Goat's Rue

8

Goat’s Rue

    “Wal rung,” reported Pete on a gloomy note.

    And Pete had actually picked up? That was a first, he was getting worse and worse, not bothering with the ecolodge’s phones, and in fact Jan usually kept the main phone switched through to her mobile, which she kept welded to her person. Otherwise they’d have lost half their bookings.

    “How are Stewart and his son getting on?” she asked.

    “Not too bad. Wal said the kid was quite merry and bright over Christmas. Um, that wasn’t it.”

    “Then you’d better tell me what it was,” said Jan on a grim note.

    “Yeah.” Pete cleared his throat. “Aidan’s dad’s died.”

    So much water had passed under the bridge, what with ginger-haired Canadian dames seducing Bob, and Jayne and Libby being rushed round the countryside in hire cars by two enamoured sixtyish Yanks, and the usual change of guests, those who had only come for Christmas going and those who’d only booked for New Year’s arriving, and the bunkhouse filling up with over-aged trampers that by the look of them had come for a liquid New Year— Not to mention that flaming great forest giant of Pete’s shedding like billyo all over the main lounge!

    “Uh—oh! His lawyer friend, of course. That’s very sad.”

    “Apparently not, ’cos ’e was a real old bastard. Anyway, the funeral’s on the second, one of the sisters has to get over from Perth. Sounds as if the spiteful old B’s left the rest of them out of the will, Aidan gets the lot.” He scratched his jaw, looking dubious. “Wal seems to think he’s gonna divide it up amongst them, though.”

    “Amongst his brothers and sisters?” said Jan in astonishment. That didn’t sound like any sibling she’d ever heard of, in fact most wills caused bitter family divisions that went on for generations. Dan Jackson’s Aunty Iris, admittedly a hen, still wasn’t speaking to her sister Maude, on account their mother had left one of them something that Jan had mercifully forgotten, and they were both in their eighties. And her own cousin Robyn had waxed very bitter indeed when her mum’s will left the silver cream jug to— Yeah.

    “No, well, that’s what Wal reckons,” said Pete with a shrug.

    “Possibly Aidan Vine’s the only sibling in the country with a conscience, then.”

    “No, ’e can’t be, love, remember when Bob Kenny’s old dad went—the mum had gone years back, lovely woman, Mary Kenny—and he left Bob the property and only the residue to the sisters? Not that their husbands weren’t pretty well off, mind you.”

    “I remember Bob and Coral having an almighty row over it, yeah,” said Jan drily.

    “Well, yeah, that was it! He let the sisters come and take whatever they wanted from the house and into the bargain sold that extra section the old joker owned to Miser Ron Reilly and gave ’em the lot!”

    “Okay, there’s two of them,” said Jan mildly.

    “Eh? Oh! Yeah, sounds like it. Anyway, Wal reckons he’ll be back after the funeral.”

    “What?” said Jan feebly.

    “Yeah. With his mate.”

    “But there’s always loads to sort out when someone dies, Pete! I mean—clothes, personal items.”

    “Dare say he’ll let the sister do that.”

    Mm, well, that was typical male behaviour, come to think of it. Jan sniffed slightly. “Mm. That reminds me, did Robyn or Leanne ring when you were in picking-up mode?”

    “Don’t think so. Why?” he said vaguely.

    “Because Robyn rang me in a filthy temper wanting to know why no-one had rung them back!”

    “Go on, tell us the worst,” said Pete glumly.

    “You better believe it! Well, admittedly the whole family’s a bit mad on that side. Leanne doesn’t want to drive up from Wellington, she wants to get the railcar—I know it doesn’t come this way, Pete!” she said loudly, “—and she wants you to collect her from the station.”

    “Waiouru station, this’d be,” said Pete drily.

    “Yes,” replied Jan baldly.

    Pete gulped. Waiouru was right down the Desert Road, on the edge of National Park proper, one of the tiny towns that had all been stops when steam was king, the Main Trunk Line had been the quickest way from Auckland to Wellington, and the whole country took the train. These days it wouldn’t have been a stop at all if there hadn’t been a military camp there: the Army had a huge piece of desert that they shot off their pop-guns in. True, the town was on the main highway, in fact the last place south of Taupo where the highway and the Main Trunk Line intersected before the railway hived off over to the west. Most probably Leanne had just stabbed her finger at the map. Seventy miles south of Taupo. The point wasn’t the distance or the drive across the Desert Road—real good surface, these days—but the fact that Waiouru was very literally the middle of nowhere and Leanne sounded like the sort of dame that had clashing earrings and matched luggage.

    “Never thought I’d hear the words ‘Leanne’ and ‘Waiouru’ in the same sentence. Well, yeah, sure I’ll pick her up, Jan, and I’ll do me best to be on time, but shit—!”

    “It’s her choice,” said Jan firmly.

    “Yeah. Uh, this wouldn’t be the railcar that gets in at—”

    “No. It’s the daytime service.”

    The scenic one, right: in that case why the Hell wasn’t the hen going on up to Taumaranui? If she got off at Waiouru she’d miss the Raurimu Spiral! One of the great engineering feats of the railway world, it was, according to a railway nut that they’d had staying once.

    “She’ll miss the Raurimu Spiral,” he croaked.

    Jan shrugged. “More fool her. Be that as it may, have you thought where we’re gonna put her?”

    “Uh—no. Shove ’er in the loft with the girls? Tamsin seems to be spending most of her time with Neil on his Dad’s launch, she can have her bed.”

    “Pete, if we do that, it’ll look like we’re shoving the kid at Neil!”

    “Don’t think she’ll mind, love. I mean, it’s this generation, eh?”

    Jan’s generation hadn’t been much different, actually: it was only him that dated back to white gloves for church and a pretence of no sex before marriage. “The girl deserves the choice. And aside from anything else, there are times when a female doesn’t want to be stuck on a ruddy launch all night!”

