First Impressions

3

First Impressions

    Bob Kenny stood morosely in the swamping humidity of the Auckland International Airport. At his elbow stood the fruit of his loins, whingeing.

    “I don’t see why you hadda—”

    “Will ya shuddup!” he snarled.

    Neil scowled. “Well, I don’t. These dames aren’t our relations, they’re—”

    “Will ya shut up, Neil?”

    “—flaming Pete McLeod’s,” he whinged.

    Bob ignored him.

    After some time of silent scowling Neil ventured: “Mum said to tell you—”

    “I don’t wanna know,” he sighed.

    “It’s not about the shops!”

    “Good,” said Bob sourly. Coral Kenny’s first souvenir shop had been the direct cause of her and Bob breaking up six years back. She’d simply lost interest in him and after ignoring him in order to concentrate exclusively on the shop for five years, had told him she wasn’t interested in domesticity any more and after being a blimming household slave for him and his son for eighteen years—not true, Bob did at least as much round the house as she did and in the last five years, more—she’d had enough. They hadn’t had a sex life for ages anyway and as she was a nagger Bob was bloody glad to see the back of her. And as Neil was eighteen and about to start university he might be supposed to be old enough to look after himself, hah, hah.

    Neil was now twenty-four, had just completed the first year of a Ph.D. in something scientific to do with water, Bob Kenny heretofore hadn’t been aware that ya could, and, when he wasn’t flatting up in Auckland with a load of other scientific cretins, was still living at home off his old dad. Evidently water research meant you hadda work at that during most of your long holidays instead of getting a job as a builder’s labourer or at the service station or with the forestry like everyone else’s sons. Or in the case of some, daughters: Dan and Katy Jackson’s second girl had worked as a builder’s labourer in her holidays for years. Bob liked Dan Jackson—he worked in fish research but he didn’t hold that against him—but every time he saw him he had a surge of green jealousy. Even his Sean had pulled his finger out, at last: for a bit there he’d looked set to be almost as much of a wanker as Neil, fish genetics was what he’d been doing at varsity on his father’s hard-earned—but he’d finished his degree, given it away and gone into the ecolodge stuff with Pete McLeod, not to mention taking up with a really nice young woman and building their house himself. –The jealousy, though Bob wasn’t admitting it to himself, in fact wasn’t just on account of Dan’s kids but on account of his and Katy’s very happy marriage: even though she spent most of her time making weird arty wall hangings and he spent most of his time on his fish eggs it was one of the solidest marriages in Taupo.

    Neil was trying to tell him something about his mother not being able to have him over for Christmas dinner but as she usually found some excuse not to feed her only offspring at the festive season Bob merely groaned: “I don’t care, will ya shuddup?”

    “So can we have turkey at home?” the wanker said hopefully.

    “No!” Bob was fond of his son and, though he probably wouldn’t have admitted it if tortured with hot irons, very proud of him, but fifteen hours a day solid on the lake while he dipped his whatsit in the water and took a sample and marked a cross on his ruddy great chart and reset his flaming electronic gizzmo and ordered his father to navigate them to what he reckoned was the next spot according to the gizzmo and dipped his whatsit in for another sample had got very, very boring during the past month and unfortunately it looked as if it was set to last out the summer. The professor had apparently told him to get off his arse and get the hard figures. And there was a lot of lake.

    “If these dames have got a lot of luggage there won’t be room—”

    “Will ya drop it, Neil!”

    “Well, there won’t.”

    “In that case the luggage can go in the back and you can go in the trailer, Neil!” snarled the driven man.

    “Very funny, Dad.”

    Silence fell. Bob drooped morosely. Neil just stood there like a turd.

    Finally he whinged: “Anyway I don’t see why we hadda collect them.”

    “I was coming up anyway with that load of stuff for Taupo Organic Produce, and SHUT UP!”

    Scowling, Neil shut up.

    After quite some time—there was a great crowd of people here but none of them were off a plane from Brisbane, in fact most of them looked as hot, droopy and irritated as Bob felt—he said in a more pacific tone: “So what was this other professor like?” –Neil’s professor had told him to get up here pronto to see some bloke from another university that might be able to give him a job if he pulled his finger out and got his degree, so funnily enough Bob hadn’t objected to giving him a lift up. ’Specially as he was driving up to Auckland anyway to deliver a load of particularly fragile fruit for Taupo Organic Produce and they paid really well. The bloody truck was in dock, but it wasn’t that big a load so he’d just hitched the trailer to the old station-waggon. Those fancy greengrocers over Remuera and Newmarket way had been a bit of an eye-opener. The prices! No wonder Taupo Organic Produce could afford to hire him to drive stuff up by hand.

    Illuminatingly, his son replied to his enquiry: “All right.”

