Palmyra Polynesia

Part III. TEN YEARS DOWN THE TRACK

11

Palmyra Polynesia

    Holly Turua appeared in the doorway of Lalla’s office. “Hey, Lalla, that Mrs Finkelstein, she wants a massage, only we’ve run out of that frangipani oil.”

    “Again?” said Lalla limply.

    “Yeah: see, Mrs Finkelstein, she reckons it’s got the real smell of the South Pacific, and that Mrs Kilcannon last week, well, she said it’s the scent of the Islands!” she beamed.

    “It’s a flaming Central American plant. You know: Mexico and places,” said Lalla feebly.

    Holly winked one large, lustrous brown eye at her. “Yeah. They don’t know that, see? Anyway, what are we gonna do?’

    Lalla looked somewhat limply at Holly’s tall, generously proportioned person—Cook Islanders were not small people—in its pristine white massage uniform and red rubber jandals. Possibly there was a slight excuse for Mrs Finkelstein, Mrs Kilcannon, et al., because the Palmyra Polynesia’s masseuses (so-called: all trained by Liliane Ledbetter, though as she patronised Elisabeth Arden when at home, she’d know) had to wear their hair scraped back ultra-neatly into a bun, or bunch if they were more modern and had had it cut, with one neat flower—usually a frangipani but sometimes the endemic white tiare maori, which was the Cook Islands national flower—pinned over the ear. True, frangipanis grew like weeds here, but nevertheless they were not a native— Oh, forget it. Rich, the Palmyra Polynesia clients were. Used to the best, they were. Exacting—too right. But educated? Uh-uh. No way.

    “Um, well, I can’t magic up some frangipani oil if we’ve run out, Holly.”

    Holly gave a fruity chuckle. “Nah!” –The Cook Islanders spoke New Zealand English, complete with its slang, though with a local accent. Perhaps fortunately the well-off guests from the States or Britain assumed the slang was the charming local dialect and the Europeans didn’t notice it. And actually the Australians didn’t seem to, either. The accent depended on the speaker and whether they’d spent a length of time in New Zealand or even gone to school there: New Zealand had a larger population of Cook Islanders than the Cooks did. Maybe the clients were all too concerned with their scented massages, their careful tans, their five-course gourmet meals with the bottles of Bollinger, not vintage, at two hundred New Zealand dollars a pop, and their endless spa-bathing in full view of the sparkling Pacific Ocean to notice anything?

    “Is she narked, Holly?” Lalla asked cautiously.

    “I wouldn’t say that. Bit narked, maybe. So I said I’d see if there was any more, but I knew there wasn’t.”

    Suppressing a sigh, Lalla got up. “I’ll come and speak to her, Holly.”

    “Ta, Lalla,” said Holly gratefully.

    “Do I look all right?” asked Lalla without thinking, smoothing her Liliane-Ledbetter-decreed sarong over her hips. The sarong was not a native Cook Islands garment. However, the guests all expected to be served by something that was a cross between a Gauguin and Dorothy Lamour, so that, apart of course from the massage staff, was what they got. Mrs Ledbetter bought the material in Honolulu and had it made up there, to a pattern that was distinctly on the D. Lamour side, entailing darts galore, by a Chinese dressmaker. So there you were.

    Holly of course thought she looked okay. As you’d have to be covered in black mud from head to foot with your hair like a birch broom in a fit for her to say anything else, this didn’t mean much. It was partly unwillingness to say anything rude to a non-Islander, partly the fact that the local culture had no sense of neatness or smartness as Western societies understood it. This last was, alas, something that Mrs Ledbetter couldn’t really grasp. In her book they were just untidy and sloppy, and she and Lalla had to deal with it. Deal with it in the sense of fix it, rather than that of work round it. At one stage she’d almost decided to hire “nice Noo Zealand or Australian girls” to serve the guests. Lalla had had a real struggle to persuade her that doing so could only alienate the locals, that these nice girls wouldn’t want to stay longer than a season, and that she could cope. The red rubber jandals that Holly was wearing as of this moment represented a signal triumph for Lalla: Mrs Ledbetter had finally got the point that the Islanders weren’t used to shoes, that their feet were too broad for shoes, and that they’d give a much better service if their feet were comfortable. Oddly, Lalla’s final and somewhat desperate point that they were so nice and brown all over that their toes didn’t look horrid and naked at all, had seemed to carry the day.

    So Holly in her neat white uniform, red jandals and single white frangipani bloom, and Lalla in her gaily coloured sarong went off to face Mrs Finkelstein of Tucson, Arizona, together. The sarong material came in a range of colour combinations, but all with designs of large hibiscus blooms, sometimes dotted with smaller frangipani blooms, on a plain background. Most of the staff got through two in a day and though the material washed well, nevertheless Mrs Ledbetter’s custom must keep Mrs Lee pretty busy. This morning’s effort featured pink and apricot hibiscuses with stars of bright yellow frangipani on a cheerful emerald background, and Lalla had a toning pale apricot, red-centred hibiscus behind one ear. It fell off as they were crossing Palmyra Polynesia’s top terrace, so possibly if Holly had shared Liliane Ledbetter’s standards she might have pointed out that it looked wobbly before they set out.

    Obligingly Holly picked it up for her.

    “Thanks, Holly,” said Lalla, looking sadly at the terrace’s expanse of flown-in veined white marble paving and heavy white balustrade with its large, rounded supports topped by fat knobs. The latter not marble but something fake from New Zealand. The terrace was the highest point of the island and beyond it you got a view of nothing but the deep blue Pacific and the sky, so it was certainly spectacular, but horribly bare. When you reached the far balustrade you saw that below it was more terracing, several of the hotel’s misnamed “huts”—detached luxury suites—and a lot of flourishing tropical vegetation, mostly brought in, the island as bought by Mr Ledbetter having had coconut palms, lots of sand, lots of large crabs, and very little else. But from up here on the terrace you couldn’t see the vegetation at all and the view was just blue and white. “Don’t you think some nice hibiscuses in pots would look good up here?”

    Naturally Holly agreed: the Cook Islanders didn’t like to contradict you. Adding cheerfully: “Nice and bright, eh?”

    “Too right. Oh, well. This is supposed to be elegant,” said Lalla sadly. Almost no-one used the terrace: it was too hot up here for most of the day. Palmyra Polynesia did offer breakfast out here but by the time their clientèle deemed it a suitable hour to break their fast with the odd slice of green and orange melon lightly dotted with sliced strawberries, or pawpaw sprinkled with fresh lime and raw sugar, the day had already heated up. “And I dare say hibiscuses would spoil it; I’ve got no taste.”

    “You’ve got taste, Lalla!” objected Holly loyally.

    “Not really, though Mrs Ledbetter’s taught me a lot,” said Lalla with a strange little smile that the innocent Holly didn’t notice. “I’ve only met one person with more taste than her.”

    “Yeah, she’s got taste, all right,” agreed Holly. “All the sarongs are the same pattern, eh?”

