Nobody's Uncle

2

Nobody’s Uncle

    The man in the terry-cloth robe who was not Uncle Tom was called Peter Sale. The Pommy accent and the understated, very English looks did not belie him: he was, indeed, English. It was a very old family and up until the late nineteenth century had been prosperous enough, in a landed-gentry way. At that point the head of the house had developed a passion for cards, and what with that and the advent of Mr Lloyd George, the rot had fairly set in, and by the time of the stock market crash of 1929 there had been very little left of the Sale estates except the house itself. The Peter Sale of the time, who had been this man’s grandfather, had followed the usual family path: Eton and the University; but then had unexpectedly gone into the City, subsequently marrying the only child of his wealthy employer. During the War his father-in-law’s business, which he was now managing, had diversified into munitions, and Peter Sale formed many useful business connections, not merely in army supplies; by the time the conflict ended his character, which had been fairly determined anyway, was pretty well ruthless. The firm flourished after the War, diversifying into machine tools, then into property development, and then into a variety of other interests. The first Peter’s son, Richard, had taken over after his father’s extended reign, but he’d never been a well man, and this Peter Sale, now thirty-seven years of age, had become CEO when still only a young man. By that time the Quinn Sale group was a multinational which owned, amongst other useful assets, a merchant bank, a giant long-distance freightage company, two supermarket chains in Britain and three in Europe, an oil and gas exploration company complete with the rigs that went with it, and the better part of a giant mining conglomerate currently chewing up large chunks of barely charted Indonesia and Melanesia. Plus a couple of small but useful hunks of outback Australia. Peter Sale was a very wealthy man indeed, even though he did not of course own any of the Quinn Sale companies outright.

    At this moment he was also a fed-up and disgruntled man. Canberra was damned hot and damned poky and damned boring; there was no-one in the whole of Australia who was capable of exchanging two intelligent words with him, or certainly no-one whom he had met; he had been plagued by reporters from the moment he stepped off the plane—it must be their silly season and by God it felt like it; and for inscrutable reasons the British High Commissioner’s lady had decided to foist ranks, positively ranks, of ghastly divorced expatriate females upon him as dinner partners, luncheon partners, picnic partners, dance partners, you-name-it partners.

    The episode at the end of the preceding week might have been considered typical; but Peter Sale had felt at the time that it was the last straw. He had been invited by an Australian businessman to a barbecue dinner. You might have thought you couldn’t get more Australian than that, didn’t they claim to have invented the damned things? He had assumed that though there would be mosquitoes and clouds of choking, execrably scented mosquito repellent (this was not his first visit to Australia), he would at least be free of the frightfully frilled and lipsticked, gaily giggling divorced expats. (Why was it that they all, without exception, dyed their hair to a shade it could never have attained on its own? Purplish red, very often. And wore huge artificial coloured fingernails? And tanned themselves to the shade of old mahogany and dieted themselves into a state of near-anorexia?) But the very first person he set eyes on at the barbecue was the High Commissioner’s wife, with the most frightfully lipsticked and gallantly girlish of the expats in tow, expressly to be his barbecue partner. God!

    Not that the Australian females offered for his delectation were better. The accents were different but the tone just as loud and as vile, the hair was even more elaborately frizzed and gelled, and the lashes even spikier. And in the case of those present at the barbecue, certainly the earrings were even larger and the bangles even clashier. Not to mention the huge teeth. In fact every Australian woman he had met so far had had huge teeth. To cap it all someone had let the bloody Press in and he had found himself being snapped between the frightful expat and one of the Australian ones, both showing the teeth. “Two Carnivores with Captive” would probably be the caption in Australian Vogue. –Was there one? Whatever.

    The barbecue had been the nadir, but so far the entire Australian experience had been vile. And he had something like three more weeks of it: he couldn’t possibly get away until after that meeting on the twenty-sixth. True, business-wise things were not going badly, but every time he so much as poked his nose out of doors for a breath of fresh air, there they were. Hordes of ’em. Flashing and clashing and giggling.

    And what was worse, this sort of thing had now been going on, more or less, for three years. Well, strictly speaking it had been going on ever since he and Monica divorced, eight years back, but in the interval he had been more or less protected, first by Kitty, who was an angel, but dumb as they come and definitely out for marriage, so when she’d hooked a fat American film producer Peter hadn’t much cared, and then by Sylvia, who had been protective all right, as a female mantis of its intended mate and dinner. She had been, both physically and emotionally, the most exhausting female Peter Sale had ever met, and he often wondered why the Hell he’d got mixed up with her. Though eventually he’d decided it hadn’t had much to do with any move he might have made: he had simply been, for whatever reasons deep-lodged in Sylvia’s much-quoted psyche, the required prey of the moment. Sylvia was an opera singer, very loosely based in London, and if not in the diva class musically, pretty well as demanding, in her private life, as one imagined Callas must have been in her heyday. She was talented enough and more than determined enough to do quite well in her profession, and certainly lovely enough to have her pick of the idiot males who lined up begging to be gobbled up. Sylvia’s psyche, Peter had discovered three years back, had not required a thoughtless, selfish macho brute who habitually left her flat at dinner parties where she hardly knew a soul because he’d had an urgent phone call from the office. Nor had it required a self-centred, selfish, egotistical brute who didn’t turn up for her first night at Glyndebourne because something had come up at the office. Nor had it required a mean bastard who refused to spend three million on a very small, cold, drainless broken-down castle in the Scottish Highlands that had come onto the market just when Sylvia had decided they needed to get away from it all (get away from it all and take it all with them, of course). And finally, nor did it need a self-serving, self-centred adolescent who wasn’t capable of understanding that Sylvia and the psyche needed room to expand. Peter might have given in over the castle but there was no way he could have brought himself to accept the combination of Sylvia, the psyche, and the newly acquired quasi-Lesbian lover the psyche needed for its expansion. Not even with the Lesbian’s part-time boyfriend. No, not even in Mustique on the very public “private” holiday Sylvia had had the brass face to propose the day he’d walked into his own bedroom and found the three of them at it. That was the point at which he’d broken it off.

