Overseas, Or, Plus Ça Change

18

Overseas, Or, Plus Ça Change

    It started in Auckland with Mrs Macdonald, a plump, cosy-looking woman with a grandmotherly manner. Not to say a completely managing manner. She turned up as promised, though threatened might have been a better word, complete with a hulking grandson, and looked round the perfectly adequate room in the Auckland Airport Travelodge with a sniff.

    “You could’ve stayed with me, you’d’ve been much more comfortable. I told Tanya it’d be no problem, I’ve got stacks of room, and Petey could have had the stretcher, it’s got its own mattress.”

    Mrs Faraday had already offered the use of her place—she hadn’t accompanied them back to Auckland but was staying on in Rarotonga, her son having finally persuaded her to have a proper holiday: she was one of those irritating women who seemed determined to martyr themselves when anything relating to their comfort or pleasure was mooted. It wasn’t a house, it was a retirement unit, but it had two nice bedrooms, and a sofa-bed in the sitting-room and you could leave the keys with Mrs Whatsername in Number 3, she was completely reliable! Jean and Roger had also offered their house: it’d be simple, just leave the keys with Mrs Whatsit next-door. Surprisingly, Lalla’s wet brother Bill had also offered their house, though as it turned out this had been at the prompting of his brisk, no-nonsense wife, Marlene, who apparently was now and had forever been on Lalla’s side in anything you’d care to name and—obviously—some things you wouldn’t. Just leave the keys with the Whosits. Sherrie and the butcher had eagerly volunteered their house, not to say his mum’s house, which was nearer to the airport, he had the keys because she’d gone down to— Quite. And as a matter of fact Tanya Macdonald White and Ron White themselves had also offered their house. Just leave the keys with— Mm. Precisely.

    So Peter was able to counter this one smoothly with the fact that as it was such a short stopover they’d decided to spare themselves the hassle of driving to and from. Mrs Macdonald didn’t appear entirely convinced, but that was par for the course.

    She then had to supervise Petey’s inspection of the clothes she’d brought for him.

    He held up a scarf suspiciously. “I won’t need this.”

    The hulking grandson, who so far had merely uttered a very sheepish “Hullo” when prompted by his grandmother, though he’d carried the carton of clothes very capably, now produced: “That’s a Grammar scarf, Grandma, what’s it doing in this lot?”

    There was no doubt whatsoever, in fact Peter would have bet his entire fortune on the point, that he had not said it with intent to propitiate Petey, but its result was: “Ooh, a Grammar scarf!”

    “They don’t really need them in our climate, and it’s not compulsory,” Mrs Macdonald explained.—No, perhaps not explained: elaborated.—“But this is the style they’re supposed to wear, you see.”

    “Lovely: he’ll really need a nice, warm muffler in Britain, Mrs Macdonald,” said Peter smoothly.

    The word “muffler” then had to be explained to Petey…

    The heavy grey serge shorts eventually got the nod, but only after he’d glared suspiciously at the grandson and asked: “Do ya haveta wear shorts at Grammar?”

    “Yeah. Those aren’t Grammar ones. They are school shorts, though.”

    Petey brightened horribly and declared his intention of wearing them on the plane.

    Mrs Macdonald then explained that you needed layers on the stupid planes, and proceeded to demonstrate.

    “Heck, Grandma, whaddid ya bring that for?” was Master Macdonald’s horrified reaction to a charming hand-knitted Fairisle jumper that you’d have paid a small fortune for at Harrods, supposing Harrods could have found a hand-knitter to produce it in these technological days. It got the chop.

    Very, very luckily Maman appeared to be completely on Mrs M’s wavelength, as Lalla was clearly overwhelmed and reduced to silence, and bloody John Faraday, who Peter had thought would be an ally, was trying not to laugh throughout.

    “Very suitable indeed,” was Maman’s verdict on the appallingly hideous padded anorak in an offensive mixture of pale blue and red. It didn’t sound bad at all, did it? Blue and red, perfectly acceptable. But somehow this anorak... Was it the unnecessary black stripes down the middle of each sleeve that were making it worse?

    “Have you got an anorak?” Petey demanded of Master Macdonald, ignoring his grandmother completely, ouch!

    “Parka,” he corrected. “Yeah.”

    “Well, what’s it—”

    “Petey, my dear,” said his grandmother firmly, “that will do. You will wear this nice warm shacket in England, because it is very cold there. And Scotland will be even colder, you will most certainly need it there.”

    “You mean ‘jacket’, Mémé,” the vainglorious lad corrected her; Peter goggled at him in horror. “Will there be snow in Scotland?”

    “Yes,” Marie-Louise replied firmly, not a shadow of a doubt in sight.

    “Ugh, yes, Scotland’ll be freezing!” agreed Mrs Macdonald. “Where are those nice warm boots? –Sean!” she said sharply, thus revealing the hulking one’s personal name for the first time. “Did you pack those Ugg boots you didn’t get any wear out of?”

    “Not real Uggs, Grandma. Nah, they’d be miles too big for him.”

    Drawing a deep breath of the sort that meant “I’ll speak to you when we get home”, Mrs Macdonald said grimly: “Never mind. He better have these gumboots that Mrs Stacey gave Sean for his twelfth birthday, Mrs Sale: they were miles too small for him, but then she’s got no idea, really, she never had any of her own.”—Er, offspring, not boots, Peter deduced groggily.—“With two pairs of nice warm socks, do you think, Mrs Sale?”

    “Oh, absolutely, Mrs Macdonald, he will need two pairs of wool socks in Scotland. This is very kind!” smiled Marie-Louise.

    “That’s all right, dear. The blimmin’ shops are hopeless, of course—Karen tried to get a nice raincoat just before their trip; I told her, they’ll never have any in stock at this time of year—”

    Etcetera and so forth. Peter looked limply from his useless broken reed of a PA to his wife. Hell’s bells, now she was trying not to laugh, too! He tottered blindly to a chair and sank onto—

    “Peter!” shrieked Petey in anguish.

    Peter sprang up again. “What? What’s the matter?”

    “You’re sitting on my Grammar scarf!” He rushed over and rescued it tenderly.

    Peter was past speech, really, but as his mother’s steely eye was now upon him he managed to utter numbly: “Sorry, old chum.” Then he just sank down again and… Went into a stupor, really.

    “I tried a different one this time,” Petey reported, coming back from his Nth foray to the plane’s loos.

    “Mm. Did you? Good show,” replied Peter limply.

    “It was the same as the other one, really. It’s quite neat, the way they fit it all in. Jimmy Raui, he reckons it all just goes down the tube and falls out.”

    Peter took a deep breath. “Petey, we’ve already have this conversation, haven’t we? It doesn’t. It goes into a waste tank in the bowels of the plane and when we land a tanker truck arrives and takes the waste to be properly disposed of.”

    John leaned forward. “If it all just fell out of the plane the world’d be covered in blue dye by now, they’ve had big passenger planes for over fifty years.”

    “And it’d be raining bright blue rain,” sighed Peter, with his eyes shut. “Just shut up. Read your book or go to sleep.”

    “I’m not sleepy!”

    Alas, no.

    “Watch the movie,” John suggested kindly.

    “It’s dumb!”

    This was true. “Stalemate,” sighed Peter.

    Marie-Louise got up, looking determined. “Come along, then: we go up the little stairs to the lounge.”

    “I been up there, Mémé!”

    “Nevertheless we go again. It will make a shange.”

    “‘Change’,” he corrected firmly. “Okay, then.”

    They vanished.

    Peter groaned. Though silently acknowledging it was a bloody good thing Maman had decided to come. Not to say a bloody good thing that he’d been deaf to every word Lalla had uttered on the subject and chosen First Class.

    “Serves ya right for having him,” said a sepulchral voice from under Lalla’s sleeping-mask. –She had stigmatised it as “Funny”, in a very dubious tone, but gone out like a light the minute she’d put it on.

    He jumped, but managed to make a recover. “So it does. Thank you for that aperçu, Lady Sale.”

    Lalla merely gave a smothered snicker.

    Hitherto Peter had thought of his plump, cosy-looking cook, Mrs Beattie, as a sensible, quiet, composed sort of woman. Capable in her own sphere, yes, but without any signs of wishing to emerge from it, let alone impose her will on him. But two seconds after they’d staggered into the flat she revealed herself as a completely managing clone of Mrs Macdonald from Auckland!

