God Rest Ye Merry

7

God Rest Ye Merry

    “I’m not wearing a bloody suit,” said Bob flatly.

    Heatedly Neil retorted: “I didn’t ask ya to wear a bloody suit, I asked where that brown suit was!”

    He shrugged.

    “WHERE IS IT?” shouted Neil.

    “Gave it to that flaming minister, if ya wanna know.”

    “What?” said Neil blankly. The Kennys were not practising Christians. Though somewhere around there was a fancy satin-covered album with posed photos of the wedding party on the steps of the Methodist church.

    “Not that smarmy Methodist bastard that come looking for old members of the congregation that time.”

    “N— Ya sent him round to Mum’s anyway,” Neil remembered. “Who the Hell, then?”

    “Anglican, I think. Wanted stuff for the op shop, ’e was doing the rounds. Didn’t have nothing else to give ’im, since he didn’t fancy them gold-rimmed whisky tumblers yer mother left behind. –Well, heck, Neil, he seemed like a decent joker and it was a good cause and when am I gonna wear a flaming suit? Better than letting the moths have it.”

    “Yeah, like your good grey suit,” said his son in a steely voice.

    Bob shrugged.

    Looking grim, Neil investigated his wardrobe again. “Where are your good grey pants?”

    “Eh? Aw. Them ole flannels?”

    “Don’t try it on with me, Dad!” he shouted. “Where ARE they?”

    “If ya wanna know, I wore ’em that time I went over to Napier to me Cousin Marilyn’s wedding to ’er second that you wouldn’t come to ’cos you were too busy with yer varsity stuff.”

    “Dad, I was finishing my Master’s thesis, it’s bloody hard yacker,” said Neil with a sigh. “So where are they? Napier, for the last eighteen months?”

    Bob cleared his throat. “Come back through the Kaimanawas, if you remember.”

    “No, I was up in Auck— Oh, was that the time you shot that wild pig?” he said, grinning. “Just as well ya didn’t let Mum have the chest freezer, eh? Yum, yum!”

    Bob cleared his throat again. “Yeah. Well, did have me rifle in the back, yeah. Only as it happened I didn’t shoot it, exactly. Hit it with the waggon.”

    “Eh?”

    “It run out on the road in the dark and I pulled up too late. Dazzled by the headlights, probably. Hadda finish it off, poor bloody thing. Anyway, pity to waste it: nice fresh pig, eh? So I got it into the back. Forgot I had me good pants on. I left right after the bloody reception, ya see. Sent ’em to the dry-cleaners and Joanne Thompson, she give ’em two good goings-over for me, only she couldn’t get all the stains out.”

    Neil took a deep breath. He was aware that Dad was, to put it no more strongly, a bit of a pet of Mrs Thompson from Thompson’s Taupo Dry Cleaning. She was about twice his fighting weight, though coming up to about his shoulder, and well into her fifties. “How kind of her,” he said coldly. “Charged ya double, did she?”

    “Nah, give ’er a bit of a knee—” He broke off.

    “Honestly, Dad!”

    “She was up for it, I was up for it, why not?” he said defiantly.

    Neil sighed. This woulda been after the disastrous episode of that Barbara cow from Wellington, and the reason that Dad hadn’t let Joanne Thompson really console him was that there was a Mr Thompson. Also ready, willing and able, according to the rest of Taupo.

    “Good sort, ole Joanne,” offered Bob.

    Neil was rather red. He ignored this. “We’re going shopping the minute the shops reopen after Christmas.”

    “Flaming bloody Norah! I don’t need a bloody suit!”

    “Not for a suit, for one good pair of slacks,” said Neil tiredly. “In the meantime, you can wear those jeans we bought in Auckland when you came up for mid-semester break. Where are they?”

    There was a short silence.

    Neil took a very deep breath.

    “No! They’re in me drawer!” said Bob quickly.

    Neil investigated his tallboy. Right: still folded up and with the cardboard label on them. He removed it, checked for other labels—the price tag was still attached, so he removed that and its plastic tail—and shook them out. “I’ll iron them,” he decided grimly.

    “They’re jeans, ya don’t need to—”

    Neil had walked out with them, ignoring him.

    Bob sighed. He sank down on the edge of the bed. Pete had said it didn’t matter what he wore so long as it was clean and Ma Kitson thought he was lovely anyway. Bob had ignored the latter. But the rest of it had sounded okay and that lunch had been really nice, so…

    Neil came back with the ironed jeans. He’d changed into his new jeans, too. And that poncy short-sleeved Bob Charles knit thing his mother had given him for his last birthday. Well, probably told that mad-haired dame that worked in her second Taupo shop to nip out and get it, Coral was like that, but at least she wasn’t at the stage of forgetting her only son’s birthday. Yet.

    “We’ll both wear our good jeans,” he said grimly.

    “You’re not getting me into a pink Bob Charles thing,” warned Bob.

    “Pink and fawn, Tamsin says there’s a lot of it in the shops this year and stripes are really in. And it’s not a Bob Charles, you’re living in the past, Dad. Get up. Put them on.”

    “They’ll be all stiff,” he whinged. “New jeans are bloody—”

    “Put them ON!”

    —bloody horrible. Bob put them on. They were all stiff. Horribly stiff. Okay, maybe they’d manage to hide the hard-on he got whenever he so much as caught a glimpse of Libby, or squash it or something. Cripple him for life, most likely. So much the better.

    Neil then discovered there were stains on all his tee-shirts. So he’d have to wear a white shirt and like i— Horrified gasp.

     “Eh? Aw. That. Red wine. Went blue in the wash, Joanne said I shoulda brung it straight to her.”

    “This was ya BEST SHIRT, Dad!” he shouted.

