Down To Taupo

10

Down To Taupo

    Lalla might not have done anything about the motel in Taupo that might have a job available, but for the Big Jean And Alison Row. She and Petey had got into the habit of going over to Jean and Roger’s most Sundays for tea: Roger was fond of Petey and Petey was, thankfully, too little to treat him differently because he was in a wheelchair. Roger had a nice house on the North Shore, which the compensation for his accident had paid for. The Sunday bus services were pretty bad but they sometimes combined the trip with a morning visit to the Museum and a picnic lunch in the Domain, or, if in funds and the weather wasn’t too good, lunch in town at a big McDonald’s. This would mean they were in good time to catch the afternoon bus over the Harbour Bridge that would get them to Jean and Roger’s in respectable time for tea but not so early that Jean would feel obliged to give them afternoon tea as well. Though Petey always scored a drink of Ribena or, if the weather wasn’t too good, warm Milo. Actually just going over the Bridge was a treat in itself, to both of them. Roger always drove them home: he had a specially altered car. This arrangement meant that Jean didn’t visit at the house in One Tree Hill much at all, so she remained sublimely unaware of the new situation for some time. Then she popped in on a Saturday after a swing shift and the shit hit the fan with a roar. Possibly Alison hadn’t realised that the lease was in Lalla’s name and that the whole arrangement was to help out Lalla and Petey—no; but she remained adamant that the new arrangement was perfectly fair. And Lalla had agreed to it! And it was none of Jean’s business any more. Etcetera. The session ended—though all present were aware that the thing was far from over—with Jean declaring grimly that she’d speak to the landlords.

    Even though Lalla wasn’t responsible for Jean finding out and in fact had tried to say, as the row surged on, that Alison was right and it was fair, when you thought about it, and she had agreed to it, Alison blamed her for the whole thing and relations became very strained indeed, with Alison using the girls’ own entrance, not the front door, which was more convenient if you’d left the car on the front drive, or the back door, which was more convenient if you’d brought the car right down to the garage next to the patio and were just popping in to use the toilet and dump your uniform in the washing-machine—and the meek Diane, after a burst of tears which made no impression on Alison, caving in and copying her. The kitchen timetable which Alison had already instituted was adhered to rigidly and so, as much as was humanly possible, was the bathroom timetable. Ditto the washing-machine timetable, and Alison transferred the shared laundry detergent to a see-through plastic container with cms or possibly mls or something marked on the side in red felt-tip pen. Oh, help.

    It was after this artefact had appeared on the laundry shelf—the high one that Petey couldn’t reach—that Lalla went and spoke, not to Sir Jake himself, of course, but to Dorothea, his PA. Dorothea did know the name and address of the place in Taupo—it wasn’t a motel, it was an ecolodge, she reminded Lalla kindly. Taupo Shores Ecolodge, run by Pete McLeod and Jan Harper, and this was their number, and their fax number, and their email address, and Lalla would probably like to look at their webpage: this was its URL. Yikes.

    Lalla had a computer: Roger, who was in IT, had got it for her at Jean’s instigation, at a very good price. So she and Petey looked up the ecolodge, even though Lalla was now sure it’d be far too up-market, not to say pricey, for them to stay at for a week while she sussed it out. Or even a long weekend.

    “It looks very up-market,” she said sadly to Petey as the glossy webpage was revealed.

    “Yeah,” he agreed obediently. “Look, Mum, a goat!”

    So it was. One of the pictures with which the webpage was liberally bedecked was of a white goat, looking as if it might have been washed and brushed for the occasion, the accompanying text being “Explore the gourmet delights of fresh organic goats cheese from our own flock”, ugh! The food was “regional cuisine with an organic focus, graced by a selection of wines from the Ecolodges own temperature controlled wine cellar” and “served in an airy dining-room lined in the soft glow of recycled kauri.” Could a soft glow line something? Oh, well. And the sample menu listed “Roasted Capsicum & Pumpkin Soup” (one strip of red pepper to two whole pumpkins, yeah), “Crumbed Bluff Oysters” (worth their weight in gold, yikes!), “Fresh Organically Grown Potato Wedges” (chips—quite), “Fresh Homemade Lasagna With a Greek Salad from Our Own Gardens” (apart from the olives, presumably, though actually that sounded lovely), and “Free Range Chicken in Your Choice of Traditional Roast or the Chefs Specialite du Jour.” Presumably the Ecolodge’s webmaster didn’t recognise the existence of accents, along with that of apostrophes. …Aw, gee, “Breakfast is included in your day rate,” must mean that lunch and tea weren’t: fancy that. “Special diets, whether vegetarian or otherwise, are gladly accommodated with advance notice”—and at a price: got it. Lalla sighed.

    “Ooh, this looks good, Mum!”

    She looked at the picture of one of the chef’s Specialites, no accent, du Jour. “Chicken a la Berry.” The caption kindly added that it was “a Classic French Country Recipe, gently stewed on a bed of organically grown Julienne carrot.” One didn’t stew a recipe, and Lalla was pretty sure that “a la Berry” was wrong—that was, in addition to the lack of an accent—but she just sighed.

    “Mum!”

    “Um, yes, it looks lovely. Chicken stew,” said Lalla feebly.

    “Sauce,” he said, pointing. “Like Aunty Jean makes!” –She wasn’t, of course an aunt, she was a first cousin once removed, but she’d wanted to be an aunty, so Lalla hadn’t objected.

