By The Shore Of Gitche Gumee

1

By The Shore Of Gitche Gumee

    The ecolodge dozed under a pale blue November sky. Nothing moved on the gravelled sweep. From somewhere in the distance came the roar of an outboard motor, then all was still. Further round the shore a motionless aluminium dinghy with two male figures in it could be glimpsed on the shining waters of the big lake.

    “The women’ll reckon he needs a wife,” warned Wal Briggs morosely. He waggled his line a bit but as this didn’t encourage the non-existent fish to bite, reeled it in and inspected the hook morosely. “Bugger.” He baited it again and chucked it back in, though without hope.

    “Who’ll need a wife?” asked Pete McLeod without much interest.

    “Aidan Vine.” Pete merely looked blank so he added crossly: “Wake up! The bloke that’s taking that dump of old McLintock’s for the summer!”

    “Thought ’is name was Andrew?”

    “’Tis.” Pete gave him an amazed glare so Wal elaborated, since they still weren’t biting: “Technically the bloke that asked about the house is Andrew Barker. Aidan’s coming with him, geddit? They’re old mates: used to clerk for me, yonks back. And what I’m saying is, look out, the women’ll go crazy, ’cos Aidan’s got pots and he’s busted up with that cow-faced Australian bitch Paulette.”

    Pete merely replied calmly to this intel: “Jan won’t go crazy, mate, I can guarantee it.”

    “No, well, Livia will, I can guarantee that, and don’t imagine you and Jan are gonna be spared, she’s planning the nice little dinner parties already!”

    “We’ll be too busy, summer’s our busy season,” responded Pete, unmoved.

    Wal gave him a dry look. Taupo Shores Ecolodge might be busy, but Pete wouldn’t be rushed off his feet, because these days young Sean Jackson was giving him a hand in the intervals of building a brand-new house cum crafts shop for himself and his brand-new de facto down the back of the property. And Jan’d be on Livia’s side. Especially if one of Pete’s daughters by his first turned up this summer like what she’d been threatening to. Neither of the daughters had laid eyes on Pete for yonks, but apparently that was no deterrent. He waggled his line a bit.

    “So which of ’em’s been working in Oz, again?” asked Pete.

    “Aidan. Big noise in company law in Sidders. Livia’s already decided he’ll be just the thing for your Elizabeth, apparently on the grounds he’s been living in Sydney for the last twenty years and her mum took her to Brizzie getting on for forty years back so they must have so much in common, don’t tell me to look at the map, ta!”

    Pete merely replied to this intel: “Libby. Elizabeth was all her mum’s idea.”

    It would have been, yeah. Wal reeled his line in again. “Bugger. Thought you said this mixture couldn’t fail?”

    “Nope,” replied Pete succinctly.

    Wal glared.

    “What I said was,” said Pete, staring out over the lapis lazuli expanses of the big lake, his thin, tanned face expressionless, “if they were biting this mixture couldn’t fail.”

    Wal breathed heavily.

    “’S not like in the old days, yer know,” Pete reminded him unnecessarily.

    Evilly Wal replied: “Would this be as in the old days like fifty years ago, when we were too young to know any better and the fucking word ‘environmental’ hadn’t been coined and a handy stick of dynamite did the job, or in the old days like sixty years ago, when ya chucked ya fly in and hooked a thirty-pounder?”

    Wal and Pete were both around seventy, which was partly the trouble. Well, that combined with the fact that the womenfolk wouldn’t let them hive off into the bush with their rifles like in the good old days. So Pete replied on a discernibly annoyed note: “Whaddaya mean, sixty? You never even knew Taupo flaming well existed sixty years back!”

    “Never knew anything much existed, sixty years back,” admitted Wal, giving in and chucking the hook back in, unbaited. “School, wagging of same with Jake and anyone else we could suborn, the orphanage porridge, and good old Sister Anne’s stick: that was about it. And reciting a few prayers like a parrot, not to say listening in a state of complete incomprehension to old Father O’Malley in church. Still in yer dinkum Latin lingo, back then,” he said reminiscently. “Boy, were those the days. Keep ’em ignorant and awed.”

    “You and Jake done all right,” replied Pete to what might possibly have been the sub-text.

    Wal smiled a little. He himself was a retired barrister, and might have been said to have made his pile, except if you compared him to Jake Carrano, whose fortune was the biggest in the country. Construction and civil engineering, mainly. Head Office of the Carrano Group was still in Auckland but only because Jake was a sentimental bugger and he and his wife preferred living in the country where they’d grown up. There was a Carrano Building in London and another in Tokyo and—well. Done all right and a half.

    “Mm,” he admitted. “No, well, I was thinking of that old bloke, John Something, still used to come down here with a mate, think ’is name was Ces Something, when me and Jake first met you, though the wife was already getting set to put the kybosh on it, thought he shouldn’t be driving down from Auckland at his age. According to him, ten years before that they used to reel in the thirty-pounders, hand over fist. –Aw, yeah,” he remembered: “and bottle ’em in malt vinegar, ’member?”

    Pete winced but acknowledged: “Aw, yeah, ole John Whassaname. Decent old joker. Quite high up in the public service before he retired, ’djew know that? –Yeah. Well, no other way of stopping ’em going off, back in them days, and it was a fair drive back to Auckland, might of been the main road but the surface was a bugger. The wife was a real bitch, that’s right. One of them cool dames.”

    Wal shuddered. “Right.”

    Pete stared out across the lake. “Yeah… Poor ole John. She did put the kybosh on, ya know, just a few years later… Mind you, I wasn’t noticing much by then, that was after I’d hooked up with Alison and she made me buy that dump down Kitchener Street and do it up within an inch of its life.”

    Wal’s ugly, basset-hound face creased in a smile. “Mm.”

    “What’s the joke?” asked Pete suspiciously.

    “Nothing. Well—Kitchener Street? Dates it, eh? Never mind,” he said to Pete’s blank expression.

    “That’s right, keep ’em ignorant and awed,” replied Pete without animus. “Pelmets over all the windows,” he added thoughtfully.