    They had already agreed that this was an inspired stroke on Mrs Ledbetter’s part, so Lalla just smiled and nodded.

    “June Raui, she was saying her zip gave way the other day,” said Holly on a hopeful note.

    The spurious sarongs had zips under the left arm. Moulded to the form: yeah. “If it’s just the zip Ngamau could replace it for her,” replied Lalla conscientiously: Mrs Ledbetter wasn't wholly unsympathetic to the staff’s keenness on grabbing any clothes discarded by the hotel: according to her it might help to give them some notion of what style was; but on the other hand she was very down on waste and in person had trained Ngamau Tangianau to do alterations, mending and running repairs in addition to the ironing she did for the guests.

    “Nah, it wasn’t just the zip. It did give way, only the material, it tore under the arm, too.”

    Trying to banish all thought of Liliane Ledbetter’s scathing opinion of the Cook Islands girls’ armpits from her mind, not to mention the recurring thought that Mrs Ledbetter should have taken a stiff course in Polynesian culture and customs before she ever set foot here, Lalla replied: “In that case I should think it’ll have to be thrown away. It sounds as if she needs a bigger size. Or the same size, but maybe Ngamau could let out a couple of darts for her, or something.”

    “Yeah. Want me to tell her?” asked Holly hopefully.

    “We could tell her together,” said Lalla kindly. “I’d better get her to try a few on and have Ngamau look at them.”

    “Righto!” she beamed. “So is it okay for me to have the old one? June doesn’t want it.”

    At least she was asking. She was bigger than June—Mrs Ledbetter preferred the slighter girls for waitressing and sarong-wearing—but Lalla didn’t ask what on earth she intended doing with it. If all else failed it would probably go to her little sister, Princess Diana. She was only fifteen, and not a small girl, but Mrs Ledbetter had promised that if she kept her weight down she would be taken on as an apprentice waitress when she left school. Typically of Liliane Ledbetter, she hadn’t explained how Princess Diana was supposed to do that with the local diet, which was pretty much a compound of the most fattening aspects of the New Zealand diet—starchy white bread, Coke, greasy fish and chips, bacon and fried eggs—with the most fattening aspects of the more traditional Pacific diet: starchy plantains, bananas and taro, greasy pork and tinned bully beef. They ate a lot of fish as well but somehow it didn’t counteract the grease and starch. And certainly there were lots of lovely fresh fruits and veges in the markets over on Rarotonga, but fruit seemed to be more an adjunct than a staple of the diet. So Lalla had explained to the grateful Princess Diana that avoiding the fatty and starchy foods would be the way to keep the weight off. Somehow her teacher had got to hear of this, and Lalla had been roped in to give a talk on diet to all the senior girls. She had been terrified at the idea of speaking in public, but actually the girls had all been so eager and interested—particularly in the construction of the sarong which Mrs Ledbetter had ordered her to wear—that she’d soon forgotten her nerves. Then the junior girls had been jealous, and as the teacher had thought it was never too soon to make an effort, she’d had to give the talk to them, too.

    She agreed Holly could have June’s busted sarong and they went on amicably over the terrace, through the gap in the balustrade that you didn’t even realise was there until you were up close, as the two rows of fat, turned posts artfully overlapped in the middle, and down the whitewashed stone steps to the lower levels.

    Mrs Finkelstein was discovered on the patio of her air-conditioned “hut” under her large white sun-umbrella, lying face-down on her sunlounger cum massage couch and ignoring the splendid view of the Pacific artfully framed by the fringed palms transplanted there for the purpose.

    “Good morning, Mrs Finkelstein. I’m so sorry, but we’re out of frangipani massage oil: it’s been very popular just lately and as of course you realise, all our supplies have to be flown in,” said Lalla smoothly. –This type of situation had occurred before. “But Holly has some very nice oil from Elizabeth Arden, if you’d like to try that. Show her, Holly.”

    Beaming hopefully, Holly produced an Elizabeth Arden product from her bag of massage aids—sparkling white, emblazoned with the blue palm tree that was the hotel’s logo and the words “Palmyra Polynesia”, also in blue. It looked really good even though in essence it was a cheap airline carry-on bag of the sort that a business buddy of Mr Ledbetter’s manufactured by the hundred thousand in South Korea. Though he was thinking of shifting his factory to China, their labour was cheaper these days. Palmyra Polynesia’s custom was, of course, a drop in the ocean to Mr Forrest Croft, even though the hotel sold a fair few in the lobby shop and gave away a fair few as one of the many freebies their up-market guests expected, but he had agreed to make up the order as a special favour. These bags were now seen all over the Cooks, but as Hiram Ledbetter himself said, it was great advertising for them.

    Mrs Finkelstein examined the product with a frown. “It’ll have to do,” she said in the cross, whiny, discontented voice that was typical of their clientèle—hers was scratchy, into the bargain. “And bring me a fresh lime juice, would you?”

    “Of course, Mrs Finkelstein,” agreed Lalla. “I’ll send one of the waiting staff over right away.”

    “Not that boy that served me yesterday,” she ordered with a frown.

    “Hoyt Nooroa? Wasn’t his service satisfactory?” asked Lalla politely. There was nothing wrong with Hoyt: he was a perfectly pleasant boy, aged about nineteen. Possibly the woman had made a pass at him which he’d fended off: most of the local population belonged to the Cook Islands Congregational Christian Church and had strict moral standards which didn’t include sleeping with leathery-skinned American hags old enough to be their grandmothers.

    “He was real offhand,” said Mrs Finkelstein sourly.

    Oh, dear. This was her first visit and whether because Mr Finkelstein had basely deserted her every day so far in favour of the “Genuine Pacific Canoe Fishing Experience” that featured on the website (genuine with the addition of a small outboard motor as a safety precaution) or whether because she was just naturally discontented, she hadn’t appeared to enjoy anything so far.

    “I’m sure he didn’t mean to be. It’s the just the Cook Islands native good humour, Mrs Finkelstein,” said Lalla—she could use the word “native” without a blink in this sort of context, now: Liliane Ledbetter had stressed that it wasn’t pejorative, honey, the clients wanted the native experience: it was what they came for, so we had to make sure they realized they were getting it! “They’re a very friendly, natural, simple sort of people. But I’ll make sure someone else serves you in future.”

    “Mata Nelson, he could do it,” suggested Holly. “He’s all right, Mrs Finkelstein.”

    There was absolutely nothing to choose between Mata and Hoyt: same age, same unaffected manner, same chunky figure, same complete willingness to oblige in almost any matter short of propositions from sour-faced Yank aforesaid. But Mata was Mary Nelson’s son and so in some sort an unofficial connection of Lalla’s; in fact he was probably over at Dad’s little bungalow with his mum as they spoke. It was clear to Lalla that Holly imagined she was doing the Holcrofts a favour by suggesting him.