    Bob sighed. “Neil, did he seem like the sort of joker you’d wanna work for?”

    “Um, yeah, why wouldn’t he be?” he said vaguely.

    Bob breathed deeply. Mostly recycled humidity, ugh, and the aftershave coming off that joker in front of them in the Hawaiian shirt.

    “He’s a Pom,” said Neil vaguely.

    “Eh?”

    “He’s all right, though.” Suddenly he burst into a long, involved speech about what this bloke had published in.

    Bob’s knowledge of the world of magazines—which Neil called journals, God knew why—didn’t go much past the occasional Playboy or Mad Magazine in his youth. “Nature?” he said foggily. “Wouldn’t that be all plants, though? Or plants and animals, like David Attenborough, maybe?”

    “You’re mad, Dad,” he said tolerantly, plunging into more of it. Uh—did this mean this joker would be a good joker to work for, or not? Had a what? Bathy-how much? Cost WHAT? Bob gaped at him.

    “Yeah, Dad! That university’s privately funded, ya see!”

    It’d need to be, Bob couldn’t see our government coughing up that sort of dough for a mad scientist Pom to chuck away on— Yes, he could, ’cos they were all mad, Labour or National, proportional representation garbage or not. Male or female, straight or gay.

    Neil had run down. He just stood there. Bob just drooped at his side…

    “Are they coming off?”

    “No,” he groaned.

    Neil lowered the sign, or more correctly piece of New Zealand apple carton, that Pete had helpfully lettered with the strange device “MCLEOd” for them. Them apple trees down the back of the ecolodge couldn’t bear as well as what he claimed, in that case, and as a matter of fact Bob had always thought that soil was too pumicey—

    “They’re coming through, Dad! …Oh, blow, they look like Business Class.”

    They were smooth jokers in suits, so yeah. –Unless you trucked in loads of compost and topsoil like that joker that had started Taupo Organic Produce had done, of course. …What exactly was permaculture, anyway?

    “Hey, Neil, what is permaculture?”

    “Eh?”

    “Like what they do at Taupo Organic Produce. ’Tisn’t just organic, it’s permaculture.”

    Looking superior, Neil explained.

    “What about the pests?” said Bob cautiously. His vege garden was always overrun with them.

    “If ya stopped planting rows of ruddy cabbages that no-one’ll eat, Dad, ya might not get the white butterflies.”

    “Not them! Well, them, too,” said Bob fairly. “And the flaming weeds.”

    Neil plunged into it. Clear as mud. Sounded as if you hadda be the type that wanted to get out there and immolate yourself twenty-five hours a day for it to work. Thought so. Bugger.

    “That new bloke that’s running it,” said his son helpfully, “he’s got pots, he’s a retired—”

    “I know!”

    “I was only saying.”

    “Yeah. Anyway, Miser Ron Reilly next-door ’ud never let me get away with a permaculture jungle, ’e’d be onto ’is mates on the flaming Council before the cat could lick ’er— Wave that sign, ya ning-nong, they’re coming through!”

    Obligingly Neil held the sign up, though noting: “I wouldn’t call it a jungle. Parts of it are really pretty.”

    “Yeah, them wild blackberries that it’s actually illegal to cultivate,” noted his father.

    “They taste good, though. Their organic blackberry jam’s ace,” said the ning-nong.

    Quite. Bob sighed.

    “There’s a sign: McLeod,” said Jayne on a hopeful note.

    “It can’t be for us: there was no message on the bulletin board,” objected Tamsin.

    “Um, I don’t think Dad’s that organised, really,” said Jayne limply.

    “Jan sounds pretty organised, though,” offered Libby in a small voice. Libby, as her relatives had recognised with a certain resignation, had now completely lost her nerve. It was just like that time she’d signed up for a really expensive wine-tasting course, got as far as the place where it was being held, and hadn’t gone in. Of course the fees weren’t refundable.

    “Does that look like Pete?” Tamsin demanded of her mother. She was refusing firmly to call him “Granddad,” even though the presents he’d always conscientiously sent her for Christmases and birthdays—latterly it had probably been Jan who’d chosen and sent them, as her mother and aunt both tacitly recognised—had always been signed “Your loving Granddad, Pete McLeod.”

    They did have a smudged Polaroid of him that post-dated Jayne’s very vague memory of her father and Libby’s more recent but even vaguer memory. Jayne tiptoed. “Um… not really. Well, he is thin. Um, I think that man’d be younger. What do you think, Libby?”

    “I think he’s about Tamsin’s age,” said Libby sourly.

    “Um, no, not the boy with the sign, the man next to him, Libby.”

    Libby peered. She shrugged. “His hair’s grey. Dad’s was greyish thirty years back.”