    Wal shuddered, but nodded. Pete’s first wife had been a total disaster. So had his second. It wasn’t until he was in his fifties that he’d hooked up with Jan Harper, as decent a woman as you could meet, even if she did have a face like the back of a bus and the bus’s figure to match; and that, thank God, had taken. Not that Wal could talk, he himself was on his fourth round. But Livia was okay. Didn’t want anything he couldn’t give her, didn’t nag him to death—well, be fair, except when he’d asked for it—and when ya came right down to it, was bloody grateful to be living a decent life with a joker that didn’t expect her to be anything else than what she was. Plus and had kept her figure and was still a bloody good-looking woman, for her age.

    They sat back in peaceful silence for a bit. The fish still weren’t biting but then, if you were being strictly honest, neither of them had expected them to. Not out here, not at this time of day. And not with that mixture of Pete’s.

    “So has ole Judge McLintock carked it?” asked Pete elegantly.

    Wal made a face. “Nah. In a nursing-home back in Auckland. The two sons have got power of attorney.”

    “Never knew he had any sons.”

    “You wouldn’t: they never came down here,” agreed Wal. “No, well, he was a real bastard on the bench and as far as is known it extended to ’is private life. Not that the pair of them sound much better: it’s a joint power of attorney, Pete.”

    “Eh?”

    “They both have to sign,” said Wal very drily indeed.

    “Eh? Oh! I getcha. Take after him—right. So how come they decided to let the place?”

    There was some logic in this enquiry: whereas Taupo Shores Ecolodge was on the ordinary side of the lake, Wal Briggs’s Californian-Spanish palace was on the good side, as was Judge McLintock’s huge dark brick and glass thing over to its left as you looked at them from the water. A coincidence: Wal was pretty much persona non grata with the New Zealand legal Establishment and in fact the judge was reliably reported to have thrown a wobbly when he realised who he was next to. The so-called holiday house would probably fetch around two mill’ if it was sold.

    “Think the story was (a) they wanted the dough and Aidan and Andrew didn’t argue over the rent, and (b) they couldn’t agree on a price if they put it on the market. And (c) neither of the wives wants a bar of it, that dark brick look’s really out, these days.”

    “Is it?” said Pete McLeod blankly.

    “So they tell me. Pass us a beer, for God’s sake.”

    Pete passed him a beer and opened another for himself and conversation lapsed.

    Over on the ordinary side of the lake Livia Briggs peered out at the boat and reported: “They don’t seem to be throwing things.”

    “Good; perhaps they’ve learnt that metal cans constitute pollution, at last—even if they did contain the sacred macho DB Draught,” replied Jan Harper grimly.

    Livia gave a loud giggle. “Silly! No, fishing lines.”

    “Oh! Uh—fly-fishing, Livia,” said Jan on a weak note. Livia was a Pom, a retired not-very-successful actress, though the male side remembered her very clearly some twenty years back in some Pommy TV series that had tried to out-Dynasty the Yanks, in a see-through blue negligée with, or so it was claimed, the nipples rouged. Why that apparently had made it better was a mystery that only the male side understood. But “throwing things” was pretty bad even for a Pom that had never so much as been in a small boat before she met Wal.

    “Don’t you have to do that if you want trout, though, Jan?”

    “That’s the received wisdom from the male side, yes. That or chuck a stick of dyna—”

    Even Livia knew that that was an absolute no-no. “Ssh!” she hissed, collapsing in giggles.

    Jan eyed her tolerantly. “Yeah. Well, the claim is that trout’ll only bite at your genuine, tied-by-hand-under-the-magnifying-glass, secret trout fly that simulates their natural food, but funnily enough this claim has never been reconciled with the fact that over Rotorua way those giant ones used to snap at white bread or stale cake or whatever the tourists cared to offer ’em, and for all I know, still do.”

    “Ooh, yes, those huge rainbow ones!” she remembered. “Wal took me to see them, once! Ooh, aren’t they silly!” She collapsed in giggles again.

    Jan grinned tolerantly. “Yeah.” Those who knew and loved Wal Briggs had been in fear and trembling when he took up with the ditsy blonde Livia, but it had turned out real good. The ditsy bit was only on the surface: underneath Livia was solid steel. Just what bloody Wal needed, in fact.

    Livia sat up straight on their rug, provided by herself, and blew her nose on a dainty ironed handkerchief.—Just as well, thought Jan, eyeing it in some amusement, that Wal was the type of macho idiot that liked his women to like things to be nayce, eh?—“Shall we open the rosé, Jan?” she suggested hopefully.

    The sun hadn’t quite reached the yardarm yet, by Jan’s calculations, but why the Hell not? Those two buggers out there were certainly knocking back the frosties. And the reason she and Livia were about to drink EnZed rosé was not that she, Jan Harper, considered it to be wine, or that Wal Briggs, who could afford the best, was safely out there on the lake as of this min, nor that it was all that she and Pete could afford. And only partly that Taupo Shores Ecolodge was slightly overstocked with it in the wake of a special offer at one of the wholesale liquor emporiums in Taupo and these days most of their customers thought it was too down-market to drink. No, the main reason was that Livia loved it and Wal would drink anything and into the bargain not criticise what others might be knocking back. Alone of the male half—yep.

    “Here ya go,” she said, pouring. “Cheers!”

    “Cheers, Jan, dear!” agreed Livia brightly, drinking. “Ooh, isn’t it nice?” she said pleasedly.

    It was, actually. Good and cold, just slightly fizzy but not so much as to give you gas for the rest of the day, and sweetish. And almost wine-flavoured and discernibly alcoholic, what more could you ask for on a clear and almost warm day in late November? They might even be going to get a summer this year, too! Jan relaxed and drank pink sweetish wine gratefully, not giving so much as a thought to what the ecolodge’s four guests—yes, a whole four—might be expecting for lunch.

    “I finally got Wal to admit that neither of them are married,” said Livia after Jan had refilled ’em.

    “Mm? Oh, these types that are taking old McLintock’s house, Livia? Not gay, are they?” responded Jan kindly.

    “Absolutely not, dear!” she replied smartly.