    “Mm, yummy,” she agreed kindly. It did bear a generic resemblance to Jean’s apricot chicken, yes. There were no prices listed. Lalla looked at the page glumly.

    “Can we go and stay there?” he asked excitedly.

    She should never have mentioned the idea, of course. “It might cost too much.” She looked at his face. “I could send them an email, I suppose.”

    “Yeah! –I know! If it costs too much we could take Bernice!”

    Eh? Lalla goggled at him.

    “’Cos she knows about motels! She’d like it!” he urged.

    Er—yes. Bernice actually knew too much about motels, having stayed at one up in Whangarei earlier in the year, not with the girl from work she’d told her mother she was going with, but a married man. Unfortunately Coralie had rung her up and he had picked up, since he was expecting a call from his wife, who’d been under the impression it was a business trip. Well, it was, but he was combining it with Bernice. Oh, dear. Well, at least it wasn’t Aunty Jan who’d rung, one small mercy, ’cos the hysterics would still have been going on. Bernice was now twenty and working, possibly having landed the job by sheer determination, as she only had keyboarding qualifications, as an “Editorial Assistant” at one of the country’s few glossies. She got a lot of freebies like sample bottles of awful scent called things like “Tiki” and “Kowhai Mist”, and strange liqueurs the local wineries produced, and meals at up-market little restaurants that wanted free advertising in the foodie column. Well, actually, apart from the huge number of full-page paid ads, that was mostly what the magazine was: free advertising. There was an official food reviewer but he only visited the places his gay mates were running. Of course he always grabbed the sample bottles of anything drinkable, but that was okay, Bernice didn’t know the difference.

    Actually she would probably like to come, she was in really bad odour with her mother, of course, and she was still living at home, partly because rents were very high and flats were very scarce, partly because she was a bit of a Scrooge—apart from her own clothes, shoes and makeup, naturally. Petey had earlier brilliantly suggested she might like to come and share the rent with them—although he was so young he had a pretty good grasp of financial realities—but that was just before the Big Jean And Alison Row, and Lalla hadn’t dared to broach the notion since.

    “Um, we’ll see,” she said weakly, not without the guilty reflection that once upon a time she’d sworn she’d never use the phrase to a child of hers, in what had then seemed the unlikely event she’d ever have one. Oh, well. That was life. She sent the email, and told Petey not to hope too much, which of course had no effect whatsoever.

    To her astonishment, Jan Harper responded very quickly and the prices weren’t astronomical after all. Much more than Lalla would normally have spent on a holiday, but… She’d explained that she had a little boy and Jan Harper had said the ecolodge had two twin rooms. After some puzzling, it dawned that this must mean rooms with two single beds. Lalla thought it over and then spoke to Bernice. She was very keen and immediately put forward three separate proposals whereby they would rook Jan Harper and her partner and get three for the price of one, kind of thing, but Lalla ignored that, it was just typical Bernice. She emailed Jan Harper again—there had been no indication whether she was “Mrs”, “Ms” or “Miss”, so Lalla was addressing her dubiously as “Dear Ms Harper”, as she couldn’t bring herself to put “Dear Jan Harper”, though she had seen lots of people do that in emails, mostly unsolicited. The reply was that of course they could put a stretcher in a twin room for the little boy, and there’d be no extra charge! Hurray!

    So they went: not when Lalla had thought they might, over Labour Weekend, as Bernice, who was still quite involved in the concerns she’d had when she was a schoolgirl, had a netball tournament, but in the Christmas holidays. Actually over Christmas itself: the ecolodge was booked out for later in January. Coralie was furious because Bernice would be away for Christmas. Aunty Jan was both furious and tearful because Bernice would be away for Christmas—though the claim she was her favourite granddaughter was possibly spurious. Jean was upset because Lalla and Petey would be away for Christmas, when she and Roger had been planning to have them come to them—though as this had apparently been a secret plan they could hardly be blamed for its not having dawned on them. Mrs Holcroft was furious because Lalla and Petey would be away for Christmas—though last year she’d let them go to Coralie’s without, apparently, giving a damn. And Mr Holcroft was upset because his grandson would be away for Christmas, even though last year he hadn’t invited them to come to them. Bernice was thrilled, though, so that was all right.

    The Christmas at Taupo Shores Ecolodge was the nicest Lalla had ever had. For one thing, the ecolodge itself was lovely. The main building wasn’t very big: a longish, low structure, a very simple design: one-storeyed, with a long verandah out the front and rows of French windows opening onto it. It seemed sort of nestled into the landscape: its main woodwork was creosoted, with the window surrounds and the verandah painted a soft, matte fawn, and the colour-steel roof a soft, matte green. Inside, however, it was extraordinary: opening the front door into the big guests’ lounge you stepped into a sort of golden cave! The floorboards were that soft, golden, glowing shade that only recycled kauri attained, but the glory of the place was its gabled kauri ceiling. Wonderful! The rest of the big lounge hardly mattered, after this, but actually it was very nice: the far wall in warm, dark brick with a big fireplace, and over to the right a wall of glass with a view, past a patio with bronze-leaved flax plants in big coiled pots and a long stretch of lawn, of the huge lake itself. The furniture in this room was mainly plain, square sofas and chairs covered in a dark forest-green fabric, plus one huge old brown leather chesterfield and a couple of big La-Z-Boy chairs in Black Watch tartan. Even Bernice, whose tastes had been moulded, or perhaps corrupted, by the interior décor experts at her magazine, had to concede it was really tasteful.

