26
“Summer Breeze, Makes Me Feel Fine…”
Petey Sale’s final year at high school, the dreaded “Year Twelve”, was also the year in which, according to the employees of the Quinn Sale group, the boss definitively lost it. Well, the rumours had been going round for some time—at least since they were over the worst of the GFC—that he’d lost interest in the company: he was delegating more and more—which for the execs concerned, wasn’t entirely bad, it meant they had at least some chance of moving up in the corporate hierarchy… He was what? Going back to university? At his age? They might have known something really weird was in the wind! Ever since he’d opted to emigrate to bloody Australia…
He wasn’t quite going back to university at first, but he was going back to study. During Petey’s Year 11 he’d had a really bad bout of bronchitis and the doc had ordered him to take it easy. Lalla had, naturally, insisted he do so, and in fact Peter had felt so bloody knocked out that he hadn’t felt like rushing back to work. By the time his brain was getting back into working order the idea of picking up the reins of QS again seemed extremely unattractive—the more so as Miss Starkie had lent him a couple of fascinating volumes that dated from her university days. A preferable alternative to the car mags kindly supplied by Tony Simpson from next-door or the extremely weird Japanese comics from Troy. The books weren’t exactly in his subject area, but he really enjoyed them. One was about the Chanson de Roland and the epic tradition which had produced it, and looked not merely at Old French evidence but also at contemporary Arabic manuscripts from Spain. The other was a critical edition of a sufficiently obscure early sixteenth-century English manuscript: sound on some points, but he found himself taking issue with the author on quite a few others.
Coincidentally, not very long at all before this, the Sales had bumped into one, Don Verrell, a very pleasant man in his forties, an old friend of Chris Hahn’s from their mutual uni days, who’d turned out to be the son of Bruce and Pegeen Verrell from Canberra and, on recognising the name “Lalla”, had been thrilled to meet her, thanking her so much for the lovely letter she’d sent when the news of his parents’ deaths in the plane crash had been in the news. Bruce Verrell had, alas, as Peter had at one time predicted, crashed his bloody plane. When they got home after this meeting, Lalla admitted, wiping her eyes, that at least it had been a consolation to know that Pegeen and Bruce had gone together: if one of them had lost the other it would have been terrible.
Well, yes, she wasn’t wrong there, but… Peter wasn’t feeling too bright at this point: as it turned out he was incubating the dreadful cold which led to the bronchitis. But he did manage to work out groggily that the news of the crash had come at about the time Lalla had decided to go to Rarotonga. How the Hell had she been able to contact Don Verrell? –She’d been writing to Pegeen, of course. The realisation that bloody Pegeen Verrell must have known all along where Lalla was had really knocked Peter for six. All those years when he’d been sure he’d never see her again… He couldn’t have said exactly why, even when he was fully recovered from the bronchitis, but he felt as if the world was upside-down and everything that he’d thought he’d known and everything that he’d thought mattered during his life in Britain meant nothing…
Yes, okay, he’d been running a temperature and okay, John, it was mid-life crisis, thanks for that—and YES, Bernie, it was mid-life crisis, but wasn’t mid-life crisis, or burn-out, or whatever you liked to call it, Nature’s way of telling you to take a pull, look hard at your life, and ask yourself what the fuck you were doing it all for?
What Peter had been doing it all for, he realised very clearly—yes, very well, Jeremy, or he thought he did, thanks for that—he realised very clearly, was for his late father. And latterly in order to make sure Vibart’s didn’t go under and ruin their shareholders, or, same difference, fall under the sway of stupid little City whizz-kids stoned on coke and obsessed with making bigger imaginary profits for the firm and bigger bonuses for themselves than their stupid little peers. And had Vibart’s come through the GFC? Yes, it had. And was the Quinn Sale group solid as a rock? Yes, it was. And if the senior execs thought that that offer from Branson to join him in some sort of asset stripping of a “good” bank and a “bad” bank, relics of the said GFC, might be a goer, let them go ahead and look at it themselves. They were all big boys now.
Don Verrell was a lecturer at Sydney Uni: comparative linguistics, though he’d started off doing Early English… This did it and once Peter was convalescent, enjoying an enforced vacation up in Queensland during “the Dry”, where it was, indeed, dry, warm, and very pleasant, but where, ipso facto, there was nothing to do except lie on the beach all day, he had entered into an extensive email correspondence with Don, started reading the books he recommended, and was soon immersed. Back in Sydney the university (very possibly with an eye to future endowments, certain persons realised quite clearly), decided that a Ph.D. would be possible, yes, but he’d better do some work at M.A. level first…
So Petey’s Year Twelve of swot had been spent side-by-side with Dad’s year of swot—and step-by-step disengagement from his responsibilities in Quinn Sale—culminating in sufficiently high marks in his HSC for Master Sale to be accepted into a uni science course which would lead to a career in environmentalist studies, precise specialty as yet undefined, and in Peter’s being allowed to enrol for a Ph.D. centring round some very obscure topic in historical linguistics involving the study of the works of some very obscure writers preceding and following Chaucer…
“Well,” his wife said cheerfully to their sitting tenant, “it may never come off, but at least it’ll keep him happy and busy for the next several years, instead of worrying about the blimmin’ company and the stupid money markets that he can’t control!”
“Quite,” Miss Starkie agreed. “He’s certainly seemed much less… well, febrile, really, this last year.”
Lalla nodded hard. “Yes: it’s really done him good! And it’s encouraged Petey to knuckle down to his studies, too! Well, I think going to that set of public lectures with you really inspired him, Miss Starkie! He thinks the sun shines out of that Tim man’s backside!”
Miss Starkie smiled a little. “Mm. He has the knack of inspiring young people.”
“I’ll say! Well, that wonderful documentary on the ABC the second year we were here about how the Murray-Darling Basin’s being shockingly exploited and drained dry by the stupid, greedy cotton and rice farmers made a great impression on Petey, but of course he wasn’t quite twelve back then. I’m so glad you gave him the DVD of it for his sixteenth birthday! It made such a difference! Well, once he’d had to help out at the old folks’ home, and had sobered up a bit. We can never thank Dean Barraclough enough for that! –I just wish we could find him a lovely wife, he’s a lonely man, you know.”
Miss Starkie eyed her drily but refrained from comment. It was true that Sergeant Barraclough had been divorced for quite some years, now. However, he was a very attractive fellow and could pretty well have had his pick of the local divorcées. He had, however, too much taste to favour the local style, which involved, on the higher amusement level, getting shrieking drunk on rum and Cokes at middle-class barbecue parties, with or without the attraction known as “Carry Oh-kee”, and on the more everyday level, eating out five nights a week and chucking money away at the pokies whilst absorbing more rum and Cokes down the RSL (not a simple facility for returned servicemen but a giant, gleaming club which did not appear, to the outside eye, to restrict its membership). But on the other hand, over the past few years he had tended to turn up more and more frequently at those cosy morning kaffee klatches, those impromptu lunch gatherings, and those cosy afternoon teas at Number 5 She-Oak Rise. To such as had eyes to see, there was no doubt whatsoever that he’d conceived a huge crush on Lalla Sale. Poor chump, thought Miss Starkie detachedly.
Still, on the home front, everything was going well. Grace, now six, had settled in very well at Bells Road Primary, had made fast friends with one, Kristel Andrews, and one, Toula Karakostas, and had declared all boys were dorks, especially Owen Andrews, aged eight, and Nicky Karakostas, only four, and one of the sweetest little boys Lalla had ever laid eyes on. Oh, well!
Overseas, Marie-Louise had made up her mind to come out to Australia for good, had put her flat on the market and had disposed of the country house to some good friends who had coveted it for years. Since Peter would be more than able to support her in her declining years (the authorities did not know Marie-Louise Sale personally, of course, or they would have choked on this last phrase), there were apparently no objections to her coming, though, threateningly, she would not be eligible for the old age pension until she’d been in the country twenty years! No-one pointed out that Peter’s Maman was just the sort of person to grimly survive that long or longer on purpose to spite them, and the family was greatly looking forward to seeing her. Dean Barraclough had found her a nice flat in his complex, a single-storey one, a block of only two, no noise from a very quiet neighbour, a retiree, and they were old flats, very well built. With its own parking slot.
And Candida? She had long since settled down with the very nice man who had been a visiting consultant at Michel Guimaud’s clinic. The clinic had duly reported to Marie-Louise, who had bowdlerised the report for Peter, that the mixture of drugs she’d been taking, combined with the head trauma from a fall from an elephant in Thailand shortly before she was evacuated, had had some effect on the brain. A little loss of immediate memory, and there would probably be blank spots here and there, and she would appear somewhat slower than she had in the past. Eugh—her capacity for rational thinking was slightly impaired, Mme Sale. Marie-Louise had informed the medical gentlemen grimly that Candida had never had a rational thought in her life, gone home and had a little weep over it, and firmly reported to Peter that Michel’s treatment had resulted in her being very much calmer, and she did not think there would be any more upsets from now on, mon chou.