    Reason it had red wine on it, eh? Good ole Vern Reilly’s Cousin Dave Sheldon’s wedding to his second, that had been. Registry Office, but quite a nice do. The whisky had flowed like whisky, the red wine had flowed like—yeah. It had been about five months after the Barbara episode and Linda Hooper had been there looking all eager—well, so had her husband’s sister-in-law, Melanie, that had helped—and Bill Hooper hadn’t been there. The reception was held in someone’s garden, turned out to be one of those big old-fashioned bungalows that had an orchard. The actual garden was done up all poncy, but down the back this poncy brick wall with the unlikely-looking espaliered camellias, believe it or not, had a nice little gate let into it under a sort of arch thing. And Linda had wanted to show him the orchard through there. Nice big old trees, not looked after properly, but nice. Big old Christmas plum, so Linda had kind of leant against it and kind of let him get his dick up there. At which point she’d come like the clappers before he could move and two seconds after that some dame had squawked “Yoo-hoo! Linda!” So that had been all she wrote. The red wine incident had been after that.

    Neil investigated further and found the bloody thing that Bob had unaccountably forgotten to fling out. Yer genuine Night Fever shirt, that was. Only hadda look at it and the bloody song started going through his br—

    “NO!” he shouted.

    “You haven’t got anything else decent, Dad. And you can’t get into anything of mine, or I’d lend you something that doesn’t date from the flaming Seventies.”

    Uh—yeah. Well, strictly speaking from 1980, disco had still been very big and Coral hadn’t yet given up sex for good: she’d persuaded him to get engaged and was grimly planning the wedding. Ballroom had been temporarily out and yer John Travoltas had been in.

    “Neil,” he said desperately, “it’s me John Revolting shirt, ya can’t make me wear it!”

    “Eh? Oh. Hah, hah,” he said weakly, giving it a second look.

    Palest green, it was—peppermint, according to his bloody mother. Tailored within an inch of its life, it was. Darts on the darts—yeah. “See?” said Bob. “Poisonous.”

    “Rats. Put it on.”

    Bob didn’t wait for him to shout, he put it on.

    “Stand up straight!” said his son irritably.

    Jesus, sounded just like his bloody mother! Bob straightened his drooping shoulders. “See?”

    Neil’s mouth firmed. “You’ve got a ruddy good figure for a man your age. If anyone asks we’ll say it’s a Western shirt. Well, looks just like one, eh?” he decided, cheering up.

    “Right: only need the rolled-up hanky round me neck and I’ll be yer Midnight Cowboy in person.”

    “Eh?”

    “Never mind,” he sighed. “Before your time. Well, before mine, too, but it eventually come to the flea pit with an R18 rating and me and Jack Wilson went on the strength of being sixteen and thick with it. Never been so embarrassed in me life,” he sighed.

    “Eh?”

    “Never mind, Neil, I’m wearing it,” said Bob heavily.

    “Right. Did you use your deodorant?” he asked suspiciously.

    “Of course I ruddy well used me deodorant, I don’t date back to the flaming nineteenth century!” he cried.

    “No, I only meant you’re mean with it, Dad.”

    He was mean with it, the silly young tit, because it cost a bomb and he had the prospect of not being able to make a red razzoo out of the launch this summer! Oh, well.

    “Yeah. I’m wearing it. It’s Christmas. Are we going?”

    “Thought you had a present for Pete and Jan?” replied his son.

    “Aw. Yeah. Hang on.” Bob disappeared.

    Neil sighed. He wandered out to the waggon and leaned on it.

    His father reappeared lugging a chillybin.

    “Um, Dad, they won’t expect us to bring grog—”

    “No, well, a spare bottle won’t go amiss, but ’tisn’t for that.” He opened it. Inside there were a couple of those chiller bag things, a bottle of Hawke’s Bay Chardonnay, and a strangely shaped bundle swathed in plastic with a card stuck on it reading, in addition to its own “Season’s Greetings”: “Pete & Jan. From Bob.”

    Neil swallowed. “Yeah, uh, that the last of the wild pig?” he croaked.

    “Yeah. Shoulder. Jan’ll be able to do something nice with it, eh?”

    “Yeah. Um, good idea, Dad. Um, couldn’t you of, um, wrapped it up, though?”

    “Nah, thought the Christmas paper’d go soggy. Well, hop in!”

    “Have you locked up the house?”

    Bob eyed him drily. “Yeah, and what’s more I’ve turned off the iron that you left on, matey.”

    Smiling weakly, Neil got into the passenger’s seat.

    When his father drew up on the freshly re-gravelled sweep before the ecolodge he grabbed his presents and hopped out all merry and bright, instead of sitting there all red and blushful like what was the alternative, so Bob concluded that he had already got up that bossy little Tamsin, as he’d suspected. She was a nice enough girl and God knew Neil could do with a bit of stirring up, but the odds were all in favour of her going back to Australia—Bob wasn’t familiar with the expression “visiting firemen” but having lived in a tourist town all his life he was more than familiar with the phenomenon—and even if it did last, he, Bob Kenny, would bet his right arm that ten years down the track they’d either be continually at each other’s throats or actually in the bloody divorce—

    “Dad! Come on!”

    —court. Bob got out slowly. No other cars parked out here, well, one mercy. “Eh? Aw, yeah,” he said as Neil reminded him to get the chillybin out.

    “They’ll like it, Dad!” Neil encouraged him.

    “Eh? Aw. Yeah.” Something like that. Bob followed him over to the front door, perforce.

    Oh, Christ. They were all here, all the dames in fancy frocks and frightening hairdoes, the hairspray and the scent and the talcum powder were fighting it out with the smell of roast turkey, the flashing earrings were fighting it out with the flashing ornaments on the ruddy tr— Sweet flaming Jesus!

    “Just a small one this year,” said Pete with a snigger, coming up to his side.

    “Yeah,” said Bob feebly. “Who’d ya nick that off, Pete? Forest Products?”

    “Shuddup,” he said with a wink. He looked round cautiously. “Jan thinks,” he said very quietly into Bob’s ear, “that me and young Sean found it in that scrub next-door.”

    Bob went into a helpless shaking fit.

    “Yeah,” said Pete with satisfaction. “—That for us?” he asked baldly, as Bob was just standing there holding it, shaking.

    “Eh? Oh! Yeah. Merry Christmas.”

     Pete took it. He peered into it. “Is it?”

    “Only if ya like wild pig.”

    Pete’s thin, leathery dial lit up like his bloody tree. “Yeah, Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! We won’t let this lot get a sniff of it, I can tell ya! Been out of the freezer long?”

    “Ten minutes, tops.”

