High Finance

12

High Finance

    “That’s It,” Jack reported to Jardine Holiday Horse Treks’ personnel, looking sour. “They’ve asked me to stay on as temporary caretaker: keep the grounds looking reasonable and check the roofs and so forth, but everyone else is out. Had a few bookings for Christmas but that little nerd from Head Office, he’s cancelled them. Told that tour operator that she can keep her rich Swiss types.”

    “Oh, no!” cried Rosemary sympathetically.

    It wasn’t unexpected, of course. Nevertheless Gil said numbly: “Christ.”

    “At least you’re okay, though, Jack!” said Rosemary quickly.

    “For the moment, yeah,” he agreed, not looking much more cheerful.

    “What about Vince?” asked Phil.

    “Actually he’ll be okay. Decided to get on over to WA: him and Terry are gonna start their ecolodge. Annabel’s going with them: evidently,” said Jack, his sky-blue eyes beginning to twinkle, “some time back Vince put her on to a really good lawyer and he put the squeeze on the ex: got a decent divorce settlement out of the bugger, so she’s putting the lot into the ecolodge with Vince and Terry! She’s even keener than he is!”

    “Oh, good!” cried Rosemary, clapping her hands.

    “Yeah, that’s great!” agreed Phil.

    “Thank goodness!” beamed Jen, his girlfriend.

    “And is Jacqueline going with them?” asked Rosemary innocently.

    Jack was seen to wince. “Uh—no. Well, nothing wrong with what she does, if ya like that sort of thing, and Vince has coped okay with her, but I don’t think he’d fancy a bigger helping. She’ll be okay, though: she’s got a mate in Sydney that does fancy massages, too, so she’s joining up with her.”

    “That’s good. And what about Alfie?” asked Gil.

    “Said he might try Queensland, loads of fancy hotels up there, they’re always looking for chefs. But for the time being he’s gonna give David a hand at the B&B: they’re fully booked right up until the end of February and the restaurant’s pretty well booked out as well, and Deanna can’t do much with the baby on the way, it’s making her very tired.”

    “It wasn’t very well timed,” noted Phil.

    The two older gentlemen had to take deep breaths at this one but fortunately his little partner in life jabbed him fiercely in the ribs with a needle-sharp elbow, ordering: “Shut up! Ya can’t time it to the minute, and some poor women can’t fall pregnant at all!”

    “That little Jen’s worth her weight in gold,” concluded Jack as the younger persons, including Gil’s fiancée, pushed off to check out the bunkhouse in preparation for the weekend’s influx of horse trekkers, ordering Gil firmly not to help, and the two elderly gentlemen retired to the front verandah with the obligatory frosties in the hand.

    “I’ve always thought so!” agreed Gil with a laugh.

    “Mm.”

    The gentlemen drank cold beer slowly.

    “They selling the dump, then?” ventured Gil.

    Jack shrugged. “Apparently. Head Office reckons money’s tight or something.”

    “Mmm... Um, heard of the phrase ‘sub-prime mortgages’, Jack?”

    “Nope. Uh—hang on. Something American?” he groped.

    “Ye-ah.” Gil rubbed his nose. “The local media haven’t said very much about it—well, the concept of informed comment’s virtually unknown here, isn’t it? But it looks as if the money market in America might be badly affected, and these days the big investors put their money anywhere in the world, it’ll be European and Japanese money just as much as American, ultimately, that can’t be repaid... Well, put it like this, if YDI have decided to pull their horns in for a bit, I’d say it’s a very wise decision. Er—have you got anything in a pension fund, Jack? Sorry, superannuation fund, think they call it, here.”

    “Um, a bit. Well, I was self-employed, you see. Back in New Zealand. It’s just sitting there, far’s I know.”

    “Mm. We-ell, all the pension funds are heavily invested in the markets, these days. If we’re all headed for a recession on the coattails of the Yanks, you might end up with less than you were expecting.”

    “Wasn’t expecting anything, much,” Jack admitted cheerfully. “Uh—oh, I getcha. The buggers will of put it all into shares and if the share market drops then the mugs end up with less super.”

    Gil bit his lip. “Mm.”

    “Aw—shit. Nefertite bunged her spare cash into an industry super fund last year,” he recalled in dismay. “Dot and David thought it’d be the safest place.”

    “I believe the Australian industry super funds are as safe as you can get, Jack, but they still rely on investments to pay the members their interest.”

    “That’s something,” he said heavily. “But ya still can’t get it out, eh?”

    “No,” agreed Gil sourly.

    “Shit, why does the buck always stop with the little people?” said Jack in disgust.

    “Mm. That’s capitalism for you.”

    “I’d opt out completely if I could, but I can’t!”

    “Out of the pension— Oh! Out of capitalism!” said Gil with a smile. “Me, too. Well, I have done my best to, I must admit!”

    Jack looked around him at the view of badly gravelled drive, sparse, scraggy bushes scattered in amongst the clay and the rocks, and beyond that the tops and trunks of a few tall eucalypts and then a rolling view south over the valley of already drying, browning countryside under a wide summer sky lightly dotted with clouds. “Too right.”

    Gil finished his beer in silence. Then he ventured: “How about the new ecolodge YDI’s building in Tasmania, Jack?”

    “Still going ahead; George is making great progress with it, should be opening next Easter. Great trout fishing near there, ya see, and in summer there’s white-water rafting and real bush walks. They’re going ahead with the one in the Cooks, too, that’ll be George’s next project. Tropical, much more of a market for that type of holiday.”

    “Well, that’s good,” said Gil temperately.

    Jack made a face. “Yeah. Might end up working on the one in the Cooks meself.”

    “Take her with you, Jack!” sad Gil with a laugh to the sub-text.

    “Ye-ah... Well, could probably swing a bit of a holiday, but not longer-term. See, on a project like that the blokes’d normally all be kipping in together, six to a motel room, kind of thing, if they can’t get bunkhouse accommodation.”