    Petey was zonked out after the long flight and Peter was carrying him. He set him down carefully on a sofa.

    She bustled forward. “The poor little lamb!” she breathed, ignoring the rest of the company. “Now, he’d better have the pretty little room with the spriggy wallpaper, it gets the sun—not that we’ve seen anything of it lately! And I expect ’e’ll want something tasty but light to eat when he wakes up, I’ll do boiled eggs with soldiers, they all like those, don’t they? And we’ll call it breakfast or high tea, according!” she added with a cosy chuckle that heretofore Peter had never dreamed she could produce. “I’ll take him, Sir Peter. Don’t worry, I’ve got the electric blanket on to warm the bed up and my cousin Annie’s Tabitha’s brought over some nice fleecy jim-jams for him; but we won’t disturb ’im, he can just pop in in ’is undies for once!” With this she picked him up bodily and walked out with him.

    “Good,” said Marie-Louise with satisfaction. “I see she has things well in sharge. I shall take the blue bedroom, then.”

    “I’m sorry, Maman,” said Peter limply—he knew she liked the spriggy room, with its tiny bunches of spring flowers against a white background on not only the wallpaper but the curtains and bedspread as well.

    “Nonsense, Peter.” She seized her lightweight wheeled case and wheeled it out.

    Peter looked limply at Beattie.

    “Don’t worry about the little lad, sir, Doreen’ll look after him. Brought up free of ’er younger brothers after ’er mum died—well, half-brothers, but same diff’,” said his hitherto stiffly correct manservant cheerfully. “Welcome to London, Lady Sale.”

    Lalla jumped. “Thank you! So you’re Mr Beattie? Peter’s told me about you and Mrs Beattie. He says she’s a marvellous cook.”

    “That she is, madam—your Ladyship, I should say. But it’s just ‘Beattie’, my Lady.”

    “I can’t possibly call a human being Beattie,” replied Lalla firmly. “What’s your first name?”

    “Fred,” the man admitted weakly.

    “Fred! That’s a nice name! You don’t hear it so much these days, do you?” she beamed. “Good, I’ll call you Fred, then. You could call me Lalla if you like, we’re gonna live in Australia anyway, and they don’t have any silly Sirs and Ladies there.”

    “Er—yes, so I believe, but I don’t think Sir Peter would care for that, my Lady.”

    Lalla looked hopefully at Peter. “It’s all bullshit, you know.”

    “Yuh— Uh, I know that, my darling, but in London I think Beattie would be more comfortable addressing you formally.”

    Her face fell. “Oh. Would you?”

    “Yes, my Lady,” he admitted.

    “Oh. Well, I tell you what: why not come out to Australia with us? We’re gonna look for a nice house, not too fancy, and maybe there’ll be a lovely granny flat that you could have! Do you have those in England? It’s like a separate little flat, or some people have them over the garage, they’re lovely. Of course we’ve got a granny!” she added with a laugh, “but Marie-Louise doesn’t want to live in Australia, so we wouldn’t need it!”

    He cast a wary look at his employer. “Er, that does sound good, my Lady, but, um, well…”

    “I haven’t suggested it yet, Beattie, because I know you’ve lived in London for many years, and—well, the Australian lifestyle is rather different.”

    “It’d be warmer, that’s for sure!” put in Lalla with a shudder.

    “Are you cold, my Lady?” the man asked in alarm. “I could turn the heating up—”

    “No, it’s lovely and warm in here, thanks, Fred!” she beamed. “But it was freezing outside!”

    “Yes, our winters are chilly…”

    She nodded hard. “I think it can be cold in Sydney in the winter, but nothing like this. Heck, they’d had to sweep the snow back at the sides of the airport road, I’ve only seen that in National Park before—that’s in New Zealand, where people go skiing. What do you think, Peter?”

    He blinked. “Er—well, I must say I’d be very pleased if you did fancy it, Beattie. Naturally I’d see that everything was taken care of for you, you wouldn’t have to worry about your visas or packing or anything like that.”

    “And a limo to the airport!” Lalla prompted him, beaming.

    “Yuh—uh, yes, darling, naturally.”

    “See, what’d be best, first we’d find the house, so you wouldn’t have to put up with any of that. Then when your flat was all ready for you, you could just come! And of course we’d meet you at the airport! When I went to Canberra I sat next to a lady on the plane who told me how confusing the Sydney traffic could be, and how half the taxi drivers don’t know where to go. But we definitely wouldn’t leave you to struggle with luggage and taxis.”

    “No, of course not,” said Peter quickly, since the poor man was now looking completely overwhelmed. “You talk it over with Mrs Beattie and see what you think, Beattie. There’s absolutely no hurry: I’m keeping the flat on in any case.”

    “Yes, sir. Thank you very much, Sir Peter. Shall I take these bags through, sir?”

    “Yes, please do.”

    “I’ll give you a hand,” said Lalla sunnily, grabbing a case. “Then you can show me everything! –Is there an ensuite?”

    Beattie actually sounded brighter as he answered in the affirmative. Well, poor bastard, at last being asked something factual to which he could make a simple reply? Oh, lawks!

    Peter laughed weakly and sat down on a sofa.

    When Beattie eventually resurfaced he offered him to get him a drink: no doubt thought he looked in need of it. He wasn’t wrong: in fact Peter had been in need of a drink since well before leaving Auckland International Airport.

    “Yes, thanks, Beattie. Make it a large B&S. Er—and don’t mind Lalla,” he added cautiously as the man went over to the drinks cabinet. “She means well. Just not used to our ways. Oh, and, uh, she hates being called Lady Sale, so if you could avoid it as much as possible—”

    “Yes, of course, Sir Peter,” he said, looking taken aback.

    Peter passed a hand over his forehead. “It’s not me, Beattie. She’s opposed to all forms of titles. She’s looking forward to just being Mrs Sale in Australia. –The Australians have abolished titles in their New Year’s Hons, but the things aren’t against the law,” he added feebly. “It’s, um, just what she’d prefer.”

    “I see, sir. So she’s a republican?”

    “Uh—yes. But she approves of the Queen!” he added quickly. He had no idea what the Beatties’ feelings on the subject might be.

    “Oh, good. So does Doreen,” the man replied happily, handing him a brimming glass.

    “Thank you. –Pour one for yourself, Beattie, and we’ll have a toast.”

    “Thank you very much, sir!” he agreed in astonishment.

    When he was duly provisioned Peter gave the toast. “Here’s to a brighter future, Lalla’s way!”

    Beaming all over his unremarkable, neat features Beattie responded: “I’ll drink to that, sir! To you and your good lady!”

    No, well, there you were. …But Mrs Beattie taking over like that, Maman giving in over the spriggy room without a murmur, and Beattie apparently prepared to eat out of Lalla’s hand? Peter was beginning to feel as if he’d fallen down the rabbit hole all over again…

    They slept like logs, whatever the time might’ve been after they’d eaten Mrs Beattie’s deliciously light whatever it had been. Possibly dinner. Or lunch? Well, whatever the time might’ve been then, it was now nearly half-past nine according to the little bedside clock. Morning, according to the dim grey light filtering into the room. Peter got cautiously out of bed and went to peek behind the curtains. Ugh! Yes, morning.

    “Are we here?” said a confused voice.

    He turned quickly. “Yes, darling, don’t you remember? Mrs Beattie gave us a lovely meal and then we turned in.”

    “Oh—yes. Can you hear anything?”

    “Er—no. Should I? Oh: double-glazing, darling, the traffic won’t bother y—”

    “Not that! Petey.”

    “Oh! No, must still be asleep.”

    “I hope so. We’d better get up before he starts ear-bashing Mr and Mrs Beattie.”

    So they did that. Peter got to the dining-room first—Lalla having declared it was only a flat, of course she could find her way there! He paused outside the door. Oops.

    “If she’s Mrs Beattie, Mémé, why isn’t he Mr Beattie?”

    “It is silly, isn’t it, mon chou? That’s just how it’s done in England. One’s cook is Mrs Beattie and one’s manservant is Beattie.”

    “Oh. –What does he do?”

    “A very good question, Petey,” she began drily.

    Hurriedly Peter went in. “Good morning, Maman; good morning, Petey.” He managed to kiss his mother’s cheek before the torrent started up.

