The Pretty Woman

3

The Pretty Woman

    “No!” he shouted.

    Lalla dropped her armful of packages and looked at him helplessly.

    “I THOUGHT I SAID, DON’T PERM YOUR HAIR?” he bellowed.

    “It isn’t. –I don’t think,” said Lalla nervously. “I think they just sort of curled it.”

    “Curled it with what?”

    “Um, curlers.”

    “JESUS!” he shouted.

    “Well, I don’t know: I never go to the hairdresser!” said Lalla vigorously.

    Peter took a deep breath. “Have you any idea—even a vague one—of how long it might have taken?” he asked sweetly.

    Lalla looked at him sulkily. “About an hour. Shane thought the shops might be shut before they’d finished, so he was quite pleased when it only took about an hour. Most of that was under the dryer.”

    Peter’s knees went quite weak. “Then it can’t have been permed. –At least you didn’t let them dye it maroon,” he noted. “Get into the bathroom and wash it all out,” he added grimly.

    “But I thought we were going out tonight?” she gasped.

    “That was the idea, certainly. But I don’t propose to flaunt that on my arm as a putative fiancée.”

    “I don’t think you mean putative, do you?”

    “GET INTO THE BATHROOM AND WASH IT ALL OUT!”

    “All right, if you say so. Only I’m warning you, I can’t put it up all fancy again.”

    “Thank God for that,” he groaned. It was immensely frizzed and curled and piled and puffed and— Ugh, in short.

    Lalla went over to the door of the ensuite but paused. “I thought this was my room?” she said suspiciously.

    Peter sighed. “It is your room, your very own room; the adjoining room is your very own sitting-room, and that through there is your very own bathroom. I merely invaded your territory in order to ascertain whether you were back yet.”

    “Good. –Shane’s gone,” she added on a defiant note, vanishing into the bathroom.

    “WHAT?” he bellowed.

    He heard the sound of the door being locked. Then she said loudly—she must have been standing just behind it: “I told him he could go home. He said you said he could have the whole of tonight off for his sister’s wedding anniversary.” There was a short pause. “Ages ago!” she added loudly.

    Peter did have a vague recollection of having done so, now she came to mention it. He took a deep breath and said with immense restraint: “You had no right to tell him any such thing.”

    “Yes, I did, I looked it up in the fiancée guide!” she said with a sudden loud laugh.

    “Have you been drinking?” he demanded grimly.

    “Yes. I had a brandy. Shane thought I’d better because I was feeling wobbly. It was quite nice.”

    “Wobbly?”

    “I think it was because I hadn’t had anything to eat since—” She broke off. This was in order to stop herself saying: “Since the plastic lunch on the Air New Zealand plane at eight o’clock your time.”

    “Since when?” he said crossly—all the more so because it had never occurred to him that she might have missed lunch—and come to think of it, she’d thought he’d meant lunch when he’d mentioned coq au vin: bugger.

    “Um—quite early. Um, about eight o’clock,” said Lalla in a sheepish voice.

    “You’re an imbecile: why didn’t you ask him to give you lunch?”

    “It was a bit late. Anyway, the money was for the clothes.”

    Peter restrained an urge to clutch at his hair—he was rather proud of having the thick family hair, which tended to recede but otherwise remained a good thick thatch all one’s life, judging by Grandfather, but there was no sense in tempting fate, after all. He took a very deep breath and managed to say in a cool tone: “In future, please don’t tell Shane to get off home without checking whether I need him back here.”

    In the bathroom, Lalla stuck her tongue out at the cool tone. “You don’t, though, do you?”

    “I need him to send a fax!” he said irritably.

    “Heck, even I can send a fax!” said Lalla in amazement. Which to his annoyance, Peter thought was genuine.

    “Then in that case you can send one for me the minute you’ve washed your hair. And get—a—move—on,” he added coldly and evilly. “We’re going to be late.”

    “You mean we’re still going?” she gasped.

    “YES!”

    He heard her mutter: “Yikes.” Then she said: “Well, go away, then.”

    “Why? I’m ready, in fact I have been ready for some time.”

    “Go AWAY!” shouted Lalla.

    Smiling just a little, Peter said: “Very well, I’m going. But get a move on.”

    For answer the shower was suddenly turned on very hard.

    Peter went out smiling a little.

    On second thoughts he came back, quietly retrieved all the carrier bags, and took them through to her sitting-room to inspect them.

    And just as well. Jesus Christ! She must have let the yuppie choose the lot. Peter was conscious of a hope that she had, that her own taste couldn’t possibly be this bad. This rag was a garish bright royal blue: if there was one colour she couldn’t wear, with her skin and eyes—! He began flinging garments out of bags desperately. When he came to the undergarments he unashamedly paused, and inspected the styles and the sizes on the labels, grinning to himself.

    Lalla came into her sitting-room and stopped short with a gasp, clutching her borrowed terry-cloth robe to her. “What are you doing in here?”

    “Vetting what you’re going to wear. Have you got a hairdryer?”

    “No.”

    He took a deep breath, strode past her and went into the bathroom. There was one in the large cabinet under the Goddawful pink hand-basin. He returned to the sitting-room with it. “Here.”

    “Who does this house belong to?” asked Lalla dubiously as she took it.

    He shrugged. “I’ve no idea. It was to let fully furnished, I took it.”

    “But they might not want us to use their stuff!” she gasped.

    “Rubbish. Get on with it. –Plug it in over there,” he added with a sigh.

    “I’m not blind!” Lalla went over to the wall and plugged the hairdryer in. Peter was about to get her a chair when she sat down on the carpet. “I suppose those dresses are all wrong,” she said without emotion.

    “You suppose correctly. Who chose them?” asked Peter before he could stop himself.

    “The shop assistants.”

    “That figures,” he said limply.

    “Shane just said the sort of do they were for: you know.”

    “Quite. –See this?” He held up the blue rag.

    “Mm. Coralie, that’s my cousin, she’s got a dress just like that.”

    Peter ignored that. “Never let me see you in it,” he said coldly.

    “All right.”

    He blinked. “Er—right. Good.”

    “There’s a pink one that’s sort of all right. Or is that a nightie? He made me get some, he said they were for the benefit of the servants.”

    “It astounds me to learn he has that much nous.”

    “I haven’t seen any servants. –Except Ted, of course.”

    “They come in— Who the Devil’s Ted?”

    Lalla goggled at him. “Your driver, of course!”

    “Uh—oh. Well, the other servants come in early in the mornings, to do the breakfasts and so forth.”

    “Oh.” Lalla removed the towel from her head, bent forward, and began to dry her hair.

    Peter looked at her limply. After a moment he began to forage in the pile of garments he’d dumped on a sofa. …No. The only pink one was most definitely a nightgown. Pity: it was rather a pretty shade: very pale. Though the style was tasteless: smothered in stiff and scratchy nylon lace. The negligée that must go with it simply was stiff and scratchy nylon lace. He swallowed a sigh.

