Invisible

9

Invisible

    The bus was late getting in to Barrabarra, but Iain hadn’t really expected it wouldn’t be. It wasn’t a luxury coach, just a lumbering old thing that did the back roads for about ten hours, finally ending up at Dubbo around fiveish if its passengers were lucky. Barrabarra was a scattered settlement of ageing bungalows featuring a very wide main road, a sagging old verandahed pub, and a lot of dust.

    “Someone collecting you, are they?” he said with laugh in his voice to the plump woman who was calling herself Brenda. He knew for a fact she wasn’t, but if she wanted to do a bit of moonlighting over the long weekend, no skin off his nose.

    “Yes, they said someone would. I don’t know who.”

    “In that case we’re in the same boat! I was just told that I’d be collected, no details—but I suppose you know that,” said Iain meanly.

    “Me? No, why should I?” she retorted, going very red.

    Iain’s eyes twinkled but he merely returned smoothly: “Potters Inlet’s a very small place; thought they might have mentioned it when you got the job.” He looked up and down the main road but nothing and nobody was coming their way. “Fancy the Sunshine Milk Bar?”

    “No, I don’t want to miss them, they said they’d collect me from the bus stop,” she replied on a grim note.

    “In that case let’s take turns.” She was still looking grim so he said: “I’ll go first, shall I?”

    He’d finished his ice and had managed to persuade her he was responsible enough to keep an eye on her bags while she was in the milk bar when a camouflage minibus drew up and a tall, middle-aged chap in jeans got out. “Hullo,” he said with a wary look in his eye. “You waiting for a lift to Blue Gums Ecolodge?”

    “That’s right. How are you, Jack?” drawled Iain.

    “Okay, ta,” he said feebly.

    Then there was a pause. Iain didn’t speak, it was too good.

    “What happened to the Beamer?” said Jack at last.

    Smoothly Iain returned: “I think perhaps you know the Beamer wasn’t mine but my delightful companion’s, on that occasion. Today I’m just an ’umble temping butler, come by bus.”

    “Does Vince know it’s you?” replied Jack baldly.

    “Well, Jack,” said Iain sweetly—he hadn’t expected it to get quite this good—“he does know it’s me, because he interviewed me in person, but not necessarily me, if you see what I mean.”

    “In that case I’d watch me bloody step, in your shoes,” returned Jack drily. He heaved up a case.

    “Uh—hang on, some of this belongs to a lady called Brenda who’s not headed for the ecolodge!”

    “Yeah, Brenda Worthing, that’ll be, I’m collecting her, too.”

    Iain’s shoulders shook. “Worthing? Are you quite sure it isn’t Bunbury?”

    Jack Jackson very obviously didn’t get it. “Nope; Worthing. Hand us that suitcase, wouldja?”

    Jack’s plan apparently was, he’d take Iain up to Blue Gums first and then nip back to the MacMurray place with Brenda, show her the ropes, since Daffy Owens wasn’t here yet. Yes, well, that’d give the soi-disant Brenda nice time to bolt, wouldn’t it, which judging by the look on her face she was about to. So Iain said nicely as he clambered out: “Bye-bye, Brenda. Don’t lose your nerve!”

    Presumably this back door labelled “Staff Only” was the staff entrance. He tried the screen door which was veiling it and surprisingly enough it opened.

    In the passage which was revealed there was a smell of food, so the kitchen couldn’t be far away, but it featured only closed doors bearing labels such as “Linen” and “Glassware”—ooh, and “Plant”, how exciting!—and at its head another passage, with several more doors.

    There was no answer from the first door, so he tried the handle. The door opened to reveal a small office containing a desk and cartons and cartons of wine. The next door was ajar, revealing a similar office except that there was no wine and several non-organic steel filing cabinets, not very ecological! The door after that bore a label, “Housekeeping,” but there was no answer to his knock. Okay, the other end of this corridor must lead to Reception, there had to be someone there!

    It did and there was. Vince Pettigrew in person.

    “You got here, Iain, great! Well, welcome to Blue Gums Ecolodge! –Hold on just half a mo’!” he gasped as the phone rang. “Reception, Vince speaking. –Oh, good morning, Mr Zweig. Yes, er, coffee, is that? I’m sorry, I don’t speak German.”

    “Give it here,” said Iain, grabbing the receiver off him. “Morgen, Herr Zweig.” He took the order, assured the man it’d be along in no time, hung up and said calmly to Vince: “Can you bung a pot of coffee on for Mr and Mrs Zweig? And a plate of pawpaw and mango, if you can manage it.”

    “Um, yes. Pawpaw and mango in German as well?” said Vince on a very, very weak note.

    “Definitely.”

    “Oh, thank God! It’s been terrible, none of us but Jacqueline speak any foreign languages and we can’t ask her to do Reception, and of course being so short-handed with it— Hang on, I’ll just ring the kitchen. –Hullo, Di, it’s Vince. ...Picking herbs? No, don’t disturb him; can you do a pot of coffee and a plate of pawpaw and mango for the Zweigs? Room 3. Hang on, I’ll just check.” He tapped at a computer terminal. “Yeah, thought so, don’t garnish it with strawberries, Mrs is allergic. Thanks, Di, dear, you’re a treasure!” He hung up. “She is a treasure, but she only does breakf— Oops, there goes another, they’re going mad!”

    “What language?” said Iain.

    “Well— Reception, Vince speaking. Just one moment, please. –Italian!” he hissed. “Mrs Bellini!”

    Iain held out his hand for the receiver. “Buon giorno, Signora Bellini...”

    “Thanks so much, Iain,” said Vince feebly as he reported that the Bellinis would like coffee and croissants for two with a platter of mixed fruit. “Um, it seems mean when you’ve only just got here, but could you possibly stay on the desk?”

    Iain’s eyes twinkled but he merely agreed: “Of course. –Cosmopolitan, innit?” He went behind the desk. You got a really good view of the ecolodge’s ground floor from here. Those giant raw clay arches holding up nothing were good. He had been thinking he might’ve misremembered them—exaggerated them in his mind—but nope!

