Natural Disasters

13

Natural Disasters

    A week before Christmas Blue Gums Ecolodge burned down. It could have started a bushfire, if Gil Sotherland hadn’t been having one of his restless nights with his shoulder nagging him and wandered down to the bottom of their drive and spotted the glow up the road; and if the conscientious Jack Jackson, who of course was a New Zealander, hadn’t absorbed a bushfire warning on TV, the sort of thing that a large percentage of the locals cheerfully ignored, and scoured the roof gutters, swept every last leaf off all the paths and patios, and cut back all the trees near the buildings, to boot felling a couple and incidentally destroying a possum habitat or two, only the week before. And if the local volunteers of the NSW Rural Fire Service hadn’t been very much on the ball and had an engine available.

    “The word ‘insurance’ springs to mind,” concluded Bob Springer from the B&B, scratching his jaw, as the neighbours assembled next morning to gawp at the mess and at Kyle McDonough and Greg O’Connell from Barrabarra standing guard over it. Greg still had a hose in his hand, that was exciting!

    “We’re looking into it. Looks as if it was deliberately lit, all right,” replied Kyle, though the remark had not particularly been addressed to him. “But Gil heard a load of motorbikes roaring up your road some time last night before ’e spotted it, and there’s been complaints about them from down Barton Drive, too.”

    “Sylvia Moss,” spotted Bob with a groan.

    “Probably,” conceded Kyle fairly.

    “She’s a nutter, Kyle!”

    “Yeah, but Gil isn’t, though,” said the volunteer fireman stolidly. “Yeah, thanks, don’t mind if I do, David!” he added with a grin as the chef offered a relay of fresh scones. “Goob!” he approved. “Sho how long’sh the place been closed down?” he asked, swallowing.

    “About a month,” replied David.

    “Couldn’t make it pay, eh? Knew they wouldn’t, nothink for rich tourists to do round these parts. So what’s happened to the staff?”

    “Well, this is Alfie, their chef, he’s helping us out for a bit!” said David with a laugh as Alfie appeared with a tray of small pies. “Fancy a pie on top of a sc— You do,” he recognised as Kyle took one.

    “They have been up all night,” Alfie reminded him. “We can’t thank you enough, the whole road could of gone up, you firies are simply wonderful!” he added, simpering admiringly at the tall, burly and at the moment soot-streaked and unshaven Mr McDonough in his fireman’s gear.

    “Get off him, that’s not designer stubble!” said David cheerfully, grasping his comrade’s arm.

    Alfie gave a loud giggle, batting the eyelashes admiringly at Kyle, but allowed himself to be dragged away.

    “Cripes,” said Kyle weakly. “’E can cook, though,” he allowed, biting into the pie.

    Bob had also accepted one. “Yeah, he’s not a bad little bloke. Rest of the Blue Gums staff have found new jobs, what there was left of them. The YDI mob that own it have been paying Jack to keep an eye on this lot, dunno what the fuck ’e’s gonna do now.”

    “No. Shit,” allowed Kyle, staring at the mess. Very little was left of the main building, apart from some charred sandstone pillars, a lot of broken glass, and three soot-blackened giant rammed-earth arches. That twisted pile of metal over there might’ve been the remains of a patch of solar panels if you looked hard.

    “Hey, them bloody rammed-earth arches, they gonna collapse, ya reckon?” asked Bob with friendly interest.

    “They could well do, yeah, so don’t bloody go near them.”

    “No,” he agreed on a weak note.

    “Kristel said to ask you how’s Deanna?” Kyle recalled.

    “Not bad. Gets very tired. Stopped chucking up at last, though, that’s a plus.”

    “Good. She’s got a herb tea recipe for her, gonna ring ’er later today. Reckons it helped her when Juliette was on the way.”

    “Thanks, mate, all contributions gratefully received!” replied Bob with a grin.

    “Yeah. –What the fuck was this place made of, Bob? Seems to of gone up like a bomb.”

    “Uh—well, Jack’d be the one to give you the dinkum oil on that one, mate. Glass and them silly rammed-earth arches, far’s I could see. –Oy, JACK!”

    Jack came over to them, munching pie. “Alfie makes great pies, eh?”

    “Yeah. Tell Kyle what the dump was made of.”

    Jack scratched his head. “Recycled crap, mainly, Kyle. The top boss—he’s a mad Pom, never came out here in person until the official opening, just gave us orders from London—he wouldn’t let us treat half the wood. A lot of it was driftwood. Dry as dust, before you ask. The rest was very old recycled timbers, lot of it came from an old woolshed George found up the backblocks—sorry, what you types’d call the back of Bourke—and a lot of recycled sandstone from an old warehouse down in Sydney somewhere. The glass was all recycled, too, hand-made by some woman that recycles bottles, dunno if that counts.”