    To get to the ecolodge’s little restaurant you went through the door in the far left-hand corner, near the little bar. There was a passage leading off to the left, with the six bedrooms spread out along it, all opening onto the verandah with their own sets of French windows. The one public door on the other side of the passage, next to the motel’s office door, opened onto a short passage which led to the dining-room. It was mainly white plaster with a bit more recycled kauri, and lovely heavy varnished tables and chairs in a mixture of styles.

    The bedrooms were rather plain, disappointingly without the glowing kauri floors. But then, the Feltex Berber carpet was very nice and comfy underfoot. It was an unobtrusive flecked oatmeal shade, the walls were painted in a similar shade, and the curtains were the same dark, forest green as the lounge furniture. The bedcovers were dark green, too. Bernice inspected them narrowly and decided they were actually made from sheets. So what, having them washable was both sensible and hygienic, and they looked really smart! Lalla didn’t say so, as Bernice then decided it was quite a nifty idea. A couple of pretty botanical prints on the walls brightened the room, and as well there was a bunch of flowers on the lowboy, wasn’t that lovely! When you looked at it closely it turned out to be a mixture of bits of native foliage—the manuka wasn’t in flower, what a pity—several different types of sage, some of it ornamental and some possibly not, dark-centred, puce-petalled geraniums that you had to call something else these days that Lalla could never remember, and, yikes, banana passionfruit vine! She was sure it was: those pink flowers were unmistakeable, they’d had one at home. She and her brothers had mostly eaten the fruit, though it was pretty tasteless, and Dad had been ordered to pick up what fell off: once established the vines fruited like billyo.

    “Ooh, is that pink clematis?” asked Bernice, pronouncing it “clem-ate-iss”.

    Lalla was almost sure it should be “clem-a-tiss”. “Um, no, it’s banana passionfruit, I think. ’Member that one we used to have?”

    “Aw, yeah. That was a neato house,” said Bernice nostalgically, coming to look. “Yeah, it is: funny, eh? Looks quite pretty, though.”

    “Very pretty! I just love a vase of flowers to have a natural look! It isn’t like a hotel at all, really, is it?” said Lalla with a deep sigh.

    “Um, no,” agreed Bernice uncertainly.

    It did, however, have a real ensuite. Well, very small, no bath, but that was okay: Petey loved having a shower. And after Petey had been persuaded that the big green duvets he’d found in a cupboard could stay there, as it was summer, and Bernice had been persuaded to let him keep the small cake of the ecolodge’s guest soap that he’d commandeered on the really quite logical grounds that there were three of them so one must be for him, and after, on seconds thoughts, he’d been frogmarched back into the ensuite to actually wash his hands (using the soap Lalla had brought with her), they ventured out, eagerly in the case of Petey and Bernice and shyly in the case of Lalla, in search of the lunch that Jan Harper had assured them would be ready when they were.

    —It was just “Jan”, she’d already told them to call her that. She was probably in her mid-fifties, a squarish, solid woman, with wavy grey hair cut very short. Very sensible-looking, wearing a pair of plain fawn cotton slacks and a pale blue tee-shirt. Not in the least like what Lalla had expected an ecolodge owner to look like, though on the other hand she couldn’t have said exactly what she had expected. Not Jan, though.

    The lunch was yummy, though not precisely what the website had suggested. There was a menu, but it didn’t list very much. One small sheet, notepad-size. Once Bernice had remarked aloud that there were three courses, they had to have them, though Lalla was very doubtful that Petey’d get through them.

    They all passed on the “Chilled Carrot & Orange Soup with our Own Yoghurt”, especially after Lalla had reminded Bernice about the goats, and had the starter of “Vegetarian Nutballs in Organic Pesto Sauce” instead. Even though Petey didn’t think nuts could be balls. When they came it was evident that its sauce wasn’t just pesto, though it had minced basil in it: it was much creamier. Petey was dissecting the balls—Jan seemed to be serving the meal herself, and she’d given him a small portion, thank goodness—and announcing that they were little wee bits, all squashed up, and more or less under cover of this forensic report Lalla said to Bernice: “I wonder what’s in the sauce beside the basil?” At which, embarrassingly, Jan turned round from serving the next table and explained with a smile that it was soy milk, she’d got some to try but nobody liked it as milk, so she’d used it up in the sauce. Adding that the original recipe was a cream sauce but she sometimes used yoghurt instead. Lalla smiled and nodded weakly. They’d struck it lucky, then. The dish was, actually, delicious, the balls even creamier than the sauce, and even Petey’s vanished like dew in the morning.

    There were three choices for the main course. Two hot: “Vegetarian Pie” or “Chicken & Vegetable Pie”: oddly bare and simple, when you thought of the website’s flowery, apostropheless and accentless phrases, and the more flowery “Taupo Shores Baked Farci”, further described as “served cold, a delicious pork & silverbeet meatloaf based on the classic French Country dish.” The nutballs indicated it would probably be delicious, but they voted it down unanimously in favour of the chicken and vegetable pie. It wasn’t accompanied by “Fresh Organically Grown Potato Wedges” but the “Greek Salad from Our Own Gardens” was on offer. Or you could have “New Boiled Potatoes au Beurre”, in which case you’d probably want the “Organic Parsleyed Carrots”, too, or “Jan’s Favourite Potato Salad”, which certainly seemed to be a favourite with the guests—the room was quite full, about twenty people lunching, and even without peering you could see that a lot of them were having it. Petey adored potato salad and unfortunately Bernice kindly read the menu out to him. Lalla tried to warn him that it wouldn’t be the same as Jean’s potato salad, to which he replied: “I’ll still like it!”, and that she didn’t think it’d go with the pie, which made no impression. Bernice, when she remembered, was watching her weight, so she decided against potato anything. Which left the Greek salad, but she hated olives!