    By the time Iain had taken three more orders for Blue Gums Ecolodge-type breakfasts, Vince resurfaced from the back regions, acknowledged thankfully that that was the lot, switched the phone over to his mobile, and led him off down the passage with the labelled doors, explaining: “Those are just storage, and that’s the kitchen on the other side, it adjoins the dining area, you see. –This way.” He opened a door that wasn’t labelled at all, and conducted him down a walkway that led to another block. The walkway consisted of panels of recycled glass interspersed with panels of louvered wooden shutters.

    “It has got natural ventilation,” Vince admitted as Iain remarked sweetly on it, “but actually it gets very hot in here, we’ve had to have the air conditioning ducted through to it.”

    “Zat so?” he said, grinning broadly.

    “Yeah,” agreed Vince limply. “Well, the architect’s English.”

    Iain collapsed in splutters.

    Smiling feebly, Vince said: “This is the staff block—that’s the laundry downstairs, and more storage. The bedrooms are upstairs.”

    He was in the bunkroom over to the left of the stairway, next to Vince’s suite, which occupied this end of the block. Next was a similar room for the maids and waitresses, only they didn’t have any at the moment, and at the other end of the block the suites occupied by the chef, the head housekeeper and the resident masseuse. Iain was prepared for this last: Leila had raved about the massage she’d had.

    There was time for a shower, yes, and as Sir Maurice, the boss of YDI, liked the male inside staff to wear neutral shades during the day, Vince had laid out a set on the bed for him. Gawdelpus. Organic creamish cotton shirt, organic natural cotton trousers, organic natural cotton waistcoat featuring thin vertical stripes. So did natural dyes come in grey-blue?

    “This’d be a butlerly waistcoat, would it?”

    “Don’t laugh, Sir Maurice reckons the guests appreciate it,” replied Vince gloomily.

    “Vince, I have to laugh, or I’ll burst!”

    “Yeah,” he agreed with a silly grin. “’Tis mad, but if it makes them happy, why not? And you did say you’d been a frog.”

    “Exactly! A frog, and a chicken! Okay, Vince, see you back at your office.”

    Back in Vince’s office he got what was pretty obviously the standard YDI spiel for new staff. Including the warning—not in so many words but bloody clear—that no matter how supercilious or cretinous or racist the guests came on as, one did not answer them in kind.

    “I’ve had supercilious and cretinous in my waiting and buttling jobs, but racist as well?”

    “Well, yeah,” admitted Vince unhappily. “You just have to ignore it, Iain. Well, we’ve had German ones that hate the French and French ones that hate the Germans and the Swiss as well, but I did sort of expect that. And see, some of the British ones, turns out they hate the Europeans and the Americans. And a lot of them hate the Japanese and the Chinese, even if they're doing business with them. And the Americans, they’re even worse!” He shuddered. “A couple of weeks back we had a couple that asked for a table in the dining area away from the European guests. They meant the British ones as well, I'm afraid.”

    “I’ll bear it in mind. Well, um, usual routine is they all sleep in till gone ten, then start ordering up extempore plates of room service tropical fruit and so forth, is it?”

    “Sort of, yeah,” conceded Vince, “except that if it’s a tour day they have to get up early, so we put on breakfast in the dining area. And if they’re checking out they often have to leave really early to get their plane, they might want room service around four. But don’t worry, I’ve worked out a roster, it’s quite fair. The cabana guests expect butler service, but unless they put in a special request they can’t have you to serve during the meal. Just take it over and make sure everything’s okay and they like the wine and all that. We’ve got a new waitress coming: unless we’re really busy back in the main building she can stay with them unless they’ve asked to be alone, only they don’t usually. Not even the honeymooners.”

    “Getting their money’s worth?” groped Iain.

    “Yeah, probably,” he said indifferently. “Most of them have lunch downstairs, only not until at least gone one, we’ve stopped offering it from twelve on. They can have it until three, but then we stop serving downstairs. That means some of them’ll still be there by five, mind you, even though there is the whole of the bar and lounge area for them to sit in.”

    “Right. Who serves there?”

    “Well, in the arvo I can do the phones, so that’d be you, Iain.”

    “Right,” said Iain weakly. “How do you fit room service in amongst all this, Vince?”

    Vince admitted that that had been a bit of worry, but mostly they only wanted it like between ten and twelve, or in the evening.

    “Uh-huh. Can you define evening, in this context? Five till three, perchance?”

    He smiled feebly. “It’s not that bad, only sometimes ya do get them asking for drinks or something peculiar in the middle of the night. But they do start knocking back the cocktails at around five, yeah. Hardly any of them go for the organic ones that are non-alcoholic.”

    “How can a cocktail be— I’m not asking! I presume these three ack-emma sprees are rostered?”

    “They are now you’re here,” admitted Vince thankfully.

    Yeah, right. It didn’t sound as if he was gonna get any time off, roster or not, did it? He glanced through the sheaf of bumf Vince had given him. “I see, and if any of them have an emergency in the middle of the night, wake you up. What constitutes an emergency?” he asked meekly.

    Seriously Vince replied: “Basically fire, a heart attack or a stroke. If it’s the plumbing, get onto me, too.”

    “Uh-huh. Requests for strange food and drink aren’t emergencies, then,” noted Iain dulcetly.

    “No. And if a lady chucks something at the man, it isn’t an emergency unless the bleeding won’t stop.”

    “Yuh—uh, God,” he muttered. “What if she chucks something at yours truly?”

    “It’s in your folder. Just get me straight away. There could be a law suit, you see. The guests don’t have the right to physically abuse our staff. And if they start swearing, leave the room and get me immediately. We haven’t had one of those yet, but you never know.”

    “I will do my best not to provoke them into chucking things or swearing, Vince.”

    “Yes, ’course. This is meant to cover all the contingencies. It’s for your protection as well as the firm’s, you see. You’ll soon settle in! The guests just expect the service to be prompt and kind of invisible,” said Vince kindly.

    Trying very hard not to laugh, Iain agreed: “Right-ho! Invisible it is!”

    Mr Hughes and Mr Petersen in the cabana had rung and demanded to see someone in authority, so Iain deputed himself and went over there.

