Human Resources

8

Human Resources

    The reason Mrs Chatty hadn’t rung him on his mobile, it had dawned on Iain as Jase pointed out that his mobile was turned off, was that his mobile was turned off: having it on while you were doing a waiting job for one of RightSmart’s clients was a real no-no, and he’d been such a good little boy, he’d remembered to— Yeah. After he’d signed contracts for the Emco’s job he tottered down to the nearest café and got himself round a short black, à la Pearson. Then he turned the phone on. Okay, four messages: three from telephone companies and one from Leila Duckworth. Would Gail tear him limb from limb and throw the pieces to the wolves of New South W—no, hang on, what was it they had? Yellow dogs, like coyotes—dingoes, that was it. Throw the pieces to the dingoes of New South Wales if he rang the woman back? Oh, what the Hell, he was a big boy. He rang the woman back.

    She knew he was busy but she just thought if he could possibly manage it, because he’d been such a lovely butler and Chatty wanted her to put on a dinner party for a bunch of awful pollies, but her usual caterers didn’t supply butlers and as a matter of fact Chatty had to go overseas after that and there was no way she was going to Indonesia with him, you never knew what you’d pick up, and what with that and the risk of terrorists—! She was thinking about going up to the place in the country, only she got nervous being stuck out miles from anywhere, and it was all very well for Chatty to say it was only the possums on the roof at night, it gave you an awful fright all the same. And she wouldn’t let him lose by it—

    At this point Iain felt constrained to tell her, not merely because Gail had brought the matter up, that he wasn’t an escort.

    “Sorry,” said Mrs Chatty Duckworth sadly. “Thought it was worth a try.”

    “Leila,” said Iain with a laugh in his voice, “why not just suggest a lovely week away together?”

    “Um, yeah, do you wannoo?” she gasped.

    “I’m up for it, yeah.”

    “Righto, you’re on!”

    So that was that. The rot had definitively set in, so why not enjoy it? And she wasn’t a client, or the nice sort who’d have regrets, or, worse, the single nice sort that’d be at risk of taking it seriously and wanting more commitment than little Iain was capable of. And, in short, it was bloody ideal! True, she’d be a good ten years his elder, but keenness made up for a lot, as did, frankly, large boobs.

    He had to do Jase’s job first, but she had to have her dinner party and get rid of Chatty first, so that was okay.

    “This is it,” she said after miles and miles and miles of countryside, featureless and almost entirely flat, had fled beneath the wheels of her Beamer. Iain gaped at the view of a giant modern one-storeyed house in the local sandstone. Not an unattractive stone, but he had it on very good authority, Sugden authority, that the bloody stuff cost the earth, even those fake blocks you could get nowadays, sandstone dust mixed in with the cement, mate. It had a huge, sandstone-pillared verandah, and this was just as well, because there was no other shade. Immediately before it was a large paved area, sandstone again or possibly those bloody fake sandstone pavers, mate, and surrounding that there was just acres and acres of flat grass. Literally just grass: to the horizon.

    Inside the sandstone motif was discontinued in favour of—possibly Mexican?—glazed terracotta tiles. And a lot of high arches and white plastered walls and— That was all he noticed, really, ’cos Mrs Chatty had flung herself at him. Ooh-er! Cor, in fact! Luckily Chatty had provided a large fluffy rug just through that arch there, and they managed to stagger over to it as she got his trousers down and he got her top up— Oh, boy! Those boobs were genuine, all right, no silicone need apply!

    “Oh!” shrieked Mrs Chatty as he bit her neck. “Oh, Iain; oh, Iain! Quick, have ya got a condom?”

    He had, funnily enough, so he managed to haul it on whilst not removing his person entirely from the voluptuous Mrs Chatty—“Ooh, Iain!”—yeah, and didn’t manage to ask her if she was ready but did manage to tangle his tongue with hers again as he plunged—God, she was ready, all right! Jesus! Jesus, Jesus, Jesus—

    “Eee—oow-OOH!” shrieked Mrs Chatty Duckworth, clenching like crazy as he pumped into her and raking his back furiously, meanwhile sort of shoving onto him—“Aah—aah—aah, AAH! Uh—AAH!” she shrieked. There might have been more of the same but Iain was yelling like fury and shooting his load, so he didn’t really register it.

    After that he just lay on her curves and panted for ages and ages and ages...

    “Jesus,” he managed at last, rolling off her and pulling her against his side.

    Mrs Chatty just panted.

    “Boy, you sure yell when you’re coming,” she offered, quite some time later.

    “Mm. Uh—me?”

    She sniggered and gave his arm a playful bash, ow! “Yeah! Chatty reckons we oughta have the bedroom soundproofed!”

    “I’ll say. –So he does still, uh, take an interest?”

    “Yeah, he’s not past it, thank God. The Viagra helps, he can keep it up for miles longer.”

    Er—yes. Should that be what was required.

    “He hasn’t got any figure, of course,” she added, eyeing his torso, “but he’s got a nice fat prick, bit like yours, actually: can’t stand them needle ones, y’know?”

    “Understandable,” he allowed, wincing.

    “We’ve got a nice home gym here if you wanna work out.” –Still eyeing the torso.

    “Well, yeah, Leila, why not?”

    “Goodoh. There’s the pool, too, only the mean bugger won’t let us have the heating on unless we’re up here, so it’ll be flamin’ freezing. I better turn it on while I think of it, actually.”

    “Uh-huh.” Iain sat up and, since the house was cold, helped her on with her bright pink jumper, not neglecting to stroke them gently as he did so.

    “That’s nice,” said Leila in some surprise, smiling at him.

    “Good. It’s even nicer from my end!”

    The pool heating had been turned on, so had the central heating, the condom had been disposed of and some perfunctory washing had taken place, Leila acknowledging that a shower would be nice only the flamin’ place was freezing.

    “Want me to show you I can make an omelette as well as putting it up a lady and going bang within two seconds?” he offered.

    “I wanted it, too, ya nit,” she said amiably.

    “Well, yeah, I did notice that! Are you always that wet? –If that isn’t a rude question. Or even if it is a rude question!”

    “Well, not always. I was on the Pill for ages and I used to get really dry—well, not dry enough for an actual lubricant, but it wasn’t natural for me, y’know? Then when I married Chatty he’d had a vasectomy so I didn’t have to bother, thank God. But I must say I can’t always get turned on, with him.”

    Ouch. Why had he asked? It had already dawned she had a terrifically literal mind, as well as very little modesty, false or otherwise.

    “I know you think I married him for his money,” she added calmly, heading for the back regions, “but it wasn’t only that. See, he always made sure he gave me a come, loads of rich jokers don’t.” She paused. “Well, rich or not, actually. But if they’re rich they usually don’t bother. So I thought maybe I could hack it with him. That was ten years back, and at first he said he better not catch me fooling around with anyone else—see, that was what went wrong with his last wife. Snooty dame from flamin’ South Yarra, her dad’s a bloody judge. Didn’t stop her putting out for whatever offered, though. –Through here.” She ushered him into a giant tiled kitchen. Grey-blue slate tiles on the floor, white tiles on the walls, dark grey granite bench tops. “Personally I loathe this look, only the bloody interior decorator reckoned it was the go, so Chatty hadda have it. –Anyway, he pretty much lasted the course for the first five years and then he said that he was never gonna keep up with me even with the Viagra and he didn’t mind if I did it with someone else so long as I didn’t shove it under everybody’s nose, and do him a favour and lay off the bloody gym instructors. –Like, she must of had at least five of them. Well, lots of them are in it for that, see? But actually, it’s quite hard to find the right guy.”

    “The men of Australia must be blind as well as chemically castrated, then, Leila,” said Iain politely.