And so it had proved. Paul, the visiting consultant, was a very much older man, and if he treated Candida rather like a dear little doll, well, it seemed to be what she wanted and needed. There had been no more trouble at all, and as Paul, who already had a grown-up family, had no intention of starting a second, she had no responsibilities of that sort and in fact spent her days happily painting rather bad watercolour landscapes, a hobby which she’d been taught as therapy at the clinic, and doing really excellent petit point work, a skill which her Great-Grandmother Sale had also had but which Marie-Louise, for one, had never expected to see handed on. She also belonged to a mah-jong club, and happily lost every game, but there was no indication that she hankered after the bridge which had always obsessed her mother. She had two pet dogs, some sort of spaniel-poodle cross, rather curly, a pair of lovebirds and a pretty conservatory full of plants in which she was taking more and more interest as the years went by.
Peter and Lalla had been over to see her several times over the years and she’d always seemed very pleased to see them both, kissing Lalla shyly, had been very kind to Petey, not failing to remember the privilege of borrowing his Davey White, and, on the last visit, had been unaffectedly thrilled to see how big Grace was and had given her a very special painting of the two lovebirds with a view of hills and sea behind them. Which now hung in Grace’s bedroom, spoiling, in her father’s words, its aesthetic appeal by a factor of five thousand percent.
Marie-Louise had eventually disclosed the full story to Lalla, who’d wiped her eyes, nodded, and said: “I thought it might be something like that. Don’t worry, we’ll always be here for her, and when Paul dies I’ll make sure we bring her out here and look after her.”
It was England’s turn to host the Ashes, of course not until July, so Archie wouldn’t be in Australia over the summer. Just as well, as his and Taggy’s third child, unplanned, as its father had freely admitted, but eagerly awaited and joyfully welcomed nevertheless, had been born in early December. A boy: great rejoicing, as their second had been another girl, little Lalla. They’d decided to call the boy William, for Archie’s old Uncle Willy.
The Tangianau family and friends, not to say the entire staff of Palmyra Polynesia and a goodly number of the population of Avarua, had then been stunned by the arrival of the said Uncle Willy in full panoply: baggy white linen suit, giant colourful braces over the expanse of pale pink shirt, matching pink socks, tan and white shoes smothered in punched holes, referred to by the more disrespectful members of his extended family as his masher’s shoes, broad-brimmed panama encircled by a disreputable thing on which his college colours were just discernible to those in the know, a full set of matched Louis Vuitton luggage, the latest girlfriend, a tall redhead of something less than half his age, also with a matched set of LV luggage, and a valet. Come for the christening, me boy! The stupefied Taggy was then awarded a distinctly non-avuncular kiss and a giant silver objet d’art. Well, yes, Archie owned to his old friends, intended as a christening mug, but actually it was some sort of dashed wassail cup or some such that an ancestor had kindly taken off old Prinny’s hands at a time when His Royal Highness’s pecuniary difficulties had been particularly exigent. Something like that. As Peter had the handset on speaker-phone, Lalla at this point gulped and croaked: “You—you don’t mean George IV, do you, Archie?” Yes, that was the fellow. Well, possibly not strictly speaking a wassail cup, but he was damned if he knew what else to call it: not a tankard, far too big—big round as well as high, not like a German beer stein—but it had a lid, all right and tight!
On hanging up Peter was able to report in shaken tones: “I’m bloody nearly sure that that silver thing is part of the Lacey patrimony and Willy had no right whatsoever to give it away.”
“Why not? Don’t tell me it was entailed, in this day and age!”
“Er—very probably it is part of the entailed property, yes, but the thing is, Willy’s only a younger brother. It’d belong to his older brother. And it was very probably leased with the rest of the stuff to the hospitality company that the old bastard’s let the house to. Um, or the National Trust: I think he graciously said they could look after the ancient Keep of Munn, but he’d keep it in the family, ta. Something like that.”
By this time he’d gone much too far and had to explain that Willy’s older brother was the Duke of Munn—a Scottish title—and yes, he had let the beautiful old Georgian house over on the western coast of Scotland to YDI for a luxury boutique hotel—the same company that had wanted Vibart’s to bankroll their ecolodge in the Cooks, that was right, darling. Not because he was broke, no: the Laceys had made extremely judicious marriages ever since—well, since time began! But certainly since the later 19th century: that one had been the daughter of an American millionaire in the days when a million was a million, and a hefty share of his confectionary empire had been in the family ever since. Then there’d been a German arms manufacturer’s only child: sadly, the huge income from that source had not been available during either the First or the Second World Wars, but all things were possible with Swiss banks—yes, Peter confirmed to her face of horror. Added to which, Willy’s paternal grandmother had been the daughter of the owner of a smallish Swedish shipping company which also owned a shipping yard: in the doldrums for a while, but these days doing very well indeed building hideous luxury cruise ships. His mother? Only a minor Rothschild—second cousin or some such. And of course there’d be a giant share portfolio and God knew how much stashed away in the Cayman Islands—you know: tax haven, darling—and etcetera. The brother didn’t live in Scotland, though he did own large stretches of it: the shooting was let at a vast profit, ditto the trout fishing, and he had a villa in the south of France, a rather nice “summer house”, unquote, in Bermuda, a luxury flat in London, and a ditto in Paris. Though possibly his and Willy’s very elderly mother was currently occupying that, she preferred the French side of her family to the English or American. And if Lalla valued either her own or his sanity never get Maman started on her!
“I won’t. The whole thing sounds appalling. No wonder Archie decided to stay in the Cooks!”
“Mm. Though the Foxe-Forsythes aren’t in old Munn’s income bracket. Foully toffee-nosed, though.”
“So um, does his Uncle Willy do anything?”
“Leggy blondes, brunettes and redheads apart? No. Played cricket in his day. Lives off his trust fund.”
Lalla winced. “Yikes. Thank goodness Marie-Louise managed to bring you up to be sensible and—and understand what hard work is!”
Peter smiled a little. “And so say all of us.”
“I rather wish we’d decided to go to Rarotonga this summer after all.”
“Never mind, there’ll be other years. This place down the coast that Don recommended sounds very nice.” His eyes twinkled. “And there’ll be plenty of surf for Petey and Addison!”
Lalla laughed. “Yes! I must say you could have knocked me down with a feather when he said of course he was going to their school prom and he was taking her!”
“Mm, well, I suppose they’ve been seeing a fair bit of each other over the last couple of years.”
“I thought she was more interested in your linguistics books than she was in Petey.”
“About equal, I’d say. Er, as a matter of fact, at one point I thought she might have a crush on Don, she seemed so keen to read the stuff he’d recomm— Yeah,” he said with a silly grin, as Lalla collapsed in giggles.
Blowing her nose after the fit, she admitted: “I’m very glad. I hope they stay together. She’s a serious-minded girl and very bright.”
Brighter than he was, in fact: her HSC marks had been very high and she could have opted for any university in the country, but she’d chosen Sydney, partly because she was an only child and her dad had to be away so much with his lorry, partly because the Lemans couldn’t have afforded her board elsewhere, but also because she wanted to take Don’s courses.
“Yes,” Peter replied mildly. “I’ve always liked her.”
Lalla nodded pleasedly, but as her next remark was to the effect that they should have insisted on meeting Marie-Louise at the airport, she was sure she’d never be able to find this holiday home Don had recommended, she was sure there was no-one in the whole of France that had even heard of Wollongong, and if Don’s directions were right, it wasn’t even in it, but south of it, and it wasn’t even in the place they hadn’t been able to find in the atlas, that Don reckoned was the nearest settlement, Peter directed his energies to mixed reassurances and rubbishings, and the entrancing topic of Green Gables’ very own teen romance was shelved, for the nonce.
… “This can’t be right,” worried Lalla.
“It’s the Princes Highway, Mum,” replied the driver in a bored voice.
“Yeah. I’ve been to Wollongong before,” said Addison sturdily. “This is right.”
They drove on.
… “Petey, we’ve been driving for hours, don’t you think you’d better stop and look at the ma—”
“Two hours to get through the bloody Sydney traffic—I toleja we shoulda started earlier—and twenny minutes on the Princes Highway,” her son replied succinctly.
Peter smothered a laugh, and Lalla subsided.
They drove on.
… “I thought we were headed for the coast?”
“We are. This is the Princes Highway, Mum.”
“It can’t still be that!”
“Yes. It’s the way to Wollongong. On the coast.”
“I don’t see how Marie-Louise will ever find her way!” she said in tones of despair.
“Dad, for pity’s sake shut her up, you’re the one that went and married her,” her unfilial offspring sighed.
Peter cleared his throat. “Mm. Shut up Lalla, sweetheart, you’re driving poor Petey out of his skull. We are taking the exact route that Google in its wisdom recommended.”
“But how do we know it’s right? It’s only a stupid Internet thingy!”
“Puts it well,” he noted.
“Da-ad!”
“Um, well, pass me the printout, Addison, dear,” he said weakly.