    Mr Hughes and Mr Petersen had really expected better, from an establishment of this class, than rodents in the roof! “Disgusting!” elaborated Mr Petersen, shuddering all over. Iain could see he was shuddering all over, because all he was wearing was an organic cotton terry-cloth robe—courtesy of Blue Gums Ecolodge, it bore the twisted gum leaves logo on the breast—open over a lime-green pair of silk boxer shorts. Possibly meant to be bathers. It was not a particularly lovely sight, as he was a tall, cadaverous, white-skinned Englishman—of the sort that made you understand why the word “Pommy” was used as a pejorative term by the sort of Australian encountered in pubs.

    In the roof... Oh! “This was last night, was it? –Yes. They wouldn’t have been rodents, sir, they’d have been marsupials.”

    “That isn’t funny!” snapped Mr Hughes, turning purple. Purpler. Mr Hughes was a short, pudgy, pink-skinned Englishman of the sort given to turning purple when annoyed. God had been merciful today and his plump frame was veiled in a caftan which gave the impression of having been handwoven in a third-world country by vision-impaired weavers with crippled hands. That or the thread had been spun by vision-impaired spinners with crippled hands. Or both. The caftan was mercifully in shades of grey.

    “I’m sorry, Mr Hughes, it wasn’t intended to be funny. The noises would have been on your roof, not in it. They’re the native possums. They’re a protected species.”

    “We haven’t seen any native animals,” said Mr Petersen on a suspicious note.

    “Well, no, you hardly ever see them during the day, they’re nocturnal,” replied Iain easily, with a mental prayer of thanks that he’d actually listened to old Bert Sugden’s earful about the bloody possums. “They’re vegetarians, but they do have large claws, so if you should spot one on your roof, don’t try to handle it, will you?”

    “No,” he said on a dubious note. “But what were they doing on the roof?”

    Oh, lawks. “They’re very playful creatures: they were probably just sliding down it.”

    “Jeremy, we’ll have to keep watch for them tonight!” said Mr Hughes in excited tones.

    It was Iain’s bet that your average possum would hear the two of them approaching ten miles off, but so be it. He allowed them to drag more information about possums out of him and finally escaped, to bear the chef the glad tidings that Mr Hughes and Mr Petersen would love to try the native seafood “bugs” for lunch.

    The chef was a young, slim, fair man. Undoubtedly gay, but never mind, he seemed to be quite a pleasant chap. “They’re frozen,” he warned.

    “Need-to-know only, Alfie,” replied Iain with a grin.

    “Yeah, hah, hah!” he agreed with a snigger. “In the cabana?”

    “Yes, they’re here for complete rest and relaxation, unquote.”

    “They’ll get lots of that with the bloody possums doing their thing. Ya can get humane traps, y’know?”

    “Mm, but my landlady’s dad informs me that they head right back to their territory even if you let them out twenty miles away. That or their place is immediately taken by their sisters and their cousins and their aunts.”

    “That’d be right!” he agreed cheerfully. “Okay, frozen Balmain bugs for the cabana!”

    “Uh—would it be possible to have fresh ones?”

    Alfie’s parents were Londoners but he’d grown up in Sydney. He eyed Iain drily. “Ya mean like not frozen? Well, sort of. Send Jack down the fish market at crack of dawn, shove them in an esky with some chiller bags—they’ll of been sitting on ice anyway, mind you—get them back here before it starts to warm up?”

    “You mean before nine, do you?” said Iain drily.

    “’Tisn’t hot today,” replied Alfie cheerfully to the subtext. “It’s the humidity.”

    “Yeah. Well, in the first place I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that Jack should get up at three in order to get fresh seafood for the guests’ ruddy stomachs, and in the second place seafood that’s had a three-hour drive in the humidity, esky or not, strikes me as a no-no.”

    “You said it,” he agreed very, very mildly.

    Grinning, Iain returned to the reception desk, where Annabel Marks, the head housekeeper, was filling in for him. “Any calls?”

    “No, thank goodness!” she said with her lovely smile. She was a pretty, slim, fair woman—delightful figure, very sweet personality. She put Iain forcibly in mind of Coralie from Coralie Catering & Cuisine, and not merely because she was about the same age.

    “Mm, well, they’ve all had their brekkies sent up. Vince mentioned yesterday that the requests for room service slacken off around now.”

    “Yes, that’s right,” she said as Vince bustled in. Iain was about to report on the possum situation but Jacqueline Corbière appeared and sank her claws into the manager.

    Ready to give Mrs Bellini a massage now. Vince was seen to flounder. “Um, she did ask for one yesterday, yes, it’s in the computer, but she’ll have barely digested her breakf—”

    “I shall ring ’air.”

    Vince was seen to wince. “Of course, but Jacqueline, you will bear in mind that the client’s wishes must come first, won’t you? It’s at her convenience.”

    “Beut naturally,” she replied with icy dignity. “May I use your phone, Iain?”

    “Certainly. Room 2.”

    She duly rang. You couldn’t have defined the subsequent interchange as bullying, exactly, but there was no doubt that it was Jacqueline who’d decided that in fifteen mee-noots would be entirely suitabule. She then briskly rang round the other rooms, apart from the Cavendishes in Suite 4, who’d only arrived at one-thirty this morning, horribly jet-lagged—Vince having to put his hand physically over the phone to stop her while he explained in words of one syllable. Oh, boy!

    She bustled off looking officious, so as it was just them chickens Iain said sweetly: “That’s a rod for your back, Vince. Does the phrase ‘watch her like a hawk’ spring to mind?”

    “Don’t be awful,” said Annabel faintly. “She—she can be a bit of a trial, but she’s a wonderful masseuse and the clients really appreciate her service.”

    Yes, well, Leila certainly had, this was true. The woman was about five-foot-two, looked as if a puff of wind would blow her away, and had the personality of a Sherman tank. Iain had encountered the syndrome in other Frenchwomen, yes, but he hadn’t expected to bump into it Downunder! Anything more unlike the endemic Aussie laissez-faire could scarcely be imagined! And if the Anglo-Celtic majority found her very hard to take, how the Hell did she put up with them?

    “The guests keep asking for massages and Sir Maurice insisted we hadda get a permanent masseuse,” said Vince on a grim note. “Anyway, don’t worry about her, it isn’t your responsibility, Iain.”