    “No!” she said with a startled laugh. “Thanks! Yeah—no, his business mates’d tell their bloody mates, and laugh at the poor ole bugger behind his back, ya see, likewise all those little nerds that work for him, and the ones like the golf pros or the tennis pros, they’re doing half the bloody club, and they’re what I call the semi-bitch type anyway: they’d let on to their other customers for spite. We had a lovely gardener at one stage—not the regular guy, he’s a funny little wrinkled bloke ya wouldn’t look twice at in ya wildest dreams—but this guy was filling in for him.” She delved in the enormous steel fridge, then turned and winked one huge blue eye at him. “Filling in and a half, if ya get my drift! He was taller than you, but about the same size where it counts. Really good with his tongue, too.” She sighed deeply.

    “I know how to do that!” said Iain quickly.

    Leila collapsed in splutters, gasping: “Yeah, I betcha do!”

    “So it was the temporary gardener chap, really, was it?” he said kindly.

    “Yeah, and a lovely builder, a local bloke, that finished this place for us. See, the bloody Sydney firm Chatty hired started on it and left it half done: so many jobs on their books they didn’t give a damn. But Chatty wasn’t gonna put up with that, he said they could take another look at that contract they’d signed and get stuffed. So then this other guy, Bob, his name is—Bob the Builder, geddit? We used to have a laugh over that—he took over. Did a lovely job, only of course Chatty made him put in all the stuff the flamin’ gay interior decorator wanted. He’s divorced: he took me over to his place once, his own kitchen’s lovely, all natural wood.”

    “I see. Uh—never thought of maybe dumping good old Chatty and taking up with Bob instead, Leila?”

    She sighed. “Well, of course ya think, don’t you? Can’t help it. Only I could see it never occurred to him, it was just a fling. Then he met a nice girl up at Tamworth, he’s into country music, ya see, and so is she. Nice country girl, grew up on a farm, she’s just right for him. Wants kids, too.”

    Mm. Poor Leila. She’d be a bit past that.

    They had the omelette, with a bottle of Chardonnay from Chatty’s cellar, some bread they’d got on the way, and a pineapple Iain had bought for the porpoise. Leila was very surprised (a) that he’d thought of it and (b) that he thought their Australian pineapples were wonderful. She did quite like pineapple but it was fiddly to prepare. Then they had some coffee and then Iain had her. Helluva lot of shrieking, considerable giggling and quite a lot of clawing—’bout what he’d expected, actually. Then she generously let him put it in her—’bout what he’d expected, too. Phew!

    That evening was quite similar, in kind if not specifics, after a couple of huge steaks from Chatty’s freezer and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from Chatty’s cellar.

    “Why—are you—always—so ready?” he panted.

    “Them white muscles—of yours—turn me on!” she panted.

    Uh—white muscles?

    “Like a statue—like in—the museum—and stuff!”

     Like a statue?

    “Only would they all—be gay?” she panted. “Like that David!”

    “Uh—oh! Michelangelo’s boyfriend! Statis’ly—speaking—can’t all—be gay!” he panted.

    “Good! You’re heavier—’n him, though! More like—new—James Bond!” she gasped.

    “That’s—almost off—putting!” he warned breathlessly.

    “Bullshit! Come on, fuck me!”

    He was, actually, but Iain came on and fucked her. And came, actually. And then kindly finished her off.

    “Thanks, Iain,” she said with a deep sigh.

    “My pleasure,” replied Iain primly.

    “No, honest. Loads of jokers don’t bother.”

    “They’re not worth your time,” he said lightly.

    “You said it! Only by the time ya find that out, it’s too late! Mind you, it only needs to happen once, the wankers, and then I dump them, I can tell ya!”

    “Good show.”

    “And the ones that won’t do it with their tongue!” said Leila viciously.

    “Eh?” he croaked.

    “Yeah. Well, that was only one, he was a bit of a mother’s boy—still lived with his mum, though he’d of been your age.”

    “Perhaps he was gay and didn’t know it,” he said dazedly. “I’ve never heard of a hetero chap not wanting to— Well, I suppose everything’s possible, but Christ!”

    “Yeah. Anyway, I dumped him, pronto. –Wanna watch TV?”

    “Just so long as it’s not some effete little offering from the ABC,” he replied, forgetting himself, rather.

    “Nah, never watch that, unless it’s an Agatha Christie, some of those are quite good.”

    “I don’t think I’m up for a reality show, Leila,” he admitted as she sat up and pressed buttons and something ’ideous flashed up on the big screen on the opposite wall.

    “Nah, they’re a pack of drongos. Hang on... CSI! ...Aw. Seen it. Chatty reckons Nine’s run out of money, they’re rescreening everything. Um, this episode wasn’t bad, actually.”

    “Then let’s watch it,” said Iain comfortably. “Fancy a drink?”

    “Yeah, I’d love one—thanks,” said Leila, her eyes glued to the screen.

    Smiling, he got out of bed.

    The rest of the week was pretty much likewise. She remained just as keen and so, funnily enough, did he.

    Just by the by he gathered that she was more like fifteen years his elder, not ten, and there was a grown-up son up in Brizzie that she didn’t see much of because the wife belonged to the Uniting Church and didn’t approve of her and Chatty. Oh, Lor’. Poor cheerful, up-beat, willing Leila. Mistake to assume that anybody was just a cliché, wasn’t it? He took a vow to be a very good little boy in future and not brush her off if he had anything more interesting to do, like staying home with Daph watching yet another repeat of Lara Croft Tomb Raider on the telly—he wasn’t sure why she liked it but he knew why he did—or going down the pub with Bert and Scott or down the RSL with Bert or old Jenkins.

    “Not more barcoding?” he groaned as Jase rang him at crack of dawn after a very heavy farewell night with Leila before Chatty got back. Tequila sunrises. Heavy on the tequila and if the sun was down she’d just have it with ice.

    “Not this time. Mr Tinker wants his caravan cleaned and done up—he’s selling it.”

    “Got it. It means investigating the right type of paint, does it? –Yeah. But why’s he want it at crack of dawn?” he sighed.

    “It’s gone ten,” replied Jase in astonishment.

    Ooh, ’eck. “Never drink tequila neat with a lady fifteen years your elder and with fifteen times your capacity,” he warned.

    There was a short silence and then the chap said: “Annette and I don’t drink spirits, actually.”

    Right. Yeah. Feebly Iain agreed he’d see him in about an hour, and hung up. What on earth did the Jase type imagine life was all about, if it wasn’t about the occasional bender? With or without an unsuitable companion!

    Mr Tinker’s caravan wasn’t a beat-up heap parked in his driveway or causing a hazard at the curb, it was anally neat and parked in his giant three-car garage and Mr Tinker himself was an anally neat maniac in his sixties who wanted the caravan to be even neater before he sold it. And gee, the reason he was selling it was so as he could buy an even bigger one. Did he go on Outback holidays, then? Iain asked with a last flicker of dying hope. The answer was a lemon: he and Georgina—she would be Georgina in full, yeah, whilst the rest of Australia happily used Georgie and Georgy and even Georgi—had found a very nice caravan park on the outskirts of Wollongong that they went to every year, they’d got to know the regulars quite well. Mr Tinker was so particular that the job took Iain a week, but he never scored more than a packet gingernut from the equally anal Georgina. And he would not allow his mind to wonder what the Hell their sex life must have been like, because thereby madness lay. Yeah.

    Veronica had given in and taken an accounting job. Drew from RightSmart had been very persuasive and her finances were very, very low, and— Well. It was a private client, not an office: Mr Stott, a short, stout, middle-aged man, albeit with a knowing look in his eye. He owned a palatial dwelling—hideous, but she freely admitted it was palatial—with a magnificent view of Sydney Harbour. Why on earth did he need a temporary accountant from a small temp agency— Oh.

    Mr Stott was divorcing his wife, who’d run off with another man. His lawyer, most unfortunately, and as his accountant was the lawyer’s brother-in-law—

    “See if we can save something from the wreck, eh?” said Mr Stott. “There’s no doubt those two bastards’ll know just what everything I’ve got’s worth, down to the last cent, but if there’s any way of keeping anything out of her clutches— S’pose we can’t do anything about the stuff bloody Bryson talked me into putting in her name?”