    “He’s not on shift, yet, Holly. You might like to start the massage, if Mrs Finkelstein’s ready. I’ll see about the drink, Mrs Finkelst—”

    “Wait!”

    Obediently Lalla waited.

    “What sort of ice do you use?” she demanded grimly.

    Lalla had encountered this question before, oddly enough. Only from American clients, true. “Don’t worry, Mrs Finkelstein: all the ice used in the drinks is made from bottled water. It’s only the ice used in the wine chillers that’s made from the tank water.” –The island had no natural source of fresh water, doubtless why it had been inhabited only by coconut trees and crabs when Hiram Ledbetter bought it, not to say why its owners had been only too keen to get rid of it. In the wet season they did get a lot of rain: the annual rainfall was about two metres, or seventy-nine inches, and Mr Ledbetter had duly dotted his property with rainwater tanks, by now mostly fairly well disguised by trellises of climbing vines. All the taps in the “huts” and suites had water filters attached but as well—you couldn’t be too careful—the guests were advised not to drink the tap water. Of course it was costing a fortune to freight the bottled water in, but then, the guests were paying several fortunes for the privilege of staying here: the cheapest suite in the hotel cost $NZ1500.00 per night, and the huts went for $2500.00 and up depending on whether you demanded full butler service. Which the Finkelsteins, thank goodness, hadn’t.

    Mrs Finkelstein didn’t say “Good” or anything like that; she said sourly: “When we were in Mexico—though mind you, it wasn’t a five-star hotel, and I said from the outset it was a mistake to try it—we saw the men unloading the ice and dragging it across the filthy ground.”

    “I see: how ghastly,” said Lalla politely. She had heard this horror story before, actually. Only from American clients, true. “Our management is American: they wouldn’t dream of allowing that sort of thing. You can rest assured our standards of hygiene are of the highest.”

    “See, it’s really clean, Mrs Finkelstein,” said Holly helpfully.

    “Just get on with the massage, would you?” she replied coldly.

    Obligingly Holly peeled the pristine white towel off her shoulders and began applying the Elizabeth Arden product to her back.

    “If that’s all, Mrs Finkelstein, I’ll see about your drink,” said Lalla politely.

    “No, it isn’t all, since we’re on the subject of hygiene: that spa bath is unusable!” she said bitterly.

    All the huts were built to the same pattern: with a spa pool at the end of the patio, sheltered from the gaze of the curious by some trellising, painted the hotel’s blue and with a vine or two growing on it. Wood didn’t last too long in the tropical climate so the trellises, which looked real good, Mr Ledbetter had to admit, were colour-steel: the blue bonded on. Freighted in from the States. A special order, but they’d been real obliging, whereas both the Noo Zealand and the Australian firms he’d made the mistake of trying first had tried to tell him he was crazy, trellises were always made from wood and they didn’t generally do production runs that small: sheesh!

    Lalla didn’t try telling the woman the pools were cleaned regularly and inspected every day: she went over and looked. The pool was full. Naturally Palmyra Polynesia did not keep its spa pools full: in fact one of the pool boys’ jobs was to check, very early in the morning, that the clients hadn’t left the water in. So Mrs Finkelstein must have filled it herself. Three leaves were floating in it, and—

    “There’s something nass-ty in there!” said Mrs Finkelstein loudly in her native vernacular.

    “Like, nah-sty, she means,” translated Holly helpfully in the dialect she and Lalla shared.

    “Um, yes,” said Lalla weakly. “Just do the massage, Holly, dear. Um, ’tisn’t nasty, Mrs Finkelstein. It’s just a passionfruit that must have fallen in off the vine.”

    Holly was rubbing the client’s back scientifically but she hadn’t taken the hint—either of the hints. She offered kindly: “See, you can eat them: they’re free.”

    Lalla took a deep breath. “Holly, dear, I don’t think Mrs Finkelstein wants you to talk. Ladies like her don’t need free passionfruit. Just do the massage, okay?” She bent over and, at a certain risk of falling out of the sarong, retrieved the passionfruit. It was the yellow-skinned sort, quite large. It must be ripe, if it had fallen off. And Holly was quite right: they were a perquisite of the guests.

    Mrs Finkelstein didn’t say anything, so Lalla kindly picked the leaves out of the water, said on a weak note: “It’s all right now,” and escaped, clutching the passionfruit.

    The nearest available waitress proved to be Glenda Nooroa, who was Hoyt’s sister, but never mind, Mrs F. wouldn’t ask the girl her surname or even her first name—in fact she would not even bother to look her in the eye, not realising, of course, that it was Polynesian body language indicating respect for one’s elders and betters not to look one in the eye. Yeah, well. So Glenda in her sarong of scarlet and turquoise hibiscuses dotted with white frangipani on an apricot background, complete with a scarlet hibiscus behind one ear, went off cheerfully to serve the client with a glass of nimbu pani (with sugar and ice) as previously ordered by Mrs Finkelstein and duly recorded in Palmyra Polynesia’s computer system. This was no guarantee that the woman would find the drink acceptable, but it was as far as it was humanly possible to go—yes. The passionfruit went to the kitchen: why waste a perfectly good passionfruit?

    In the kitchen Navy Tairea, the sous-chef, decided with a giggle it could go on the so-called “Tropicana Meringue” (good old EnZed pavlova) that Mrs Finkelstein had ordered up for her lunch: why not? To which Angie Gordon added the relieved addendum that that meant the last of the bloody kiwis could go on Mr and Mrs McIntosh’s fruit salad, because they’d been asking where they were.

    “Kiwifruit? They’re barely semi-tropical,” said Lalla limply.

    “You know that, honey, and I know that, but do the clients? No way!” replied Angie with vigour.

    “The McIntoshes, they’re Canadian, too,” added Navy in a sort of awed wonder.

    “Navy, hon’, that makes no difference,” said Angie. “They know from nothing.”

    Navy rested his weight on one leg and looked thoughtfully at the salad he was creating for this lunchtime’s buffet. “Like, does that mean if you’re rich it doesn’t matter where you come from, you’ve gotta be ignorant?”

    Lalla collapsed in giggles, and he grinned.

    “Yeah, hah, hah,” said Angie weakly. “Well, apart from Mother and Pop, I guess so.”

    “Our statistics so far indicate as much, Navy,” agreed Lalla, wiping her eyes. “Don’t do too much buffet food: Mr Anderson’s gone off with Mr Finkelstein in Hoppy Tangianau’s canoe for the day, and Mr and Mrs Dunkel got a dose of sunburn yesterday and they’re gonna lunch in their suite.”

    “What you mean is,” said Angie with a twinkle in her eye, briskly chopping coriander—they grew their own, in self-defence, so many of the clients had asked where it was—“Judge Anderson, and Mr Dunkel and companion, but we get the general drift.”

    “Yeah, very funny,” allowed Lalla, grinning, what time Navy dissolved in giggles. “I’ve worked out why the insistence on the ‘Judge’ bit, by the way: she’s really peeved because he hasn’t been knighted yet.”