    For some time Peter had missed sex with Sylvia but simultaneously he was conscious of a strong feeling that thank God he was rid of the bloody woman at last! And that his London flat and his country house were at last free of the endless streams of freeloaders, all exciting new discoveries in the performing or visual arts, and with most of whom, it gradually dawned on his simple mind, Sylvia had in all probability been sleeping, too.

    Unfortunately freedom from Sylvia did have its negative side: there was now no-one to protect Peter from all the other rapacious females in the world who were beating a path to his door. He was not a vain man and he didn’t imagine for one second that this was because of his personal charms. He knew some women found him attractive, yes; but a damn’ sight more of them found his fortune even more attractive.

    Of course when he was at home, either in town or the country, he was pretty well protected: his servants were reliable and had been with him for years. And the rapacious females couldn’t beard him at the office: there were ranks of defences to be broken down before they could have got a sniff of even his outer office. But at dinner parties, lunch parties, theatre parties, racing parties, polo parties, et al., he was, he had long since realised, fair game. So why in God’s name he had imagined it would be different out in Australia—!

    Whether it was the shock of finding it wasn’t different, the gaggles of giggly expats, the Australian teeth, or the Canberra humidity, which seemed to descend every afternoon around five in a sort of sickening, clinging, sweaty blanket, Peter couldn’t have said. The barbecue’s gaspingly brutal Australian Shiraz that needed to lie in the deep-delvèd earth for at least another ten years might have been a factor, too. Anyway, whatever it was, he’d been and gone and said something very silly at the barbecue. As the High Commissioner’s wife tried to foist yet another frilled and fortyish moron on him, he’d said lightly: “Lunch next Tuesday? Er—no, I’d love to, Belinda, but I can’t make it: my fiancée’s due in Canberra: I’ll be meeting her plane around lunchtime.”

    In response to the gasps and protestations of having had no idea, and of course he must bring her, too—well, dinner, then, Peter darling!—and blah, blah—Peter had without any effort whatsoever produced a string of smooth and circumstantial lies.

    Mornings in Canberra in February, he was finding, were delightful: fresh and clear, not a hint of the previous evening’s humidity. And often with a delicate crispness in the air. As he woke the day after the barbecue and flung open his windows to the morning’s crispness, Peter had realised with a norful sinking feeling that he’d really bloody been and gone and done it: how in God’s name was he going to get out of that one?

    Very gradually the temptation not even to try to get out of it, to go ahead and bloody do the lot of them in the eye, not to say unbalance the High Commissioner’s lady’s dinner-table for the rest of the month, had overtaken him. It hadn’t even been hard to set up: the Sydney office had discreetly contacted a few agencies, several score aspiring models and actresses had been screened, and Miss Holcroft had been approved as Choice Number One. Sufficient acting ability to bring it off; able to speak nice—well, enough to be reasonably convincing, he didn’t require miracles and he’d already told the High Commissioner’s wife that the girl was an Australian; not too young—he didn’t want to look like a cradle-snatcher—but not too old—he didn’t want their audience to think he’d been stupid enough to fall into the clutches of a maroon-haired fortyish divorcée. And reasonable-looking. Able to wear clothes. Since giving orders to Sydney he had of course had more than ample time to regret it. Not to say decide it would be extremely easy just to tell the wife of the High Commissioner that his fiancée hadn’t been able to make it after all, illness in the family. And yet he hadn’t put a stop to it. Peter Sale couldn’t have said why the Hell not. He supposed, vaguely, that since Sydney seemed to have found the ideal candidate he might as well look at her. He could always send her back with a cheque for her trouble if he didn’t like what he saw.

    So far he didn’t much like what he’d seen of Miss Holcroft but he didn’t actively dislike her, so he thought they might at least talk about it.

    Lalla Holcroft was never afterwards able to explain why she did what she did that day. But possibly the fact that on the plane coming over the Tasman she’d had a nasty shock might have had something to do with it. It didn’t take Lalla long to figure that out, in fact the notion was at the back of her mind even as she did what she did. But exactly why it should have influenced her in that way…

    What had happened was this. Lalla’s mother had insisted on getting up at crack of dawn in order to make sure Lalla got to the airport, even though Jean was more than capable of making sure of that and even though Lalla herself was actually capable of ordering a taxi for crack of dawn. True, if Mrs Holcroft wanted to see her daughter’s plane depart she’d have to wait around for two hours, since Lalla had to report in two hours before the trans-Tasman flight took off, which added half as much again onto her travelling time. (And that plus the time it would take to get out to the airport from Jean’s and Lalla’s flat doubled the travelling time.) At the International Airport, just as Lalla was about to disappear behind the giant barrier that cut you off from your friends and relatives two hours before you were due to depart, Mrs Holcroft had thrust a sealed envelope into her hand, saying with a very significant look on her face: “I thought you’d like to see this, dear. I know you don’t get the Listener.” Lalla had simply accepted the envelope, not bothering to try to interpret the significant look: Mum did that for anything ranging from the news that Aunty Jan’s Coralie was pregnant yet again, to the news that Maoris or Indians or had moved into the house over the road. (Worse news, such as that Islanders had moved in, would rate an actual diatribe. Not that this specific event had occurred in Mr and Mrs Holcroft’s neat little retirement suburb.)