    “Hey, Peter! Guess what, Mrs Beattie, she gimme a boiled egg and she calls dippers soldiers!”

    Uh… Peter looked helplessly at Maman.

    “In New Zealand they don’t call little strips of toasts soldiers,” she said placidly.

    “Nah,” Petey agreed. “Or the Cooks. Dippers, because ya dip them.”

    “Précisément. Much more logical,” Marie-Louise approved.

    Peter groped his way to the table and sat down heavily. “Got it. Welcome to my flat and to London, Petey.”

    Obviously he had gone bonkers: Petey looked blankly from him to his grandmother.

    “Now one says ‘thank you’ nicely, Petey,” she prompted.

    “Thank you,” he said blankly. “What does Beattie do, Peter?”

    “Er… he brings in the breakfast,” said Peter limply as the man came in with a fresh relay of toast.

    “Good morning, Sir Peter. What would you care for this morning?”

    “Just coffee and toast, thanks, Beattie.”

    “I see! And asks you what you want. Only he didn’t ask me, ’cos see, Mrs Beattie, she knew I’d like a boiled egg with soldiers! And Mémé, she likes coffee and toast with marmalade, she says it’s very English! And guess what! That’s what it says on the jar: ‘English Breakfast’, see, and Mrs Beattie, she says ya don’t have it on the table, ya have it in a little dish!”

    “Yuh—uh—”

    “She’s got a neato kitchen.”

    Peter looked at him in horror. “You went into the kitchen?”

    “Yeah, ’course. Mrs Beattie, she says that stove’s first-rate, but it doesn’t grill like her old gas one, it used to. That was when she was at home. She lives here now, eh?”

    “Yes, of course. They have their own little suite of rooms.”

    He nodded. “Yeah. With their own TV, eh?”

    Peter looked helplessly at his mother.

    “He was up early, so Mrs Beattie very sensibly shows him over the appartement,” she explained.

    “Flat, she means,” Petey added helpfully.

    He nodded weakly.

    “An’ Beattie, he says I can go in the car if you say so! Can I?”

    Astonishingly, his Mémé didn’t correct this to “May I?” Possibly because the point had not appeared in her grammar book, the authors of such tomes not customarily bothering about the vernacular usage?

    “Yes, of course. Not now,” he added hastily.

    Petey looked virtuous. “I wasn’t gonna. Beattie says this block of flats isn’t very high.”

    “Not very, no.”

    “Nah. But quite high, eh? There’s lots of high ones. Is that a river?”

    “Oh! Yes, certainly; that’s the River Thames, Petey, it’s London’s famous river.”

    He fixed him with a steely gaze: Jesus, those were Maman’s genes, all right! “The one with the London Eye?”

    Oh, God. “Yes.”

    “Can I go—”

    “Yes, but we’re going up to Scotland first.”

    “Aw. Yeah. –Jimmy Tangianau, he reckons Candida oughta get a good spanking. See, when he was my age he nicked a man’s sunglasses, and Mrs Tangianau, she give him a good spanking. After that he didn’t nick stuff,” he reported on a regretful note. He brightened. “But he still got a good spanking when he was naughty!”

    “Good for Mrs Tangianau. I entirely agree, but unfortunately Candida’s too old for spankings. But I’ll bear it in mind for other occasions,” said Peter on a grim note.

    “Hah, hah,” he replied mildly in his mother’s very accents, at last stuffing his gob with toast and marmalade.

    Peter sagged.

    Lalla came in just as Beattie resurfaced with a fresh pot of coffee. “There you all are! Good morning, Marie-Louise, I hope you slept okay and this horror didn’t wake you up at crack of dawn.”

    “Good morning, mon chéri: come and give me a kiss. –So!” she said when Lalla had done so. “I sleep very well, thank you, and Petey has been very good, he did not disturb me at all.”

    “See?” said Petey, vindicated.

    “Good morning to you, too! –Ooh!” she gasped, as she went to take a chair and Beattie quickly pre-empted her. “Thanks, Fred, but you don’t have to hold chairs for me, all that feudal stuff’s hopelessly out-dated, isn’t it? Did you and Mrs Beattie sleep well?”

    “Yes, thanks, your Ladyship,” he said weakly.

    “I hope you didn’t get up early just for us. We were all pretty jet-lagged; I can’t even remember going to bed,” she said chattily.

    “Er—no, I mean, just at our usual time. What would you care for, my Lady?”

    She sighed. “Maybe you could just call me Mrs Sale at home?”

    “Lalla, darling, drop it,” said Peter firmly. “When in Rome.”

    “We’re not in Rome,” said Petey in a puzzled voice.

    “It’s a saying, Petey,” Lalla explained. “‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ We’re in London, so we have to do what they do here. –I’m sorry, Fred. I won’t insist any more. Maybe if you could just say it less often it’d help.”

    “Er—yes, certainly, my— Yes, certainly. What can I get you?”

    “I’ll just have toast and marmalade, thanks. And some coffee, if there’s enough.”

    “There’s plenty,” said Peter quickly. “The hot milk’s in that p—” He stopped, Beattie had picked up the milk and was adding it to her coffee.

    “I never saw milk in a pot before,” noted Petey.

    Regardless of the fact that it was served that way to Palmyra Polynesia’s guests who ordered coffee, Lalla replied with a loud giggle: “Must be because we’re in England!”

    “Hey, yeah!”

    They beamed at each other.

    Oddly enough, Peter found he was beaming, too. Actually, so was his mother. Actually, so was his correct manservant! So there you were.

    “They get orf okay?” asked Doreen Beattie, as her spouse returned from driving them to the airport.

    “Yeah. Young Petey was thrilled by the Lear jet.” He laughed. “But ’is mum, she said: ‘I fort it had gone back to Australia?’ and when Sir Peter explained that was the QSMME one, she told him it was conspicuous consumption of the worst kind!”

    “Good on ’er.”

    “Well, yeah, but blimey, Dor’!”

    “Just be thankful she’s a decent young woman, not a ruddy Society tart like the last lot.”

    He scratched his head. “Yeah, well, I am, but she’s so different from any of them!”

    “Any of them that ’e only took up with on the rebound from her. –Well, must of been, Fred!” she said as he looked blank. “Work it out: she’s the girl ’e met in Australia, right? Ten years back; well, ten years, nine months and a bit, according to young Petey’s arithmetic!” She shook silently.

    “Yeah, hilarious,” he said heavily. “But—oh. I geddit. She’s the one what vanished and poor ole Mr Faraday hadda ring up all the Whatsernames in Australia only none of them was ’er.”

    “Got it in fourteen, Fred,” she replied sardonically. “And that was when ’e took up with them tarty Society bitches!”

    “Yeah. Lucky ’e didn’t catch somefink nasty orf them. But that Sylvia cow, she was before that, wasn’t she? Had ’er claws into ’im good an’ proper, poor bastard. ‘Oh, Beattie,’ she says to me, looking down ’er ruddy nose an’ all—my old mum would’ve ’ad a fit at ’er goings-on—‘Take Mr Dee Beaufort ’is breakfast. Weak Earl Grey tea, biscottes and strawberry jam. And don’t try serving ’im toast this time!’ I hadda bite me tongue, but I said: ‘Is ’e up, Miss?’ And she snarls: “No! In the bedroom. Get on with it!’ Well, that was the last straw and I says: ‘Miss, I don’t serve no nasty gays in the boss’s bedroom wot ’e’d ’ave a fit if ’e knew about your goings-on.’ And—”

    “Walked out on the cow, we know,” his wife agreed heavily—Fred had told this story approximately five hundred times since it happened. “No, well, ’er Ladyship’s nothing like ’er, or them last lot, thank the Lord!”

    “No. Thanked me for holding the car door for ’er, an’ all. Now, that’s the test of a true lady! –Never mind if she don’t like being called it!” he added with a chuckle.

    “No, well, she’s right, of course: all them titles are so much ’ot air, and the boss, ’e didn’t even want it, did ’e? Let them ponces at the company talk ’im into it.” Doreen gave a prolonged sniff. “I reckon the rot set in when ruddy ’Arold Wilson accepted a knighthood—and then let them make ’im a ruddy Lord, if yer please!”

    “Right. My ole dad threw a fit, I remember it clear as if it was yesterday. Betrayal of ’is working-class origins, he called it.”

    “Yeah, well, there you are. What did she call them, again? –Titles, Fred,” she prompted.