    “But what if I’m sitting here on me ownsome and she comes up and wants to ring a guest to bully them into a massage at crack of dawn?” he said plaintively.

    “Don’t be silly,” replied Vince repressively.

    “Or a tai chi,” said Iain sadly. “They’re awfully crack of dawnish. –What are they?” he added plaintively.

    Vince was seen to swallow. “Give it a rest,” he said feebly.

    “They're those Chinese exercises. I’m afraid I always tend to get them mixed up with dim sums,” said Annabel tranquilly.

    Iain choked. “Uncle,” he conceded weakly.

    “Yeah, hah, hah!” said Vince on a gleeful note. “Now, let me see... I think you’d better just hang on here, Iain. I’ll just show you how to enter the housekeeping details on the computer.”

    “Whether they've had it, he means,” said Annabel kindly. “I’ll be over in the laundry, Vince.”

    “I can see that housekeeping could be a problem, with this sort of establishment,” said Iain mildly, as she disappeared down the corridor.

    “That’s right. The house rule is, if they’re not out by three o’clock, we knock and ask nicely if it’s convenient. If they haven’t had housekeeping by the time they ring for food, whoever’s doing Reception needs to ask if they’d like it. See, you call up their room number...”

    Iain watched obediently. “I see,” he said at last. “What about the cabana, Vince?”

    “Same routine.” Vince made a face. “If they never get out of the bed one can’t change it! Oh—their spa pool, it’s on the patio, it is nominally a housekeeping responsibility, but Jack looks after it, ya don’t need to check up on him. –Don’t worry, only the seagulls over the inlet can see it!” he added with a giggle.

    “And possibly the possums lurking on the roof,” murmured Iain.

    “You said it, they’re driving us mad, poor Jack’s up there checking the solar panels every other day!”

    “Uh-huh. Mr Hughes and Mr Petersen had a moan to me this morning about hearing them on the roof—don’t panic, I’ve got them convinced they’re fascinating examples of your unique Australian fauna—but perhaps Jack had better check the panels again. –Decent chap, isn’t he?”

    “Yes, lovely man!” said Vince enthusiastically. “Oh—that reminds me. His partner is a singer. Classical music. She gives the occasional concert just down the road at Springer House B&B and any of our staff can go. Just check with me first. They’re usually in the early evening, we might need you to wait on.”

    The strangely Germanic term “wait-on” being the Australian vernacular usage for “wait tables”, Iain acknowledged silently that that was pretty much what he’d thought. Blow. Well, blow depending on who this classical music singer was. “This singer, who is she, exactly?”

    “She’s called Nefertite but Jack did say it isn’t her real name. Hang on... No, dunno. Well, her brother, he’s the chef at Springer House B&B, his name’s Walsingham, so that’d be her maiden name.”

    “Antigone Walsingham Corrant,” said Iain feebly. “I did hear she was living out here.”

    “Yes, that’s it.”

    “Right,” he said feebly. “Next qu— No, forget it. If he’s her brother, he’s her brother.”

    “Alfie likes him,” he said helpfully.

    Iain’s mouth twitched in a pale, mirthless smile. “David Walsingham?”

    “Yes, that’s right!” agreed Vince brightly.

    David Walsingham was a serious composer, for God's sake! “Presumably he knocks off the odd symphony in between the soufflés and the ragoûts,” said Iain lightly.

    “He did tell Alfie that inspiration doesn’t strike that often and he’s always loved cooking!” agreed Vince. “And Gil told me—Gil Sotherland, he runs Jardine Holiday Horse Treks, just the other side of the Springer property, quite a few of our clients have been on their treks—Gil told me that composing doesn’t bring in much money, and you see, David’s wife, Dot, she’s Deanna Springer’s sister, so they agreed to join up with them!”

    “Uh, Gil Sotherland, did you say?” croaked Iain.

    “Yes: the property belongs to his nephew and his mother, but he runs the enterprise, you see. He’s a really lovely man. He used to be in the British Army, too. Do you know him, by any chance?” he asked brightly.

    “I’ve met him. I did hear he was doing something with horses out here but I didn’t realise it was up here.”

    “Well, isn’t that a coincidence!” beamed Vince happily.

    Yeah, wasn’t it?

    The following day was Saturday, and with the long weekend now under way the ecolodge would have been very busy, except that this afternoon Jack had mercifully taken the lot of ’em for a launch trip. The shallow inlet which gave the settlement of Potters Inlet its name came right up to the promontory on which Blue Gums Ecolodge was perched, and apart from the horse-trekking down the road, or the crafts centre also down the road, the launch trip was pretty much It for the local activities. Well, true, most of the clients didn’t come for activity, they came for complete rest and relaxation, pampering and gourmet organic food. Massages with therapeutic oils and tai chi optional.

    Annabel was discovered leaning on her part of their joint balcony in the staff block, gazing at the view of ranks upon ranks of steel-blue hills under a great bowl of blue sky. Iain went along to her, smiling. “Glorious, mm?”

    “Yes, it’s lovely,” she agreed with a sigh.

    They gazed at the hills in silence for a while.

    “Those new ones in Suite 5,” she said abruptly.

    Iain’s shoulders shook slightly. “Uh-huh?”

    “They really are eco-friendly,” said Annabel in tones of horrified awe.

    Alas, Iain gave in and laughed till he cried. “Yeah!” he admitted at last. “Aren't they?”

    “Mrs asked me about the linen this morning,” she revealed weakly.

    “Uh-huh. This would have been at crack of dawn, just before they went for the eco-friendly run in their organic cotton running shorts, would it?”

    “Just after,” she said limply.

    Iain went into renewed paroxysms. “Yeah! I had to tell them the fully organic cocktails are fully organic and non-alcoholic.”

    “But are they?” she quavered.

    “Don’t ask me, haven’t had to serve one yet!”

    Annabel looked worried. “They asked for organic tomato juice, so I looked at the bottles and cans in the storeroom, but, um, well, they do say things like ‘pure tomato juice’ and ‘no preservatives’ and, um, some of them have got that Heart Association tick”—Iain didn't ask—“but none of them actually say ‘organic’.”

    “Possibly we ought to ask Alfie to juice some organic tomatoes for them, then.”