    “Good, I’ll bung it in our big new one. –Got it off Steve Garber, gave me a really good price: bit scratched, the suburban moos of Taupo weren’t having a bar of it. Hang on.” He’d vanished before Bob could say he’d come with him, bugger.

    Bob stared at the tree, trying not to wonder where Libby was. “Uh—yeah, Merry Christmas,” he croaked as an old joker that looked vaguely familiar wished him one and shoved a glass of something revolting into his hand. Ugh, not a glass, a nasty little glass cup. But it didn’t look like punch. Murky. Globby. What the Hell…?

    “Eggnog,” said a sepulchral voice from somewhere below his right shoulder.

    Bob gasped, jumped ten feet and turned red as a beet. “Hullo, Libby,” he said lamely. Oh, shit, she was in a fancy kind of long, dark blue thing with them flashing whatsits on the skirt that Coral’s ballroom dancing clobber had always been smothered in. Though the tits were undeniably good, in a sort of navy-blue tee-shirt thing. Tight. Cut real low. Bit short, showed a bit of skin at the waist. He swallowed hard.

    “Merry Christmas!” said Libby with a laugh in her voice. “Who forced that on you?”

    “Uh—old joker in yellow stripes and a red bow tie.”

    “Oh—Mr Kitson! You met him down by the lake, ’member?”

    No, he didn’t remember anything except how great she’d looked in her yellow singlet and jeans. And the tits—right. “Uh—thought ’e seemed vaguely familiar.”

    “You don’t have to drink it, Bob!” said Libby cheerfully.

    “Uh—no.” He looked round desperately.

    “Over here,” said Libby. Dazedly Bob allowed her to lead the way through the crowd of Merry Christmases and flaming floral silk dresses and pastel shirts—cripes, that joker was wearing a Santa hat already. Gratefully he set the cup down on a coffee table by one of the big sofas. “Who’s the type in the Santa hat?” he ventured.

    “Mr Christensen—Stan,” she amended, smiling. “He’s an American, they don’t get many men, it’s usually American widows.”

    Like from Seattle—yeah. “Right. So is he a widower?”

    “Yes, poor man, his wife had cancer. She was only fifty-two, isn’t it sad?”

    Well, yeah, it was, only the bloke didn’t look that sad as of this min, he was holding a bunch of artificial mistletoe above Libby’s sister’s head and giving her a smacking big Christmas kiss. “I’ll drag ’im off yer sister, if you like,” he offered.

    Libby followed his gaze. “No, it’s all right, Bob. I hate to say it, but she does enjoy the admiration of older men!” She gave a loud giggle.

    Right: ten years older, ’ud be his estimate and not past it, but if she said so— And just by the by— “What’s that muck in your fist?” he asked.

    “No idea!” replied Libby with another loud giggle. “A very merry Canadian widow forced it on me! Look, that’s her: Lucille!” She waved gaily. The ginger-haired dame with the giant holly earrings and the Goddawful dress cut down to here and smothered in poinsettias—two shades of red, that made it better—waved a flashing armful of bangles back. Jesus. That was the dame that—

    “You met her at, lunch, ’member?” said Libby gaily. “I think she liked you!”

    Liked him? The woman had rubbed her flaming foot up his leg throughout the pudding!

    “Well, I didn’t like her,” he said grimly. “Give that here.”

    Libby blinked as his big, warm hand closed over hers and removed the glass of bright yellow Christmas cheer forcibly from her grasp. “I thought it was nice,” she ventured. “Though I don’t know anything about drinks, really. When the ladies at the public library used to ask me to happy hour with them, I just used to have whatever they were having: I could never think of what to ask for.”

    “Right. You’d of had some surprises, then,” he noted, sniffing it cautiously. Cripes! Hundred per cent over-proof! “Tequila sunrise, Libby,” he said heavily.

    “I thought it had orange juice in it,” said Libby lamely.

    “Yeah. And that pink muck—forget its name.” He tasted it cautiously. “Yeah, she’s laced it with vodka: thought she looked like the sort of dame that favours the hard stuff. I wouldn’t drink much more of it, lovey, or you’ll end up too pissed to enjoy Jan’s lovely dinner.”

    “Um—no!” gasped Libby going very pink. “I’ve already had a big glass of it!”

    Yeah, he sort of thought she might of. “Uh—could finish it for yer? It’ll go good on top of that toast and Vegemite without marg me and Neil had for breakfast,” he assured her.

    “Um, a roast dinner is rather greasy,” replied Libby uncertainly.

    “Uh—no!” said Bob with a sudden laugh. “No, forgot to buy any marg! Or put it like this, he had the waggon on what was gonna be our shopping night and by the time he got home I’d dropped off in me armchair.”

    “I do that, too. Had you started watching TV?” asked Libby sympathetically. “It’s a great soporific.”

    “Eh? Aw—yeah! Um, wouldn’t be any plain beer going, would there?”

    “I very much doubt it.”

    “In that case I’ll drink the flaming Tequila sunrise, it’ll go with me poncy shirt, that’s for sure.” He drank it and shuddered.

    Libby smiled weakly. “I think it’s a very nice shirt. The Country and Western look, it suits you. That’s a nice belt, too.”

    Yeah, well, she needn’t look at it too closely, just at this juncture. Bob cleared his throat desperately. “Uh, came with the jeans; Neil chose them.”

    “They look good,” said Libby simply, smiling up at him.

    “Ta,” growled Bob, turning an unlovely shade of beetroot. “He forced me into this lot, ya see. Forgotten I had this ruddy shirt.”

    “Not really? Tamsin does that to us, too!” she cried.

    “Eh?”

    Libby nodded hard. “Mm, really! See that awful tropical print thing of Jayne’s with the parakeets? She made her buy that, and today she forced her into it! She did her best to make me wear an awful yellow thing with huge butterflies on it that she chose for me, but honestly, Bob,” she said earnestly, “I couldn’t! So she fell back on this skirt she made me buy for parties, but nothing’d get me into the awful lacy top she chose for it,”—she shuddered—“so she gave in and let me wear this top I got in Taupo.” She squinted down at it dubiously. “It’s a bit tight, but they didn’t have one in my size and I was desperate for something plain.”