    On the plane her usual failure to thought-ray the hostess into offering her The Bulletin to read instead of a New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, an Australian Women’s Weekly, or an Australian House & Garden had driven Lalla, once she’d finished her book and devoured the flight literature, to open the envelope. It was a cutting from The New Zealand Listener, all right. In fact it was a four-page spread only slightly interrupted by two pages of advertising, which Mrs Holcroft had included, on Professor Maurice Black. Who had just died. Ten days before the Listener had gone to press, so, it being the sort of magazine that reviews plays and exhibitions six weeks after they’ve closed, it must have had it all set up for years in anticipation. He hadn’t been that old, only in his early seventies. Lalla had experienced a sort of numbness as she read it. Not just because Maurice Black had once seemed as permanent a feature in her existence as the moon and just as unreachable, but because in the first place that had been years ago and in the second place how could anyone, even Mum, have been so crass as to imagine that if she was interested enough to want to read his obituary she wouldn’t also be very upset by suddenly learning he had died?

    Now Lalla sat on a heavy, swathed white sofa with giant white bows round the swathing that hid its lower parts and re-read the letter to Miss Holcroft carefully. Several times, he was ages coming back.

    Finally he did come back, still looking cross.

    “Where were we?” he said, sitting down on a large white-swathed chair.

    Up until this moment Lalla had convinced herself that she was going to tell him the truth immediately and walk out. Now she suddenly found herself saying crossly: “We weren’t anywhere.”

    “Er—no. Well, that should have expanded on what you were told in Sydney, Miss Holcroft. It’s a draft letter of contract—”

    “I can see that,” said Lalla grimly. Legal research was her job, true, but anyone but a moron would have been able to see that this was a letter of contract. The sort of contract that let Peter Sale, who this man must be, of course, though he hadn’t had the manners to introduce himself, out of absolutely everything and gave the other party to the agreement no rights whatsoever.

    “Are the terms satisfactory?” he said after a short pause.

    “If you mean the money, this is Australian dollars, is it?”

    “Y— Uh— We can write it in that it’s to be in American dollars, if you prefer.”

    “No. When you try to change foreign money the banks take a huge great whack out of it. Only for ordinary people like me, of course,” said Lalla, giving him a nasty look.

    Peter Sale blinked. “No doubt.” The damned woman didn’t say anything else and he found himself forced to add: “Well?”

    “It’s a lot of money for two weeks’ work,” she said.

    Peter’s jaw sagged slightly but he managed to say: “You would be on duty twenty-four hours a day, you know.”

    Suddenly Lalla thought she saw. She went very red, stood up abruptly and said in a trembling voice. “I get it. Sorry. I don’t care if you are this party of the first part, and I know you’re rich and all that, but I’m not a call-girl.”

    “For God’s sake!” he said, not getting up. Even in these liberated days that was very rude, thought Lalla crossly, she was a guest and at his age he should have learned some manners when he was growing up. Unlike her cousin Coralie’s kids, who sprawled all over a seat each in the bus when there were old ladies getting on that had to stand.

    She glared at him and he said: “I thought they explained all that to you in Sydney? Look, for God’s sake sit down again. I don’t require a bloody call-girl. Or any kind of sex of whatever nature—however unlikely.”

    As this last addition had been drawled more or less looking down his nose, which to Lalla’s annoyance he managed even though he was sitting down, she was angrier than ever, and didn’t sit down, and said: “Why isn’t that spelled out in the letter of contract, then?”

    He groaned and said: “It will be, if that’s what you want. I told that fool, Shane, to make sure those morons in the Sydney office made that clear from the outset.’

    Suddenly Lalla went scarlet and said in a choked voice: “Does he know?” And did sit down. No wonder the yuppie had given her an odd look! Well, any girl that would volunteer for this sort of job—! Escort service and then some!

    “What? Yes, of course he knows: someone had to handle the arrangements,” he replied dismissively.

    “You couldn’t have done it yourself, of course!” returned Lalla in very choked tones.

    “No, I’m too busy,” he said, sounding both vague and uninterested.

    Suddenly Lalla shouted: “For Pete’s SAKE! Too busy, when you’re proposing to spend the next two solid weeks pretending you’re engaged to this woman?” There was a short pause. “Well, me, I suppose,” said Lalla in a much smaller voice.

    “Yes. –Look, what is that accent?” he said irritably.

    Lalla’s mouth opened but for a moment no sound came out. He obviously hadn’t taken in a word she’d said—or if he had, he didn’t care. “New Zealand,” she admitted feebly.

    “Oh, good grief!” Peter passed a hand across his forehead. “I’ve told the High Commissioner’s wife you’re an Australian,” he said limply.