    “’Oo? Oh, ’er Ladyship! Bullshit!” Beattie shook all over.

    She sniffed, but she also nodded and looked pleased, so after a moment he ventured: “Whatcher fink about this idea of goin’ to Australia, then?”

    “Dunno, Fred. Be warm, eh?”

    “Yeah.” He cast a darkling look at the window, which was showing a view of grey high-rises amidst grey murk. “A nice change. What about our pensions, though?”

    “Eh? Sir Peter’d see us right, are you nuts?”

    “Not that. I mean, can we kind of get the money, if we’re in Australia?”

    “Who in ’Ell you been talking to now, Fred Beattie?” she asked heavily.

    “No-one! Um, well, when the boss rung up and said ’e was thinking of settling out there I did just mention it to George Perry—”

    This expert on anything you cared to name was their building’s doorman and part-time caretaker. She snorted richly. “’Im!”

    “Yeah, well… I s’pose it’d be all right. Well, nuffink to keep us ’ere, eh? The old people’ve gorn, now…”

    “Now don’t get melancholy, Fred! And don’t bring up yer sister Janet again! Her Charlie’s in Canada, she wanted to go out there, end of story.”

    “Ten foot of snow,” he noted mournfully.

    “Yes, well, we won’t get that in Australia!” she retorted forcefully.

    There was a short silence. Fred eyed her hopefully.

    “It’d be better than ’aving to start ’unting for new jobs at our ages,” she noted.

    “Yeah. We’ll, ’e’s keeping the flat on…”

    “You’re not gonna sit ’ere on yer bum doing nuffink for eleven months of the year, Fred!”

    “No. So, Australia?” he offered hopefully.

    “I’m considering it,” she replied majestically.

    Fred breathed a stealthy sigh of relief. “Right-oh, love. Good. –Hey, know what ’is real name is?” he offered brightly.

    “Whose, for Gawd’s sake?” demanded Doreen, staring.

    “Mister Damian Dee Beaufort’s, that’s ’oo! George told me. Got it orf the cow when she was drunk one night—’e wasn’t on night duty, exactly, ’e was filling in for Ron Hammond.”

    “Again,” she noted drily. “Well, don’t keep us in suspenders, Fred!”

    “Albert Birtwistle,” he reported with relish. “Bert Birtwistle! Good, eh?”

    Doreen laughed obligingly, but inwardly she sagged with relief. Phew! Fred was such a stick-in-the-mud, she’d never have thought he’d fancy a move, specially not to the other side of the world. Australia! Sun, sand, blue skies… Old Mrs Johnstone’s Kenny from their street had gone out there and he had an orange tree in his garden! Imagine it. Didn’t have to straw it up or nothing. Say they had one of those granny flats what Lalla, bless her, had suggested… No reason why it shouldn’t have a bit of garden attached. Specially if it was a separate one, like a little house… And flowers! She had some African violets in pots but they weren’t doing too good, and the geranium that Sir Peter had given her special for her kitchen windowsill had croaked. Probably hadn’t got enough sun. Then, say ten years on—Petey’d be grown up by then, well, left school, anyway—they could retire. Did they have nice retirement villages in Australia? …Bound to. Sunny, it’d be. Lovely…

    And God knew there’d be no hassles working for a lovely person like Lalla! Um, her Ladyship, she supposed they oughta say until they’d shook the dust. No, well, could you do better?

    Naturally her hands hadn’t been idle during these ruminations. “Ta, love,” said Fred as she set a mug of tea before him. “Ooh, Chocolate Digestives!” he discerned, seizing one eagerly.

    Doreen sat down and sipped her own tea. Could you get Chocolate Digestives in Australia? The ruddy things were Fred’s favourites—him and the rest of Britain: there’d been something about it in the paper. No, well, too bad. If that was the sacrifice it was gonna take, that was what it was gonna take!

    “Eh?” he groped.

    “Nuffink. ’Ave anuvver Chocolate Digestive, love,” she said happily.

    Jesus Christ, Scotch Jimmy had not only one of them, but two! On their arrival at his less than baronial hall—the “castle” was a horrible Victorian affair, ersatz from top to toe, though possibly the stuff it was made of was actually Scottish granite—they were greeted by Jimmy in person and a plump, cosy-looking woman who turned out to be his mother. Her looks belied her: in two seconds flat it was apparent that Mrs McNeil had completely taken over. Well—almost completely: as she was bustling them all inside, assuring Lalla that the bedrooms had central heating and electric blankets, another plump, cosy-looking woman appeared from the back regions and announced in a strong Scottish accent that all the rooms were centrally heated but none of the fireplaces drew well, Heaven only knew what silly man had designed them, so they weren’t using them, but she’d put an extra little electric fire in Lady Sale’s bedroom! And was there anything the bairn couldna eat? Words to that effect.

    “Er, this is my cook-housekeeper, Mrs Macdonald,” said the burly Jimmy limply.

    Petey brightened. “I’m sort of a Macdonald, too! Peter Christie Macdonald Townsend Holcroft!”

    Mrs Macdonald appeared terrifically pleased to hear this and told him that Macdonald was her husband’s name: she was a McNeil, herself.

    “Um, well, when we were in New Zealand he didn’t like parsnips, Mrs Macdonald,” said Lalla rather shyly.

    Now, that was a funny thing, wasn’t it? Most children didn’t like anything with the taste of aniseed. But she wasn’t to worry, Mrs Macdonald wasn’t planning to serve parsnips. Could he eat porridge?

    Lalla hesitated. “Um, well, he ate it for breakfast in the winter when we were down at Taupo—that’s in New Zealand, it’s a thousand feet above sea-level, they do have very cold winters there. With milk and brown sugar. But that was ages ago, he’s not really used to it any more…”

    She responded with a keen enquiry as to what he usually had.

    “Mrs Beattie, she gimme a boiled egg with soldiers! That’s what she calls dippers. Do you call them soldiers, too?”

    “Aye, that we do, laddie!” she replied with chuckle. Apparently she could manage that easily.

    “Um, yes. But he won’t really need an egg tomorrow as well, Mrs Macdonald,” said Lalla uneasily.

    “I will, Mum!”

    Immediately his grandmother, Mrs McNeil and Mrs Macdonald in chorus told him not to talk back to his mother.

    Peter looked limply at Scotch Jimmy. He just looked back helplessly.

    Taking a deep breath and clearing his throat into the bargain, Peter said: “Several a week, I think, Petey, but not two days running. Whatever you usually serve will be fine, thanks, Mrs Macdonald. But perhaps you could show us to our rooms? Then I’d better see Candida.”

    She and Mrs McNeil exchanged glances. Then Mrs Macdonald reported that she was asleep just now but she seemed very out of it, Sir Peter.

    “Totally,” agreed Jimmy glumly. “Keeps saying a wave couldn’t do that and it must be a trick to get her back and I must’ve bribed the Embassy people to send her back home. Hasn’t sunk in that I don’t want her back.”

    Ouch.

    “I’m sure all she needs is rest and quiet,” said Mrs McNeil very firmly.

    “Certainly. And some sensible food,” agreed Marie-Louise.

    Mrs Macdonald and Mrs McNeil exchanged glances again and the latter admitted heavily: “We’ve had the doctor to her, Mrs Sale, and he says she’s had dysentery: she’s lost a lot of weight that she couldna afford to lose; so he’s put her on a liquid diet with a litre of electrolyte solution to drink every day into the bargain.”

    “Until she can take solid food,” Mrs Macdonald added.

    “That’s right: keeps chucking it up. Goes down all right, then up it comes,” Jimmy explained glumly.

    “The phenomenon,” said Peter grimly, picking up a case, “has been observed before.”

    Jimmy went on looking glum but he also picked up a case. “Not sticking her fingers down her throat this time, Peter. Just comes up. The doc says that’s typical of dysentery. Dehydrated, too. Partly why she has to keep drinking fluids. The muck he’s prescribed is to put the good bacteria back in her gut. –That sound likely to you?”

    “Perfectly,” said Marie-Louise firmly. “That is what electrolyte solution is, my dear Jimmy. Please, Mrs McNeil: after you.”

    And with that the whole party headed upstairs, Maman explaining very clearly just what electrolyte solution was. Possibly Petey absorbed this intel gratefully; Peter didn’t think anyone else did.