    “Isn’t that automatic in the British Commonwealth when they get to be a judge?” asked Angie vaguely.

    “Apparently not, in EnZed,” replied Lalla with a certain satisfaction. Mrs Anderson was what could fairly have been stigmatised as a pest, though Angie had used a much ruder word when a beautiful crab terrine had been returned untouched to the kitchen.

    “He doesn’t seem so bad,” offered Navy.

    Angie, though their temperaments were very different, tended to take her tone from her mother. “Navy, hon’,” she said with heavy kindness, “he’s weak as water: lets her push him hither and yon. That’ll be enough salad, in that case, and they can have some of that fruit that no-one wanted for breakfast.”

    “It wasn’t sitting on a patio in the sun, was it, Angie?” asked Lalla weakly. Angie couldn’t bear to throw good food away. Even though it wouldn’t literally have been thrown away: the staff would either have eaten it on the spot or taken it home. In some cases, having to hop between three islands to do so.

    “No, it was sitting in our refrigerator with none of them asking for it, Lalla, honey!” replied Angie with vigour,

    “Oh,” said Lalla weakly as Navy winked at her. “Well, they are on holiday, after all: why should they get up in time for breakfast when they don’t need to?”

    Alas, this placatory gambit misfired: Navy collapsed in giggles again and Angie reached for a piece of steak and reduced it to mush with her big cleaver before Lalla’s starting eyes.

    “It’s all right, Lalla,” said Navy kindly: “she’s doing that fake Lebanese thing with the, like, meatballs only they’re kind of oval, y’know?” –Navy had done a New Zealand hospitality course and then several years of cooking in a variety of Auckland hotels and restaurants, and had duly picked up the manner and intonations of the gay cooks he’d met there. Not to say their other habits. His upright Congregational family had taken the precaution of marrying him off to a nice Cook Islands girl before they let him go, but it manifestly hadn’t worked. They were still legally married—divorce would have horrified both their families—but she was in Auckland with her de facto and their three kids. Navy’s fellow staff members didn’t know whether the families pretended the kids were his or just ignored the whole bit. Certainly their mother had never brought them home to the Cooks.

    Lalla swallowed hard: Angie usually used the food processor for those meatballs. “I see. So, um, what happened with the breakfasts?”

    Ange pointed the cleaver at her. “Number one, Mrs Finkelstein.”

    “Oh, heck,” said Lalla faintly.

    Angie took a deep breath and plunged into it. “The croissants were too dry and the coffee, believe me or believe me not, was too strong! Well, yeah, she is from Tucson, Arizona, but sheesh!”—She sounded just like her Pop: Navy and Lalla exchanged smiles.—“The sugar wasn’t sweet enough—you may well stare. Next the fruit coupe wasn’t chilled enough and she didn’t like the look of the ice it was sitting in, so it all came back, too.”

    “Granted that was after Mr F. and the judge had gone off with Hoppy, Lalla,” said Navy quickly.

    Angie sniffed. “Yeah. Then she complained that she’d expected a Continental breakfast and Hoyt made the mistake of trying to tell her that was what it was instead of just grovelling, poor kid.”

    “I see!” said Lalla in enlightened tones.

    “Yeah, I just bet you do,” Angie agreed. “The kid was almost in tears by that time. So Mac went off to talk to the cow in person.”

    Minor staff run-ins with spoilt clients weren’t Mac’s job. “Angie, why didn’t he call me?”

    “Didn’t figure you needed the aggro, Lalla, dear!” said Navy brightly.

    “No, that’s right,” agreed Angie. “Now, get this: he offered her anything she liked, so she ordered toast and Earl Grey tea! For the life of us we couldn’t figure who she meant to spite by it!”

    “No, but we were positive she was spiting someone!” added Navy with relish.

    “Ya would be,” agreed Lalla, shuddering. “And did that go down okay?’

    Navy shrugged. “She didn’t send it back.”

    As Angie seemed to have cheered herself up, Lalla ventured: “Was that all?’

    Angie just snorted richly, so Navy eagerly took up the tale. “By no means, dear! Those four Aussies down in Hut Five—well, heck, I know we advertise four maximum, but who comes to a place like this to share? And it isn’t as if they get hardly any discount, either!”—Angie and Lalla exchanged glances. It wasn’t much of a discount, percentage-wise, no, but was it hard to imagine circumstances in which four well-off Australians of mixed sexes in their mid-forties might want to share accommodation?—“Anyway, they asked about the cooked breakfasts, so of course Hoyt said anything they liked, and showed them the cooked breakfast menu, y’know?”—Poor Hoyt again: oh, dear. Lalla bit her lip.—“So the men decided they'd have the Rancher’s Platter and the ladies chose the Eggs Benedictine. And the pink grapefruit. We didn’t think anything of it, dear, and sent poor little Hoyt off with it all, and lo! They kicked up the most terrific fuss!”

    “Uh—yikes,” said Lalla, gaping at him. “Did you say they chose the Eggs Benedictine?”

    “You got it,” replied Angie with satisfaction.

    “They must’ve thought they were the same as Eggs Benedict: we used to do them in Auckland at The Royal: very popular with the ladies,” explained Navy.

    “Well, yes!” said Lalla with considerable feeling. “Australians? Didn’t anybody think?”

    “Nobody would of spotted it straight off!” retorted Navy, pouting.

    “I think I might of, Navy, if I’d been standing at the stove laboriously poaching eggs and making a delicious Hollandaise sauce,” said Lalla on a weak note.

    “He did make young Roro toast the muffins,” put in Angie kindly.

    Roro was supposed to peel and chop under supervision, which was about all he was capable of. “Mm,” said Lalla feebly. “What about when you put the slice of tongue on the muffins, Navy? I mean: Australians?”

    “No!” he said crossly. “Because last week we had that lovely Mr and Mrs Van Buren, that told me they hadn’t had better at the George V in Paris!”

    Lalla was now very flushed: Mr and Mrs Van Buren were cousins of the Gary Van Burens whom she’d met in Canberra. “They’re American old money, Navy, the sort that send their kids to Harvard and—and places.”

    “Ivy League schools,” said Angie kindly. “The kind that not only can afford to eat at the George V, they know what they’re eating. They were right, you do that dish real delicious, Navy. Only Mother was right, see: it’s only the rare few that know what they’re eating, and we better take it off of the menu. Or go a bit down-market and put descriptions on the menus, I guess,” she conceded, looking at Navy’s fallen face. “See, in the real swanky places the rich people, they don’t wanna read the menu: they just ask the waiter what the dish is.”

    “I get it! –Hey, they got it all wrong in Auckland, eh, with those huge great menus!” he realized brightly. “Anyway, Lalla, dear, you’re right: they were expecting Eggs Benedict: runny scrambled egg with cream in it, on croissants, eh?”

    “Yeah. That’s what I had in Australia, at a winery: it was a conference tour,” she admitted. “Well, that doesn’t sound too—”

    “Wait for it,” advised Angie drily.