    “Libby! Not thirty!” Jayne did the arithmetic, her lips moving silently. “Twenty-four,” she admitted in a weak voice.

    “I’ll ask,” decided Tamsin. Dumping her bags and ordering her aunt: “Don’t dare to take your eyes off those!” she marched over to the young man with the sign.

    “I’m with a McLeod party: my name’s Tamsin Dahlenburg and my mother’s Jayne Dahlenburg née McLeod, and my aunt’s Libby McLeod: is it us you’re waiting for?”

    Boy, that was telling ’em. The Kenny males stared numbly at the slim, pretty brown-haired girl in the flared jeans and two coloured singlets under a droopy sort of see-through blouse thing.

    “Um, dunno,” croaked Neil finally, very red.

    Bob took a deep breath. “We’re waiting for you if you’re Pete McLeod’s granddaughter, yeah.”

    “Pete McLeod from where?” replied Tamsin suspiciously.

    Bob tried to smile and failed. “Taupo Shores Ecolodge.” Failing to call it “so-called” for about the first time in his life.

    “Yes, that is my grandfather. Who are you?”

    “Bob Kenny. I’m a mate of Pete’s,” he admitted. “This here’s my son, Neil.”

    “Hullo,” croaked Neil, very red.

    “Gidday, Neil,” said Tamsin indifferently. “You wanna give us a hand with our bags?”

    “Um, yeah!” he gasped, twitching sharply.

    “Give that here,” said Bob heavily, taking the sign off him. “Over there, see? Them two ladies with the trolley and the pile of bags.”

    “I’m not blind, Dad!” he retorted crossly, redder than ever. He marched off in Tamsin’s wake.

    Bob followed slowly, mechanically folding the cardboard sign in two and then in two again. Shit. Those ladies didn’t look like anything that Pete McLeod might’ve spawned. And it was a fair drive down to Taupo.

    Tamsin had decided that her mother and aunt could wear something casual but not dowdy on the plane. It didn’t have to be expensive, but it needed to be something comfortable but that wouldn’t show them up. That had let out both of Libby’s pairs of jeans, yes. And all of Jayne’s old tapered stretch-nylon slacks that were really comfy to wear. So Libby was in a casual but not dowdy outfit that was a shade between orange and coral. Bright—yes. A shirt-like short-sleeved blouse and straightish three-quarter pants—not cargo pants! Okay, not cargo pants. And what Libby in her ignorance would have called a sleeveless tee but that Tamsin had declared very firmly was a camisole. Not according to the Concise Oxford, it wasn’t, but Libby wasn’t arguing. It was a white cotton-knit with the chest decorated with a trailing spray of orangey-coral flowers of a species not known under the stratosphere. The considerable length of shin that showed below the three-quarter or possibly cropped pants, both terms had been heard, was ruthlessly depilated but not yet tanned to Tamsin’s satisfaction. The feet were in new high-heeled white sandals with, ye gods, ankle-straps. Libby hadn’t worn ankle-straps since she was seven and Mum had crammed her into a ghastly pair of shoes to go with her ghastly granny dress.

    Jayne was casual but definitely not dowdy in a short-sleeved but longish floral tunic, shades of brown, pink, tan and fawn with splashes of white blooms, possibly daisies, or dahlias on second thoughts. It was narrowly trimmed with fawn, and loosely fastened from about mid-breast level with groups of tiny fawn fabric-covered buttons. It could not have been worn without a blouse, and in fact it had come complete with the matching “camisole”. Her toning fawn slacks were, surprisingly, allowed to be full-length. She’d scored a pair of high-heeled sandals, though. Fawn: they picked up the shade of the—quite. Not ankle-strapped, lucky her. And why Jayne, who did have a lovely tan, hadn’t been favoured with three-quarter pants was a mystery that Tamsin’s relatives weren’t prepared to investigate. The outfit was, actually, pretty horrible, but Jayne was so pretty it looked good.

    Astoundingly, Tamsin’s relatives had been allowed to take their sandals off and wear tiny little soft pink scuff slippers on the plane. Bought especially for the journey by Tamsin, yes. Just as well, because Libby didn’t actually own any slippers. Well, in Queensland’s climate you didn’t need them. Though, true, she didn’t know of anybody else who’d grasped this point.