    Bloody Bryson was his former accountant. “No,” said Veronica faintly. “Well, I’m not a lawyer, Mr Stott, but I should think you could claim half of it, if she’s claiming half of everything you’ve got... Why did you do it?’

    “Tax purposes,” said Mr Stott, making an awful face. “Well, just sort it out as best you can. I’d like to at least know exactly what my position is.”

    “Yes, I can do that for you,” said Veronica thankfully, letting him sit her down at his desk. “Was Mr Bryson managing the accounts for your private company as well?”

    “Yeah,” he said sourly. “She can’t claim the company, can she?”

    “Not as such, but your interest in the company is an asset, you see.”

    “Fucking Bryson told me she couldn’t touch the capital!” he shouted.

    “Technically she can’t, it’s the property of the company.”

    Mr Stott swept his hand across his forehead. “Right. Got it. Shall I leave you to it?”

    “Yes; I’ll need to get an overall picture first, and then I’ll probably need to ask you about details,” replied Veronica seriously.

    Nodding, Mr Stott left her to it.

    Veronica’s previous accounting jobs had been in offices. It wasn’t long before it dawned that working in a client’s house was very, very different. You had to deal not just with the paperwork but with the person—not to say with a crowd of other persons. There was Julie Connors, the lady who did for him—you didn’t say that in Australia, she called herself his housekeeper—and Tim Peters, who looked after his garden, and Sally Connors, who sometimes came in to help her mum and use Mr Stott’s big swimming-pool, and Miss Andrews, who was Mr Stott’s grim middle-aged secretary—she worked at the office but she often came round when he was working in the weekends or had decided to work at home for the day—and Aaron Baddeley, who was his PA, and often came round ditto. These were sort of expectable, with perhaps the exception of Sally, but as well there were Raquel Dobson, Aaron’s girlfriend, who thought Mr Stott asked far too much of him and never let him call his soul his own, Raquel’s little brother, Harrison, who often came with her to use Mr Stott’s big swimming-pool, and Julie Connors’s little nephew, Kenny, who often came with her to use—yeah. After a bit a Melanie Mayne appeared. Veronica was almost sure it wasn’t her real name. She had blonde hair cut in elaborate layers of wisps and she spoke in a silly little high-pitched, whispery voice, unless she was shouting at you fucking kids to get out of the fucking pool. Her rôle was undefined but it wasn’t long before it dawned that she was Mr Stott’s girlfriend.

    Julie Connors was supposed to answer the phone on her days, but was always “just popping out,” so Veronica had to do it. Harrison had an allergy to peanuts, so Veronica had to make quite sure he didn’t just go into the kitchen and help himself to anything. As Mr Stott didn’t know how much using of his big swimming-pool went on behind his back, Veronica was deputed to ring Julie or Sally Connors at home if it wasn’t Julie’s day, or Sally if Julie had just popped out, and Raquel and Harrison’s mum if ditto or ditto, and let them know if Mr Stott was heading home—he always rang from the office to make sure she was there, if he was going to come and see her about the accounts.

    The accounts themselves were not muddled, no. At first glance they looked, especially the company accounts, very, very clear. Gradually, as she checked everything meticulously against the bank statements and invoices, it began to dawn on Veronica that the unlamented Mr Bryson had been about as able as her former top boss, Mr Kinnear, and that everything that could be turned to Mr Stott’s advantage had been. Giant amounts had been squirreled away in pension accounts that if Mr Stott couldn’t touch them, nor could anyone else. But as well... Mr Stott had several interests but one of them was real estate: house properties, yes, but a lot of industrial real estate, too. Not just in Australia: all around the South Pacific and in Southeast Asia and Papua-New Guinea. Of course money was always going in and out, and everything dovetailed beautifully, just as it ought to. But... Eventually Veronica was driven to do some intensive research. Okay, some of those properties had been sold way, way under the price they should have gone for, judging by other properties in their area, and some, on the contrary, had brought in a lot, lot more than they should have. All of which had been legally declared to the taxman.

    “Finished?” said Mr Stott brightly, about six weeks after she’d started the job.

    “I’ve determined your assets and checked everything Bryson did for you over the past five years, yes, and everything’s in order. He wrote off everything that could be written off, I'm afraid there's no hope of claiming the office equipment’s worth less than he’s put it down as.”

    “No, well, didn’t really think there would be. So what’s the company worth?”

    Silently Veronica showed him the figures.

    Mr Stott made a face. “Yeah. About what I thought. Can the bitch grab half of it?”

    Veronica had checked up on that. “She can claim half of its worth in the financial year you split up, but whether she can grab it is up to the courts.”

    “Yeah. Right.” He looked at her face. “What’s up?”

    “Money laundering,” said Veronica baldly.

    Mr Stott gulped. But rallied to say: “Wouldn’t call it that!”

    “No. Well, I won’t ask how much you’ve got stashed away in Zurich or the Cayman Islands,”—help, that last was a hit: he twitched sharply—“but I will say, I was happy to sort out your ostensible accounts for you, and there’s no proof in the figures that anything might be a bit off, but I won’t do any more work for you, Mr Stott.”

    “But look— No, all right,” he said glumly.

    “Does Bryson know?” asked Veronica baldly.

    “Know what?” he replied blandly.

    “All right, have it your way. But if I was you I’d think about moving myself and my lovely art collection to a nice tax haven, lock, stock and barrel,” said Veronica drily.

    Mr Stott gave her a Look. “Come with me, Veronica?”

    Veronica bit her lip. “No, thanks very much. I like you but you’re not my type.”

    “Can’t blame a bloke for trying!” he said jauntily. “—I could recommend you to some more customers,” he said, showing her out nicely.

    “No, please don’t,” replied Veronica firmly.

    Shoulders shaking, Mr Stott bowed her out of his palatial residence with its magnificent view over Sydney Harbour.

    “Pity,” he concluded, shaking his head. “Oh, well.”

    Iain goggled at the jumbled, chaotic Aladdin’s cave that was Number 211 Blackburn Avenue. “Inventorying?” he croaked.

    “Yeah. It’s a probate job,” explained young Mr Guthrie of Maddern McCoy Freeman. “Mr Durrant said you’d be able to tidy it up, and sort it out for us, too. It belonged to a very old lady who was an artist or something. Maybe it was her husband that was the artist. Anyway, they lived here for over seventy years. There’s a studio out the back, as well. Um, look, she had a lot of shares, the estate’s worth quite a bit, and some of it’s gonna go to charities, but there’s some great-nephews, I think, or maybe great-great, that get the residue and they’ve already starting arguing over it, and they reckon some of the stuff could be quite valuable—well, there’s a Norman Lindsay in the old lady’s bedroom. Come on, I’ll show you.” He led the way, not without difficulty, down a dark passage crowded with bookshelves. “See?”

    “Yeah. Naked ladies,” croaked Iain, gaping at acres of very decorative female flesh on an eight-foot stretch of canvas. The whole thing, in fact, was very decorative, indeed pretty, but he wasn’t too sure he’d have classed it as art.

    “Yeah: I thought it looked like him!” said Mr Guthrie proudly. “And now they want everything assessed before it goes to auction.”

    “Y—uh, I’m not a valuer,” warned Iain.

    “No, we can get anything that looks like real art or an antique looked at by Sotheby’s, but Mr Durrant said you’d be able to sort out what looks good from the junk.”

    Iain took a deep breath. “Right. Well, uh, three piles? Possibly valuable, send off to nearest auction place, and chuck out?”

    “Yeah. Well, the clothes could probably go to the St Vinnies or the Salvos.”

    “Uh-huh. How old was she, again?”

    “Ninety-nine, and I don’t think she ever threw anything out,” he said glumly.

    Iain opened one of the giant, looming dark wardrobes. Strewth! “In that case, some of the older clothes might be quite valuable. Dresses dating from the Twenties, for example,”—very carefully he drew out a heavily beaded creation—“are going for huge sums these days, there are private collectors as well as the museums.”