    “It’d be an awful waste of tomatoes,” she replied seriously.

    “The whole thing is an awful waste, especially when you think what it must cost to grow organic produce, but this is apparently the way twenty-first-century commerce wags.”

    “Mm.”

    “At least none of it—or as little as the company can manage—is produced by slave labour.”

    “No, that’s true,” she agreed, smiling at him.—Luverly, wasn’t she? Iain found he was smiling back.—“Jacqueline was telling me all about those big coffee plantations in South America, they sound terrible.”

    “Er—Annabel, in the first place Jacqueline’s a certified organic nutter; and in the second place, would those South American Indians have any jobs at all if it wasn’t for the coffee plantations?”

    “It’s not them, so much, it’s the ones that lose their homes when the rainforests are cut down.”

    “Mm. Well, if you feel bad about it don’t drink coffee. Especially not instant coffee: has she told you the horror tales about the Nescaff company and third-world babies?”

    “Yes. I have given it up, only who knows who owns the other brands behind the scenes?”

    “Good point,” he agreed drily. Why him? He had no intention of coming on like a father figure or, for that matter, a father confessor: for one thing, he was younger than she was, for God’s sake!

    “What’s the matter?” asked Annabel, looking at his expression.

    Iain shrugged. “Nothing. –Got a little black dog on me shoulder, actually.”

    Annabel gave his shoulders a startled look.

    “Not literally! No, um, feeling sour because there’s something I oughta do and I’m not doing it.”

    “I see!” she said with a smile. “Can I ask what it is?”

    “Going over to the horse trekking place to say hullo to Colonel Sotherland,” he said glumly.

    “Gil, the man who runs it? He’s very nice.”

    “Well, yeah, Alfie told me the same thing, but he’s never had a strip torn off him with full military honours!” said Iain bitterly.

    “Oh,” said Annabel blankly.

    “I was a humble and extremely insubordinate lieutenant and he was a major in charge of a large part of a joint op of our various units and, uh, well, little Iain just happened to be somewhere when he’d been ordered to be utterly elsewhere. It, um, turned out well as far as the op was concerned, but, um, well, he was decent within his lights. Gave me the choice of being brought to the colonel’s attention for a commendation or not, as it were.”

    “But surely, if you deserved a commendation—”

    “No, bad little fellows that disobey orders for whatever reason get the chop when they’re brought to the colonel’s attention, Annabel.”

    “I see...” She thought about it. “So he should really have reported you?”

    “Yeah.”

    “I think you should go and say hullo,” she said definitely.

    Gee, Iain had thought she’d see it like that. Probably why he’d brought the subject up, actually. “Yes, you’re right: I should.”

    Annabel’s eyes twinkled. “Go now, they’re all on Jack’s launch trip and Vince has given you the whole afternoon off, hasn’t he?”

    “Oh, God,” he groaned. “Okay, I will, but it’s not because I’m taking your advice, it’s because I can’t stand the agony of not going.”

    “You’ll feel much better afterwards!” said Annabel with a laugh as he trudged off.

    He wouldn’t, but he was doing it, ’cos he couldn’t possibly feel worse.

    He walked down the road: he had a strong feeling that if he took the scenic route, along the low cliff top above the little creek that ran into the inlet, he’d chicken out and just lurk in the bush. Potters Road was sufficiently bumpy and rutted to satisfy any masochist, so that little black dog on his shoulder stayed well on form. ...This was it. A steep gravelled drive, a new-looking letterbox, and a rather nice hand-painted sign reading “Jardine Holiday Horse Treks Pty Ltd”, with a picture of a horse’s head. Iain went slowly and glumly up the drive. It turned a corner, rose again and broadened out to reveal a pleasant old verandahed bungalow, white with a pale green trim and a startling red colour-steel roof.

    He went up onto the verandah and knocked but nothing happened. Gee, good excuse to run away, wasn’t it? Okay, this was the depths of the countryside and even back in suburbia Daph, Cotty, old Bert et al. usually used their family’s and neighbours’ back doors. Iain went glumly round the back. It was even less exciting than the gravelled sweep at the front, featuring a dusty flat area and a crazy-paving path made of large, misshapen bits of concrete leading over to a large grey-green hut. However, it also featured a plump woman with a mop of untidy light brown curls with strange bronzy-green lights in them sitting on the back steps, so he said gloomily: “Hullo. Mrs Sotherland, is it?”

    “No, I’m his sister-in-law,” she replied. A doubtful look came over her face and she added: “Um, if you do mean Gil, that is.”

    “Yes, actually; who else?” replied Iain gloomily.

    “Well, I was married to his brother, but that was over twenty years ago: it was his father’s idea, so as to make sure Phil was a Sotherland if he turned out to be a boy. Which he did,” she ended calmly.

    “Er—yeah. Oh, yes, of course, you’re Colonel Sotherland’s nephew’s mother,” said Iain as hazy memories of that encounter with Martin Richardson in London, what seemed like a lifetime ago, began to surface.

    “Yes. Are you one of his friends from the regiment?” she asked with a lovely smile.

    “No,” said Iain sourly. There was a short silence. “Um, sorry,” he said with an effort. “Not a friend. Did know him very slightly when I was in the Army—different regiment, though.”

    “He’ll be very pleased to see you,” she said placidly. “He’s just up the back in the horse paddock, giving a riding lesson. Tell him there’ll be a cuppa going in twenty minutes or so.”

    “Er—yes. Wilco,” said Iain feebly, heading on up the back.

    Um, better view of huge tin shed—help, with another one tacked onto it at right angles via a sort of curved tunnel affair—barbecue area, nice awninged shady spot with picnic tables, um, view of bush—oh. Horse paddock, yeah. Railed, yet. Glumly he went and leaned on the railing. The little girl in the pink tee and large straw sunhat on the pony wasn’t him, the middle-aged woman in the yellow tee and riding helmet on the fat brown mare wasn’t him, the very small boy in the camouflage tee and riding helmet on the second pony wasn’t him, so gee, the tall, straight-backed chap on the fat dappled thing must be him.

    After a bit he caught sight of him and, ordering the victims just to ride round slowly in a circle, came over to him.

