Attraction Of Opposites

12

Attraction Of Opposites

    The treat of flying over from Rarotonga on the amphibian that belonged to Mr Ledbetter still hadn’t palled: Petey came home from school beaming. “Hey, we come on the amphibian!”

    “That’s nice,” replied Lalla kindly. It had pretty much palled with her, though it was a lovely trip.

    “Hey, you know what? Grandpa says we could have a hut like his!”

    Neville Holcroft’s little verandahed bungalow, not in the luxurious style of the guest huts, but still very comfortable, was of course looked after by Mary Nelson. But as Lalla didn’t have a Mary Nelson, if she and Petey had a bungalow she’d have to look after it herself, whereas the flats in their wing were cleaned by the hotel’s staff.

    “You’d do the housework, would you?” she replied drily.

    “Um, Mrs Nelson might,” he said, looking vague.

    “She’s got more than enough to do,” replied Lalla firmly. “I thought you liked your room?”

    “It’s okay. But a hut’d be neato!” he urged.

    Lalla looked at him limply. The nine-year-old mind just wasn’t capable of grasping the ramifications of finding someone suitable to look after the place, forcing them to accept suitable remuneration that didn’t include clothes she’d hardly worn or the contents of the fridge, keeping them up to the mark, putting up with the inevitable replacements that would turn up without warning because the someone had decided to be elsewhere for the day, and picking them up when standards inevitably slipped, however low they’d been to start with… She had all those hassles as part of her work, she didn’t need them in her private life!

    “Hey, I know! Ken Tangianau, he could do the housework! He’d like to!”

    Lalla swallowed hard. Ken was not far off sixty. He was a Tangianau in that his mother had been a Tangianau, but the first name wasn’t short for Kenneth: his father, who had never married her, had been Japanese. He had been a resident back in the 1930s, though goodness only knew whether legally or not. He’d been interned in New Zealand for the duration of the War but had come back to Rarotonga and fathered Ken, only to be sent back to Japan, willy-nilly, almost immediately, which possibly explained why the marriage had never taken place. Ken was very interesting-looking: much slenderer than his Cook Island relatives, but quite tall: a wiry, hatchet-faced man. Lalla thought he was very Japanese-looking but by now had realised that she was almost alone in this opinion. In fact her father had said that he looked more Red Indian. Petey, on the other hand, had declared: “Nah! He looks like that Japanese man that was in that film that done all that kickboxing, see?” What film this might be remained a mystery but as a little later he and Lalla saw the actor in something else—less kickboxing but a lot of, confusingly, snow scenes interspersed with Pacific scenes—Lalla was able to agree that he was quite right.

    “You like him, Mum!” he urged.

    Lalla went rather pink. She did like Ken: he was a nice man and, actually, very attractive. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Ken also liked her—too much, alas. He was nice, he was bright, he was widely read, and no doubt he was right in claiming that he could show her a really good time, but heck! For one thing he was nearly as old as Dad, and for another thing he’d shown half the women of the Cooks a good time! Not to mention all those lady tourists! Plus being divorced twice. He hadn’t stayed in the Islands: he’d got a scholarship to a really good boys’ secondary school in Auckland and then done a degree in civil engineering. He’d worked all over the world, in his time. The first wife had been a New Zealander who’d tried to make him drop the globe-trotting and stay home in cosy domesticity—big mistake. The second had been a Frenchwoman who’d tried to make him rent a nice flat in Paris, buy a small country cottage in Provence, and base himself permanently in France—big mistake. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the cultural amenities: he did; and he didn’t dislike the European way of life, in fact he even went skiing with her in winter—shades of that daft film—but once it dawned that she intended it to be permanent he was out of there.

    No-one could have said he was the sort of person who planned his life out—just as well—but he’d always had the vague intention of coming home to the Cooks in the end, and that was what he’d done. Not with a golden handshake or a vast superannuation pay-out—no, as Neville Holcroft had discovered with horror. He’d just decided he’d had enough, told the firm he was resigning, and walked away from the lot. That had been about seven years back and in those seven years he’d had more than time enough to renew old acquaintance, make new acquaintances, and charm untold numbers of lady tourists. So much so that it had penetrated to even the nine-year-old mind, which had thereupon produced thoughtfully: “Hey, Mum, do ya reckon Ken’s had a million girlfriends?”

    Very few people lived permanently on the so-called Palmyra: it was far too small, and the hotel staff went back to their homes on the larger islands pretty regularly. But Ken had a small bungalow, which he rented from Mr Ledbetter for ten kilos of fish a week and help with barbecues, launch trips, canoe expeditions and so forth as needed. He could also do a mean—and completely ersatz—war dance, so every so often when there was a good crowd in who asked for that sort of thing he’d oblige. It had now dawned on Lalla that living over here allowed Ken to escape from the predatory female tourists of Rarotonga, whereas if he’d lived on the main island they’d pretty soon have tracked him down. But there was no regular transport to Palmyra at all. If you knew the Ledbetters and if the amphibian or the launch happened to be doing the trip, you got a lift in that, or if you knew someone who was sailing over, you got a lift with them. Or fell back on Hoppy with his canoe and its outboard. As these facilities were never advertised, the lady tourists weren’t aware they existed. Ken looked after himself in his bungalow and in fact had coolly explained to Petey that a man was as capable of doing housework as a woman and that he quite enjoyed looking after himself.

    So Lalla now said limply to her innocent offspring: “Just because Ken does his own housework doesn’t mean he’d want to do ours.”

    “He might. I’ll ask him!” he decided.

    “Petey, there’s no point in asking him, ’cos we’re not getting a hut!” she cried.

    “But we could: there’s a spare one, see, ’cos that lady that was gonna come from New Zealand to be the boss of the massages, she never come, and Holly an’ everyone, they just got rooms, see?”

    “Petey, shut up,” said Lalla tiredly.

    Looking injured, Petey went over to their small fridge. “C’n I’ve a drink?”

    “Yes. Juice or water.”

    “What about a Coke?”

    “There isn’t any,” replied Lalla firmly.

    He investigated the fridge, but she wasn’t lying. He took a pineapple juice and plunged into a long, rambling and quite possibly apocryphal story about the exploits of one, Jimmy Raui, possibly a relation of June’s but Lalla wasn’t asking, and one, Charlie Short, the proud possessor of a genuine Swiss Army knife!

    Perhaps unfortunately Lalla was so horrendously bored by this saga that his threat to ask Ken Tangianau to be her housekeeper went completely out of her head. Early in the morning two days later she was snatching a moment to herself on the shore after seeing Petey onto Palmyra Polynesia’s launch along with Navy, who was headed for the markets and could be trusted to see he got to school afterwards, though probably not to see he didn’t eat whatever he fancied, Roro, who was going along to carry things for Navy, and possibly because he had a crush on Navy, and Mrs Tangianau, who was going home to Avarua after having slept over on the island with old Hoppy, about the only way she saw him these days.

    “Hullo, heard you need a housekeeper,” said a deep voice with a laugh in it from behind an artful-looking clump of oleanders, frangipani, bamboo and coconut palms. Lalla duly screamed and leapt.

    “Oh, it’s you,” she said weakly as Ken emerged onto the pure white sand beside her, grinning.

    “Yeah. Heard you need a housekeeper,” he repeated.

    Lalla went very red, though as she was very tanned maybe he wouldn’t notice. “What? No! It’s some silly idea of Petey’s!”