Addison passed the printout back over her shoulder, noting as she did so, in the voice of one with the head twisted round over the shoulder whilst the torso was strangled by a seatbelt: “It looks okay to me, Lalla.”
“See?” said Peter meanly. “Now, just look at it quietly, Lalla. Depart here— No, here! At the top!”
“At the top, Mum,” put in the hitherto silent Grace, who had been merely sitting meekly between her parents, reading a very small book.
“Um, yes,” said Lalla on a weak note. “Um… Well, She-Oak Rise, yes… I don’t recognise any of these other street names.”
Taking a deep breath, Peter pointed. “We have taken the Princes Highway as directed. So we are approximately—” A sign flashed by the window and he looked at it hopefully but it was a large ad for Toohey’s. The word “beer” not mentioned, but then, it didn’t have to be: this was Australia. “Um, approximately here. Just look. This road will take us down… See?”
“No. It doesn’t even look like a map!”
It wasn’t a map, it was a set of directions for—
“Here’s the map,” said Addison quickly, passing it over.
Lalla stared at it in confusion.
“North is at the top,” said Petey in a bored voice.
“Shut it,” ordered Peter, trying not to laugh.
“My point is, Dad,” he said heavily, “we are coming from the north. –Heading south, Mum. All you have to do is hold it the right way up and you’ll see the route.”
Into the resultant silence a small but clear voice said thoughtfully: “So why isn’t she an echidna?”
“Good question!” choked Petey, breaking down in sniggers.
“Don’t laugh, ya nong, you’ll have us off the road,” said Addison in the mildest of tones.
“Off the highway, I think you mean,” he replied drily.
“Um, why are you talking about echidnas, Grace, sweetheart?” asked Peter weakly.
“Because Sam said we haven’t got hedgehogs here but she’d be like an echidna, with prickles.”
“She’ll be reading one of those ruddy English kids’ books ya forced on her, Dad.”
“Oh! Let me see, Grace. –Yes,” said Peter very limply indeed. “Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. Well, the book was written by an English lady who’d never heard of echidnas, Grace. She wrote about a hedgehog because a hedgehog was the only sort of prickly animal she knew.”
“She is very prickly. See, her prickles, they come through her clothes!”
He looked at the picture and smiled. “So they do.”
“Hey, why aren’tcha an echidna, Mum?”
“Shut up, Petey,” said Peter limply.
“Because I’m a New Zealander, you idiot, and New Zealand has no monotremes,” replied Lalla, sounding smug.
“What about echidnas?” asked Grace, perfectly seriously.
Alas, Peter lost it completely and laughed till he cried.
“Stop it, Peter!” said Lalla crossly. “Just ignore him, Grace, he’s in a silly mood. An echidna is a kind of monotreme. A monotreme is a very unusual type of animal that lays eggs and feeds its babies on milk after they hatch, you see?”
“Mm. Is a hedgehog one?”
Lalla, the older members of her family registered with enjoyment, was reduced to a gulp. “Um, no, darling, Australia is the only country that has monotremes.”
Petey coughed.
“Stop it, Petey!” she cried.
“Mum, we did echidnas at school, and they live in PNG as well.”
“Well, that’s right next to Australia, Grace. Hedgehogs live on the other side of the world. They do feed their babies on milk but they don’t lay eggs.”
“And they got prickles.”
“Yes,” said Lalla weakly.
Rather luckily this seemed to satisfy her: she returned to the book, telling it: “You feed your babies on milk.”
Those who were waiting for a question pertaining to the conjunction of babies and prickles were disappointed.
Lalla examined the map, frowning over it. Peter was just about to ask if she was having problems with it, when Petey announced: “If that great big sign saying ‘Wollongong’ that’s coming up is right, we’re almost in Wollongong. On the other hand, can we trust it? It’s only a stupid road sign thingy.”
“Hilarious,” noted his girlfriend drily, as Peter had a coughing fit.
Since they’d been so late starting, and it had taken so long to get out of Sydney, they had to have a comfort break and something to eat. Lunch, possibly. Of course they didn’t know their way around, so Petey merely drew in and announced firmly: “This’ll do. Don’t tell me they don’t serve food, Dad. It’ll be fuel, and I’m not driving round Wollongong looking for another place that’ll turn out not to serve food, either. –Come on, Grace: you want a cheeseburger?”
“Yay! Cheeseburger!” she beamed.
“So ya, sucks boo,” concluded Lalla, unbuckling Grace’s seatbelt for her. “Antipodes one, Poms nil.”
“That’s right, gang up on me,” sighed Peter. “It won’t, though,” he warned.
“Nobody’s listening,” replied Lalla, getting out of the car.
So Grace had a cheeseburger and thin fries—well, sort of, but for a person of her size she made quite a good meal—Petey, Addison and Lalla had Big Macs and thin fries, and Peter had thin fries. Washed down, in his case, by something that called itself coffee. Petey had a thick-shake, Addison and Lalla had Coke, and Grace had a thick-shake. “Lalla, darling, she won’t get through—”
“Just shut up and crawl back into that doghouse.”
This apparently struck Addison’s fancy: she collapsed in giggles.
Peter sighed.
The thick-shake was reported to be like ice cream! Hardly surprising, given that the lackadaisical young serving persons seemed merely to have filled the giant paper tumblers with soft-serve mixture. Australian laissez-faire seemed definitively to be getting the upper hand in Wollongong, NSW, whatever might have been the case back in the good ole U.S. of McDonald’s.
… “We’re lost! I knew it!”
“Mum, we’re NOT LOST!” shouted Petey.
“But this is the middle of nowhere!”
“Yeah. Don said that’s where it is. Just shut up and stop panicking.”
They weren’t lost. Ten minutes later Petey swung into a long dusty unpaved driveway and drew up in front of a good-sized, tired-looking old bungalow sitting in a wide expanse of dry grass mixed with low scrub on its own long sweep of shallow bay. A note was discovered on its door, to wit: “WELCOME, Sale family. That key you were sent is for this door (but it’s really the back door). The power’s on but you’ll need to turn the fridge on. Any problems, ring Stan and Polly on”—followed by a number, and, in a different hand: “PS. Stan’s left you a little map inside showing you how to get to Mac’s fish and chips shop, but we can always get you some fresh. PPS. The big tree round the front is a deodar, in case you don’t know them.”
“I discern,” said Peter, beginning to lose control of his mouth, “that two personalities have been at work here. The to-the-point portion of this was written, I feel sure, by Stan, though the aside about this really being the back door was, I deduce, at Polly’s prompting. The PSes are definitely her work.”
“Very funny!” said Lalla crossly. She peered. The first part of the note was in a typical male hand: small, neat, and very hard to decipher. The rest was in a sprawling but very much clearer hand. “The PSes are to the point!”
“I’ll say! Fish and chips shops are always to the point!” agreed Petey, grinning.
“Petey,” said his father heavily, “part of my point is that once we get inside, this helpful map of Stan’s will doubtless be apparent to the naked eye.”
“Yeah, that PS is redundant. Fresh fish’d be good, though,” noted Addison.
“Whose side are you on?” demanded Peter indignantly.
“I think I’m on the side of common sense, really,” she replied thoughtfully. “Come on, let’s unload the car.”
“Y—uh—where the Hell have they gone?” gasped Peter, turning to find his wife and daughter had now disappeared.
“Round the front—the real front,” noted Petey, poker-face, “to look at the deodar, of course.”
… They had. There was also the most glorious view of the sea. Unerringly identified by Lalla, who of course was used to Auckland’s East Coast beaches, as the Pacific.
“No! Don’t you know the geography of your own region? That’s the Tasman Sea!” cried Peter.
Lalla stuck her tongue out at him. “That’s part of the Pacific Ocean, technically. And in my region—my extended region—no-one ever says ‘the Tasman Sea’, is it those beans in your ears or are you just getting deafer in your old age?”
“Balls!” he cried, forgetting his company. “Of course they do!”
“Nah. It’s ‘the Tasman’,” said the Antipodean definitely. “Come on, Grace, darling: wanna see the house and your room?”
They walked off, leaving Peter face to face with the glorious deep blue expanse of the Tasman (Sea) and the glorious azure expanse of the Australian sky, under the undoubted deodar. Himalayan? He shook his head madly. It might at least dislodge those beans in his— Where in God’s name had she got that one from?
Early that evening the very nice Mrs Brinkman—do, please, call me Louise—from the next holiday home, mercifully further along the coast and out of sight, turned up with a cake for them, not to say a dose of raging curiosity. Did they know the Mayhews who owned the property? “Oh, I see! Well, they’re lovely people, of course—professionals, he’s just retired but they’ve both been teaching at ANU—what you’d call easy-going!” –Silly laugh, leading the Sales to conclude that she would, yeah, and they’d rather like to meet the Mayhews. She then supposed, with a leer, that this big girl must be their daughter: how old are you, dear? Let me guess. I’m sure you must be five!
To which Grace Sale replied: “Balls! I’m six!”