    Kyle had seized on the keyword. “An old woolshed? Are you telling me half the bloody place was soaked in lanolin?”

    “No, but it would of been,” he allowed fairly. “Mind you, there wasn’t much wood in proportion to the other crap.”

    “What were them shingles made of? –Some of the gables had shingles, rest was blue slate,” Bob informed Kyle helpfully.

    “I can see the slate, yeah,” he said drily. “Go on, what?” he said to Jack.

    “Well, wood, but I dunno exactly. George found a bloke that makes shingles by hand, but by that time we weren’t asking, ’cos if we kept on asking we were never gonna get the bloody place up and the boys’d lose their bonuses.”

    “Very old recycled dry-as-dust shingles,” concluded Bob.

    “Pretty much, yeah,” Jack agreed mildly. “Well, don’t look at me. If ya build with timber in a bushfire-prone region you’re taking the risk, eh?”

    “Disaster waiting to happen,” concluded the fireman in disgust.

    “Maybe, but the bosses’ insurance company okayed it,” said Jack with a shrug.

    “Insurance was the word that sprang to mind,” allowed Bob.

    “Gil reckons it was bikies.”

    “Yeah, well, we didn’t hear anything at the B&B, too far back from the road, but the servo was broken into last week, could’ve been them. Well, not bikies as such, don’t think. Yobs from the Big Smoke on motorbikes.”

    “Yeah, you’re too far off the beaten track for the actual bikie gangs, they like roaring down the main roads,” said Kyle placidly. “The cops are looking into it.”

    “You told YDI yet, Jack?” asked Bob with friendly interest.

    “If you’re waiting to hear that ole Sir Maurice exploded, don’t,” replied Jack stolidly. “I’m not allowed to ring Head Office, have to get onto Jim Thompson, over in Auckland.”

    “That’s the bloke that come over originally when Gil thought I could be onto a good thing selling YDI forty hectares of nothing,” Bob explained to Kyle.

    “Yeah, he runs the YDI South Pacific office. Dunno why Auckland—think some Pommy type looked at the map and decided it was nice and central between the Pacific islands and Australia,” said Jack in detached tones.

    “It is, on the map, yeah,” allowed Bob fairly.

    “I’d of said we were pretty close to Fiji,” objected Kyle.

    “Sir Maurice doesn’t want Fiji, mate, too many coups!” retorted Bob smartly.

    “Yeah,” Jack agreed stolidly. “Anyway, I rung Jim.”

    “Did he explode?” asked Bob eagerly.

    “No, ya twit, did he strike you as that type? First ’e was took aback, then ’e said that Sir Maurice was gonna explode, then ’e laughed like a drain.”

    Bob and Kyle at this broke down and also laughed like drains. Though Bob did ask kindly once he’d recovered: “Jim have any idea what might be gonna happen next, Jack?”

    Jack eyed him drily. “Nah, they never had an ecolodge burn down before.”

    “Just as well, or we would be ruddy suspicious,” noted Kyle. “Shit, is that one of Steve Macdonald’s— Oy, YOU! GEDDOUDAVIT!” he roared, striding off towards the horrid sight of one of Steve Macdonald’s boys approaching a scorched rammed-earth arch.

    “Will,” discerned Jack, unmoved.

    Bob peered. “Is it? Not Danno?”

    “Nah, he’s all legs, these days. I did ask Jim if he had any idea what might be gonna happen next, actually, Bob, but all he could say was he was positive YDI’s insurers would cough up and I better hang around in case they want the site cleared.”

    Bob brightened. “Yeah, that’d be a job for you, Jack!”

    “Couldn’t be bad, eh?” he agreed mildly.

    They contemplated the wreck of Blue Gums Ecolodge in silence for a while.

    “All that funny furniture’s gone up in smoke,” said Bob at last.

    “Yep. Driftwood’d tend to burn,” Jack agreed drily.

    Bob had to swallow. “Mm. Might up our insurance, when ya think of all the hard yacker we put into the bloody place. Deanna done them bloody sofas up herself, ya know.”

    “Yeah, it’s the replacement costs you gotta be thinking about, Bob.”

    “Too right. –Just by the by, if anyone at YDI has the bright idea I might wanna buy them forty hectares back, you can tell ’em the answer’s a lemon.”

    “Yeah. I should think they might be able to sell the place, though: the cabana’s okay, and it didn’t get as far as the staff block.”

    Bob eyed the wreck of the walkway—or wind-tunnel—leading to the staff block. “Not quite. That is a fire door you stuck in there at the entrance to that block, is it, ole mate? Highly non-environmental like what it is?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Whose idea was that?”