    Unnoticed by the two young women, though Petey was staring avidly, a thin, wiry man in his sixties, dressed in ancient if clean jeans and an ancient if clean grey tee-shirt, had ambled up to the table behind them with a bottle of wine for the four loud-voiced American ladies at it.

    “We can leave the olives out,” he offered amiably.

    Bernice turned puce. “Um, yes! Could you? Thank you!” she gasped.

    “The Greek salad’s got goats’ fetta in it, too,” he noted. “Well, not everybody’s cuppa tea, no,” he allowed, looking at their horrified faces. “I did tell her she better put a plain tomato and lettuce salad on the menu as well, but she reckoned everybody knows it’s always on offer, this time of year, and by that time she’d printed them and cut them up, ya see. Two to a page, saves on paper as well as that ruddy ink dust muck, forget what they call it.”

    “Toner,” said Lalla faintly.

    “That’d be it. I did say everybody had been here before except you people, you wouldn’t know, but she reckoned she was gonna tell ya. Too much on ’er mind, see? We’ve lost another waitress. Well, I say lost,” he said, putting his gnarled brown hand on their table and leaning heavily on it, “but technically she decided it was too much like hard yacker and chucked it in. And the other one, that was supposed to be on a working holiday, never turned up. –Dutch,” he said with a shrug. Lalla and Bernice looked at him dubiously, not sure how he expected them to respond. “S’posed to be reliable, we always thought. Dare say they come in all varieties, like the rest of us, eh? Well, tomato and lettuce salad all round, then?”

    “No! I want potato salad!” cried Petey in shrill anguish.

    “Keep yer hair on, you can have potato salad if yer mum says it’s okay,” he replied without any evidence of emotion.

    “Is it okay, Mum?” demanded Petey immediately.

    “Yes, of course. A—a small helping, please,” said Lalla faintly, wondering if the man was the waiter or if he just did the wine.

    “Yeah, ’course,” he said, gathering up their plates. “I can recommend the farcy thing—well, it’s meatloaf, really. Tastes better cold: funny, eh? She sticks it in the fridge: it’s a good standby for when we’re really busy, and the types that know about gourmet food think they’re at the Tour dee Flaming Argent.”

    “Yes,” said Lalla faintly, wondering how on earth he’d heard of the Tour d’Argent. “We thought we’d all have the chicken and vegetable pie, Petey loves chicken and he likes pies.”

    “Petey, eh? Geddouda here,” he said without any evidence of emotion. “I’m a Peter, too: Pete McLeod. Good to meet ya, Petey.”

    “Petey Holcroft,” said Lalla faintly. “I’m Lalla Holcroft and this is our cousin, Bernice Young.”

    “Like, young, only it’s a name,” explained Petey carefully.

    “Right, same word, eh?” agreed Pete McLeod cheerfully.

    “Yes,” said Lalla, smiling at him suddenly. “He worked it out for himself.”

    “I geddit,” said Pete, smiling back. “Good to meetcha, Lalla. You too, Bernice. Okey-doke, chicken and vege pie all round, potato salad for one, tomato and lettuce salad for two. Fancy a glass of wine? On the house, some up-market types down from the Big Smoke in their ruddy Porsche ordered a white with their firsts and left half of it because they thought a red’d be more appropriate with the meatloaf. –Ya might as well, because if you don’t have it I will, or Jan’ll wrench it off me and bung it in a sauce.”

    “Ooh, yeah, let’s!” said Bernice eagerly.

    “She old enough to drink?” Pete asked Lalla with a jerk of his head at her unfortunate cousin.

    “Yes: twenty,” she said faintly.

    He sniffed. “That wouldn’ta been old enough when I was that age—not officially—but we’ll let it pass. I’ll get it for ya.” And with that he ambled off with their plates.

    Petey appeared unmoved but Lalla and Bernice just looked at each other limply.

    “So you’ve met Pete!” cried a voice from the table behind them

    They turned their heads and smiled weakly, what time Petey hissed informatively: “It’s a lady!”

    The lady nodded her unlikely ginger head, smiling brightly at them all. “Isn’t he just the darlingest man? So down-home, but real bright, of course! Now, anything you need for the little boy, you just ask Pete or Jan, honey,”—she now seemed to be addressing the puce-faced Lalla specifically: she tried to smile—“because this sure is the homiest place we have ever stayed at—isn’t that right, Stella, honey?”

    Stella honey was the equally large, equally fancy-haired lady next to her; she agreed with feeling: “That sure is right, and we said when that investment of Ruthie’s matured, now, you can say what you like about a cruise, but stuck on the boat all the time, who needs that? And for a cosy, real down-home Christmas you sure couldn’t go past Taupo Shores Ecolodge! And nothing can beat Jan’s real home cooking, that’s for sure!”