    “Eh? Aw. Yeah. In that case I better warn ’er about that bog in the loft that blocks if ya so much as look at it.”

    “I’ve already warned them all, your daughters are still young enough to have it, you know. What about Leanne?”

    “Give ’er to Bob!” choked Pete, suddenly going into paroxysms. Tears ran down his thin brown cheeks and he had to blow his nose noisily.

    Jan smiled feebly. “Clot. Go and have another look at the loft: see if we can squeeze another bed in there.”

    Pete ambled off obediently.

    Jan got on with what she was doing, which was making cottage cheese from the goats’ milk. It was easy, but time-consuming. In fact she was mad to bother, and they should have got rid of the goats long since, but Pete was a real softie about them. They were the great-something-granddaughters of the original nannies that his second, the red-haired American dame that had gone off with a Lesbian lover—that she pretty soon dumped, too—had left behind. No, he wasn’t sentimental about that bitch Namrita—real name Susan—he was sentimental about the nannies. Oh, well, at least the bloody-minded females seemed to have taken a liking to Libby. Jan had been under the impression they only liked having their tits fondled by blokes. At one point she’d been driven to consult a friend of Katy Jackson’s who kept goats commercially—made cheese and soap and sold the milk as well—but apparently her goats were only too happy to let her milk them. She’d explained they didn’t want to be hurried but as Pete had already explained that, several times, Jan had returned home no wiser than what she’d started out and not in a very good mood. Though admittedly with some very nice soap.

    The goats had their own little fully-tiled dairy—that was how besotted he was, yep—built on behind the garage. Jan rinsed her hands, locked the door carefully in her wake—she didn’t care if the guests nicked the setting cottage cheese but she did care if the idiots went and contaminated it—and for a change went round the garage to the front sweep.

    “Hullo, Bob,” she said feebly. Jesus, had he turned up for a bit more from Lucille Polaski?

    “Hullo,” he said uneasily, casting an uneasy glance around him. “Um, you wouldn’t have any work going, wouldja, Jan?”

    Oh, shit. “Um, no; I’m really sorry, but our budget’s really tight. Look, why don’t you try the permaculture nu—uh, place? They usually need help with the harvest at this time of year, and Hugh Throgmorton, the new bloke’s that’s running the place, he’s really decent: he’s paying poor old Tim an actual living wage for the first time since the bloody place started.”

    “Um, yeah, I will. Ta, Jan.”

    “And while you’re over there, Bob,” said Jan, suddenly making up her mind, “if you wouldn’t mind, ask them if they’d like some organic goats on a permanent basis, wouldja?”

    “Um, Tim only likes cows…” It sank in. “You aren’t gonna get rid of the goats, are you?” he said in horror.

    Jan sighed. What was it with macho men and females that gave milk? Young Sean was getting almost as bad: he’d been spending ages over the milking back before Christmas and even his Molly, who was a very placid young woman, had got fed up and asked him what on earth he was doing, wasting time when he was supposed to be getting their house up.

    “I am if I can find a good home for them. They’re too much work and if we want goats’ cheese there’s that friend of Katy Jackson’s half an hour’s drive away.”

    “Who?” he said blankly.

    “Never mind. The point is, I’m rushed off my feet and Pete’s doing less and less these days.”

    “Um, I thought Sean Jackson was milking them for you?”

    “Nominally. He’s spending too much of his time on them, too. It isn’t just the milking, Bob, it’s making the cheese—it’s easy but it all takes time—and making sure the dairy equipment’s sterile and making sure the creatures get enough of the right stuff to eat and don’t break down their fence and don’t get in next-door and eat permacultured broccolini!”

    “Eh?”

    “The stuff they grow for their bloody up-market customers in the Big Smoke, Bob!” said Jan rather loudly. “That we can’t afford because the goats are eating us out of house and home! Contrary to popular myth, you can’t just shove them in the scrub and forget them!”

    “Um, I know what broccoli is,” he said in a muddled way.

    Jan took a very deep breath. “Yeah. Broccolini is some kind of new-fangled up-market relative of it. All stalks. Those flash greengrocers in Auckland that Hugh Throgmorton sells it to charge and arm and a leg for it. It’s not hard to grow, apparently—in fact you could grow it in that wasteland behind your house that used to be a vege garden!”

    “Eh? Aw. Doesn’t seem worth it, with Neil up in Auckland most of the year,” he offered.

    “No, well, a decent vege garden is a lot of work,” said Jan heavily.

    Bob reddened. “It’s not the work.”

    Eh? Oh, God, now she’d offended the macho male! “Not you, us. And if Sean didn’t have to spend time on the bloody goats he could put in a bit more hard yacker in our vege patch, not to mention make a proper run for those ducks of Molly’s, and then maybe we wouldn’t have to pay megabucks to the permaculture place when we want to put duck on the menu! –They swam away,”  she said evilly to his blank face.

    Bob choked. “Um, sorry, Jan,” he said lamely. “Pete never mentioned that.”

    Jan sighed. “No, well, most of them came back, but it was traumatic while it lasted. Oh, and one went next-door and tried to join the permaculture flock but they spotted it and brought it home.”

    “I see,” he said feebly. “Um, well, I could look after the goats for you, Jan.”

    Jan went rather red. “Don’t be silly. We couldn’t possibly pay you, you know that, and before you say anything there is no way we’d let you do it for nothing, Bob.”

    “It wouldn’t be any bother,” he said feebly.

    Of course it would: she’d just explained the bloody things took up hours of the day! Not to mention the midwife aspect of keeping them! And the vet’s bills, too right.

    “It would,” she said flatly. “You’ve never had goats, have you?”

    “No. Coral didn’t like animals,” he said glumly. “Dad had a cow,” he offered. “Daisy. She was a Jersey. Kept her down the bach.”