    Lalla got up again. “Good, then I’ll push off.”

    “No, don’t do that,” he said.

    Was he trying not to smile? Lalla goggled at him incredulously. The completely entrancing mouth had certainly seemed to twitch, for a moment.

    “Sit down again and let’s discuss it calmly. –You’re not in the least what I imagined.”

    “You said that before.” Lalla sat down very slowly.

    “Did I? –Someone in the Sydney office must have more nous than I’d thought,” he murmured to himself.

    At that precise moment Lalla nearly—very nearly—told him the truth.

    Then he said: “Well, so much the better: you may be able to hold your own at the bloody High Commissioner’s wife’s bloody dinner-table, then,” and any tendency towards softening towards him and not taking him for that immense sum his offensive letter of contract had had the gall to offer the real Miss Holcroft, wherever she was, vanished.

    “I don’t think so, I’ve seen photos of that sort of lady: they always wear fancy jewellery and lots of make-up. And shoulder-pads—or are they out, now?”

    “Not quite,” said Peter, trying not to laugh. “How much experience have you had?”

    “What of, pretending to be someone’s fiancée or dining with the High Commiss— You mean the British High Commissioner?” ended Lalla in a squeak.

    “Of course, what else— Oh: I suppose there is a New Zealand one, yes. He’s probably home on holiday at this time of the year, if he’s got any sense. I meant experience of an acting job that lasts for more than two seconds while you hold the smile for the camera.”

    “None, as such, I’m not an actress,” said Lalla firmly, thinking she had at least better get that one out in the open. And if he decided he didn’t want her after all, then she hadn’t lost anything, had she?

    Peter rubbed his nose. “Mm. What makes you think you can pull it off, then?”

    Lalla took a deep breath. “Well, I have had quite a bit of experience pretending to be someone’s fiancée, actually.”

    There was a short pause.

    “I think I see. In your private capacity, would this be?”

    “Yes, and don’t laugh,” said Lalla grimly.

    “I’m not laughing,” he murmured, again sounding vague and uninterested.

    Lalla glared, but couldn’t think of anything else to put forward as a possible qualification, so didn’t say anything.

    After a moment he said: “If I said Coq au vin with an Australian Shiraz, what would your reaction be?”

    Lalla blinked.

    “I said—”

    “I heard you. I’d say it’d be a bit much for lunch, in summer, wouldn’t it? And I don’t much like Australian reds, they’re too heavy, but I wouldn’t stop you drinking it. And before you say anything, I can see that that was a test, but it was a really dumb one, and I don’t know anything about French wines!” finished Lalla loudly, panting slightly.

    “Who was it who taught you about Australian ones, then? The—er—false fiancé?”

    After a moment Lalla admitted sulkily: “I might have learned it up for myself, hasn’t that occurred to you? But as a matter of fact it was, yes. So what?”

    “Nothing,” he murmured, again looking as if he was trying not to smile. “I suppose you’d know what to do with a plate of snails, too?”

    “I’ve seen that film, in fact the whole of the so-called civilised world has probably seen that film,” said Lalla grimly, “and I wouldn’t have to do anything with a plate of snails, because I wouldn’t have ordered them in the first place. I hate them. They’re like garlicky rubber.”

    “I only saw it on a plane,” he replied apologetically.

    After a moment Lalla admitted: “My flatmate’s got a video of it. It’s incredibly sentimental, isn’t it? But we were both glued to it. I suppose it’s well acted, but I don’t think that’s entirely it: the Cinderella theme must reflect some sort of atavism, don’t you think?”

    “Undoubtedly. Would you say that the Beauty and the Beast story was the same sort of thing?”

    “Yes, only there you’ve got the additional thing of, um, the sexual attraction of, um, a really grotesque sort of man. Um, and quite a bit of sadism, I think. Um, there was an element of that in that film, too, I thought.”

    His mouth twitched a little. “Quite.”

    “Go on, laugh: I know I didn’t put it well. But they wouldn’t let us do fairy tales in English III, they said we could only do them at post-grad level, and I couldn’t afford to—” Lalla broke off.

    “You did a degree in English literature?”

    “No. Um, well, I did do three years of English, because I had one extra subject to do to finish my B.A., but really I majored in history and—” She stopped abruptly. “It was New Zealand history, really,” she said in a small voice. “Not what you’d call history.”

    “Do I strike you as North-oriented as that?”

    “More Anglocentric,” said Lalla firmly.

    Peter flung back his head and laughed. “Thanks!” he gasped finally.

    “It’s the accent,” said Lalla, not sounding apologetic. “And the way you assumed the British High Commissioner was the only one.”

    “I’m sure!” He gave her a sly look. “Would it surprise you to learn I’m actually a European mongrel?”

    “Yes, it’d astound me,” said Lalla firmly.

    “My father was only half English: his mother was Jewish. Well, the family had been in England for over a hundred years, but nevertheless. And my mother is French, but her grandmother was Spanish.”

    “It doesn’t show,” said Lalla drily.

    He smiled a little, but let it drop. “Well, if you can take the expression ‘North-oriented’ without a blink, and if you actually thought about that bloody film, even if you were unable to stop yourself lapping it up, you’ll do. Er, provided you think you can stand it.”