    After quite some time she swept the hair back, looked up, turned off the dryer, and said: “Are they all hopeless?”

    “What do you think?’

    “Well, I didn’t like any of them, but then, I’ve got no taste.”

    Peter passed a hand wearily over his face. “Lalla, if you didn’t like anything they chose for you, why didn’t you stop them?”

    Lalla looked puzzled. “You said we had to buy clothes. And the shop assistants all said these were the right thing. You know: what ladies wear.”

    Peter had rather thought it must have been like that. He looked at her limply.

    “I saw a film once where the lady had a really horrible dress and they sort of ripped the bows and stuff off it and it turned into a super dress, and she looked great,” she offered.

    “Mm. And I saw a film once where they did the same thing, and the dress came unlatched and showed the place where they’d ripped the flowers off it or some such, and the lady was covered in confusion. Forgive me for asking, but which category of lady do you think you fall into?”

    “Hah, hah,” said Lalla sourly. “–Did you really?” she asked after a moment.

    “Mm? Oh—see a film like that? Yes,” he said, smiling a little. “It’s quite a classic. I’ve got it on tape, actually. You could— Oh,” he said lamely. “No, stupid of me: it’s at home, of course.”

    “I’ll just have to wear one of them as it is. It won’t be too bad,” she said kindly.

    “It will be appalling,” retorted Peter coldly.

    “Well, you should have come with us,” she returned calmly, switching on the hairdryer.

    Peter collapsed into a large armchair. –All of the furniture in her suite was huge and puffy but instead of being swathed in white with bows like the stuff downstairs it was swathed in very pink cabbages on a white background with bows. That was, the blooms were not cabbage roses, but literally the size and shape of well-grown cabbages. The window furnishings were similar, but on a black background. With bunching as well as bows. After quite some time he said: “Lalla.”—No answer.—“LALLA!”

    Lalla switched the dryer off. “It’s nearly dry,” she reported, raising a flushed face.

    “Yes. Listen: did you—” Peter broke off, biting his lip a little.

    “What?” she said meekly.

    He swallowed. “Did you by any chance let the yuppie purchase all this appalling crap in order to demonstrate to me that I should have gone with you in person?”

    “I’m not that dumb!” she returned with immense scorn.

    Peter sank bank into the billows of pink cabbages. No. Of course. Silly him.

    Lalla looked at him dubiously. “I could wear the red one.”

    Peter eyed her grimly.

    “Like in Pretty Woman!” said Lalla with a loud laugh.

    “THE RED ONE—” Peter took a deep breath. “The red one is appalling,” he said coldly.

    “I think so, too!” she agreed cheerfully.

    “JESUS!” he shouted.

    Lalla just looked at him.

    “You can wear this black satin skirt,” he said grimly.

    “There’s a jacket that goes w—”

    “You are not going to sit by me at dinner in a thing weighed down by five hundredweight of gold braid and sequins. –On each lapel,” he noted coldly.

    Lalla swallowed. “Um—no. All right. Its shoulders are awfully big, too,” she offered.

    “Precisely.”

    There was a short pause.

    “Shall I send that fax for you?”

    “What? Oh. No, we’ll sort this out and send the fax on our way out. And don’t let me forget.”

    Lalla nodded obediently.

    Peter picked up a black slip. “Wear this.”

    “Ye-es… There isn’t a black blouse, though.”

    “This will be the blouse,” he said grimly.

    “No! It’s a petticoat!” she gasped.

    “WEAR it!” he shouted.

    “NO!” shouted Lalla.

    They glared at each other.

    “I won’t wear it, it’s rude. And my bra straps’d show.”

    “You won’t wear a bloody bra, everyone’s wearing slip-tops these days, and you’ll WEAR THIS!”

    “No, I won’t,” said Lalla grimly.

    After some deep breathing, Peter said tightly: “Suggest an alternative.”

    Lalla scowled.

    “Oh, very well: put the bloody slip on and wear the fucking jacket over it; I give up.”

    Lalla picked up the jacket, the skirt, and the slip and went out with them.

    … “Christ,” he moaned. She was quite a tall girl, about five-nine, and she had good legs, and at least the yuppy seemed to have bought her a pair of simple black patent sandals, but—

    “You told me to.”

    “Mm. I really can’t— I’m sorry, but I don’t wish to be the laughingstock of Australia. That jacket literally doubles your width.”

    “I said it had big sh—”

    “So you did. Get out of it.”

    Lalla just stood there.

    “Take it OFF!” he shouted, picking up the red monstrosity.

    “I’ve only got the petticoat on under it.”

    “I don’t care,” said Peter rudely.

    Reddening, Lalla removed the offending jacket.

    After a moment Peter managed to say: “You look, if a fictitious fiancé may say so, bloody stunning in that.”

    She glared angrily and crossed her arms over the bloody stunning black lace-covered breasts.

    “No, very well, if you won’t, you won’t.” He got out his pearl-handled penknife and surgically removed the red dress’s puffed, ruched, bunched and draped skirt from its top.

    “It’s rude,” said Lalla in an obstinate voice.

    “With the black skirt, you moron!”

    “No, I mean the top.”

    It was rude, all right. Cut in a vee to well below where Lalla had her arms crossed. Peter swallowed a sigh and said: “Over the slip. Get on with it: we’ll be here all bloody night at this rate.”

    Scowling, Lalla took the top and turned away to insert herself into it.

    “That’s not wholly bad,” conceded Peter in some surprise, when she’d tucked the remains of the red skirt into the waist of the black one. True, the red top was pretty awful: it was heavily pleated—though the pleats did follow the line of the bust—and into the bargain the pleats were fringed with nasty little gold beads. It also featured cap sleeves with shoulder-pads under them, the which stood out grotesquely from the actual arms; but at least it didn’t make her look as wide as she was tall.

    Lalla squinted down at it. She went over to the redundant fireplace over which hung a gigantic oblong mirror in an offensively bright gilt frame. “It’s still rude.”

    “Too bad. Get into the bedroom, we’ll brush your hair.”

    “I can—”

    “Just DO IT!” he shouted.

    Sulkily Lalla went into the bedroom and allowed Peter to brush fiercely at the rippling flood of shiny brown silk that almost reached her waist. Peter Sale, alas, didn’t even try to pretend to himself that the experience was not wholly—wholly—enjoyable.

    “I suppose you’ve noticed that these blimmin’ gold beads shake when I walk?” she said in a nasty voice.

    Peter ran his hand gently through the silken mass—ooh, er. He had noticed, actually. “Mm. Would you have anything along the lines of a simple tortoiseshell hair-clip, perchance?” Good God, she did. He pinned the top bit back gently.

    Then there was a short silence. Peter didn’t kid himself for one second that hers was because she’d spotted that playing with her hair had really turned him on.

    “Um, don’t you think it looks messy like that? I usually plait it,” said Lalla uncertainly.

    “You’ll plait it over my dead body. –Oh, hang on.” He produced a small velvet case from his pocket. Lalla eyed it warily. “Give me your hand,” he said heavily.