    Plain, it wasn’t. Not with them pair in it.  Bob cleared his throat. “Right.”

    “This necklace is really hers, and she gave me these earrings—they’re pretty, though, aren’t they?” said Libby innocently, smiling up at him.

    For two pins Bob would have just grabbed her, fancy skirt and all, and run off to his cave with her right there and then. Only unfortunately nobody was offering him two pins and they were surrounded by middle-aged Christmas revellers, all bellowing their heads off. “Um, yeah. So she forces you to dress up for special occasions, too, eh?” he croaked.

    “I’ll say! For everything, really. She chose those ghastly outfits we wore on the plane, too. Matronly, weren’t they?” She grinned at him.

    She wasn’t wrong, there. Sort of thing Coral got round in. And her bloody mate, Suzanne Donahue, that ran the hairdresser’s she used to chuck away his hard-earned at. “Too right!” said Bob with feeling. “Took me in, I can tell ya!”

    “Uh—oh, help, did you think I was an efficient suburban matron?” croaked Libby. “Help. But they all despise me, I’m the most inefficient female that ever walked!”

    “Are ya? Good on ya,” said Bob on a weak note, reflecting that bloody Coral was probably the most efficient. Well, not in the same class with good ole Helen that ran the actual country, but up there with the leaders, not back with the pack.

    “Ever watched the Tour de France?” he asked abruptly.

    “Um, no, I’m not interested in sport,” said Libby feebly. “Why, Bob?”

    “Um, sorry, dunno why I— Well, it’s been driving me mad for days. See, when them ponces that do the voice-overs describe the race—Poms, they are, half the time they’re so busy talking to each other they miss what’s happening on the road—um, sorry. They got another word for the pack.” Libby looked blank. “Um, like, there’re the leaders, with the yellow jersey and that, and then further back there’s the pack, only there’s another word, can't recall it for the life of me—French, I think.”

    “Peloton,” said Libby simply.

    “Oh,” said Bob, sagging. “Yeah. Ta. How the Hell didja know that if ya don’t watch the Tour?”

    “I did some French for my degree. And I might have come across it when I worked at the public library: you get a very wide general knowledge when you’re a cataloguer.”

    “Right. I’d’ve thought it sounded a bit dull,” he said cautiously.

    Libby smiled a little. “Not entirely, because you get to see the new books, you see!”

    “Right; perks of the job, eh? S’pose every job has ’em.” He eyed the giant Christmas tree drily and added: “Some more than others. Lot of wood fires round these parts, come winter.”

    “I get it! ’Specially where the husband is in forestry!”

    “What about the forestry?” asked Pete suspiciously. “Here.” He shoved a tumbler at Bob.

    “You get perks if you work for the forestry company!” explained Libby gaily.

    “Forest Products,” noted Bob very drily indeed. “What is this?”

    “I’m not trying to poison you, ya nana! Come out of a square bottle with a black label on it, but if ya don’t want it—” Bob was drinking it. “What brought up the subject of the forestry?” Pete asked his daughter suspiciously.

    “Um… Heck, I dunno, Dad!” she admitted with a giggle. “One minute we were talking about the peloton in the Tour de France and the next minute you’re poisoning Bob with stuff out of square bottles and interrogating me!”

    “What the Hell have you been letting her drink?” Pete demanded.

    “Um, me?” said poor Bob limply. “Nothing. It was that Lucille dame.”

    Pete shuddered. “Jesus, Libby, haven’t ya got more sense?”

    “What?” asked Libby in bewilderment.

    “Well, crikey, love, can’t ya see—”

    “No,” said Bob.

    “No, all right. See, dames like that, they drink like fishes, it’s one of their hobbies.”

    Libby looked dubiously over at the poinsettia-clad Mrs Lucille Polaski, now waving a big sprig of artificial mistletoe gaily over the very blond head of one of the German boys from the bunkhouse. “It is Christmas, Dad, everyone’s having drinks.”

    Bob cleared his throat.

    “All right!” said Pete irritably. “Spent twenny years in the flaming back room of a flaming library, thanks to her bloody mother! –Take my word for it, Libby, anything liquid a dame in a dress like that with a hairdo like that offers you is gonna be ninety percent alcohol.”

    “Ninety-nine,” said Bob unemotionally. “Very distinctly over proof.”

    “Then why didn’t ya stop ’er?” he snarled.

    “He did,” said Libby. “He took it off me and drank it himself. That’s why he knows it was ninety-nine. And I’ve had that VSOP brandy, you needn’t go into a male peer group!”

    “She’d already got a huge belt of it down ’er,” said Bob unemotionally to her father.

    Pete ran a hand over his sparse grey hair. “Right.”

    “You’re ’er dad, why weren’t you keeping her out of the orbit of dames like that?”

    “Because I can’t be in fifteen places at once! But since you’re here you can help keep an eye on her.”

    “I don’t need keeping an eye on!” said Libby indignantly.

    “Ya do, too,” retorted Pete. “Get a few drinks inside you and you let the first poncy up-’imself lawyer in a flaming white tux that gives yer the eye lead you up the garden path and straight into one of them ruddy guest cabins of flaming Livia’s!”

    Libby was now scarlet. She drew a very deep breath. “Dad, I’m not a kid of twenty. And I’m as entitled as anyone else. Excuse me, I’ll see if I can help Jan.”

    In her wake Bob drained his whisky and Pete glared impotently at the tree. “Fuck,” he said at last.

    “Apparently, yeah,” noted Bob very sourly indeed.

    “You should talk!” He breathed heavily and finally managed to admit: “She’s right, she is as entitled as anyone, only why it hadda be that up-himself prick— Anyway, he’s gone back to Auckland,” he finished lamely.

    “Yeah. Merry Christmas,” concluded Bob sourly.

    Christmas dinner at Taupo Shores Ecolodge went extraordinarily well in that the turkey was perfect, not too dry but cooked right through, the ham was completely delicious, and everyone appeared to enjoy the roast potatoes, roast kumaras, green peas out of the garden, pureed hoary broad beans and tinned cranberry jelly equally. In fact Neil Kenny and the two German lads had double helpings of turkey. With gravy as well as cranberry jelly, yes. None of the ecolodgers were vegetarians this year, so Jan hadn’t had to bother about a special vegetarian dish and she was able to do avocados stuffed with shrimps for starters. Tinned shrimps, but they were as about far inland as you could get in New Zealand, and nobody seemed to object. Those who would have preferred a repeat of the trout that she’d done for Livia had the sense to keep stumm.