Lalla turned puce and was incapable of speech, afraid she might burst out laughing in the woman’s face, Peter choked and was incapable, ditto, but Petey spoke up manfully: “Dad, I toleja you oughta watch your language in front of the kid. Sorry, Louise, she doesn’t know what it means. She is only six.”
After which Mrs Brinkman, with assurances that they were always there, not to hesitate to ring or come over if anything went wrong, slung her hook.
“I dunno what this cake’ll be like, it looks like a supermarket one to me, they always have these fancy plastic domes over them these days,” noted Lalla, “but if it’s okay, then junior Sales can both have great big slices!”
“Yes!” Peter agreed with a laugh, swooping upon Grace and kissing her soundly. “Do you think this great big cakey looks okay, Grace, sweetheart?”
“Yeah, ’course! It’s choc’lit!” she replied sturdily in the vernacular.
Exactly. So, Lalla conceding that they needed it after Ma Brinkman, they all had some. Yum!
True, they hadn’t had their actual dinner, yet. Oh, well, too bad, they were on holiday! And the entire Christmas long vacation stretched out gloriously free before them…
The map from the unknown Stan was completely incomprehensible! Especially to those, noted Petey, firmly taking it off his mother, who were holding it upside-down. Look! This was the coast: see? The east coast, so THIS was north!
“Um, I’d’ve said it was quite clear,” noted Addison.
“Traitor,” retorted Lalla, scowling.
Petey thereupon discovered there were two ways of getting to “Mac’s”. You could go this way, it was clearly longer but this note at the bottom indicated it was a better road surface, or if you took—
“I’m not listening,” warned Lalla with her hands over her ears.
“Do ya want fish and chips for lunch or not, Mum?”
“Um, it’s a hot day,” she replied weakly.
“There’s a note on the back of it,” remarked Addison.
So there was! Petey turned over and read out: “‘The supermarket has the basics but it’s not very big, you need to get in early, especially if you want meat, and its lettuces tend to be wilted. Don’t buy the bagged stuff, it’s always wilted. Their cheesy bacon buns are good. All the best, Polly.’ –Does this style remind you of anyone?” he asked his girlfriend.
“Shut up,” she muttered, reddening.
“Well,” he said cheerfully, “we’ve eaten all the stuff we brought with us, and Ma B’s cake, so if we want food today we’d better stir our stumps. Though I’d say meat’s out: it’s already gone twelve-thirty.”
“Yeah,” Addison agreed. “I’ll see if your dad and Grace wanna come.”
Peter and Grace were discovered under the huge deodar tree, Peter in a shirt and shorts and Grace in bathers and a sunhat—the latter unnecessary in the heavy, wonderfully cool shade cast by the ancient tree. He was sitting on one of the elderly deckchairs that had been stacked in the kitchen when they arrived and she was sitting on a rug provided by Lalla. They were both reading. Grace wanted to come but Peter thought he wouldn’t bother: it was too hot for fish and chips. Addison pointed out kindly that there was no beer left but he replied mildly that they were bound to find beer, this was Australia.
Once Grace had been forced to assume a frock and pair of panties, and her sandals, and to go to the toilet—YES! GO!—and Lalla had rushed back inside for her handbag, they set off.
The old bungalow that the Mayhews used as a holiday home but to which, according to Ma Brinkman, they were due to retire permanently, was not on a main road or anything like it, it was down an obscure track off a secondary road, but Petey negotiated these hazards with ease and within ten minutes they were entering the tiny town of Gorski Bay… Which appeared to consist of a solid traffic jam, largely composed of shiny new four-wheel-drives.
“SUVs, Mom,” corrected Petey in a fake American accent.
“Hah, hah. –It’s funny, but none of them look dusty—I mean, not as if they’d been in the Outback.”
“No. This isn’t the Outback, and if Ma Brinkman’s anything to judge by, it’s a home away from home—the get-away-from-it-all and bring-everything-with-you sort—of the affluent upper-middles.”
“Sometimes you sound just like your father,” she sighed.
Addison gave a startled snicker and clapped her hand to her mouth.
“Gee, that’s a compliment,” returned Petey equably. “I don’t suppose this burg’d be big enough to have a carpark building? –No,” he answered himself.
“We’ll just have to find the supermarket and park in its carpark,” said Addison sensibly.
“Along with the rest of the population, mm.”
They did eventually manage to do that, and went in… The unknown Polly was spot-on. And there weren’t even any cheesy bacon buns left! So they bought bread, milk, marg, beer, marmalade, peanut butter and Vegemite.—No, Mum, ya brought a whole carton of toilet paper down with us, we don’t need any more.—The tomatoes looked okay, so they got a kilo of those. The strawberries were an outrageous price but they bought some anyway. And some yoghurt, though the place didn’t have Grace’s favourite. They looked at the pressed ham but the mere sight of it was depressing, so they left it severely alone. Petey suggested eggs and bacon. So they got those. And on second thoughts a packet of cornflakes, Grace liked them. Nobody else did but they all forbore to mention this.
“All right,” said Petey, surveying their trolley, “Dad can have bacon and eggs or tomato sandwiches for tea, and serve ’im right!”
“Um, well, maybe we ought to get him some nice crackers and, um, cheese,” ended Lalla weakly.
“He hates mousetrap and anything that’s called Brie or Camembert here will taste like soap, ya know that, Mum. Come on, let’s find the fish and chips shop, I’m starving!” He led the way firmly to the checkout.
… “This is odd, there’s nothing here,” discovered Lalla as they emerged from a very rundown winding back road containing almost nothing onto a shabby waterfront containing a low seawall, a lovely view of the sea, a dusty, badly surfaced road, and a long, overgrown stretch of ground which might once have been front gardens, many decades earlier.
“That blue structure to our left is presumably the fish and chips shop,” replied Petey, heading for it.
“Yes, but there are no houses!”
“Good,” he replied simply, drawing up outside the small, white-trimmed blue building. A neat sign depending from its verandah roof read “Mac’s Kitchen” and “Fresh Fish”. The shop window bore the hand-painted information: “Crabs. Crays. Fish & Chips”.
A stout white-uniformed woman was behind the counter, and the place smelled reassuringly of frying. “Well, lunchtime’s over, really, but I can do ya some fish and chips, yeah,” she allowed. “The fryers are still hot. –Ignore that,” she advised as they peered up at the menu board. “Fish of the day. Stan got me a couple of decent-sized mulloway this morning—not too big, y’know? They get a bit coarse and dry. This one’s nice an’ juicy.”
Okay, the Sales had mulloway and chips…
“Superb, is the only word,” concluded Lalla dazedly as they perched comfortably on the seawall, eating them.
“Too right,” agreed Petey dazedly. Addison had her mouth full: she just nodded dazedly.
“I think she’s used real potatoes,” Lalla added groggily.
“Yeah. Good as Mrs Beattie’s, eh?” Petey agreed.
Lalla opened her mouth. She shut it again, looking warily at Grace. “B,E,T,T,E,R,” she mouthed.
Petey and Addison collapsed in guilty giggles, nodding.
Yep, the chips from Mac’s Kitchen were out of this world. As, indeed, was the fish. Well: fresh-caught this morning? Mmm…
“Actually,” concluded Lalla thoughtfully: “I could happily live off fish and chips from Mac’s Kitchen all holidays.”
“A lot of people feel like that!” said a cheerful voice from the beach behind them.
They jumped, and twisted round. The speaker was a slim, very tanned bald man perhaps in his mid-fifties, clad in knee-length shorts which had clearly started off in life as jeans, and a very, very faded cotton shirt, indefinably patterned in a greyish-green on a paler grey, possibly once white, and open over his tanned chest. Where he had come from wasn’t discernible; there was certainly no boat drawn up on the beach behind him.
“Gidday. New here, are ya?” he added.
“Yes,” replied Lalla eagerly. “Isn’t it lovely? We’re staying in the Mayhews’ house, that’s further down the coast: do you know it?”
“Yeah.—Up the coast, not down.—Think you must be the Sales, then? I’m Stan Smith,” he said, coming up to them and hoisting himself over the wall. “Good to meet you,” he added, holding out his hand.
“You too, Stan!” beamed Lalla, shaking it. “I’m Lalla Sale, and this is my son, Petey, and his girlfriend, Addison Leman, and this is my daughter, Grace!”
Solemnly Stan Smith shook hands with all of them, including Grace.
“I’m six,” she informed him.
“Yeah? Good on ya, Grace.”
This appeared to please her: she returned: “’Ve you ever seen an echidna?”
“Yeah, but they’re really hard to spot. They live in burrows, under the ground, ya see.”
“Do hedgehogs?”
Completely unphased, he replied: “Nah, think they’re quite different. They live under bushes, or in the long grass: they like a bit of shelter, ya see, so in England they probably do live in the hedges, like in their name.”
“Yeah. They got prickles.”
“Sure. Not many animals have got prickles, eh? Mainly echidnas and hedgehogs.”
“Yeah,” she agreed.
“Thanks for the map, Stan,” put in Petey at this point.
“No worries. It got ya here okay, then?”