    Right, well, Livia was the expert, no argument, so if she said so—

    “I met Aidan Vine that winter we went to Sydney: you remember, Jan, the weather was horrid, and Wal was really fed up, so I said let’s get away to a nice hotel, nowhere horrid and tropical where you risk Gyppy tummy, just somewhere really comfortable and within easy reach of the downtown. So we stayed at the Wentworth, he said it was starting to show its age but so was he. Aidan was still married to that frightful Paulette and living in that huge house with a view of the harbour that he’s apparently let her have in the divorce settlement. Well, of course it was obvious that he’d lost interest—in the house as well as in her, I mean—but I ask you! A lawyer, letting her get away with the house?”

    “Um, have they got kids?” groped Jan.

    “Well, yes, two, but darling, they’re grown up!” she cried.

    In that case Jan had had hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely, but she just nodded kindly, not telling her to go on, because once launched, nothing stopped her. Sure enough, she got the entire low-down on the house that this Aidan Vine character had let the ex have. It certainly sounded ghastly enough to satisfy any number of rapacious up-market Sydney-sider society bitches. Livia was too nice to use the word but she left no doubt in Jan’s mind that that was what the woman was.

    “Why the Hell did he marry her in the first place?” she wondered idly.

    “Darling, why do any of them?” cried Livia vividly.

    Well, yeah, why? She didn’t have to ask again, because Livia was telling her.

    “The right school, darling, and the father was a judge,”—she pulled an awful face—“and not only good-looking but the right sort of looks, y’know?” She pulled another awful face. “The Sloane Ranger type, Jan, dear, I know you don’t have that out here, but that is the type. Sleek looks, ra-ather tailored, the hair in a smooth pageboy bob—longish, in her case, there was a big photo of her in those days on one of the occasional tables.”

    “I see. So he married her to further his career?”

    Livia shrugged. “More or less. I dare say he did want her.”

    “Mm. But that isn’t the only criterion with the ambitious type of male, don’t tell me. I get it that they’ve lost interest in each other but I must say I can’t see why the Hell he’s coming out here on the strength of it, Livia.”

    “No, well, mid-life crisis, darling?” she said vaguely. “He told Wal that he fancied a change, but then, men can’t communicate, poor dears, can they?”

    Wal Briggs had made his fortune on his feet communicating in court and this Aidan type was supposed to be one of the same—or maybe if it was company law you did it all in your office, but communication had gotta be in there somewhere—but as Jan entirely agreed with her she didn’t mention these points.

    Livia then launched into an encomium of Aidan Vine’s looks. Tall, dark and ’andsome just about summed it up. Late forties? Yes, well, in that case it was mid-life crisis, all right. As to why the raving about the looks when she herself had married—and was genuinely in love with—one of the ugliest men Jan had ever laid eyes on… Well, joli-laid, true, but she didn’t think the expression was in Livia’s vocabulary. Now she was on about his job. Jan just poured them each another belt, nodding at intervals. Senior partner, uh-huh. Downtown offices in Never-Heard-of-It Street, uh-huh. Oh, view of the Opera House, beg ya pardon! Making how much? Jan’s jaw dropped.

    “Eh?”

    Livia nodded serenely. “Oh, all of that, Jan, darling, Wal says the big-time Sydney law scene’s like that. And if one’s asked to appear on a Commission or something like that, for either side, I think he meant, at least two thousand an hour! Billable hours, darling, not just the hours they spend in the actual hearings.”

    “Their dollars or ours?” she croaked.

    Livia wasn’t much given to dryness but at this she looked distinctly dry and replied: “Does it matter, darling?”

    “Well, no, you’re right,” croaked Jan. “In that tax bracket it wouldn’t matter, no. –An hour?”

    “Mm. I’m so sorry, Jan, but Wal went and told him the judge’s house was available before I knew about it.”

    “Eh? Oh, ya mean we’ve lost a customer for the ecolodge! Heck, that’s all right!” said Jan breezily. “If we had’ve tried to charge him twice what everybody else pays he’d’ve found out and sued the pants off us, ’cos that sort does!”

    “Ye-es… Well, in general, yes. But you know,” said Livia thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t say Aidan Vine was that sort. I’d say he wouldn’t lower himself, actually.”

    Never mind the silver-streaked yellow fluff on top of the head and the strong impression she emanated that that was what was inside the head as well, Livia was actually very shrewd about people. So Jan Harper replied in some surprise: “I see!”

    “Which possibly,” she said slowly, “explains why he’s fed up with the Sydney legal scene. Well—too much probity, Jan, dear?”

    Uh—cripes. Jan gaped at her. After a moment she managed to say: “Livia, he hasn’t got some dotty idea that EnZed’ll be any different, has he? ’Cos from what Wal’s said, our legal lot are a pack of self-serving Scrooges with an eye to the main chance, as well!”

    “Well, I don’t know, darling. He is a New Zealander, of course: he did his degree at Auckland and worked in Wal’s office for a while as a young man. So I wouldn’t think he’d be under any illusion about the ways things are here. Unless he’s looking at it through rose-coloured spectacles because it’s his past?”

    Uh—that was a fairly common human error: yes.

    “Never mind, Wal’ll put him straight,” decided Livia comfortably. “Shall we have a wee nibble?”

    “Mm? Oh—sorry!” Sheepishly Jan opened the non-chilled hamper that didn’t contain the rosé and handed her a Tupperware container. “Savoury tarts. Be warned: they didn’t quite work out.”

    Assuring her she was sure they’d be yummy, Livia bit into one eagerly. A surprised look came over her face.

    Jan cleared her throat. “Sumac. That’s what’s making the filling look pinkish. Never tried it before. Polly Carrano sent me some, don’t ask me where she got it from. It’s supposed to be a replacement for lemon juice. So I looked up that Cooking With Spices book she gave me ages back and it mentioned a mixture of sumac and thyme with a kind of yoghurt cream cheese, so I used up some of the gallons of milk the goats are giving us this year. Turned out a bit sour: there was no actual recipe, so I wasn’t sure of the proportions. Might have known it wouldn’t work: never have managed to make anything from that book.”

    “No, dear, most unusual!” she cried. “One can taste the thyme, too!”

    Something like that—Livia wasn’t a cook. “Mm. Anyway, have a cheese straw to take the taste away.”

    They had both eaten several cheese straws and Livia had bravely taken another tart when Jan remembered idly: “Didn’t you say this Aidan type had a mate?”