    In fact Pete was remarkably stumm throughout, having to be prompted to give the toast, where usually he had to be held back, so Jan could only conclude that it was his big foot in his great mouth that had caused Libby to come into the kitchen and say loudly: “I wish you’d tell Dad that I am an adult and who I go round with is none of his business and I don’t need him telling that Bob Kenny to look after me and not let me drink drinks like everyone else!” Thereupon apologising and saying it wasn’t Jan’s fault. Jan had shot out to the restaurant and changed the place cards so that Libby was no longer next to Bob. And on second thoughts switching Tamsin to Pete’s left hand instead of Libby.

    As a result of this reorganisation of the personalities at the big table Libby ended up next to Stan Christensen, complete with his hat and his mistletoe and a squeaker with a feather on the end of it that he kept blowing at her in what Jan for one felt was an extremely suggestive manner. Stan’s pleasant friend, Whit Corston, who’d come out to keep him company and maybe get in a bit of fishing, and who hadn’t seemed to be making the running at all earlier, ended up next to Jayne and made the most of every instant of it. His eyes were practically down her bodice by the end of the avocado. Jayne didn’t seem to mind: she certainly giggled enough. And Bob ended up next to Mrs Lucille Polaski. Possibly it wasn’t cause and effect that the more Libby giggled and encouraged bloody Stan to blow his squeaker at her, the more Bob refilled Lucille’s glass and let her taste bits off his plate and let her feed him from her fork and, Jan Harper would have taken her dying oath, let the hand that wasn’t holding the fork go somewhere very rude indeed. Well, that purple tinge to his cheeks certainly indicated it wasn’t merely holding her Christmas serviette on her poinsettia-ed lap.

    Not that this was the first time such things had happened at the Taupo Shores Ecolodge Christmas dinner table—by no means. One frightful year the gold-haired Mrs Salome Jackson from Evanston, Ill. (Sal-oh-may, where Jan had always thought it was Sa-loh-mee) had seduced meek-seeming Ted Robinson from Glendale, Auckland, away from Mrs Robinson right under her awful eye. Literally: he’d gone back to Evanston with the jolly Salome. No, well, that was the most extreme example, but there had been others...

    Actually they’d done quite well out of Salome, because she had loads of friends in Evanston, to whom she had warmly recommended Taupo Shores Ecolodge. Er, no, hardly the point.

    Jan looked down the table resignedly at the grinning Pete drunkenly demonstrating something-or-other with his pudding spoon to the giggling Tamsin and the tolerantly grinning Neil, swallowed a sigh and said to the refeened Mrs Kitson at her right hand—the main table was very big so unfortunately it had had to be someone and at the time Mrs K. had seemed suitably unobtrusive and, er, null—“I think we might have coffee in the lounge.”

    “Of course, Jan, dear!” she beamed. “We’ll get them all in there and then we can start on the washing-up!”

    We. Exactly. Oh, well, they’d had a bit of that before, too. Most of the nayce ones that had been mums and total life-support systems to some pathetic twerp of a pale imitation of a male all their days were totally at a loss when they found themselves on holiday with not even a motel stove to play around with. And Mrs Kitson was very nayce. She thought the P.M. was doing such a good job—though of course she and Adrian always voted National—and of course she had nothing else in her life, poor thing, did she? This last point had been followed with an avid description of her own grandchildren, tactfully not presented in so many words as an illustration, Jesus!

    Jan took a second look at the flushed, round, helpfully smiling face beside her and swallowed a sigh. Couldn’t help it, brainwashed into it from her formative years, not to say by her hormones, and without the brains to rise above ’em. At least she was well-meaning—though hadn’t some sage once said that was the most damning phrase on earth? She managed a smile and a “Ta, Maeve”—such was the female’s name, yes, though she’d looked completely blank when Jan had asked if there was Irish blood in her family—and got up, bashed a convenient cut-glass trifle bowl with her spoon and told them there’d be coffee in the lounge and everyone must feel free to do as they liked. –One year they’d tried screening a video of something horribly Christmassy and relatively inoffensive in the main lounge but they’d all bloody well rolled up for it! So they didn’t do that any more.

    As expected, they all came along obediently for coffee, the German boys with polite thanks for the delightful meal, cripes, and then those that weren’t too stonkered to move mostly trickled off to their rooms to sleep it off.

    The merry Stan Christensen, however, had other plans and, blowing his by now very limp squeaker in Libby’s face, suggested a walk by the beautiful lake. And Jan could only hope that he’d drunk enough to make something else limp by now, too! Libby claimed to be too full to walk—his face fell—but she wouldn’t mind just a sit-down by the lake—he brightened. Gee, his mate Whit asked Jayne, too.

    “I suppose they are the right age for them,” said Jan heavily to Ma Kitson as they gathered up coffee cups.

    “Of course, dear! And poor Stan Christensen is such a lonely man! It’s so nice to see him come out of his shell!”

    Er—yeah. And she actually meant it. Oh, well. Jan grabbed a tray and began piling coffee cups on it.

    When they got to the kitchen she realised that the reason Tamsin and Neil had disappeared a bit back wasn’t to go off to the loft for a snog: Tamsin was competently rinsing plates and he was stacking the dishwasher. Mis-stacking but being redirected.

    “It’s all right, Jan, you deserve a break, we’ll manage this!” said Tamsin brightly.

    “Of course! You go and sit down, Jan, dear!” beamed the helpful Maeve, buckling on an apron.

    “Maeve, you’re a guest,” said Jan feebly.

    “Nonsense, dear! Off you go!”

    Jan could have withstood Maeve but with Tamsin she knew she was licked, so she just tottered groggily back to the main room.

    “Tamsin’s in charge in the kitchen,” she said to her partner in life.

    “Eh? Yeah,” replied Pete drunkenly. “Siddown. Take uh weigh’ r’off.”