“Yeah, though Mum was sure it wouldn’t!” he said with a laugh.
“Right. That’ll be the male directions thing,” he said thoughtfully. “Polly wanted to find this ruddy shop in Wollongong, ya see, and of course she couldn’t remember how to get there, so we rang up this young bloke that had been with her at the time: result, male directions that she couldn’t follow.”
“And?” said Petey with a grin, what time Lalla, very flushed, glared indignantly, and Addison bit her lip, trying not to laugh.
“Drove ’er straight there,” he replied, poker-face.
Petey collapsed in delighted sniggers, gasping: “Yeah! –Hey, she was sure we weren’t gonna end up in Wollongong at all!” he revealed.
Stan sniffed slightly. “Come down the Princes Highway, didja?”
“Yeah!” he choked ecstatically.
“Hah, hah!” said Lalla crossly. “Honestly! We had this stupid print-out from Google, Stan, and it just went on and on with all these silly street names, it was useless!”
“Well, it navigated us right into a whacking great traffic jam in the middle of Sydney,” Petey admitted, “but that was because we were late leaving.”
“Yes,” said Grace unexpectedly. “But I had my book to read.””
“Good-oh,” replied Stan comfortably. “Ya need a book on a long trip, don’tcha?”
“Yes. It’s about Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. She’s a hedgehog, she’s very prickly. She’s not an echidna.”
“No, that’s right. She’s an English animal: no echidnas in England. –Well, nice to meetcha, Lalla.”
“You, too, Stan: and please thank Polly for telling us the lovely old tree’s a deodar, and for the tips about the supermarket!” she beamed.
“Will do,” he said amiably, going on over to the little shop. “Gidday, Mac,” they heard him say as the door closed behind him.
“So would Mac be the lady?” ventured Addison.
“There didn’t seem to be anyone else there, did there?” replied Lalla uncertainly. “Oh, dear: we should’ve told him how lovely his fish was!” she realised.
“Never mind, if we’re gonna live on it all holidays there’ll be plenty of time to do that!” replied Petey with a laugh. “Hey, what didja think of Stan, Grace?”
The company awaited the reply with bated breath.
“He knows about hedgehogs and echidnas.”
“Um, yeah, besides that, sweetheart,” he said limply. “Didja like him?”
“Yeah, ’course!” she replied in scornful amazement.
“I think that’s a consensus,” said Addison with a smile, taking her hand. “Come on, Grace, wanna come for a paddle?”
“Righto.”
That was a consensus, too, and they all adjourned to the water’s edge.
After quite some time Lalla repeated her earlier remark, that it was very odd: they’d bothered to build a seawall and a road all along the lovely little bay, but there weren’t any buildings here except Mac’s Kitchen, and way down the other end something that looked like a hut, and that sort of heap thingy in the middle, there, that might once have been a house.
“Think it’s only a tangle of lantana,” said Petey, peering. “They oughta root that out, it’s an invasive weed.”
“But there’s nobody to root it out!”
Nor there was. “It is odd,” he conceded, scratching his head.
Yes, it was. Very odd.
On their return home Peter immediately put forward five possible explanations for the oddness of the fish and chips shop’s little bay but his family refused to listen, and Petey in fact told him to shut up or he wouldn’t get any beer.
“I suppose you’ve just been sitting under the tree reading all this time,” noted Lalla.
“Mm. That’s what holidays are for,” he replied placidly.
“There’s a glorious sparkling beach right down there at the foot of the lawn!”
“Mm. I may go for a gentle dip later, when it’s cooler.”
Rolling their eyes somewhat, his family gave him up as a bad job.
Two days later Marie-Louise was due and Lalla was worrying that she’d got lost, when the phone rang. Several people endeavoured to tell her it wouldn’t be for them, it was the Mayhews’ phone, but she was already snatching it up and gasping: “Hullo?”
“Hullo,” said a contralto voice. “Is that Lalla Sale?”
“Yes, that’s right. Is Marie-Louise all right?”
There was a disconcerted silence and then the caller said: “Um, it’s not about that. I’m sorry, are you waiting for a call? I’ll hang up.”
“No, um, sorry, we’re not, really!” gasped Lalla. “She hasn’t got this number.”
“Oh. Um, well, this is Polly,” she said.
Lalla could hear her swallowing. “Of course!” she replied quickly. “Thanks so much for the tip about the supermarket, Polly. We got in there really early this morning and managed to buy some nice meat.”
“Oh, good. Um, the thing is…”
“Go on, or do ya want me to tell her?” said a male voice in the background—presumably Stan’s.
“No, I will. Um, the thing is, Lalla, um, I think I know you. I mean, I’m Polly Carrano that was.”
Lalla dropped the receiver. “She says she’s Polly Carrano, but she can’t be!” she gasped.
Since the phone was in the kitchen and the family were all in there, having just had a sort of morning tea, a bit early, but never mind, they were on holiday and those cinnamon donuts acquired at the supermarket had looked nice and fresh, Petey was able to note: “Polly’s not a very common name,” and Peter, who was nearest, was able to make a dive for the receiver and replace it in her hand.
“I’m sorry, duh-did you say Polly Carrano?” she gulped.
“Yes: I was. I’m Polly— Um, heck, what did you tell them?” she said, not to Lalla.
“Uh—shit. Smith. Maybe I better—”
“No, I’m telling her! –I’m Polly Gorski, now, Lalla, that’s Stan’s real surname, but you see, when he decided to live here, he called himself Stan Smith because of all the horrible well-off second-homers that had flooded into the poor little place: he thought the ladies’d be all over him if they knew his real name’s Gorski and his ancestors owned the whole area!”
Possibly many persons would have been phased by this speech—as Peter, who now had his ear to the receiver, too, freely admitted to himself at this point—but Lalla replied on a pleased note: “I see! Of course they would! Do you know one called Mrs Brinkman?”
“Yeah, the dreaded Louise,” said Polly. “That’s why I thought I’d better ring you. She’s planning a barbie, and if you give in and go, just don’t let on who your husband is, or she’ll be all over you and then she’ll tell all her awful friends and then they’ll invite you to their awful does as well.”
“Ooh, heck. Could we get out of it, do you think?”
“Well, Jenny Mayhew always used to go, on the principle of not alienating your neighbours, but you don’t need to worry, it’s not your house. Um… I know! Tell her you think your little girl’s sickening for the measles!”
“What?” said Stan’s voice in the background.
“Yes!” said Polly, not to Lalla. “Measles are highly contagious, she’ll be scared witless.”
At this point Peter collapsed in sniggers. He laughed so much he had to stagger over to the table and sit down.
“Stop laughing, Peter: I think it’s brilliant!” said Lalla crossly. “—Sorry, Polly. That’s a really great idea, I’ll use it! Thanks so much!”
“That’s okay.”
“Go on, ask her!” prompted Stan loudly.
“Stan, they’ll probably want to just be the family.”
“They can say, can’t they? Gimme that! –Gidday, Lalla, this is Stan. We were wondering if you’d like to join us on Christmas Day. See, our little cove is completely private, no chance of being descended on by holiday-makers with campervans or Ma and Pa Brinkman and their ilk. Thought we’d just have a barbie and plenny of beer, ya know?”
“Hang on, Stan; it sounds lovely, I’ll see what the others think.” Pleasedly she relayed this message, verbatim.
Peter wiped his eyes. “That sounds good, but what sort of shade have they got? We don’t want Grace frying in the sun all day.”
“No. I’ll ask.” She asked, and reported: “Two big sun umbrellas and an awninged swing, all bought by Polly, and the shack’s got air-con.”
“Super!” he said with a laugh. “In that case, I vote we accept with thanks.”
Petey and Addison were agreeing, though Grace was merely eating the very last crumbs of her donut, and noting: “Some of its sugar came off,” so Lalla accepted with thanks, though adding anxiously: “Um, we’ll have Peter’s mum with us: is that all right?”
“Sure!” Stan replied breezily.
“Um, but she’s French,” she said uneasily.
“No worries, Lalla! –Elle dit que sa belle-mère est française!” he said to Polly with a laugh. Polly was heard to reply with something and he said to Lalla: “That’s okay, Polly speaks French like a native. She reckons I’ve got a horrible Arabic accent, though, which would follow, I picked a lot of it up from a couple of Lebanese friends.”
“Really? That’s good! Um, no, I mean, she’s, um… very French,” she ended lamely.
Peter got up and grabbed the phone. “This is Peter Sale, Stan. By ‘very French’ she means rabid, I’m afraid.”
“Goddit. We can stand it. Gather Polly’s first hubby was pretty rabid, in ’is way, too.”
Peter swallowed but managed to say: “Mm, I met him a couple of times. Well, you have been warned. Just don’t offer Maman anything in the way of an Aussie cheese or pâté, and you’ll be right, I think!”
“Don’t worry, never buy the muck. Might run to steak, since it’s Christmas. Fish if they’re biting.”
“We’ll look forward to it! Thanks, Stan!”