    “There you are, then, you’re ideal for the job!” beamed Mr Guthrie. “Take your time, take a break whenever you like—just remember to fill in the timesheet for us—and if ya want anything to read in your break there’s actually some quite good books, I noticed some James Bonds back in the passage, must’ve been the husband that liked them, I s’pose. Ya don’t need to list all the books, just give us an estimate of the number of shelffuls, that’ll do. The Vinnies usually take books.”

    Iain looked at him limply. “Some of them may be valuable,” he managed. “First editions.”

    “Really? Well, you better check through them and list the likely ones separately. Aw, that reminds me. One of the great-nephews’ wives reckoned that wardrobe’s Huon pine. Mind you, the other one said it wasn’t and they had a row over it, but it’s worth checking out.”

    Iain had no idea what he was talking about—none. Ouch! He was going to have to burn the midnight oil doing a bit of research into the Australian art and antiques market, wasn’t he?

    “Okay, sure. I can start tomorrow, if you like.”

    “Great! Aw, and listen: if the wives come round don’t let them in, okay?”

    “Okay, got it. Is the studio locked?”

    “Yeah. You might as well have all the keys now,” recognised Mr Guthrie, handing over a huge, tangled bunch. “I think that one’s the studio, or maybe the back door. Anyway, there is one for the studio. You can biff out all the paints.”

    “Roger, wilco!” said Iain with a grin.

    Mr Guthrie smiled a relieved smile, noted that it was a load off his mind, and asked him if he fancied a quick one. So they did that, Iain incidentally garnering a lot of knowledge about the iniquities of the senor partners in Maddern McCoy Freeman, Mr Guthrie’s own modest ambitions—suburban private practice, only you had to get the capital together—and the teething problems of one, Heather Joy Guthrie, aged eighteen months and a bit.

    “If Maddern McCoy Freeman want acid-free archive boxes, they can pay for them,” warned Gail, a week later. Iain had done some pretty intensive Internet research, and thanks to the job with old Max Mackay he knew that the National Library of Australia would be the place to ask about Australiana and huge collections of old letters. The voice on the phone had croaked: “Sybil Wetherby’s estate? Nathan Wetherby’s widow?” and agreed they would be interested in the papers, yes, and then asked in trembling tones if there were any letters from Norman Lindsay, to which Iain had been able to reply with a certain satisfaction: “There’s a shoebox labelled ‘Norman,’ stuffed full of letters and notes, and a whacking great oil painting of Sybil as Circe with a female friend as Aphrodite, if that’s—”

    “My God, a missing Lindsay?” the voice gasped.

    —who you mean: quite.

    “Okay, Gail,” he agreed, “I’ll pass that on to Guthrie, but I don’t think that either he or Maddern McCoy Freeman are up with the play as far as archival stuff is concerned.”

    “Tell ’em Sotheby’s’ll auction the papers for them and you’ve got the National Library interested, and they’ll cough up—they’ll recharge it to the estate anyway.”

    “If you say so.”

    After that it all took off and there was even a pic in the paper of Mr Freeman of Maddern McCoy Freeman in person, proudly pointing to the “Lost Lindsay,” what time an almost obscured Mr Guthrie was allowed to hold up an original Sybil Wetherby linocut beside him.

    And Scott was hired to help with the heavy work, packing books for the Vinnies and heaving boxes full of old newspapers and battered but non-antique cooking utensils into the mini-skip, so take it for all in all, Lavender Avenue didn’t do too badly out of the Sybil Wetherby estate. Though it was a bit of a shock to learn from the ABC News what the National Library paid in the end for the papers that Iain would happily have given them.

    “Cripes,” said Scott numbly. “That’s our old dame’s stuff!”

    “Yeah. Well, Norman Lindsay autographs, and the old bird seems to have slept with half the Australian federal parliament in her time.”

    “Right: while he was writing letters to the Communists in Russia,” he said dazedly.

    Quite. The Australian research community was going to do pretty well out of the Sybil Wetherby estate. Though there did the remain the question, if true scholarship was vanishing with Max Mackay’s generation, what were they preserving it all for? Iain gave himself a shake, and poured them all a round, even allowing Scott a belt of Black Label.

    “What’s the toast?” asked Daph with a smile.

    “To the old dame,” suggested Scott.

    They drank to the old dame. Yes, Scott, it was smooth stuff, wasn’t it?

    Then Iain had to propose a toast. “RightSmart?”

    “Yeah! They’ve given us enough jobs! To RightSmart!” beamed Daph.

    Never mind the toast, the next job was making a pond with natural-looking rocks for Mrs Wield, as anal as old Mr Tinker and twice as particular, if half his age. The reason Mr Wield couldn’t do it was he was an exec with some big company that had sent him to— Yeah, yeah.

    “Doing it behind his back. Most of them are like that,” explained the percipient Marlene.

    Iain didn’t even score a gingernut off Mrs Wield, but then, he hadn’t expected to.

    After that he more than needed a break—not the hard yacker, as Scott called it, the emotional strain—true, he wasn’t entirely serious, but Scott’s sniggers proved that he, Iain Ross, was well over the hill and then some. And as Chatty was in China, a lovely week away with Leila would be the go—mm, rather! She would pay? She would n— Uh, how much? Leila, this was mad! No, it wasn’t, she had the dough and there was nothing else she wanted to spend it on and don’t argue. Oh, what the Hell, it’d make her happy—some flash dame from Double Bay or thereabouts had recommended the place, supposing as she did so that it would be too quiet for her tastes—and he could hack being a kept man for one week.

    So he drove her for miles and miles into the hills of New South Wales. Uh, was this Potters Road? Looked like a back road, and he couldn’t see a road sign. There was no-one to ask, just a view of wispy grey-green native foliage and rather a lot of ruts. Leila was positive it was right. Okay, they were her springs. Right at the end of the road they found it, though its sign was so discreetly environmental he almost missed it: “Blue Gums Ecolodge. Private Property” in, uh, pokerwork?—on rough, bark-edged raw wood.

    “You want me to take the Beamer up that?” he croaked, goggling at the place’s notional driveway. Rough, pebbly clay. She did, so, mentally shutting his eyes, Iain bumped ’er up over the ruts to— Cor! He collapsed in splutters. Gables, little balconies sprouting here, there and everywhere, giant clay arches holding up nothing, extraneous panels of coloured glass and discoloured clear gl—ooh, must be recycled, of course! Louvered wooden shutters, possibly oiled but certainly with no other discernible coating, over everything that could be shuttered. And hunks of, um, driftwood? It looked bloody like it! Hunks of driftwood here and there amidst the sandstone pillars that were sort of almost holding the place up...

    “Sorry,” he said weakly, mopping his eyes. “Better than I ever dreamed it could be! Lead on, Macduff. —Oy,” he said to the tall, middle-aged chap in jeans who’d appeared to help with the bags, “this’ll sound like a silly question, but is there anywhere the car can be parked under shelter, without further damage to her springs?”

    “Yeah, the garages are round the back, it’s all flat,” he replied, unmoved.

    Small mercies. Iain gave him the car keys and tottered inside in the eager Leila’s wake.

    He collapsed in splutters as the door of the suite closed softly after the helpful manager chap, who’d shown them to it in person. The tasteful fawn and cream décor included high gabled ceilings with recycled timber beams, rusting bolts an’ all, strange sofas of driftwood upholstered with huge puffy cream canvas cushions, giant fluffy, creamy sheepskin rugs on recycled timber boards, and in the bedroom, an enormous fawn and cream handmade cotton quilt on a giant bed, the headboard and footboard being full-size recycled panelled doors.

    “Don’tcha like it?” asked Leila uneasily

    “No! I love it!” he gasped. “Now I know what an ecolodge is!”

    When Jack Jackson turned up at RightSmart Pty Ltd not five minutes after they’d opened on a Monday morning, both its receptionist and its CEO just about choked—mixed horror at anyone’s letting Jack go once they'd got him, and ecstasy that he’d be back on their books again—but it wasn’t that, at all. He hadn’t lost the job as handyman up at Blue Gums Ecolodge, he was looking for a housekeeper for a mate. See, it was like this…

    “Yikes,” concluded the CEO of RightSmart.