    “So, here we are! Now, mind,” said, presumably, Ruthie, nodding significantly as Jan was seen to re-enter the room with a piled tray, “just ask.”

    And that was Lalla’s, Petey’s and Bernice’s introduction to the delights of Taupo Shores Ecolodge. It was all like that. There were some younger guests out in what the website called “the bunkhouse” but which Jan admitted was just a shed from Mitre 10 that Pete and a mate had lined with Gib-board, but apart from them, all the other guests were of Ruthie’s and Stella’s generation: sixty and up. Not all of them sported fancy hairdoes and shiny, expensive light-weight tracksuits with toning tops and loads of toning and not necessarily junk jewellery, like the two friendly American ladies; the New Zealanders, if female, tended towards nice floral frocks and pastel cardies with, if any, restrained pearl earrings; and, if male, well-pressed cotton trousers or cotton shorts and open-necked, short-sleeved shirts or those knit short-sleeved golfing shirts. And the other two American widows, who usually sat with Ruthie and Stella but were not technically with them, tended towards well-pressed linen-look slacks, tailored blouses and pastel cardies with restrained pearl earrings. The Australian couple, who were over on a walking tour that didn’t seem to preclude their driving a giant four-wheel-drive, favoured pale khaki shorts with huge baggy pockets on the legs, buttoned-pocketed khaki safari shirts, camouflage tee-shirts, strange droopy camouflage fabric hats, and huge hiking boots—even though they were of Ruthie’s and Stella’s generation, too.

    The food continued marvellous—the chicken and vegetable pie of that first lunch was extraordinary, with a wholemeal crust that managed to be both light and crisp, and the dessert trolley made not only Petey’s but also Lalla’s and Bernice’s eyes bulge. Pavlova laden with strawberries and cream was the least of it. There was a black-bottom pie that, as Ruthie said, was so rich it was a sin, an open peach pie that Lalla would have called a flan but that the Americans declared was real, honest-to-goodness peach cobbler, out of this world, served with fresh farmhouse cream, and a blueberry cheesecake that tasted… Real, was the only word, comparing it with those things from the supermarket that the nurses all favoured, decided Lalla with a deep sigh. The sort of taste experience that made you forget that the word “slime” had ever existed. The menus varied from day to day, but were always delicious, however simple the dishes might appear to be.

    And Christmas dinner fulfilled all Ruthie’s and Stella’s predictions: roast turkey and real baked ham, with all the trimmings! Petey obviously thought he was in Paradise, and actually Lalla and Bernice didn’t feel much different.

    There wasn’t much to do, unless you had a car and wanted to hive off to the thermal area or National Park or were a tramper and wanted to hive off to National Park, but the ecolodge featured several so-called “trails” or bush walks, two of which were suitable even for Petey’s short legs, with a bit of help on the way back on the Rimu Trail; and Pete had a funny old launch that wasn’t officially part of the facilities but that always seemed to be wanting to “stretch ’er legs” just when Lalla, Petey and Bernice were wondering what to do with themselves. One glorious day he loaded them up in the morning and took them right over to the far side of the lake for a picnic lunch. Ruthie and Stella came too, and so did the two odd-looking Danes from the bunkhouse: very, very scrawny and deeply tanned, and from even a short distance indistinguishable: short, very fair hair above their hairless, bony brown faces. It was only when you got very close that you realised that one was male and one was female, yikes! If Ruthie and Stella were loud, and Erik and Katryn were odd-looking, they all were nevertheless very well-meaning and very kind to Petey, and, in short, a lovely day was had by all.

    Pete and Jan were both so very nice that towards the end of their stay Lalla actually plucked up the courage to ask Jan if there was any possibility of a job.

    “So you are the Lalla who works for Jake Carrano,” said Jan. “I thought you must be, it’s a very unusual name.”

    “Um, yes!” gasped Lalla, very disconcerted.

    “Well, we’d love to have you, but we can’t pay much. I know we look prosperous, but this is our busy season. The place is never busy over winter: we only get a few strays from the winter sports and a few couples that want a weekend away from it all. –Somewhere where they expect to find it all, in case it needs spelling out.”

    “No,” said Lalla faintly. “I mean, it’s more than all, Jan.”

    “Um, ta,” said Jan on a weak note. “There’d be your keep, of course. You could have the big loft above the garage, it’s a bit basic but it’s quite roomy and there’s a small ensuite. We lived there ourselves when we were doing the alterations to this place. And I’d make sure he didn’t run any blasted motors all night,” she added drily.

    “Um, yes!” gasped Lalla. “I don’t want to be a nuisance, Jan!”

    Jan looked wry. “You wouldn’t be a nuisance, you’d be a godsend, but I think you might be bored when it’s slow.”

    “No: I read a lot,” said Lalla calmly.

    “Good. Well, there is a public library. They’ll get stuff for you on interloan, too. Too efficiently, actually: there was one horrible winter,” said Jan reminiscently, “when Pete took it into his head to build a small balsawood replica of the Endeavour.”

    “Cook’s ship?” she croaked.

    “Mm. Evidently the National Library in Wellington had had that sort of request before, because they sent us detailed copies of the plans. He immediately decided that balsa wouldn’t do and went out to the dreaded shed and got some real timber. Three years later—he’s got stickum, has Pete—the thing was as high as my hip and a rich legal-eagle mate of a legal-eagle old mate of Pete’s bought it for megabucks. –Pete would’ve given it to him but luckily the mate set a price before he could shove that great foot of his in his mouth. So I suppose those three years weren’t entirely wasted. Though at the point it dawned that he’d forgotten to get his seed potatoes in it felt like it, I can tell ya!”