    … “It’s a monstrous regiment,” he sighed, collapsed onto the over-stuffed pink satin eiderdown of the large ersatz four-poster, as Lalla returned from trialling the ensuite bathroom.

    “Yes!” she agreed with a loud giggle. “At least they all seem to agree about things, though, Peter.”

    “So far,” he noted grimly.

    She just giggled again and informed him the ensuite had gold taps shaped like swans!

    “Good. Last time I was here they gave me the bathroom with the gold taps shaped like naked ladies.”

    “Yikes!” she squeaked, collapsing in more giggles.

    Peter smiled. “Come here.”

    She had sat down beside him and he was kissing her tenderly when the door burst open.

    “Hey, Mum! Guess what! There’s a man called Hamish, he’s got a pareu, he says they call it a kilt here, an’ a great big hairy dog, his name’s Donnie, and he says I can come out with him tomorrow and watch him shoot pheasants! That’s like Scotch chooks, sort of, you eat them. Can I?”

    “No,” said Lalla, frowning. At the same time Peter said: “Why not?”

    “Peter! Killing defenceless birds when Jimmy doesn’t need them for food?”

    “Hamish, he said they are food. Well, he said you eat them, that’s food,” reported Petey, very puzzled.

    “Petey, Jimmy’s rich, he can afford to buy food at the supermarkets, he doesn’t need this Hamish man to go out and shoot wild birds for him.”

    Oh, Lor’. “Lalla, darling,” said Peter firmly, “they’re not wild. Granted their ancestors may have been wild, but for generations Hamish and his ilk have been cultivating the creatures, building, er, coops for them, feeding them on special grain mixtures to encourage egg-laying: that sort of thing. They are not wild. It’s no different from Mrs Tangianau wringing the neck of a hen from her own back yard.”

    “Yeah, she’s got hens,” Petey agreed, faint but pursuing.

    “But it’s killing your native fauna!”

    “It would be, if they were wild, but they’re not. But then, old Hamish is a native. And—well, I’ll grant poor old Jimmy was sent to an English school, but as a matter of fact he’s a native too, on both sides. Didn’t you notice the Scottish creeping into his mother’s voice every so often? She grew up in Edinburgh but was also sent to an English school.”

    “So can I?” Petey insisted.

    Lalla sighed. “Will he be safe?”

    “Hell, yes: Hamish has supervised generations of sons, nephews, grandsons and great-nephews. Never let any of them so much as touch a gun without proper supervision, and never had an accident. And if there’s any sign of recalcitrance”—he eyed Petey drily—“he’s not above putting the culprit over his knee.”

    “Oh.” She sighed. “I still don’t like it.”

    “Well—if I go with them?”

    “Yeah!” Petey urged. “Peter can keep an eye on me, Mum!”

    Lalla gave in. “Okay, then.”

    “Ace!” He raced out.

    Peter looked at her wryly. “Sorry. This wasn’t a hazard I’d envisioned.”

    “No. Um, Peter, it sounds as if Candida is really sick,” she ventured.

    “Yes, but if the doc hasn’t ordered her into hospital she can’t be critical. If they can manage to make her follow his orders she’ll be fine. Uh—well, there is the risk of a weak stomach for years afterwards, I do know a chap who— Mm. But Maman’ll be on top of that!”

    “Ye-es…Does Candida take any notice of her, though?”

    “Yes. She’s terrified of her. Reason why she didn’t fight tooth and nail when Monica forbade the holiday visits.”

    “That’s good!” she said with terrific relief.

    Er—yes. On the whole, yes. He smiled limply at her. “Mm.”

    Candida was reported to be awake just as they finished dinner, so Peter decided they'd better go up and see her straight away.

    “C’n I come?” asked Petey.

    “We’ll all go,” he said firmly. “We’re a family now.”

    “Right,” he agreed. “Come on, Mum! Come on, Mémé!”

    So they all went upstairs, Peter taking Lalla’s hand and holding it rather tightly.

    Candida’s little triangular cat-face looked very small in the absurd four-poster bed. She looked at them blankly and then burst out: “It’s not even true! Jimmy’s been telling me lies about big waves and—and bribing the Embassy people in horrid Thailand just because I got this awful tummy bug!”

    “That’s what your medicine’s for,” said Petey helpfully.

    “Yes, of course, Petey, but let the grown-ups talk, please,” said his grandmother firmly. She bustled forward. “So! You are safe from the big tsunami! Now all you have to do is take your nice medicine and keep your fluid intake up and soon you will be well again, and poor Jimmy will not have the sharge of you! Now, be a good girl and say hullo to your papa: he and Lalla have broken off their ’oneymoon to come and see you; you’re a lucky girl, ’ow many fathers would do that?”

    “You mean Jimmy won’t have to be in charge of her, Mémé,” Petey corrected her. He looked at Candida critically. “She looks crook.”

    “Petey, I don’t care what the boys at school say, we don’t say crook when we mean sick,” said Lalla quickly.

    “No, it was Jimmy T—”

    “Or Jimmy. Anybody. The word is sick. She is sick, poor girl, but she’s going to get better.”

    “Of course it’s true, Candida,” said Peter limply. He’d been so taken aback to see how horribly emaciated she looked that he hadn’t been able to find his tongue. Not that anything would have shut Maman up when there was sickness in the house: she was convinced that the French had the cure—frequently homeopathic and revolting, or otherwise sourced from one’s pantry and/or herb garden—for everything.

    “Yes, it is true,” Lalla agreed. “There was a huge tidal wave off Indonesia, and it swept up to Thailand. Hundreds and hundreds of people have been drowned and the resorts have been destroyed.”

    “You would be on their side! I suppose you’ve come to sneer because you’ve caught him at last!” she said bitterly, a sob in her voice.

    “No, I’ve come to support Peter because him and me and Petey are a family now.”

    “Yeah. Families stick together,” volunteered Petey into the sudden silence that had fallen. “Grown-ups weren’t talking, Mémé!” he added quickly.

    “No, but hush, mon chou, one tries not to talk too mush when someone is sick, you see?”

    He looked dubious, but didn’t utter.

    “Who is he? What’s he doing here?” asked Candida fretfully.

    Lalla looked frantically at Peter.

    “He’s our son, Candida. Mine and Lalla’s. I explained all that in my email. Didn’t you read it?”

    “Yes! And why didn’t you invite me to the wedding?” Tears began to slip down her cheeks.

    “I did. You can’t have read it.”

    From behind them Jimmy’s voice said apologetically: “Don’t think she did, old man. Dunno what she and the bloody Swede were on, but anyway, they were pretty much out of it for days, so I thought I’d better check her mail—emails as well. Well, all the rest were bills, as per usual. Your message looked important, so I started to read it out to her but she shut me up before I’d finished the first paragraph. Half an hour after that she announced they were off to Thailand and walked out.”

    Peter passed his hand over his forehead. “I see. Well, Candida, Petey is my son and your half-brother, and Lalla and I are married and headed to Australia to live.”

    “In a house,” put in Petey helpfully.

    “Yes, a nice house,” Lalla agreed. “But hush, Petey. Let the grown-ups speak.”

    “Daddy, he can’t be yours. If you believe that you’d believe anything,” said his daughter faintly, her eyes closed. More tears slid down her cheeks.

    “See?” muttered Jimmy. “Won’t believe a thing anyone says.”

    “Mon cher Jimmy, I think it is evident that she is merely refusing to believe anything,” said Marie-Louise with horrible firmness. “Lalla, mon chéri, you have your agenda? We show her the photos.”

    Lalla felt in the pocket of her capacious woollen skirt, courtesy of the French Embassy in Canberra, and withdrew a small leatherbound folder. “I thought it was just for those pictures of Peter when he was little, Marie-Louise.”

    “Non, non, mon chou.”

    Dubiously Lalla fumbled with the volume. “Oh! Here’s the one of Peter when he was eight, when he looked just like you, Petey!”

    “Good, I show it to her,” said Candida’s grandmother grimly, making a grab. “Là, tu vois? Candida! Open your eyes! See? One cannot mistake the likeness. Petey is Peter’s child.”

    “Yes, ’course. He’s my dad,” said Petey calmly into the silence.

    “That’s disgusting,” she said faintly.