    Jack looked at Gail meekly. “Yeah. The place is just down the road from us.” Old Andy MacMurray had decided to go off and live with his son George and George’s new girlfriend over on the east coast, and he’d sold his Potters Road property. Some frantic head-scratching on Jack’s part and consultation with his life-partner had resulted in her musical mate Daffyd Owens buying it.

    It had been a considerable shock to Gail’s system to discover that the “Nefertite” with whom good old easy-going Jack Jackson was living up Potters Road was actually the contralto, Antigone Walsingham Corrant. What the Hell could they possibly have in common? He was a jobbing builder from New Zealand, currently doing groundsman for Blue Gums Ecolodge, and she was the daughter of Sir John Walsingham, one of Britain’s foremost conductors of the previous half century! Had the woman taken up with him for his good looks alone? Gail Vickers was conscious, not for the first time, of a fervent hope that the bloody woman knew what she’d got, because, never mind the unfortunate episode when Christie had selected him as just the right contractor to build the man-hungry Mrs Desirée Garven’s pool cabana, you couldn’t have found better a man on the face of the earth than honest, solid, reliable and really nice Jack Jackson.

    Jack admitted, making a face, that ten to one Daffyd Owens would only spend a week out of the year, max’, at the old MacMurray place, but the joker had pots, he’d never miss it. Well, yeah, it had been kind of a measure of desperation, suggesting he might like to buy it, but see, the first thing that had sprung to mind was some trendy’d snap it up and build a ruddy glass-walled holiday home on it and get permission to subdivide it so as ’is mates could put more glass-walled monstrosities on it, and that’d be the beginning of the end for Potters Road. And since Daffy was coming out to give some concerts out here, he’d need someone to look after the place for him.

    “We thought it’d better be a cook-housekeeper, if you can manage it, Gail.”

    “Can’t cook, eh?”

    “No, that’s right. Well, never had to look after himself at all, far’s I can make out.”

    Gail had been under the impression, admittedly not from anything she’d ever read in anything that called itself a programme from the Sydney Opera House, that Daffyd Owens was from a very ordinary lower middle-class Welsh family. Presumably with an ordinary mum that had done everything for him because he was a boy. Aw, gee, just like ordinary Aussie mums!

    “Right, got it, first his mum slaved for him and then his wives slaved for him,” she agreed drily.

    Jack cleared his throat. “Pretty much. Well, left home at seventeen, went to sea—’is dad went spare, he’d just got him into a nice choir, see? But yeah, his track record’s not too shit-hot: been married three times, Nefertite reckons.”

    “Uh—yeah. Three, eh?”

    Nodding, Jack proceeded to elaborate. Evidently Daffyd Owens’s first wife was a nice Welsh girl who dumped him and married someone else when he went to sea. Only when Daffy came back and his singing career started to look really promising she dumped the hubby in his favour. Which should have been fair warning—yeah. The poor sap bought her a shiny house on the outskirts of some ruddy English village with all mod cons and gave in to the nagging and had a kid with her even though she knew his career was gonna take him away from them most of the year. She ditched him and married a divorced stockbroker with a bigger, shinier house on the outskirts of the same village when the kid was about two, as it finally sank in that his career really did take him away most of the year. And, reading between the lines, that she couldn’t talk to a soul he knew, because they were all musical types. The second wife was apparently what Jack’s helpmeet called “an opera groupie.” Gail went into a sniggering fit at this point, gasping: “Got it!” Helpfully Jack added: “Lot of fancy notions in her head: he hadda buy her a huge fancy flat in Vienna, stuffed full of antiques. Don’t ask me why Vienna—Nefertite reckons it’s central.” She dumped him for a promising Italian tenor fifteen years his junior after five years of it. The third wife came along some years later: a terribly managing Danish woman on the management side of one of the opera houses Mr Owens had sung at. In Germany somewhere, according to Jack. Daffyd had had to get rid of the flat in Vienna, not to mention the string of girlfriends that went along with it, and buy, unquote, “one of those modern minimalist German flats.”

    At this point Gail interrupted the narrative with a faint: “Eh?”

    “Don’t look at me! Nefertite reckons there was nothing in it and it was all white.” Jack gave a faint sniff. “Did get a bit of clarification one night when we were watching Inspector Rex on SBS. Well, it’s mad, a dog couldn’t understand all that crap those jokers say to it, eh?—but we both like it anyway.”

    “Yeah, we like it, too,” admitted Gail weakly, trying to imagine the world-famous operatic contralto Antigone Walsingham Corrant watching Inspector Rex and failing dismally.

    “Anyway, it was on and she suddenly said: ‘That’s it, Jack! An awful minimalist German flat like the one Karen made poor Daffy buy!’ –Austrian instead of German, strictly speaking, but same diff’. Nothing in it, and all white,” he confirmed placidly.

    Gail managed a weak smile: she rather thought she knew the episode he meant, and she and Fee had both really liked that flat. “I get it. Well, go on. This Karen didn’t last, either?”

    “Nope. Ruled ’im with a rod of iron for about eight years—a record, right—and then ’e went off the rails with a married film star—well, minor, but well enough known for it to be all over the news. Never married her, mind: told ’is opera mates that she was even dumber than she looked and it was definitely a boobs job. Couldn’t carry a tune, either, so that musical of hers, the one she’d been in Cannes for when ’e met ’er, it musta been dubbed, like what ’e’d claimed all along.” Jack grinned at her. “Words to that effect!”

    “Yeah,” said Gail weakly.

    “Don’t worry, Daffy’s pretty well off, he can afford whatever ya like to charge him for a cook-housekeeper, Gail.”

    “It is pretty short notice, Jack. We’ll do our best, but it might have to be a student who can’t cook and hasn’t got much idea of cleaning.”

    “He can have his main meals up at the B&B’s restaurant, the cooking doesn’t matter so much. And it’s just for the long weekend and the week after, and he’ll probably stay in town the nights he’s singing. You found Vince any more applicants for Blue Gums, yet?”

    Gail sighed. “You can see the résumés, if you like. The short answer’s not much. We’ll have better luck with waitresses and so forth once the uni holidays have started.”

    “Yeah, only then they’ll all push off to enrol and find flats in the middle of February just when the ecolodge is full.”

    How true. There was, however, nothing Gail could do about this. What bloody Blue Gums Ecolodge needed, she was beginning to feel very strongly, was a married couple to do reception and help with the cleaning and waiting: pitch in where needed, in fact.

    “That nice Annabel of Vince’s doing okay?” –She wasn’t one of RightSmart’s, the ecolodge had got her last year through another agency. An agency which, luckily for RightSmart, had signally failed to find them any more housekeeping staff. Well, halfway to Outer Woop-Woop? No bloody wonder. Jack had reported favourably on her before: sounded like the only lady sea-changer in recorded history ever to settle down to a decent day’s work, actually. She had started off with a full-time assistant housekeeper, also provided by the other agency, but this had fallen through. Since then RightSmart had of course supplied Kathleen Gordon, but that had lasted a month almost to the day and then her old mum had had a bad fall, busted her hip, and Kathleen had regretfully decided that Blue Gums was too far out of Sydney and packed the job in.

    “Yeah, she loves it up there. She’s been managing fine all winter; we haven’t been that busy, mainly overseas tourists on their way to the Red Centre or taking a break from the tropical ecolodges in Queensland,” Jack noted drily, “only now the weather’s warmer we’re getting bookings from the Aussie lot that fancy a bit of pampering, and the place is too big for one lady to cope with on her own. Jacqueline, the French lady that does the massages, she’s doing okay, too. Well, bloody hard to take, but Annabel seems to put up with her okay. It’s just as well we’ve got her, ’cos half the punters we’re getting these days seem to speak French. Swiss ones, they are, from this specialist tourist agency Vince has latched onto.” He scratched his jaw. “You ever struck a person that stood on her rights about keeping her tips?”

    “Uh—would this be in the context of French lady masseuses, Jack?”