    “Sounded pretty sound to me,” he drawled, looking at the red cheeks with interest. “Aren’t you fed up with living in that dormitory with all those dim girls?”

    “They’re not all dim, and anyway we’ve got our own flat,” replied Lalla valiantly.

    “Mm. Petey seems to want to live in a house like a proper family.”

    Lalla was about to ask him if Petey had actually said that, but thought better of it. Ken was capable of telling any sort of lie when it suited him, and as he was the complete poker-face—

    Ken watched with amusement as every thought was reflected on that very speaking oval countenance. “I’m generally considered very handy round the house,” he said neutrally.

    “I bet!” retorted Lalla before she could stop herself.

    His wide, wiry shoulders shook. “That, too! Why not let me show you?”

    “It’d be stupid,” said Lalla grimly. “There’s too much of an age difference and the leopard doesn’t change his spots, does he? You’ve spent your whole life globe-trotting and—and having ladies!”

    “I’ve given up the globe-trotting; what makes you think I couldn’t give up the ladies?” he murmured.

    Glaring, Lalla began to count on her fingers. “Katie O’Connell from New York. Katie’s friend Georgia Hall. Mrs O’Connell, though I dare say it serves her right for grabbing a hut and bunging the two girls in a suite! Mme de Lavallière from Toulouse, France. Her friend Mme Dumas. They’ll go home and let it out to their other best friends, so that’s twenty-five years of best friendship down the drain! Miss Andrée Weissmuller from Omaha, poor little soul: eighteen years and two days old to the day: what was it, a belated birthday present, Ken? Mrs Jeanie Weissmuller—some consolation prize! Mrs Kyra Broadbent from Double Bay, Sydney, Australia. Her friend Mrs Jenny Porter-Smith from ditto: Double Bay’s gonna be too hot to hold them, ’cos they’ll have other best friends, too, you betcha. Poor little Glenda Nooroa, who’s young enough to be your daughter and for all anybody knows, could be! Mrs Nooroa when she came over to tear a strip off you. And that was only last month’s roll call!”

    He eyed her in considerable amusement. “It was only because I couldn’t have you, Lalla. Believe you me, you’d be enough to distract me from even the thought of another woman.”

    “Rats. I wouldn’t have the stamina!” retorted Lalla crossly.

    Alas, Ken collapsed in horrible sniggers.

    “Go away!” said Lalla crossly.

    Instead Ken, who was only wearing a pair of battered jeans—which didn’t make it all that much easier to resist him, actually: his muscly but lean chest was extremely attractive, especially in comparison to the hairy pudge of such as Mr Finkelstein, Mr Dunkel, et al., or the white, filleted-fish look of such as Mr Brinsley-Pugh—began to undo them.

    “Hey!” shouted Lalla, turning puce. “What are you doing?”

    “Going for a swim. Don’t look, if you can’t stand the heat.”

    The cheeky so-and so! She knew perfectly well—and he must know that she knew—that in mixed company he normally just went into the water in whatever garment happened to be shielding his nether limbs: be it the jeans, one of his pairs of ancient shorts, or one of the faded simple wrap-around sarongs, the Cook Islands pareu, variously salvaged from the male staff’s discards or bought in the markets on Rarotonga for a song.

    “I don’t wanna look, believe you me!” Angrily she marched away in the direction of the hotel.

    Ken shucked his jeans sadly. Aw, gee, she didn’t even look back, either. Alone amongst womankind—well, of the sort he seemed to meet! He tried to summon up a cynical smile but failed dismally. Well, shit! He ran down to the water and swam furiously for quite some time.

    “That looks nice!” urged Sarah Karati. She wasn’t due for her shift on Reception until the evening, and exactly why she’d volunteered to come over to Avarua early this morning with Lalla instead of sleeping in wasn’t clear.

    Lalla looked dubiously at the bucket of cut orchid stems. It looked lovely, but how long had it been standing in the heat? True, the flower stall was shaded by a piece of blue plastic sheeting, but the weather, as usual, was pretty hot. “Mm.”

    “See, you could have some in the huts and the suites, as well as some in the dining-room!” urged Sarah. They were running out of cut flowers at the hotel. And although guests and staff were free to pick the odd bloom from around the place, cutting off whole branches was a no-no: it had taken time, expense, and a lot of freighted-in water to get the natural-looking gardens established.

    “Plants’d be better,” said Lalla dubiously.

    “But Mac said flowers,” she reminded her.

    “Um, no, I meant, um, growing flowers. You know: whole plants.”

    Sarah looked dubiously at the bucket. “Would they sell ya them, though?”

    Good point. The Cook Islanders were terrifically easy-going, but the orchid plants would be these sellers’ livelihoods.

    “Uncle Raemaki’s got flowers, he could let ya have some plants,” offered Sarah generously.

    “In pots?”

    “Yeah, sure! Well, ya might have to dig them up first,” she admitted.

    “Um, ta, Sarah,” said Lalla weakly. “What sort of flowers?”

    Sarah didn’t know. Not like these, she admitted, looking at the orchids again. But he had loads of that bougainvillaea stuff, heck, it grew like a weed, Lalla didn’t wanna buy that: it was for the tourists!

    “Um, no. Well, if we could get a regular supply of orchids sent over… They do last well. I’ll ask them.” There were two women sellers, right at the back of the booth, neither of them appearing interested in their potential clients, but this wasn’t exactly unusual.

    “Um, excuse me,” said Lalla clearly. “Could I ask you about these orchids?”

    From the shady dimness at the back of the booth the younger woman replied, not looking round: “You can buy a stalk, but we don’t sell the flowers one by one.”

    “We don’t wanna buy a flower, we wanna know how much a bucket, it’s for the hotel!” said Sarah loudly.

    “Oh, it’s you,” said the older woman, looking round at last.

    “Yeah. Hullo, Mrs Tangimetua,” agreed Sarah.

    At this both women came forward and after a prolonged interrogation of Sarah and an exchange of family news all round, Lalla was introduced to Mrs Tangimetua and Julie. Sarah then told them every last detail she knew about Lalla, including the brush-off of Ken Tangianau, which apparently struck a chord with Mrs Tangimetua, who collapsed in horrible sniggers, her large form shaking helplessly. “See? Toleja!” she gasped, what time Julie scowled horribly. This was followed up by Oliver Perkins’s unrequited crush, which caused Julie to brighten and agree fervently with Sarah that Lalla didn’t want him, he was a drongo, even if he did have a nice house. After that the subject of the flowers was finally able to be broached.

    “You don’t want these, dear, these are just for the tourists,” said Mrs Tangimetua firmly. “You come on home with me, Jim’ll find some nice ones for you. Nice fresh ones, eh?”

    “We need loads,” warned Sarah. “Not just orchids, either.”

    “Um, the thing is, we do need some flowers today, but we’re looking for someone who can supply fresh flowers regularly, at least once a week,” said Lalla.

    “I thought that that Brian Ho, he was your supplier?” retorted Mrs Tangimetua smartly.

    “He’s sold up and retired to Queensland.”

    “Mad, see?” explained Sarah. “’Cos Lalla, she reckons it’s just like here!”

    “Um, yes,” said Lalla, blushing. “I mean, I’ve never been there, but that’s what people say.”