    “How much did you pay for this?”

    It was a large baroque pearl surrounded by small diamonds and it hadn’t been all that dear. Though he was aware that in her terms the price would be beyond the pale. “Not enough,” he said with a sigh. “We’d better tell the dames who pretend to admire it that you’ve got a passion for baroque pearls.”

    “What?”

    Peter slid the ring on. it was a bit loose but not bad. “Repeat after me: ‘I’ve got a passion for baroque pearls.’”

    “I’ve got a passion for baroque pearls. –What does it mean? Is it a pearl? It’s all lumpy.”

    “Y— Uh, yes,” he said feebly. “Er—real lumpy pearls are called baroque pearls. I don’t suppose you can manage to say,” he added without hope: “‘I’ve got a passion for baroque pearls: Peter spoils me’?”

    Lalla went into a helpless spluttering fit.

    “No,” he agreed drily. “That’s what I thought. –Put some muck on your face, and come on.”

    “I’m not good at make-up. I’m sorry,” said Lalla glumly.

    Oddly enough it didn’t cross Peter Sale’s mind at this point that he should have sent her straight back to Sydney. He just sat down and operated on the face. God knew he’d seen enough women do their faces—and then, he had had some direct experience, in amateur theatrics at school. She had a lovely skin, creamy with a natural apricot-pink flush. He deepened the flush a little with a glittery blusher, added a smudge of soft, brown-gold eyeshadow, and having perceived that the curved, thick brown lashes were naturally gold-tipped, refrained from touching them. He left her to put a bit of apricot lipstick on, reflecting that that wide, gentle mouth didn’t really need it. Or wouldn’t have done if she hadn’t been wearing the red top. He was tempted to have another go at persuading her to take it off and just wear the black lace and the knockers, but as he didn’t think he’d win, didn’t.

    “I don’t need earrings or stuff, do I?” she asked, getting up.

    “No; I feel that those bloody gold beads on that red thing more than make up for several pairs of earrings. Come on, we’re Hellishly late.”

    They went downstairs. Lalla reminded him about the fax just as he was about to open the front door.

    “Damn. Through here.”

    She appeared to dispatch the fax competently enough. It only had to cross the Tasman Sea. Peter supposed if it hadn’t got there, Carrano Development would be on the wires early tomorrow asking why not.

    “What’s this?” he said idly, picking up a fax that lay by the machine.

    “It came this afternoon. Shane said there must have been a mix-up,” said Lalla indifferently.

    The fax was from the Sydney office, informing them that Miss Holcroft had withdrawn from the proposition. “There certainly must.”

    “He faxed them back,” said Lalla casually.

    “Mm? Oh—good,” returned Peter vaguely. “Come along: we’ve got to put in an appearance at this bloody cocktail thing before dinner.”

    Lalla accompanied him obediently, concealing her intense relief that he hadn’t wanted to examine the so-called “mix-up”.

    “New Zealand is ahead of Australia, time-wise, isn’t it?” he asked as they went out.

    “I don’t know: I always get it muddled,” she said cheerfully.

    “Mm.” –Served him right for asking, really.

    As Peter hadn’t bothered to tell her that the “bloody cocktail thing” was being held at a small gallery, to celebrate the opening of a new exhibition, Lalla was rather surprised when they got there. She was interested in art, and often visited the small galleries at home, though everything in them was much too expensive for her purse, even when it had prices on it, which usually it didn’t.

    On her previous visits to Australia she had also tried to visit the small galleries. This had been rather difficult, as though she had actually managed to discover that such galleries existed, either by carefully reading the advertising material provided in her hotel room or by happening across a newspaper with an arts section or a magazine of the arty variety, their advertisements had without exception failed to give their addresses. Possibly they didn’t want to attract new custom? Or was it that they were determined to keep out those who just wanted to look, like her? Lalla was not the sort of person who could hop cheerfully into a taxi and tell the driver “Such-and-Such Gallery” and then deal with his demand to know where it was. They never knew addresses, in her experience, and on one or two horrible occasions back home she had even had to tell the man the way to the airport! Yikes.

    In Adelaide, where she had had two whole extra weeks to fill, her manager having ordered her to take some leave while she was over there, it was piling up and the firm didn’t want her to carry it over, she had tried to find her way to a couple of galleries by bus but had failed miserably. Not, in fact, even getting to the point of stepping onto a bus at all. Three helpful lady pedestrians had directed her to the place where you got the timetables and the maps, or possibly only the one map: Lalla had been so horrified at having to pay for it, when its entire purpose was to advertise their own services, that she had never discovered if there was a more detailed one—but then she hadn’t been able to work out where any of the bus stops were, because they didn’t seem to be marked on the map! Well, possibly they were, but everything was so small and jammed up that she couldn’t find any. But as there were definitely no street numbers on the map it wouldn’t have helped, anyway. Lalla had given up. She had found the big public art gallery, which was easy, in the same street as the university where the conference was held, and just gone there, instead.

    Her experience in Melbourne had, if anything, been worse. That conference was held in August, which in Melbourne was as cold, wet, windy, grey and miserable as it was in Wellington. She had had one free day: she had started out by deciding not to wander round at random, but to be efficient and logical, and find the Melbourne tourist information centre, get the correct information about the galleries, and go straight there. There definitely was a tourist information centre, there was a brochure in her hotel room which mentioned it, though without giving its address. But it must be central, surely? It might or might not have been central, but Lalla certainly couldn’t find it. She had got so cold and chilled that she had retreated into a big shop and just wandered round it getting lost in it, looking at clothes she didn’t want and couldn’t afford, until her feet and legs got so tired that she dragged herself back to her hotel. It was only four o’clock but she’d gone straight to bed.

    “Do you like modern art?” asked Peter as the stretch limo drew up behind a long line of equally ostentatious vehicles dropping passengers off.

    There was a short pause.

    “Some of it,” said Lalla cautiously, wondering if he was testing her yet again.

    “Who’s your favourite artist?” said Peter with a definite laugh in his voice.

    “You wouldn’t have heard of him,” replied Lalla grimly.

    There was another short pause.

    “That is, if you mean a modern one,” she said uncertainly.

    “Mm,” said Peter, trying not to laugh. “Who?”

    “All right, if you must have it. Fred Williams. And don’t laugh, it’s a real name—”

    “Yes,” said Peter in a shaken voice. “I adore him, too: I’ve got a couple of his things.”

    Lalla peered at him uncertainly. it was already dark: he had said as they sped through miles of bafflingly wide, tree-lined Canberra streets: “It gets dark very early in these subtropical climes, doesn’t it?” and Lalla, unable to determine if he was getting at her, at Australasia, at both, at his own ignorance (unlikely), or merely making an observation (just as unlikely), had not replied.

    After some time she said: “I meant the Australian one.”

    “Yes,” said Peter. “I love his work, and I love the landscape he—depicts isn’t the word, is it? Reflects?”