    Sighing, Jan sat down beside him on the sofa that he, his glass, his bottle and a plate of cake were hospitably occupying. She put the plate on the coffee table that was successfully blocking off access for anything in a floral frock that might call him “lovely” or, according to the vernacular, “just dorrling!”

    “I won’t ask,” she said with a sigh.

    “Eh?” he said drunkenly.

    “Just how you put your great foot in your mouth with Libby.”

    “Eh? Aw. Tell ya la’rer,” he said drunkenly.

    Jan looked round the room, though without hope. “Where’s Bob?”

    “Gone off to shag that gin’er Cana’n dame,” he said drunkenly, if explicitly.

    Jan sighed.

    “Pear-shaped,” said Pete sulkily.

    “Mm?” Oh—God. “That’s family life, Pete,” she said heavily.

    “Nah. Well, that, too, I was looking forward to it! No, Bob an’ Libby,” he said with an awful scowl.

    Oh, Jesus, was that— Christ, that was probably why he’d asked the man to pick them up at the airport in the first place! “Pete, you can’t push people at each other like—like blocks!”

    “Eh?” he groped.

    It was the image that had sprung to mind. She could see the very blocks in question: alphabet blocks. Genuine wooden ones. God knew where that had come from. “Um, well, like puppets.”

    “He’s on ’is tod, she’s on ’er tod, ’e’s a decent joker, why not?” he said sulkily.

    Jan could think of about a million reasons why not, starting with Libby’s inability to do anything other than library cataloguing and going on to Bob’s complete uselessness when there wasn’t a woman pushing him, and Libby’s very evident inability to push anything—

    “Yeah. Well, it’s early days yet.”

    “Norrif ’e keeps gerring off with dames in holly dinner-pla’ earrings from Seattle, it isn’!” he said bitterly.

    “Uh—Vancouver, Pete,” said Jan feebly.

    “Same diff’,” he muttered sourly. “Well, ishit?”

    Probably not, no. Unless Libby didn’t notice. Never mind the penchant for smoothie lawyers in smooth white tuxes and very nice legs, she was pretty bloody innocent.

    “Um, what? Um, well, they are all on holiday,” said Jan feebly.

    “Yeah. Right.”

    Silence fell.

    “Where’s Tamsin?” he demanded aggrievedly.

    Jan blinked hazily. “Uh—didn’t I say? Doing the dishes for me.”

    “She’s a good girl,” he said, scowling.

    “Mm.”

    “Gonna go back to sodding Oz,” he muttered drunkenly.

    “Uh—well, not necessarily, Pete,” said Jan cautiously. “She was asking me about the courses at Auckland University and what sort of fees she might have to pay as a foreigner.”

    “Ash’nom’cal,” he said drunkenly, if accurately.

    “Mm, but the point is, she asked!”

    Pete brightened. “Right! Uh, shit: that tit of a Neil Kenny?” he croaked.

    “He’s all right,” said Jan firmly. “Nice boy, good prospects.”

    “Dipping ’is whatsit in the lake?” he groped.

    “Yes, it’s freshwater ecology, remember? Eco-anything is so in he could probably get a job anywhere in the world. But I doubt if he’d stray far from home.”

    “Ish ’e lake,” said Pete drunkenly. “Draws ya back.”

    Well, not the majority, only those with some sort of soul. Jan smiled a little and patted his knee. “Yeah, that’s right. Why don’t you pop off for a lie-down? This lot can get on with it by themselves.”

    Pete looked wry. “Managing me for me own good, now, are yer? It’ll be gian’ sneakers an’ them flaming knee-socks nex’!”

    Er—yeah. Jan shot a wary look at Pa Kitson in an armchair three feet away, but he was dead to the world. Snoring blissfully in the land of dreams, where the cosily managing Maeve had metamorphosed into Sophia Loren. He always had been keen on her: he’d told Jan quite a lot about it the other evening after the Chardonnay had flowed too freely.

    “Yeah,” she agreed drily.

    “I will if you will, Jan,” said Pete with a meaning though unfortunately drunken wink.

    “Promises, promises.” Jan got up, smothering a yawn. “Come on, then. Leave that bottle, it doesn’t need you any more.”

    Pete left the bottle and shambled out in her wake, leaving the main lounge of Taupo Shores Ecolodge to its usual post-Christmas dinner somnolent doze.

    Bob hadn’t intended to do the woman at all. True, when she put her hand on his thigh during the meal he got an excruciating hard-on, but after all, he was a bloke that hadn’t had it on anything like a regular basis for three years. and apart from a few odd knee-tremblers, some of which hadn’t come off, so to speak, hadn’t had it at all, if you were gonna be strictly accurate. But shit, everybody else was manifestly at it—well, Libby and that Yank were, he coulda strangled the both of them. And she’d made it bloody clear she wasn’t interested in him: why had bloody Pete gone and opened his mouth? Not that he wouldn’t’ve been more than happy to keep an eye on her... Probably been the wrong move, taking that glass of grog off her. Bugger. He wasn’t gonna say that Lucille Polaski wasn’t his type: she wasn’t entirely, in that she was well into her fifties with a flaming ginger dyed mop, but she also had a very white skin, loads of which was on display, and large boobs, most of which were on display, that’d be one of those push-’em-up bras, and, actually, wasn’t a bad-looking dame. Too much make-up, like all the Yank dames, but you couldn’t have everything. Uh—Canadian, in this specific instance, come to think of it, but same diff’. Only he hadn’t actually been volunteering for a helping.

    Only the thing was, he hadda go to the bog after coffee on top of all that gnat’s piss Pete had served at dinner: there were half a dozen bottles of real French champagne, cunningly spaced out amongst the tables so ya had the impression there was more, and the rest was that Goddawful New Zealand sparkling white from Liquorland or the so-called independent White Peaks Wines & Spirits—stocked so much Lion beer it must be owned by Lion Nathan or whatever they called themselves these days. Or from that other place on the far side of town, they all sold the same revolting sparkling whites, usually at the same discount prices over Christmas or with only a cent’s difference per dozen, so it wasn’t worth the petrol to go to the one that wasn’t nearest.