    Lalla took a deep breath: that was obviously her cue to go all feminine and gasp that of course she could, Mr Sale! –Supposing that he was, which HE STILL HADN’T SAID.

    “I’m not sure; I’d need to know exactly what was expected of me. And is it you?” she said firmly.

    “What?”

    “Is it you?” repeated Lalla, this time going very red but sticking firmly to her guns and looking him in the eye. “This party of the first part. Peter Sale.”

    “Yes,” said Peter Sale limply. “Of course.”

    “I see. I thought it must be, with the accent. –Does the French blood explain Quinn Sale’s takeover of Super-Mini-Marchés S.A., or was that a coincidence?”

    Peter’s jaw had sagged. “A coincidence,” he croaked.

    She just nodded.

    “Look, do you want to do it or not?” he croaked.

    “Um, well, what will I have to do exactly?”

    “Exactly,” he said slowly.

    “Yes. This,” said Lalla, waving her hand disparagingly at the letter of contract, “is all phrased in much too general terms. Apart from the escape clauses relating to you, of course.”

    Peter rubbed his chin. “Perhaps if I describe a typical day?” She nodded seriously, so he continued feebly: “Er, well, today hasn’t been typical, or not the latter part of it: I’d better take yesterday. I had a damned breakfast meeting: the Australians seem to have picked that one up from the damned Yanks. Normally they seem to have them in hotel dining-rooms, but this one was at someone’s home, and the wives and fiancées were expected to turn up. Floral frocks. High-heeled sandals. They sat on the patio under one sun umbrella and chatted about God knows what—floral frocks and high-heeled sandals, very likely—while we sat under another and talked men’s talk.” He eyed her sardonically. “We all ate the same stuff, though. Slices of cantaloupe and watermelon, sliced strawberries, sliced kiwis, and sliced—uh—papaya. I’m sorry: you don’t call it that, I don’t think, but I—”

    “Pawpaw,” said Lalla. “It’s much cheaper over—I mean, in New Zealand it’s awfully dear.”

    “Er—yes. Well, that was the first course, I suppose, but the whole do was a buffet. The hot course, though I don’t expect you to believe me, consisted of eggs Benedict and sliced ham on warmed, sliced croissants.”

    Lalla had once been on a conference jaunt to Adelaide that had incorporated a side-trip to the Barossa Valley for a wine and food festival. That had been precisely what the breakfast had consisted of, so she merely nodded mutely.

    He shrugged. “Plus execrable coffee.”

    Lalla had never actually heard anyone say “execrable”. She nodded mutely again.

    “Oh, and Buck’s fizz. Their orange juice is quite pleasant.”

    “Some of it is, yeah. It depends on the brand. The Berri stuff’s awful, which is strange, because their apricot nectar’s absolutely wonderful!” confided Lalla, getting carried away.

    “I’ll remember that,” he said politely.

    Recalled to herself, Lalla reddened. “Sorry. Um—well, it doesn’t sound too bad. Usually if I have to talk to ladies like that,” she explained, thinking of the “happy hours” with the ladies from Accounts and the Pool, “I just sort of agree with everything they say.”

    “All one can do,” he murmured.

    Did he really agree, or was he getting at her? Or at the sort of lady that talked about the rich Australian version of microwaves and mortgages? Or—or what? She looked at him doubtfully.

    “When they’d finished theirs the hostess gave ’em a tour of the house; I gather that’s quite normal,” he drawled.

    Lalla swallowed, but nodded.

    “Let’s see: came back to this dump,”—Lalla twitched, but he didn’t seem to notice—“went through the mail with the yuppie,”—she swallowed—“read through a lot of papers and so forth for the afternoon’s business meeting. During that kind of period a fiancée would generally sunbathe on the patio or swim in the swimming-pool, or have her hair done—”

    “I get it, thanks!”

    Peter Sale smiled a little. “After that, lunch. A different floral frock. Possibly silk. Let me think… Well, it was a mixed bag. Some of the Embassy people are around, though a lot seem to be on holiday. The French diplomatic wives looked wonderful, so did the Indians from the High Commission,”—he eyed her sardonically—“but the business wives were hideously over-frilled and over-lipsticked. With masses of frizzed hair—you know the local style.” He shrugged.

    “Um—yes,” said Lalla blankly. “Do you mean I have to get my hair permed?”

    “No—Christ, no!” he said, wincing. “Er—a shampoo might not be a bad idea, though.”

    She reddened. “I was going to wash it tonight, anyway.”

    “Good. But let me suggest, this afternoon. Where was I? Oh, yes. Lunch. It was another bloody buffet. On a lawn. Not enough shade, so I’d strongly recommend a hat. –Most of the females were a sort of dark mahogany, of course,” he added idly.

    Lalla looked at him uncertainly, wondering if he was criticising her failure to tan in the correct Australasian fashion. “I was working all last month, I didn’t get much sun.”

    “Definitely a hat, then. Uh—well, it was bloody boring. Though I admit I did have a nice chat to the French Ambassador’s wife about a production of Tristan und Isolde we both saw at l’Opéra last year.”

    “Um, there is an opera house in Sydney,” she said limply.

    “Yes, it’s full of Andrew Lloyd Webber productions,” he returned cordially.

    “Sometimes they have real opera or ballet!” said Lalla crossly.

    Peter bit his lip. “I’m sorry, Lalla.”