    “Mine and George’s.”

    “Head Office know about it?”

    “Nope.”

    Bob broke down in sniggers, slapping Jack on the back as he did so. “Good on ya, mate!”

    Jack’s sky-blue eyes twinkled but he merely said placidly: “Better safe than sorry.”

    Bob eyed the mess in front of them again. “Boy, oh, boy; and we thought the eyesore was gonna be a fixture...”

    “Yeah,” said Jack on a wry note. “Me, too.”

    “It’s burned down?” said Julian Sotherland long-distance to his only son in dismay. “Oh, Lor’! I don’t think Myra will want to buy in that case, old chum. I mean to say, she got her secretary to check it out on the Internet—she’s a whizz at that sort of thing. Poor woman’s got a face like the back of a bus, retired nun or whatever they call it when they give up their vows, but terrifically good at all that Internet stuff. Myra absolutely loved the architecture, she knows that architect. Well, ’smatter of fact one does know his uncle, too: did you realise he’s David Throgmorton’s nephew? According to her he’s in line to inherit Wenderholme when old David pops off, but one needn’t place too much credence in that, she is a Yank, of course: I don’t think she actually grasps what an entail is! Well, terrible pity, old boy, but I honestly think it’ll be No Can Do.”

    “There’s a lovely cabana, it wasn’t touched!” said Phil crossly.

    “Oh, yes? Separate, is it? –Mm. We stayed in a place rather like that—didn’t call itself an ecolodge, though, think it was just a lodge—now where was it? Mustique? Could have been. Very pretty, but actually the air conditioning didn’t work too terribly well and you know what Yanks are, Myra couldn’t stand it, so we took off for Gordy and Pammy Sennet’s brother-in-law’s place on Guadeloupe—Jean-Xavier de la Marre. Don’t know if you ever met young André de la Marre? Jean-Xavier’s nephew, the old comte’s heir. He’d have been at school round about the time you were, just for his last couple of years: the French schools give them too much freedom and he was spending on all his time on girls instead of swot.”

    “No!” said Phil crossly. “Concentrate, Daddy! What about the cabana?”

    “Um, well, I don’t know, Phil...” he said, sounding horribly vague. “How big is it?”

    “Cabanas are never very big!” said Phil crossly. “It’s got a nice lounge-r—uh, sitting-room, quite spacious, and a lovely master bedroom with an ensuite—an ensuite bathroom, I mean—that opens out onto the terrace, with a super spa—um, Jacuzzi, Daddy,” he ended somewhat lamely. “Well, it’s super. And there’s a nice kitchen, it can be properly serviced.”

    “That doesn’t sound bad... But didn’t Gil say it’s almost impossible to get decent domestic staff in Australia?”

    Phil had gone very red. “I’m bloody sure he never said any such thing! Are you going to help us or not?”

    “Of course I’d help you if it was up to me, old lad, like a shot! But it isn’t, you see. Well, there’s my next quarter’s allowance... I don’t need anything, you could have that. It goes up and down, I don’t know why, though Belinda did try to explain it to me—Myra’s ex-nun. Just spending-money, really. About a hundred thousand?” he said, sounding super-vague.

    Phil bit his lip. “Um, no, Daddy, thank you very much, but I don’t think it’d be enough.”

    “Wouldn’t it? Well, it’s dollars, of course, not pounds, I can never work it out, and now they’ve introduced those silly euros, it’s making it worse, and it’s such an ugly word, don’t you think?”

    “Um, yeah, um, actually the Europeans don’t know this, but there’s a type of kangaroo, a smallish sort, that’s called a euro.”

    “There you are, then! It must be an Australian word! I say, s’pose there’s no decent accommodation at all near you, then, Phil?”

    “There’s some really nice hotels in Sydney, you could easily drive up for the day, Daddy!”

    “She doesn’t like Australia, old man, says the service is appalling,” he said sadly. “Well, um, terribly sorry and all that, but I don’t think it’s a goer. You’ll tell Gil, will you?”

    “He’ll be very disappointed,” warned Phil grimly.

    “I know. Never could live up to his standards,” said Julian glumly.

    “Daddy, you’re wasting your life with Myra!” burst out Phil, angry tears in his eyes. “Why don’t you join up with us? You could help look after the horses, you love horses!”

    “Oh, couldn’t do that, old chap—does sound nice, though. Not my scene, y’know. No, well, might run up more on credit than we could pay off—wouldn’t want to do that.”

    “What? Look, we could close your accounts!”

    “Doesn’t seem to work,” said Julian mournfully. “Well, Father tried it: didn’t work.”

    “I thought you were declared bankrupt, can you even have a credit card?”