    Hair had been a matter of concern because Tamsin wanted them to be comfortable but not end up looking messy at the end of the trip. Everyone else in Tourist Class looked messy, in fact most of them had got on the plane looking messy: they were nearly all families going over for a Christmas at Rotorua. However. In order not to look messy, or at least be remediable by her niece, Libby’s hair had been cut by Davina at Visions under the supervision of Francesco himself—hardly necessary, since Tamsin was already supervising. It was now waving beautifully, just under shoulder-length in front and carefully shaped to be a little longer at the back; it was so thick you’d almost think she was one of our Italian girls, wouldn’t you, dears?—Francesco was his real name, though in private life he was known as Frankie, and he was Italian in that his grandparents on both sides had been immigrants in the Fifties.—As Libby’s niece was gonna kill her if she squinched the hair up in a stupid clip again, it wasn’t.

    Jayne had been more of a problem: the new style wasn’t suitable for travelling, when she had to lean her head back. So Tamsin had given her a fish-tail plait: it had got messy but she’d redone it for her just before they landed. Plaits weren’t In, of course, but never mind, on Mum it looked good. Some might have said the neatness of the plait was counteracted by the junk jewellery that Tamsin had forced her mother to wear. Evidently real pearls were Out. And if that was the necklace Dad had got her to keep up with the Joneses like the drongos from the Education Department and the flaming Davisons she could probably sell it, Cash Converters would probably give her quite a good price! Jayne had meekly put the pearls away again, not mentioning that she’d save them for Tamsin on her wedding day. So above the camisole’s scooped neckline a horrible necklace of pink glass beads, brown glass beads and three fat brown seeds on a thin chain fought it out with a big round pendant of brown enamel with a yellow metal trim on a short pink cord, while her pretty little ears were disfigured by dangling messy things that were a tangle of pink glass beads and tarnished silver spangles. Very Today.

    Libby’s “camisole” mercifully came up to the salt cellars so all Tamsin had forced on her in the way of junk jewellery was a pair of dangly brass earrings composed of hoops about five centimetres in diameter with about sixteen different shapes and shades of little orange glass beads hanging off them. They didn’t quite touch her shoulders, that was all that could be said of them. Gee, remember all those tiny, weeny crystal beads and minute seed pearls that all the skinny, with-it girls had worn in their ears above their Ally McBeal-type black linen-look suits in the Nineties and that she in her blindness had thought looked so understated as to be positively painful? Yeah—silly her.

    “Hullo,” said Bob glumly to the good-looking dame with the really good tits in the tight white tee-shirt, eying the terrifying jangly earrings uneasily.

    “This is Bob Kenny, he’s a mate of Pete’s,” said Tamsin briskly. “This is my Aunt Libby McLeod, Bob.”

    “Um, yeah. Hi,” said Libby glumly to the tall, rangy man in the battered jeans and the faded blue tee-shirt.

    “And this is my mother, Jayne Dahlenburg,” explained Tamsin. “Don’t try to pick that bag up, Mum, Neil can carry it!”

    “Um, yes, I mean no. How are you, Bob, it’s nice to meet you,” said Jayne, very flurried. “Dear, couldn’t that bag go on the trolley?”

    “No, it’ll be top-heavy. –Don’t you Kiwis realise that people have luggage, coming off international flights?” said Tamsin bitterly to the two Kenny males. “There were only half a dozen trolleys available!”

    “The plane wasn’t full, dear,” murmured Jayne.

    “There still weren’t enough trolleys for all of us, though!”

    Bob cleared his throat. “Never mind, ya got here.” The speech he’d been intending to make about Pete having asked him to collect them as he was coming up here anyway and it was no bother seemed sort of redundant, somehow, so he skipped it. “The waggon’s over the far side of the parking lot, but I think they let ya take the trolleys out.”

    “We’ll wait for you by the exit door,” said Tamsin firmly.

    Bob scratched his chin. “Um, ye-ah… There’s a joker out there that moves you on.”

    “You won’t be parked: stopping for a moment to pick people up or drop people off doesn’t count,” replied Tamsin very firmly indeed. “We have to change some money anyway, so we’ll meet you out there.”

    “Um, it’s a really weird set-up,” muttered Bob. “See, ya come out on the first floor and there’s no stairs. Or is that for going in? Well, I mean, it’s really weird, me and Neil got lost, eh?”

    Neil was very red. “Shut up, Dad, we didn’t really.”

    “Um, that mate of Pete’s, Jake Something, he reckons the place where ya change ya money’s not always open,” he muttered. “Like the flaming banks: never open when ya need ’em, eh?” he offered.

    “Dad, that was ages ago, and he meant in the weekends, anyway!”

    “It’s your funeral,” muttered Bob, shifting from foot to foot.

    “Dad’s not a traveller, he’s never been anywhere,” explained Neil, seizing one of Tamsin’s cases and staggering under the weight of it.

    “I’ve been to ruddy Auckland International Airport,” noted Bob sourly.

    Neil was very red. “Stop it, Dad! –Sorry, he’s not getting at you, he means that time he came to pick me up after I’d been to a conference in Sydney and he got lost: ended up having to ask at the Thai Airways desk and they give ’im a whole little Thai girl in a cheongsam to ’imself!” He grinned hopefully at them.