    “Mm? Oh, yes, an old schoolfriend. Wal hasn’t seen him for years, though way back he and Aidan used to clerk for him when they were doing their degrees together.”

    “So he’s a lawyer as well?”

    “No, dear, he works for Jake,” she said calmly.

    Er—thousands of people worked for the Carrano Group, in fact if you counted all the building subcontractors and God-knew-what, probably tens of thousands. “As what, Livia?”

    “Head of a section,” she said vaguely. “I don’t know what, exactly. In the Auckland office.”

    “Um, the Group’s Head Office, or Carrano Development?”

    “The Group, darling, I do remember that, because I asked Polly, and she asked Jake, and he said what section it was, but I can’t remember it—well, it was essentially meaningless, Jan, dear, you know what big business is—and then he said he was good middle management material but he’d never get further than he was now because he didn’t have enough push and she said was that his Sir Jacobness’s considered executive opinion and he said it was, as a matter of fact,” reported Livia, verbatim.

    “I get it,” said Jan mildly. “What’s his name, again?”

    “Andrew Barker. I have spoken to him on the phone: he sounds rather nice, actually.”

    “Uh-huh. And when are they coming down?’

    “He wasn’t absolutely sure, but quite soon, Jan. Spending the whole summer.”

    As Livia was a Pom this was possibly just her vernacular. “You mean the Christmas holidays?” replied Jan cautiously in EnZed as she was spoke.

    “No, dear, the whole summer.”

    Jan wasn’t that vitally interested in the tenants of old Judge McLintock’s super-duper house but at this she took a deep breath. “Not if this Andrew type wants to go on working for Jake, I wouldn’t think, Livia. Even if the execs at his level do get four weeks, and tack that onto Christmas and New Year’s and I dare say he can drag it out to five, or six at a pinch, but he’ll have to be back at work come the first or second week of Feb like the rest of ’em, won’t he? Only if he doesn’t want Jake to sack him, of course,” she added fairly.

    “Well, no, darling, because he’s taking a leave of absence.”

    “Ya mean Jake’s letting him?” she croaked. “What happened? Hang on, not the wife dying of cancer or something frightful like that? A kid drowning in the backyard pool in Pakuranga?”

    “No, silly one, nothing like that at all. He and the wife are separated and the children must be in their twenties.”

    “Right, in that case, that’s two of ’em with mid-life crisis,” said Jan heavily.

    “I’d say so, darling, yes.” She took a third tart. “These quite grow on one, you know!” she said brightly.

    They did after half a bottle of sweetish pink plonk, yeah. Jan took a handful of cheese straws. “Why wasn’t I ever privileged to have mid-life crisis?” she wondered on a grim note.

    “Darling, me neither! What woman is? Though if ever anyone deserved it I’m sure I did! At that age I was wondering if I’d ever work again—well, one does, you know, in the Business, once one’s hit forty and the neck’s started to go.”

    “Only if one’s our sex, presumably, Livia,” said Jan very drily indeed, opening another, why not?

    Livia accepted a refill, knocked back a slug of it and said with giggle: “Well, one or two of the other sex as well! Did I ever tell you about Johnny Merchant’s face-lift? Disastrous, darling, everyone told him he should have gone to California but he went to some man in Amsterdam and came back looking positively rigid! Though it worked out quite well in the long run, because he landed that part as the po-faced butler in that series with frightful Poppy Mountjoy—you know, darling, the thing in the country house the old father wouldn’t sell, not the vet thing where she was married to that dishy doctor—lovely Guy King, do not ask me why they didn’t cast him as the new James Bond, and you can say what you like, that fellow is not blond within the legal definition!”

    She was off. Jan never listened to Livia’s reminiscences about the so-called “Business,” that was, the ruddy British acting scene. So she just sat back, drank pink plonk, ate cheese straws and very—hah, hah—tart cheese tarts, and let it all flow over her…

    “Don’t you think?”

    Jan blinked. “Huh? Sorry, Livia, what was that?”

    “I was saying that Andrew and Aidan might be just right for Pete’s Libby and your cousin Robyn’s daughter!” she beamed.

    Uh—gone back to the last subject but fourteen, recognised Jan groggily. “Livia, we don’t know yet that Libby’s definitely coming,” she reminded her cautiously. “And I haven’t laid eyes on Robyn for years, let alone the daughters, I’ve no idea what Leanne might be like and in fact I can’t even remember which one she is. And they may not fancy these blokes and actually, if this Aidan type from Sydney’s as up-market as he sounds, I very much doubt that he’d fancy them! Well, cripes, what other word than ‘ordinary’ could possibly spring to mind when you catch sight of Pete?”—Livia had gone rather pink, so that one was a bull’s eye.—“And I never met Alison but judging by the male half’s feeling descriptions of those lemon crocheted toilet-roll holders she specialised in—gee, that’s not easy to say on top of four or five belts of pink plonk—um, judging by them she was pretty much Taupo’s Mrs Average. And believe you me, round these parts average is average!” She belched loudly. “Help. Pardon me!”

    “Well, yes, darling, one is not arguing with that, and thank goodness darling Pete met you, but after all, the second generation is often more upwardly mobile than their parents, and what else does one go to Queensland for, Jan, darling?”

    “Uh, sun, sand, easy life without having to run the pot-bellied stove all winter or risk the electricity bill breaking the bank?” she groped.

    Livia replied feelingly: “My dear, you’re not wrong, Wal shouted his head off when last winter’s bill came in, and as you know, he is not a mean man! No, but at Alison’s age—when she went, I mean—of course one goes in order to give the kiddies a better life!”

    In Jan Harper’s considered opinion Alison McLeod had gone because she wanted an easy life in the sun, with far more opportunity to buy Yank-style consumer junk than conservative little EnZed had been able to offer in the Sixties, and the kids’ prospects had had nothing at all to do with it.

    “And Libby did go to university, you know!” Livia reminded her.

    “Uh—yeah. Think both girls did. But they could have gone here, Livia, in fact they could have gone for nothing if they’d got Bursary. Well, nothing plus the cost of boarding up in Auckland, I suppose. –Gee,” she realised, “and that would’ve come out of Pete’s pocket anyway, so he’d still have ended up broke!”