    Navy nodded portentously. “The Rancher’s Platter,” he said deeply.

    It was very popular with their male American clients, on the occasions on which their wives would let them get away with it. Lalla stared at him, very puzzled. “Was there too much meat? They could just have left some.”

    “Put it like this, dear; they did ask Hoyt what was in it, and he said steak, bacon and eggs, and beans. Turns out,” said Navy with relish, “they were expecting a fry-up with the beans just Wattie’s—tinned, in tomato sauce—y’know? Well, I dunno if Hoyt had it exactly right, there was quite bit of shouting, but it was something like ‘We ordered an Outback breakfast’?” He watched in satisfaction as Lalla clapped her hand to her mouth. “Yes: Huevos Rancheros, they were not expecting.”

    “’Specially not the fried tortilla and the chilli sauce the eggs were sitting on: in fact one of the men shouted something about why does everything have to have chilli in it and he never wanted to come here in the first place,” added Angie, making a wry face.

    “Shit,” said Lalla numbly.

    “Yeah, we concluded that, huh, Navy? Anyroad, we took it all back and sent Hoyt back with two plates of fried steak, eggs and bacon. Couldn’t manage the Wattie’s baked beans on the side, though.”

    “Hoyt and Roro and Nga, they ate the Rancher’s Platters: they weren’t wasted,” said Navy kindly.

    “Um, yes,” agreed Lalla weakly, not asking what Nga, who was one of the pool boys, had been doing in the kitchen at the time. “Oh, well, it goes with the territory, doesn't it?”

    “Honey,” said Angie heavily, “this all was only number two—well, two and three,” she allowed drily. “I guess you could say Mrs Anderson was number four.”

    “Four and five,” amended Navy, pulling a face. “Well, the Judge had gone off with Hoppy, y’know? Not to mention scoffing a plate of bacon and eggs before she could stop him. Well, at least he had the sense to just say ‘bacon and eggs,’” he allowed.

    “Yes, but what went wrong with her order?” said Lalla faintly.

    “Nothing went wrong with it, Lalla!” he retorted.

    Lalla looked limply at Angie.

    The head chef looked back blandly. “She ordered a pot of coffee and the sliced cantaloupe.”

    It was hard to imagine anything simpler. “Another one that said the coffee was too strong?”

    “No, though June said she asked where the milk was and she had to explain it was hot milk, in the second pot.”

    “Again,” added Navy on a malicious note.

    “Yeah, we might as well not bother,” agreed Lalla. “So what was it?”

    “Threw a wobbly ’cos she’d ordered cantaloupe and it was rockmelon,” he explained. “Seems she thought cantaloupe hadda be green. Well, I have seen green melons labelled that in New Zealand, y’know?”

    Lalla gulped. “Yikes. What’ll we do? ’Cos if we put ‘rockmelon’ none of the North Americans’ll understand!”

    “Or the Limeys, though we get mercifully few of them. –I’m coming to that pair in Hut Three,” warned Angie. “Well, my notion would be to put ‘cantaloupe, bracket, rockmelon, close bracket,’ Lalla, hon’, and gee, if we’re gonna have to have the menus reprinted with the descriptions on them anyroad, why not?”

    “Yes. Um, Dad could do them on the computer and use the laminating machine for the breakfast ones.”

    “Well, sure, he’s got a real good eye—shoulda been a graphic designer,” noted Angie by the by—“but that’s more paper, more toner, and the laminating plastic, isn’t it? And there’ve been some disasters at dinner-time, too—not culinary ones, keep your hair on,” she advised Navy, “and just put a pot of coffee on for us and Lalla, while I think of it, would you, hon’? –Thanks. Like I was saying, Neville might as well reformat all the menus for us, even though it’ll use up that real expensive heavy paper Mother bought in from the States. Can’t be helped.” She began expertly rolling her mince mixture, which she had not ceased working on during the conversation, into olive shapes. “No, well, Ma Anderson was easy to fix, just sent June back with a complimentary plate of green melon—real tasteless, but the customer’s always right, right? Didn’t mean any of us enjoyed it, though, least of all poor June. Though I will say this for the Islanders, it’s generally water off a duck’s back.”

    “Um, yes,” said Lalla, looking uneasily at Navy.

    “Don’t look at me, dear!” he adjured her with a giggle.

    “No,” said Lalla with a relieved smile. “We’re all mad foreigners in any case, aren’t we?”

    Gratifyingly, Navy collapsed in giggles once again, nodding madly.

    “Yeah,” said Angie, eyeing him with a sort of dry tolerance. “I’ll tell you about Hut Three and get it over with,” she decided. “Mr and Mrs Brinsley-hyphen-Pugh, that expected something nicer than Hut Three. –Don’t tell me they’re all the same, that’s my point.”

    “What are? Limeys or the huts?” asked Lalla with a twinkle in her eye.

    “Well, since you put it like that, honey, both. But yeah, the huts all are, so’s they can’t say they had a better one last time or go visiting and say someone else has got a better one: Mother worked that out, you can’t say she isn’t on the ball.” Neither Lalla nor Navy would have dreamed of doing so: they nodded respectfully. “Yeah,” said Angie, swallowing a grin. “Anyroad, last time they went to Nassau they had something nicer. Uh—the real Nassau, Navy, hon’,” she added as he was looking puzzled. “In the Caribbean. Not the one out here. So this morning Mrs Hyphen starts off telling Taukea she can’t possibly call her that, dear, she’ll call her Teresa, it’s more what she’s accustomed to. Oh, yeah,” she said to Lalla’s dropped jaw. “British colonialism, huh? Real memsahib type. –Don’t tell me it’s the 21st century. I was in fear and trembling, I can tell you, ’cos if Taukea goes, what’s the betting we lose Hoppy as well?”

    Lalla nodded numbly: Taukea Tangianau was Hoppy’s younger daughter, and Hoppy and his canoe were indispensable to the functioning of Palmyra Polynesia. Well, some of the male guests opted for surf-casting instead, but then, it was generally Jimmy Tangianau, Hoppy’s eldest son, who looked after that. And the two pool boys, Nga and Andy, were also relations, Nga being Jimmy’s younger brother and Andy a cousin. Not to mention Hoppy’s older daughter, Taggy, on the reception desk. Yikes.

    “Yes, and the rest of the family,” concluded Angie with a certain bitter satisfaction.

    “Mrs Tangianau was saying she’d like to help with the laundry,” said Lalla very faintly.

    “Well, there you are! Luckily for us Taukea didn’t take it the wrong way. –Is that coffee ready, Navy? Well, now, that was only the beginning of it, Lalla,” she said, briskly greasing an oven tray and setting her olive-shaped meatballs on it. “Mrs Hyphen’s next was that there was nothing exotic on the breakfast menu and couldn’t Teresa suggest something?”

    “Pawpaw?” suggested Lalla faintly, since she seemed to be waiting for a response.