    “Mm.” Gil racked his brains. Surely there must be someone who’d like to take over Blue Gums Ecolodge lock, stock and barrel and turn it into—uh, well, a less up-market ecolodge? Get the spill-over of the weekend trade from Springer House B&B?

    “I’m racking my brains,” he admitted after some time, “but I can’t think of anyone who’d like to take Blue Gums off YDI’s hands, I’m afraid. Well—like to, possibly. Not afford to.”

    “Ex-Army mates?” he ventured.

    Gil made a face. “Nigh as broke as me.” Um... There was the happy thought that if he asked Mummy for the moolah—that was, asked Dwight, her fifth—Father would almost undoubtedly explode. Er—no, on the whole. “Sorry, Jack, not brooding, just telling over the ranks of Rabbit’s friends and relations,” he admitted with a grimace. “Um, best bet might be Myra and Julian—well, put it to her as an investment.”

    Jack looked at him doubtfully. “That’d be Phil’s dad and his second, eh? –Yeah. Could you ask them, though?”

    “I hardly know her. I could ask Julian—I could ask him anything. He’d promise to look into it, too.”

    “Um, yeah?” said Jack on an uncertain note, as he’d stopped.

    “I’ve stopped,” explained Gil.

    Jack had realised that Phil’s father was pretty bad, but— “Oh, cripes.”

    Gil made a face. “Yeah. Just born without any backbone or stickum or—or whatever gene it is that makes ordinary chaps do stuff, I’ve long since concluded.”

    “Well, um, say you wrote a letter to his wife?”

    “Putting it as a good investment, eh?” Gil hesitated. He owed Jack Jackson a fair bit. Looking back, he’d never have got Jardine Holiday Horse Treks up and going without his help—Hell, he wouldn’t have got through that frightful first year out here without Rosemary at all, without Jack! And if the man was going to be left without the prospect of any work, with the bloody ecolodge folding—

    “Okay, why not? Nothing venture, nothing win,” he said lightly. “Myra’s got pots, she’d never miss three mill’ or so. And it might take a while to recover the investment, but I’m sure she would, in time. I’d think turning it into a more downmarket ecolodge might be the go, or possibly timeshares, but I’ll suggest every possible option. Let us know if anything more occurs, Jack.”

    “Yeah, I will,” he said, looking very much brighter. “Ta, Gil.”

    “Uh—she’s a very hard-headed businesswoman, she may not come at it,” he warned.

    “Yeah, but at least we’ll of tried! Tell ya what I’m gonna do,” he said, getting up with a determined look on his face: “I’m gonna dig up a new patch of veggie garden out the back of our place. Probably still be time to get it started before the worst of the hot weather hits, eh? And even if there isn’t, I can manure it good. Any chance of some horse manure?”

    “Uh—they’re not stabled, it’d mean scooping it up from the pad—” Okay, he was prepared to scoop it up from the paddock. Feebly Gil agreed, didn’t offer, in view of the fucking shoulder, to help—shovels took two hands and two good shoulders—and watched him head off at a rapid pace.

    Phil’s reaction was: “I’ll write to Daddy, too!”

    “Jolly good,” conceded Gil feebly.

    “Now?” suggested his idiot nephew brightly.

    Oh, why not? “Very well, I suppose now’s as good a time as—”

    “I’ll get your writing pad and pen!” Phil rushed out.

    “I thought my precious Parker pen, wot my maternal grandfather gave me when I was thirteen years old, was safely hidden in my chest of drawers,” sighed Gil.

    “Silly one,” returned his fiancée affectionately.

    “Can you even get nibs for them, these days?” wondered Jen in detached tones.

    Alas, at this one Gil’s fiancée collapsed in helpless giggles. Honestly! Ganging up on a poor, frail, elderly—

    “Oy, that’s my writing paper!” he cried as Phil reappeared and sat down with a chunk of it.

    “It was that or your computer paper,” replied Phil logically.

    Alas, at this one Jen also collapsed in helpless giggles.

    Helpfully Phil unscrewed his precious— Gil took it in a trembling ’and.

    “I saw one just like it on The Antiques Roadshow last week,” noted Jen, once she’d recovered from the giggles.

    “You did not! Er—sorry, didn’t mean to shout,” said Gil weakly, as this time Rosemary and Phil dissolved in giggles. “That was a unique Japanese Satsuma pen, especially created for— Forget it,” he sighed. “It was a fountain pen, yes, Jen.”

    “I’m telling him how much Jack’s helped us, ’specially me and Mummy with the house originally, and you and me with setting up Jardine Holiday Horse Treks, and how he’s going to be out of work,” reported Phil after considerable sucking of the biro and a certain amount of writing.

    “Mm? –Mm. Good show.” Gil was writing ve-ry slow-ly and care-ful-ly with his right hand, because in case these three idiots had forgotten it, it was his left arm that wasn’t working good, and he was left-handed.

    “I know! Maybe your parents would like to take a share, Rosemary!” was the idiot nephew’s next bright idea. Gil nigh to dropped his precious fountain pen. They didn’t approve of him and Rosemary. Not that they had anything particularly against him apart from his age and his lack of a lung, but that was enough.

    Poor Rosemary had gone very red. “No, um, I mean, I suggested it, actually!” she gasped. “I mean, I thought Dad might like to acquire the property as an investment, so I rang him.”

    “It’s all right, darling, you don’t need to elaborate,” said Gil quickly.

    “No, that’s all right, Gil,” she said bravely. “First he said I shouldn’t be wasting money on toll calls, and then he said that if I was making a go of it in five years’ time he’d consider investing out here and not before.”

    “I suppose that’s fair,” admitted Jen glumly.

    “Fair?” cried Phil indignantly.

    “Shut up,” she ordered grimly.