    “Don’t know. Well, Myra’s got me one—I say Myra, Belinda did the work, of course. Think it’s got a limit on it or some such. Never use it, much. Well—restaurants, that sort of thing. Must be a Yank card, think that’ll be the story. Terribly sorry, old chap. Keep in touch, mm?” With that he rang off.

    Phil rushed off to the horse paddock in search of his uncle to report. Ending loudly: “He’s getting worse! You should have heard him going on about his American credit card that he never uses much but he thinks there’s a limit on it!”

    “That sounds like Julian,” agreed Gil wryly.

    “He was bankrupt in England, wasn’t he?”

    “Mm. You’d just started school, Phil.”

    “So, um, did it wear off, or what? I mean, Grandfather blew his top because of what he was spending on clothes, that was in my second year at school, I do remember that, but how could he if he wasn’t allowed to have a credit card?”

    Gil smiled a little. “Thank God you don’t know! No, well, chaps from Julian’s class and with Julian’s bloody manner just stroll into an establishment in Bond Street or thereabouts and order a dozen silk shirts or a new suit to be sent to the club or Father’s address, y’see. –Way it’s always been done,” he elaborated wryly. “The bill comes some time later. If your grandfather had allowed you to spend more time with Julian in your hols I’m quite sure it would have dawned, Phil.”

    “So that was why I was never allowed to go up to town with him? I see,” he said limply.

    “Mm. Is it a hundred thousand Myra’s allowing him as pin money?”

    Phil scowled. “American dollars. Every quarter.”

    “Uh-huh. Could hardly expect him to give that up—the cars will be extra to that, y’know—to come and pig it out here.”

    “Hasn’t he got any self-respect at all?” he cried, tears in his eyes.

    Gil looked at him with considerable sympathy. “No, I don’t think. Or not that goes further than a determination always to be beautifully presented.”

    Phil’s jaw trembled. “I’ve never been so ashamed in my life!”

    “Mm. He’s a complete disaster area, Phil. One just has to try to accept that.”

    “I don’t think I can,” said the young man bitterly. “Heck, now I’ve got to tell Jen it’s no bloody go, after I was so sure— Shit!”

    “She’ll understand, Phil, she’s a very sensible girl and I don’t honestly think she ever put much faith in the idea of Julian and Myra coming through for us. Well, possibly Myra if the figures were right.”

    “Yes. I was stupid—deceiving myself because I wanted to believe bloody Daddy was salvageable!” said Phil bitterly, striding off.

    Gil sighed and wiped his hand across his sweaty brow. “Thought I’d warned him,” he said glumly to One Donkey, who’d come up uninvited to nuzzle at his pocket. “But Julian’s not the sort of natural phenomenon one can explain, one just has to wait until it—not strikes, far too active a word. Until one encounters it. Just let’s thank God Phil’s out of it! –Oh, go on, Greedy Guts, have a horse nut, at our ages we both deserve a treat or two!” As in the hinterland Jack was busily shovelling muck into a couple of sacks he then bellowed: “OY! JACK! Fancy a JOHNNIE?”

    Jack came slowly across the horse paddock, dragging his sacks. “That bad, was it?”

    “Oh, yeah. Bloody Julian doing his vague ‘terribly sorry, old chap’ act.”

    “Shit.”

    “Puts it well,” said Gil sourly.

    “How about that Johnnie, then?” said Jack kindly.

    “Absolutely. Doubles!” agreed Gil with feeling.

    “Classic canapés, sir,” said Iain smoothly to one of Mr Pearson’s artier friends.

    Refraining completely from eye contact, in fact you’d have sworn the fellow believed the plate was holding itself up, the arty one took one of Laurie’s so-called canapés. Other arty persons followed suit so rapidly that the plate was cleared before you could say “knife”. Iain tottered back to Mr Pearson’s pristine all-white, post-Y2K nightmare of a kitchen.

    “What the Hell were those last thingummies, Laurie?” he croaked.

    Laurie turned from the stove, very flushed. “Those? I’ve given up, four parties of nibbles one on top of another is more than I’ve got inspiration for. Prunes wrapped in bacon: I forget whether they’re angels or devils on horseback, but one of those. They’re an old stand-by. You just bung them under the grill.”

    “They vanished like the dew,” said Iain numbly. “Like the dew. Um, Laurie, what if—well, all prejudice apart, some of the guests look Jewish to me!”

    “They didn’t have to eat them,” replied Laurie calmly. “And it’s ‘thingos’, not ‘thingummies’, you’re Downunder now!” She beamed at him.