    “Yes. Um, I’ve never seen it, only on TV and that, but um, yes,” finished Lalla in a small voice.

    “You’ve never seen the Outback? The Real Australia?” said Peter with a laugh back in his voice.

    “No. And that’s one of the stupidest expressions I’ve ever heard: it may be the real countryside, but it’s got nothing to do with modern Australian society! Virtually the entire population of the country occupies the coastal fringes and lives a Westernised suburban lifestyle filled with microwaves and mortgages and—and Mazdas!” said Lalla loudly and angrily.

    “Yes; hush,” he said, shoulders shaking. “Er—what is a Mazda, Lalla?"

    “It’s some kind of car, and you know perfectly well I don’t know what, so why ask?” retorted Lalla fiercely.

    “Merely to hear you admit it,” he murmured. “–You’re right, of course; and the lifestyle of the people who live Outback, certainly the white ones, manages virtually to ignore what’s around it, too. Quite apart from imposing a European system of agriculture which is entirely unsuited, as far as my Westernised brain can see, to both the climate and the soil conditions, they seem to have no values or even interests apart from microwaves and mortgages and—er—Holden cars, I think, in this instance. And tinned peaches,” he added thoughtfully.

    “What?” replied Lalla weakly.

    “Tinned peaches. They figured largely in my trips to the Outback. Usually with ice cream from the enormous Westernised freezer maintained by the enormous Westernised generator.”

    Lalla swallowed.

    “However, in between the Holdens and the tinned peaches I did manage to get a glimpse or two of those wonderful flat landscapes that Fred Williams... paints the feeling of, if that’s not too bloody fanciful a phrase.”

    “I think it puts it very well. Lucky you,” said Lalla gruffly.

    Peter Sale smiled a little, but not unkindly, and said: “I’m due for another dose of the Holdens and tinned peaches quite soon, actually. Something to do with one of our companies’ mining interests. Not that I need personally to inspect this area, you understand—and I certainly couldn’t tell you anything about its geology just by looking at it! But—ah—they seem to expect it of me.”

    “Noblesse oblige. Like Prince Charles,” agreed Lalla calmly.

    “If you’d stop comparing me to the heir to the throne for two seconds, I might be able to add, you’d better come with me.”

    “What?” said Lalla numbly.

    “Get out, for God’s sake, we’re here. –You’d better come with me to the Outback: it will lend verisimilitude and save tedious explanations to the Press.”

    Lalla scrambled out, gasping: “Y— Um— But I don’t think— Oh, thank you!” she gasped to the young man holding the door for her. He looked surprised, noted Peter: probably she was the first one this evening to have bothered.

    “Um, I’m due back at my job in a couple of weeks. My permanent job, I mean,” she muttered, reddening.

    There wasn’t much light outside the trendy little gallery and Peter missed the redness. “Oh, I see: you’re moonlighting, are you? While officially you’re on leave, is that it?”

    “Um—yes!” gasped Lalla, redder than ever.

    “Well, take some more leave. I’ll make it worth your while,” he said lightly. Refraining from asking himself why he wanted to cart this odd and ungracious young woman round Fred Williams country.

    “Um, they do keep telling me to take some. They don’t like you to, um, carry it over,” said Lalla feebly.

    “Carry it over into what?” asked Peter meanly.

    “The next financial year, of course.” There was a short pause. “But I don’t know why,” she admitted.

    “No.” He took her elbow firmly. “That’s all right, then. You can send them a fax. How much are you due?”

    “Um, lots. Um, I’m not sure. Well, Gayle, she’s in Accounts, she reckons I’ve still got thirty days, because I never took all of last year’s, only I’m not sure... Only she reckons it’s in the computer.”

    “Thirty days?” echoed Peter dubiously.

    “Working days, of course. Um—that’s six weeks."

    “Oh!” There was a short pause. Peter Sale asked himself uneasily why that had come out sounding quite so bloody pleased. Well—Fred Williams country with the only other human being he’d ever met who genuinely and unaffectedly adored Fred Williams? “Good,” he said, a trifle lamely.

    “Where is it, that you have to go?” she asked as he propelled her inside.

    “Mm? Oh; in the Northern Territory, I’m afraid.”

    After a minute Lalla said: “No wonder you were going on about their politicians!”

    Firmly Peter replied: “I was not going on about them, I merely asked casually, and you went on about them. And shut up about it: the Lord High Everything Else is here tonight, you know.”

    Lalla gulped, but shut up. He could see, however, as they entered a brightly lit set of white-painted rooms filled with brightly dressed people gobbling savouries, knocking back the booze and shouting their heads off, that she was looking round for the Lord High Everything Else.

    ... “Well?” he said, as he helped her back into the car and she sank back against its horrible vinyl upholstery with a loud sigh.

    Lalla eased her sandals off. “My feet are killing me."

    “Serves you right for letting the yuppie choose your shoes."

    “He didn’t, they were the only pair I could get into. I’ve got funny feet.”

    Figured.

    “I was trying to ask you what you thought of it. Or was the agony in your feet preventing conscious thought?”

    “More or less, yeah!” she said with a loud laugh. “Um—I thought it was pretty bad. Um—was I all right?” she added anxiously.

    Judging by the number of males that had hung round her squinting into the black lace vee of the red monstrosity, she had been very much all right. “Mm,” he returned drily. “I don’t think any of the males present found fault with—er—anything.”

    Lalla replied simply: “But do they count?"

    Choking slightly, Peter admitted: “Not much, no! Not as green as you’re cabbage-looking, are you, Miss Holcroft? No, well, the unattached dames turned green as grass.”

    “Rats,” said Lalla in a stunned voice.

    “Of course they did, you imbecile: you had the best pair of tits in the room. And the legs tied for first equal with that blonde girl who was with the skinny artist.”

    “She’s a TV actress,” said Lalla in a stunned voice.

    The simper and the continuous rolling of the eyes and batting of the eyelids, two motions almost impossible to perform simultaneously without years of practising in front of one’s mirror in expectation of the day when one would be required to do it on camera, had more or less told him that, actually. Not to say the frizzy blonde, uncombed look which Peter had never been able to stand ever since Ms Farah Fawcett had first popularised it more years ago than, if one could recall it, one cared to recall. “Yes, well, be that as it may, your legs are as good as hers. And your tits, since you’re not asking, a damned sight better."

    To this the extraordinary female merely returned in a stifled voice: “You only mean bigger.”

    After an incredulous moment Peter said: “You’re not telling me that was what all the fuss about the slip-top was in aid of?” She didn’t reply and he added with a groan: “My dear girl, ignore anything the fashion mags or the rest of the purblind trend-following morons that call themselves the media may have tried to brainwash you into believing: ninety-nine point nine percent of red-blooded males still prefer ’em like that. –Hormonal predisposition.”

    “Hormonal— Oh.”

    He could see she was chewing on her lip. Also, though the Canberra streets at half past late-for-a-dinner-appointment didn’t afford much illumination, he rather thought blushing. “They’re good, believe it. And the High Commissioner’s lady hated you, and the five purplish-red-headed hags she had in tow hated you even more! Exponentially with every purpled hair, I think. In fact you almost deserve a bonus.”