    Not to the surprise of Rabbit’s friends and relations, Phil shut up. And in fact passed his letter meekly to her for approval. Of course Gil then surrendered his effort to Rosemary, but that was quite different! The verdict was that Phil’s would do fine but that although Gil had tried, it was absolute beetle tracks, and he’d better let Rosemary type it up for him on the computer and just sign it nicely. Phil began to object that one didn’t send a typed letter to one’s sister-in-law but then copped a gander at the beetle tracks. So they did that. With an additional sentence dictated by Phil apologising for the typing. In other circs an idiot nephew’s girlfriend’s next question might have been “Where did Phil go to school, exactly?” but this was another country entirely and that there was darling Jen, so it didn’t happen.

    Marlene was chatting smoothly to a new candidate at the reception desk when Laurie came in cautiously, but she broke off smoothly and said: “Hi, Laurie! Just go on through to Gail’s office, there’s no-one with her.” Which meant she more or less had to, didn’t it? Laurie tottered on through.

    The door was open, as usual, and Gail was working at the computer. “Hullo, Gail, it’s me,” she said in a small voice.

    So it was! Gail took a deep breath and managed to smile. She and Christie between them were sharing most of Laurie’s erstwhile workload, with a little help from Drew, and one of them had been of the opinion that Laurie would not stick it out as cook-housekeeper to the middle-aged Mr Stott for more than a week, never mind that he’d been very pleased with whoever it was that Christie claimed they’d placed with him in an accounting job. Because even over the phone Mr Stott had struck Gail Vickers as very much the sort that if you let him get away with an inch wouldn’t hesitate to grab an ell. Or an even softer part of the anatomy. Christie, however, had been convinced that Laurie could do the job with both hands tied—etcetera. Well, yeah, she could, and Gail hadn’t had the time to convince her that Laurie was the sort that wouldn’t realise she was giving an inch—the more so as both Laurie and Mr Stott were well over forty. Though she had had the time to remind herself that Christie had been the idiot that had placed Jack Jackson with the man-eating Mrs Garven.

    “Hi, Laurie. Stott’s grabbed a soft part of the anatomy, has he?”

    “How did you know?” she gasped.

    Hard not to. “Dunno, really. Just somehow sounded like that sort. It’s all right, you don’t have to go back to him, I’ll deal with it.”

    Laurie sank down onto Gail’s visitor’s chair with a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Gail. –It was terrible!” she burst out. “At first I thought I was imagining it, I mean, heck, I met his girlfriend, she’s half his age and her name’s Melanie and she’s got a different hairdo but she actually looks and talks just like Melanie Griffith!”

    “Er, this would be the Ms Griffith of Working Girl, one presumes?”

    “Yes, of course.”

    Gail repressed an urge to cough. “Mm. That doesn’t stop ’em if they’re that sort. Go on, I can take it.”

    First Mr Stott, he’d told her to call him Len, had come up behind her in the kitchen and sort of held her arm just above the elbow, it had taken her by surprise and she hadn’t told him off, she hadn’t really thought he’d meant anything by it, and he’d let go straight away. And he’d said a cuppa would be nice if she was making one, and told her quite a lot about the afternoon teas his old gran used to put on, with real homemade cape gooseberry jam, and she, Laurie, had got the impression the poor man was lonely.—Gail managed not to react violently to this naïve report, but only just.—Then he hadn’t done anything at all for the next two days and so of course she’d thought she must be imagining there could’ve been something in it. Then she’d been dusting the banisters—he had a horrible fancy sort of front foyer affair with a pinkish marble floor and a revolting staircase with marble banisters—and he’d come up behind her and put his hand on her bottom!

    Aw, gee, fancy that.

    “Squeezed it?” asked Gail clinically.

    Laurie blinked. “Um, yeah.”

    “Mm. What you should have done the minute he took your arm—he squeezed that, too, didn’t he? –Yeah,” she said as Laurie nodded dumbly. “What you should have done instantly was snarl: ‘Hands off the merchandise! Or I’ll do ya for sexual harassment.’”

    Laurie was now very red, though she’d been pretty red all along. “You’re not funny! I’ve seen that old film! It was Shirley Maclaine!” she snapped.

    “I think it was, yeah. One of her would-be daring portrayals of a bad girl who turns out to be a nice girl underneath, and at that moment she was demonstrating what to do if you wanna remain a nice girl. Not classy, no. But nice.” She fixed her with a basilisk eye.

    “All right, I should’ve told him off,” said Laurie on a sulky note.

    “Yeah. And reported it to us right away, like we always tell our contractors. You were stupid, but that doesn’t mean he’s blameless. Leave it with me. Just fill out a timesheet with the approximate hours, and I’ll tell the bugger he can pay up or be sued. –He’ll pay up, they always do,” she said heavily to her erstwhile employee’s appalled face.

    “You mean you’ve had them before?” she gasped.

    “Yes, though not many: the Australian male, on the whole, is a timid specimen,” said Gail detachedly. “Well, Mr Pearson wants a cook who can do trays of dainty canapés for his Chrissie parties for his arty friends: do you fancy that? Several parties; he has several categories of friends, apparently.”

    “Is that for the week before Christmas?”

    “Yes. Oh, sorry, Laurie, if you’re planning to go to your brother’s—”

    “No, they have to go and crawl to Mum because she gave them all that money.”

    By Gail’s calculations it was about a fifth of what the old joker, Laurie’s grandfather, had left the old bitch, but there were many as would’ve hung onto the lot to the grim end, so she just said kindly: “Yeah, ’course. Well, Pearson’s yours if you want him.”

    “Um, I won’t have to serve them up, will I?”

    “No, he was very, very keen to get Iain Ross to do that. If you want a lesson on giving ’em the brush-off nicely but firmly you could always consult Iain.”

    “Um, I thought it was him that made the pass at Coralie, not the other way round.”

    “I’m glad to say it didn’t go that far, though it would have if she’d shown the slightest inclination. No, Laurie, he let down Pearson nicely but firmly. So much so that he’s quite agreeable to doing temporary butler for him for a few evenings.”

    Laurie gulped. “Right.”

    “So do you fancy it?”

    “He doesn’t want sushi, does he?”