“No worries. See ya!” With this he rang off.
“Might run to steak, since it’s Christmas, fish if they’re biting,” Peter reported to his family.
“Dad, if his wife really is, or should I say was, Lady Carrano, she’s worth several billion,” said Petey weakly.
“Did he strike you as the sort of chap that’d live off his wife’s billions?” asked Peter mildly.
“Well, no.”
“No, of course not!” cried Lalla. “And he can’t be, if he’s supplying Mac’s Kitchen with fish!”
“I thought he was okay,” offered Addison.
“Good,” replied Peter firmly. “Grace, darling, ’member meeting that man called Stan when you got the fish and chips?”
“Yeah. He’s seen an echidna. They’re very hard to spot.”
“Yes, I see, darling. Tell me, did you like him?”
Petey winked at his mother, mouthing: “Wait for it.”
“Yeah, ’course!” replied Grace Sale in scornful amazement.
Polly Carrano that was had hardly changed at all since the period when she had merely been sighted from afar at large gatherings of the Carrano Group’s staff: there were some silver streaks in the wavy brown hair that was rather like Lalla’s own, but she was still a very pretty woman, though she must be in her fifties, now. For Christmas Day she was wearing a jade-green bikini top, a really lovely long-sleeved gauze blouse patterned in several shades of pink and more jade green, a very faded and very tight pair of brief pale pink shorts that were rather raggy and fringed, not trendily so, the older Sales discerned, but as of suffering the after-effects of an attack with a large pair of scissors, and a pair of bright pink, high-heeled heelless wedgies, ideal for walking on sand. Her hair was pinned up untidily in a big bunch with the sort of cheap plastic butterfly clip that had teeth. Bright pink. Quite a contrast to the days of the ultra-smart shiny bun under a smart little silk pill-box and the fabulous black pearl earrings or giant diamond drops! She was wearing earrings, actually: brightly-painted little wooden parrots dangling from tiny gold hoops.
For her part, Lalla Sale had chosen to garb herself for Christmas dinner at the Gorskis’ obscure little beach, way off the beaten track, that was called Dead Man’s Cove, in a bright apricot bikini top under a white broderie Anglaise blouse trimmed somewhat superfluously with a scalloped broderie Anglaise edging on its three-quarter-length sleeves, its hem, its neckline, and both fronts: a charming effect if left unbuttoned, as it was. The skirt was a pareu, white printed with huge hibiscuses in apricot, turquoise and green. The bright apricot bikini bottom glimmered through it. Her footwear was a pair of raffia-covered wedgies, very suitable for walking on the sand of Palmyra Polynesia, with ankle-straps: not the original raffia ones but bright green ribbons, ordained quite some years in the past by a narrowed-eyed Mrs Ledbetter. Her hair was loose, but with the sides pulled back neatly into a plastic tortoiseshell clip. The earrings might have been deemed unfortunate had one not known that they were a Christmas gift from Grace Sale: five-centimetre long Christmas trees dangling from the stars at their tips. The donor’s male parent was secretly convinced that they would become, not merely a tradition, but a favourite. Oh, well!
It was immediately apparent that the two ladies were going to get on like a house on fire, and so it proved.
The “shack” which had been mentioned was literally a shack: it seemed to be made of old corrugated iron. It was, in fact, only a beach house. It had two mismatched windows, one on each side of the front door, and a verandah with what looked like driftwood posts holding up a roof of what looked like bark. The main part of the building had a roof of old corrugated iron. Inside, however, the main room, which obviously functioned as bedroom, sitting-room and dining-room combined, was quite comfortable: the reverse-cycle air conditioner was on. The furniture consisted of a very small table and two dining chairs, a large bed, draped in what was probably a duvet cover minus its innards in unremarkable navy and white checks, and a sofa. This last was covered in crochet granny squares. Not a “throw” or “afghan” draped over it, but the wool work actually fitted to its shape. Possibly because its owners had deemed it unfit for the human eye? It was certainly unfit for the human elbow, being a relic of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the successor to the giant Michelin-men couches that had dominated the earlier part of the Eighties: very, very low flat arms, on which were perched flat oblong cushion affairs which were not detachable. Ultra-trendy at the time, yes. This one seemed to be made of pale grey Naugahyde. The bright granny squares were a huge improvement.
“The sofa cover was a wedding present from Mac,” Polly explained, ere introductions had scarce been effected. “She’s a great crocheter. We were going to chuck the sofa out but she said it would be a pity to waste it. We love it, now!” she beamed.
“It hides those weirdo arms good,” Petey approved.
“Yes, thank goodness!”
Addison, meanwhile, had spotted the room’s two interior doors and been struck dumb. They were recycled front doors, probably dating from the mid-1970s: inset with panels of bubbly yellow glass. Not matching.
“Like me doors?” drawled Stan, lounging up to her side. “Real find, they were. Bloke that ran the dump said if I could haul them away they were mine, he was sick of the sight of them.”
She nodded groggily.
“Aren’t they fabulous?” beamed the former Lady Carrano. “They’re so horribly wrong that they’re wonderful!”
Suddenly Addison laughed. “Yeah! You’re right! Hey, look, Petey!”
“Yep. Bonzer!” he approved. “Dunno why more people don’t have fun furnishings.”
“But this is just a beach house, mon chou,” put in Marie-Louise.
“Well, no, ’tisn’t, actually, Marie-Louise,” replied Stan calmly, not neglecting to pronounce her name correctly. “This is where we live when we’re in Australia. Other side of the Tasman, we live in Polly’s beach house, eh, darl’?”
“Yes,” she agreed, coming up to his side and hugging his arm. “We’ve given the consumables thing away. Independently—we only met after I’d decided to get rid of the house and live in the bach—that’s the New Zealand word for a beach house—and Stan had been living here for several years.”
“Right,” he confirmed placidly.
“Ah. Very wise. The world is full of enough clutter. But you have no shildren?”
“‘Children’, Mémé,” corrected Grace.
“Merci, ma petite. Children.”
“Stan hasn’t. My three are grown up,” said Polly, suddenly looking gloomy. “We haven’t really got anything in common any more.”
“O, là, là! But that is so often the way. I am very lucky that Peter and I have always been close.”
Polly nodded seriously. “Yes, you are.”
“Indeed. But I also downsize, you know? I have sold the big beach house in France, and the furniture from my flat; I look at it and think, is this all necessary or is it merely clutter in my life? I keep only the little escritoire from my husband.”
“It’s very pretty, isn’t it, Mémé?” said Grace.
“Yes, mon chéri, very pretty indeed, and when I am in my little flat, I will have it in a corner and you must come and write some nice letters at it.”
“Good. You might have to help me a bit, Mémé.”
“Certainly: you must just ask when you need help.”
“Dis merci à ta mémé, mon chéri,” prompted Peter.
“I was gonna! Merci beaucoup, Mémé,” said Grace Sale bilingually.
And with that it seemed to be time, the sun possibly being over the yardarm, for glasses of fizz for the adults and fizzy grape juice for Grace; and perhaps a hot sausage roll or two? Perceiving that Petey, Addison and Grace were all beaming at this latter suggestion, Peter and Lalla exchanged smiles and agreed that those might hit the spot.
Stan Gorski gave the toast: “Merry Christmas to us, and to doing your own thing, whatever it is! Joyeux Noël!”
Some persons might have been thrown by this Yuletide salutation; the Sales, however, happily responded with: “Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noël!”
Chilled Australian fizzy white wine—Polly pointing out redundantly that it was dry, neither of them could stand the sweet stuff—went down rather well with supermarket sausage rolls, hot from the oven, and Petey unilaterally decided that they’d always have them for Christmas in future!
After which Polly said to her spouse: “Go on, you decided it was gonna be a barbie, so you’d better get on with it. Get the coals glowing or whatever the appropriate macho phrase is.”
“I’ll give you a hand, Stan,” offered Petey, grinning.
“Me, too,” agreed Addison.
“Addison, it’s Secret Men’s Business, just be warned. Tolerance is the most they’ll accord you,” warned Polly.
Promptly Lalla dissolved in giggles, gasping: “Yes! But she’s miles more competent than Petey is!”
“Cack-handed, like his father,” put in Peter, grinning.
“Doesn’t know one end of a barbie from the other, more like,” noted Lalla, though without animus.
“I could teach you, Peter,” offered Stan, poker-face.
“That’s very kind of you, Stan, but we’re surrounded with competent Aussie blokes at home, thanks very much,” he returned smoothly.
“See this?” replied Stan, making a fist.
“Yes, and I apologise for every word, nay, syllable!”
“Yeah,” he noted drily. “Come on, then, you two.”
“C’n I come?” cried Grace.
Stan stopped at the door. “’Course ya can, pet. You wanna take my hand? –Good-oh; come on, then.”
Grace Sale’s parents and grandmother changed incredulous glances as the pair exited, hand-in-hand.
After quite some time Marie-Louise explained feebly to Polly: “Grace is not shy, but normally she takes a long time to—eugh—to accustom herself to new people.”