    “Hah, hah.”

    “No!” he said with a laugh. “I mean it: they loathed the sight of you! I felt instantly betterer nor I have done for years!”

    “But— Oh.” After a moment she added in a small voice: “I thought you wanted the British High Commissioner’s wife to like me?”

    “No: as second-best I wanted her to find you a believable fiancée. I didn’t dare to hope that she’d instantly class you as knock-out bird that had me good an’ proper enslaved. –Only to hope it in me heart of hearts,” he explained.

    “Very funny.”

    “I mean it, you moron. –Listen, did I tell you it’ll be Japanese?”

    “What will?” said Lalla blankly.

    “Dinner.”

    “Japanese?” she gasped.

    Peter waited for her to say “Yikes” but to his great disappointment she didn’t. “Mm. With some business acquaintances and some Japanese acquaintances of theirs.”

    “I don’t see how on earth I’m going to sit on the floor in this stupid skirt!” said Lalla in despair.

    “Oh,” he said, smiling. He touched her hand fleetingly. “No, I promise you it will be Western chairs. Do you like Japanese food?”

    “I’ve never had it. Probably not.”

    Peter shuddered and shrank into his shell.

    “Hah, hah, hah,” she retorted grimly.

    His shoulders shook slightly but he merely murmured: “Did you like any of those artists’ offerings?” –It had been a joint show. One of ’em specialised in oblong palest grey canvases, all well over six feet in length and something under two wide, haphazardly and sparsely decorated with thick trails of what might have been greyish white paint but which it was Peter Sale’s considered opinion was well-used chewing gum. Every so often these trails were allowed to trail off the edge of the canvas and hang there in lumps. Which proved his theory. The other artist also specialised in grey, or at least monochrome, but his were all less than eight inches square, mounted, masked with plain white and neatly framed in pale wood. Etchings, composed entirely of multiplicities of minute cross-hatchings. Sometimes darker, sometimes lighter. That was all you could say of them, really.

    “No,” she said baldly.

    Peter shook silently for some time.

    Finally Lalla shouted: “Nor did YOU!”

    “No!” he gasped. “Hush!”

    Lalla crossed her arms and sank back into the vinyl, scowling.

    Pegeen (not Irish) and Bruce (not Scottish) were already there, considerately acting as host and hostess, when Peter and Lalla arrived. Pegeen was probably what Peter had mostly had in mind when he’d described the women at the breakfast meeting and alfresco lunch, now he came to think of it. At the breakfast she’d been in a strapless sunfrock, white with a pattern of huge, splashy blooms in magenta, orange and luminous turquoise. Very mini-skirted. At the lunch it had been pale blue silk printed in a pattern of puce squiggles: a wide-shouldered, wide-revered, short-sleeved suit, with giant gold filigree buttons. Very mini-skirted. Her hair was very full, shoulder-length and bouffant, and very yellow, and her skin was the expectable deep mahogany. She was at the very least fifty-five and very obviously what her crowd considered a good sort. Or, to put it more accurately—and Peter Sale in a jaundiced moment had, even though he quite liked Pegeen, in whom there was very little malice—she very obviously aimed at being considered a good sort. Bruce was large, red-faced, red-nosed, and perhaps sixty-five. The hammy-handed variety. There wasn’t any malice in him, either. Possibly because usually there was a good deal of Black Label.

    It was not a large restaurant, and Pegeen and her companions gave the impression of filling it, rather, especially when she caught sight of Peter, turned, and waved extravagantly. Tonight she was in glitter. Very mini-skirted, they saw as she then gasped—realising that Peter was actually with the tall, long-haired girl whose arm he was holding—and leapt to her feet. The top was possibly a gold glitter on top of a black glitter? Strapless and tightly moulded—Pegeen was at least a forty-two-inch and while Peter didn’t particularly object, he did reflect that you couldn’t have called the effect tasteful. The skirt was more of a solid black glitter. It was also tightly moulded. The arms featured several rows of flashing bangles, mixed gold and silver or black enamel in about fifteen different styles, and the ears and neck featured Pegeen’s fine black opals in their truly appalling mixed gold and platinum ersatz Baroque setting. The hands featured more flashing rings than it was possible to enumerate. And very long, very scarlet claws.

    Some ladies might have experienced a moment of social awkwardness and wondered what to do, when the lady playing hostess leapt to her feet to greet two new arrivals of mixed sexes. Two of Pegeen’s companions very obviously did not. One was the other variety of rich Australian matron: very large, draped in wide-shouldered turquoise silk, the hair bouffant but short and definitely grey. She merely sat there mountainously. The other female was one of Belinda’s expats: English, forty-fiveish, desperately dieted, deep mahogany. Daphne. She was in a satin dinner suit which was about the same shade of purplish red as the hair favoured by her compatriots, but surprisingly her own hair was not purplish. Pale ginger, almost a marmalade. Swore at the suit. Short at the back, curled and fluffy at the front. She showed her teeth archly and waved, not getting up.

    The third lady at the table was Japanese and she, like good old Bruce, the large Australian male who matched the large Australian turquoise female, and the two Japanese men, got up as Pegeen did.

    “Peter!” shrieked Pegeen at the top of her very coarse, very hoarse Australian voice. You couldn’t blame it on the gin, rum was her preferred tipple. Maybe it had the same effect, after nigh on forty years of knocking it back? She then informed Peter that he was a One, and this must be Her, and what did he mean by it, keeping her a secret all this time, and they were all dying to meet her—words to that effect, Peter and Lalla had heard them endlessly at the cocktail thing. And now that they had Lalla, they’d have to see she had a good time! Evidently Peter wasn’t capable of showing her one. Well, they’d heard that endlessly at the cocktail do, too, so he couldn’t be.

    Pegeen then introduced everybody. Daphne and the mountainous woman still didn’t rise. Peter gripped Lalla’s elbow very tightly and just nodded to them. Whether it was the grip or not he wasn’t sure, but she followed his lead obediently. Then, having shaken hands with those who had risen and of course having let herself be kissed by Pegeen, who had remarked admiringly on her skin as she did so, Lalla sank nervelessly into the place indicated. Between one of the Japanese—probably a mistake if she’d never tasted their food, but unlike some Pegeen wouldn’t have done it a-purpose—and, thank Christ, Peter himself: there were many hostesses who would have separated them a-purpose. Peter then attempted for the fifth time to apologise for their tardiness but was once again shrieked down by Pegeen. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Lalla was very pale but put it down to nerves, and attempted to give her an encouraging look, which she apparently didn’t see.

    Lalla had been very nervous anyway about dining with a lot of rich people she didn’t know who believed her to be Peter Sale’s fiancée: but when the second Japanese gentleman had risen and bowed politely, she’d almost died: she knew him, it was Mr Takagaki, he was the Carrano Group’s Tokyo rep! Yikes!