    “Hang on.” Gail got the job file up. “No, definitely got ‘canapés’, here.”

    “Good, I’ll take it.”

    “We haven’t discussed rates yet,” said Gail feebly.

    “What is the rate?”

    Managing not to roll her eyes, Gail told her the rate, rang Mr Pearson, got the nod, and printed out and signed the employment contract. Pointing out carefully that Pearson did understand that any consultations he had with Laurie over menus were billable time, so she’d better remember to fill in her timesheet. Then having to print her out a pile of timesheets because she’d left all of hers at Stott’s. The only odd thing about that being that she’d managed not to leave her handbag.

    “Oh—don’t wanna buy an ecolodge, do you?” she said as Laurie folded all her bumf and stuffed it into said handbag.

    “No. –Heck, is this Blue Gums Ecolodge?” she realised. “So it’s definitely gone under?”

    Gail made a face. “Yeah. Jack rang the other day. They’ve put him in as caretaker, presumably until the joint’s sold, but all the rest have been let go.”

    “At least he’s still got work,” said Laurie kindly.

    “For as long as it lasts, but yeah. That place Daffyd Owens was in is on the market, too. Fifty hectares of scrubland, I think. Still, you could make a killing if you got in now and waited until the council let you subdivide it for lovely up-market holiday homes.”

    “I’d rather die!” said Laurie fiercely.

    Gail blinked. “Good on ya.”

    “You should see the view from up the back! The hills stretch on and on forever! Way over to the Great Dividing Range, I should think!”

    “It sounds wonderful,” said Gail limply, not asking why the view hadn’t been mentioned before.

    “You and Fee could afford it,” she prompted. “It’d be a lovely retreat, completely away from it all, and if you did have to dash back to work to troubleshoot something, it’s only three hours’ drive!”

    “Laurie,” said Gail with a laugh in her voice, “you could afford it, now!”

    “Um, I’ve never owned property,” she said in a horribly vague voice with which Gail was only too well acquainted. Meant she was digging her toes in forever more.

    “Start thinking about it now,” she said without hope.

    Smiling vaguely, Laurie replied: “I might. Thanks for everything, Gail.” And slid out.

    Gail sat staring blindly at her computer screen for quite some time. There came a time when you either took the plunge and did something, or hated yourself forever more. And now would seem to be It. Finally she said under her breath: “Right,” and got Laurie’s personnel record up. Next of kin... Mr H. Hanson and two Queensland phone numbers. She wouldn’t spring it on the poor sod at work: what she would do was speak to Leanne, the wife, because never mind Laurie’s complaints about the ladylike shit, she sounded as if her head was well and truly screwed on. Not to say, was a thoroughly decent woman! Well, letting the hubby give half the dough he’d got out of the mum to his sister? Unheard of in the Australia of the—not just the twenty-first century, no. Pretty well since the War, if all of Gail’s extended family and its neighbours were anything to go by.

    “Is that Leanne Hanson? Hi, Leanne, this is Gail Vickers, Laurie’s old boss. –No, nothing wrong at all! I just thought you might like to know that there’s a property for sale that Laurie’s seen and liked very much, and it’s quite a good investment, but she’s just told me that she doesn’t see herself as a property owner, if you get my—” Yeah. Good. More than got her drift, and she and Hughie had been so worried about Laurie— Right. Thoroughly decent woman. Gail knew just what old Diogenes had felt like!

    Iain got a new placement consultant this time: Penny Harper. After a bit it emerged that she was new—that was, she’d just started at RightSmart—but she wasn’t as new as all that, she was an old friend of someone’s and had worked for them before, and was just filling in until the Christmas rush was over. She was a comfortable-looking woman in perhaps her mid-fifties, with a nice smile and a cosy manner. She seemed to know the history of RightSmart since the Year Dot and told Iain a lot about Gail’s failure to find the right person to help manage the firm. Yes, she did understand that he had the job during Christmas week with Mr Pearson, but that was just short-term, wasn’t it? –Standard persuasive smile of the placement consultant.

    “I’m not working over Christmas itself,” said Iain firmly—it was Cotty’s turn to lay on the Christmas spread this year, everyone was going there, and he was not going to miss it!

    “Are you sure? We can offer you a very good rate. Mr and Mrs Lytton: they’re looking for a butler-chauffeur and cook-housekeeper to assist them with their holiday guests,” said Penny with a bright, persuasive smile. “They’d really prefer a married couple, but I think we can persuade them to—”

    “No,” said Iain brutally.

    Ignoring this, Penny added: “We’ve got a very pleasant woman for the cook-housekeeper—she’s English, too, I’m sure you’d like her! Very nice,” she said firmly, fixing him with a firm eye.

    “Not tempt—”

    “Veronica Johnson.”

     “—ed. What?” he croaked. It must just be a mad coincidence, he was at the other side of the world!

    “A very nice person,” insisted Penny, varying the emphasis somewhat. “Actually I think you might have worked with her before: hang on.” She consulted her computer—somewhat ineptly: Iain watched her drily, never mind the parched mouth and pounding heart. “Um, yes, over Labour Weekend!” she said brightly. “Who were the clients? ...Um, YDI. Um, the address was—hang on, that’s the postal address. The street address was—that’s funny, there’s no number. Blue Gums Ecolodge, Potters Road, Potters Inlet. Over Labour Weekend,” she prompted.

    “I was there. There was no Veronica Johnson there.” Iain swallowed, with difficulty.

    “I’m sure it was on her list of jobs. Hang on... Um, it’ll be in the job file, I think,” she muttered. “Hang on... It must be earliest first. Hang on, I’ll look at the record!” There was a short silence. “Blast! This is mad! This isn’t her file at all! Hang on... Well, I’m blowed if I know where I am,” she admitted frankly, “but this is the job!”

    Iain got up and tottered round the desk to peer at the computer. It was the Blue Gums job, all right: “Housekeeping Staff, Temporary, at Blue Gums Ecolodge for YDI (Australia) Pty Ltd.” No personnel were listed, though.