    “Rubbish,” replied her grandmother grimly. “Now, I show you the photos of the  disaster in Thailand caused by the tsunami.—I put in this plastic sleeve, Lalla, you see?—Here. This is a big tourist ’otel. Destroyed. Appalling.”

    Candida looked at in silence. “It—it could be anything,” she said at last.

    Lalla came up rather timidly to Marie-Louise’s side. “I see. It isn’t very clear, but it’s the same horrible picture that was on the news, Candida,” she said with a sigh. “And there were some other ones, they were really frightening, taken by some people in one of the hotels that was several storeys high: they were up high and they filmed the filthy wave of mud and stuff sweeping in. Nothing could have stopped it. They were lucky to get out alive.”

    “It’s not true,” she said faintly, closing her eyes again.

    “Of course it’s true, Candida: I can assure you we wouldn’t be here otherwise,” said Peter on an acid note.

    Lalla bit her lip. “Don’t, Peter,” she murmured, going up to him and squeezing his arm. “Come on, I think she’s had enough for one day. –What is it, Petey?” she added, as he was pulling at her skirt.

    “You know! What I said before!”

    “Um—oh! Well, if you really want to. But she might throw him away, you know.”

    “He’s tough, he can stand it. Shall I?”

    “Mm.”

    Petey raced out.

    “What is he up to?” asked Marie-Louise.

    “No idea,” replied Peter limply.

    Lalla smiled faintly. “He thinks he can cheer her up.”

    They looked dubiously at Candida lying there with her eyes shut and a frown on her forehead.

    Petey raced back, panting. “Here!” Before anyone could move he was over at the bedside. “Hey, Candida, you can borrow Davey White if ya like. He’s my old bear, he’s named after Davey Sale, ya know him, don’tcha? Mum says it’s because he’s got a silly smile like his!”

    Lalla clapped a hand to her mouth, and Peter found he was grinning in spite of everything.

    Candida had opened her eyes out of sheer amazement.

    “See?” Petey urged. “Don’tcha think he looks like him?”

    “I suppose he does a bit,” she said faintly.

    “Yeah. You can have a lend of him if ya like. But I gotta have him back. Go on.” With this he firmly propped Davey White against her pillow.

    “But I’m not a kid,” she said in the thread of a voice.

    “Never mind, you can still borrow him. See ya later, eh? –I think she’s tired, Mémé!” he added in a horrible hoarse whisper that would have been audible at fifty paces.

    “D’accord, mon chou. We leave her now. Come along, everyone.”

    And with that they all filed out.

    At about ten that night Scotch Jimmy carried out a cautious reconnaissance, and reported to Peter, with whom he’d been playing a desultory game of billiards, that the bear had seemed to do the trick: she was fast asleep, hugging the thing.

    They looked at each weakly.

    “Good,” said Peter finally.

    “Yes. Well, up the stairs to Bedfordshire? One for the road?”

    Peter yawned. “Both, I think. My head’s spinning. In the last three or four days—give or take an International Date Line—I’ve been in the tropical South Seas, got married in flowers and a glowing shirt—remind me to show you the snaps some time, they’re hilarious—been right royally feasted in the Polynesian tradition, flown innumerable miles across the world, faced up to my bewildered servants at the flat—Lalla invited them cordially to Australia out of the blue—got into yet another bloody plane and found myself not merely in yet another country but what appears to be Cloud Cuckoo Land! My bet would’ve been she’d throw the bloody bear on the fire!”

    “Can’t, old boy, that fireplace is blocked off with a whacking great brass whojamaflick in front of it. But I’ll give you thrown out of the window.”

    “Quite! Er—well, belt of your local single malt, then Bedfordshire?”

    “Done!” Jimmy agreed.

    The gentlemen had recourse to the genuine uisge beatha.

    It might have been Cloud Cuckoo Land, but it wasn’t the land of miracles, so Candida didn’t have an immediate about-face, or an instant recovery, or anything of that sort. She did not, however, reject Davey White on waking up, and this, as the sturdy red-headed girl who was doing assistant attendant reported, was a good sign.

    The girl’s name was Katie Macdonald, she was about Candida’s own age, she had a B.Sc. in biology, and she worked at the local salmon farm on the research side. Since the farm and its associated factory, which produced genuine smoked salmon which tasted like food of the gods and cost about as much, belonged to  Scotch Jimmy, he had raised no objections to her taking time off to help her mother with Candida.

    The juxtaposition of the two young women had just about reduced Peter to tears: in fact, he’d had to retreat to his room, wiping his eyes and reporting to Lalla: “The girl’s just so healthy-looking: solid figure, lovely pink cheeks, bright eyes and a—a look of real intelligence. The contrast is just so… God.”

    Lalla merely said: “Mm,” and put an arm round him.

    He sighed. “I’d like to kill bloody Monica.”

    “Me, too.”

    “If only there was something we could do!”

    “I think you’ve already done the best thing, Peter. Like Marie-Louise said: how many fathers would come belting off to the other side of the world on their honeymoon to see a daughter who’s behaved as badly as she has? It’s not as if she was even caught in the tsunami itself.”

    “No,” he sighed. “I suppose that’s true…”

    “Marie-Louise will look after her: make sure she takes her medicine.”

    “Yes. Well, she’s already penetrated to the kitchen regions in order to brew up her infamous rice water. –Guaranteed for tummy upsets,” he explained to her puzzled face. “One boils the rice, strains off the water, adds sugar and salt and forces it down the victim. Infallible French recipe. The sugar and salt are mandatory: never mind electrolytes, one’s gut apparently needs them both to, er, do its stuff.”

    “I see. Well, it’ll be liquid, it can’t do her any harm.”

    “True,” he agreed weakly.

    “Does it work?”

    Peter had to swallow. “Well, one gets better, darling, but whether that’s due to the natural course of time or the brew…”

    “I see!”

    “Mm. Kiss me. …That’s ever so much betterer,” he sighed. “Well, uh… Fancy a bit of sightseeing in frozen Scotland? Can’t think of anything else to do.”

    “Jimmy said he’ll take me over to see the salmon farm.”

    Peter gaped at her. “Er—why?”

    “I thought it sounded interesting. Wanna come?”

    Oh, why the Hell not! The alternative was to sit here brooding about Candida and risk one of Maman’s harangues. And he’d already done his duty this morning and got out with Hamish, Petey, and the guns—oh, yes. Total bag, twa brace. Words to that effect. These had been duly hung, and Petey had been permitted to go off with Hamish to his cottage.

    So they did that.

    They returned in time for a somewhat belated lunch, complete with a whole smoked salmon from the factory, which naturally adjoined the farm, to the news that Marie-Louise had been through all Candida’s things, including the drawers and closets, and found the muck that she and the Swede had presumably been taking. And done a swift diagnosis. Cocaine on the one hand, LSD on the other. All now disposed of.

    “I could have analysed them,” Katie Macdonald noted very weakly indeed, “but Mrs Sale, um, tasted them—she didn’t swallow, of course!” she added quickly—“and, e-er, was sure that was what they were.”

    “Certainly,” said Peter’s Maman composedly. “One has lived.”

    Certain faces were now evincing dawning horror, so Peter said quickly: “Not what you’re thinking! No, um, experience of what idiot friends were blowing their minds on back in the Sixties. –Never breathe the word ‘soixante-huit’ to her, by way,” he advised his wife.

    “Très amusant, mon chou,” said his mother coldly.

    “Soixante-huit?” said Lalla in confusion, apparently deaf to his good advice. “But… I’m sorry, Marie-Louise: does he mean that’s your age?”

    Peter choked.

    “No, my dear, I am sixty-nine now. I am twenty-two when Peter is born: far too young, but then, I see already that his papa is not a very well man, so I think we do not waste time. But we ’ave a flat in Paris and during the years soixante, as Peter says, I have some foolish friends there who behave like daring young things: very silly, for they are already in their thirties: reliving their youth, tu sais?” She sniffed. “And some of them, they try anything that is offered.”

    “I see,” said Lalla weakly.

    Fortunately lunch was brought in at that moment, so they were spared the usual swingeing political analysis of les années soixante.

    During the week that followed they did fit in some sightseeing, more or less, since there was little else to do and Candida needed peace and quiet, not continual streams of visitors. Master Holcroft’s verdict about summed it up: “A lot of snow.”

    The time had not passed entirely peacefully, at least not for the visitors: Marie-Louise had had a run-in with the doctor on discovering that he had prescribed codeine for Candida: stopped diarrhoea, apparently.