    “Yeah, and that’s another one! Remind me to tell Neville to put ‘papaya, bracket, pawpaw, close bracket’—or maybe vice versa, who cares, but if we leave one off that’ll be the one the next one asks for! Well, yeah, poor little Taukea suggested that and the woman said it sounded revolting, she’d never heard such a horrid name—words to that effect.”

    “Poo-poo’d be worse,” said Navy detachedly.

    “Right. So she demanded kiwis. Yeah: again. Barely semi-tropical an’ all though they are. We’re gonna have to make an arrangement with a New Zealand grower, it’s crazy paying those marked-up prices.”

    “Kath’ll get you a case from the Auckland markets any time they’re in season,” said Navy generously.

    Kath was his estranged wife: the two young women looked at him numbly.

    “Why not? She’d be glad to. She goes to the markets at least once a week, y’know? Buys for a whole group of families round their way: like, a co-op.”

    “The big wholesale market? Where the truck gardeners sell their produce?” asked Angie.

    “She means the market-gardeners, Navy,” said Lalla quickly.

    “Yeah, ’course! Heck, those so-called Saturday markets, they’re real rip-offs! Well, there’s one in Otara that’s not bad—no-one from round that way ’ud buy anything if they charged retail prices, y’know? But the real market’s much cheaper. You just wait until the auction’s almost over and the big retailers have placed their orders and then you can grab a case or maybe a few, if you’re in a co-op. Um, well, you might have to reimburse her for petrol if you want her to put it on the plane,” he added cautiously.

    “Yeah, sure,” said Angie dazedly. “Well—well, gee, I think they’re in season now.”

    “Yes; it’s winter,” put in Lalla.

    “I’ll ring her,” said Navy comfortably. He looked at his watch. “Bit later, I think. Give her time to get back from the markets, eh?” He collapsed in sniggers.

    “Yeah. Thanks,” said Angie on a weak note. “That’d be great. So Taukea—beg pardon, Teresa—makes the mistake of asking whether Mrs Hyphen’d like the kiwis with the mango sauce or the blackcurrant and that elicits the information that mangoes are sicky—uh, do Limeys say that? Sickening? Whatever. And blackcurrants aren’t exotic and she’d expected better. And she was real surprised not to see melon and prosciutto on the menu or at the very least figs and ditto.”

    “This isn’t flaming Italy,” said Lalla on a grim note.

    “Right. Just as well Taukea doesn’t know enough to tell her that, huh? Then she says can she have star fruit as well as kiwis and the poor kid goes and tells her she can have a whole fruit platter. Which, gee, is not an answer and she’d expected a higher level of service at our prices.”

    “Funny, isn’t it? It’s always the English ones that complain about the prices,” said Navy dreamily. “After they’ve paid megabucks for the fares, eh?”

    “Right. –Grab that coffee-pot off of the heat, would you? So Taukea comes back to the kitchen and I have to tell her we’ve run out of star fruit. Well, Hell, the local grower only put them in for us, those trees aren’t limitless, and if you look at the map, Queensland isn’t just down the highway! None of which counts, don’t tell me. Anyroad, I looked up the recipes from the English fruit book your friend Jan recommended, Lalla, but they’re all full of cream, or cream and eggs, the English know from nothing about fruit. Though I grant you it dates from the Seventies. So I just made a purée of half a kiwi with some banana and sugar and lime juice for a swirl, and sliced one and a half real fine and put them on it. And a thin-sliced strawberry at the side sprinkled with icing sugar. That all went on one of Mother’s special white plates with that kinda lace edging. Then I put that on one of the big plain blue plates, those real shiny ones: looked good. With one of the best linen napkins in that cut-work that matches the lacy plates, and a couple of frangipani flowers slipped in beside the plate, with June’s fake banana-leaf tray as a background. That place Mother found in Honolulu with all the banana-leaf-pattern wooden stuff has been a real godsend!” she ended with a laugh.

    “Exotic, see?” explained Navy.

    “Yes,” agreed Lalla. “Angie, you’re so clever! It sounds lovely.”

    “Well, there was no message of thanks, but no news has gotta be good news, huh?” replied Angie cheerfully. “Those exotic lacy plates are made by an English firm, by the way.”

    This final hit at their English client did it: Lalla and Navy both collapsed in helpless giggles. After which they all had coffee and, since they were there, a few of the excruciatingly thin almond wafers that Angie made by the tens of dozens to decorate the clients’ exotic servings of fruit or dessert, not expecting them all to get eaten, which was just as well, because they didn’t. Except by the waitresses, the waiters, the pool boys and the kitchen hands, of course.

    Taggy Tangianau, who’d been working the morning shift on Reception, was just coming off duty as Lalla was about to head off for lunch. “That Oliver Perkins, he rung up again this morning,” she advised her.

    “Oh, heck,” said Lalla limply. Oliver was a New Zealander of about her own age who worked over on Rarotonga as a civil servant. He had originally come out with his wife, Janet, as a last-ditch attempt to save their failing marriage. As almost all of the expatriate residents had immediately predicted, the change had been the last straw that broke the camel’s back. Oliver was okay here, as he had IT skills, which were in demand, but Janet only had basic office skills and there weren’t that many jobs going and most of the positions were filled by local girls. She stuck it out for four months, three of them unfortunately during the wet season, and then went home with some very bitter parting remarks about the climate, the lack of facilities, and the false impression given of the place by those who had only been there on holiday. Not to say about the way people got jobs: the word “nepotism” wasn’t in her vocabulary but if had been she would certainly have used it. Lalla had met Oliver at one of the many parties the expatriate New Zealanders gave for their fellow exiles.—Not that she had wanted to go, but Liliane Ledbetter had decreed it was good PR for the hotel.—She hadn’t consciously encouraged him at all, merely done her best to talk nicely to him, but ever since he’d been pursuing her with offers of casual beach picnics with him and a couple of friends, barbecues with him and a couple of friends, visits to the far-flung Northern Cooks with ditto…

    Initially Lalla had made the double mistake of letting on about these invitations to Mrs Ledbetter and of taking the latter’s advice that it wouldn’t hurt to accept, honey, it could hardly be called a date if it was in a group, now could it? Oliver had, obviously, taken it as encouragement. Yikes. He was a nice enough fellow, but she didn’t fancy him at all. Strangely enough, while Angie and her mother both thought he was eminently suitable for her and she should be encouraging him, Taggy Tangianau and her cousins Melanie and Sarah Karati, who were the other two receptionists, were entirely and fervently of Lalla’s opinion. Oliver was a computer nerd (Sarah) and a real dork (Melanie). Lalla might not have gone that far but she had said exasperatedly to Angie: “He’s completely null!”

    Looking smug, Taggy assured Lalla she’d told him that she was off the island for two weeks and couldn’t be reached.

    “Oh, good,” said Lalla feebly. “Ta, Taggy. Um, where am I supposed to be?”