    “Uh, the housekeeper’s assistant never turned up at Blue Gums Ecolodge, had the flu or something,” he croaked. It must just be a mad coincidence!

    “It doesn’t say that here... Hang on, I’ll get out of this.” Penny closed the database. A large menu flashed up.

    “There. Personnel,” said Iain firmly, putting his finger on it.

    “Um, y— No, hang on, it’ll be in the contract file! The contract for the job, you see!”

    “There,” said Iain very firmly indeed, putting his finger on “Search Personnel’s Contract Details.”

    “Um, but isn’t that where I was before?”

    Very possibly. “No. –You’re not entering a contract, Penny,” he said as her cursor hovered over the “Enter Personnel’s Contract Details” choice.

    “They’ve changed everything since I was here before. It used to be really simple,” she said on a sour note.

    It was really simple now. You could see exactly which choice to make for a given action! Boy, Gail had been scraping the bottom of the barrel, hadn’t she? Penny’s muddled gossip hadn’t actually explained why Laurie, aka Brenda, had left, but Iain could guess. Presumably Penny was the lesser of the two evils but on present showing it didn’t look like it.

    She had finally chosen “Search Personnel’s Contract Details” and a search screen had opened up.

    “I’m sure this is where I was before!”

    “Just put her name in the search box,” said Iain grimly. “There.” It said: “Contractor Name”, gee, that was hard.

   “Ye-es... Should it be ‘Veronica Johnson’, though, or ‘Johnson, Veronica’?”

    It was the twenty-first century, after all, and though Iain wasn’t familiar with the software he would have taken a bet, the more so as Gail was in charge of it, that either way you put the name in you would get the desired result. But as there was a very clear instruction to press F3 to browse he leaned over her and pressed F3 and lo! A list of names popped up. After that it was a matter of scrolling down, clicking on the name “Johnson Veronica” and then clicking that there button that said “Paste”, two concepts which Penny seemed incapable of grasping, Jesus!

    “I’ve pasted it,” she reported sourly.

    Sort of, yeah. “Like it says, hit ‘GO’, that’s that green button with ‘GO’ on it.”

    “They can never just do it, can they?” she replied sourly.

    No, because “They” were waiting in case you wanted to use a Boolean operator with another of these convenient search boxes which were all set at “AND” but which Iain had a suspicion would offer you the choices of “NOT” and “OR” if you clicked on those nice big “AND” buttons—he’d never seen this feature displayed in quite this way before, it was lovely-looking software, very clear, miles nicer than anything he’d used in his work for old Max Mackay.

    And there was Veronica’s contract record plus a list of personal details plus a small picture of Veronica, looking very serious. Jesus! Iain felt himself go goosey-flesh all over.

    “There you are!” said Penny proudly. “Aw—yeah. ‘Cancelled due to illness.’”

    “Yes,” said Iain faintly, not listening. She’d been at Emco’s at the same time as he had? But he’d never laid eyes—no, hang on, possibly she’d been at the city office while he’d been barcoding madly in the tin shed in Outer Woop-Woop. Christ, had Veronica and he been playing Box and Cox round RightSmart’s job list for the last God knew how long? It didn’t fucking well bear thinking about!

    “Are you all right?” asked Penny cautiously as he tottered back to his seat.

    “What? Yeah. When is this job supposed to start? The new job, for Mr and Mrs, uh—”

    “Mr and Mrs Lytton.” She fluffed around but finally got back what seemed to be the job details. Starting Christmas Eve, that was, the Monday. Well, at nine in the morning, if you called that Christmas Eve. Some flashy mansion with a view of the harbour, that was pretty much to be expected, who else could afford to take on two fulltime staff at GIANT rates over the main Australian holiday of the year? Next to the Melbourne Cup, of course. Not that Iain cared where it was. He let Penny fail to print out the requisite details for him—they’d changed everything, yeah, yeah: what was the betting the woman had made the wrong choice from that crystal-clear printing menu and so was ipso facto getting the wrong print-out?—and write out the details in longhand for him. And tottered off towards a restorative short black.

    ... Jesus! Veronica must have been here since at least—well, months, anyway.

    Daph Harris looked at him with great sympathy. “I see,” she said kindly at the end of his involved and, frankly, self-exculpatory and very-sorry-for-himself narrative.

    Iain bit his lip. “Yeah. Um, so what do you think I should do, Daph? Try—try to contact her?”

    Privately Daph thought that if he did that this Veronica might run away. She hadn’t seemed that keen back in England, had she? Well, fancied him, yeah: she didn’t think Iain was blowing his own trumpet on that one, not like some we could ment—

    “Get out!” she snarled as it appeared in the kitchen looking hungry, as usual.

    Scott looked injured. “I live here, too!”

    “Get OUT, Iain and me are having a private conversation!”

    “Aw, can’t I even get a—“

    “NO! GET OUT! –And pay for your own beer, in future!”

    Scott vanished from the kitchen, pouting.

    “He did put a six-pack in the fridge only last week,” said Iain feebly.

    “Yeah, and then he drank them!”

    “Uh—well, me and Bert each got a glass.”

    “A glass? Not a whole can? The mean little shit!” gasped his mother.

    “Um, to be fair, Daph, I think he’s discovering the cost of living since he got that barcoding job alongside me and you made him pay board.”

    “Good,” she acknowledged sourly. “Why did that ruddy ecolodge have to close? I really thought he was gonna get that job waiting on!”

    Well, yes, Vince had been prepared to take anyone that looked clean and could promise to give Blue Gums Ecolodge a whole summer. “I was quite looking forward to doing a longer stint as butler for them, too,” he conceded. “Well, the concept was mad, of course, but the staff were very pleasant, and it’s lovely in the hills.”

    “And you could have gone riding with your Colonel man!” she beamed.

    Iain winced. “Um, yeah. That’s a bit like the curate’s egg, he does know exactly what little Iain’s like.”