She nodded. “I see. Stan’s good with kids, he doesn’t treat them like morons and he doesn’t coo over them.”
“No: he was just so, um, natural, I suppose, when we met him outside Mac’s!” Lalla added eagerly. “Grace was absorbed in the topic of hedgehogs and echidnas at the time, and when she mentioned them out of the blue he answered her really sensibly, without turning a hair!”
“Yes; he’s the sort of person who’s always himself, whatever the age, sex or status of the people he meets. Luckily,” said his wife detachedly, “his self is both completely unpretentious and highly intelligent. As well as pretty macho, which does put some people off. I must say, it’s a combination I never expected to find, by the time I met him. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall at his interview for his job at Sir George Grey University—he’s tutoring part-time in the Geology Department. The dean of the faculty is married to an old friend of mine and from what they told me, it must have been hilarious. He rocked up with a huge gap in his résumé—he’d been out of the field for years, though he’s got Ph.D.s in both geology and marine engineering—and when of course they questioned it, he produced a list of the jobs he'd been doing: largely, smuggling gemstone rocks out of Afghanistan. Well, both the dean and the former CEO of Sir G.G. who was on the interviewing panel are pretty hard cases, and they decided the only way to check him out was to see if he really spoke Pashto as claimed. The only speaker they could find was a lovely refugee woman who was enrolled for ESL, and when she arrived she was accompanied by an aggressive support person, so styled, a very tall, broad-shouldered young Maori woman who seemed to suspect they were about to victimise her supported person in some way. Well! He had both women eating out of his hand before you could say knife! Mind you, nothing would have phased either the dean or the former CEO, but even they were rather stunned! The rest of the feeble types on the panel were incapable of even uttering a peep, I gathered!”
“Lovely!” beamed Lalla.
“Yes; one sees it all, my dear Polly!” Marie-Louise agreed eagerly.
“Absolutely!” said Peter with a laugh.
“Mm. That’s Stan. Completely natural, whatever his company and whatever the situation. Oh, and when he got there the secretary was just about to throw up: she was pregnant. He dealt with that, too, down to unilaterally having the office phone put through to the switchboard!”
Her audience collapsed in delighted laughter.
The Christmas dinner provided by Stan and Polly Gorski was the oddest, Peter Sale admitted to himself, that he’d ever been favoured with. Not so much as a barbecue, no, but as a Christmas dinner. The steak hadn’t eventuated: they hadn’t been able to source any decent stuff locally. However, there must still have been mulloway around, because that was what the main dish was: approximately 24 inches, excluding the tail fins, of fish. It had been cleaned and split open, and treated to a liberal helping of olive oil, black pepper, and a quantity of strange native foliage. Lemon myrtle, Stan revealed. Backhousia citriodora. Native to the coastal Queensland rainforests, but you saw a fair number of them in NSW. Though these particular ones, just back there—jerk of his head at the area of bush on the slope of the rise that backed Dead Man’s Cove—had been planted, actually. His grandmother had been on top of lemon myrtle leaves long before the modern foodies had discovered them.
The fish was so thick through that he didn’t close it up again, just covered it with some aluminium foil.
“We’re agreed that half-raw onion inside your lovely grilled fish is a no-no, let alone slathering it in chilli and garlic like the awful male telly cooks that ruin good fish!” beamed Polly. “Not that we don’t like garlic, but not with everything.”
Marie-Louise agreed fervently with this statement, so that was all right.
The fish was accompanied by sweetcorn cobs grilled in their own green jackets, the results being astonishingly sweet and juicy, and Polly’s special potato salad, which she explained she really only made for a treat. The dressing consisted of Heinz Salad Cream mixed with a judicious but not over-generous amount of yoghurt. Some capers and green peppercorns had been added, Stan apologising for this: she’d done it before he realised what she was up to.
“But it’s delicious!” Peter protested.
“Our English mates in New Zealand always like anything with Heinz Salad Cream in it, too!” he replied with a laugh. “Yeah—no: might be too strong for Grace.”
“Nah, she’s got a stomach like an ostrich: eats anything. Well, not very hot chillis, but anything else,” explained Petey. “What with trips to Rarotonga most years, interspersed with trips to France—we went to a restaurant near Mémé’s old beach house one year, and you shoulda seen the little kids lapping up platefuls of oysters and mussels! Grace woulda been three, so as Mémé gave us the okay, we tried her with mussels. She loved them—didn’t you, Grace? T’aimes les moules, n’est-ce pas?”
“Oui, j’aime beaucoup les moules!” she agreed.
“Good-oh,” replied Stan stolidly, investigating a battered tin platter sitting on his barbecue—a large brick affair which worked not with the aid of the usual giant bottle of camping gas endemic to the Aussie barbie, the visitors had discerned with bulging eyes, but by means of a blazing wood fire. An actual barbecue, in other words. He brought the platter over to them, where they were all sitting under the sun umbrellas on rugs—Marie-Louise had been offered a deckchair but had scorned it.
“She’ll probably be okay with these, then. –Pipis,” he explained briefly.
“Heck, do you get them in Australia, too?” cried Lalla. “I thought they were native to New Zealand!”
“Different species, Lalla. Presumably the European settlers here adopted the Maori name for them. Yours are Paphies australis, ours are Plebidonax deltoides.” He grinned at her. “When Polly, here, took me pipi-ing near her place, I hadda look them up: it was driving me nuts. They’re very alike but turns out they’re not even the same taxonomic family.”
Peter smiled. “We’re all like that, too, Stan. Some claim it’s the scholarly mind.”
Polly laughed. “That or ’satiable—”
“—curiosity!” cried Lalla. “That’s just what I was gonna say!”
They beamed at each other.
The feast—topped off with ice cream and a bit more fizz or grape juice—had been digested, and Petey and Addison, having discovered Stan’s surfboards, were now endeavouring to coast in on the reluctant breakers—it was a very calm day. Peter had wandered inside and not been seen again; after a bit Stan investigated and reported with a grin that he’d gone to sleep on the sofa with a book on his chest. Stan himself was now escorting Marie-Louise and Grace to the rocky spot at the far point of the little bay where, so he claimed, they might see a few rock oysters. Lalla and Polly were lying flat under one of the big sun umbrellas.
After quite some time Lalla, squinting in the direction in which the hunter-gatherers had gone, asked: “If you go round that point do you get to the bay where Mac’s Kitchen is?”
“Yes,” Polly confirmed. “The other end of it. You can walk round easily if the tide’s out.”
“I see,” she murmured, realising that that was probably where Stan had come from the first time they’d met him. “Um, we were wondering why it’s so empty, Polly.”
“Um, well, I do know, but promise you won’t tell anyone?” she replied cautiously.
“Of course I won’t, if you don’t want me to,” Lalla agreed in some surprise.
“I don’t mean Peter, of course. But, um, I think it’d be disastrous if any of the second-homers got to know about it,” she said, swallowing.
“That’s okay: one visit from Mrs Brinkman with a supermarket cake was more than enough warning!” returned Lalla with a laugh and a shudder.
“Yeah!” Polly agreed, also laughing and shuddering. “Well, um, that’s Brydons Beach. This whole area, from way up past where the Mayhews’ place is to well south of us, and for a long way inland, was once owned by two families, the Gorskis and the Brydons. They brought in sheep and cattle, dispossessed the local Aborigines, and proceeded to ruin the land with overgrazing. Not an uncommon story in Australia,” she added sourly.
“I see,” said Lalla slowly.
Polly sighed. “Yeah. Well, after a while the Gorskis were still doing fine, but there was only one Brydon left, and she married a Gorski.”
“So the Gorskis got the lot?”
“Right. It’s a long story, but they did very well during the 1920s, when Aussies started buying cars and the beaches were discovered: they developed Brydons Beach, built a roadhouse there, and a nice house. By this time the land was so degraded that they weren’t farming any more. Then the Depression hit, and nobody could afford the time or the money to traipse off down here. And then, of course, there was the murder here at Dead Man’s Cove during the 1930s.”
Lalla swallowed. “We did wonder about the name.”
“Yeah. The victim was a tramp who’d been kipping in the beach house here. They never found out who did it.”
“How awful, Polly!”
“Yes. Everybody avoided the place after the first flush of ghoulish curiosity had died down. Well, eventually the remains of the property came to Stan and his sister Sue—that would have been just after he finished his degree. They took one look at the frightful houses that had already started to go up over on the waterfront at Gorski Bay and decided no way, they’d just shut up about owning Brydons Beach. They get a bit of income from letting a few fields out for hay, but they talked that over and just quietly let the rest of the property go back to bush—it’s not much, now, their grandfather sold everything he could back in the early 1950s.”
“I see! Heck, good on them,” said Lalla, looking at Polly in some awe.
“Yeah. They’re both really decent people,” said Stan Gorski’s wife on a detached note. “I think you’d like Sue. Well, she is a bit obsessional, but she’s solid,” she ended with a smile.
Lalla nodded hard. “She must be! Help, when you look at some of those monstrosities people have built along the shore… They could sell off Brydons Beach for millions.”