    Livia licked her lips uncertainly. “They are his daughters, Jan, dear.”

    “Mm. I suppose my point is that that bitch Alison could have contributed but she never gave either of them a red cent: screwed it out of poor old Pete instead. And she had remarried by then, you know. Oh, well, water under the bridge.”

    “Exactly. So the elder girl went to university too, did she, dear? That’s nice!” said Livia brightly.

    Something like that. Livia herself had broken her mother’s heart by going on the stage at seventeen. That was one version. The other one was that Mummy had always been terrifically supportive—you paid yer money and took yer choice. Oh, well, talking of water under the bridge, that was something like fifty years back: Livia was a lot older than she looked, in fact closer to Wal’s and Pete’s age than to Jan’s. Being able to send one’s children to university, Jan had long since realised, represented some sort of pinnacle of worldly success to her. The Pommy mind-set or something. Whereas to the majority out here, the matter was completely irrelevant.

    “Eh? Oh—yeah. Jayne with a Y—her mother’s choice,” she said heavily. “She did a B.A. and then a teaching diploma. That was shortly before she married the headmaster of her first school—fifty-four, if you please, to her twenty-four—and took up housekeeping and home nursing as a full-time career. Until the cancer finally took him off,” she ended grimly.

    “Darling, one has to say it, girls who grow up without a father often do turn to an older man,” she murmured.

    “Uh—yeah. Do they? Yeah,” said Jan muzzily, pouring more pink plonk. “Give those two drongos a wave, wouldja, Livia? Might as well have our actual lunch, don’t fancy any more of these tart tarts.”

    “Tart— Oh, very good, Jan, dear!” she carolled. She rose unsteadily and waved energetically but unsteadily at the macho morons in the boat. Part of the unsteadiness might be due to the extremely high-heeled wedgies she was wearing, to be fair. –Gosh: Livia in wedgies already? Summer must be a-cumen in, all right!

    The morons were ignoring her so Jan bellowed: “HEY! LUNCH! PETE! LUNCH! HEY!”

    “I don’t think they heard you, Jan, dear,” concluded Livia, sitting down again.

    “Sound is supposed to carry over water,” replied Jan firmly, “and I’ll give them ten minutes and then I’m unwrapping the chicken!”

    “Ooh, chicken! Goody!”

    “It’s a very easy recipe, Livia,” said Jan on a cautious note. Sure enough, this elicited a pout and the information that “Little Me” would be sure to ruin it. How very true. Jan sighed. What Livia needed was a cook: she and Wal either came over here and ate in Taupo Shores Ecolodge’s restaurant—quite a long drive from the other side of the lake—or she fed Wal on microwaved frozen dinners. Frozen lasagna, frozen Chinese, frozen roast lamb and three veg, all reliably reported to taste of salt and cardboard… Oh, dear. Trouble was, no way was she gonna find a cook round these here parts. She did have help in the house: she was a client of Sue Pritchard’s and Kristel Pohaka’s huge Lake District Cleaning Services empire. They originally did most of it themselves but they were set up as a proper company and these days employed half a dozen other women and spent most of their time on the paperwork. Needless to say it was only the residents of the choice holiday homes and retirement mansions on Livia’s side of the lake who were favoured with their services: no-one on this side could afford their prices. But unfortunately they didn’t provide cooks, possibly because there were none. For the conscientious housewives, meat and three veg was still the norm round Taupo way, never mind the twenty-first century. The other lot simply fed the partner and the kids on takeaways or frozen pizzas.

    “I did hear,” said Livia on a hopeful note, “that Paul Turpin wants to let that place of his this summer. It might be just right for the girls!”

    Jan had to swallow. The lakeside dwellings fell into two categories. The mansions on Livia’s side of the lake were over the top and down the other side: every style imaginable, each one more unsuitable than the last for our climate, Pete’s favourite being the glass-walled, slate-floored erection that was so cold in winter the owners never came down for ten months of the year and so hot in summer that they’d had to put in ducted air conditioning at the cost of only megabucks and a whole year’s wait until the Auckland firm could get down here to do it.

    This side featured mainly baches, more or less renovated. The far side had been virtually inaccessible back when Pete’s grandfather had had the bach that had eventually been renovated into Taupo Shores so-called Ecolodge. Well, as nothing had been done to the reasonably extensive property over three macho McLeod males’ lifetimes the native vegetation had had more than time enough to grow. As much as it could, given the pumice that its soil was largely composed of. Eco-friendly enough. The weeds that flourished as much as the natives did were all European imports, but that was par for the course—so much so that Jan sincerely doubted that this generation even realised they were introduced. And Taupo Shores did offer eco-friendly bush walks. Choice of several “trails”. The Pohutukawa Trail wound for about two K round the property, cunningly ending up back where it started from, and the Rewarewa Trail wound ditto, five K. The Rimu Trail was more of a trek and really tested the keen ecolodgers, especially the ones that were sure they could do it themselves with the aid of Pete’s map: sixteen-odd K, head south-east until you hit the five-barred gate and then good luck to you, the rest of it was off the property and since it was Crown land anything at all might have been happening to it since last time Pete bothered to wander down it. The lodge itself was eco-friendly in that most of the renovated parts were constructed from bits and pieces that Pete had—hah, hah—“salvaged” from around and about. And personally Jan wasn’t asking where those huge beams that looked like railway sleepers had come from.

    Paul Turpin’s place sort of fell between two stools. The relic of overweening ambition followed by an almighty marital dust-up followed by an excruciatingly expensive divorce, was wot. The wife had got the large two-storeyed house in an expensive suburb of Wellington and the Beamer, and Paul had got the Taupo property and the 4WD. Certainly the land would be worth a fair bit if the road ever got that far, which at this stage it hadn’t, though he had a nice little jetty on the shore. And there was a track, which had been negotiable by 4WD four or five years back. The house itself consisted of an enormous timber framework on concrete footings, three actual rooms, a gigantic pile of bricks and an enormous pile of blue slate, reliably reported by Wal Briggs to be shrinking every month, must be the weather. That was as far as it had got at the point the wife found out about the other home just out of Wellington in Upper Hutt—oh, yeah: juicy wasn’t the word for the Turpin divorce.