    “Yeah. Just about the first thing she said when she arrived. No, well, done her nut about the bus being late getting in to Barrabarra—it usually is, none of us were expecting it to arrive on time,” he noted by the by. “Only practically the first thing she said to Vince was she hadda keep her own tips. Nobody had said she couldn’t, in fact nobody had even mentioned the word tips.”

    Gail’s eyes twinkled. “When you do a fancy massage and your lady is very pleased with it, she may press a large denomination note into your greasy little hand. Probably depending on how much vodka she ingested the night before, but however. This Jacqueline—that is Zhack-leen, is it? Not Jack-qwuh-leen and not Jack-erleen?”

    “Yeah, yeah, knock it off,” he said, grinning broadly.

    Obligingly Gail knocked it off. “This Jacqueline would be counting on the tips to supplement her pay, you see, Jack. She wouldn’t want to pool them with the dining-room staff’s.”

    “What dining-room staff?” he said drily.

    “According to your website—admittedly my eyes had gone fuzzy, what with the fully organic lobster sprinkled with lemon myrtle on top of the serenity of the native bush and the glorious view of the azure waters of the tranquil inlet—but isn’t there a dining-room?”

    “Dining area. Yeah,” said Jack stolidly. “No waiting staff, though, they all moved on at the end of the summer holidays. –We would have if you’d of found us any.”

    “Look, we’re trying! We sent you two waitresses last week and a butler the week before, in case you didn’t notice!”

    “One waitress. Vince said the scent was coming off ’er at two hundred yards, his top boss would throw a fit. The butler bloke said we gotta be kidding and slung ’is hook.”

    “Just a minute, Jack.” Gail picked up her phone. “Christie, do you realise one of those waitress candidates you sent to Blue Gums Ecolodge last week never turned up? Okay; mind you do put it on her file. –Eh? Yeah, put them forward.” She hung up. “Christie’s got another two possible waitresses for you, though they don’t seem to have had any experience.”

    “Vince can train them up a bit, no problem!” he said eagerly. “And Daffy Owens reckons he’ll be back for Christmas, so if you find someone that wants the job you could offer her a six months’ contract. Money’s no object, you can offer her pretty much what you like.”

    “Short notice, Outer Woop-Woop, no shops, no cinema, and no hairdresser? I think we’ll have to!”

    “There are in Barrabarra,” replied Jack calmly.

    “Right; Ms Walsingham Corrant patronises the Barrabarra hairdresser, does she?”

    “Nope, but we been to the flicks over there a few times,” he said cheerfully, getting up. “Ta, Gail. See ya!”

    “See ya, Jack,” said Gail with a weak smile, letting him show himself out. Well, he’d been here often enough, he knew the way... Okay, possibly the Walsingham Corrant woman did—not deserve him, no. Almost deserve him? Have something in common with him? Well, uh, the flicks in Barrabarra and Inspector Rex, it wasn’t entirely unpromising. ...Unless she was just playing at it.

    After a period of glum sitting she tottered along to Laurie’s office.

    “Marlene said you had Jack in. He hasn’t lost his job, has he?” said her employee immediately.

    “No, don’t be an idiot, what raving maniac’d want to sack him, once they’d got him? No, um... Look, possibly it’s the strain of finding sixteen hundred waiters and kitchen hands for the spring rush that haven’t got black fingernails, but I... Ya do know he and Ms Walsingham Corrant are a couple, do you?”

    Laurie had never actually placed Jack—Christie had been the idiot responsible for the job with the man-eating Mrs Desirée Garven. “He’s a tall, very good-looking man, isn’t he? About fifty, maybe?”

    “Yes. Silver curls, very short. Native colouration faded denim.”

    “That cuts out a few dozen! Um, well, her and him were definitely together when I was up at Springer House B&B. He helped hand round plates of nibbles the night she sang.”

    “Yes,” said Gail heavily. “What in God’s name—I mean, of course he’s a really decent bloke—but what under the sun can they have in common?”

    Laurie had gone rather pink. “They’re in love with each other, Gail, even I could see that!”

    Gail’s mouth tightened. “You mean she’s fallen for his looks.”

    “It didn’t strike me like that at all. They seemed really comfortable together. –Well, that was what I thought!” said Laurie on a defiant note, looking at her employer’s face. “Was he okay?”

    “Yeah, yeah,” she said sourly. “He’ll be okay until she gets bored with playing house with him, presumably.”

    “Don’t be so pessimistic. It is the strain of all those black fingernails that think they’re gonna get waiting jobs,” said Laurie firmly.

    Gail sighed. “Something like that. Look, I’ve got to rush. Jack’s found us another job, can you take care of it? Cook-housekeeper, but the client’ll take just a housekeeper at a pinch. It’s up there, so it’ll be live-in. It’s only short-term.”

    “Right away?”

    “Starting just before Labour Weekend and going on for the next week. I’ve put the details in the database,” said Gail, vanishing.

    Laurie shook her head. “Pet,” she said under her breath. It was lunchtime, so she didn’t self-sacrificingly hurl herself into the new task, she got up, grabbed her handbag, went to the Ladies’, which was conveniently stationed off the back stairs—luckily on their floor, the next floor up had the Men’s—and went out to Reception.

    “You can stop panicking, her pet hasn’t lost his job, he’s got a new client for us,” she said drily to Marlene.

    “Eh? Aw, Jack, ya mean!” she recognised. “Good. Did he say how he’s getting on up at that ecolodge place?”

    “Don’t ask me, I never get to interview her pets. And look out, she’s on the warpath, she thinks another man-eater has got her hooks into him.”

    “Aw, heck, I thought she’d be in a real good mood all day!”

    Laurie was about to agree with that one, in spades, but a lady in droopy but expensive garments, in fact possibly silk garments, had just come in, clutching a new but, the experienced Laurie spotted immediately, cheap briefcase. ’Nother lady sea-changer? The reception area of RightSmart not being large, she grabbed one of Marlene’s post-it notes—why was it Marlene never ran out of them, even when the rest of the staff were screaming for them?—and scribbled “sea-changer?”

    Without so much as a blink, Marlene nodded. “Good afternoon, madam, welcome to RightSmart,” she cooed in a superior tone.

    Hurriedly Laurie took herself off before Marlene could decide she was free and shove the woman off onto her.

    “Do what, Drew?” said Iain limply to RightSmart’s personnel placement bod.

    “Butler. It’s only temporary, but there is the possibility of a permanent position, if you suit,” he said with a lovely persuasive smile.

    “Y—uh, not actually looking for a permanent thing,” he said limply.

    “No, that’s why Gail thought you might be interested in the short-term contract!” he said brightly with a lovely persuasive smile. “Top rates, and full board as well. With really excellent accommodation.”

    It was three hours’ drive out of town, for God’s sake! On the other hand, Scott had already pointed out, more than once, that he must be the only bloke in Australia without a car, and if he saved up—

    “Show me the money, Drew,” he said resignedly.

    ... Yeah. Okay. “Very well, Drew,” Iain agreed. “Temporary butler at Blue Gums Ecolodge over Labour Weekend.”

    “A cordong blue course? I see. I’m afraid the consultant who usually handles our catering personnel is unavailable at the moment,” said Christie loftily.

    “Oh,” said Veronica numbly. What did that mean? “Um, I could come back another day.”

    “That’s quite all right, Veronica,” said Christie kindly. “I can look after you. It’s just that I may not have the expertise to ask you the right questions, you see, so you’ll have to tell me all about it!” –Awarding her a bright, kind smile.

    “Um, the cordon bleu course?” she said numbly, failing to pronounce it as the girl had. “It was a fairly standard course, I think. Um, I’ve got the certificate here,” she added, scrabbling in her briefcase.

    “An English course! It looks like a very good course!” she approved.

    Veronica didn’t actually think it had been a very good course. Not according to what Mesdames Child and Grigson said, anyway. Not to mention her ancient copy of the Répertoire de la cuisine. However, the staff at Fridays Every Day had advised it, if she was serious about changing her profession, so she’d done it. Apart from a couple of middle-aged ladies doing it out of interest, not because they needed to work, as they both assured her, everyone else on the course had been under thirty—most of them under twenty-five—and all of the males without exception had been gay. Not that she’d expected anything else, really. All of them had seemed completely taken in by the food, too.