    “What did she eat?” said Jan dazedly. Admittedly she hadn’t strolled over that way for some time, but judging by the view from the lake it was all scrub right the way back to the— Uh, did the road even go that far?

    “Um, grass and hay. Um, she had a paddock.”

    Jan eyed him drily. “Right. Died in 1954, did she?”

    “No,” he said miserably, flushing. “I wasn’t even born then. Um, no, 1973, when I was fourteen.”

    Jan had to swallow. For various reasons, she remembered 1973 rather well. Not merely because of the amount she’d chucked away on that Afghan coat, either. “Mm. Well, that still means the bush has had a fair time to grow back.”

    “Scrub. Only second growth,” the macho male produced. Were they born with the phrase “second growth” in their mouths?

    Jan eyed him tolerantly. “Mm. Well, you could slash it back, rotary hoe the result and replant grass, but it’d take some time to establish, wouldn’t it? And in the meantime, I sincerely doubt that Miser Ron Reilly’d let you get away with keeping them in the back yard.”

    “No,” he agreed—glumly, but eying her with a sort of wistful hopefulness about him.

    Jan Harper felt very like telling him that she wasn’t his mum and if he wanted to be managed within an inch of his life by a woman he shouldn’t have let Coral dump him. “Mm. Well, think it over. You’d need to fence them in really well, Taupo Organic Produce could probably sue you if they got loose in their place, but it wouldn’t be impossible. Um, look, think about this. We give you the goats and you graze them here until your place can take them; in return you let us have the cheese for the duration.” She’d nearly said “the milk,” but that’d mean a large portion of the daily grind wouldn’t vanish with them. “Of course use the dairy here, too, that’s what it's for.”

    Bob brightened terrifically. “Yeah! That’d be really great, Jan! But I oughta pay you something for them, as well.”

    Fortunately Jan had seen that one coming, so she squashed it flat. He then noted doubtfully that he didn’t know anything about making cheese, so Jan, striking while the iron was hot, led him inside and forced all her goat and cheese books on him.

    “Gee, you’ve really gone into it, eh?” he said admiringly.

    As opposed to just letting them wander all over the property while ya wondered how the Hell to get rid of all the milk, like Pete had been doing when she first met him? “Yes; any sort of dairying needs to be done properly,” said Jan briskly.

    “Yes, of course. Dad had some books for Daisy,” he said seriously.

    Jan blinked. The old Jack Kenny that she remembered hadn’t struck as being able to read at all. “Right,” she said feebly, showing him off the premises and reminding him, as he opened one of the books, that he’d been going to go over next-door and ask them for work. This got the usual “Aw. Yeah,” and he drove off happily.

    Jan tottered inside and as good old Janet had turned up and was rinsing breakfast dishes and making more toast for later breakfasters, said to her with feeling: “Heaven preserve me from the male wimp!”

    “They’re all hopeless,” said Janet calmly, as Jayne came in with another trayful of breakfast dishes. “Ta, Jayne, just put them down here, I’ll rinse them and then we can set the dishwasher going. –Which one was it, Jan?”

    There was plenty of choice, that was for sure! “Not one of the guests, for once. Oh, and if Ern Whatsisface asks for a duck egg for his breakfast, girls, you can tell him from me that Mrs Ern has already vetoed that one.”

    “Um, no,” said Jayne, trying not to laugh: “he just asked for scrambled egg, Jan, only Mrs told him it was to much cholesterol.”

    Right. Middle-class suburban female EnZed, to a woman, had leapt on that one as another stick to beat the male half with. “That’d be right.” Janet was looking at her enquiringly. “Uh—oh! The wimp, Janet? Bob Kenny: he came over looking for work, so I told him there wasn’t any and, uh, somehow managed to foist the goats on him.”

    “Really? Good!” beamed Janet. “I always said they were too much work, Jan, dear!”

    So she had. “Yeah. Well, it may work out. He’s gonna get his paddock back into shape—did you know his dad used to have a cow on that patch of scrub—” Yes, of course she did.—“Um, yes,” finished Jan feebly. “Wait and see, I suppose.”

    “Um, does Dad know?” asked Jayne cautiously.

    Jan gave her a dry look. “Nope. I am an autonomous human being, not welded to him at the hip, ya know.”

    This appealed to Janet’s sense of humour, apparently: she gave a muffled hoot.

    Jayne was rather pink. “No, of course not, but he’s rather fond of the goats, isn’t he?”

    “Claims to be, but over the past couple of years that seems to include forgetting about them.”

    Janet immediately recalled that dreadful day when— Yeah. Well, it hadn’t been all that dreadful, and Jan had managed to milk the bloody creatures herself, but—yeah. Janet then favoured Jayne with a lot of obstetrical information about the nannies that Jan would have taken a large bet she didn’t wanna know.

    “I see,” she said limply. “I didn’t realise so much was involved.”

    “Right. That and the ruddy vet’s bills attached to it,” said Jan on a grim note.

    “Exactly!” agreed Janet, nodding brightly.

    “But will Bob be able to cope?” asked Jayne faintly.

    Good question. “Uh, well, if he can’t, he’ll always have the option of selling them,” Jan explained. “There’s a woman who lives not far away who farms them commercially, she’d probably take them off his hands. They’re the wrong sort for the fleece, of course—not mohair, the unlamented Namrita wouldn’t have chosen anything that useful—but she could probably make use of the milk, she makes a lot of cheese and soap.”

    “That reminds me, Jayne, dear!” said Janet brightly, “When you’ve cleared the tables, perhaps you could sort out the new sets of towels and soap for the guests? Michelle isn’t very reliable about it, you see, so it’s one more job poor Jan has to manage!”

    “Yes, of course,” said Jayne, looking bewildered but obedient.

    “Um, that isn’t wholly fair to Michelle, Janet,” said Jan, clearing her throat. “She gets the amounts right, Jayne, but she’s not too particular about choosing matching sets and matching the soap to them.”