    “Yikes! What did you do?”

    “Took potato wedges, potato and yoghurt bake, and vichyssoise off the menu, and bought some off those permaculture nuts next-door. Lucky for us they’d got under way by then, eh?”

    Lalla nodded hard. She’d been privileged to look over the fence at the permaculture place. Unfortunately it didn’t offer tours, it would have been fascinating. Though Bernice and Petey had gone right up the drive under the pretence they wanted to buy some organic tomatoes. There encountering a nasty man who’d told them he’d do them for trespassing unless they bought something. So Bernice had bought one organic tomato and retired, red but triumphant, ignoring poor Petey’s wails that they had strawberries.

    “Uh—sorry,” said Jan with a silly grin. “Getting side-tracked—getting as bad as Pete in my old age!” Briskly she told her the amount they could afford to pay her. Lalla thought that that was fine, if they got their meals. And would electricity be extra? Jan blinked but said firmly no, it wouldn’t. And had she thought about getting Petey to school? It was quite a walk and the bus didn’t come this way, there were only the permaculture nuts’ kids out here and their shit of a father had alienated all the locals, so no-one had pushed to alter the school bus route for their benefit. The two boys who were nearest Petey’s age walked with the others, but they were used to it.

    “He can get used to it, too. I’ll go with him at first.”

    “Yeah, well, if the weather’s shocking Pete’ll run him in—no, don’t argue, he takes next-doors’ kids anyway, unbeknownst to their ruddy father. Um, well, it’ll be a big change for you, Lalla. Are you sure?”

    Lalla wasn’t sure about moving all this way and packing in her secure job, though she was really bored with it, but as far as Jan Harper and Pete McLeod and their ecolodge were concerned, she was firmly of Stella’s and Ruthie’s opinion. You couldn’t do better. And she wouldn’t be that much worse off, because having to pay that extra slice of rent was really eating into her salary.

    So they moved, bag and baggage and Davey White. Very fortunately Pete and Jan didn’t seem to think it unusual or ridiculous that an elderly person of nearly five should be very attached to a soft toy. Unlike his grandmother. Mrs Holcroft of course was disapproving and predicted doom, but as she didn’t know about it until after the event there was nothing she could do to prevent it. Mr Holcroft was really miserable at the thought of his grandson being so far away but did not suggest either that they come and live with them or that he and Mrs Holcroft move down to Taupo, where they could buy two houses for what they’d get for their up-market retirement unit in up-market Puriri on the Hibiscus Coast.

    Jean, surprisingly, thought that Lalla was due for a change and that the ecolodge sounded lovely, and did it have wheelchair access? Oh, good, then she and Roger could come and stay! Sherrie, surprisingly, wept buckets, but she was pretty well absorbed in her nice Bob, and Lalla knew that though she might miss seeing Petey regularly her own concerns would soon take over, especially if they had a baby. Bernice was upset that Lalla was going to be so far away but thrilled that she’d be living at the ecolodge and immediately made plans for free holidays over Easter, the skiing season, and next Christmas.

    It wasn’t long before Lalla realised that Jan, of course, was right: the ecolodge was not nearly full for most of the year. They were very, very busy while the good weather lasted, in fact it was a wonder that Jan had been managing at all. She did have a helper, Michelle, who did most of the cleaning, and was totally reliable and conscientious, and another part-time lady, Janet, who helped in the kitchen between about nine in the morning and four in the afternoon in the busy season, but didn’t do waiting; but she’d had innumerable other helpers in the kitchen and restaurant who had all fallen by the wayside. They must have been mad, because you couldn’t imagine anyone nicer to work for than Jan Harper! She wasn’t critical and she thanked you if you did something extra and she taught you things! It was like a miracle, really.

    But once the colder weather set in, although they had some lovely crisp, clear days of the sort you never got in Auckland, where winter was wet and dreary, if not so icy at night, custom at the ecolodge slackened off drastically and there were quite a lot of weeks without any bookings at all. Eventually Lalla persuaded Jan just to give her and Petey their keep over those weeks, it simply wasn’t fair to take a wage for doing nothing.

    The library interloan system came up trumps, so she had plenty to read, but as time went by Lalla found that her mind needed more occupation. Jan, who was a qualified accountant, did teach her to do the books, but Lalla wasn’t interested in taking it further. Oddly enough it was Jan’s very up-market friend, Livia Briggs, who was married to a wealthy barrister with a huge house on the far side of the lake, who came up with an inspiration. Why not see if there were any online hospitality courses? Possibly she had expected Lalla to do a local course, but after looking at a lot of websites, Lalla chose an English one that looked more thorough and more challenging, but wasn’t extortionately dear. A butler’s qualification was offered as a kind of adjunct to the hospitality diploma, so Lalla did that, too. Pete collapsed in horrible sniggers as the sight of her practising in her good black skirt and white blouse and an old waistcoat of his, but agreed amiably to be a guinea pig. And helpfully invited Wal and Livia Briggs over for dinner on a quiet winter’s night—Wal being an old mate of his—so as to give her a tableful to practise on. Wal and Livia had a guest staying in their enormous house, so they brought him, too. And that was how Lalla met Mr Hiram Ledbetter.