    “Livia,” she croaked, “it’s a complete dump. Has it even got a toilet?”

    “Yes, he put a nice bathroom in, that was one of the things they had the fight over.”

    “When she flung that rock at him?” asked Jan hopefully.

    “Brick, dear. No, before that. The time she went back to Wellington and discovered that suspicious electricity bill in his desk drawer.”

    “Right, for the second home.”

    “Yes. But the property isn’t so bad, now, he’s made a lot of improvements. He’s sold all the building materials: Ben Reilly took them off his hands.”

    Er… Ben Reilly was only in his twenties and very firmly under his dad’s thumb: it was Ron Reilly who owned the recycling yard the luckless Ben managed, for his sins—largely the sin of not being able to get a job in a small town in the twenty-first century, poor kid. Owned it together with Jan and Pete’s local dairy and large stretches of other real estate in Taupo proper. “Livia, you mean Miser Ron Reilly did, don’t you?”

    “I suppose so, dear, but it was young Ben who came over with his truck and some helpers. They’ve taken all the mess away, even the whatchamacallum—framing.”

    “The timbers? Gee, Pete could’ve salvaged those if we’d known they were going begging! So, um, what’s left?”

    “Some concrete posts and three rooms,” replied Livia literally. “And he hired Micky Young to put up one of those A-frame garages, it isn’t quite connected but there was a bit of a path, so it’s at the end of that. It has got windows, it’s the sort that can be a little holiday house!” she beamed.

    Er—yeah. Jan did know of some people that had one of those, but they’d put a fair bit of work into it to turn it into something reasonable. Wall linings, for a start: the things were basically tin sheds. Not your basic or Mitre 10 shed, no. The sort that had fake weatherboarding made of pressed steel rather than your corrugated steel au naturel.

    “Look, if you were thinking of Libby, or Robyn’s Whatsername, come to that, they’re not girls, they’re women of around forty, Livia, they won’t want to bach it in a dump without facilities of any kind. Is the water even on?”

    She didn’t know—quite. “They can come to us,” said Jan firmly.

    “Jan, you said yourself you’re fully booked, even the bunkhouse, and you can’t turn away paying customers, you know!”

    “They can have the loft over the garage,” said Jan firmly, not bothering to correct her polite usage of “bunkhouse,” as per their website, to “tin shed from Mitre 10,” which was what it was. Admittedly lined by Pete and a mate. “It may be basic but its little ensuite’s okay and we can shove an extra bed in there. And they can be independent if they want to: we’ll put back the hot-plate it had that time Lalla and Petey used it.”

    Brightening, Livia agreed that that would be comfortable, and plunged into happy reminiscence of Lalla and her little boy and happy enquiries as to how she was doing now. Ending, as Jan gave in and opened the Tupperware container of cold chicken: “What a lovely girl she was! It’s such a pity you can’t get someone permanent to help you, Jan!”

    Possibly she meant fulltime rather than permanent but Jan merely replied firmly: “Janet’s a great help.” Janet Barber was in her mid-fifties with two useless lumps of grown sons and a useless wimp of a divorced husband that she saw more of than she had when they were married, and thoroughly imbued with the sort of grindingly respectable, grindingly dull EnZed ethos that before coming to live in Taupo Jan would have said had gone out with white gloves and horrid little hats for church. Meat and three veg and peel every potato within an inch of its life was her idea of cuisine. Helpful when you were preparing potato salad for twenty-five—yes. Not so much when you could have done with an extra hand on the spinach- and fetta-filled filo pastry rolls.

    “Jan, dear, you’ve said it yourself: she can’t cook.”

    “Nor could Lalla, bless her,” said Jan with a sigh. “She sent some pics of Petey with her last letter, did I say? He’s growing like a weed… Oh, well. At least Janet’s reliable, and doesn’t mind giving Michelle Callaghan a hand with the vacuuming and the beds when we’re busy. And before you start, Michelle may look like Arnie Schwarzenegger in drag, but she’s worth her weight in gold!”

    “Of course, dear,” said Livia comfortably, eying the chicken. “Your lovely recipe with the lemon and the breadcrumbs, is it, Jan?”

    Jumping slightly, Jan agreed it was, and offered the container. Barely having the time to urge her to take a nice piece of breast before the two Good Keen Men turned up whingeing that they’d started without them.

    “Yes, we gave up on waiting for the trout,” said Jan pointedly.

    Livia gave a trill of laughter.

    “Coarse fishing!” retorted Pete on a huffy note.

    “Yeah, or whatever happened to bite,” admitted Wal with a grin, sitting down heavily. “Only nothing did.” He inspected a bottle. “Shit, this a dead man already?” He inspected the other, grabbed himself a plastic drinking vessel from Jan’s non-chilled hamper and, not remarking that Enzed rosé wasn’t wine, poured the remains and drank them off. “Aah!”

    “That muck’ll go good on top of DB Draught,” noted Pete, though without particular animus. He investigated the chillybin. “Eh? Where’s the beer?” he cried on an aggrieved note.

    “In the boat with you two sillies!” squeaked Livia brilliantly, collapsing in hysterics.

    “Yeah,” agreed Jan, on the broad grin. “That was a good one, Livia! It’s pink plonk or tramp back to the ecolodge for beer, Pete. Or the storage shed, but as the stuff in there won’t be chilled—”

    Pete was opening a third bottle.

    Over the chicken and some of the potato salad prepared for yesterday’s lunch by the invaluable Janet and not got through by the ecolodge’s four guests, Pete and Jan, and one retired couple who’d made the mistake of booking in at a motel in Taupo itself for a week, Wal gave Jan the real gen on Aidan Whatsisface and his mate Andrew Whatsisface, but as it amounted to no more than Livia had already told her, she didn’t really listen. Though the fact that the one that was a rich lawyer had sold his Roller was possibly significant, yeah. “Mid-life crisis” in fact was Pete’s brilliant deduction.

    “We were just saying that Aidan and his friend might be just the thing for Pete’s Libby and Jan’s cousin Robyn’s Leanne!” Livia offered brightly.

    “Why?” replied Pete blandly.

    “Shut up,” ordered Jan, doing her damnedest not to laugh. “They are the right sex, after all.”