    Even though Mr Takagaki hadn’t appeared to recognise her, she had sunk into the seat indicated, between the other Japanese man and Peter, feeling as if she was going to faint. This was dreadful. Far, far worse than pretending to be someone she wasn’t to a lot of boring, rich strangers. What if he realised who she was? She’d once spoken to him for a long time, Sir Jake had got her to do some research—well, strictly speaking Dorothea, his PA, had got her to do the research, but he’d evidently asked for Lalla in person to come up and present it. There had only been him, Mr Takagaki, Mr Armitage who was a friend and business associate of Sir Jake’s, Mr Wells who was the head of Carrano Development and often travelled round with Sir Jake, and the twin yuppies from the Fifteenth, besides Dorothea and her. –The yuppies from the Fifteenth weren’t really twins but they both drove flat sports cars and wore draped suits with strange garish ties that Lalla thought were tasteless and old-fashioned but which must be the In Thing (but only for yuppies: Sir Jake didn’t). And they each had one ear-ring. And they were the only two yuppies on the Fifteenth. So there you were: twins, obviously. During this session Mr Takagaki had asked Lalla lots of questions and had appeared to look at her as if he really saw her. Perhaps that had only been manners, though? Perhaps Japanese men never really saw women, wasn’t Japanese culture famous for that sort of thing? So perhaps he really didn’t remember her? It had only been three months ago, though. ...Or perhaps he had recognised her and was biding his time to ask her what the Hell she thought she was up to, swanning around the town pretending to be a rich Pommy’s fiancée when she was here on the Group’s money to attend a conference on which she had to report back to the Group. And to report her to Sir Jake in person! Yikes!

    At this juncture perhaps several points might have occurred to a more sophisticated person than Lalla Holcroft. Point One was that possibly Inoue Takagaki, if he had recognised her, might assume that what a woman in her twenties was doing in her spare time in Canberra was none of his business. Point Two was that Peter Sale, given that he was about to dine with business acquaintances, one of whom was with the Carrano Group, might possibly be interested to know that Lalla worked for the Group. Not to say, in view of what he was paying her for that fortnight, might possibly be considered to have a right to know there might be some sort of conflict of interest involved. Point Three was that there might be some sort of conflict of interest involved. Point Four was that Inoue Takagaki, who had a devious and flexible mind, very unlike Lalla Holcroft’s indeed, might just assume, on seeing her on such intimate terms with a man who in some sort was a business rival of their employer’s, that she was doing a bit of undercover work for the Group.

    Point Five, which most certainly occurred to Inoue Takagaki, was that anyone with a slightly suspicious mind who didn’t know the exact circumstances might wonder what the Hell he himself was doing, dining quietly (pace Pegeen Verrell) with a man who in some sort was a business rival of his employer’s.

    And Point Six was that Mr Takagaki, though not himself as fervent an admirer of Lalla’s type as was his employer, was neither blind nor past it, and had most certainly realised that the tall, pretty young woman with the stunning fall of glossy brown hair who had come in on Peter Sale’s arm was the same young woman as the bright but nervous, badly-dressed legal research assistant who had clarified a tricky point of international law for them at the Group’s Head Office in Auckland only three months back. The shampoo and trim had greatly improved the look of the hair, he noted by the by. And Jake Carrano had been perfectly correct—he always was in such matters—in saying idly two seconds after his office door had closed behind Ms Holcroft’s rather nice posterior: “Pair of good ’uns under that bloody loose blouse, if a bloke looks for them. Pity she doesn’t know what she’s got there, eh?” Well, thought Inoue, looking from her to Sale and back with well-concealed interest, it now looked as if she did know—or as if he did, which amounted very much to the same thing.

    Gradually, as the drinks came and went and the meal began to be served and people tried to explain to Lalla what she was eating, her nerves settled down and she decided that he couldn’t have recognised her, after all. Well, it wasn’t a likely scenario, was it? And why should he remember an obscure legal assistant from three months back?

    Peter had expected that Pegeen Verrell would attempt to patronise Lalla, nicely enough but firmly, and this of course happened. He was intrigued to see that Lalla genuinely didn’t appear to resent it. Or notice it? No-o: he rather thought she had noticed it, but didn’t mind it. Once or twice as she looked at Pegeen with nothing but polite attentiveness on her face it even crossed his mind to wonder if she was humouring the bloody woman.

    He had also expected that Daphne Horton-Wyatt would patronise Lalla unmercifully and this of course also happened. Happened but didn’t work at all: Daphne used the wrong cues. Lalla didn’t recognise a single one of the names she dropped. Not one: not diplomatic, not Society, not I.J.-S.—nary a one. And very manifestly was not the least abashed by her failure to do so. Daphne of course wasn’t bright enough to realise she’d taken the wrong tack entirely. Peter had an idea that had the keywords “Tate”, “British Museum” and “Royal Opera House” been dropped, Lalla would have listened to the woman with all the awed attention Daphne apparently desired. Well, given that she’d already asked him timidly if he’d “ever” been to Glyndebourne and then, emboldened by his admitting that he’d been there once or twice, had he ever heard of that Swedish Company that did Mozart— Did he really? Yikes. And Salzburg as well? She would, too, if she had the money, she’d decided approvingly.

    It got better: when Daphne mentioned the World Premiere in London of the latest—well, Peter wasn’t too sure if it was an Andrew Lloyd Webber or a clone: he didn’t pay that sort of thing even a minimal amount of attention—but the latest musical extravaganza, Lalla, who had by now consumed three cups of sake in rapid succession, gave a yelp of laughter which she tried unsuccessfully to strangle.

    Daphne didn’t have the sense to drop it, of course: she said with an offended stare: “The tickets are like hen’s teeth!”

    Lalla took her bottom lip firmly between her teeth. Her shoulders shook.

    Peter put his hand on her knee under the tablecloth and gave it a nip. “Lalla and I prefer our music to be of the classical variety, Daphne. You know: for grown-ups.”

    Lalla gave a muffled squawk.

    “Peter!” shrieked Pegeen. “Stop that, naughty boy! –Don’t you take any notice of him, Daphne,” she ordered kindly, “he’s being naughty tonight. Bruce and me tried for yonks to get tickets, too, didn’t we, darl’?”—Bruce nodded amiably with his mouth full: didn’t have a blind notion what they were on about, registered Peter.—“But we decided we’d give it away—well, go to the New York production, Bruce knows a man who can definitely get us tickets for that, don’t you, darl’?”—He nodded amiably.—“Alice was just saying the other day, weren’t you, Alice,” she said to the mountainous female, “that we might get up a party to go down to Melbourne to see—” She chattered on.

    Good old Pegeen, thought Peter drily. Still, it had probably saved Lalla from hysterics. He prevented the waitress from refilling her sake cup for the fourth time. “You’ve had enough,” he said, moving the cup to a safe distance.

    “How can it be alcoholic, it’s warm!” said Lalla with a loud giggle.