    Mr Ledbetter was, as his given name indicated, an American, and Wal Briggs, who had recently retired from his extremely lucrative Auckland legal practice, had once pulled him out of a real bad pickle and he was everlastingly grateful. Even though, as Pete revealed drily, he’d paid through the nose for the wily Q.C.’s services. The pickle involved ownership of a large sea-going yacht which had been anchored in New Zealand waters at the point when illegal items had been discovered aboard it. Not drugs: Pete admitted that Wal in his time had defended every sort of crim, from your poor suburban bastard driven to smother the wife that had had Alzheimer’s for the last fifteen years to bikie heroin traders that’d murder their grandmother for sixpence and boast of it to their jailbird mates afterwards, but by the time Mr Ledbetter’s little bit of bother came along he could afford to pick and choose his clients. The items had consisted of native artefacts from a variety of Pacific islands and a large greenstone mere. No longer legal in the possession of anyone outside the Maori families who had owned them for generations or the Auckland Museum, and even that was being disputed these days. Mr Ledbetter hadn’t been aboard at the time, but that didn’t count. But anyway, Wal got him off with a slap on the wrist and a small fine. Small in his terms.

    Mr Ledbetter was out in New Zealand this time to see his daughter, who’d married a New Zealander who was managing a small motel up in the Bay of Islands. It was a favourite tourist destination for both local and overseas tourists, so the man could hardly be poor, but Mr Ledbetter seemed very gloomy about it. However, as Lalla served the pre-dinner drinks it gradually appeared that this was only because Mac called her “Angie” instead of the very pretty “Angela” that Mother had chosen. Mr Ledbetter owned a small island in the Cooks, with a nice place that they’d had built for them, and he was turning it into a real nice “boutique hotel”, just keeping the one suite for themselves, and Angie and Mac were coming over to manage it! The locals—now, he wasn’t prejudiced but he had to say it—were willing but hopeless, and him and Mother would really appreciate it if Lalla could see her way clear to joining them. Head housekeeper, butler duties for special guests, and help keep an eye on the kitchen staff, make sure they did what Angela wanted. Because she was keen to supervise the menus, and Mother had found a guy who could cook well enough to do sous-chef, but he had to be told what to do, and Angela and Mac wanted to start a family, she couldn’t work fulltime. And the place was real clean, Mother oversaw the hygiene herself, the water was all filtered and they only drank bottled, themselves, and fully air-conditioned throughout! Did she know that Aggie Grey’s, in Samoa? No? Well, it was a nice place, a real nice place, but “Palmyra Polynesia” was nicer, he wasn’t flattering himself when he said so. Real pretty name, huh? Mother had thought it up!

    Lalla might have seen the whole thing as a come-on, but for the mention of “Mother.” Mr Ledbetter had the photos to prove it and Wal and Livia Briggs later assured her he was genuine—and in fact it was obvious he was: never mind he was rich enough to own an island and dealt in dubious archaeological artefacts, he was one of those perfectly genuine, naïve Americans, the sort that can’t see, because they’re so well-meaning themselves, that the rest of the world might envy their prosperity, doubt their genuineness, and not make allowances for their ignorance of all cultural assumptions other than their own. Lalla by this time had been at the ecolodge for just over three years and thanks to the steady trickle of American visitors spawned by Ruthie, Stella and their like, who industriously spread the word back home, she was in no doubt that a lot of Americans were like that, never mind the sad, artificial Hollywood people who thought they were sophisticated—or the truly sophisticated people like the two ladies she’d met in Canberra, come to think of it. Mrs Ledbetter in person then rang her up and urged her to join them, and she sounded, if rather brisk and managing, fundamentally as nice as her husband.

    Lalla was undecided. She still might not have gone, even though there were lots of New Zealanders in the Cooks and the Ledbetters were offering her a huge salary, because it was such a big change to make, and there was Petey’s schooling to think of, but Mrs Holcroft unexpectedly died. Lalla’s main emotion on being told the sad news was an enormous relief, which she didn’t attempt to disguise from herself. She literally felt as if a huge weight had fallen off her shoulders.

    It was a car accident. Mrs Holcroft had driven her own small car for as long as Lalla could remember—not that this had prompted her either to attempt to teach Lalla to drive or to spring for driving lessons for her. She’d only had the latest car for about five years and although it had been second-hand when she bought it, about three years old, it had been in very good condition. However, just lately it had developed what Mr Holcroft, who wasn’t usually allowed to drive it, had discerned to be a wobble in the steering when he’d driven it to the dairy the day his own car was in for servicing. Mrs Holcroft hadn’t noticed any wobble and the car had had its annual service only four months back, so she rubbished the whole notion, declaring she wasn’t going to pay to have it looked at so soon after its last service. He had tried to argue with her—fortunately for his conscience, as it turned out—but hadn’t been listened to. Five days afterwards she drove it off the cliff coming back from an abortive trip to the up-market crafts boutique up at Kingfisher Bay in search of a really nice printed silk scarf. Nobody who knew her doubted that she’d been driving too fast because she’d been pissed off at not finding what she wanted.—They knew she hadn’t found what she wanted, because she’d rung her daughter-in-law and torn a strip off her when the boutique failed to deliver what Marlene had promised.—The accident investigation revealed that the steering had given way just when she drove into a nasty curve and she must have jammed her foot on the accelerator rather than on the brake, which unfortunately wasn’t all that uncommon.