    Lalla went bright red and looked away. “No,” she said gruffly. “You’re right, it’s pretty awful. Only I’ve never been to Europe or anything. Something’s better than nothing. And—um—I didn’t mean to be rude. I suppose I’m jealous.”

    “I see,” he said limply.

    There was a pause. Lalla looked glumly at the opposite wall and Peter looked uncertainly at her.

    “Er, lunch consisted of rather a lot of seafood, which I was taught not to eat in the months without—in the warmer months. Rock lobster with chilli and coconut sauce, that sort of thing. Mountainous mixed salads, but the intention seemed to be that one didn’t eat the green, leafy vegetables that formed the base of ’em. Have you encountered that syndrome?”

    “I don’t— Oh, yes! I know what you mean! I was at a conference once where they had lots of salads like that—the big opening dinner was included in the price, you see—and the one near me was kind of mixed mandarine pieces and cold macaroni and cucumber and radishes and, um, I think it might have been fetta cheese, and it was all sitting on that red and green curly lettuce, only nobody ate that. Except me,” finished Lalla, glaring at him.

    To her astonishment he beamed at her, the perfect mouth doing its stuff, and said: “Good, that’s thee and me, then! My mother would have a fit at the sight of all those salad greens going to waste as bloody decoration!”

    “Um, yes,” said Lalla uncertainly. Her mother would have a fit at the sight of anything going to waste, but Mrs Holcroft wasn’t that keen on leafy salad greens. Tiny wee strips of limp lettuce produced by grimly rolling the leaves into submission was more like it.

    “My mother’s French,” he reminded her.

    “Yes, you said,” agreed Lalla foggily. “And part Spanish.”

    “Yes, but that doesn’t count!” he said with a little laugh. “Well, that was more or less it for the lunch. Well, there was pudding: gateaux, and so on. Too many calories for me!” he said, smiling again.

    Was it the mention of his mother that had suddenly perked him up? Lalla looked at him dubiously, wondering if he was perhaps one of those gays that were terribly fond of their mothers? She knew several gay men and none of them was particularly fond of his mother, but this didn’t occur to her just at this moment. Possibly because at the thought he might be gay—which would certainly explain why he didn’t want sex or anything from the not-call-girl he proposed hiring—her heart had unexpectedly sunk right into her shabby sneakers.

    “Mm,” she said.

    “Let me see. Inane conversation about Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals and the latest political scandals; floral silk frock; hat; okay?” He raised his eyebrows at her.

    “What?” she said, jumping. “Oh! Yes.” Wondering where on earth the floral silk frock was to come from. Because presumably she wouldn’t get the money in advance. She tried to remember what had happened in Pretty Woman but all she could recall was the very snooty shop assistants. Lalla wasn’t much into shopping but her world was certainly filled with snooty shop assistants who effectively circumvented her weak efforts to shop, so she had thoroughly sympathised with that scene. Um—had the man given the girl his credit card? No, she must have it wrong, she knew you couldn’t use someone else’s card, because they checked your signature: Bernice, who was her cousin Coralie’s eldest daughter and aged nearly fifteen, had taken her shopping once and tried to use Coralie’s credit card and the shop assistant had threatened to call the police. It had been possibly the most embarrassing moment of Lalla’s life, but Bernice had only said: “Oh, well, it was worth a try.”

    Peter looked at her expression and said in a feeble voice: “Back home in the stretch limo to sleep it off.”

    “What? Oh!” she said, jumping. “Yes.”

    “Coming home in the stretch limo,” he drawled, looking at her sideways, “some fiancées would be called upon for a quiet snog, but I can assure you, we’ll skip that bit.”

    “Yes,” said Lalla grimly. He must be gay. Well, so much the better.

    “Likewise on arrival at this charming mansion,” he said, swallowing a laugh. “Dull business meeting for the rest of the afternoon. Fiancées as during the dull paperwork of the morning, I’m afraid. Then cocktails: sort of a semi-political gathering.” He made a face.

    “When Mum was a girl they wore little black dresses for cocktails,” said Lalla politely.

    Peter had just been about to say: “Little black dress.” He winced. “Quite. But in this day and age, anything goes, judging by yesterday’s efforts. You’d have been going on to dinner, so a dinner dress would have been quite acceptable.”

    Lalla swallowed. Yikes, what was a dinner dress, when it was at home?

    “The cocktail thing dragged on interminably. Half of them were on about the local political scandals again, and the other half—or possibly the same half the other half of the time,” he noted politely, “were on about your new Aboriginal rights legislation.”

    “Oh.”

    “The ones from the Government benches who felt their political masters’ eyes to be upon them were very polite about it, those who were on the other side were either very polite or scathingly rude, depending on which persuasion of the other side they affected, and possibly which state they were from, though I didn’t grasp the nuances of that one; and those Government members who didn’t feel their masters’ eyes to be upon them or who were pissed out of their tiny minds were scathingly rude about it. Oh, and prejudiced, but you might have gathered that.”

    “You really had a good time, didn’t you?” said Lalla drily.

    He grinned. “Mm-hm.”

    “The Western Australians are scared out of their wits by it. There’s huge mining interests there, all banking on getting their mitts on huge tracts of Aboriginal land without having to pay a penny for it.”

    “So I gather,” said Peter, not mentioning Quinn Sale’s mining interests. “What about the Northern Territory?”