    This evidently appealed to the Japanese sense of humour—either that or Mrs Inumaru was as pissed as Lalla—because she suddenly let out a loud giggle, too. The two of them beamed at each other and Lalla asked her what this was. (A piece of raw tunny fish, Peter was no expert on Japanese food but even he could see that.) Delighted to be asked, Mrs I. explained in great detail, in spite of her rudimentary English, and from that they diverged onto the topics of her kids and their schools and their progress therein and the family’s ambitions for them. Whereas so far all the rest of them put together had managed to get out of her was: “Thank-ah you very-ah much” and “Prease.” Good God. After quite some time Peter became aware that there was a fatuous and approving smile on both his own and Mr Inumaru’s faces; so he stopped his abruptly. Well, so much for the poker-faced Oriental.

    To Peter’s considerable relief Lalla unaffectedly adored the Japanese food, particularly the raw fish. A pleased and wondering smile had spread across her face as she tasted the first piece and she’d gasped: “Oh! It’s wonderful! So delicate!” She’d been pretty much home and hosed with Inumaru after that, but getting his wife to talk about their kids apparently set the seal on his approval. Pity they couldn’t take her on as a permanent diplomatic representative, really: he could do with considerably more Japanese business. Well, possibly the consortium would go ahead, then. Not that Inumaru was the top man, by any means: the top man, old Yashimoto, was so important he didn’t—lucky fellow—visit Canberra in the middle of a too-hot Australian summer: he just sat at home in Kyoto letting others come to him, only venturing out for the odd very significant weekend at obscure châteaux in France in conditions of the greatest privacy. Privacy and central heating. However, Inumaru at least had the ear of the great man’s Number Two. Lalla could definitely keep that ring. In fact he might buy her a pair of earrings to go with it!

    At the point when Pegeen, Lalla and Mrs I. had all gone off in a bunch to the lavatory, Takagaki got up and came round to sit in Lalla’s seat. “May I say, your fiancée is delightful, Peter?”

    Peter didn’t blink at the smooth Standard English liquids: Takagaki had been at Cambridge and his English was better than Peter’s own. “Thank you.”

    “She reminds me very much of Polly Carrano: you have met her, I think?”

    At this Peter did blink. Lady Carrano was a certified lovely. A certified international lovely. Admittedly he hadn’t thought Lalla with her hair well washed and very well brushed and the bit of make-up and the black lace vee in the red thing was too bad at all: but not in that class! “Er—yes,” he croaked. “Do you really think so?”

    Inoue Takagaki eyed him sideways, silently hoping to God the expression on his face appeared inscrutable to the Westerner, and said: “Certainly. Very similar in features and figure; but it is not only that, it’s... How shall I put it? A certain delightful directness?”

    Peter winced slightly. “Mm.” He didn’t know Carrano’s gorgeous wife that well, but directness was pretty much the word for Lalla, all right.

    “And freshness: naturalness,” added Takagaki approvingly.

    “Mm. Uh—thanks. Uh—you know them very well, of course, don’t you?”

    “Yes. We see a lot of them. My wife, Masako, gets on very well with Polly.” His dark almond eyes twinkled. “Even though Polly knows only a few phrases of Japanese, and Masako knows only Polly’s children’s names, and ‘hullo’ and ‘goodbye’, which she frequently confuses.”

    Peter grinned weakly. “I see.”

    Inoue thought he did. He also thought that it was five thousand to one that Sale didn’t know that Lalla worked for Jake Carrano, and inwardly raised his eyebrows. He did not insist on the Carrano theme, but smoothly turned the conversation to include both Mr Inumaru and Bruce Verrell. The mountainous Hughie O’Reagan (who was not Irish, either), paused in his knocking back of the beer with which he was washing down the sake, and amiably joined in.

    At the end of the evening Peter was stunned to be invited by Inumaru to an intimate dinner with himself, Mrs I., and “anoth-ah couple-ah from-ah the Company.” He knew Japanese rarely socialised with their wives. Well, when in Canberra— But even so! He tried not to accept too fervently.

    “Thanks,” he said, when they were back in the stretch limo.

    “Me?” replied Lalla cautiously.

    “Mm. If the weather weren’t so stinking, I’d award you a mink,” he said idly.

    “Don’t you mean,” said Lalla with a smothered giggle:

“‘If the weather weren’t so stink,

Ing I’d award you a mink’?”

    “Shut up,” he said weakly.

     Lalla collapsed in helpless giggles at her own wit.

    “If you’re not too pissed to take it in, I’m trying to thank you, you daft ha’porth.”

    “Not at all,” she said daintily.

    There was a short silence.

    “Um—I didn’t do anything, I don’t think,” she added uncertainly.

    “Balls: you had Mrs I. eating out of the palm of your hand, Inumaru himself purring like a kitten, Takagaki telling me you’re very like Lady Carrano—”

    “Me?” she gasped, thus proving that even she had heard of the wife of New Zealand’s richest businessman.

    “Well, I certainly don’t mean the Dire Daphne."

    Lalla collapsed in helpless giggles.

    Peter smiled a little. “Anyway, thanks. You done good, kid.”

    Lalla heaved a deep sigh. “I suppose it wasn’t that hard. You just have to sort of, um, make yourself stay on their wavelength. And smile a lot. And agree with them. I quite liked Pegeen, though.”

    Unable to stop himself, Peter asked: “In the intervals of humouring the bloody woman, would this be?”

    Lalla thought it over seriously. He watched her in some trepidation.

    “No: while I was humouring her as well,” she pronounced eventually.

    Peter collapsed in helpless sniggers.

    She was fast asleep well before the stretch limo had reached the house, so “not that hard” or not, the evening must have taken it out of her. She was a well-grown girl: about thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six, according to both Peter’s expert eye and the underwear he’d inspected, and he doubted that he and the helpful Ted between them could get her upstairs, even though Ted amiably offered. –As he did so Peter noticed for the first time that the man wasn’t calling him “sir”. He had a feeling that the lateness of the hour, the endemic Australian mateship, and the fact that the fellow had now been driving him for several weeks had very little to do with it. Well, put it like this: until the advent of Lalla he had had no idea his name was Ted, having merely addressed him as “Thank you.”

    “No, thanks, Ted, she’s no light-weight,” he said weakly, shaking her shoulder. “LALLA! Wake UP!”

    Lalla opened her eyes groggily. “Mr Sale,” she ascertained, blinking.

    Peter went very red, for more than one reason, which he did not care at this point to analyse. “‘Peter’, you moron,” he said shortly.

    Lalla blinked again. “Oh, ’s all right: he knows.”

    Peter’s jaw dropped.

    “He won’t tell anyone, will you, Ted?” she said happily.

    “Nah. You awake, now, Lalla?”

    —There you are! thought Peter in a sort of annoyed triumph.

    “Yes,” said Lalla, yawning. “Oh: are we here?"

    Apparently taking this remark unto himself, Ted replied: “Yeah, that’s right. See ya tomorrow, okay?”