    “That is a derivative of a hard drug! She is already inclined to addiction: are you mad, man?”

    Ouch.

    He stuttered. Nothing better, common practice, etcetera…

    “I contact my own médicin in Paris!”

    She did that. Result: Froggy parcel. God knew how it came through Customs, but there it was. Mush better! Weakly the local doctor read the label—it was in French but fortunately the medical terms were barely different, give or take the odd case ending. It would do, Mrs Sale, but for no longer than two weeks.

    The glance would have scorched an entire prairie. “I do not permit any drugs for more than two weeks!”

    Not managing to smile, the poor man muttered something and stumbled out.

    The things seemed to work, that was, they worked as well as the codeine had. The electrolyte solution and the continual doses of rice water also seemed to work; that was, the up-chucking had stopped and by the end of the fortnight Candida was able to eat some jelly-like substance that Mrs Macdonald had prepared under Maman’s supervision.

    “I think, Mrs McNeil,” she stated firmly, “that I shall take her back to France with me. She will be under my eye, and that will relieve you of the responsibility.”

    Mrs McNeil protested vociferously, but surprisingly enough it didn’t come to a no-holds-barred fight: they agreed that Candida should stay there for another two weeks. Yes, most certainly, Mrs McNeil, your good beef broth would be most suitable during that time! Mutton broth? Non, non, the good Mrs Macdonald must be discouraged from providing that, Candida had never liked the taste of the meat of sheep (she used the phrase: getting heated, Peter noted, wincing), and when she was not strong one would not force her! Then Peter would (apparently) arrange for Maman and Candida to be picked up, driven to the airport wrapped in eiderdowns as necessary, and the Lear jet would take them to Paris, where Peter (apparently) would have arranged for a comfortable limousine which would deliver them to Maman’s door. The man (unspecified) would carry her, there would be no problem!

    “Er—Maman, if the driver leaves the car in a Paris street he’ll probably get a ticket, you can’t expect him to—”

    She would ask the concierge’s husband.

    The concierge herself, a large, managing woman whom only Maman had ever been known to oppose successfully over anything, was completely capable, but the husband was notoriously unreliable. Never observably did anything except sit and smoke, and a large part of the time he did that in one of the many tiny bars situated just round the corner from the very ordinary apartment block from which Maman had obstinately refused to move ever since she and Peter’s father had acquired their flat there back in the late 1950s. The neighbourhood was perfectly respectable, but— Oh, well. She was happy there.

    “I’ll send a capable man to help you,” Peter decided firmly. “Or would it be better to hire an ambulance? They’re used to—”

    Okay, they would not take up an ambulance unnecessarily. One never knew, this was true. Silently Peter conceded that it was possible to envisage a disaster in which every ambulance in the greater Paris area would be called upon—yes. Some Higher Being up there must have been on their side today because she did not, for once, cite 9/11.

    “Then,” she concluded on a triumphant note, “I have my own doctor to her!”

    “Aye, well,” replied Mrs McNeil drily, “the stuff he prescribed seems to have worked, at all events.”

    “Certainly!” She then plunged into an account of the many and varied remèdes that should, could, and would be tried once on the soil of France, but as many of the keywords were in French—she tended to do that when carried away—Mrs McNeil was probably none the wiser.

    “That seems to be that,” Peter reported to Lalla and Petey, who were peacefully doing a jigsaw in a warm little sitting-room far, far from the scene of conflict. In the company of the large, shaggy Donnie: one could only hope and pray that neither of them would propose adopting the brute. He was merely lying on the carpet, breathing. Unless ordered to be at Hamish’s heels, he had never been observed to do anything else for as long as Peter had known Scotch Jimmy. Ostensibly he was a gun dog but actually he didn’t do that, either. Over the years various other canines had fulfilled that function: currently it was his niece, Bess, a much brighter specimen altogether, in fact entirely on the ball. Or possibly great-niece, Donnie was ancient.

    “So Marie-Louise won?” asked Lalla with a smile.

    “Mais bien sûr, mon chou,” he replied drily, collapsing into an armchair. –You could say this for Scotch Jimmy’s ersatz castle: the furniture, most of it mercifully not dating from the Victorian era like the structure itself, not to say its horrendously Gothic panelling, was bloody comfortable. Mostly giant leather upholstered things like this. Quite probably feather-stuffed and dating from… Well, before the War, would be his bet. The sort of square, solid things that had never been a fashion trend and that you expected to see in the better sort of gentlemen’s club.

    Lalla collapsed in delighted giggles.

    “I don’t see what’s funny about that,” noted Petey.

    “No!” she gasped helplessly.

    Promptly Peter gave way and laughed till he cried. “Oh, Lor’,” he said, mopping his eyes. “Er, well, the thing is, Petey, we’d never really expected Maman not to win.”

    “’Course not!” he replied scornfully. “Hey, Peter, can you see any bits of sky? ’Cos me and Mum are stuck.”

    The jigsaw was being done on a large baize-covered tray which existed for the purpose. Possibly at one stage in its existence it had been the top of a card table: Jimmy’s forbears were the sort of jolly country-living family who just naturally surrounded themselves with such really useful objects. Rather unfortunately Lalla and Petey had placed the tray on the floor.

    Peter groaned. “I can’t get down there, Petey! I’m exhausted!”

    “Are you sick, too?” he asked in alarm.

    Shit. “No, of course not. Fit as a flea. It’s mental exhaustion, rather than physical. Er, well, between us, I was afraid Maman and Mrs McNeil were going to have a stand-up fight. Er, as much as ladies do,” he amended uneasily.

    “You know, Petey,” Lalla prompted: “like that awful day when Mrs Ledbetter and that New Zealand tourist lady had that run-in over that really nice pareu that she wanted to use as a special tablecloth.”

    “Aw, yeah,” he acknowledged, unmoved. “That lady yelled, eh?”

    “Yes.”

    “Mrs Ledbetter, she didn’t.”

    “No,” said Lalla, swallowing. “She just, um, stood on her rights.”

    “She seen it first.”

    “‘She saw it first.’ Yes. –It was terrible, Peter: I know exactly how you must feel,” she allowed. “Would you like me to get you a drink?”

    “That’ll make ya feel better!” Petey encouraged him.

    Peter smiled very weakly. “Actually, darling, a nice cup of tea would hit the spot.”

    “I’ll ask Mrs Macdonald!” she beamed, scrambling up.

    She didn’t ring the bell—which worked perfectly well, it wasn’t Victorian, Mrs McNeil herself had supervised its installation—she went out.

    Peter sagged limply. “She could’ve rung the bell,” he said limply to his son.

    “Nah. She said Mrs Macdonald’s not a slave, she’s a person.”

    “Oh. Right.”

    “Only before, she said that slaves were people, too,” he noted, the brow furrowing.

    Oh, God. Peter racked his brains in order to put it in a form that a ten-year-old could absorb. “That’s right, Petey. The poor African people were taken from their own land by the white slave-traders and transported to America and the West Indies, as slaves. To say somebody’s not a slave doesn’t really mean they’re not a person, it just means they shouldn’t be, um, made to work like a slave. They—uh—had to work very hard and they didn’t get paid.”

    “I geddit.”

    “Um, I think what Lalla meant was that the frightful white people who owned the slaves didn’t treat them like people, Petey.”

    “Nah. That was ages ago, eh?”

    “Yes.”

    “So can’t I ring the bell at the flat?”

    Peter bit his lip. “Well, you could, because Beattie understands that we don’t think of him as a slave.”

    “Does he get paid?”

    “Yes, of course! I pay him and Mrs Beattie.”

    “So does Jimmy pay Mrs Macdonald?”

    “Yes, certainly.”

    “And Katie?”

    “Uh—he pays her for her work in the research department at the salmon farm. I think she just volunteered to come and help out with Candida out of the kindness of her heart, Petey.”

    “Right. She’s nice. She’s got a Scottie dog, he’s miles smaller than Donnie, but she says he’s feisty!”

    Peter smiled. “Yes, Scottie dogs are often feisty little fellows. Quite tough little dogs: bred to take the Scottish weather, you see.”

    “I geddit.”

    Peter hesitated: he had no idea whether Lalla liked dogs, though she seemed to have taken Donnie in her stride. Though really, one could hardly count that, the creature was little more than a breathing doormat. “Um, if your mother approves of it, perhaps we could have a dog in Australia.”