    “No, exactly. It’s the little touches that count when you’re running a really nice place,” said Janet firmly.

    Yeah. Something like that. Jan smiled weakly at Jayne and nodded. “Um, where’s Libby? Having a sleep-in?” she asked. They had both been forbidden to get up early and help with stuff, but apart from one or two odd mornings after the nights spent driving home from Rotorua with highly eligible up-market lawyers or well-off Yanks that apparently weren’t old enough to know better, they’d both been pitching in.

    “No,” said Jayne uneasily. “Dad’s taken her out in the boat to look at some house that’s to let. Um, he knows a man that can lend us a launch and he reckons it’ll only take fifteen minutes. I forget who he said the house belongs to.”

    “Not Turpin?” croaked Jan.

    “Yes, that was it.”

    Janet dropped a plate.

    After the fuss over that was over and Janet’s apologies had been accepted and Janet had calmed down Jan was able to croak: “That’s over the other side! Fifteen minutes in a speed-boat, possibly! Otherwise a good half hour: it’s about twenty miles!”

    Jayne licked her lips. “Dad said eighteen, tops. Um, the thing is, he answered the phone yesterday when you were in the garden and it was a couple that were really keen to come for a fortnight and they’ve been before, so, um, he thought if me and Libby and Tamsin and your cousin used the house, he could put them in the loft. It’d mean more income for you, Jan,” she said earnestly.

    “That’s a good idea, dear!” approved Janet. “And you did say you were going to start using it for the overflow, Jan.”

    “Not now,” said Jan dazedly. “He’s taken leave of his senses! I was under the impression he’d been itching to have you all under our roof! –Hang on, he hasn’t had another run-in with Libby, has he?”

    “No: like I said, they went off together. He’s teaching her to drive the boat, she’s quite good at it. That’s why he thinks we could have a launch.”

    “Uh—let’s get our terminology clear, here, Jayne,” said Jan faintly. “Is Pete teaching her to drive the aluminium dinghy or that floating tart’s bedroom, the Tallulah Tub?”

    “The Tallulah Tub. –The Taupo Shores Tallulah, I mean,” corrected Jayne with a smile. “I think he’s done her up beautifully. He said it’d mean we could all have a bit of space.”

    “As I recall it, the Turpin place has got three rooms, one of which is the kitchen-living room and one of which is the bathroom,” said Jan dazedly.

    “No, dear: the A-frame!” Janet reminded her.

    “Uh—oh. Okay, that’ll be two bedrooms amongst the four of you.”

    “Pete said the A-frame’s been divided into two,” reported Janet.

    Right, the bugger had been over to see it, then! Jan took a deep breath. “Jayne, don’t let him push you into this. Leanne didn’t let us know until the last minute she was coming, so if necessary she can have a stretcher in our sitting-room. Along with Pete’s fly-fishing stuff,” she added drily.

    “I think it’s so clever, the way he makes the flies,” said Jayne admiringly.

    Potty, more like. “Mm. Well, the decision is up to you girls, but as I say, don’t let him push you into something you don’t want. Um, did he say who these putative clients for the loft might be?” asked Jan without hope.

    No. Exactly. Jan just sat down limply at the kitchen table as Jayne trotted off to clear the final breakfast dishes away and do the soap and towels and Janet, having filled the dishwasher and set it going, got on with washing up the overflow by hand. Galloping senility, that was wot, and if he dared to so much as breathe a word about the bloody goats she’d tell him so!

    “Aw, yeah, all that blue slate has gone,” noted Pete sadly.

    Libby wasn’t listening: she was looking eagerly at the rudimentary Turpin house and its setting. “It’s a lovely little jetty! And look how it’s nestled in the bush! It’s beautiful!”

    Er—yeah. Well, nestled in the second growth, yeah. Amazing how even the depredations of your average building firm—effing and blinding because of the lack of proper road access, according to Wal’s reliable report—could be covered up by a few years of really heavy rains and total ignore. “Eh, love?” he said feebly “Oh—a verandah. Yeah. Well, sort of. Think the plan was it was gonna run the whole side of the house facing the lake—see them concrete stumps? They’re the foundations for the rest of it. I’ve got the keys, let’s take a dekko.”

    The three rooms of the raw brick structure that formed the embryo Turpin holiday home were fully furnished. Libby hadn’t expected this: she gulped.

    “This lot’ll be her taste,” spotted Pete. “All the walls are white.”

    She nodded numbly. The white-walled main room, which was a fair size, featured a large, chunky white leather suite on a pale, polished wooden floor, several low white cabinets, and a huge white and navy abstract-patterned rug which presumably was meant to go with the heavy navy denim curtains and the lifebuoy on one wall. The far end of the room was the kitchen: separated, of course, by a heavy white divider topped with grey granite, and featuring a blue slate floor and featureless white Melamine cupboards, a giant fridge-freezer, and, crikey, a ceramic stove top and an eye-level oven! In a holiday house?

    “All mod-cons. Think the power’s still connected,” noted her father laconically.

    Libby tried a light switch, but nothing happened.

    “It won’t be on, lovey, but it’s probably connected. Well, the builders woulda had a line from the pole, see? Wanna see the other rooms?”

    Dazedly she tottered in his wake. The bedroom featured more polished floorboards—Pete squatted and ascertained that they were that slot-together crap, whaddid they call it? Aw, yeah, floating. However, one scarcely noticed the flooring, extravagant though it was, because most of the room was occupied by a king-size bed, covered with a giant patchwork quilt. The cottage theme: quite. It was taken up by the swagged and bowed floral curtains at the windows—swearing at the view of dull green bush fading to navy in the distance—and what Libby ascertained dazedly to be several real rag rugs on the floor. The theme ended abruptly with the fitments, including the sliding doors of the walk-in wardrobes, which were white Melamine. The ensuite was all white and completely tiled except for the enormous oval bath: free-standing, like a great dish or—or ship, really!