    “Yeah,” said Iain feebly. He was almost sure that that dark-haired chap with the beaky nose in the very nice charcoal suit with the lemon silk tie adorning the silk shirt that was too discreet to be actually lemon-striped, but was white with very fine dotted lines of lemon running through it, was called Goldstein and heck, all prejudice apart— Well, he couldn’t be Orthodox, that was for sure. On the other hand, that tallish, palish, very Aryan-looking chap—that nondescript air to him, that you seldom saw outside the British Commonwealth—was called Meyer. So there you were.

    “They snapped up all the avocado ones and I couldn’t keep them back, because unless you souse it with lemon or lime it goes brown,” she reminded him.

    “Mm? Mm. Um, that Meyer chap—”

    “He is one of them, he’s from the actual Foundation. See, they don’t run the shops any more, they’re nearly all involved in the Foundation! I saw a programme about it on the ABC!”

    “Yuh—uh, I see. ‘One of them’ being?”

    “One of the Meyer family, of course! That started the big Meyer shops!” she beamed.

    Iain smiled weakly. Right. Laurie was about the last person in the world to harbour any type of racial prejudice, and he, Iain Ross, was a tit to have imagined even for a split second— Yeah.

    “Does Mr Pearson think they’ve had enough, now?” she asked

    “Er—dunno, think he’s slightly tiddlers, he seems very keen on that youngish chap in the black-on-black outfit except for the red chilli peppers on his cravat. –Does that mean something?” asked Iain plaintively.

    “Don’t ask me!”

    “No. –I say, I’m starving, anything left over?”

    “No. They’re like hyenas,” she said in awe.

    Yep. Hyenas—or possibly ravening wolves—was what Mr Pearson’s arty friends were, all right. And they weren’t even starving artists! They were all horribly well dressed—had been, throughout the four “little does”—little in Pearson’s terms, there were at least fifty bodies crammed into his extremely tasteful sitting-room right now, all shouting their heads off.

    “Have you worked out what his criterion was?” asked Laurie.

    “Uh—oh! For sorting the sheep from the goats? No. All terrifically arty, terrifically well-dressed and great eaters and shouters.”

    “Mm.”

    “It can’t be racial, though there seem to be a few Jewish ones today and there were some Arab ones on Tuesday. But not otherwise. Well, there’s a Greek Cypriot and a Turk in there as we speak.”

    Laurie looked at him in horror.

    “Don’t worry, they’re well separated, the Turk’s on a sofa with a tasty morsel in skin-tight jeans, a completely artful five o’clock shadow, and a tiny emerald earring, to die for, and the Greek’s on the other side of the room shouting at a thin lady with a very strange hairdo, sort of gelled spikes and bits at the front that look as if they’re growing out of her forehead an inch below the hairline, and a kind of, um, not gathered, um, um... puckered!” he dredged up proudly. “A puckered blouse. Gives one the impression that she fell out of bed very, very hungover, had a large hair of the dog and buttoned it with her eyes shut.”

    “Pale grey?” replied Laurie, unmoved.

    “More sort of um, between grey and brown, really. There is a word, I think.”

    “Taupe,” said Laurie with huge satisfaction. “I never thought I’d have the opportunity to actually say it in real life! Taupe. I saw that peculiar announcer on SBS last week in a grey puckered thing—hang on, it’s not her, is it? Chinese?” she said eagerly.

    “Nope. Er, well, hard to tell what she is under the white makeup and the dark purple lips—I thought that look was out but I’m obviously wrong—but not Eastern features, at all.”

    “No. ‘Asian,’ we say here,” said Laurie kindly. “I’ve noticed they don’t tend to use it in The Guardian Weekly.”

    “No,” agreed Iain, smiling. He was very pleased to have got to know Laurie, aka Brenda, at last: she wasn’t in the least like what he’d assumed. Pretty much the last literate Australian, in fact—old Max Mackay would’ve approved of her. “I’m afraid it seems terribly pejorative to me, Laurie: I can’t bring myself to use it.”

    “Good on ya,”  she returned firmly.

    “Thanks!” he said with a laugh. “Look, I’ll check with Pearson: I think he’ll say we can go. Then what say we head straight for a steakhouse?”

    “Great. –Don’t forget to get him to sign the timesheets, this is our last day, remember.”

    “He already has,” said Iain drily.

    “It’s mad! Hardly any of them check the times, but it’s what they’re paying for!”

    “Yep. Nowt so quare as fowk!” Iain went back to the scrum. Gosh, Pearson had his hand on little Mr Hot Chilli Pepper’s thigh! “Excuse me, sir—”

    “Here he is!” cried Pearson, all lit up. “Isn’t he gorgeous? –Now, don’t fuss, Ross, dear, you must admit you’re gorgeous! –It’s his surname, actually, Leon, dear, so trad!” he said with a giggle. “English, of course, I’m sure he could get a job in Beverly Hills any time! –Just give Leon a card, dear boy, his mum’s desperate to find a really refined butler!”