“I know. That’s one more reason why Stan doesn’t want the bloody second-homers to know his real name.”
“No, of course not!” she agreed fervently. “I promise I’ll never breathe a word, Polly! …Actually,” she said thoughtfully, “I won’t even tell Peter. He knows too many greedy capitalists, it’d be dreadful if he told someone he thought he could trust and they let it out.”
“Thanks, Lalla.”
They smiled at each other and lay back, gazing up through their sunnies at the perfect azure Australian sky…
The Peter Sales relaxed in deckchairs under the spreading branches of the big old deodar. Down on the beach, Petey and Addison were energetically coasting in on their boogie boards, paddling them out again and coasting in again… At each end of the Mayhews’ long stretch of beach, Stan had warned, there were public paths and you occasionally got day trippers, but so far none had eventuated. Towards the northern end Marie-Louise and Grace, both in long-sleeved lightweight blouses over their bathers, their heads adorned with wide-brimmed sunhats and their legs, their faces and the backs of their hands liberally slathered in sunscreen, were, apparently, botanising. Well, they were certainly bending over some sort of plant life where the scruffy growth of dead grass and stunted shrubs met the sand.
The sun shone, a little breeze blew, not enough to ruffle the sea, and the air was soundless apart from the shushing of the waves, and the occasional laugh from Addison as Petey failed to manage his board.
“Happy, darling?” murmured Peter, groping for her hand.
“Mm,” agreed Lalla. “Blissfully.”
“Good, me, too. I think perhaps we should investigate the possibility of building a holiday home of our own down h— No?” he said in surprise, as she shot upright, as much as was possible in an ancient, sagging deckchair, gasping: “No!”
“No! The environment’s been ruined enough already, Peter!”
“Er—I wasn’t envisaging a monstrosity like the Brinkmans’ and their pals’.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“But the Mayhews are due to retire here, darling, they’ll be using this house themselves, and there don’t seem to be any others available to rent during the summer.”
“No, and if you investigate what’s available for sale,” said Lalla grimly, “you’ll find that at best, all you might pick up is one of those glass-sided or rendered monstrosities on the waterfront at poor little Gorski Bay itself.”
“Er… Well, the beach where the fish and chips shop is?”
“None of it’s for sale,” said Lalla flatly.
“How in God’s name do you know that?”
“Never mind. Someone told me. Please don’t investigate it, Peter, the owners won’t sell.”
“Look, I’m sure if I suss out the local real estate agents—”
“There’s only one, it’s in the main street. It had two horrible monstrosities advertised in its window, both cheek-by-jowl with neighbouring monstrosities, both well over five million, I’m not kidding, plus a few very ordinary little bungalows, very rundown-looking, way back from the water. I don’t want a holiday house where we’d have to drive to the beach, that or risk Grace getting sunstroke if we walked.”
“Darling, this sounds exaggerated, to me.”
“Does it? Go and look.”
He frowned. “Perhaps I will.”
…The next day he did. He returned from this expedition looking chastened. Lalla was once more under the deodar. He went out there and sat down beside her with a sigh.
“You were right, Lalla. Nothing for sale that we could stomach. Even if I bought a monstrosity and pulled it down we’d be jammed up against two others.”
“Yes. Just enjoy this holiday for what it is Peter.”
“But I really love it here! …Do you suppose the Mayhews would sell us a bit of this property?”
“Not if they’ve got any sense. Once they’d sold us a section, who knows what could happen to it? If we had to sell it, for whatever reason, or our heirs did, anybody at all could snap it up.”
Peter sighed. “Well, uh… Look, perhaps if I suggest we put up a holiday house at a decent distance from this one—there’s enough space here for them never to be bothered by us—and pay them ground rent?”
“Well, you could try, but I wouldn’t agree in their shoes. And don’t suggest that sort of arrangement to Stan and Polly, thanks.”
“But we get on very well with them!”
“Peter, you idiot, didn’t you look at their suntan lines?” said his wife heavily.
“What?” he fumbled.
“Blind as a bat,” she sighed. “It’s obvious that they’re both used to just stripping off and running into the water, neither of them have got suntan lines!”
“Uh—oh. Oh, I see!” he said with a laugh.
“Yeah. We’d be spoiling their little middle-aged paradise. I’d say they’ve both come through a fair bit—it can’t have been easy being married to a relentless go-getter like Sir Jake Carrano, you know: he always had bags of energy and everyone at the Group said he was as stubborn as a mule. And from what Polly mentioned about Stan smuggling gemstones out of Afghanistan it certainly doesn’t sound as if he’s led an easy, non-stressful life, either!”
“Er—no. No, I see what you mean, darling. No, wouldn’t dream of invading their little Eden,” he said with a smile.
“No. Have a beer,” said Lalla kindly. “In the esky, there.”
Peter had to swallow, both at the Aussie terminology she seemed to have absorbed and at the fact that she’d thought of bringing out some beer in the foam hamper—complete with chiller bags, yes, he saw, opening it and excavating one.
“Well, uh, who does own the beach where Mac’s Kitchen is?” he asked, having sunk half a can.
“No idea,” lied Lalla calmly. “All I know is the owners definitely won’t sell.”
“Damn.”
“Just enjoy this holiday for what it is, Peter. Don’t go all entrepreneurial on us, for pity’s sake.”
“Ugh, was I? God! Sorry, sweetheart.” Peter sighed and drank beer, and lay back in his deckchair…
“It is a perfect day, isn’t it?” he murmured after quite some time.
“Mm.”
“Where are the rest of them?” he asked idly.
“Stan came and collected them all: it’s today he promised to take them on a bush walk. It’ll just be on the slope up behind their place and over to the, um, southwest a bit, I think he said.”
“Oh, was that today? Well, I hope he’s made it plain to Grace that it’s highly unlikely she’ll see an echidna.”
“Yes.”
“Good! Well, that leaves just us.” He took her hand and kissed it.
“Mmm,” agreed Lalla.
They lay back, hand-in-hand, and gazed up at the dark branches of the ancient tree, with the cerulean sky peeping through here and there…
After a while Lalla realised he’d gone to sleep. Oh, well! She closed her eyes, too.
“He’s done a lot of sleeping,” she said uneasily to Marie-Louise as January neared its end and they girded their loins for the return to Sydney and Grace’s new school year.
Peter had taken Grace, Petey and Addison into the little township for a last round of ice creams, not to say whatever assorted tourist junk might take his fancy—he’d already favoured Addison with a keyring adorned with a small fuzzy koala, Petey with a ditto adorned with a small plastic platypus, and Grace with a large fuzzy wombat adorned with—sigh—a pink ribbon round its fat neck. She’d decided its name was William Gorski Wombat, though Petey, alas, had dubbed it Fatso Wombo.
“Yes, my dear: I think the decision to give up the company, and of course all the extra work it entailed, and then the switch to fulltime study has taken it out of him more than he anticipates.”
“Yes,” said Lalla with a sigh.
Marie-Louise patted her hand. “Now, you must stop worrying, mon chou! Peter is far happier and—eugh—far more content in his new life than he ever has been before.”
“Ye-es… But he had that stupid entrepreneurial fit that I told you about, wanting to build here.”
“That is just ’is silly early training,” she stated dismissively. “Habit, tu vois? Not that it would not be most pleasant, but if it is impossible then it is impossible.”
“Mm… I think I’ll tell you the truth,” Lalla decided. “Polly would understand. But we mustn’t let on to Peter.”
“I understand. Please, go on.”
With huge relief Lalla burst out with Polly’s story about the Gorski family.
“Ah. Most admirable!” Marie-Louise approved its dénouement.
“I think so, too,” said Lalla.
“But you are right, it would be foolish to tell Peter. Even if he does not repeat it, there is the risk that it—eugh—sets the—eugh—the entrepreneurial wheels, that is it! The risk that it sets the entrepreneurial wheels in motion, again, and we do not want that! The scholarly life, it suits ’im so mush better!”
“Do you really think so, Marie-Louise? I mean, sometimes I think maybe I shouldn’t have encouraged him…”
“But yes, mon chéri! No question! I ’ave never seen ’im so happy in ’imself! Truly, my dear Lalla, marrying you and settling in Australia and deciding to go back to study has, I think, saved his life.”
Lalla swallowed hard. “I see.”
“Yes,” said Marie-Louise with a tiny sigh. “I was so afraid… Never mind! It is all over! I think we drink to it, non?”
“Um—okay!” said Lalla with a startled laugh.
They were sitting under the deodar. Smiling, Marie-Louise bustled inside.
She returned with two glasses of Peter’s Black Label, hers with a token amount of water, but Lalla’s merely with ice.
“To you, my dearest Lalla, who saves my Peter from the fate of ’is father, and from the upper-class English bishes who chase him relentlessly, and from the ’orrid English life of the City of London! Santé!”
Yikes, did I do all that? thought Lalla numbly. Numbly she picked up her glass. “Cheers,” she said feebly, drinking.
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