    “I think the case is the same, but they’re not so scared, because the right-wing party’s got the state well and truly sewn up. I don’t think there’s ever been a Labor government there.”

    Peter smiled a little, and nodded. “I see. –You know, this federalism stuff seems mad to me, with a population of only under twenty million. Even spread out as it is.”

    Lalla shrugged. “Don’t look at me, I’m a New Zealander. I think it’s mad, too.”

    “Yes, of course—I was forgetting. Remind me that we’ll have to dream up something plausible to explain that away to the ruddy High Commissioner’s lady, will you?”

    “There’s lots of New Zealanders over here,” she said placidly.

    “I’m glad to hear it. Um—where was I?”

    “Cocktails.”

    “Oh, yes. –They usually aren’t, out here, by the way, so be warned: soi-disant ‘champagne’, reds and whites, the reds too young and the whites either too acid or too over-oaked or both— Sorry,” he said, grimacing: “One of my hobby-horses. You can produce decent reds, why the Hell don’t you let them— Sorry.”

    “Let them what?”

    “Mature,” said Peter with a sigh. “Never mind. Oh, and for God’s sake never eat anything at these bloody cocktail things.”

    “All right,” said Lalla, puzzled but obedient.

    He sighed again. “Dinner was next. Acquaintances of business acquaintances—you know the style. I think one of them wanted to sell me his interest in a chunk of Western Australia before the Aborigines claimed it back,”—Lalla bit her lip—“and another seemed to want to sell me his daughter, though I may be flattering myself, there, and another definitely wanted me to go into partnership with him and open up a merchant bank in Sydney as a joint venture with Vibart’s of London— Sorry, I’m boring on,” he said, making a face. “Well, your function at such does would most certainly be to protect me from the type that wants to sell me its daughter. Not to mention from the daughters themselves, plus all the unattached females in the Southern Hemisphere, with their sisters and their cousins and their—” He broke off and took a second look at her face. “I’m not kidding,” he said grimly.

    “Is—is that what all this is in aid of?” fumbled Lalla. “You’re scared of these ladies?”

    “Not scared, dammit, fed up!” he said loudly.

    “Oh.”

    “Look, I know it’s bloody silly,” said Peter, passing his hand over his forehead, “but I— To tell you the truth, I— Well, I don’t know,” he said limply. “Possibly I was drunk, or it was the humidity, or— Look, it was like this,” he said grimly under the wide-eyed, wondering stare: she had huge, limpid eyes that were the colour of pale sherry, rather lovely, but that straight gaze was horribly disconcerting. “The High Commissioner’s bloody wife foisted one too many giggling expat divorcées onto me and I told the woman I couldn’t make it to her bloody Tuesday lunch because my fiancée was arriving that day.”

    “Today’s Tuesday,” said Lalla numbly.

    “Quite. Why I said fiancée and not merely girlfriend, I have no idea. Possibly in order to stop her in her tracks. –It did that,” he noted drily.

    “Ye-es… Help, I see! Do you mean she’d been—um—finding ladies for you?” she gasped.

    “Got it in one,” said Peter acidly.

    “Yikes,” said Lalla numbly.

    “‘Yikes’ puts it rather well. And just to put you fully in the picture, the ladies she didn’t find for me have been finding me for themselves.”

    “Yes. Um, some people,” said Lalla, clearing her throat, “would just, um, come out of the—you know—closet,” she ended hoarsely.

    Peter’s ears rang. “What?”

    “I’m sorry: maybe it’s different in Europe!” gasped Lalla.

    “Great God Almighty,” he said, passing his hand over his face. “I’m not looking for the pansy’s friend, you silly woman!”

    “Oh,” said Lalla dubiously.

    “I am not,” said Peter Sale loudly and slowly, “gay.”

    “Oh,” said Lalla, going very red. “Lots of people are, these days.”

    “I’m NOT GAY!” he shouted.

    “Well, how was I to know?”

    “Can’t you— No,” said Peter limply: “very evidently you can’t tell. Look, not to blow my own trumpet, but that’s part of the bloody problem. Since Sylvia and I split up, I’ve been—uh—pestered by bloody women.”

    “Oh.”

    He sighed. “They wouldn’t bother if I was gay, would they? And we split up because I couldn’t take her sleeping around on the excuse her bloody psyche needed an open relationship!” he ended loudly and angrily.

    “Oh,” said Lalla, goggling at him.

    “Don’t tell me I’m not this century’s answer to Casanova, I know that, thanks. But I do happen to be hetero, momentarily unattached, and very rich,” said Peter in a nasty voice.

    “I see. Um, couldn’t, you just be, um, off-putting?” It seemed to her he could be: very easily.

    “Er… Let me put it delicately. It’s very difficult to be off-putting enough, when one has a great deal of money.”

    “Mm,” she said, nodding. “I get it.”

    “I hope so,” he muttered. –Gay! For God’s sake, was she blind or unnatural or what?

    “If that’s all it’s for, I think I can do it,” she said.

    “What? Oh! Yes,” said Peter limply. –Gay? Hell’s bloody bells!

    “Um, I haven’t got any floral frocks, though,” said Lalla anxiously.

    “What? Oh, for God’s sake, didn’t Sydney— No. Look, Shane will take you shopping, okay? Do you know Canberra, at all? –No,” he said as she shook her head. “Well, that’s all right: he was apparently born and bred in a briar patch. –Grew up here,” he said impatiently. “He’ll take you to the right places.”