    “The Queen Mary,” noted Pete laconically.

    Libby broke down in hysterics all over the Turpins’ frightful ensuite.

    “Yeah,” said Pete, grinning. “She come over to the ecolodge once, ya know: went on old Vern’s ‘Antiques and Boutiques’ tour with the guests. See, we’ve agreed he can take outside bookings so long as he lets us know about it—’tis his minibus but he just does the driving, we pay for all the advertising, ya see. Didn’t wanna be bothered with the business side of it, he’s nothing like his bloody brother.”

    Vern Reilly was a little, thin, wizened man: pace Pete’s referring to him as “old” he was probably only a year or two older than he was. He was one of those perky, robin-like men and Libby had thought him very sweet, an opinion which would considerably have astonished Mr Reilly himself, who had a line of laconic repartee considerably drier than Pete’s had ever got.

    “Help, you don’t mean he’s Miser Ron Reilly’s brother?” she cried.

    “Yep.”

    “But he’s so nice!”

    “Yeah. Well, chalk and cheese. Does sometimes happen with brothers. Anyway, like I was saying, Mrs Turpin went on his tour and chucked away a few thou’ on an antique chest of drawers what she fancied for this dump, only a big truck come and took it away again after the bust-up. Think there might of been a picture or two that went, too. Didn’t want the rest, apparently.”

    “Heck. That’s a really nice quilt,” she said numbly.

    “Yeah. Katy Jackson, that’s Sean’s mum, she’s an artist, she does wall hangings, well, she knows a dame that makes those. That’d be two thou’ worth, min.’,” said Pete with some relish.

    Libby nodded seriously. “Yes; there’s a terrific lot of handwork in a quilt.”

    “Uh-huh. You do that sort of stuff, love?”

    “No, I’ve got no talent at all,” said Libby with a sigh.

    Pete and Jan had sort of gathered that. Well, most people weren’t artistic, after all. But it was a pity, because there was quite a thriving little community of artists and craftspersons in and around Taupo and not a few arts and crafts boutiques had sprung up over the last thirty years, it having gradually dawned that not all tourists were on the hunt for plastic tikis, tikis made of tiny chips of paua, or tea towels with “Haere Mai from Rotorua” on ’em.

    “No, well, take after me. Ya mum was into the crochet stuff,” he said vaguely, unlocking the back door. Aw, gee, there was a back step. Sort of. Big piece of broken concrete, bearing all the earmarks of having been helpfully placed there by a large builder in a black singlet. He tested it carefully but for a miracle it didn’t wobble. This rudimentary step led you onto a very rudimentary path which possibly Mrs had insisted Turpin hadda put in to lead to the washing-line, except there wasn’t a line and as far as Pete could remember never had been. Well, maybe she’d been at the point of forcing him to buy a washing-machine and drier when it all went belly-up? At the moment the path led over to the A-frame, so they went over there. Right: it wasn’t your total A-frame, it was the sort with side walls, lowish but still walls, that they sold for garages, or baches with optional garage under ’em. Put the first floor in at your own expense. Not to mention the wall linings. They went in. He hadn’t put a staircase or a top storey in, but it was lined, sort of, be gib-board sitting on battens with no insulation behind it or his name wasn’t Pete McLeod, and he’d divided it into two, front and back. The front had got the roller door. He favoured his daughter with a long, rambling story he’d got off the Arvidsons, a middle-aged back-packing couple from Adelaide, Australia, who’d once stayed—why, God knew—in a converted fire station in their own home town complete with its original giant folding garage doors at the front and the draught under ’em. And the fire engine. All shiny, sitting right in the middle of the poncy bed-sit. The Arvidsons had been luckier than what they’d thought they were gonna be in not having booked the downstairs room but the upstairs serviced apartment that was bigger and didn’t have the draught.

    Libby stared in a dazed way at the two bunks, bright red tubular-steel-framed, and the giant squidgy black vinyl sofa which stylistically had nothing in common. An enormous circular mat like a bull’s-eye in navy, red and yellow occupied the middle of the dark blue vinyl floor. “Um—what, Dad?”

    “I said don’t forget to remind me to tell Jan it was the Arvidsons what rung.”

    “Um, what? Oh, yes, the people that want a room. Um, was this the children’s room?”

    “Eh? Aw—nope. Didn’t have the A-frame back then. The kids woulda been in their early teens, I think. They made ’em go in the tent.”

    Libby swallowed.

    “No, ya got it wrong, lovey,” said Pete tolerantly. “Kids of that age love tents. Not to say being out of their parents’ orbit. You have to go through this room to get to the other one.”

    The back bedroom of the A-frame was half the size Libby had expected. It was quite pretty, however: it had a single bed with a very frilled gingham bedspread matching the very frilled gingham curtains. Pale blue gingham. The mat by the bed, over more of the dark blue vinyl, struck an incongruous note: fake Persian, in fact quite possibly fake Belgian. To their right was a door which revealed an elementary bathroom which to Pete’s expert eye bore all the hallmarks of having been fitted out with seconds from a factory in South Auckland that made campervan fitments. A minute round steel handbasin, a two-foot-wide steel shower, kind of thing. The bog was one of those chemical ones, Turpin hadn’t gone so far as to have one plumbed in. Libby thought the whole thing was cute.

    “Seems to be serious about letting the place, but there’s no road access at all, so we won’t give him his price, eh?”

    “Um, no. Um, Dad, we’ll have to ask Jayne if she wants to, it’ll be her money,” said Libby uneasily. “I can’t possibly afford the rent.”

    “No, well, it’ll only be for a couple of weeks and then Leanne’ll be pushing off, but they’re not queuing to take the dump, are they? We’ll beat him down!” he said cheerfully. “Well, do ya like it?”

    “Yes; it’ll be like living in a little doll’s house!” she said ecstatically.