    Libby smiled timidly at him and Jayne smiled kindly but Tamsin said grimly: “If she was a Thai it wouldn’t be a cheongsam, and I hope that remark wasn’t intended to be as sexist as it sounded. If you take that other case, Bob, we’ll meet you by the exit.”

    “Okay,” said Bob meekly, giving in entirely—she sounded like bloody Coral with the bit between ’er teeth, to be totally accurate. “It’s an old Holden station-waggon with a trailer on behind. Blue. –Ish,” he amended fairly. “Come on, Neil, stir ya stumps, I’d like to hit the road before the rush hour, ta.” And with that he took himself and his red-faced offspring and the two heavy cases right away from the vicinity of the bossy kid, the pretty mum and the good-looker with them fabulous tits and the dainty wee feet in them cute little sandals that had obviously taken one look at him, Bob (Mug) Kenny, and taken a real scunner to him. Might’ve known.

    “You made good time, didn’tcha?” noted Pete, lounging out onto the gravel sweep. “Weren’t expecting you till later.”

    The airport was to the south of the city; nevertheless it was about 250 K to Taupo. Neil got out of the front passenger seat. “Dad put his foot down. Lucky not to get a ticket.”

    “Yeah. Coulda been on that bloody silly Motorway Patrol thing on TV, then you’d of looked really silly,” noted Pete, lounging round to the driver’s side. “Pack of sleeping beauties in the back here, eh?”

    “They’ve been asleep since Papakura,” admitted Bob.

    “Huntly, to be accurate,” corrected Neil, undoing the tarp on the trailer. “We did stop in Hamilton, well, thereabouts, once Dad figured out how to get off the bypass. I had a pie and a Coke but only Tamsin woke up.”

    Pete wandered over to peer into the trailer. “Shit, didn’t put their bags on top of them dead cabbage leaves, didja?” he asked with friendly interest.

    “There are no dead cabbage leaves in my ruddy trailer!” cried Bob.

    “What’s up with him?” asked Pete of Bob’s son.

    “Hungry, I think. He wouldn’t eat anything on the way down.”

    Pete wandered back to the waggon where, hardly surprisingly in view of the shouting, the sleeping beauties had woken up and were blinking around them in confusion.

    “Hullo,” he said, leaning an arm on the thing on Bob’s side and peering in at them. “—I get it, reason ya couldn’t put all their luggage in the back of the waggon was all that crap you’ve got in here.”

    “He needs that crap,” said Neil with a grin, coming up to Tamsin’s door.

    At the same time Bob said crossly: “I need that stuff!” so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Libby should have collapsed in giggles.

    “Yeah. Gidday,” said Pete, grinning. “Libby, isn’t it? You haven’t changed much.”

    “Hullo, Dad,” said Libby feebly. “You haven’t changed, either.” She fumbled with her door, managed to unlock it and Pete opened it for her, grinning. Libby got out and looked at him uncertainly.

    Pete looked back at her uncertainly. “Um, it’s been a while,” he said lamely.

    “Mm,” agreed Libby, nodding hard.

    “Um, well, give us a kiss, eh?” She was still looking at him uncertainly but he pecked her cheek anyway.

    “You don’t smell of smoke any more,” said Libby faintly.

    “Eh? Aw—no. Given up the fags, Jan said it was her or a case of lung cancer.”

    “Good,” said Libby firmly.

    “Yeah, pretty good!” admitted Pete with a sudden grin.

    Meanwhile Tamsin had got out and was looking about her grimly. “Has it been raining? Don’t put our cases down in the mud!” she said sharply to Neil.

    “Um, sorry. Um, might of had a bit, I suppose,” he said, looking round in a confused way at the expanse of mud sprinkled with gravel that was the ecolodge’s front sweep. “I wouldn’t say it was all that muddy.”

    “Just don’t,” said Tamsin in an iron voice. “Hullo, Pete, I’m Tamsin,” she said firmly as he came round to her side of the car, which, since Bob had cunningly parked pointing ’er in the way he intended to proceed, was the side nearest the ecolodge’s front verandah. He hadn’t parked near enough to it to be convenient, but then probably none of the males present outside Taupo Shores Ecolodge at this moment had expected that.

    “Yeah, I sort of got that, lovey,” said Pete in a weak voice to his only granddaughter. “How are ya?”

    “Good, thanks. How are you?”

    “In the pink, ta, always am. Bit of arthritis in the ankle, nothing to speak of, doesn’t bother me in the milder weather. Better get yer mum out of the car, eh? –Come on, Sleeping Beauty!” he said, bending down to the car again.