    Iain sagged. So long as that was all he wanted him to give! “I’ll give you one of my placement firm’s cards, sir,” he said in very refined tones to Leon Hot Chilli Pepper. “RightSmart. It’s a reliable, established firm and your mother will find their arrangements take all the worry of managing wages off one’s shoulders.”

    “There! Isn’t he divine?” said Pearson as the card was accepted.

    “So do they only do temporary staff?” asked Leon on a suspicious note.

    “No, sir: both permanent and temporary.”

    “Right. And Mum wouldn’t have to be an employer?”

    “Not if it suited her not to, sir.”

    “That sounds all right, Pixie,” he said to Pearson. –It was his nickname. Only the closest five thousand were favoured with it and in fact tonight was the only night, come to think of it, that Iain had heard ’em using it, so maybe that was the criterion!

    “Of course, dearest boy, I told you!” he beamed. “Now, I think you and Laurie could go, Ross—I’ll just come and have a word! –Don’t run away!” he adjured Leon coyly, getting up and grabbing Iain’s arm in a hot, damp hand—he could feel the heat coming off it all the way through the sleeve of the dinner jacket he was wearing because it would kill Pearson’s friends. Unfortunately so far it hadn’t.

    “These are for you two dears,” he said impressively in the kitchen, opening a cupboard which Laurie, looking for plates, had already verified contained some wrapped Chrissie prezzies that they could’ve nicked if they’d been so inclined. Most of the private clients were like that, according to her. When they signed contracts with RightSmart they acted as if the contractors were gonna be a combination of Jack the Ripper and the Great Train Robbers but once you were in it was open slather: fifty-dollar notes left on the dressing-table, and in a couple of extreme instances the safe left open.

    “Oops, mustn’t get them mixed up!” He snatched the small gold-wrapped one back off Laurie. “Blue for a boy!” he said coyly, presenting Iain with it.

    Help, what was RightSmart’s etiquette in such matters? Of course he’d got that nice square bottle for his green frogging last year, but that hadn’t been right under an erstwhile placement consultant’s eye, had it? Laurie was merely looking stunned, so he produced: “Thank you, Mr Pearson, but you really shouldn’t have.”

    “Call me Pixie, dear boy, you’re off-duty now! –It was all lovely, Laurie, dear, they’ve all been asking me where I found you!” he assured her, handing her the larger red-and-silver-wrapped present.

    “Thank you,” said Laurie feebly.

    “Open them!” he urged, beaming.

    Feebly they opened them. Laurie looked limply at a lovely headscarf, real silk, almost undoubtedly from David Jones—or possibly a very exclusive arty boutique, the design was most unusual. Flower shapes, not any identifiable species, in shades of red, orange and maroon, spiked here and there with what might have been yellow stamens.

    “She thinks it’s not her colours, but watch this!” said Pixie Pearson with a chuckle. He put the scarf over Laurie’s hair—tonight not in the tangled curls it had appeared in at Potters Inlet, but scraped back neatly into a clip.

    “Oh, heavens, yes!” said Iain with a laugh as the big brown eyes seemed to glow and the rather olive skin came alive.

    “Mediterranean blood, have you, dear?” said Pearson on a complacent note.

    “Um—I suppose I have. My father was French. From Marseilles,” said Laurie feebly.

    “There you are! Those colours really suit you!”

    “Yes: you should always wear those shades,” agreed Iain. “—Look, Pixie, I really can’t accept this, though it’s terribly good of you.”

    “Nonsense, Iain, dear boy! –They’re all furiously jealous!” he hissed. “Not just because they want a lovely English butler, too, dear—though of course they do! I swear that bitch Miranda Dewhurst hasn’t taken her eyes off you all evening!”

    “Is—is that—that isn’t John Dewhurst’s wife, is it?” faltered Laurie.

    “Of course, dear! And maybe if the man ever went anywhere with her—well, official appearances, all lovey-dovey, y’know? But everyone knows he’s been doing that frightful lady lawyer of his for years! She’s asked me three times where I found you, Iain!”

    Iain tried to smile and failed. Gail was gonna kill him.

    “Don’t worry, the man’s too mean to pay for anything himself, if it’s not on the government she doesn’t get it, poor cow,” said Pixie Pearson detachedly. “Now, take it, Iain, dear, it’s the best Christmas I’ve had for ages!”

    Feebly Iain accepted it. Not a Rolex, no. Swiss, though. Bloody nice.