    Anyway it would never of happened if it hadn’t been for the layout of the ruddy so-called ecolodge. The front door, which was where the door of the original bach had been, opened straight onto the main lounge with its great kauri ceiling and lovely kauri floor, Bob wouldn't have minded owning anything half that nice. Its end wall was glass with a great view of the lake, where Pete had, legally or not, cut a swathe through the native bush. This was the only room at the right-hand end of the building, all the additions had been built out the other way or at the back. If you went through the door in the lounge’s far left-hand corner, near the little bar, you were in the main corridor which had the six guest bedrooms off it to the left, all opening onto the verandah with their own sets of French windows. The dining-room was behind the bug lounge, down the little passage directly to the right, complete with his and hers bogs, ’cos the authorities had told Pete and Jan that if they wanted to run a restaurant that accepted public bookings it hadda have public toilets. However, that fat old Ern Whatsisface that came from somewhere down the South Island but never went fishing in any of its lakes or streams and had never so much as tasted trout before Jan served it up the other day—par for the course, he’d been something in local government—had just been sighted heading in there. Don’t ask him, Bob, why he wasn’t using the one attached to his room. Possibly because his wife was in there snoring her fat, self-satisfied face off—she’d told Bob the trout tasted rather muddy but poor Jan did her best, wouldja believe? To which good old Lucille, give her her due, had retorted that her serving had been really excellent and perhaps it was just that Ma Whatserface wasn’t used to freshwater fish and of course trout was a delicacy. Anyway, Bob knew that if you went past the guest rooms and through the door labelled “Private” at the far end of the main passage it led to Pete and Jan’s rooms and they wouldn’t mind if he used their bathroom. So he did.

    When he came out the woman was leaning in the doorway of her room in a floaty green negligée over the push-’em-up bra and, gulp, a ginger bush that matched the hair! Must of had it dyed at the same time, cripes. Well, there was a full waxing place in Taupo, these days, but was it even safe to use dye down there?

    “Hi, there, again,” she cooed, batting the mascaraed eyelashes.

    “Um, Lucille,” croaked Bob feebly, “isn’t this a bit dumb?”

    “Why not, honey? We’re both grown people. Well, I’m a grown girl and you’re sure a big boy!” she added with a loud giggle, looking at it.

    Bob cleared his throat. “Yeah. Well, yeah, why not? Well, close the flaming door and put the radio on, eh?” he added feebly.

    Giggling, Lucille grabbed his hand, pulled him into the room and shut the door. Then plastering herself to him and groping him.

    “Shit!” he gasped, even though her hand had been there before.

    “Ooh, naughty boy!” she cooed.

    Bob gave in, kissed her, and then gave in further and shoved his face in amongst the pair in the push-’em-up bra. Bright red with dark green lace, must be a Christmas push-’em-up bra, see? Flaming Rhoda from Seattle had had a dark green lacy Christmas one with red ribbons threaded through it, no kidding.

    He let out a yell as she got his old man out of the bloody crippling new jeans, so she gave another giggle and went and put the radio on—it was on the bedside cabinet. Unaccountably Bob followed her and as she bent over—she had a really good bum, not skinny like lots of the Yank dames that came to the ecolodge, but a bit of flesh on it—bent down, whipped the green negligée up and shoved his face in there. Lucille let out a shriek like a steam whistle, took him back to the good old forestry plant days if ya wanted to be precise about it. The ginger didn’t reach all the way, he noted by the by.

    After some of this he hauled the jeans and the underdaks right down to his ankles and got his tip in the wet. “JESUS!” he shouted.

    Giggling, Mrs Polaski wriggled a bit against it. This was so good that Bob nearly shot his load on the spot. “Uh, better slow down a bit, Lucille!” he gasped, retreating.

    Giggling, Lucille agreed, getting onto the bed and removing the negligée with a lot of wriggling that probably wasn’t strictly necessary but wasn’t boring. That left just the push-’em-up bra and the ginger tuft, if you were counting.

    “I could take that bra off ya,” noted Bob, kicking his clothes out of the way.

    “Come on, then, Bob, honey! I do like a tall man with a long one!” gurgled Lucille.

    This was so discouraging that Bob knelt on the bed, had a fight with the bra hooks, hauled it off her and plunged his face between them, muttering, “Hey Lucille, can ya suck me tip a bit, love?”

    The obliging Mrs Polaski did that, so gee, she wasn’t the Coral type, just as if ya hadn’t guessed. Or the Cloris Witherspoon type, to get it quite clear. “CHRIST!” shouted Bob. “Yeah, do that, lovey! Oh, CHRIST!”

    Mrs Polaski gave a very muffled giggle and went on doing it.

    It got so good that Bob, turning purple, had to push her away. “Wanna bit?” he panted.

    “Which way, Bob, honey?” she cooed, stroking his chest a bit. “Boy, you got a great figure.”

    “For a man my age?” said Bob drily.

    “Huh? No, just entirely great, hon’, you’d beat out any eighteen-year-old I’ve ever seen!”

    And no doubt she’d seen a few in her time. It was flattering, though. “Uh—ta. Uh—which way? Well, with me tongue if you’d like that, Lucille.”

    She would, she spread ’em immediately. Ooh, she was the mewing sort! Wouldn’t of actually guessed that. After a good lot of mewing she wanted to sit on his face. Well, okay, he wouldn’t say he hadn’t had it before, but not that often, but whatever she fancied. He lay flat and let her lower the partly ginger parts over him. Uh—nobbad at all, almost as good as creeping up behind her. Then she bent down and sucked him again, oh CHRIST!

    “I’ll come, lovey!” he gasped. “It’s the way ya wind yer tongue round—CHRIST!”

    Mrs Polaski giggled and stopped. “Shall we turn round and do it missionary position, then, Bob?”

    “Righto,” he said groggily as she got off him. “Nice ordinary fuck, eh?”

    “Something like that!” said Lucille with a loud giggle. “Have you get a rubber, honey?”

    “Uh—no. Bugger,” said Bob lamely.

    “Not to worry, hon’! Just look in the top drawer of that cabinet.”

    Bob looked. Box of real fancy Belgian chocolates, that must be one of the little treats she gave herself, cripes, huge purple dildo, that must be another of ’em—crumbs, wiggly, not a stiff one, he’d say this for North America, they had the technology—box of, um, bath pearls, what in God’s name were they? Several scarves, small bottle of Bourbon—for emergencies, right—and here they were.