    “Loads of New Zealanders retire there, eh, Lalla? Like that Mr and Mrs Green that used to live next to your dad: they went there, eh?”

    “Yes. Well, I suppose there’s more shops,” admitted Lalla. “But I think it’s lovely here.”

    “See?” said Sarah on a vindicated note.

    “Yes,” agreed Mrs Tangimetua, looking at Lalla with undisguised approval. “Well, I must say we thought the Auckland shops were great, that time we went over to see Bob and Kate, eh, Julie? But the weather was freezing!”

    “Yeah, an’ it was Christmas,” said Julie impressively to Lalla.

    “Um, December can be very changeable over there. But it is lots colder than here.”

    Julie shuddered. “I’ll say! –I’ll look after the stall, Mum, if you wanna take Lalla and Sarah home. Make Dad give them some of the good ones, eh?”

    “Yeah, ’course! Come on, dears.” She picked up a bulging shopping bag, beaming at them.

    “But we were gonna have a nice morning tea,” objected Sarah. “Like last time!”

    Uh—oh! Help, had that been the object of the exercise, then? “Um, we still could, Sarah,” said Lalla quickly.

    “But it’ll take ages!”

    “I’ve got the ute,” said Mrs Tangimetua on a smug note. “I told him, it can sit there and rust while you look at it and I stay in town with my sister, or you can let me drive it. We’ll have morning tea when we get home, you don’t wanna chuck your money away on any of those places round here.”

    “The Mecca,” said Sarah sadly.

    Exactly. Why it was called that in the twenty-first century goodness alone knew. It was, as Sarah had got Lalla to admit last time, just like an Auckland coffee shop. Actually it was horribly like the Remuera sort of coffee shop. Ladylike. And it was certainly infested with ladylike expats. Of both sexes, come to think of it. Presumably their custom was what allowed it to stay open. Theirs and the middle-aged New Zealand tourists’: was it the comfort of the familiar? Maybe it was: they flocked to it. You might well ask, why come all this way at considerable expense only to— Yeah. The only possible answer to that was human nature.

    Mrs Tangimetua naturally brushed this extravagant suggestion aside like a fly, and off they went in the ute.

    Bucketfuls of cut flowers had been loaded into the back of the ute, more bucketfuls of whole plants complete with their dirt had also been loaded, a very large morning tea had of course been consumed, and since Lalla knew there was a launch going over to Palmyra early this afternoon she had been able to refuse Mrs Tangimetua’s pressing invitation to stay for lunch with enough conviction to avoid hurting her feelings. And their kindly hostess got them back to the quayside in good time to catch the…

    Oh, dear. It wasn’t Hoppy at the launch’s little wheel, it was Ken!

    “Hullo, again, Lalla,” he greeted her smoothly.

    Immediately Mrs Tangimetua burst into an impassioned series of orders and warnings off.

    “I’ve told her, I’d turn over a new leaf for her,” said Ken smoothly when the raving had died down.

    “Huh!” Energetically Mrs Tangimetua, whilst not ceasing to heave pots of plants down from the ute, told Lalla and Sarah a story about one of Ken’s exploits in his boyhood which would have been guaranteed to cut anyone but a person with the cheek of Ken Tangianau down to size. He just grinned cheekily and asked her for a kiss.

    “See ya later, Lalla,” said Sarah when the last pots were loaded and stowed and Lalla had wedged herself in between some huge cartons variously labelled “This Way Up,” “Fragile,” “Wattie’s Spaghetti,” and “Made in Taiwan”.

    “Aren’t you coming back?” gasped Lalla in naked horror. Promptly Ken collapsed in a sniggering fit.

    “Nah, I’m not on shift till this evening. See ya!” said Sarah cheerfully, walking away.

    Glaring at Ken, Mrs Tangimetua burst into a further series of loud admonitions and warnings off, which produced further sniggers—so much so that two sweating tourists in snow-white, if creased, linen suits and pristine panamas were able to dash up and gasp: “Excuse me, is this the boat for Palmyra Polynesia?”

    “Yes,” said Lalla in huge relief. “You’re just in time: come aboard.”

    Ken stopped sniggering. “Um, we’ll be overloaded,” he said feebly.

    “Rats!” retorted Mrs Tangimetua energetically.

    “In a pig’s eye, Ken,” agreed Lalla. “Stir your stumps and get some of these boxes stowed and let the gentlemen sit down.”

    “Hang on,” he said feebly. “Are you guests?”

    “It doesn’t matter if they’re not, Hoppy’ll bring them back,” said Lalla quickly.

    “We are, actually,” said the younger of the two, removing his panama to reveal rather fluffy, thinning light brown hair in a very English cut, and mopping his brow. “Whew! Warm, isn’t it?” he said with a nice smile. “Booked in as from today: our luggage was supposed to go on ahead while we had a look round the town.”

    “I haven’t got any luggage aboard,” said Ken to Lalla in a horribly blank voice.

    “Stop that. –Your bags will have come on the morning launch,” she said nicely to the two tourists. “Welcome to Rarotonga. I’m Lalla Holcroft, Palmyra Polynesia’s Head Housekeeper, and this is Ken Tangianau, who helps us out with the boats sometimes.”

    Eagerly the younger gentleman introduced himself as Dennis Simpson, very pleased to meet her—he was certainly looking at the now rather grimy and limp blue, green and orange sarong, the mass of tumbled brown curls, and the spray of creamy, gold-centred frangipani behind the ear, courtesy of Mr Tangimetua, as if he was pleased. And the rather older gentleman, removing his hat, whether from super-good manners or merely to let the air at the bald spot fringed by neatly shaven fawn bristles, introduced himself as Rick Teasdale, also very pleased to meet Ms Holcroft. Neither of them appeared all that thrilled to be forced to shake the hand which Ken held out pointedly, but they did so politely.

    In the course of carton reshuffling one of the ones labelled “Wattie’s Spaghetti” turned out to be full of oranges, so Lalla took one for herself and generously handed some round, not neglecting Mrs Tangimetua, who was now watching and listening interestedly from the quay.

    The two gentlemen, both revealed by their accents to be English, accepted the oranges numbly. They watched numbly as Lalla peeled hers and ate a segment of it.

    “Aren’t they rather green?” ventured Dennis Simpson limply.

    Lalla shook her head, smiling politely round the orange segment with her mouth closed.

    “Nah, they are ripe, dear,” said Mrs Tangimetua comfortably. “See ya, Lalla!”

    Lalla swallowed hurriedly as Ken cast off and started the engine with an unnecessary roar. “Bye-bye, Mrs Tangimetua! Thanks again for everything! And thanks to Mr Tangimetua: the plants are lovely!”

    And with a last snort of “Him!” from Mrs Tangimetua the launch headed off with an unnecessary roar of the engine in an unnecessary plume of spray.

    “These are the sort that are green when they’re ripe. They have to put them in a big shed with some stupid chemical stuff to turn them orange,” said Lalla to the two guests as the roar died down a bit.

    “So in fact,” said Ken in a nasty tone, “they’re far better for you green than they would be a nice healthy orange shade, not to say straight off the trees, but by all means, don’t eat them. If you can hang on until we get to the hotel they can supply some lovely bright orange navel oranges that’ve only been in cold storage for six months before being shipped over here in refrigerated containers from Australia by way of New Zea—”

    “Stop it, Ken!”

    Shrugging, Ken stopped.