    “Shouldn’t that little girl have a helmet on?” said Iain sourly.

    “Under the sunhat!” he replied with a laugh. “Iain Ross, isn’t it? Welcome to Jardine Holiday Horse Treks.”

    “Thanks.” He watched as he dismounted and then, as he hadn’t been using his left hand at all and in fact had had the reins in his right hand, which back in the day had been the riding crime par excellence, asked: “How’s the chest, Colonel Sotherland?”

    “Call me Gil,” he replied with a smile, holding out his hand. “Doesn’t bother me at all, thanks.”

    Iain shook, perforce. “Then why were you holding the reins in your right hand, or did my bloody paternal relations have it all wrong after all?”

    “It’s ’cos of me tin shoulder, Mummy,” he said in a silly voice.

    Iain swallowed. “Right. Sorry.”

    He made a face. “Got a pin in it. Various quacks have told me if I’m a very good boy and wear the elastic bandage all the time it’ll tra-la-la, but no joy so far. Can’t fucking grip properly. I’m left-handed, of course. Clear?”

    “Yeah. Sorry.”

    “Don’t be, I’m very, very happy!” he said with a laugh. “Up with the lark every morning thanking Allah for telling that Iraqi to aim his submachine gun just right!”

    Iain smiled feebly. “Good. Uh—report that back to Major Richardson, shall I?” he asked, starting to get his second wind.

    “I wish you would, Iain!” he replied with feeling. “Half the bloody regiment seem to think I’m at death’s door!”

    “Um, well, I wouldn’t say he gave me that impression, in fact he said you were enjoying the challenge, if I remember rightly. Well, think that was before the whiskies, but, um, yeah, pretty much.”

    “Yes, having the time of my life. Planning to get married next March, ’smatter of fact!”

    “Congratulations.”

    “Thanks,” he said, grinning madly. “So what are you doing in this neck of the woods?”

    “Stint as butler up the road at Blue Gums Ecolodge.”

    “Oh, jolly good: Jack’s temp agency found you a job, did they?” the bloody man returned.

    Iain found he’d gone very red. “How the Hell—?”

    He rubbed his jaw, looking rueful. “Longish story. Look, let me finish this lot off and then we’ll have a chin-wag, eh? Catch up a bit.”

    Iain’s plan had been to say hullo nicely and then escape. “Uh—sure,” he agreed feebly. “Oh, your sister-in-law said to tell you there’ll be a cuppa going soonish.”

    “Jolly good!” He remounted, still without using his left hand, and rode over to his pupils. Er—yeah, the little girl did have a riding helmet on, Iain saw as the class dispersed and the middle-aged woman forcibly removed the child’s large sunhat to an accompaniment of a shout of “I can do it, Nanna!”

    Uh—blast, the next part of the routine seemed to be to give the nags a bit of a rub-down. Resignedly Iain clambered over the fence and went to help.

    “Thanks,” said Sotherland as, not without further shouts of “I can do it!” from both kids, they were all finished off and dispatched to wander off into the paddock with pats on the rump. Um, well, the dappled thing wasn’t taking the hint, it was coming over to the fence with them, but they were all finished.

    “Get off, Dappo!” said Sotherland with a laugh as the thing nuzzled hopefully at his pocket.

    “They’re very tame,” the middle-aged dame informed Iain.

    “Mm, mainly ex-polo ponies,” agreed Sotherland, giving the grey thing a shove. “Spoilt rotten’s the phrase, though, Marion, not ‘very tame!’”

    This went down very well, and with a lot of coy giggling and urging of the kids to thank Gil nicely for the lesson she finally removed them and herself.

    That left, Iain, Sotherland, Sotherland’s bad shoulder and a lot of horse tack perched on the railed fence, didn’t it?

    “Get off! I’ll do it!” said Iain on an irritable note, grabbing a saddle.

    “Ooh, you are bossy, Mummy! No, tuck one under me good wing, see?” he said, suiting the action to the word.

    “Yeah. How the fuck do you manage when it’s just you?”

    “Well, usually the pupils aren’t quite that small, you see! –This shed, just over here. We keep it locked to discourage the adventurous, not to say cretinous, from riding out unescorted, falling off on their bonces and completely nullifying our insurance agreement.”

    “Jesus.”

    “That’s what Phil and I said when we saw the premiums,” he agreed drily, feeling in his pocket with his bad hand. He then set his saddle down and was about to muck round with the padlock, but Iain snatched the key off him.

    “But it’s good for me to exercise the arm, Iain,” he said plaintively.

    Grinning, Iain replied, holding up his handful of key and padlock: “Talk to the hand, Gil,” and Gil collapsed in a fit of splutters of the most agonising kind.

    “Always wanted to work that one off really appropriately,” Iain admitted, grinning like a maniac.

    “Ow! Don’t! Ooh, me ears and whiskers!” he gasped, patting his chest.

    Iain’s grin faded. “Jesus, are you okay?”

    “Mm.” Gil wheezed for a bit. “Fine! Just a slight lack of lung power. Don’t look like that, the more exercise the chest gets the better, in fact one helpful quack’s worked out a little routine of mild weight-lifting for me.”

    “This’d be a helpful quack from the Big Smoke that’s never hefted a bloody saddle in his life, would it?”

    “Got it in fourteen,” he agreed mildly.

    “Yeah. How many horses have you got?”

    “Well, not counting the ponies and my nephew’s very own Palomino, fourteen, actually,” he replied meekly. “Plus one donkey, we call him One Donkey.”

    Iain choked slightly but managed to counter this with a grim: “Who grooms them?”

    “My nephew and his girlfriend, you ass! I’m occasionally allowed to give ’em the finishing touches.”

    Yeah, well, maybe. Iain didn’t say anything more, just got on with stowing the tack,

    “Martin Richardson mentioned he bumped into you in London,” said Sotherland very, very lightly as they strolled back to the house.

    “Keeps in touch, does he?” replied Iain, not managing not to sound sour.

    “Mm: off and on. Occasionally sends me an email—that kind of thing. Known him since school, y’know.”

    “I see,” said Ian limply. He didn’t bother to keep in touch with any of the chaps he'd known at school, but then Gil Sotherland was that type. Conscientious was the middle name.