    “So what did you cook?” asked Christie on a firm note, as the candidate wasn’t volunteering.

    “Well, uh, the usual things, I suppose... I mean, we learned methods. Well, we cooked soufflés and sauces, and, um, we learned the right way to sauté and poach and roast and so forth... And how to do a bain-marie.”—The girl was looking sort of blank but encouraging, help!—“For the final exam we had to do five courses. Hors-d’oeuvre, they made us do a pâté for that. Not a—a classic pâté, it was chicken livers with pistachios,” she faltered.

    “Ooh, that sounds nice!”

    Really? Veronica had thought it sounded revolting, but it hadn’t turned out too bad. “Um, yes, I got a good mark for that. Then a soup: chicken consommé. The meat course was quails.”

    “I’ve had them. On cooked red cabbage, quite sweet. It was very unusual!” she beamed.

    Unusual was one word for it. Not that the cookery school’s preferred recipe was much better, though it was based on a classic one, true. “We had to do them with cherries. Quailles aux cerises, they call them. Sautéed, then flamed in a bit of brandy, then stewed in port and cherry juice. It’s served garnished with the cherries.”

    “It sounds lovely!” she beamed.

    Veronica smiled weakly. Lovely or sickening—mm.

    “So what veggies didja do with them?”

    Feebly Veronica reported on the small new potatoes, finished in butter, the turned carrots, and the summer squash, Christie brightening and agreeing the last were very up-market. She was surprised to learn the next course had been a salad but then so had Veronica been, nothing she’d ever seen in a fancy restaurant had encouraged her to believe there was anyone in Britain who knew that there was such a thing as a salad course. Christie decided it sounded a bit boring, so she didn’t tell her it was the only edible feature of the entire meal. The dessert was the cookery school’s version of Bombe Alaska: small block of sponge, even smaller block of rock-hard ice cream, smother in stiffly whipped meringue mixture, blitz with small blowtorch, serve immediately, surrounded with dots of icing sugar, a scattering of blueberries, three blue borage flowers and one, count it, one thin strawberry slice. Veronica got a good mark for hers, though not nearly as good as her neighbour’s mark: he had piped his meringue mixture on, in a configuration of ridged swirls that made the result look like, surprisingly enough, a piece of singed meringue with ridged— Oh, forget it. She’d got the piece of paper.

    Christie then verified that she would take a housekeeping job and she didn’t have a preferred area. “In that case,” she said briskly, “maybe you’d be interested in a very good position, with a really nice group of people, I think you’d like them, at an exclusive ecolodge. I can tell you it’s up Barrabarra way.” –Bright, persuasive smile.

    “Um, I see,” lied Veronica feebly.

    “Only three hours’ run to the city, and they offer excellent staff accommodation on top of a very generous wage. Mainly housekeeping, but any help you could give in the kitchen would be an advantage.”

    “Um, yes, I could do that. You—you mean they’d want me to live in?”

    “That’s right: a pleasant room with an ensuite, and all meals. And like I say, they’re really nice people. At the moment they’re still recruiting staff,” said Christie smoothly, “but eventually the applicant might be expected to supervise the other cleaning staff. You could manage that, couldn’t you?”

    “I think so. I have worked in an office with juniors under me.”

    “There you are, then!” beamed Christie. “Let’s see... Yes, I’d better just check it with our senior consultant, and then I can tell you the rate and everythink. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

    Help, it was like going to the hairdresser! Any minute now she’d be shoved under the drier on far too hot, so that she’d have a throbbing headache for the next two days and eventually be driven to wash the set out in cold water, at which point the hair would spring out in its usual wild mass of curls that Dennis would inform her was quite unsuitable for the office. Well, at least she didn’t need to worry about him and his whims and fancies any more! Gratefully she agreed she’d love a coffee, thank you, Christie.

    Some years back Veronica had made the mistake—she’d freely admitted it was a mistake at the time—of getting mixed up with a married man. She’d been twenty-seven, and it had lasted for nearly five years, even though various kind friends had told her there was no future in it, give it up, she wasn’t getting anything out of it and he was taking gross advantage of her. Any or all of the above. Veronica knew all that, and in fact she quite agreed with it all, but there was no-one else offering. Well, no-one unattached that might be willing to offer marriage. Why was it that she always fell for the wrong sort of man—the sort with that look in his eye, usually, and very good-looking, usually—and never for the sort that was likely to offer a home, security and a decent life? And why was it that that type never fell for her, what was wrong with her? Well, largely that she always fell for good-looking men whose eye very clearly told you that they knew what it was all about and then some. Presumably the nice, steady ones took one look at her and knew that she was that sort, and also knew that in her heart of hearts she didn’t want to be anyone’s household slave.

    Anyway, the thing with Dennis Haverstock had lasted five years and she finally decided that he was never gonna leave the wife—their kids that had been at secondary school when the affaire had started being now grown up, and in fact in the case of the eldest girl married and in the case of the second girl already broken up with the unsuitable boyfriend she’d been living with for three years, admittedly leaving school at seventeen to do so, but—yeah. Into the bargain he’d claimed that as this girl was in a very fragile state (having done exactly what she wanted all her life, unhindered by doting Daddy, please note), he couldn’t possibly break up the marital home now. Yeah.

    Very unfortunately they worked in the same office. That was, Dennis was half of the accounting firm of Kinnear and Haverstock and Veronica was one of the humble employees who did a great deal of the actual dog work while the bosses were out playing golf with contacts. For a while she was silly enough to believe that she could still carry on working there after the break-up. Well, nobody else at work knew they were involved, he’d been very, very careful about that and in fact forced her to move because her original flat had been two along from a block where the office building’s janitor lived. He hadn’t helped her find a nicer new flat, nor offered to help pay the rent of the more expensive new flat which was all she’d been able to find within a halfway reasonable distance of work, no. Not that Veronica would have let him contribute to her rent, but that wasn’t the point. At that stage she’d been so keen—not really on him, more on the sex, but it amounted to the same thing, nobody was offering her that on anything like a long-term basis but him—that she hadn’t minded moving at all. After going on five years of a ninety-minute journey to work entailing a train and a bus with a long wait between the two, and a ditto home, she had started to mind. And to mind the rent: she hadn’t managed to save a thing, the more so as, though he contributed nice bottles of wine and boxes of lovely but fattening chocolates, he never appeared to realise that those dainty meals of steak, snow peas and turned carrots preceded by a slice of good pâté and followed by a slice of good cheese cost a bomb. As did the alcoholic muck she had to buy to put in the syllabubs and zabaiones which were the only puddings apart from genuine crêpes Suzette that he’d condescend to eat. Of course if he put on a fraction of an ounce the puddings always got the blame—that was, she did.

    Eventually Veronica discovered that she and her puddings were as blameless as she’d suspected all along, because his wife fed him on much more fattening stuff, which he was ordered to eat or go without. Nobody told her this, she overheard two of the men talking about it at work. The partners didn’t normally socialise with the dogs in the office who did the dog work, but sometimes they graciously invited young Douglas Winters to a large dinner party if an extra man was needed. They were grooming Douglas for eventual partnership—not because of his ability, but because he was a male. Well, a young male with the right sort of look: they weren’t grooming poor old Paul Grant, who was plumpish, fortyish, plain, and a bad dresser, even though he knew tax law backwards, and they weren’t grooming nice young Sanjay Patel ’cos guess why, and they certainly weren’t grooming Madge Dawson, who’d been with the firm for years and knew more than all the rest of them rolled into one but was fifty-seven and could never have been even passably good-looking. Douglas had been to one of these dinner parties at the Haverstocks’ and so Hugh Kinnear was able to shoot his mouth off later to him about Mrs Haverstock’s cooking, very clearly not giving a damn if the interested Veronica, Paul and Sanjay overheard them. If they were eating alone the woman served up overcooked spaghetti and meatballs five nights a week and told him he could lump it or cook his own, and it was only because poor old Dennis played squash regularly and went to the gym three nights a week (one, Veronica corrected silently at this point) that he wasn’t the size of a house!