    “They’re very refreshing: full of juice,” said Lalla nicely to the two Englishmen, eating another segment.

    Feebly Mr Simpson and Mr Teasdale peeled their oranges and tried them.

    “See?” said Lalla with a smile to the looks of relieved surprise.

    “Very refreshing!” they agreed, beaming.

    At the wheel, Ken made a sour face. Although Rarotonga was a hunting ground for hetero males looking for gorgeous beach girls, they usually were much younger, came in groups, and stayed at the cheapest motels. Palmyra Polynesia’s male couples tended to be gays looking for a peaceful South Seas paradise with gourmet food and excellent massage therapy—though doubtless a side-dish of gorgeous brown pool boy wouldn’t have been refused. These two obviously weren’t gay. What the Hell were they here for, then? And where the Hell were their wives? At their ages they’d be in the sort of middle management bracket that was expected to have giant mortgages and huge school fees to tie them down to stability and company loyalty, along with the wives that were expected to tie them down to good behaviour and too-expensive holidays in the sun. Thus necessitating even more company loyalty—yeah. And as a matter of fact, although the frightful white suits were expensive enough and the watches were reasonably so, they didn’t look as if they were the sort that could afford Palmyra Polynesia’s prices—not quite yet. Uh—blowing Christmas bonuses or something? Divorcing their wives and celebrating— But hang on: in that case they certainly wouldn’t be able to afford— Uh, blowing it before the about-to-be-divorced wives could grab it? That was a thought! …Not a particularly welcome one, though, in view of the way the two ning-nongs were eyeing Lalla up and competing to tell her crap about their bloody flight from bloody England and make her laugh at their pathetic jokes.

    Enlightenment came in well under two hours, including the travelling time.

    “See,” Taggy explained in the kitchen, sitting down on a handy chair and easing her sandals off, neither of which acts she’d have dared to perform had Mrs Ledbetter been on the island, “they had these, like, company credit cards, I thought it was a bit funny, eh? So I said to Baldy, ‘Excuse me, sir, is this correct? This seems to be a company credit card.’ Well, I mean, we’re not a conference hotel!” she added with a hearty sniff.

    “Have you ever set foot in a conference hotel?” drawled Ken.

    Taggy withered him with a look. Half a look, really. “Yeah, I done six months at the big conference hotel down Wairakei.”

    “In New Zealand,” added Angie helpfully.

    “’Course. –So Baldy, he said that was quite correct, they were actually on business for their firm—nice work if ya can get it, eh?—and the young one, well, he told me all about it.”

    The older persons present in the kitchen, including Ken, looked at lovely, elegant Taggy tolerantly and didn’t bother to say “Naturally.”

    “Ooh, ta!” she said as Angie kindly presented her with a small canapé.

    “It’s an experiment,” she warned as it went straight in the mouth.

    Taggy chewed and swallowed, beaming approvingly round it. “Yum! Hey, wouldn’t waste these on any of them!” She collapsed in giggles at her own wit.

    “Taggy, who the Hell do they work for?” said Ken, rather loudly.

    “Keep your hair on. It’s in the computer, if you wanna look. Y-Something. It’s a Pommy firm.”

    “Ya don’t say!”

    “They own a lot of hotels over there,” she continued, unmoved.

    Ken’s jaw sagged. “Eh?”

    Angie swung round from the oven. “What was that?”

    “Yeah. –Whadd’e say?” she asked herself. “I forget. But definitely the top end of the market. They’re looking for sites out here, their firm, it’s just got into ecolodges, see, and they been sent out to look at the ones that their other bloke, he thought might do. He didn’t stay with us, though.”

    “How do you know?” asked Angie, frowning.

    “I asked them,” replied Taggy simply.

    Angie and Ken exchanged glances.

    “Taggy, are you sure they said looking for sites?” asked Ken on a weak note.

    Taggy didn’t ask why he was asking or point out she’d just said so or remind him she wasn’t deaf, she just replied placidly: “Yeah.”

    Angie took a deep breath. “Well, they won’t find any sites here, but I dare say they might if they go over to Rarotonga or the Northern Cooks. You better go back, Taggy, if there’s no-one on the desk.”

    “Nah, Lalla’s out there. Could I have a drink?”

    “Yeah, sure, hon’.” Amiably Angie fetched her a fruit juice.

    Ken eyed Angie uncertainly. “Um, I might just nip out and suss out the computer.”

    “Not in those jeans,” she replied grimly.

    “You wanna watch it, you’re starting to sound like your Mom,” he drawled. “All right, I’ll grab a sarong—Hoyt’s,” he decided.

    Hoyt had merely been sitting there, chewing stolidly, throughout the entire scene. Now he clutched at his waist in alarm. “No!”

    “Okay, blushing violet, come out into the passage and we’ll swap,” said Ken with a sigh.

    “Eh?”

    Not bothering to sigh again, Ken explained: “You can wear my jeans while I borrow your pareu—beg pardon, sarong.”

    Hoyt was a solid boy and Ken was very slim. “They won’t fit,” he quavered.

    “For pity’s sake!” Angie marched over to the locked emergency cupboard, unlocked it with the key she wore round her neck, and handed Ken a sarong from the emergency stock. “And do us all a favour, would you, and put it on before you take the jeans off.”

    Ken shrugged, but complied.

    “Give him your flower, Hoyt, hon’,” added Angie firmly.

    Resignedly Hoyt handed Ken the hibiscus he’d been wearing behind his ear, plus also the bobby-pin which the resourceful Mrs Ledbetter had decreed must be used by all staff to hold the flowers in place.

    Looking wry, Ken fixed the flower behind his ear, refrained from pointing out that it was bright red and the sarong was in shades of bright mauve, green and blue, the combination thus not corresponding to Mrs Ledbetter’s decree of “toning”, and went out to the main lobby.

    “Are you waiting?” said Lalla feebly, blinking at the apparition thus presented.

    “Only for you, Lalla, darling,” he replied with a leer. “No, spying.” He came behind the desk and looked at the computer. “What room are those two flaming Pommy types in?”

    “Ssh, don’t say that in the main lobby,” replied Lalla with the utmost placidity. “If you mean those two new ones, they’ve got Suite 4, that nice couple have gone home.”

    Ken raised a mobile eyebrow. “Nice?”

    “By comparison.”

    Sniggering slightly, he peered at the computer. “Oh. YDI. Ye-ah.”

    “What’s up?” asked Lalla mildly.

    “Oh, nothing. Only that it looks as if a big hospitality company may be sniffing round us for a takeover. Well, YDI itself isn’t so big, they’ve got a small chain of luxury hotels in Britain as well as this new venture into ecolodges—”

    “Oh, yes! I had an email from Jan just the other day, they’re building one just round the lake from them. Much more up-market, so they won’t be stealing their clients.”

    Ken eyed her drily.

    “Yikes, you don’t mean— I’m sure Mr Ledbetter would never sell!” she gasped. “I mean, he’s left it all to Angie!”

    “What? Oh—in his will. That won’t weigh with a Yank entrepreneur with big bucks in his eye—and as I was about to say, YDI itself isn’t big, but the parent company’s the Gano Group, and they own—”

    Lalla was nodding, a horrified look on her face.

    “Right. Half the world,” he said drily. “I was forgetting you were deeply into the legal intricacies of multinationals in a former life. Well, I think Angie’s got a fair notion of what might be going on, but Taggy seems to have accepted the fact that they’re here sussing out sites for a bloody ecolodge on faith, so don’t mention it to anyone else, will you?”