    Back at the house he made sure Iain and the sister-in-law were properly introduced. Honey Jardine. She’d set out a plate of biscuits on the kitchen table. –It was, incidentally, a very ordinary kitchen. Freshly painted, with new vinyl flooring—a really awful mock Spanish tile pattern that leered at you—and the stove and chest freezer looked fairly new, but nothing else did. A bit like old Bert Sugden’s, in fact. Probably like what Daph Harris’s had been before she’d had it done up. Except that there was no serving hatch through to the dining-room. The bungalow was probably about the same vintage: about eighty or ninety years old.

    “Look,” said Iain heavily, “before I eat your salt, just tell me why you weren’t surprised to see me and why you immediately mentioned the temp agency.”

    “Arnott’s. They are full of salt, actually,” said Honey in a detached voice, looking at her plate of biscuits. “Go on, Gil, why weren’t you surprised to see him?”

    “Perhaps I’d better say right from the start that I most certainly didn’t give your name as a referee,” said Iain grimly.

    “I know,” he said, sitting down. “Look, for God’s sake sit, man, you’re not on report!”

    Okay, he could stand here like a tit or obey orders and sit down. Iain sat.

    “Have you ever noticed,” said Honey thoughtfully, also sitting, “that they never put anyone on report in Star Trek?”

    “Old videos. Hundreds of ’em. Passed on by a neighbour,” explained Sotherland, poker-face. “No, well, they decided to make the captain chappie sympathetic after having taken the decision to make him an icy-cold Brit, you see.”

    Honey collapsed in splutters, nodding madly. “Yeah! –The Next Generation, Iain!” she gasped. “Sorry!”

    Iain just waited.

    Gil explained mildly: “When you signed on with the temp agency—pour the tea, Honey, my dear, we don’t need paint stripper today—when you signed on, the boss lady—talking of being on report, hate to be up before her!—she had a little think about your age relative to your rank. Didn’t know anybody but Jack who knew someone who’d been in the British Army and might be able to give her the good gen, so she rang him and he got me to ring her. She was extremely discreet, didn’t mention your name, but she did say Martin Richardson had given the captain in question a reference, so I put two and two together.”

    “He asked her straight out if it was you,” said Honey placidly. “Have you ever done any Latin?”—Iain nodded numbly, goggling at her.—“It was a nonne question, of course, he did it deliberately. Do you take milk, Iain? It’s Twining’s English Breakfast, but I think it is a bit stewed.”

    “In that case I will have milk, thanks,” he said limply. “Well, that clarifies it, Honey. Apart from the small matter of why RightSmart ever offered me a job at all.”

    “That would have been Gil,” she said placidly. “He’s very fair.”

    “I don’t think I said anything that would have been likely to give her the wrong impression,” he said lightly. “Have a salty Arnott’s whatever-it-is.”

    “A pale fawn Something,” said Honey with a grin. “Rosemary, that’s Gil’s fiancée, she sometimes makes a batch of real biscuits, only unfortunately the bunkhousers gobbled the last lot up. I was thinking how to define the difference. If you imagine holding a long piece of string that stretches right up to the horse paddock, with Rosemary’s biscuits up the far end of it and cardboard at our end, the bought ones’d be about on the windowsill.”

    “Very graphic!” admitted Iain with a weak laugh, taking a pale fawn Something. “They add sugar as well as salt and bake ’em for two days to make quite sure all the moisture’s evaporated,” he concluded, having swallowed with some difficulty.

    “Mm!” she agreed, twinkling at him.

    Nice, wasn't she? If he’d been Sotherland‘s age he’d have settled for her, why bother to get engaged to someone else, even if she could bake real biscuits?

    He got the answer to this about half an hour later when the “short trekkers” returned from their short trek, led by the fiancée in question, Rosemary. At a conservative estimate half Sotherland’s age, and a complete dish. Small but all curves in the right places, huge blue eyes, mop of short feathery black curls, pretty as a picture and obviously adored the man.

    He also got a lot of intel about Jardine Holiday Horse Treks to which he didn’t really listen. Except to register dully that Vince had been right in saying the ecolodge’s clients could join the treks for a price, if there were horses free. At the moment they evidently had a bunkhouse full of three families, the older woman whom he’d seen this afternoon being the grandmother of one lot—quite. Most of the adults and the older children had gone with Phil, the nephew, and Jen, his girlfriend, on a longer trek. Rosemary’s lot had done the short circuit along the creek, up as far as Blue Gums Ecolodge. They’d have had the place to themselves, that was for sure. Never mind eco-tourism, so far Mr and Mrs Deloitte in Suite 5 were the only ones who’d shown any signs of even having legs, let alone wanting to get out in the bush.

    “A lot of them are like that,” agreed Gil with that nice smile of his. “We have had a few terrifyingly up-market Europeans and one or two Yank couples come over for a ride. The Yanks are the type who are used to a bit of genteel hacking in Central Park.”

    “Yes. Has Vince shown you the Akubras and those funny raincoats?” asked Honey.

    “Er—no.” Did she mean Akubras? “Hats, Honey?” said Iain cautiously.

    “Yes. The R.M. Williams look. Vince was very keen to give them something to do during the colder months, so we made an agreement that YDI would buy the riding gear for the ecolodge’s clients, you see. ‘Dry as a bone’, I think the coats are called.”

    “Oh, I see! No, well, not the weather for waterproof riding gear, is it? At the moment he's dishing out wide-brimmed panamas that only the Germans are conscientiously wearing.”

    Honey collapsed in giggles, nodding madly.

    “Yes!” said Rosemary with a smile. “The Germans and the Americans all conscientiously wore their wet-weather riding gear in the colder weather, too!”

    “Good, isn’t it?” agreed Gil, grinning. “Nowt so quare as fowk!”

    Yes, well, the man wasn’t all bad. And if you’d been terrifically upright and done absolutely all the right things all your life and never put a foot wrong whilst managing to climb the career ladder bloody successfully, probably you deserved to be awarded a complete dish like his Rosemary. Not to say to end up completely happy in the sort of life that he, Iain, wouldn’t bloody well have minded leading himself!