    “Yes,” said Lalla, yawning again. “Um, what are we doing tomorrow, Peter?”

    “You’ve accepted an invitation to swim in Pegeen’s pool, if I remember rightly.”

    “Oh, help: yes. I can’t swim!” she confided with a sudden loud giggle.

    “Eh?” said Ted.

    “Truly,” replied Lalla calmly. “It wasn’t that we didn’t live near the beach when I was a kid: I just never learned.”

    “Didn’t your mum or dad teach you?” croaked Ted.

    “No. Mum can swim, though.”

    “Figures,” he noted.

    “Yeah!” said Lalla with a laugh. “And Dad hates the beach, he never goes.”

    “Well, shit, what about school: they musta given you lessons!” objected the Australian.

    Peter was still incapable of speech. He had assumed that all Australasians bar none could swim. Well, for God’s sake, what about all that surfing and Bondi Beach and—and Surfer’s Paradise crap in their bloody propaganda? And Jesus Christ, when had she found the time to tell bloody Ted all these intimate details about her bloody mother?

    “They tried!” admitted Lalla, spluttering.

    “Yeah: I geddit,” said Ted weakly.

    “Then don’t go in the deep end,” ordered Peter grimly. “And get out of the bloody car, or you’ll never make it to the bloody pool party at all. –And if you’re awake enough to take it in,” he added, beating bloody Ted to her bloody elbow by a whisker, “do not drink at this bloody pool party: okay?”

    “Um, all right. Why not?”

    Peter took a deep breath. “Because the combination of harsh sunlight, swimming-pools and Australian wine—or the rum-and-pineapples Pegeen knocks back like water—is guaranteed to induce not only the most blinding headache known to humankind, but babbling incoherence; understand? I don’t care all that much about the headache, though I’d prefer to have you marginally functional for the rest of the day; but I will not have you babbling all over Canb—”

    “All right, for Pete’s sake! I get it!"

    “–bloody Canberra,” finished Peter grimly. “Has it sunk in?”

    “Yes. Anyway, I can’t go: Shane never bought me a bathing-suit!” she produced with a brilliant smile.

    “Get inside before I do something you’ll regret."

    Lalla gave a loud giggle, said fervently: “Goodnight, Ted, I hope you won’t get it in the neck: tell Mirabelle it’s my fault because I made us late for dinner,” and vanished into the house.

    Peter took a deep breath. He found that Ted was looking at him nervously, Australian mateship or not. “Tell Mirabelle,” he said with tremendous restraint, “that it’s entirely my fault, and that if triple time won’t mend it, at least it might help. –And tell Shane I said so."

    “Yeah—um—thanks, Mr Sale,” he said in a puzzled voice.

    “You, Ted,” said Peter clearly, pointing a finger at him, “claim triple time for tonight from five o’clock on, from me, Sale. Get it?"

    “Yeah, too right. Thanks,” he said, dropping the “Mr Sale” bit. “What time tomorrow, then?”

    Peter sighed. “In time to take Lalla to this bloody pool party. It’s a morning thing. Though that won’t stop Pegeen from filling her with rum,” he noted in a glum aside. “Uh—tennish, I’d say. Thanks. Goodnight.”

    “Okay, then. G’night,” he said, getting back into the limo and driving it quickly away before Peter could tell him to take the car home with him.

    “And take the car home with you,” said Peter acidly, walking into the house.

    He went upstairs fully prepared to ask her what the Hell she meant by telling the bloody driver the whole story—and incidentally what the Devil was all that about her mother—but was more than somewhat pre-empted by finding she’d fallen asleep on the pink cabbage duvet cover: red top, black skirt, patent sandals an’ all.

    Peter hesitated and bit his lip; then, very gingerly, he undid the black skirt’s zip fastener. Then he eased the sandals off her. He knew that by morning the room would be bloody cold, so he turned the air conditioning off and slid a window open a couples of inches instead. Being careful not to shove his fist through the fly screen  as he did so.

    Australian houses all seemed to have fly screens, he’d discovered. Some combined with elaborate curlicued burglar-proof grilles that any burglar with the slightest nous and hands smaller than a twenty-pound ham could have got his hand through in two seconds flat, some simple mesh. Since he’d also discovered that the mosquitoes were approximately the size and shape of zeppelins and carried considerably more armament, there was some method in this madness. The famous Australian flies that had given rise to the famous Australian gesture were, he had discovered, confined almost entirely to the famous Australian Outback. The ones you got in the cities were merely houseflies or ordinary blowflies. Nevertheless the screens were certainly needed to keep them out: there were hordes of them, because by and large Australian cities were filthy and never cleaned and the Australians apparently had no laws, federal, state or local, against littering their public streets and parks with half-eaten hamburgers, ice-lolly sticks, Coke tins, Coke bottles, Kentucky Fried Chicken containers, the bones from Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza cartons, half-eaten pizzas...

    Peter turned from the window with a sigh. She was on top of the bloody bedding, what could he... After some cautious opening and closing of drawers he discovered a light blanket in a pink-cabbage-upholstered chest and put it over her. Then he went silently over to the door, turned the light out, closed the door quietly, and retreated silently to his masculine black and brown bedroom.

    Even though he had drunk a considerable amount of sake and, take it for all in all, had had a bloody exhausting day, he didn’t fall immediately asleep. After some time he got up and went over to the window, and stood peering out into the dark. Stars, a glow from a street lamp some distance away, and the shapes and scent of trees. Canberra was full of trees, the only good thing about it. Well, the Japanese restaurant was also undeniably good, but the company one had to put up with there... Peter Sale found he was constructing a fantasy in his head of him and Lalla alone at the most intimate of the tables in the little restaurant— Balderdash. Rubbish, in fact.

    He returned to bed, frowning. Had he done something blitheringly stupid in taking her on? Well, no: because whatever he might feel about her, and he wasn’t at all sure as yet that he did feel anything except mild amusement and a mild—very mild—interest, he was bloody sure that she didn’t feel a damned thing for him! Well, a combination of amusement, total indifference to him as a sexual being, and some slight awe of his wealth and, er, consequence?—which he was in no doubt whatsoever was rapidly wearing off.

    Peter Sale fell asleep with a little smile on his long, perfectly shaped but rather bitter mouth.

    He woke at about five-thirty, all hot and bothered, having had the most extraordinary dream, in which ham-like hands weighing twenty pounds and possibly belonging to Hughie O’Reagan and Bruce Verrell were reaching through elaborate white curlicued grilles for Lalla, and he himself, though desirous of cutting them off at the wrist, was in the next room, walled up behind some sort of glass, unable to make himself heard, let alone get to her side to protect her—

    Good God, was that Freudian, or merely the result of too much sake; or— Good grief, in fact. He drank off a small bottle of Evian from the bedside cabinet and determinedly, the Canberra morning freshness now having blessedly invaded his room, pulled his masculine brown and black duvet up over his ears and went to sleep again.

Next chapter:

https://thelallaeffect.blogspot.com/2024/01/lalla-on-wednesday-morning.html