    “Is it gold?” asked Laurie feebly as they tottered down the steps of Pearson’s fabulous apartment block with its splendid view of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.

    “Yeah.”

    “Help. The poor man’s really fallen for you, Iain.”

    Iain made a face. “Yes. Don’t want to encourage him, but it would’ve hurt his feelings terribly if I’d refused it—bit of a dilemma, really. Um, so Gail doesn’t have a policy about gifts from the end client?”

    “Mm? Um—dunno! Don’t think any of our contractors has ever been favoured with a gold watch before!”

    No. Quite. Well, it’d be the last job he took on for poor old Pixie Pearson.

    He got home around ten after a decent steak with Laurie. The chips were hot but apart from that indifferent: she admitted hers were better, only it was such a lovely change to have a meal you hadn’t cooked yourself! They had an argument over the bill which Iain only won by dint of promising not to pop Pixie’s watch to pay for it.

    Daph shot out of the lounge-room as he opened the front door. “There you are at last!”

    “Uh—had a meal in town with Laurie, told you I would.”

    “Yeah—no, not that! Your aunty rung up!”

    Iain felt all the blood drain out of his face: it was as bad as when he’d learned that Veronica was here. “Mummy?”

    “No, she’s fine: it’s your stepfather. Crashed his car. Speeding on the bloody French motorways, your aunty said. I’m afraid he’s dead, Iain. It sounds as if your mum’s in a terrible state.”

    Iain thrust a hand through his hair. “Jesus. Well, yeah, she would be, she’s helpless without Rudi, can’t even speak more than half a dozen words of the lingo. But more than that: she’s not a coper. Always needed someone to lean on.”

    “Yes, well, your aunty seems to be coping for the moment, dear, but you’d better go over there. Look, if you haven’t got the cash, love, I can lend—”

    “No!” said Iain, very red. “I mean, it’s lovely of you, Daph, and I would accept if I needed it, but I don’t, I can manage the fare. Uh—God, there’ll be all Rudi’s affairs to settle,” he realised. “Well, the cottage is in Mummy’s name, but what’s the betting there’ll be two families he left behind in Russia that turn up to claim the loot?”

    “Depends on the will. –What have you been doing, brewing it?” she snarled at her luckless son as he appeared with a glass of whisky in his hand.

    “You don’t brew whisky!” Scott retorted crossly. “Um, sorry, Iain.”

    “That’s okay, Scott. It’s a shock, of course, but I wasn’t close to the old bugger—don’t think he let anyone get close, except Mummy, and he told her exactly what he wanted her to know and no more. –Thanks,” he said as the boy pushed the glass into his hand. “—I’d better ring Aunty Meggie back,” he said, having swallowed.

    “No, she said she’d ring you. Don’t think they’re at home,” Daph explained. “Sounded as if a neighbour’s taken your mum in.”

    Uh—the immediate neighbours were absentee landlords, the one lot an extremely affluent Parisian couple who only appeared in high summer, and the others a slightly less affluent but even snootier English couple who disapproved of Rudi, Rudi’s car, the thoroughly deserved reputation Rudi had in the village, Rudi’s visitors, especially the ones who turned up at dead of night with obscured number plates, and Mummy’s clothes. Oh—and of Rudi’s refusal to cut down the beautiful flowering cherry that dropped its leaves and flowers in their garden.

    “What?” he said, blinking.

    “Come and sit down,” repeated Daph.

    “Uh—yeah. Any indication of these neighbours’ name, Daph?” he said as they retreated to the lounge-room.

    “Well, it was a French name,” she said dubiously. “Something like Mercer.”

    Oh, boy. La Mère Mercier was possibly the biggest loose-mouth in the village, and with his mates over the morning cafés Calva’ the old boy ran her a close second. Their English wasn’t too shit-hot but bloody Gérard’s was, and he would undoubtedly be there for Christmas. Every single syllable Mummy or Aunty Meggie uttered would be all over the village— Oh, who cared? Mummy wouldn’t understand what the locals were saying about her, after all.

    “The Merciers. Over the back. Hard as nails, real French peasants, but possibly their hearts are in the right place. They’re terrible gossips, though,” he sighed.

    “Yeah, well, if your stepfather wasn’t a crook there’d be nothing to gossip about, would there?” replied Daph calmly. “Drink that up. Scott’s looked up some flights for you on the Internet. It’s quite hard to go direct to France from Australia, actually.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Scott. “Well, ya might get an Air France flight, for a price. They don’t go that often. All the cheap flights to Europe seem to be, like, tours, ya know? Either ya gotta go to London or else they start somewhere really weird, like Croatia or somethink. Or else they give you a stopover in Singapore or like that.”

    “Mm. Um, the first available direct one, I think, Scott.”