    Uh—she meant the A-frame. Oh, well, if that was what she fancied. He’d envisaged her and Jayne in the big room in the house and bloody Leanne in here.

    He led her back to the launch and let her steer them all the way back. And dock ’er.

    “You got the knack of it, lovey,” he said as the Taupo Shores Tallulah was safely moored.

    “Yes, but I can’t do those rope things,”  said Libby anxiously.

    “Eh? Oh! Just keep the loop in the rope, don’t untie it, and she’ll be right.”

    Libby nodded thankfully and they went on up to the lodge.

    “Tell Jan it’s those people that stayed in the place with the fire engine,” she prompted as they went into the kitchen.

    “Aw, yeah.” He explained.

    “The Arvidsons?” said Jan, running her hand through her short grey waves. “Pete, you said the man was a prick of the first water!”

    “He is,” replied Pete calmly. “Good ole Erin’s okay, though.”

    Er—yeah. Well, hugely efficient: one of those post-Lib groupies that rushed slavishly in the male’s wake doing everything he did plus into the bargain picking up after him and washing and ironing for the bugger. Back on their home territory the Arvidsons owned a giant campervan with all mod cons including, if you please, a miniature washing-machine so that Erin could launder Keith’s ruddy safari shirts when they were touring the Australian Outback, no kidding. It wasn’t by any means the first time Jan had encountered the phenomenon, but she had to admit the Arvidsons were an extreme example of it.

    “What on earth’s gone wrong? Erin’s the sort that books eighteen months in advance,” she said dazedly. “Don’t tell me Fern Gully Ecolodge is double-booked!”

    “Nah, they’re down the South Island.”

    “Doing the Milford Track,” she deduced. –It’d be that or the Franz Josef Glacier.

    “Nah, the Franz Josef.”—He looked with some satisfaction at Jan’s feeble smile.—“She rung from Queenstown. S’posed to meet up with some old mates—or were they mates of mates? Um, yeah, think that’s the story. S’posed to meet up with them up in Auckland but their old mum’s just died. Don’t want to inflict themselves, see? But everything’s booked out, they might get in at the Auckland Travelodge out by the ruddy airport, but ya can’t call listening to the planes a holiday, eh? So they were gonna go home, but then she thought—”

    “Just tell me one thing before I ring them,” said Jan heavily. “Why didn’t they just hire a giant campervan like that one they’ve got back home and live in it for the rest of the holiday?”

    “Couldn’t get one. They were all booked out, too.”

    Libby collapsed in splutters, and Janet gave a high-pitched hoot and also broke down in splutters.

    “QED,” acknowledged Jan, grinning. “Well, yeah, I guess they can use the loft, it can’t possibly be as bad as that time they did the Himalayan walk.”

    “What I thought,” he said comfortably, scrabbling in his jeans pockets. “Uh—no. Hang on, recipe for tree-tomato jam Julia Roberts down the service station thought ya might like.”—Jan took it in a palsied hand: it wasn’t the season for tree-tomatoes, why—Oh, forget it. Tamarillos, she meant, drat it.—“That’s that brass screw I was looking for!” He put it in his top shirt pocket.—“She did say that recipe was better with the orange ones, love, but I dare say ya could try it with the red ones. Uh—bugger. Ya better have this.”—He passed her a folded strip of paper. Jan sighed. A petrol receipt. Ten to one he’d forgotten to put the purchase in the log-book, too. Let alone the mileage.—“What’s this? Aw, yeah, gum-nut for ya, love.” He passed it to Libby. “Bright orange flowers, not red. Got it off Ma Biddle down Hinemoa Street. Thought ya might know what species it was.”—“No,” said Libby faintly.—“Aw. Never mind. Um, no. Um… no. Um—shit.” He wadded up what looked like an opened envelope and shoved it in the shirt pocket. “Um, nope. Don’t think a six-pack that me an’ ole Vern drunk down by the lake counts as allowable expenses, does it? No, thought not.” He crumpled that one up and chucked it vaguely in the direction of the kitchen tidy. “Uh—nope. Hang on!” He turned it whatever-it-was over. “Aw, yeah, here ya go.”

    Jan took it. “Do not disappear,” she warned. She rang the number on her mobile and even though it was the time of day that you might reasonably have expected the Arvidsons to be backpacking over something inaccessible, got Erin immediately. Right, she was thrilled. Jan rang off with further if mendacious assurances it was no bother and they were looking forward to seeing them again. Well, Erin, yes. Not Keith.

    Pete hadn’t disappeared. He had got a cold one out of the fridge and was drinking it, but that was par for the course.

    “Whatever that folded-up letter you shoved in your top pocket is, give it to me,” she said in a steely voice.

    “Um, Jan, I think it’s a mistake. Aw, go on then, but it’s mad!”

    Jan took the letter. It was from Sacramento, CA, in fact it was from the desk of Patty Eisenblatt-MacDermott, and she might have assumed it was just an enquiry from a would-be customer that they’d never hear from again and chucked it in the tidy—“Do not pick up after him,” she ordered Janet in a steely voice. Hooting slightly, Janet ignored her and put Pete’s crumpled piece of paper in the tidy.—She might have ignored it except that the name Eisenblatt rang strangely familiar bells…

    “Pete, wasn’t your second’s surname Eisenblatt?” She scanned the letter rapidly. Jesus Christ! Patty E-M was the daughter of Susan Eisenblatt MacDermott, née Eisenblatt, formerly Eisenblatt McLeod, and she thought that possibly P.M. McLeod of Taupo Shores Ecolodge, Brown’s Road, Taupo, might be Peter McLeod, her father!

    “What is it, Jan?” asked Libby anxiously.

    “Uh—” Jan found she was incapable of reading it aloud. It wasn’t the shock of finding out he had a third daughter that he’d never known about, it was the fact that the cretin hadn’t shown her the letter! “Read it. You, too, Janet.”