    Unexpectedly Honey volunteered herself to walk back up the road with him as far as the B&B. True, in a way it was rubbing salt in the wound—trust Sotherland to land such an unusual, intelligent, and, it had dawned during the course of the afternoon, very sweet person as a sister-in-law!

    “Gil hasn’t had it easy, you know,” she said out of the blue as they picked their way down the drive.

    “Uh—no!” said Iain, rather startled. He grabbed her elbow. “Careful.”

    “Thanks. The drive needs to be properly paved, really, but we can’t afford extras.”

    “I see,” he said cautiously.

    “Gil had a really difficult year when he first came out. The chest was still giving him quite a lot of pain and he wasn’t sleeping very well; and then, he was worrying about Rosemary: she was still in England. They barely knew each other, and of course she’s so much younger than him, so he said there was no way he’d let her rush out here after him until she’d thought it over for a year.”

    “Oh, boy.”

    “Mm. I don’t think he’d have got through it at all, looking back, let alone got the horse trekking up and going, without a lot of help from Jack Jackson and another friend. They helped him with the planning and did most of the actual building work. They were both employed on the Blue Gums building project, you see, but they used to spend all their spare time helping Gil. Jack still pops over and lends us a hand off and on, even though he’s got Nefertite’s house to look after, now. Well, it is up, and the interiors are lined, but they haven’t done any actual decorating yet, he’s just painted everything white. She’s not the kind of lady that’s always ordering the husband to redo the bathroom or change the colour scheme, you see.”

    “Er—right,” said Iain dazedly. “Glad to hear it, Jack strikes me as a very nice fellow. So, uh, whereabouts are they, then, Honey?”

    “Just up the next driveway. You’ll see the sign in a few minutes, ‘Springer House Art & Crafts Centre’. There’s three couples up there now: Ann and Bernie Anderson at the crafts centre, and David and Dot Walsingham across from them, he’s the B&B’s chef, and Jack and Nefertite just up behind them. It’s a lovely spot, Jack made sure they left the two big old gum trees and they help shade the house.”

    “I see. Quite a little community, then.”

    “Yes. They’re all good friends, it’s worked out really well.”

    “Lucky them,” he said wryly.

    “Yes, but they work very hard and although the B&B’s starting to do very well and the restaurant and the crafts centre are getting quite a lot of custom all year round, now, it’s quite a precarious existence.”

    “Uh-huh. Horse trekking’d be even more so, I’d think,” he said lightly.

    “That’s right. Gil has got a huge pension, of course, but it is a risky venture. I don’t know if it’ll be able to support Phil and Jen as well on a long-term basis, but at the moment we’re seeing how it goes. Phil hasn’t got much initiative, he’s a follower, he’d still have been working in Jen’s mum’s sandwich shop if Gil had never come out here.”

    “I see,” said Iain dazedly. “Er, is this a cautionary tale, Honey?”

    “Well, sort of,” she said, going very pink and smiling shyly at him. “We see a lot of the visiting fireman syndrome, because all of our guests are on holiday, you see.”

    “Right. You would do. Yeah, well, I won’t pretend I’m not green with jealousy, but on the other hand a bad little fellow like yours truly doesn’t deserve to end up honourably invalided out with a huge pension. I’ve never toed the Establishment line in my life.”

    “In a way Gil has been lucky,” she said, nodding seriously, “because he always wanted to go into the Army and serve his country like his father expected. But losing his career was a big setback.”

    “Yeah. Sorry.”

    “Actually we were wondering how Blue Gums is doing,” she said as they walked slowly up the rutted clay road. “There aren’t enough attractions round this way, they’re mostly getting people on stopovers before they fly out to the Red Centre. They get a lot of enquiries from Australians interested in staying there while they do the Blue Mountains tour, but their prices are too steep, most of them decide against it.”

    “I haven’t been here long enough to judge, Honey. The place is full at the moment, but... Well, I gather they certainly weren’t busy for most of the year.”

    “No. Gil suggested lowering their prices, making it a more ordinary ecolodge, with fishing trips down the inlet, but that’s not the image their boss wants.”

    “Are you implying the place might fold?”

    “Gil thinks it’s on the cards, unless someone comes up with some brilliant eco-attraction that’ll haul them in.”

    “Looks as if Vince had better examine his options, then, doesn’t it?” said Iain lightly.

    “I think he is, actually. It’s rather unfair on him: none of the policy is down to him, he’s just the hospitality manager, but if the place goes under it’ll be a bad mark against him. And poor Alfie, he really likes it here. He’s got David just down the road to swap recipe ideas with, and as long as it’s organic and got the right look Vince gives him free rein with the cuisine.”

    “Honey,” said Iain very, very lightly, “if I was a millionaire I’d take the place off YDI’s hands like a shot. As it is, it’ll have to wait until I’ve saved up for a rusty second-hand car.”

    Somewhat to his relief, Honey merely returned with a giggle: “Right, like it’ll have to wait until we’ve paved our drive!”

    She turned off at the entrance to the B&B, and Iain went on slowly up the road trying not to think of the delights ahead: Herr and Frau Zweig had invited Herr and Frau von Maier to their suite for a private dinner with butler service. Featuring sushi-style starters followed by fully organic rack of lamb sitting on a fully organic baby spinach, orange and balsamic vinegar salad— No, he wasn’t gonna think about it.

    Um, there was the point that if he waxed keen enough and got Mummy on his side, not that she wouldn’t be in any case, bless her, and wrote out a proper proposal with lots of proper figures, Rudi might just cough up the capital to—

    No. Not his bag. Even if he was capable of writing up the proposal, which he wasn’t. Um, well, there was very little doubt Gil Sotherland would give him a hand if asked, but... No. In any case that was the sort of thing you went into with a partner. Not necessarily a life-partner, but preferably, like Bob Whatsisface at the B&B. Even Gil had had his nephew and his delightful sister-in-law when he started the horse-trekking venture, hadn’t he? Little Iain didn’t have none of those. He’d remain invisible, thanks. “A little more lamb, madam? Allow me to carve it for you.” And as you’re lapping up that foul salad with it I won’t warn you not to let that very decent Coonawarra red go anywhere near that bloody balsamic vinegar. Invisible—right.

Next chapter:

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