    “That’s the criterion, is it?” said Wal drily.

    Jan gave him a sardonic look. “How does it go? A single man with a fortune, so he must be in want of a wife?”

    At this Wal, who wasn’t nearly as unlettered as he liked one to assume, collapsed in a horrible fit of the sniggers. “Yeah! Uh, never mind, love,” he said to Livia’s puzzled face. “Out of a book. Yeah, well, Aidan’s free and he’s got pots, but given his track record I sincerely doubt he’s got the sense to choose something that doesn’t buy its clobber at a Double Bay boutique and demand a pre-nup in its favour before condescending to accept the giant mansion with a view of the harbour.”

    “Wal, he’s had one of those and it was a disaster!” cried Livia crossly. “Why shouldn’t he settle for a nice, ordinary woman this time?”

    Wal rubbed his chin uneasily. “He’s had more than one. He wouldn’t look at anything that didn’t have a daddy as a senior partner in one of the downtown firms when he was working for me. That plus failed all her subjects at ruddy Dio. Uh—sorry, love, you wouldn’t know it. Their bloody mother tried to send my girls there. Snob school, useless academically—or it was back then.”

    “I remember, darling. You told me all about it when little Panda was still at school. I still maintain that that was when Aidan was young and silly, and now he’ll be ready for someone really nice!”

    “We don’t know that Libby is,” said Pete on a glum note. “Haven’t laid eyes on ’er since she was eighteen and come over here for her Christmas holidays off her own bat. Uh—what year was that? Before we were together, eh?” he said to Jan. “Well after me and Namrita busted up, though. Hang on, she was born in 1964. Well, uh, 1982, eh? Musta been. I was living here on me tod, that’s right. Never tried to brighten the place up with a single frilly cushion. We had a good time. No, well, she was okay back then, I’ll grant ya that.”

    “Them I’m quite sure she will be now, Pete,” said Livia firmly. “And if Aidan doesn’t appeal then I dare say Andrew will: he sounded very nice!”

    “She spoke to ’im once, on the phone,” Wal reported feebly.

    “One can tell,” replied Livia serenely. “Eat some potato salad, Wallace, darling, carbohydrates give one energy.”

    Feebly Wal took some potato salad. Most of the time she was on the “Too much starch” theme. Oh, well.

    The chicken was all gone, so was the potato salad, so was most of the sliced ham, and Wal and Pete had finished off the tart goats’ milk cheese tarts and were debating, having generously let the girls have the last of the last bottle of pink plonk, whether it was worth going over to the ecolodge and fetching a few cold ones, when Jan came to, looked at her watch with a gasp, and dashed off to the kitchen.

    “She’ll be right: Ma Barber will’ve bunged the pies in the oven,” said Pete comfortably to Livia’s guilty expression.

    “Oh, good!”

    “Yeah. About all she’s capable of, but yeah.”

    “If only we could find someone reliable to help Jan with the cooking!” she lamented.

    Pete scratched his head. “Yeah. Well, someone reliable to wait in the dining-room once the hordes arrive ’ud be my first choice.”

    “Wendy Pohaka?” she suggested. “We heard she’s back.”

    “She is back from wherever it was she went off to with that last bloke, yeah. One kid in naps, and she’s eight months gone with the next, don’t think she’ll be volunteering, somehow.”

    “Oh, dear! And yet birth control is so easy these days!” she lamented.

    Pete’s eyes twinkled a bit but he said mildly: “Yeah, but you gotta think of it, eh? And there’s plenty of types around, if the woman does think of it, they won’t use the things.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Wal mildly. “Anyway, she’s out—she was totally unreliable even when she wasn’t sprogging, come to that.”

    “Right. There’s her sister, young Maureen, but she’s worse,” admitted Pete. “Skirts up to here, earrings down to there, make-up so thick you’d need a paint-scraper to get it off, and pregnant at fifteen. Claimed not to know who the bloke was, unlike the rest of Taupo. He was only fifteen, too, mind you, so marriage was never on the agenda. Her mum’s looking after it, and never mind yer average Pakeha picture of yer average easy-going Maori mum, she is not pleased about it.”

    “I know, Pete, dear: Kristel Pohaka told me all about it,” said Livia, nodding the frosted yellow mop. “It’s a great pity the sisters-in-law haven’t got more sense, because going into the business with her and Sue Pritchard would be a really good opportunity for them.”

    Well, might allow them to put a down-payment on a suburban box and move into it with another unsuitable bloke, but that’d be better than inflicting themselves on their longsuffering mum, yeah, so Pete just nodded kindly and gave her a hand to pack up the stuff and cart it back to the lodge.

    “Janet doing the waiting?” he said in surprise, finding Jan alone at the bench.

    “Yes: she said she thought she could manage, since there’s only the four of them!” she replied happily.

    Wonders’d never. Raising his eyebrows slightly, Pete ambled over to the fridge and—

    “Don’t open that!”

    —didn’t open its door. “What’s in it?”

    “Jellied duck for that foodie group from Hamilton that’ve booked for tonight, and the bloody jelly’s not setting, it’s the flaming humidity.”

    “’Tisn’t as humid as all that today,” said Wal, wandering in with the foam hamper full of empties. “Where’dja want this?”

    “The bottles can go on that mountain he’s got out the back of the shed, ta, Wal. Hang on, we’d better rinse them first or it’ll be an ant mountain again.”

    Obligingly Wal ambled over to the bench and rinsed the wine bottles for her.

    “Darlings, I thought you were giving all your bottles to Max Throgmorton for his bottle cabins at Fern Gully Ecolodge?” objected Livia.

    Fern Gully Ecolodge, which was very new, was a real ecolodge. That was, it was owned by a large overseas hospitality company, British-based but in its turn owned by a gigantic Japanese-based multinational, and all its buildings were made of recycled or renewable local materials, and its meals were as locally organic as was possible in a country that had to import its coffee, tea, sugar and spices. And its prices were so astronomical that not a few of those hopeful ecolodgers who’d found its website gave it away after they’d got the reply to their online enquiry, and fell back on Pete’s and Jan’s place instead. Max Throgmorton was the inspired architect who’d used five billion of the unwanted bottles EnZed was full of in the eco-cabins which were a feature of Fern Gully. –Not in a gully, and with no naturally-occurring ferns, certainly since the era of European settlement and probably not since the middle of the North Island had erupted in a gigantic volcanic explosion to form Lake Taupo, something like twenty-four miles end-to end and eighteen across at its widest part. No, well, that was what real ecolodges were, in the twenty-first century.