    “Um, yes! Thanks, Dad!” gasped Jayne, very flustered, as he relieved her of the small, boxy case she was struggling with. “It’s a stupid vanity case, I told Tamsin I didn’t need one, but she insisted!”

    “Right. Matched luggage, eh?” said Pete, poker-face, giving her his hand. “Out ya come, upsy-daisy!”

    “She insisted on sitting in the middle,” said Libby on a weak note.

    Pete had more or less got that. “Yeah. Looking well, Jayne, lovey. Gonna give yer old dad a hug?”

    To the surprise, quite possibly, of no-one present—certainly not Bob Kenny, he’d spotted the mum for that type more or less the first time she opened her mouth—Jayne threw her arms round her father, hugged him fiercely and burst into tears on his shoulder.

    “It’s just stress, she’s had a hard time of it,” said Tamsin grimly to her grandfather.

    “I got that, lovey,” he agreed mildly, patting Jayne’s back. “Come on, pet, buck up, you’re here now.”

    “It wasn’t just Dad dying, he was a fascist pig and mean as Hell to her,” said Tamsin grimly. “She should of left him years ago.”

    “Think we all know that, Tamsin, but Jayne always did have stickum, even as a wee girl.” He patted her back again. “Never mind, ya well rid of the bastard, lovey.”

    Neil was just lifting two of Tamsin’s cases onto the verandah when a squarish woman with short grey hair appeared in the doorway saying: “Pete, is that the Wilkinsons? –Oh, good grief, they’re here! Why didn’t you call me?”

    “I was just gonna, love. This here’s Jayne, she’s a bit overwrought.”

    “No wonder!” said Jan sympathetically.

    Jayne raised her head groggily. “I’m all right. Sorry, I just came over a bit all-overish.”

    “That can sometimes be the result of sticking it out for twenty years with a mean sod that treats you like a cross between a slave and a chattel,” said Libby grimly.

    It was obvious to Jan Harper that poor Libby was very, very nervous. “I’ll say. You must be Libby, then! I’m Jan: it’s lovely to meet you in person, at last!”

    “Um, yes. Thanks for us having us, Jan,” said Libby, eyeing her nervously.

    To her immense relief Jan didn’t try to either hug or kiss her, just gave her a friendly grin and said: “You’re welcome. What lovely smart luggage; let me give you a hand with it.”

    “No, ya don’t!” said Pete loudly. “You can take this fancy whatsit of Jayne’s—shit, you got one, too, have ya, Libby? Well, you can take them, and me and Neil— Where the fuck’s ’e gone? NEIL!”

    “I’ll give you a hand, Pete,” said Bob quickly into the ringing silence.

    “Ya might have to. –Oh, there you are, what the fuck are ya doing?” he said as Neil reappeared in the front doorway.

    “Sorry, Pete, hadda go to the toilet!” he gasped, very red.

    “I told you not to have that second ruddy Coke when we stopped for petrol!” cried Bob.

    “That’d do it,” allowed Pete. “If five thousand of you ’ud get let me get a word in edgewise”—he was not unaware that his second daughter gulped and clapped a hand over her mouth at this point—“I was just about to say we’ve given the girls the loft over the garage, so it might possibly save time if ya took the bags over there. –Fully booked,” he said to Libby.

    “We shouldn’t have wished ourselves on you at your busy time!” she gasped, turning puce.

    “Rats. You’re family. –Thought I told you to leave them bags alone?” he said as Bob got out of the waggon, looking desperate.

    “Don’t be mad,” he muttered. Turning his back on them, he grabbed a couple of bags and marched off in the direction of the garage.

    “Has he—has he got a bad back?” asked Libby in a tiny voice, looking after the straight, wide-shouldered back.

    “Eh? Bob? No, strong as a horse. No reason he should heave bags around when young Neil’s on deck, though, is there? ’Specially since he’s been getting up at four in the morning for the last month to take him out on the lake to get ’is ruddy water samples.”

    “He volunteered, and he won’t let me dive by myself!” shouted Neil, turning puce.

    Pete sniffed slightly. “Glad we got that one clear. –’E doesn’t dive for the ruddy water samples but sometimes ’is whatsit gets tangled down there,” he explained clearly.

    “You shouldn’t dive by yourself in any case, it’s the first thing they teach you at diving school,” said Tamsin on a lofty note. “Come on, I’ll take these two smaller cases. So what’s the actual subject of your Ph.D.?”

    They watched numbly as she headed off with two of the smaller cases and Neil, weighed down by two large ones, shambled after her, eagerly telling her about his thesis subject.

    “Is it a Ph.D.?” asked Jayne faintly at last. “I don’t think he said, did he, Libby?”