    Lalla shook her head wildly.

    “Good. Time enough to panic if it happens. –Are you working tonight?”

    “Um, no.”

    “Then for God’s sake come over to Rarotonga with me for a decent meal. Well, it won’t be half as good as anything Angie whips up, but in relatively civilised peace and quiet.”

    “Um, are you getting sick of the island life, Ken?” said Lalla, swallowing.

    “Not exactly. If it was just was me, my hut and the sea— But I’ve just had it forcibly recalled to me precisely why I got the Hell out of it when I was about ruddy Hoyt’s age.”

    “Mm. Um, we all have to live in the world, Ken. With—with our fellow human beings,” said Lalla timidly.

    “Yeah,” he agreed wryly. “Well, will you? I promise to behave,” he added with a sigh. “There and back, okay?”

    All of a sudden Lalla saw him as a man well into middle age. She’d never seen handsome, fit, sardonic Ken in quite that light before. “Yes, okay; thanks. It’d be a nice change.”

    Ken actually wore a decent pair of slacks and a nice shirt for the occasion. In fact, Lalla rather thought it was a silk shirt. Not a Hawaiian shirt, no. Pale grey. The restaurant was quite a popular one, favoured by the Kiwi expats as well as the more conservative type of tourist, and without, mercifully, any fake hula groups or inept persons strumming ukuleles or even electric guitars. He kept his word and didn’t come on to her, just chatted nicely. And intelligently—yes. It was a really pleasant change. A trifle unfortunately Lalla didn’t own any nice dresses—well, back home she’d never been able to afford any, and there was no call for them here, stuck on Palmyra most of the time, and the climate wasn’t conducive to dressing up. So she was just wearing one of her sarongs, but Ken didn’t look as if he objected. The evening was going very well, and they’d finished their starters and had had some nice drinks and Ken had ordered a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and told her a funny story about his second wife and French wines, and their main course was just being served, when Oliver Perkins walked into the restaurant. Ooh, heck, she was supposed to be away! Lalla swallowed hard.

    “Oh, look, one of your greatest fans,” said Ken smoothly as Oliver noticed her and did a double-take.

    “Don’t be silly.” Lalla tried to smile, failed, and gave a sort of half-wave. Oliver waved back, still looking stunned, as he and the middle-aged woman with him were shown to a table rather too near theirs. After a certain amount of fluffing around—the woman apparently didn’t want to sit where the waiter thought she ought to sit and she and Oliver had to change places, and then there was something wrong with the large arrangement of purple bougainvillaea and red hibiscuses in the middle of the table, and it had to be taken away—well, maybe she was allergic to the pollen—they were finally seated.

    “Is it my imagination or is your admirer looking more like a stunned mullet than ever, tonight?” murmured Ken maliciously.

    “Ssh! I’m supposed to be away,” muttered Lalla in an agonised undervoice.

    His wiry shoulders shook.

    “Um, though I s’pose I could have come back by now: that was the other day,” she realised.

    Ken broke down in awful sniggers.

    “Stop it,” said Lalla weakly.

    Obligingly he stopped, and conceded: “The fish looks okay. It’s usually not bad here.”

    Lalla had just relaxed when it dawned that Oliver and his woman companion had got up again and were— Oh, no!

    “Hullo, Lalla,” he said with a puzzled smile. “I thought you were away.”

    “Um, no,” replied Lalla in a strangled voice. “Hullo, Oliver. I mean, I came back. Um, early.”

    “Oh.”

    “Good evening, Oliver,” put in Ken smoothly at this point.

    Oliver was neither quick-thinking enough, nor, to give him his due, malicious enough to pretend he hadn’t recognised Ken in a decent shirt and slacks. “Hullo, Ken,” he replied glumly.

    “Well, introduce us, Oliver!” put in his companion crossly.

    Jumping, he gasped: “Sorry, Mum! Um, this is Lalla Holcroft, Mum.” As she was looking completely blank he added in a strangled voice: “You know, from Palmyra Polynesia.”

    “I see! So you’re Lalla!” she said in tones of the utmost astonishment.

    “This is my mother—Mrs Perkins,” added Oliver quickly, reddening.

    “Really, Oliver! Call me Glenys, Lalla, dear,” she said, baring the teeth at Lalla.

    “Huh-how do you do, Glenys?” faltered Lalla. “It’s nice to meet you. This is Ken Tangianau.”

    Ken got up, smiling his best smile, and held out his hand. “How do you do, Glenys? Welcome to Rarotonga. Kia orana!”

    Lalla swallowed. It was a genuine Cook Islands Maori greeting, but Ken didn’t normally use it except when he was putting on an ethnic show for the hotel—ooh, heck.

    Mrs Perkins was, perforce, shaking his hand. “That’s like haere mae, is it?”

    “Or aloha,” he agreed smoothly, not pointing out it was far more like Maori kia ora.

    “That’s right, I knew there was another one. –That fish looks nice, but it’s terribly humid, isn’t it? I never fancy fish in humid weather.”

    This remark was, more or less, addressed to the air between Ken and Lalla. However, Ken replied obligingly: “It doesn’t seem very humid today to me, but then, I’m used to the climate.”

    “Yes, you would be,” she agreed.

    “Mum, they specialise in fish in Rarotonga, I told you that,” said Oliver in an agonised voice.

    “I just feel like something light, really. I don’t suppose they do a nice ham salad, do they?”

    “You could have that at home,” he said in an agonised voice.

    “It’s too humid to eat, really. I might just have a salad. Well, nice to meet you,” she said to the air between Ken and Lalla. “Don’t order a wine, Oliver, it’ll be wasted on me,” she ordered, pulling him bodily away.

    As they went, she could quite clearly be heard saying: “Why on earth didn’t you tell me that that girl’s an Islander, Oliver?”

    Lalla didn’t in the least mind being taken for a local, but she did mind the turn of phrase, and turned puce with righteous indignation: the word “Islander” in the mouths of middle-class white New Zealanders like Mrs Perkins, not to say Mrs Holcroft, was a pejorative term.

    Ken had returned hungrily to his fish but at this he looked up and said drily: “Well, go on: rush over to her and tell her you’re as white as the driven snow.”

    “No!” she hissed angrily. “And I just wish it was me that had thought of saying ‘Kia orana’!”

    At this he laughed. “Yeah! Hang on—complete the picture!” He removed a red hibiscus from the bunch on their table. “There you go, Cook Islander girl!” he said as he gently put it behind Lalla’s ear.

    “Good. Ta,” she replied in grimly militant tones.

    Oliver could now be heard telling his mother—in an agonised voice, yes—that Lalla wasn’t, she was a white New Zealander.

    Ken raised his eyebrows. “L’un vaut l’autre?” he murmured.

    “Yes! And I apologise for them, Ken!”

    “Don’t, we’re used to it,” he murmured, returning to his fish. “Eat up, before it gets cold.”

    After Mrs Perkins’s remarks, Lalla would have eaten the fish she’d spurned if it had been hemlock. But it was in fact delicious: freshly caught, of course, and simply grilled with some sliced ginger and lime, and served with a squeeze of more lime. And as Ken said, they could overlook the small, neat pile of mashed kumara beside it—the cook must have been talking to Navy!

