasn’t too sorry she had. “It does all need thinking over very seriously. Um, well, for one thing, if we double the number of rooms there'd be twice as much cleaning: I dunno that Michelle, hard worker though she is, could fit it in. It has to be done round the guests, you see: makes it a bit complicated.”

    “I could help out with that!” said Patty eagerly.

    “Well, you wouldn’t have to wear a smart linen-look suit or have your hair done for it, that’s for sure,” replied Jan on a weak note.

    Somewhat to her relief Patty Eisenblatt-MacDermott laughed at this crack and agreed: “I sure wouldn’t!”

    “Tell ya what,” said Pete thoughtfully, “if we’re gonna build an extension, we could include some rooms for the girls!”

    “Well, there’s the loft,” replied Jan temperately, “but it wouldn’t hurt. Talking of which, isn’t it about time Jayne and Libby came back from over the water? Or are we gonna go on throwing money at Paul Turpin all summer?”

    Libby had gone rather red. When Leanne went she’d persuaded Jayne to move into the house, which meant that she had the A-frame to herself. To herself with Aidan, very frequently: he had asked her back to his place but she didn’t really feel at ease, not having the house to themselves. “It is a waste of money, Jayne,” she said in a strangled voice.

    “I guess you and your boyfriend could use his place, huh?” said the innocent Patty kindly.

    “Mm,” admitted Libby, glaring at her feet.

    “Yes, that’d work out,” agreed Jayne, giving her a worried look. “Most of his clients are over on the other side, anyway, aren’t they?”

    “If he goes on with it, you mean: he turned down three ladies this week,” said Libby sourly. “It’s since we met that nice judge lady: it was all right when there was nobody around that knew who he was.”

    “He’s a tit, anyway,” noted Pete. “Forget him, lovey. Come back home.”

    Libby swallowed hard. “Yes.”

    “Libby, dear, we could keep the house on,” murmured Jayne.

    “No, Dad’s right: it’s throwing money away.” She took a deep breath and managed a smile. “And if you’re going to be a capitalist entrepreneur investing in the ecolodge, you’ll need all your dough! Not to mention Tamsin’s courses: she won’t get HECS over here, you’ll have to pay up-front.”

    “HECS is a rort anyway: you end up with a huge debt to the government and they take it off your salary,” said Tamsin sourly. “But I’m gonna pay you back, Mum!” she warned.

    Bob got up. “She is ya mum, Tamsin,” he said heavily. “Just be thankful she’s the sort that wants to give you some dough.”

    “What’s that supposed to mean?” gasped Coral.

    “Eh? Nothing. Nothing personal, Coral. Only just ask yaself this: how many couples of our age do ya know that have given their kids something to get started on instead of putting it into a bloody new car or an overseas trip or flaming new body carpet?”

    “I— Young people should stand on their own feet,” said Coral limply.

    “I’ve never been able to see why. –I gotta get back to it,” he said, going.

    “What was all that about?” said Pete limply.

    Neil had come in with a fistful of cans in time to catch the end of it. “He’s pissed off because Mum’s been bending his ear. Well, for one thing, she tried to make him join her in the campaign to make me give up freshwater ecology.”

    Jan eyed him drily. While A was undoubtedly true this did not mean that B was untrue. However, if no-one but her had realised that Bob’s ill humour dated from the point where Libby’s boyfriend got mentioned, so much the better. “Finishing your degree can’t hurt, Neil, whatever you end up doing.”

    “No, that’s right,” he agreed gratefully.

    “I never said you should drop your degree!” said Coral sharply.

    “Not lately, ya mean, Mum. No, all right, ya didn’t. We looked in on those types from the Department of Conservation down at Turangi the other day, eh, Tamsin? There’s the possibility of a job there: looks quite promising.”

    Tamsin nodded eagerly.

    “Really?” said Coral on a weak note. “You’d better tell your father, then, and maybe he’ll come out of that mood.”

    “Yeah, ’specially if I don’t mention it’d be a desk in a corner behind two kiwi-egg types!” said Neil with a sudden laugh. “Still, it’d be a start!”

    So it would. Supposing that the thing between him and Tamsin lasted and that Tamsin did really want to manage the ecolodge and—

    “Eh?” said Jan feebly as it dawned her helpmeet had addressed her. “I am cheerful, you clot! There’s just a lot to think about.”

    Pete rubbed his hands. “Yeah; better start looking round for some decent bits of wood!”

    Coral nodded judiciously but his daughters all shrieked and collapsed in hysterical giggles.

    “Yes,” said Jan limply. “Why not?”

Next chapter:

https://summerseason-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/09/new-leaves.html