    “Dunno, but we can’t reach you, eh?” replied the perfectly groomed Taggy with a wink as they headed for their block.

    “No, right,” said Lalla weakly. What if she bumped into Oliver next time she had to go over to Rarotonga? Well, heck, to name no other, Petey had a school concert coming up and all the parents were supposed to go, and several of Oliver’s friends had kids at the school. And there were always lots of errands to run for the hotel, too. Never mind that most of the errands took place during working hours, there was no guarantee that Oliver would be nailed to his desk, computer nerd or not. Everybody was on glide-time, it was no different from the civil servants back home: you could meet one at any time on the streets of Auckland, wandering about in their white shirts and business ties. Out here they might not be wearing ties, but otherwise it was the same.

    The white, Palladian-looking mansion that was the main structure of Palmyra Polynesia contained the five guest suites and the senior Ledbetters’ suite, plus the dining-room and a large guest lounge which was hardly ever used, most of the guests preferring to keep themselves to themselves in their luxury suites or luxury huts. Mac’s office was also fitted into the main building, but Lalla’s and Neville’s offices, the office which was nominally the Ledbetters’ but which they hardly ever used now that Mac, Angie and Lalla were running the place, the staff dining-room and a number of storage rooms were in a detached wing, reached by a short covered walkway. This wing was two-storeyed, with Mac’s and Angie’s pleasant apartment upstairs. Here the Palladian look was discontinued in favour of a more colonial, verandahed style, with native thatch adorning the verandah and the roof. Fake native thatch, attached to colour-steel which in its turn was heavily lined with insulation: as Hiram Ledbetter put it, they weren’t actually in the 19th century, they only wanted that look for the clients. The so-called huts were likewise.

    Lalla and Taggy headed companionably for their own block: a smallish white-painted, two-storeyed building, also thatched, set back at a little distance from the administration block. It was largely staff accommodation, the upstairs being a sort of dormitory for the younger female staff members who needed to sleep over on the island and most of the downstairs occupied by a large second laundry room and drying-room. The main laundry room and the sewing and ironing room were at the rear of the main block together with the kitchen, but in their climate they needed the extra facility: the drying-room in particular, with its ranks of clothes driers and its huge extractor fans, being a god-send. Also downstairs were three small flats intended for management-level staff: Lalla and Petey had one of these.

    Naturally the staff were allowed to use the laundry: every time Lalla went in there she would smile at the view of the rows and rows of boxes of detergent, with no restrictions whatsoever on how much you used. What a difference from that iron régime the awful Alison had imposed in the house at One Tree Hill! True, Mrs Ledbetter had instructed her carefully as to the proper amount of the chosen detergent to use with their machines and impressed upon her that she should pass this information on to all the girls, but this was merely because they didn’t want a roomful of soapsuds. It was a New Zealand brand and Mrs Ledbetter had done all the requisite consumer research in order to make sure it would be cost-effective. Which it certainly was, it did a beautiful job with only one scoop and a bit per large load. Of course, Lalla and Petey scarcely ever had a large load—but there were no restrictions, either, on how little you popped in. Alison had pointed out acidly, more than once, that just doing Petey’s tee-shirts, shorts and socks with perhaps an apron and a top of Lalla’s was “wasting electricity”.

    As the two young women reached the sanctuary of their shared front door, not to mention the tropical plantings which had now grown up enough to screen it from the main complex, Taggy thankfully removed the high-heeled gold sandals which marked her status as receptionist. “That’s better!”

    “Yes,” agreed Lalla with a smile. “See you later, Taggy.”

    “Hey, we don’t have to wear our sarongs in the staff dining-room, do we?”

    “No, of course not: not if you don’t want to,” replied Lalla in surprise, looking at Taggy’s: orange, dark blue and lime-green hibiscuses with bright puce frangipani on a candy-pink background. The more usual problem was getting the girls to take them off long enough for them to be laundered: they were very proud of them.

    “Melanie said Mrs Ledbetter said we did,” replied Taggy.

    “No, she’s got it wrong. Not when you’re on your own time in a private area of the hotel.”

    “Ri-ight. Like, a staff area?”

    “Anywhere in our block or the administration wing,” said Lalla firmly. “If you had to cross over to the main building or go past the big pool, or past any of the guests’ windows or the huts, then Mrs Ledbetter would expect you to wear a sarong.”

    “What if I was only going to the kitchen?”

    According to Liliane Ledbetter there was no reason for Taggy or any of the reception staff to be anywhere near the kitchen, but Lalla merely replied mildly: “If you go the back way, then no.”

    The convenient route to the kitchen was overlooked only by Mac’s office and some storage rooms on the lower floor, though a trifle unfortunately the Ledbetters’ bathroom had a really good view of it.

    “She’ll see us, though!” hissed Taggy.

    There was no need to hiss: Mrs Ledbetter wasn’t even on the island at the moment: in fact she was in New York—probably, though Lalla wasn’t sure of the time difference, ensconced at Elizabeth Arden at this very moment. “Only if she’s in that flaming Sistine Chapel of an ensuite of hers.”

    “Yeah,” said Taggy with silly grin. “Or here at all, eh? Only ya don’t wanna get into the habit of it.”

    “No, that’s true.”

    “So what’s a sister chapel, what you said? Like a church?”

    “Oh—sorry, Taggy: the Sistine Chapel’s a famous building in Rome, like where the Pope lives, y’know? Her and Mr Ledbetter have visited it: it’s got a famous painting on its ceiling that I reckon gave them the idea for theirs.”

    “Mum says it’s really smart,” said Taggy on a dubious note.

    “Whatever turns you on,” replied Lalla calmly.

    “Yeah: I think it’s pretty awful, too,” agreed Taggy to the sub-text. “See ya!”

    “See ya,” agreed Lalla, smiling, as the bright floral sarong made its way upstairs, what time the excruciatingly neat bun was uncoiled and Taggy’s wonderful thick black hair shaken out with an audible sigh of relief. She went into her little flat, which consisted of a living-room plus kitchenette, two small bedrooms and a tiny bathroom, and, firmly shutting the front door, said to the view of bright flowering hibiscus bushes, a slice of lawn that wasn’t doing too well in the tropical sun, a host of coconut palms and a glimpse of blue Pacific: “The woman’s mad. That hair looks glorious loose!” But there was no use arguing with Mrs Ledbetter: receptionists had to look smart. They were allowed to wear their hair in a high bun, unlike the masseuses’, and it was allowed to have an ornament or two and a hibiscus or a whole spray of frangipani or bougainvillaea in it, unlike the masseuses’. But that was as far as it went. Whereas the waitresses were—more than allowed—expected to wear their hair loose. Which, if you came to think about it, was extremely illogical, because if one of your criteria was hygiene, which Mrs L’s certainly was, which would be likelier to contaminate the clients’ food? Oh, well!