    Jan was glaring at him, so Pete cleared his throat. “Well, yeah. Well, Max is probably gonna put up another couple of bottle cabins, Fern Gully’s doing real well. No, well, gotta let them build up in a mountain first, ya see.”

    Wal collapsed in splutters.

    “It isn’t funny,” said Jan grimly. “He’s started collecting bloody sacks again, too.”

    “But darling, didn’t lovely Katy Jackson take them all for her wonderful natural-look wall hangings?” said Livia anxiously.

    “The original Leaning Tower of Pisa that was threatening to engulf the shed, yes, and once Max decided he wanted the wall hangings for Fern Gully, the next lot. This is another lot again, Livia,” said Jan evilly.

    Livia gulped.

    “A man’s gotta have a hobby,” said Pete jauntily.

    “Shuddup, Pete!” said Wal, eying Jan uneasily. “Look, grab those, and we’ll get the flaming things round to the tip.”

    “Now?” he said feebly.

    “Yes, now, this arvo! I’ve got the waggon: they can go in the back.”

    It was a large Volvo station-waggon, admittedly not brand-new, but in very good condition. “Wal, are you sure?” said Jan uneasily. “Those bottles have been sitting out there gathering dirt and dead leaves for some time. And there’s an awful lot of them.”

    “We’ll make a start,” he said firmly. “Where’s young Sean? He can give us a hand.”

    Pete avoided Jan’s eye. “Said ’e could have the day to ’imself. Well, only two couples in, neither of ’em want to do the ten-mile track.”

    “Trail,” corrected Jan with a sigh. “Sixteen K.”

    “Yeah, that too. No, well, he’ll be pretty busy over summer, and him and Molly need a roof over their heads, love.”

    “He could be pretty busy today: that vege garden’s a disgrace; but if we have to buy in stuff from next-door, so be it.”

    Pete tried to smile. The property next-door was a permaculture venture that called itself Taupo Organic Produce. Its prices always had been pretty stiff, and no mates’ rates, ’cos the bloke that had founded it had been a real stinker, but since it had been under new management they were even higher. Sure, Fern Gully could afford them, it charged about two thou’ per night for a double room, no kidding. But Pete and Jan ruddy well couldn’t, not on a regular basis. Not even though the new owner was a decent bloke that did offer them mates’ rates.

    “I’ve doubled the price of the jellied duck, by the way,” added Jan grimly.

    “Oh, good!” cried Livia.

    Pete cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, so ya should. Good on ya. Me and Sean’ll get going on the vege garden tomorrow, love, it’s a promise. Come on, Wal, we can get the top layers of them bottles in the waggon without doing yer back in.”

    “Without bending at all: you’ll see,” said Jan with a sigh. “Thanks, Wal.” Automatically she began washing up the few things that were in the sink. Helpfully Livia added the Tupperware containers from the picnic.

    “Uh—shit, these could go in the dishwasher,” said Jan feebly, coming to.

    “Never mind, dear, there’s just a few of them,” said Livia comfortably, picking up a tea towel.

    Jan looked at the petite Livia standing there in her high-heeled wedgies and her version of old clothes for casual picnics—tapered turquoise stretch pants, and three layers of bright pink singlet, turquoise singlet, and pale pink wrap-over jersey-knit blouse that dated from at least two summers back—and smiled. “Yeah. Ta, Livia.”

    Livia dried things briskly. “Poor dear Pete’s terribly nervous about seeing his daughter again, darling,” she murmured.

    Jan made a face. “Mm, I know. I dunno that I’m looking forward to it all that much, myself.”

    “No, of course, darling! But if she was a lovely, natural girl at eighteen, I really don’t think there’ll be much to worry about.”

    “Yes, well, the avoidance of frilly cushions does sound promising,” said Jan with a weak grin.

    Livia’s house was always filled with whatever the latest up-market equivalent of frilly cushions happened to be; nevertheless she replied happily: “Exactly, darling!”

    Out behind the shed Wal looked feebly at the bottle mountain and croaked: “Cripes.”

    “Most of our guests are the affluent middle-aged sort that are used to knocking it back.”

    “Eh? Yeah. Why the Hell didn’t you take ’em to the tip, ya drongo?”

    Pete scratched his head. “Dunno, really. Well, started piling ’em up here.”

    Wal sighed. “Yeah. Put that back seat down, will ya, and I’ll start handing them down.”

    They did that.

    Out at the end of the rutted drive that needed regravelling, and which Someone should have pointed out to young Sean needed doing before this, Wal realised that the ecolodge’s letterbox was bulging with uncollected mail.

    “What the fuck’s the matter with you, Pete? There might be bookings in this lot!”

    “Eh? Aw. Young Sean usually collects it, these days.”

    Breathing heavily, Wal got out and emptied the box. An airmail letter from America, that’d probably be a booking from one of their regular wealthy widows, a lot of junk mail, and gee, an airmail letter from Australia!

    “Open it,” he said grimly, shoving this last into Pete’s fist.

    “It can w—”

    “Open it, or I will!” shouted Wal.

    Scowling, Pete opened it.

    “Well?”

    Pete swallowed. “Um, yeah. From Libby. She does wanna come. Um, she’s talked Jayne into coming, too. With her daughter.” He swallowed. “Me granddaughter. Tamsin,” he said with a feeble smile. “She’d be twenny-one now, I s’pose. Never laid eyes on ’er. The dad could well of afforded to shout ’em a trip over here, but ’e was too mean to. Not that Jayne ever let on, but Libby wrote us an earful.”

    “This’ll be your chance, then.”

    “Yeah.”

    “Pete,” said Wal heavily, “they have got your genes, too, as well as ruddy Alison’s!”

    Pete smiled feebly. “Yeah. Well, dunno if that’s good or bad, really!”

Next chapter:

https://summerseason-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/10/sisters.html