    “Mighty! Really, Peter? –Hey, Mum!” he cried as Lalla came in with a tray of tea. “Peter says we can have a dog in Australia!”

    “If it’s all right with you, darling,” said Peter quickly.

    “Of course it’s all right,” she said, putting the tray down on the table that they weren’t using for the jigsaw for inscrutable reasons.

    “A Scottie dog?” asked Petey eagerly.

    Lalla looked at him limply. “Have you ever even seen one?”

    “’Course! Katie, she brought Fergus to the back door one day, to show me! They were going for a walk, only she said it might be too cold for me,” he added regretfully. “And Mrs Macdonald said there was no way a ween of my age was going out in that and she must be mad. Only they were all right.”

    “Katie has a Scottie dog, though heretofore the name wasn’t mentioned,” noted Peter.

    “I see! Fergus is her Scottie dog!”

    “Ye-ah! Honestly, Mum!”

    “Petey, I sympathise with the sentiment but the expression of it was rude,” said Peter very limply indeed.

    Petey looked puzzled. “That wasn’t rude.”

    “He means that polite boys don’t say ‘Honestly, Mum,’ to their mothers,” Lalla explained. “Mrs Macdonald’s given me a glass of Ribena for you. You don’t have to have it if—”

    “I like it!” He grabbed it eagerly—pre-empting, presumably, any attempt to take it away from him.

    Lalla looked at him limply. “He’s never had it before.”

    Petey looked up from the obligatory gulping and gasping. “Yeah, I have, Mum! Mrs Macdonald, she got it in specially for me! She’s given it to me loads of times!”

    “Thank you, darling,” said Peter feebly as Lalla handed him a cup of tea. “It’s beginning—recently begun—to percolate through to my enfeebled consciousness, that in any community consisting of, shall we say, disparate ages and disparate, er, social classes—”

    “You can drop that right now,” noted his helpmeet.

    “Very well, disparate social functions, let us say,” he amended smoothly, “there will inevitably exist a substrate, so to speak, composed of kids, dogs, those who handle food, and those who come to the various households on any errand whatsoever. A substrate whose every junior member will be aware of all the concerns, however trivial—make that the more trivial the better—of every member of the said community.”

    Lalla drank tea. “Yes,” she said placidly, setting down her cup, “kids always make it their business to know everybody in the neighbourhood. I thought that would have been self-evident from Palmyra Polynesia. You must of had your head in a bag. –Petey! Do not let the dog lick your Ribena glass!”

    “Ugh! No; most unhygienic!” Peter agreed, looking at his offspring in horror.

    “Mrs Macdonald’ll wash it,” Petey offered valiantly.

    “Not that, you pair of dills!” cried Lalla. “What makes you think that Ribena’s a dog’s natural food? It’s vegetable, it’s made from blackcurrants, what if it poisoned him?”

    A tingling silence then prevailed in the cosy little sitting-room.

    “Aye, weel, mistress, it’ll no’ do that,” said a dry voice from the doorway. “It’s nobbut a wee berry, and he’s eaten Mrs Macdonald’s Christmas pudden wi’ no ill effects, the [possible Scottish epithet]. But it doesna do on principle, to give a dog strange liquors. Will ye come to HEEL, Donnie!”

    The shaggy rug having risen and reluctantly dragged itself over to him, Hamish bade the company good-day and exited with it, as ordered, at his heels.

    Silence.

    Astonishingly, Master Holcroft was the first to break it. “Say I had a Scottie dog…”

    “You won’t give it Ribena!” retorted his mother swiftly, getting, it was to be supposed, her second wind.

    “Nah. –Can ya get Ribena in Australia?”

    “You must be able to, it’s a Commonwealth country,” replied Lalla with perfect seriousness.

    “Good. I like it. But say I had a Scottie dog, would it come to heel like Donnie?”

    Lalla looked expectantly at Peter.

    He buried his nose in his teacup.

    “Peter—!”

    “I’m brain-dead,” he sighed. “Uh—sorry, Petey. Not really. Well, we’d have to take it to obedience classes. Um, special classes for dogs where they teach them to, uh, obey commands. Er, well, ‘Heel’, and ‘Come’ and, um, ‘Sit’, I suppose,” he ended feebly.

    “Can dogs learn all that?”

    “Yes,” said Lalla definitely.

    “Great. So when can we get it?”

    “Not until we have a house,” said Peter firmly, “and are settled in it. That means when your mother is comfortable in it, she has the furniture that she likes, and she wants to stay there. Got it?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Good,” he sighed. “Uh—what—?” he said, as Lalla got up and came over to him.

    “Give me your cup; I think you need a refill!” she said with a laugh.

    “That or a transfusion,” he sighed. “Thank you, darling.”

    Lalla gave him a tolerant look. “You’ll get used to it.”

    “It’ll have to have a lead,” noted Master Holcroft thoughtfully.

    “Shut up, Petey, your father’s tired,” said Lalla tranquilly. “See if you can fill in that tree: it’s got me baffled.

    Astoundingly, Master Holcroft returned to the jigsaw, and a blessed silence fell…

    “There it is!” screamed Petey at the top of his lungs.

    The bloody thing had been in sight for hours. No, well, it felt like hours. Since very shortly after they set foot on the pavement outside the flats.

    “Ugh, it looks horribly high, Peter,” said Lalla, shrinking.

    Yes, it did. She had mentioned that she didn’t like heights and would be happy just to wait while they went up in it. “You don’t have to go up in it, darling. Only I rather think the damned thing takes over an hour to go round. Come along, we’ll find a nice warm café for you to wait in. Got your book?”

    “Yes. It’s getting quite exciting. Wasn’t it nice of Jimmy to lend it to me?”

    If she said so. An ancient copy of Ivanhoe—a leatherbound, Victorian edition.

    … “Okay?” he asked anxiously once she was settled in the café well away from any discernible draughts.

    “Mm, lovely, thanks.”

    “Come on, Peter!” gasped Petey, jumping.

    Gloomily resigned to his fate, Peter allowed himself to be dragged off to the London Eye.

    … “We went up in it, Mum! It was ace! We seen everything! Like, the Gherkin an’ everything, an’ guess what! We seen the place where James Bond, he drove his speed boat up onto the land!”

    “Apparently the whole world’s seen that film,” noted Peter heavily, sitting down at her table before his legs could actually give way under him.

    “Mac’s got a video of it. He lent it to Dad and we had a proper movie session with popcorn,” said Lalla placidly.

    “Grandpa, he went to sleep, eh?”

    “Good for him,” said Peter before he could stop himself.

    “Pe-ter! He missed a good bit! See, there was this pipeline, an’ James Bond, he went in it!”

    “In that case when I saw it on a plane I must have gone to sleep, too,” said Peter.

    “Pe-ter! –Do ya think he really drove his speed boat onto the land, Mum?”

    Peter was completely flummoxed by this one but Lalla replied mildly: “Well, someone did. It might have been a stuntman dressed up like him.”

    “Yeah. And we seen the place: right up the river, eh, Peter?”

    “Well, we saw large stretches of the Thames, so—uh—yes.”

    “’Course! And you can see for miles, Mum! Only it was a bit, like, overcast. But I bet that was Buckingham Palace where the Queen lives, Peter!”

    “Mm. Well, it was the right direction.”

    “Yes. The London Eye, it goes up re-ee-eal slow—” He demonstrated with his hand. Lalla winced.

    “Yes, well, how about something to eat?” said Peter quickly. They had had lunch. Though that seemed like a lifetime ago.

    “Mighty!”

    And so an afternoon tea of quiche and chocolate cake with a glass of orange juice that he drank but stigmatised as not even as good as that Aussie stuff that Mac reckoned we hadda use up ’cos the storeroom was full of it, set the seal on Petey’s visit to the London Eye, London itself, and, really, Britain as a whole.

    After which there was nothing to do but, ignoring such points as unviewed Towers of London in the permafrost, post five thousand postcards of the Eye to everyone Petey knew in both the Cook Islands and New Zealand, and escape to warmer climes. This time flying Emirates in the greatest possible luxury: never mind the conspicuous consumption, Peter felt he needed the rest. Not to say, the pampering.

Next chapter:

https://thelallaeffect.blogspot.com/2024/01/a-nice-house.html