    The day wore on its predictable course—predictable allowing for the vagaries of spoilt clients, that was. Lalla even managed to get most of her lunch down her before being summoned. Mrs Finkelstein. Again. The pavlova masquerading as “Tropicana Meringue” had apparently gone down good, though there was too much cream on it (nothing was forcing her to eat it, of course), but she was not satisfied with the quality of the champagne: didn’t they have anything better than this?

    Glenda Nooroa, who had cheerfully volunteered to look after the ole bat for good, merely looked at Lalla hopefully. Long and bitter experience had taught Lalla to weld a wine list and a menu to her form at meal times, so she opened the wine list and showed it to the woman. Okay, vintage Moët et Chandon it’d be. As opposed to the vintage Bollinger she’d ordered.

    “So that’s a better one, is it?” asked Glenda as they retreated to the main building to get it.

    “I wouldn’t think so,” replied Lalla drily. “Like, if they’ve got a year on them, they’re all supposed to be good.”

    “Millions of them are like that,” replied Glenda comfortingly.

    Too right.

    The right bottle was retrieved from the cold room where Mac kept all the whites—the clients were so capricious he’d given up trying to just keep a reasonable number chilled, in fact he’d said loudly and bitterly: “Who cares if they’re not meant to be stored this cold, if they keep asking for them, they can have them!”—and Lalla was literally just putting it into Glenda’s hand when her phone buzzed with yet another text message.

    There had been a certain amount of heart-burning over how the staff should carry their phones, plain wrap-around sarongs such as the waiters and pool boys wore not normally being provided with pockets, and Dorothy Lamour sarongs not needing their lines spoiled with the same, but the resourceful Mrs Ledbetter had finally solved the problem by ordering Mrs Lee to manufacture a series of floral-patterned armbands. Being fastened with Velcro, they were rather similar, though possibly only Lalla had realised this, to the thingies that doctors used when they took your blood pressure. The slimline phones fitted snugly into pockets on these armbands.

    This call was from Hoyt. Those four Aussies down in Hut Five. Again. Yikes, maybe she should have taken him off Hut Five as well?

    Down in the luxurious precincts of Hut Five Female Aussie Number 1 was red and sulky in a glamorous drift of white cheesecloth over a white bikini of the skimpiest kind and a dose of sunburn over the careful tan. She was wearing large sunglasses indoors, but that was par for the course. The nicked red hibiscus behind one ear went well, really, with her dieted Caucasian form and expensively bleached short hair. The cork-soled wedgies were so high she could hardly stagger in them but that was par for the course as well.

    Okay, they’d ordered the Tahitian Salad off the lunch menu. Aw, gee, it was fish.

    “See, that’s what a Tahitian salad is,” Hoyt explained kindly.

    Lalla sagged in relief: actually, marinated raw fish was also a Cook Islands native dish, known as ika mata: they used lime or lemon juice and coconut milk as the marinade. However, Mrs Ledbetter had done a personal survey of the examples of this specialty in the local eating places and declared firmly that they would not call it that unless a guest specifically asked for it. Tahitian was more up-market and what they’d expect, apparently. Well, not in those exact words, but close. It had taken time and effort to impress upon the waiting staff that they were not to use its local name, but Liliane Ledbetter had managed that. So far no guest had asked for it by the Cook Islands term, fancy that.

    Angrily the Australian guest complained: “When I order a salad I expect a salad! Added to which it tastes off!”

    “Mel, I keep trying to tell you it’s the stuff they’ve soaked it i—”

    “Shut up, Bryce! And don’t call me Mel!”

    “Mel Gibson, he’s a man, but ya can be Mel if your name’s like, Melanie,” said Hoyt kindly.

    “The fish is marinated in lime juice, madam, and the dressing has coconut milk in it,” said Lalla quickly. “Hoyt is quite correct: it is a classic Tahitian salad, but of course if you don’t care for it you must choose something else.”

    Most unfortunately at this point Female Aussie Number 2, who had merely been sitting at her ease with her expensively tanned, crossed legs largely out of a long, bright yellow tunic over, apparently, nothing, removed the odd-looking sunglasses she was wearing indoors and said smugly: “Really, Melanie, darling, I did try to say Hayden and I had had something similar at Club Med in Tahiti—”

    At which battle was, ya could say, fairly joined.

    “Beats me what they came for, if they only wanna fight,” said Lalla as she and Hoyt retreated with the fresh lunch order.

    “Yeah. I said to them, if ya want a barbecue, I can do you a lovely fresh fish—see, Hoppy caught it this morning. Only they said they hadn’t come all this way for the sort of food they can get at home!” he ended cheerfully.

    That of course explained why they’d kicked up such a fuss this morning at not getting precisely the sort of food they got at— Oh, forget it. Millions of them: yep!

    The evening was similar. The fishermen were back from their successful trip with Hoppy. Judge Anderson thought perhaps his fish could be grilled for their dinner but Mrs didn’t. Mr Finkelstein thought his fish would be real tasty barbecued native-style for their dinner but— Yeah. The four Aussies had a right royal barney over the piglet on a spit down on the beach that they’d ordered specially when they booked. Not over the food, for a wonder. Over God knew what. Tears and screaming fits on the one side, shouting on the other side, and champagne bottles being thrown on both sides were all in there somewhere. Jimmy Tangianau, who was in charge of the fire, copped a grilled banana on the head but as he said, it could have been worse: it wasn’t a bottle.

    Mr Dunkel and companion also had a row: she, it was claimed, had been making eyes at the pool boy and if she’d come with him for that sorta thing she could give him that gold bracelet back and if she thought he was gonna order vintage champagne for dinner again at those prices she had another think coming! Like that. Mr and Mrs McIntosh decided at seven in the evening they wanted the “Canard en daube Palmyra” in their hut and what sort of hotel was this? The menu said it was available! The menu said it needed to be ordered in advance, actually, but no-one pointed this out and as the couple in Hut Four had ordered it in advance Angie cut it into four and the ladies each got a breast and the gentlemen a thigh. Insufficient though some might have said the resultant helping of it and its accompanying jelly flavoured with EnZed Sauvignon Blanc and lemongrass was. Yeah.

    In Hut Three the English Brinsley-Pughs, having ordered the Special Polynesian Night (with music) complained that the drumming was far too loud, the ukuleles and guitars were ersatz, the barbecued fish was burnt, the foil-wrapped bananas done in the coals were tasteless, and the piglet on the spit wasn’t ethnic Polynesian. All true, actually, but that was what Special Polynesian Nights were, all over the Pacific: what on earth had they expected?

    Back in the main dining room the couples from Suites 3, 4 and 5, who were quite normal by comparison, sat listening to the drums in the scented air of Palmyra Polynesia (several frangipanis and a jasmine having been strategically planted just by the French windows), remarking on how exotic it all was, and lapping up the Tahitian salad, the barbecued pork, the baked bananas and the grilled fish from the buffet like lambs. So there ya were.

Next chapter:

https://thelallaeffect.blogspot.com/2024/01/attraction-of-opposites.html