    The continual stream of high-pitched complaints from Mrs Perkins that followed didn’t improve the evening, however, and so they decided to skip pudding, and wandered out, to the sounds of Mrs Perkins’s vicious: “I must say, Oliver, that you might have showed more taste! Look at that thing that girl’s got up in! Well, I suppose you can’t expect anything else. But it’s high time you came home.”

    “Yes, by Jove!” agreed Ken as he steered the reddening Lalla out onto the pavement. “Goin’ native, I say! Bad show!”

    “The peculiar thing,” replied Lalla very grimly indeed, “is that when you analyse them, none of those words are actually racist.”

    “No, it’s the tone,” he replied mildly, hugging her arm into his side. “Hags like her specialise in it. Well, come on, lovely Polynesian maiden, let’s see if we can get an ice cream somewhere, eh?”

    “That’d be really nice,” agreed Lalla, sighing. “—If I only I really was!” she added on a note of despair.

    At this Ken broke down in agonised splutters, gasping: “I love you, Lalla!”

    “Don’t be silly!” she gulped, going very red and trying to pull away from him.

    Ken held on. “Nothing sexual intended,” he said, grinning. “Just meant you’re a gift from the gods. The fact that you happen to be female is merely a bonus.”

    “Hah, hah,” replied Lalla uneasily.

    “No, true! –Come on, ice creams!”

    They bought the ice creams and wandered slowly back to the launch, eating them. Ken behaved himself all the way home—though admitting sourly to himself that the effort was bloody nearly killing him.

    Outside the door of Lalla’s block he said: “No, hang on a mo’, Lalla,” as she unlocked the door.

    Lalla looked up at him doubtfully.

    He took her gently by the upper-arms and smiled his nicest smile. “I’ve been a very good boy all night—and I do include not clocking Perkins one in that—so can’t I have a reward?”

    “You said you’d be good,” replied Lalla in a strangled voice.

    Ken wasn’t kidding himself it was strangled with passion—no. Embarrassment, bugger it! “Come on, Lalla,” he said weakly.

    “No, it’d be stupid.”

    At this point the experienced Ken Tangianau lost it. “Listen, whoever the fuck he was, he’s obviously out of your life for good, he’s never even laid eyes on the kid, has he?” he shouted. “Forget about the bastard! I can offer you something real, Lalla!”

    Lalla’s eyes filled with tears. “I can't.”

    “Flaming Christ, woman! It’s been nine bloody years!” he shouted.

    “More. Petey’ll be ten next month,” replied Lalla with a twisted smile.

    “You’re wasting your life,” said Ken hoarsely.

    “Not really, I’ve got used to it. And I’m doing a job I like, and Petey’s happy, that’s what really matters. I’m sorry, Ken, but I can’t.”

    He caught at her arm as she turned to go in. “And that’s another thing! You can’t go on sending him to the bloody local schools! In New Zealand he’d be nearly ready for Intermediate, he needs to go to a decent school and get a proper education! And just in case you’re imagining that it’ll be easy for him to catch up if you wait until he’s secondary-school age, I can tell you it bloody well won’t!”

    Neville had said something of the sort to her only recently, but Lalla had managed to ignore it as just Dad’s fussing. She looked up at him uncertainly.

    “Yes,” said Ken grimly.

    “There—there isn’t anything to go back to, though,” she said in a shaking voice.

    He took a deep breath. “There could be if we go together, Lalla. I’ve got some old mates over there that are keen for me to come into the firm with them—not full-time, more on an as-and-when consultancy basis. I’d have plenty of time for you and Petey.”

    A tear trickled down Lalla’s cheek. “It—it’s very kind of you, Ken, but I—I really can’t. It wouldn’t be fair on you. –I have tried forgetting him, but it doesn’t work,” she added bleakly.

    Maybe Ken wouldn’t have given up if she hadn’t been relentlessly brushing him off ever since he’d first met her, but— “No. All right,” he said tiredly. “But you need to think seriously about going back, for Petey’s sake.”

    “Mm. I will,” sad Lalla in a tiny voice. “Thank you, Ken.”

    Ken sighed. “Yeah. Good-night.”

    “Good-night, Ken. And—and thank you for the lovely meal,” said Lalla in a tiny voice, going inside.

    Ken swiped his hand over his face. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Oh, well. Knew I didn’t stand a chance , really, but— Well. There you are.” He wandered moodily back to his cabin.

    “Who the fuck was he?” he muttered, pouring himself a large whisky and collapsing on the bed with it. There was no use interrogating feeble-ized bloody Neville Holcroft, he’d been there, done that. Got a lot of bleating and some self-pitying tears—par for the course. Okay, it was gonna remain a mystery for all time. Unless... Neville had reckoned, semi-hysterically, true, but nonetheless reckoned, that it was someone she’d met in Canberra when she was over there for a conference. Sounded more than likely, from Ken’s experience of conferences. He could do some intensive Internet research, quietly plugging his laptop into one of the hotel’s modem connections: there might be some record of what had been going on in Canberra nine months and ten years back from Petey’s birthday. Well, maybe find some digitised Australian newspapers of the time? And in the unlikely event he could narrow the possible candidates down to one body, do what? Hunt the bugger down and kill him? That wouldn’t change her feelings, would it? Give him the glad tidings he had an illegitimate son, get him over here, and confront her with the prick? Uh—well, any other woman would be mad as fire with him, ten years down the track, but Lalla?

    “Pointless,” he concluded sourly, getting up and fetching the whisky bottle.

    “It’s that Oliver Perkins,” warned June Raui, appearing abruptly in the doorway of Lalla’s office.

    Ugh. Lalla sighed. “Could you ask whoever took the call to tell him I’m not here, please, June?”

    “Nah, he’s here. Want me to tell him you’re away?” she said kindly to Lalla’s dismayed face.

    It was less than a week since Oliver and his mother had seen Lalla in the restaurant with Ken. “Um, no, I’d better see him, I suppose. Where is he, June?”

    “Main lobby. Taggy, she told him she didn’t think you were available,” she offered on a hopeful note.

    Lalla got up resignedly. “No, I’ll talk to him.”

    “It’s almost lunchtime,” she warned.

    Uh—oh! “Well, if he wants lunch here, he can ruddy well pay for it, the racist pig,” she said grimly.

    “Eh?”

    Lalla reddened. “Ken and I saw him with his mother at the restaurant we went to a couple of nights back—” June was nodding: the entire staff of course knew about Lalla’s date with Ken. And no doubt had a pretty good idea of its outcome, too, given the bender Ken had gone on after it. “Um, yeah,” she said weakly. “She thought I was a Cook Islander and he fell over himself to tell her that I wasn’t.”

    “Ye-ah... Aw, I geddit. Like, he didn’t want her to think that, eh?”

    Close enough. Lalla nodded grimly. “Yeah.”

    “Ya don’t wanna let it get to ya,” June advised her kindly. “Blow him, who cares what he thinks?”

    “I don’t care especially what Oliver Perkins thinks about anything, but I do care about people who earn their living here looking down on the people they live amongst—and in his case, ruddy well work for!”

    “Thought he was a public servant or something?”

    “Exactly. The public servants are employed by the Cook Islands Government, and the government represents the people,” said Lalla grimly.

    “Aw, right. Hey, so he works for me!” said June with a loud giggle.