    “Not while I was awake,” admitted Libby.

    Pete’s shrewd eyes twinkled. “’E could of after you were off, though. Well, yes, ’tis a Ph.D.: ’e’s been at varsity for yonks, driving ’is father dippy. Something to do with measuring the lake water. Not how deep it is, though ’e does take soundings. Its whatsit. Minerals? Well, pollution and currents are all in there, somewhere. And runoff, I think.”

    “Freshwater ecology,” said Jan on a dry note.

    “That’d be it. Knew there was an eco in there somewhere,” said Pete happily, hoisting a couple of cases. “Come on, this way!”

    “So?” he said in the kitchen, about twenty minutes later when the dust had cleared and the girls had been left to have a nap and a wash and brush-up before tea.

    “Yes, what are they like, Jan?” asked Janet Barber, the protuberant pale blue eyes that did nothing for the sallow skin and the general air of gloom that hung about her lank figure actually lighting up eagerly.

    “Um, it’s a bit soon to tell,” replied Jan limply.

    Pete investigated what Janet was doing. “Lotsa carrots, eh? That Froggy thing that’s on the website again, is it?”

    “That miscalled Froggy thing, if ya look in the recipe book—yeah,” said Jan drily.

    “Never mind, none of our customers know the difference! –Thought they seemed pretty nice, meself, Janet,” he added kindly.

    “Ooh, good!” she beamed. “See, I told you there was nothing to worry about.”

    “Yes,” said Pete feebly. Janet Barber had the brain of a hen and about as much discrimination. “So ya did. Yeah, well, Jayne’s a bit upset, natural enough with that bastard she was married to being sick for so long. Thank God ’e’s gone at last, eh?”

    “I suppose we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but he does sound like a really nasty man,” she agreed. “Mum was saying just the other day that she remembers her as a kiddy: she was the sweetest wee thing!”

    Pete blinked. Janet’s mum was pretty much out of it with the Alzheimer’s these days. Could barely remember her own name.

    “She does remember the past quite clearly,” Janet assured him.

    “Uh—yeah. Well, yeah, Jayne always had a real sweet nature.”

    “Too biddable for her own good, and with a sense of duty as well… Oh, well, like you say, at least she’s free of him now,” said Jan with a sigh.

    “You liked her, eh, love?”

    “I don’t think anyone could dislike her, Pete,” said Jan feebly.

    “There you are!” decided Janet pleasedly. “And what about Libby?”

    Pete pulled his ear. “Um, well, seems a bit down. That crap young Tamsin wrote us about that married bloke she was mixed up with musta been spot-on after all,” he admitted.

    “Free love is a big mistake,” said Janet severely. “I blame the Pill.”

    Pete winced. “Something like that.”

    “Um, yeah. Let’s have a look at those carrots, Janet,” said Jan hurriedly. “Lovely!”

    “Lotta carrots for this time of year,” ventured Pete cautiously.

    “Next-door’s gave us a whole lot for nothing,” explained Jan. “Those ones that Tim planted really early and you told him the frost’d get them.”

    “Coals of fire, eh?” he concluded jauntily. “Want me to set the tables?”

    “Um, no, Janet’d better, she seems to have the knack of laying a really elegant table. Would you like to do it now, Janet?”

    Bridling pleasedly, Janet rinsed her hands and went off to lay the tables.

    “That went over good, Mrs Machiavelli,” noted Pete.

    “Shut up,” said Jan weakly.

    “Well, what do ya think?”

    “It really is too soon to say, Pete. Well, they both need a holiday, that’s for sure.”

    “Yeah. What about young Tamsin?”

    Jan smiled feebly. “Bossy little article, isn’t she?”

    “Mm. Think she’s needed to be, mind you, Jayne never had much go in her and that bastard Dahlenburg seems to have knocked most of the stuffing out of her. And as for Libby…” He made a face. “Ya know who I blame: that bitch Alison.”

    “Mm. Um, she was very nervous, of course…” Jan swallowed. “She certainly doesn’t come over like a self-confident girl that got herself across the Tasman when she was less than Tamsin’s age, Pete.”

    Pete’s hands clenched. “No.”

    “I’d say that they both need a bit of spoiling,” decided Jan. “All three, actually: she may be technically grown up but no kid of barely twenty-one needs the burden of being head of the family.”

    “You’re right. Well, spoil ’em rotten, eh?” he beamed.

    “Yep! You wanna get the chooks out of the fridge for the Poulet à la Berrichonne, or if you’re a cretinous website designer with a year of computer college on top of scraped-through-School-Cert, à la Berry? You can cut them up if you like, I haven’t jointed them yet.”

    “Right!” he said, rubbing his hands. “Lead me to it!”