    They read it, with the expectable gasps, especially from Janet.

    “Look, she can’t be me daughter, she was born in 1975, the bloody woman had left me for that Les by then!” he said loudly.

    “It takes nine months,” replied Jan grimly.

    “Yuh—Uh— Well, don’t look at me, I don’t remember what day she took off, ’cos she was always going down to Wellington anyway! But I do remember she hadn’t let me do her for yonks, so the kid can’t be mine!”

    “What about getting pissed on cheap, acid EnZed plonk—and believe you me, plonk was plonk in 1974,” said Jan to the company—“and smoking that pot of hers on top of it and forgetting she thought she was into the Lezzie stuff and lapsing back into just plain hetero sex?” –Sort of forgetting that that was a rude word to Janet. Sure enough, she gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth, but that didn’t mean she didn’t go on listening avidly.

    “Uh—not then!” he protested.

    Jan just waited.

    “Um, well, s’pose we might of, once or twice,” he said sulkily.

    “Once is all it takes,” she noted.

    “Look, it could of been anybody!” he shouted. “God knows how many of ’em she done down in Wellington!”

    “Um, it’s not impossible, Pete, love, but judging by the Lesbian couples of my acquaintance”—Janet went very red and clapped her hand over her mouth again—“the woman she was living with wouldn’t have allowed any straying.”

    “Yes, but Jan, dear, if the baby was Pete’s why didn’t she tell him?” gasped Janet.

    “Yes, why?” croaked Libby.

    “Two guesses,” said Jan sourly.

    “You only need one: she was a spiteful bitch,” said Pete glumly.

    “Mm. Well, that and the Les and her probably decided they were gonna bring it up between them,” conceded Jan. “No males need apply. I’ve seen a bit of that, too.”

    “Yes, it’s typical,” agreed Libby, looking at Pete anxiously. “One of the ladies at the public library was in a relationship like that.”

    “I wouldn’t call ’er a lady, then,” he responded sourly.

    “Never mind that. We’ll have to reply, Pete. How old is this— Oh,” said Jan, sagging. It had arrived just before Christmas, presumably on a day when he had remembered to clear the letterbox. “Well, I’ll email her.”

    “Look, ten to one she’s not mine!” he cried.

    “I think it’s ten to one she is, but there is a chance she isn’t,” replied Jan firmly. “We can’t leave the poor girl in limbo. She can send us a photo, for starters, and then I suppose you’d better get a DNA test.”

    “Then you’ll know for sure,” agreed Janet unexpectedly,

    “Yes, but isn’t it awfully expensive?” put in Libby anxiously.

    “Never mind, we’ve got to know.”

    “Yes, she’s right, Dad.”

    Pete sighed. “All right, email her.”

    “Right. Come on.”

    Pete sighed but shambled after her obediently.

    Libby looked uncertainly at Janet.

    “Isn’t that nice, another sister for you!” she said brightly.

    “Um, yes, if she is.”

    “I’d say there’s no doubt of it, dear! She was the sort of woman that wouldn’t tell him, now I come to think of it. No-one round here liked her,” reported Janet significantly.

    “Mm. Um, how old would Patty be?”

    “Thirty-one,” replied Janet instantly.

    “Help, and her mother’s only just told her that her father was a New Zealander?”

    “There you are, see!” said Janet on a triumphant note as the oven pinged. “That’ll be the silverbeet and fetta rolls, I’ll just get them out.”

    “Help, it’s lunchtime!” gasped Libby in dismay.

    “Don’t panic, dear, Jayne set the tables for me ages back. The salads are in the fridge, you can get them out. Put them in the pretty bowls, dear, the pottery ones, that’s right. I think Jan was going to do a lettuce and tomato one, too. Oh, well, that’s easy!”

    Libby watched numbly as Janet began slicing up a couple of iceberg lettuces into very fine strips like Mum had always done. She was positive that Jan never did that: she always tore it up. Ooh, heck. Numbly she followed Janet’s orders and sliced up a lot of tomatoes. Smaller than that? If she said so. Janet thought that some cucumber might be nice, too! In it went, diced within an inch of its life. Well, the vinaigrette was Jan’s, but… She watched numbly as Janet mixed it all together in a big mixing-bowl and then divided the damp, squashy-looking result rapidly amongst several smaller bowls. “Janet,” she quavered: “were there any outside bookings today?”

    Luckily the answer was a lemon. Libby tottered through to the dining-room—help, they were already lining up for it even though no-one had beaten the gong, yet—with a trolley-load of salads, cold ham, sliced, and hot filo pastry rolls.

    BOINNGG! BOINNGG! BOINNGG! She gasped and jumped. Janet on the gong. It was a giant thing, probably real bronze. Talking of Susan (Namrita) Eisenblatt MacDermott, née Eisenblatt, formerly Eisenblatt McLeod, it dated back to her day. She’d bought it at one of the Flower Power shops that had apparently flourished back then and never bothered to take it with her. …Oh, heck. Poor Dad and Jan! What a shock.

    “What are you doing here?” she gasped.

    Bob looked up in mild surprise. “Milking the goats, of course.”

    They had a little milking shed, at the back of the garage, next to the tiny spotless dairy. It had been a real shock to walk round the corner of the garage, just when she thought she was gonna be all alone with the nannies, and find him here.

    “I was gonna do that!” cried Libby crossly.

    “Um, didn’t Jan say?” he fumbled. “She’s given them to me. I’m supposed to milk them here.”

    “What are you TALKING about?” she shouted.

    “Ssh! You’ll upset Sabrina!” he hissed.

    Libby glared. Sabrina was her favourite: mainly white, silkier than the others, a large, gentle nanny, a grandmother several times over, who always came when called—in fact frequently before you’d called her—and always let down her milk for you. “I will? What about you, with your great horrible, hairy hands?” she hissed back furiously.