    “Large size, I’d say, honey!” said Mrs Polaski with a gurgle.

    “Yeah—um, Lucille,” said Bob, turning about as purple as the dildo, “I’m not gonna be able to last, ya know. Haven’t had it for ages.”

    “Gee, that’s okay, sweetie, don’t you worry about that! If I don’t come for you, you can help me whichever way you like, with your tongue or your hand, honey.”

    “Or with this, eh?” said Bob with a grin, waggling the purple pecker at her.

    Mrs Polaski gave a loud giggle and admitted: “I’m a naughty girl, I know!

    “Uh-huh.” Bob measured it against his own. Aw, gee, his was longer. Not as purple, though.

    “Honey, you get that rubber on and get right in here!” she ordered.

    Okay, he would,

    She let out a shriek to raise the dead, thank God the radio was on, and fucked like crazy on him, just as he was fucking like crazy in her. “JESUS! GOD! Uh—AAARGGH! ARRGH!” he yelled, approximately, but gee, as she was yelling her head off at the same time it scarcely mattered, eh? And in fact he concluded, quite some time later, lying panting with his hand on one of the tits, since it was there, and as his old man was just about to slide out of her: “Ya had one, eh?”

    “Mmf!” agreed Mrs Polaski indistinctly

    Gee, that was quite flattering, come to think of it, so he gave her ear a wee nip and she gave the steam-whistle shriek and clenched like blazes on what he had left down there and shot him out like a pea from his best pea-shooter that bloody ole Mr Macdonald had confiscated in Standard Three and never given back.

    “Wow,” said Bob dazedly.

    “Oh, honey!” she gasped.

    Yeah, well, that was pretty much okay then, eh?

    He woke up about four hours later. He knew it was because the radio was telling them the time. “Uh—oh. Bugger me,” he said limply.

    “If you insist, lover!” replied Ma Polaski with a throaty gurgle, picking up the bloody purple dildo.

    “Uh—not actually, no, never been into that, ta. –Sorry, Lucille, didn’t mean to go and pass on out ya.”

    “Honey, after all that food and drink, not to say the exercise? That’s quite okay!” She put her hand on his cock. Bob gulped.

    “Oh, honey,” said Mrs Polaski in a shaking voice, wriggling down and getting right down to it. Okay, if that was what she fancied. He seemed to be up for it, though at one point—shortly before he passed out, yeah—he’d had the thought that he might never manage it again this year, boy had that been a come.

    Apparently she wanted to suck him for a while and finish him off by hand, and then when she wanted him to do her with the purple prick Bob didn’t mind. She giggled a terrific lot in the process, especially considering where he poked its nose into, but she had a come, all right, with him upended over her face, if ya wanted to be strictly accurate, so as she could play with him a bit, limp as he was, yeah, and with his tongue stroking her down there into the bargain while the purple pecker was up her, but if that was what she liked, why not? It was quite fun, actually.

    After that she had a good slug of the Bourbon and passed right out, so Bob had a shower in her ensuite, and as she showed no signs of waking up, nipped out by the French windows. There was nobody around to notice him because, gee, it was dark by this time. The waggon was still there so he didn’t bother to wonder where Neil was, he just drove home.

    Neil turned up around ten-thirty the next morning, unshaven and crumpled but looking very pleased with himself. “Good. Toast.” He took the slice that Bob had made but somehow hadn’t fancied and sat down with it, munching.

    “Where were you all night, as if I need to ask,” said his father sourly.

    “On the launch.”

    “Ya done that poor little kid in amongst ya flaming electronic gizzmos? For Chrissakes!”

    “No!” he said crossly. “I’ve put a foam mattress and a duvet in there!”

    “Oh. Well, good. –No reason you shouldn’t use yer room here, ya know.”

    Neil gave him a tolerant, kindly look. “We’d rather have our own space, Dad.”

    Yeah. Something like that. Bob sighed and got up to boil the jug again.

    “How late were you last night?” asked Neil as Bob handed him a mug of instant—no milk, that had been overlooked along with the marg—and sat down with his own. His third, to be strictly accurate, but who was counting?

    “Relatively early.”

    Neil sniffed slightly. “Jan wasn’t too pleased, ya know.” Bob reddened and didn’t reply. “Well, for one thing, Pete was right out of it and she needed someone to milk the goats.”

    “Uh—shit. Sean?” he croaked.

    “He was at his mum and dad’s place, Dad, like normal people.”

    “Uh—yeah. All right, sorry, I shoulda let you have turkey. Well, uh, do something for New Year’s, eh? If ya fancy it.”

    “Um, actually Tamsin and me thought we’d spend it at Pete and Jan’s. Well, he is her granddad, after all.”

    Right. “Tamsin and me.” In that case it was too bloody late, wasn’t it? Well, he’d had twenty-four years of him and if he hadn’t made the most of it it was his own bloody fault, eh? Well, slight exaggeration, flaming Coral had been in there— No. His own bloody fault.

    “Yeah, ’course,” he managed. “Uh, who did milk the goats in the end? Don’t tell me Jan gave it a go? They don’t like her, she’s too impatient with them.”

    “No, Libby did it.”

    “Eh?” said Bob faintly.

    “Mm: Pete’s been teaching her. She really likes them. She said she wouldn’t mind living on a little farm and keeping goats, only then she laughed and said it was a Heidi fantasy.”

    “Eh?” he groped.

    “Out of a book, I think, Dad.”

    “Uh-huh… Fair bit of work in anything to do with dairying,” he said vaguely. “You wouldn’t remember Dad’s old Daisy. She was a good ole cow. When he had the bach he used to keep her down there. Good ole Daisy, her cream was the best I’ve ever tasted.”

    “Yeah,” said Neil tolerantly. “Any bread left?”

    “Uh—only the crusts. Um, well, the service station might have some left,” he said weakly.

    “On Boxing Day? Pull the other one!”

    Right. No bread, no marg, and no milk, and flaming Lucille Polaski that he didn’t really want, why the Hell had he done the woman? Well, there was only one answer to that, eh? Yeah.

Next chapter:

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