    “Aw, rats! Gave Gail a good reference for you, didn’t he?”

    “The way he tells it, he told her the truth, Daph,” he reminded her.

    “Yeah, but then she took you on!”

    “That’s true,” said Iain, smiling at her.

    “Yeah... Listen, if I was you, I wouldn’t try to contact Veronica, I think it’d be better to speak to her in person, when you start the job.”

    “You mean so as she can’t run away,” said Iain wryly.

    “I think if she sees you in person, love, you’ll stand a better chance of being able to convince her you’re serious,” said Daph, heaving herself up. “Dunno that I fancy cooking tonight. There’s some potato salad.”

    “Food of the gods, you mean! It’ll do fine. Any cold meat?”

    “Yeah, the remains of that lamb—if he hasn’t got down on it.”

    Hurriedly Iain investigated the fridge. Phew! Scott hadn’t eaten tonight’s dinner—which had been known to happen, yes.

    As she sliced the cold meat Daph revealed abruptly: “Old Miss Mackintosh is going into a home.”

    This was one of her longest-standing housework clients. “Oh, shit. Well, I’m sure RightSmart’ll find you someone else, Daph.”

    “Yeah, but heck! I’ve been going to her three days a week for the last—crikey. Must be over sixteen years, Scott had just started school,” she realised.

    “Mm. Helluva change,” said Iain sympathetically.

    “Yeah. And I suppose,” she said, sighing, “that he won’t wanna go on living at home for all that much longer—not once he finds a regular girlfriend. Well, I moan about him, the great lump, but heck, that’ll be another big change.”

    “Yes, of course.”

    “Let’s have a sherry!” Daph decided, brightening. “Try that nice English sherry you bought us, eh?”

    Harvey’s Bristol Cream—mm. They did that. The verdict was that it was great. And she wasn’t gonna ask what he’d paid for it.

    The sherry inspired her to brilliance. “Tell ya what, Iain! You get a whacking great lump sum out of that ruddy Russian stepfather of yours—tell ’im you’ll dob ’im in to the French cops if ’e doesn’t cough up—and buy the ecolodge, and me and Scott come and work for you permanent! You and Veronica could run it between you, see?”

    “Have another one, Daph, and we’ll buy Buckingham Palace,” suggested Iain genially.

    “Hah, hah. –Aw, go on, ya talked me into it.”

    They did that. Somehow doing it suggested they sit down at the kitchen table again, while the sliced lamb and the potato salad and the tomatoes Daph hadn’t yet cut up just sat there on the bench.

    Iain propped his chin on his hand and looked dreamily into space. “You could do cook at the ecolodge, we wouldn’t waste your talents on the cleaning, hire someone to do that. Or make Scott do it, after all waiting’s not a full-time job.”

    “Too right! Only would my cooking be fancy enough?”

    “Of course! See, we wouldn’t go for the up-market fools that think it has to be lukewarm, in silly little piles, and dotted with olive oil going to waste, we’d aim at people just looking for a nice few days away from it all with real food.”

    “I think I could manage that!” said Daph with a gurgle.

    “Too right,” replied Iain in the vernacular. “Hey, those biscuits you made the other day...”

    “The ANZAC biscuits?”

    “No, I know them, now!” he said proudly. “No, the other ones—with the golden syrup.”

    “Aw, them! That’s a recipe of Gran’s. You use baking soda—” Daph plunged into it.

    Iain didn’t understand a blind word but at the end of it he sighed deeply and said: “Yes, those were they. Ambrosia... We could specialise in lovely afternoon teas! Every weekend and public holiday, and charge through the nose!”

    Daph broke down in splutters but conceded, wiping her eyes: “Why not?”

    “Why not what?” said an aggrieved voice from the doorway. “Hey, you’ve had sherry!” he spotted aggrievedly.

    “Brilliant, isn’t ’e? Makes ya wonder how me and his dad managed to produce ’im,” noted Daph sardonically. “—No, don’t waste it on him, Iain,” she added quickly.

    “No, you’re right, I won’t. Have a beer, Scott.”

    “There’s only your German beer left,” he pointed out warily.

    “Yes, because you drank that whole six-pack you bought, you greedy little bugger!” retorted his mother swiftly.

    “I never! Iain and Pop had some!” he whinged.

    “Some? Half a can each!”

    “Never mind. Have a German beer, Scott,” said Iain quickly.

    He brightened. “Ooh, thanks!” He got one out, opened it, drank deeply, sat down, drank deeply and prompted: “Go on: why not what?”

    “Eh?” said Iain blankly, what time his mother just looked blank.

    “What you were talking about. Somethink about charging through the nose.”

    “Uh— Oh! When we’re running our ecolodge, Scott. Wonderful afternoon teas for real people.”

    “Would there be any of them left?” he wondered brilliantly.

    “He is brilliant,” said Iain to his mother, shaken.

    “Yeah,” conceded Daph, gulping. “No, we’re not taking the Mick, love, ya got a point!” she said quickly to her reddening offspring. “Would there, Iain?”

    “Uh—well, David, the chef at the B&B, does a few fancy touches but basically his food is real. Goes in for spit-roasting a bit and tends to use fennel a lot, but that’s because he’s half-Greek. A lot of the time it’s solid roasts,” said Iain thoughtfully. “They’re really popular.”

    “Ooh, yum!” decided Scott.

    “And we wouldn’t need to offer ’em la-de-da desserts like his kiwifruit or lavender-flower ice cream—the more so as I gather it’s only the foodie groups from the city that make special block bookings at the restaurant but don’t sleep at the B&B that opt for them.”

    “Well, uh, trifle?” suggested Daph dubiously.

    “Ooh, are we having trifle tonight?” asked Scott eagerly.

    “No,” she flattened him.

    “Your trifle would be ideal, Daph! –This is trifle in the sky, Scott, or in Spain, if you like,” explained Iain kindly. The boy was of course looking completely blank, so he elaborated: “Pie in the sky—castles in Spain—ecolodges on forty hectares in Outer Woop-Woop, that I’ve conned my stepfather into giving me the moolah to buy.”