    Bob looked numbly at his hands. They weren’t particularly hairy. “Um, she likes me,” he said numbly.

    Tears sparkled in Libby’s eyes and her jaw trembled. “Go home. I’m milking them.”

    “Um, you can help if you like,” he croaked, “but like I said, Jan gave them to me. I’m gonna learn to make the cheese and she’s gonna have it as a swap and—” His voice faltered, as Libby’s glare didn’t abate. “When I’ve got my paddock ready I’ll graze them there.” Libby went on glaring. “They were getting too much for her, and Sean, he was wasting his time on them. Um, she was gonna offer them to the new permaculture people but I said I’d take them. She—she must’ve forgotten to tell you, Libby,” he ended miserably. “I’m sorry.”

    Libby took a very deep breath. “I’m not surprised she forgot, with everything that’s happened today.”

    “Eh?” he groped.

    “They’ve had a letter from some American woman that reckons she’s Dad’s daughter by that Namrita female. –Not that it’s any of your business!”

    “Um, no,” said Bob, going very red. “Um, you can help if you like.”

    At the moment Libby felt very strongly that she wouldn’t help Bob Kenny milk the goats if her life depended on it. “No. If you reckon they’re yours, you can get on with it.”

    “Um, the thing is,” he floundered, “you won’t be here all that long, will you? And, um, the goats were, um, a long-term problem. Not that Jan’s so busy the rest of the year but, um, anyway…” he finished miserably.

    “Well, get on with it, if you’re doing it!” hissed Libby. “She’s waiting for you!”

    She was: she was looking round at him in that mild way of hers. “Are you sure you don’t wanna do it?”

    “No!” snapped Libby, turning on her heel and walking off.

    Bob’s azure eyes filled with tears. He got on with it.

    When Jan came over to show him how to do the cheese about half an hour later he was sitting on the little stool she always used for the milking—the goats, of course, were pretty low to the ground—with his head in his hands and Sabrina nuzzling one shoulder and Kitty, one of her daughters, the other.

    “What’s up? Wouldn’t they let you?” she said in surprise.

    “Eh? Aw—no, they did.” He blew his nose hard, not looking at her. “I’ve nearly finished.”

    “Bob, what’s wrong?”

    “Nothing,” he said with a scowl.

    Jan got a sinking feeling in her middle. It had been quite a day… She’d told Sean she wouldn’t need his help with the nannies any more: his wide, blond face had fallen ten feet, silly milk-fixated male that he was, but Molly had looked pleased. But—

    “Oh, shit. I forgot to tell Libby I said you could have the goats. Did she, uh—” Well, what? Bawl him out for milking their goats? She wasn’t that fixated on the creatures, surely?

    “She just come round,” said Bob, sniffing, and not looking at her, “and, um, it gave her a bit of a shock.”

    Bloody Hell, it was that! “Um, Bob, today’s been a bit of a schemozzle, with Pete deciding off his own bat to let the loft for a fortnight and fixing up for the girls to rent the Turpin house over the far side, and then letting on he’s had a letter from some dame that claims to be his and Namrita’s daughter. I suppose Libby’s a bit upset. It’s not your fault. Um, well, she was enjoying helping with the bloody creatures: I suppose I shouldn’t have… Jumping in with my great boots on without thinking before I leap, my besetting sin. Thought I’d grown out of it,” she admitted with a grimace.

    “I better give them back,” he said miserably.

    “Uh—no, the damage is done now. And Libby won’t be here forever, will she? The goats’ll still be a problem this time next year, if you don’t take them.”

    “Um, yeah. Um, I tried to tell her that.”

    “I see,” said Jan slowly. “Look, between you and me, I think she might have had some idea of staying on, if we all got on together.”

    “You do, eh?” he said, brightening.

    “Yes, but we’re committed to Sean: the agreement is he’ll learn the business from us in return for being paid a pittance. I’m not saying we couldn’t use Libby’s help, but we couldn’t afford to pay her, and,” said Jan, making a face, “though I think Pete’d like to, we can’t leave the girls the business, because of our agreement with Sean.”

    “But she is Pete’s daughter,” he said uncertainly. “She could just, um, help out.”

    Jan sighed. “She’s a grown woman. She needs a living wage. Um, if she had a talent—well, Molly’s got her glass-blowing, that’s really helping supplement their income, but Libby’s quite a different case. She can’t even cook, or I’d offer her to Livia Briggs like a shot.”

    “It’s not that hard, is it?” he said dubiously.

    Jan sighed. “Cooking well enough to earn your living by it is hard, take my word for it.”

    “Couldn’t you teach her, though, Jan?”

    “You have to have an aptitude, and though I’d be happy to—more than happy to—I honestly don’t think she’s got any. Christ, she didn’t even stop Janet rolling the lettuce up like a damp rag and cutting it into slivers for the salad today! And she’s seen me making a salad often enough!”

    “Um, no, I see. Um, there’s Kristel Pohaka and that friend of hers, maybe they could take her on.”

    Jan looked at him limply. “Bob, all those women that do housework under the vast umbrella of Lake District Cleaning Services have families. Housework is just a—a way of helping pay the bills, for them. Libby can’t spend her life on it, with—with nothing else in it!”

    “She’s doing that bloody library stuff in Australia with nothing else in it, isn’t she?”

    Er—yeah. Possibly there was the odd chance of hooking up with another married male librarian, but— “Yeah,” said Jan heavily. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but at least it’s a profession with a bit of interest in it. Think of something she can do round here with a bit of interest in it and that’ll pay her enough to live off, and I’ll be only too pleased to help you talk her into it!”

    Bob got up. “I’ll take them back to their field. –You’ll have to talk her into it by yaself, she hates me,” he added sourly.

    Making chirruping noises to the goats, which they seemed to accept as man-to-goat language, he moved off.

    “Yo, boy,” said Jan under her breath.

Next chapter:

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