    Suddenly Lalla smiled, and linked her arm in hers. “Yeah, why don’tcha give him the sack, June?”

    “Hey, yeah!”

    They walked over to the lobby, arm-in-arm, giggling. Oliver’s face at the sight of them was exactly what Lalla expected—though she hadn’t done it on purpose.

    “Hullo, Lalla. I thought we might have lunch together,” he said on a hopeful note.

    “Hi, Oliver. You know June, don’t you?”

    “Um—yeah; hullo,” he said awkwardly.

    Giggling, June replied: “Hullo, Oliver. Thought you were a public servant?”

    “Um—yes,” he said numbly.

    “Why aren’tcha in your office, then? ’Cos see, it’s the Government that employs you, and that means you work for the people, and that’s me!” Unfortunately the effect of this speech was somewhat spoiled by the burst of giggles that followed it—though Lalla had to award her an A for effort.

    “Actually, we’re on glide-time,” he said in an annoyed voice.

    “Um, yes,” said Lalla quickly, looking at her watch. “It’ll have to be a quick lunch, Oliver, I am a bit busy. Um, and I’m afraid you’ll have to pay.”

    “Yeah,” agreed June gleefully, “’cos Mrs Ledbetter, she doesn’t like freeloaders! Eh, Lalla?”

    “That’s right,” agreed Lalla in a strangled voice. Yikes, was she gonna lose it and laugh?

    “Of course I’m willing to pay, if that’s the hotel’s policy,” he said stiffly.

    It was, but it was hardly ever enforced. Well, any affluent tourists who turned up for a meal were of course accommodated in the restaurant at the usual extortionate rates, but even Liliane Ledbetter had become resigned to the staff’s friends and relations turning up and expecting to be fed. Though, true, they had to eat in the staff dining-room.

    “’Tis if you wanna eat in the restaurant,” replied June in indifferently.

    “Mm. The staff have our own dining-room, of course,” murmured Lalla. If he said then let’s go there— He didn’t. Okay, he could bloody well pay through the nose for something silly in Palmyra Polynesia’s restaurant!

    Hoyt was on duty in the restaurant today. He showed them to a table, looking numbed.

    “Don’t worry, Hoyt, Oliver will pay,” said Lalla grimly.

    “Oh, good,” replied the innocent Hoyt in patent relief. “’Cos Mrs Ledbetter, she won’t mind you eating in here, ’cos you’re Management, but you’ll have to pay.”

    “Mm. What’s on today, Hoyt?” she murmured.

    Hoyt came to and gave them each a menu. “The fish is good, Hoppy caught it this morning. –Ken’s still out of it,” he added. “Mac was saying, if he can’t shape up we’ll have to ask someone else to get the fish for us, ’cos see, the hotel relies on him, and we gotta have a regular supply, eh? –There’s crayfish, but it’s dearer,” he informed Oliver kindly.

    “Is it hot or cold, Hoyt?” asked Lalla.

    “Hot. Grilled, with a little vermouth and served with a saffron and vermouth sauce with a touch of lime zest,” replied Hoyt conscientiously.

    Lalla smiled at him. “Ooh, yummy! I’ll have that, then, thanks, Hoyt.”

    Hoyt looked hopefully at Oliver. “And you, sir?” he said in his best professional waiter’s voice.

    The prices had now had time to register. The “Islands Lobster Palmyra” wasn’t the dearest choice, but very nearly. “I’ll just have the grilled fish, thanks,” he said weakly.

    “Very good, sir. And perhaps a side salad? The Polynesian Salad à Notre Façon is always popular, sir,” replied Hoyt respectfully.

    That meant Angie had told him to push it because she wanted to use up whatever was in it. Lalla swallowed.

    “Well, um, do you want a salad, Lalla?” said Oliver weakly.

    Why the Hell not? “Yes, that’d be nice, thanks, Oliver. And I’m really hungry, I’ve been working since seven this morning, I might just have something as a starter.”

    “Yeah, she gets up early,” Hoyt informed Olive in his ordinary voice. “Ken, he reckons she works too hard.’

    Oliver’s mouth tightened. “I don’t see how he’d know. Does the man even know what work is?”

    “Yeah, he’s retired, see?” replied Hoyt indifferently. “Okay, salad for two. Have the pawpaw starter, Lalla, Navy’ll do it for you without the chilli, it’s nicer with just lime, eh?” Lalla smiled and nodded. “Good. –There’s a nice New Zealand white that’ll go with the fish and the crayfish if you don’t wanna spring for a French wine, sir. Mind you, she likes champagne better.”

    Lalla pinkened. “Not champagne, Oliver, it’s far too dear!”

    “May I see the wine list, please?” he asked grimly.

    “Certainly, sir,” replied Hoyt in his best professional voice, going to get it.

    In his absence Lalla said very weakly indeed: “Don’t let him sucker you into buying something expensive, Oliver. The prices are for the tourists, you see.”

    Reddening crossly, Oliver replied: “I’ve no intention of being suckered. But I’d like to get something nice for you.”

    Okay, she’d said it. He’d see!

    He saw. He actually blenched.

    Weakly Lalla repeated: “Um, for the tourists. I’d just like a glass of the Sauvignon Blanc, really.”

    The menu did not offer anything by the glass. “Um, well, I do like that. You can get it at home, though...”

    As he appeared to be waiting for a reply, she offered: “There’s some Australian whites but the New Zealand ones are better, on the whole. Um, a lot of the Aussies like the Swan River ones.”

    Looking cross, Oliver found them on the wine list. They were very reasonably priced in comparison to the wines at the top of the list, true, but still dearer than the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc—or at least, than the cheapest one, there were several.

    “Swan River? Honestly, what names they give them!”

    It was a place in Western Australia, so the name was merely factual. A lot of the New Zealand brands had really silly made-up names these days, not geographical at all, but Lalla didn’t say anything. Though she did reflect idly that that remark came out as entirely pejorative but there was nothing in the words themselves, just like his mother’s racist remarks. Well, it was the tone, yes. Was it endemic to the New Zealand vernacular, or just to the middle-class, narrow-minded, mean-mouthed socio-economic group to which Oliver and Mrs Perkins belonged? Um, that “mean-mouthed” perhaps didn't belong in there, it had just crept in, but heck! Oliver and his mother both sure did have mean mouths and so had Mum had, actually...

    Oliver had talked himself into the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. By now Lalla didn’t care, frankly.

    “Yes, that’d be nice,” agreed Hoyt in his ordinary voice. “You could just have a glass if you don’t wanna buy a bottle, Angie’s cooking with it.”

    Lalla’s warning look, delivered too late in any case, had, alas, bounced off his happily smiling form. Today clad in the gear that Mrs Ledbetter had ordained for the restaurant: a sparkling white short-sleeved, open-necked shirt with a floral pareu, tightly belted with a sort of cummerbund.

    Naturally Oliver replied crossly, avoiding eye contact: “I’ll have a bottle, thanks.”

    “Very good, sir,” agreed Hoyt, back in his waiter’s persona, taking himself, the menu and the wine list off.