    The crash investigators didn’t have an explanation as to why she’d taken the much longer coast road instead of the motorway, but her relatives did: she’d taken a scunner to that motorway because the first time she’d tried it she’d missed the Kingfisher Bay turn-off—admittedly that roundabout was notorious—and found herself heading back home with no off-ramps until she got there. Regardless of the fact that that had been a northbound trip she had never taken the motorway in either direction since. Not because she was afraid of making the same mistake again—no. Because it was the motorway’s fault.

    Take it for all in all the accident was a judgement on her and though no-one voiced it, it was true to say that all her relatives thought it.

    A month after the funeral Mr Holcroft came down to see Lalla and Petey at the ecolodge and, sitting in their one big room over the garage and looking at her sadly, said: “Your brothers don’t want me.”

    Lalla took a very deep breath. If she said she wanted him he’d come and batten off Pete and Jan for the rest of his days. He’d already got a free room out of them. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him, precisely, but she didn’t think it’d do either of them any good for him to lean on her like he’d leant on her mother. Added to which, though he’d been kind to her in small ways, and then to Petey when he’d come along, he’d never stuck up for her in anything that really mattered.

    “I think that’s because you’ve never stuck up for either of them in your whole life, Dad,” she said steadily.

    He blinked.

    “I’ve always thought it was a mistake for you to take early retirement, but of course Mum never took any notice of my opinion.” –He had retired at fifty-two, far too early, because an insurance policy taken out when he was a baby had matured and because they were down-sizing and offering good redundancy packages at work. And because Mrs Holcroft fancied herself in a smart retirement unit in affluent, middle-class, and almost entirely white Puriri.

    “She wouldn’t let me take that job at the dairy,” he reminded her sadly.

    Lalla eyed him drily. Of course she hadn’t! Not only was working in a dairy terrifically down-market, the dairy in question was run by a Mr Tonks, who was a Maori. “I won’t ask if you ever seriously thought she would.”—He blinked again.—“Look, I’ve got one kid and I don’t need another, Dad.”—He went very red.—“And you’re not even sixty, you’re too young to do nothing for the rest of your days. I know some people who’re opening a boutique hotel in the Cook Islands. Not Rarotonga, an offshore island, it’s very exclusive. They need someone to help with the books, and after all those years in the office I think you could handle it. If you want it, I’ll take the job as head housekeeper that they’ve offered me. But you can’t stay here: I’m not earning enough to keep you and there’s no way I’m going to let you batten off Jan and Pete: they’ve already done far too much for us.”

    His jaw trembled and he said: “You’re getting as hard as your mother.”

    “Perhaps I am,” said Lalla steadily, “and if I am, it’s very largely because I’ve had no support from my closest relatives all my life. I mean you as well as her. And I do mean both emotional support and financial support.”

    His lips were still trembling and he was very red again but after quite some time he managed to say: “You’re right. I’m sorry, Lalla.”

    Lalla looked at him detachedly. “If you’re really sorry, you’ll think about selling that bloody retirement unit and giving some of the money to Bill and Kevin while they’re still young enough to make use of it and haven’t got to the point where they actually hate you.”

    “I thought at least Marlene’d be on my side!” he burst out.

    “She’s on Bill’s side, you idiot, because in spite of all Mum’s efforts to bust them up, they still love each other! And don’t imagine you can give them the money and then foist yourself on them, because they’ll resent it like buggery: they’ll see it as a bribe!”

    “I never thought to hear you use language like that, Lalla!”

    Lalla got up. “That’s probably because you don’t even know me. I’m not going to argue with you, and actually, I’m not interested enough to argue with you. Though I’m not entirely unsympathetic: not many people would have the strength of character to stand up to Mum. I’ll leave you to think about your options: Jan needs me. There’s plenty of juice in the fridge and you can make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, but don’t go over to the bar and let Pete give you freebies, I’d like to be able to look him and Jan in the eye.” With this she went out.

    In her absence Mr Holcroft had a little cry but as she didn’t return, soon stopped.

    … “Lalla,” said Jan in horror as she revealed what she’d said: “he may be your father but he doesn’t deserve a thing from you, and even if he does do a decent job for the Ledbetters you’ll be stuck with him, you know. It’s too late for him to stand on his own two feet.”

    “That’s right, lovey,” agreed Pete sympathetically. “Too late to apportion blame, too, eh?”

    “Yes, you’re right,” said Lalla, smiling at them both. “If he takes the job seriously I won’t mind being stuck with him. If he doesn’t knuckle down to it I’ll let the Ledbetters sack him and send him home. Don’t worry, I’ll explain it all carefully to them. They’ll probably think I’m as hard as nails, but it can’t be helped.”

    The Ledbetters didn’t think that, as they’d had the whole story, via Livia Briggs: they thought it was real sensible, and agreed to take Neville Holcroft on for a trial period.

    And so it came to pass, ten years after Lalla’s visit to Canberra, that she and the now nine-year-old Petey Holcroft were living at Palmyra Polynesia. Lalla, as Mac and Angie Gordon freely admitted, had become completely indispensable, and was loved by all the staff. And Neville had settled in really well, and if he believed Mary Nelson was a widow, so much the better: living with her was doing him all the good in the world! And no-one thought anything of mixed relationships, here.

Next chapter:

https://thelallaeffect.blogspot.com/2024/01/palmyra-polynesia.html