    “How long have you types been on the sherry?” Scott returned without apparent animus.

    “Only two each—or was it three? No, two. Better make it three,” Iain decided, pouring.

    “Goes straight to your head, eh?” noted Daph, accepting hers. “Cheers!”

    “Cheers!” he agreed. “...Aah!”

    Scott drank German beer thoughtfully. “This is Blue Gums Ecolodge, eh? How much would it cost to buy it?”

    “Millions,” said his mother definitely.

    “Yeah, but heck, ya can hardly buy a house in Sydney for under seven hundred thou’, these days! Ole Pop Martin, he was telling me that they’re selling up—private sale, they don’t wanna see half their hard-earned go to a ruddy land agent—and they been offered seven hundred and thirty-three thou’!”

    Daph lowered her glass in order to stare at him. “Is this ole Dave Martin? The Martins from Backhousia Avenue?”

    “Yeah. –Funny name, eh?” he noted by the way. “—Yeah.”

    “It’s a plant, you moron. –The Martins’ place in Backhousia Avenue? Seven hundred and thirty thou’?” she croaked.

    “Seven hundred and thirty-three,” Scott corrected pedantically. “It’s bigger than ours, Mum. And they had them weirdo granite bench tops put in, too.”

    “A great selling-point,” agreed Iain.

    “They’re too dark to work on, you can’t see what you’re doing,” said Daph grimly.

    “Mark of a rotten cook, then,” he said with a grin.

    “Yeah... Well, yeah, she’s that, all right. –Seven hundred and thirty thou’?” she said numbly.

    “Three,” Scott corrected pedantically.

    Daph was too numb to yell at him, she just said numbly: “All right, thirty-three. Help!”

    “See, what I reckon,” said Scott, narrowing his eyes horribly, “say we sold three of our places, we could swing it. See, if the ecolodge was in Sydney it’d be worth a bomb—well, ya wouldn’t get that much land in the city, but say the building. Ya wouldn’t have a hope of it for less than ten mill’, eh? Only see, it’s halfway to Outer Woop-Woop. Say we got just on seven hundred thou’ each for our place and Aunty Cotty’s and Pop’s—well, maybe less for his, it needs doing up. Anyway, I reckon we could clear two mill’, easy, and then Iain could borrow the rest off his stepfather, and we’d of swung it!” He looked smug.

    A certain amount of gulping took place in the wake of this speech. Iain left it to his mother to point out: “And then we all work our bums off for the next thirty years to make the bloody place pay! And what makes you imagine Cotty wants to sell her house?”

    Scott was unmoved. “She said the other day she was fed up with bloody Sydney and the thing was a black hole of good cash.”

    “That was because that possum got in under the eaves, ya dill! –It’s all right, Iain, she rung Dad and he dragged this great lump over there and made him get up there and check the roof space and it wasn’t there, so he blocked the hole up. –Properly, Dad checked it himself. Well, um, the roof’s okay, but it does need a few loose tiles fixed, she made the mistake of letting him talk her into having the roof retiled instead of having colour-steel, back when they bought it.”

    Iain nodded, he perfectly grasped that the reference was to Cotty’s ex. “I can fix it for her, Daph, no need to chuck good cash away. Well, I’ll need Bert’s advice on what to actually do, in words of one syllable, probably,” he added cheerfully, “but I’ll do the hard yacker!”

    “It’ll be words of one syllable, all right, he thinks you’re a moron,” said Scott bitterly.

    “He thinks you are, yeah,” agreed his mother.

    “He wouldn’t even trust me to turn the fuckin’ torch on myself!” he cried loudly.

    “Yeah, well, he’s getting old, Scott. Cut him a bit of slack,” she said on a tired note.

    “Mm,” agreed Iain. “Older people who can do less often try to exert complete control over their little immediate environment. That was his Dolphin torch, was it? –Mm.”

    “It’s psychological, geddit?” said Daph heavily to her offspring’s sulky face.

    “I get it, all right, but it’s nuts! Not letting me turn on a ruddy torch?”

    Daph sighed. “He doesn’t realise he’s doing it. Older people get like that. It is a bit nuts, you’re not wrong.”

    “Yeah, but heck, he’s sharp enough!” he cried.

    “That’s different. And listen, don’t go telling him he oughta sell the house.”

    “Um, well, buying the ecolodge’d be good, I mean we’d all have jobs, but I wasn’t seriously gonna suggest it, but heck, Mum, if he could get close on seven hundred thou’—”

    “No. He’s lived there nearly all his life, Scott, he wouldn’t be happy anywhere else. He knows everybody and he’s got his little routines. –Me and Roz and Cotty are absolutely dreading the day he’ll have to go into a home,” she added to Iain.

    “Mm, I know, Daph. But it might not happen. Best scenario we can hope for would be that the old ticker just quietly gives out one day.”

    “Yeah. Die in his bed, eh? Yeah,” she said, grimacing.

    “He’s healthy enough,” ventured Scott uncertainly.

    “Lovey, we gotta face the facts, he isn’t gonna last forever.”

    “No,” he agreed sadly. “Um, who would get his house, Mum?”

    Iain quailed, but fortunately Daph seemed to accept this as a perfectly natural enquiry. “Between all his kids, of course, Scott. It’d help us pay off our mortgages, I suppose.”

    “Cripes, blow the mortgage, Mum! Go on an overseas trip!” he urged.

    “Yeah, to Bali with that load of morons that believe they’re not next in line for the Bali bombers as they knock back the tequila sunrises on flamin’ Kuta Beach!”

    “Is it tequila sunrises?” asked Iain, poker-face.

    Daph grinned. “Dunno, never been. Sydney’s humid enough for me!”

    “Europe, then,” pursued Scott. “Iain could give you some contacts, couldn’t you?”