    “Yes. Um, who’ll pay?” said Lalla hoarsely.

    Peter was about to shout at the silly moo, when he looked into the limpid eyes. “I’ll pay,” he said feebly.

    “Ye-es… Shane can’t use your credit card, though, can he?”

    Peter didn’t explain about the account Shane’s card would access. “Yes.”

    “Oh,” she said, nodding. “Um, is that extra?”

    “What?”

    “Extra,” said Lalla, swallowing. “I mean, besides the salary.”

    “Besides the— God,” he muttered. “SHANE!” he shouted.

    The yuppie was there like a shot. Yikes, thought Lalla, he was probably just behind that door, listening!

    “Get the bloody contract sorted out, will you?” said Peter Sale. “Spell it out that no sort of sexual barter is intended, will be asked for, or will in fact take place, and that anything we buy for her in the way of clothes, make-up and so on is extra to the remuneration and may be retained by Miss Holcroft. –And for God’s sake get her bloody name right!” he added irritably before Lalla could gasp that she hadn’t meant that. “Not Miss ‘dash’ Holcroft, Miss Lalla Holcroft. –L,A,L,L,A, right?” he said to her.

    Lalla nodded numbly.

    “Right,” he said to Shane.

    “Yessir! Um—sir—what about—um—jewellery?” he croaked.

    “Jesus Christ Almighty, he’s seen that bloody film, too!” said Peter Sale loudly.

    “Yes, well, I did say that the whole of the civilised world has!” gasped Lalla.

    Suddenly he smiled. “So-called civilised world, wasn’t it? –Listen, cretin,” he said nastily to Shane, “this is not Pretty Woman, I am not Richard Gere— Or hang on: did you suspect him of being gay, too?” he added drily to Lalla.

    “No!” she gasped.

    “Flattering,” he noted drily. “As I was explaining, this is not Pretty Woman: I don’t propose purchasing vastly expensive items of jewellery. –If one can, in Canberra,” he muttered.

    Shane was very red. “No, sir,” he said miserably.

    He was probably a bit younger than Lalla and whether it was that or not she couldn’t have said, but suddenly she found herself saying loudly and angrily to Peter Sale, party of the first part: “Leave him alone! By the sounds of it, you watched it as avidly as anyone! And it isn’t his fault you went and put your big foot in your mouth with the blimmin’ British High Commissioner’s wife! And he never bought it, see, he borrowed it from the shop down the road! –Tiffany’s, or something,” she ended uncertainly, spoiling the effect, rather.

    To her astonishment, Peter Sale didn’t immediately rise and throw her out bodily: on the contrary, he was grinning from ear to ear. And even without that perfectly sculptured mouth he could never have been gay, how could she possibly— Well, she hadn’t ever felt in her innermost being that he might be, only thought it with the intellectual part of her mind. Only how could she explain that to him? Or to anyone: it sounded awfully silly.

    “I stand very much corrected,” he said, still grinning. “And I apologise, Shane: I had no right to speak to you like that.”

    “No worries!” he gasped, redder than ever.

    The Aussies often said that, but Lalla rather thought that Peter Sale didn’t know that. Not to judge by the stunned expression on his face.

    “Er—mm,” he said. “Er, well— No, hang on, Shane. I stand triply corrected: she will have to have an engagement ring.”

    “It could just be glass,” said Lalla helpfully.

    He winced. “No.”

    “The sort of people that Mr Sale knows, they’d know,” explained Shane kindly.

    “Well, write it into the contract that I can’t keep it: that’s easy,” said Lalla.

    Peter had been about to say as much. “No, I think we can say it’s a perk of the job,” he drawled. “Fringe benefits?”

    “Um, they cost a bomb, sir, even small diamonds! I mean, my sister, her ring—”

    “Don’t the Australians have rather nice pearls?” Peter interrupted him dreamily. More to see if either of them could go redder than they already were, than anything.

    The boy gasped: “Yeah— Um— But—” and the girl got up, looking desperate.

    “Ask at the bloody hotel, we’re paying for that bloody suite we’re not using,” he said to the boy.

    “Yeah— Um—”

    “I think he means ask them what shop to go to, Shane. –I’m sorry, could I go to the toilet, please?” said Lalla desperately. “I never went on the plane, I couldn’t get past the grandmother’s carry-on bags.”

    Peter replied numbly: “Hell; I’m sorry, Lalla. Shane will show you. –Take her upstairs,” he added.

    “Ye— Um, is it definite, sir?”

    Peter sighed. “Yes. And do I need to add, if so much as one word leaks out to the bloody Press, Someone will never work again in the whole of the so-called civilised world?”

    “No,” he muttered, turning puce.

    “No! You don’t need to!” said Lalla loudly and indignantly. “What an awful thing to say! Of course he won’t tell anybody—will you?”

    Shane shook his head numbly.

    “Not that anybody would be interested: don’t kid yourself you’re that important, you’re not Prince Charles!” said Lalla fiercely to her false fiancé. “–Come on,” she added to Shane.

    With one last, puce, apologetic look at his employer he led her out.

    Peter Sale sagged in his hideous white-swathed armchair. “Good God,” he muttered.

Next chapter:

https://thelallaeffect.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-pretty-woman.html