    Help, what were they gonna talk about till the food arrived? Oliver was still looking cross. Of course, a brave and honourable woman, like, um, hard to think of one, really. Well, Elinor Dashwood, of course. Um, well, doubtless Elizabeth Bennet as well. Um... Ooh, yeah, Harriet Vane in the Lord Peter books! Harriet definitely would have said right out that it was nice to have a meal together but although she was happy to be friends she didn’t want it to go any further—words to that effect: firm but clear, kind of thing—before the food was brought. But Lalla frankly, in the first place was far too much of a coward to then sit through a lunch with a sulking male—there was no doubt Oliver was a sulker, in fact he had a pout on him already, yikes!—and in the second place didn’t want to ruin a lovely lunch.

    Finally she offered feebly: “Um, is your mother still with you?”

    “Yes, she’s gone on a tour today.”

    Help, that’d mean more of the same: Rarotonga was pretty small and there was nothing much to see—except for tropical beaches, the rolling Pacific, and the tropical vegetation, of course—a few villages, a few banana plantations, and some more tourist areas with a few middle-of-the road hotels and a lot of motels. And a fair number of eating places which didn’t rise above the level of large pieces of grilled fish along with over-elaborate mounded salads, all jammed into enormous bread rolls. None of which seemed calculated to appeal to the woman she had been introduced to.

    “The humidity doesn’t agree with her, but the bus is supposed to be air-conditioned. She’s met a Mrs Iverson that she’s getting on well with: they’ve gone together.”

    Ooh, phew! What a relief. Um, hang on, unless Iverson was a Jewish name: Mrs Perkins struck forcibly as the sort that was anti-Semitic, as well!

    “What’s the joke?” asked Oliver suspiciously as her shoulders shook.

    “Nothing. Um, just a thought. Sorry. I’m glad your mother’s found a friend.”

    “Yes, Mrs Iverson seems like a nice woman. She’s from Castor Bay, do you know it?”

    Lalla did, actually. It was on Auckland’s North Shore, close to the pleasant little shopping area of Milford and not far at all from the much bigger Takapuna. Mum at one stage had claimed bitterly she’d always wanted to live there, and now look at house prices there, they were through the roof! According to Dad Castor Bay had originally been nothing but a scattered settlement of rundown baches mixed with a few ugly Fifties bungalows, a lot of them perched uncomfortably on very steep sections that you couldn’t get a car up, and she’d declared it was ugly and out of the way and the bus service was impossible, all of which claims had been quite true. And she hadn’t wanted to live there at all. It was now terrifically up-market, and pretty much an all-white enclave. And quite charming, with patches of native bush allowed to regenerate, its history of Fifties-style grass-grub infested bare lawns now forgotten. True, the driveways were still steep but what with expensive concrete from those giant trucks that piped it all on at one go and flash modern cars, this wasn’t, apparently, a consideration. Oh, what the heck! Lalla lied.

    “No—it’s on the North Shore, isn’t it? Um, no.”

    Very pleased, Oliver plunged into an encomium of Castor Bay.

    Fortunately Hoyt surfaced with her pawpaw starter while he was still in the middle of it. Lalla just ate it happily, smiling encouragingly now and then—it had lime juice and raw sugar on it, lovely!—as he finished off Castor Bay and diverged onto more desirable points of the greater Auckland area. She didn’t bother to ask why Pakuranga, which was as flat as a pancake, completely featureless, and full of horrible Eighties townhouses in that very, very dark brown brick, completely depressing.

    What with Lalla listening to him apparently appreciatively and the lovely fish, not to say the alcohol, Oliver was in a very good mood by the end of the meal and, having ordered coffee without asking Lalla if she wanted any or whether she might like some pudding, invited her warmly to join him, his mother and Mrs Iverson for dinner in two days’ time.

    Lalla went very pink. “Um, no, I don’t think I’d better, thanks, Oliver. It might give your mother the wrong idea.”

    “Eh? Um, no! I mean, I’ve told her all about you, of course! You don’t need to worry, she understands about Petey. And that your Dad’s a lonely widower. And—well, there aren’t any nice New Zealand woman of his age out here, are there?”

    What? Oh, really!

    “I think you'd better stop right there, Oliver, before I lose my temper drastically. Actually I wanted the opportunity to talk to you, because I’ve decided not to see you again. I’ve got much more in common with Ken Tangianau, really.” She took a deep breath. “’Specially ’cos we’re part Maori. It’s on Dad’s side, that’s why he tans so easily. Well, we both do,”

    “But I— That doesn’t matter,” he said feebly.

    “Don’t be silly, your mother just about had a fit when she thought I was a Cook Islander.” Lalla got up. “Thank you for the lunch, Oliver. Goodbye.” And with that she walked out.

    Hoyt had been serving the next table. He hurried after her. “Hey, good on ya, Lalla!”

    Lalla smiled weakly. “Ta, Hoyt. I was so wild with him I could’ve clocked him, actually.”

    “That would of been good,” he agreed regretfully. “Was that true?”

    “Um, which?” replied Lalla feebly.

    “That you and Neville are part Maori.”

    “No, unfortunately, but it showed him up, eh?”

    “Yeah, too right! Hey,” he said brilliantly, “ya better warn Neville, eh?”

    She’d have bet a very large sum, in fact everything in her bank account that was for Petey’s education that she wasn’t yet biting on the bullet about, that after that revelation Oliver wouldn’t ever bother to speak to Dad again.

    “Yep, I better had!” she agreed with a laugh.

    “Too right! Hey, can I tell them all in the kitchen?”

    Cripes, he was asking? What a nice boy he was! Lalla beamed at him. “Yeah, you sure can, Hoyt!”

    Grinning, Hoyt shot off to the kitchen.

    Neville’s reaction was: “Bloody little worm. You’re better off without him, love.”

    Help! As Dad rarely swore, this was condemnation, indeed. Lalla awarded him a smacking kiss on the cheek on the strength of it and as Mary Nelson then agreed: “Yeah, we can do without his type round here,” gave her a kiss, too. Mary hugged her fiercely in return and said fervently: “It doesn’t matter, Lalla, you and Neville and Petey are part of the family, now,” at which Lalla very nearly burst into tears. Only managing not to by telling herself firmly that it’d upset both of them for nothing and they might assume she had wanted beastly Oliver, after all.

    Petey’s reaction was: “Aw, him. He’s a nerd.”

    Yep, too right! Happily Lalla awarded him a Coke.

    Ken’s reaction was: “I hear I’m the lesser of two evils. Or does Rumour have a lying tongue, as usual?”

    “It doesn’t if it’s been telling you that Oliver Perkins is a nasty, mean-minded, prejudiced little creep!” replied Lalla vigorously.

    “Aw, is that all?”

    “Not quite. Mrs Marianne Gatsby from Springfield, Illinois, is standing on the landing stage looking for her gallant native boatman, Ken.”

    As Lalla had finished this statement in a strong American accent, Ken replied weakly: “Shit, did she actually say that?”

    “Yeah. So you’d better hurry,” she said cheerfully.

    Angie’s reaction was a sigh and: “Okay, Lalla, you were right all along, he isn’t worth the time of day. Wish I hadn’t wasted that decent piece of fish on him, now.”

    To which Navy agreed: “Yeah. But we used the rest of the wine in a white sauce, eh?”

    “Good!” replied Lalla fervently.

    All the same, giving both Oliver and Ken the push did leave her with no bloke, didn’t it? Well, she was no worse off now than she had been before, was she?

    ... Maybe she had better think seriously about going back to New Zealand so as Petey could go to school there, though. Oh, dear.

Next chapter:

https://thelallaeffect.blogspot.com/2024/01/high-finance.html