    “In France and Britain, certainly.” Iain got up, “Come on, Scott, let’s lay the table and finish the tomato salad, your mum can keep the weight off her feet, for once.”

    “Thanks, Iain,” said Daph with a sigh. “I feel kinda drained, actually... It’s the shock of Miss Mackintosh giving up and going into a home, I think. Funny how things go on for years and you think they’re never gonna change, and then when they do— Oh, well. But I tell ya what, if you could get a few mill’ out of your stepfather, I’d come up to Potters Inlet with you!”

    “That’d be a change, though,” said Scott in a low voice as Iain washed the tomatoes.

    “Mm. Never mind. There’s a bottle-shaped paper bag in my room with a decent red in it, go and grab it, would you, old mate?”

    “Um, but she’s had all that sherry!” he hissed, glancing warily at his mother, who was now leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed.

    “This’ll make it even betterer,” Iain promised.

    “Aw—right,” he acknowledged, hurrying out.

    Iain sliced tomatoes carefully, making faces. Crawl to Rudi? He really didn’t believe, even if a miracle occurred and he coughed up the lolly, that Blue Gums Ecolodge could be the saving of the Sugdens. Well, Scott might come, and he might even stay, until the hard yacker got too much... But Daph, Cotty and Roz were all so... entrenched. Sugdenised—yeah.

    ... On the other hand, he, Iain Hamish Andrew McGregor Duff-Ross, had nothing whatsoever to offer Veronica Johnson but his fair body, did he? Plus a very old purple car that his aunty was looking after and that he had no hope of bringing out here. If he could offer her something solid—well, not Blue Gums Ecolodge, Scott was right, the bloody thing would cost millions! But something. Jesus, he’d settle happily—very happily—for an old bungalow in the suburbs like this one! And—and one wouldn’t be forced to bring one’s kids up to be Sugdenised, would one? There was no law forbidding books in the house in the Aussie suburbs, after all! Not that there weren’t some very, very good points about the Sugdens... But shit, seven hundred thou’ plus? Even with a mortgage—well, in Australia people did have giant mortgages, he knew that: the whole country lived on credit, but...

    “Scott,” he said in a lowered voice as the young man operated expertly on the real cork in the real bottle.

    “Mm? –Boy, this one’s a bugger! Hang on!” he panted.

    POP!

    “Yeah?” said Scott, sniffing the cork experimentally.

    “Not corked?”

    “Nah, smells like a good drop, actually.” He got down three wine glasses and poured a little scientifically, then sniffing carefully and giving it a bit of a twirl before tasting.

    “Nobbad. Not over-oaked, bit of body, taste of blackcurrant coming through,” he reported. “Leave ’er to breathe for a bit, eh?”

    “Yes,” agreed Iain, smiling a little. The lucky little sod had a natural palate. Well, Australia was certainly the country where he could give it full rein! Not that the Sugdens ever paid what he, Iain, had just coughed up for the red, in the—not hope, more like a dream—of having a quiet dinner à deux with Veronica...

    “Um, Scott, would you know what sort of deposit one would have to put on a house, um, say the size of this one?”

    Scott scratched his thick, pale fawn short hair. “Like if it was a bit rundown like Pop’s, ya might get it for say six hundred thou’? Well, it'd be at least a tenth, Iain, and ya gotta have a good credit rating for the bank to lend you anything. Mind you, Mannie Franchetti, him and Narelle, they only scraped up ten thou’ and they swung a place for four hundred and eighty thou’. Well, first-home owners, they got the government’s seven thou’, ya see, so it would of been seventeen all up. They had a bit more saved up but there’s fees and things, ya see.”

    “Yes, there would be. But they must’ve had to get a huge mortgage!”

    “Yeah.”

    “Scott, remember that ABC programme a month or two back on the sub-prime problem in America?”

    “No,” he said definitely.

    Iain swallowed. The boy had sat right there on the couch next to him! “Never mind. Uh, how old is Mannie Franchetti?”

    “Dunno. He was a year ahead of me at school. Twenny-three?” he offered.

    “Yeah. Well, he’ll have the time to pay it back. Or at least the interest.”

    “If he’s in work, yeah. Aw—see whatcha mean. You’re not that old, but they might want you to have a bit more of a deposit, yeah.”

    “Mm. You wouldn’t know how much he’s paying on the place every month, would you?”

    “Four hundred and twenty a week,” said a sepulchral voice.

    Iain jumped. “How much?”

    Daph sat up, blinking. “Shit, I think I dropped off for a minute! Mannie Franchetti’s mum told me he’s paying four hundred and twenty a week on that place and his old man went ropeable about it. Didn’t cough up anythink to help the kids out, though.” She shrugged. “God knows when Narelle’ll ever be able to afford to stop working and have a kid.”

    “Maybe they’ll bring in that paid maternity leave thingo, Mum.”

    “And maybe pigs’ll fly, too. I’m glad I’m not your age, that’s all! Just don’t go and put a deposit on a house without talking to me and your Pop first, will you?”

    Scott looked down his nose. “Not me, Iain.”

    “For you and Veronica, Iain?”

    Iain quailed. “Um, well, thinking about it, Daph,” he admitted.

    “It doesn’t hurt to plan ahead,” she said, smiling. “Heck, are we having wine?”

    “Yeah. It’s a decent drop, so don’t go ringing up Pop, we don’t wanna waste it on him,” ordered Scott grimly. “Or Aunty Cotty: she gimme a sweet sparkling Pinot Noir last time I was round there!”

    “Wouldn’t dream of it!” replied his mother with a laugh. “Just us, eh?”

    “Yeah,” Iain and Scott agreed gratefully.

    Over the very decent red Scott was inspired to launch into a fully-blown plan whereby Iain would not only buy Blue Gums Ecolodge as a business, he would also buy Pop’s house but let the old man continue to live in it, what time he, Scott, did wine waiter for the ecolodge—

    But fortunately Daph merely smiled tolerantly.

Next chapter:

https://temps-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/11/natural-disasters.html