    He could joint a chook: in fact he was miles better at it than she was. For once Jan didn’t remind him to wash his hands first: the chicken was gonna be cooked, after all, and he hadn’t been doing anything particularly grubby like taking the motor-mower to pieces. She just let him get the chooks out of the fridge and attack them fiercely with the big cleaver. Therapeutic—too right.

    Jayne roused groggily, blinking. “Heck, we’re really here.”

    “Yes,” agreed Libby mildly. “I was just going to wake you up, it’s about time for tea.”

    “Where’s Tamsin?” she asked, struggling to a sitting position.

    “Dunno. Maybe they’ve drowned her already?”

    Tamsin’s mother bit her lip guiltily. “Don’t say that, Libby: she’s been a tower of strength.”

    “Mm. Funny how exhausting that can be, even if you’re grateful for it at the same time.”

    “Mm!” she squeaked.

    Libby grinned at her. “The ensuite’s really nice, if you want to have a shower. And Jan said it’s one of those endless-supply hot water systems. Actually, round here they could probably just run the pipe up out of the ground and it’d be boiling hot.”

    “What?”

    “It’s all part of the thermal area. We’re actually perched right on the crater’s rim of a huge extinct volcano,” Libby reminded her. “We’ll have to hire a car: get over to Rotorua like real tourists!”

    “Um, yes, that’d be lovely. Um, Libby, what should we wear this evening?”

    Libby was in the dressing-gown that Tamsin had bought for her on discovering she no longer owned one. “Dunno. It’s not too warm, is it? Those stupid tropical things she made us buy aren’t gonna be the go. Well, if we take Jan as our model, an off-white tee-shirt and very old jeans?”

    “Mm!” Jayne’s eyes met hers. They both collapsed in helpless giggles.

    “Isn’t she nice?” concluded Libby, wiping her eyes. “I knew she would be!”

    “Yes. And Dad’s lovely!” said Jayne fervently.

    Libby smiled. “Not bad, no.”

    “Will ya stop whingeing?” shouted Bob. “We’re not gonna bludge off Pete and Jan!”

    “But they invited us, Dad! And Jan always cooks stacks, Sean Jackson reckons there’s often loads left over—”

    “No! And he’s a bludger, too!” he shouted.

    There was an uncertain silence.

    “No, he isn’t, Dad,” said Neil uneasily. “He does work for them, after all.”

    “Be that as it may, we are not gonna bludge a fancy tea off them! The restaurant’s their business.”

    “But they invited us!”

    “Shut up. I’m not going.” He marched over to the fridge and opened it. Since it contained the hardened remains of a kilo packet of Tasty cheese, one pot of marg and a piece of dead-looking pizza that was Neil’s, he got the marg and the cheese out. “I’m having cheese doorsteps,” he said grimly. “You can do what ya like.”

    “I can’t go without you, Dad, it’d look peculiar!”

    Bob ignored him.

    “Look, they invited us, it’d be bloody rude to refuse!”

    “Then go. Tell them I’ve come down with something fatal, I don’t care what ya tell them, but I’m NOT GOING!” he shouted.

    Neil edged towards the door. “Well, can I take the waggon?”

   “YES!” he shouted.

    Neil slid out.

    “And that little girl’s gonna develop into a dead ringer for your bloody nag of a mother, lad,” said Bob grimly to the remains of the sliced loaf. He went over to the corner cupboard that Coral had always reckoned was a pantry and looked hopefully for chutney but there wasn’t any. Bugger. He grabbed the Vegemite instead. Then he looked in the fridge but as some nong had forgotten to get them in there was no beer. So he went back to the so-called pantry and grabbed a bottle of what Neil reckoned was a good red. Probably taste like varnish, they all did, well, varnish mixed with tar and sulphur in the case of some. He opened it, and poured. Ugh! He drank the glassful right off to spite it, and sat down at the kitchen table.

    The second glass of red washed the doorsteps down quite well, stale though the bread was and clogging though yer average New Zealand Tasty was, so he poured another glass. “You’re a mug, Bob Kenny,” he concluded morosely. “Never mind the big tits, them toning pants suits and flaming dangly earrings aren’t gonna look twice at you, so you’d better forget them! –And you!” he said crossly to the part of his anatomy that was real interested in the big tits. Had a tummy, too, he didn’t mind that at all. Couldn’t stand skinny women—and when Coral had gone on the diet for the ruddy wedding it had been the writing on the bloody wall, only he was too thick to see it.

    The medicine had more or less worked by the time he reached the bottom of the bottle, in that he still had a hard-on but didn’t care. So he took it and the memory of the big tits and the little wee dainty feet in those dinky sandals of hers to bed—why not? Nothing else to ruddy do.

Next chapter:

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