    Somehow knowing this made it a lot, lot easier for Veronica to tell Dennis flatly that she’d had enough. Though she didn’t throw it in his face, she wasn’t that sort of person. Dennis was furious, which assorted very ill with his earlier stance of cool rationality about being too old for her (forty-nine to her twenty-seven when the affaire had started) but so long as they were both agreed it couldn’t go anywhere— Veronica didn’t listen to the tirade, she just waited it out. Then she said flatly: “I mean it. Go away.”

    He blustered, but he didn’t have a leg to stand on, did he? Especially since he wasn’t contributing to the rent. So he went. She’d already changed the locks, so when he had the cheek to come round—not the following Wednesday, which would have been their usual day, but the Wednesday after that—that was that. He couldn’t make a scene on the landing because Mrs Howard from the next flat would have come out and known. So he pushed off. Veronica said loudly to herself: “Good riddance!” And then went and threw herself face-down on her bed and had a good cry. Nevertheless she remained adamant. She couldn’t have said why, at this moment, she’d had enough: there was no one incident that could have provoked such a change of heart; she just knew she had.

    Soon things began to change at work. Dennis was quite cunning about it: he usually didn’t address her directly, or complain about her work. What he did do was give her far more accounts to work on than he ever had in the past and then start saying to Hugh Kinnear had Miss Johnson finished such-and-such a job yet? Oh. Well, they’d just have to wait, then. After a couple of months of this Madge took her out for a drink after work and said: “You never knew old Mr Kinnear, did you, dear?”

    “Not really, no. Well, I’ve seen him at the office Christmas parties, of course.”

    Madge sniffed slightly. “Yeah, before the Alzheimer’s caught up with him, eh? –Selfish old sod. Well, back in the Dark Ages there was another girl accountant, about your age, dear, very pretty, too, and old David Kinnear and her had a thing. The whole office knew about it, but it was more than our jobs were worth to mention it. It lasted about four years and then she was lucky enough to meet a divorced dentist, and dumped old David. Her and the dentist were saving up for a house so she didn’t want to give up the job, but she had to in the end, they forced her out, piled the work on until she had a breakdown. Hysterics all over the office—juicy, it was. Paul had started with us by then, he’d remember. Shelley, her name was: pretty, eh? Very bright, but not in the same socio-economic class as the ruddy Kinnears and Haverstocks: her dad was only a clerk with Burnley and Staines in the High Street.”

    “The solicitors?” said Veronica faintly.

    “Right.”

    “My mum never even knew who my dad was,” said Veronica faintly.

    “Uh-huh. Actress, isn’t she, dear? Yes. Lot of it about in the Seventies. Well, not only amongst theatricals, of course.”

    “It was a commune. They believed in free love,” said Veronica faintly.

    “Yeah. Whereas the Kinnears and Haverstocks of this world don’t believe anything’s free and do believe in hanging on like mad to what you’ve got. Dennis’s wife’s dad’s a judge.”

    Veronica’s wide mouth tightened. After moment she said: “He never told me that.”

    “He wouldn’t. Not that His Honour’s a saint, either: he came to one of the Christmas parties back in the Dark Ages and— Never mind. I wasn’t always the size of a house and though I was never half as pretty as Shelley, I did use to have what it took. Your mum’s not the only one that believed in free love!” admitted Madge with a smothered laugh. “If I was you I’d pack it in before it gets to the stage where the buggers can claim you’re not entitled to a reference.”

    “Yes, I will. Thanks awfully, Madge.”

    And that was that. Veronica handed in her notice the very next day.

    The trip to stay with Mum’s lovely friend Meggie had been intended to give her a breather while she decided what she really wanted to do, but alas, all she’d decided was that Meggie’s nephew was a gorgeous hunk and she’d better steer well clear of him, because if he gave her one more look out of those knowing, clear grey eyes of his— Like that. The funny thing was he wasn’t nearly as technically good-looking as the men she usually fell for. Much blunter features. Possibly the knowingness of the eyes made up for that—yeah. Hitherto Veronica had been labouring under the delusion—it had been a delusion, she recognised sourly—that she couldn’t stand men with reddish hair. Well, strawberry blond, as his aunt said. Or very pale skin, either: he was a bit sunburnt after Iraq but with only a few very small freckles, it was one of those very clear skins that you sometimes, but very seldom, saw on people with red hair. There’d been a girl at school with skin just like it: Laura Knowles. All the other girls swore she dyed her hair, it was the most glorious red-gold shade, but she didn’t, her little brother had the exact same hair. Iain’s was lighter but he had the same pure, pale, skin and when he staggered into the kitchen in the morning in just an old tee-shirt and a saggy old pair of shorts the bits of muscly white upper-arm and, to be frank, muscly white thigh that showed were just so biteable... He was, in fact, the sexiest hunk that Veronica had seen for years. His aunt was right in saying he looked a bit like the new James Bond, too. It was the squarish face and the lower lip, mainly. And the profile was similar except that Iain’s full lower lip kind of curved under in the most delicious way, which Veronica’s very new DVD of Casino Royale informed her the actor’s didn’t. Well, at least if she’d gone dippy enough to go out and buy the DVD she hadn’t gone dippy enough not to give Iain Ross the cold shoulder! Small consolation—yeah.

    After several months temping in London for Fridays Every Day and the horrid shock of discovering Iain was, too, she’d decided to give it away—make a fresh start. Her accountancy qualifications apparently meant she met the requirements for a professional immigrant to Australia, so she filled in the papers, was accepted, and went. Not bothering to mention, since Australian officialdom didn’t seem at all interested, that she didn’t care if she never took on another accounting job as long as she lived.

    Christie burst into Laurie’s room. “Hey, I think I’ve got an assistant housekeeper for Blue Gums Ecolodge!”

    “Not that lady sea-changer?”

    “Nah, ’course not! Veronica Johnson, she’s been on our books for about six months, Drew was wasting her on some blimmin’ accounting job! She’s English, she’s come out here to make a new start, only she’s not a sea-changer, she’s only thirty-four. An’ listen, she doesn’t mind Outer Woop-Woop and living in! And she’s done cooking, too, a proper cordong blue course an’ everythink, so she might be able to help their chef!”

    Er—yeah. “Um, well, depends on whether he wants her encroaching on his little empire, I think.”

    “She’s not that sort of lady,” said Christie confidently.

    “She might do, then, if she’s prepared to put her back into it. We’ve got to send them somebody, after all.”

    “Yeah, we don’t want them to go to Reilly’s!” she reminded her.

    Laurie winced. “No, you’re right, we don’t.”

    “I might of found them a waitress, too, Marlene took a phone call a bit back from a girl that sounded okay, so I’ve got her coming in first thing tomorrow.”

    “Good. Um, better make sure she doesn’t mind helping with the beds and stuff.”

    Christie paused in the doorway. “Well, I would, but heck, even if she doesn’t wannoo, won’t they want her? I mean, they haven’t got any waiting staff and Gail reckons the manager, he’s waiting on!”

    “When did she say that?”

    “While you were at lunch. She got it off Jack Jackson. Have you looked at that other job he’s found for us?”

    Laurie sighed. “No, Christie, not yet, ’cos if we can’t place anyone up at Potters Inlet with Blue Gums Ecolodge, with the most luxurious staff accommodation in Australia, how on earth will we find anyone for another job up there?”

    “I’d look at it, he’s her pet!” she advised, going.

    Sighing, Laurie turned to her computer. Okay, jobs database. What the Hell had Gail said the client’s name was? Never mind, search on today’s date...

    The job details came up and Laurie just sat there looking at them, her heart hammering and her cheeks burning. Cook-housekeeper to Daffyd Owens? Top rate? For God’s sake, she’d pay them for the privilege!

Next chapter:

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