    By the time Meggie rang again Scott had sorted out a few possibles—not that one, Scott, he’d have to have left twenty minutes back because of the bloody extended check-in times!

    “She’s completely shell-shocked, Iain,” his aunt reported.

    “Yeah. I’ll come as soon as I can, but with the best will in the world—when does that plane leave, again, Scott? –Yeah, with the best will in the world I won’t be there for another whole day. Twenty-four hours plus, Aunty Meggie.”

    “I’ll try to make her understand that. Madame Mercier’s given her some dope of her own, she’s pretty well out of it, just as well.”

    “Is this dope a prescription drug?” croaked Iain. La Mère Mercier had been known to boil up herbal muck in her kitchen for the locals, well within living memory.

    “Yeah. I can’t read French but if I understood her right she takes it herself. For her hip, I think.”

    “Er—yeah. Gérard paid for a hip replacement about five years back, think it was. He has turned up, has he?”

    “That’s right.”

    “The wife with him this year?”

    “Nope.”

    “That’ll improve the festive season chez Mercier, then. Um, any hope of getting Mummy back to the cottage?”

    “I don’t think so, Iain.”

    Iain hadn't really expected any other answer. “Yeah. Um, have you had time to look for a will or anything of the sort, Aunty Meggie?’

    “Not me, but M. Mercier very kindly went through Rudi’s desk,” she replied politely.

    It dawned. “Christ, are they all sitting there listening?”

    “Yes. Fortunately Gérard translates for me,” she said politely.

    Then why hadn’t he translated the stuff on the dope container— No, the old dame would have screamed at him. “So did he translate anything about the will, Meggie?”

    “Yes: it does seem to be left to Ellie. At least it is a French will, not a Russian one.”

    “Mm.” Iain had some hazy recollection that since the Code Napoléon the deceased’s family members had rights in France. Ow. “Well, I can’t do anything from here, but maybe I’d better have a word with Gérard. –Salut, Gérard.”

    Yes, well. All his property whether real or otherwise—Iain didn’t think he had any real property, because the cottage of course was in Mummy’s name, but you never knew—to Mummy. Lots of print-outs of dividends and records of share transactions in his desk but the actual share certificates were in his solicitor’s safe. Maître Bresson from the nearest town. Good, well, possibly if they didn’t put a death notice in the paper—Oops, old Mercier had already done th— “Oui, bonjour, M. Mercier. Merci pour tout—” That was all he got out, because the old boy was off and running.

    “They’ve really been rallying round,” Iain reported limply to Daph and Scott. “To the extent of putting a death notice in the paper to advertise to the Russian mafia that Rudi’s estate’s up for grabs—that was the old boy—and filling Mummy up with dope prescribed for the old dame’s bad hip that must be five years old because that was when she had it replaced. Their son, Gérard, has very kindly contacted Rudi’s solicitor, but to be fair that was to stop his father doing it. Mummy does get the lot, according to the will.”

    “Sounds all right,” said Daph sensibly. “Let’s see, it’ll be freezing in France, won’t it? Nip round to your Pop’s and grab back those sheepskin-lined boots he conned off Iain, Scott.”

    “No—really!” said Iain weakly.

    “He can have them back when you’ve finished with them, but you haven’t got any waterproof boots, have you?”

    “Pop’s got that long scarf, too,” Scott reminded her.

    “Muffler,” said Iain feebly. “I don’t need it.”

    “Well, he certainly doesn’t, they’re predicting thirty-five for Christmas Day!” replied Daph with feeling. “Go on, Scott.”

    “What if he’s asleep?”

    “Then don’t wake him up. Got your key?”

    “Yes!” Scott shot out, looking annoyed.

    “You can have that heavy jumper of his, come to think of it.” Daph bustled off to fetch it before Iain could formulate a protest.

    … “It’ll be stinking hot in the airports,” he managed feebly as Scott came back and inspected what Daph had laid out to be packed or worn on the journey.

    Swiftly Daph rejoined: “Yes, that’s why you need to wear layers that you can take off. Don’t argue: Melissa Thompson didn’t wear enough when Amanda and her went to Europe and she came down with a feverish cold and had to spend a whole week in bed while the tour went all round Italy.”

    “Italy in midwinter?” said Iain feebly.

    “It was a special offer.”

    “They’re both nongs,” noted Scott fairly.

    “Nongs that their mother had told to wear their thick parkas and take heavy jumpers with them to put on before they set foot outside the airport—yeah.”

    Ignoring this, Scott enquired of Iain: “Didja buy your electronic ticket?”

    “Yes, thanks, Scott.”

    “Let’s see the printout.” The printout got the nod, and Scott then said: “Righto, come on. I’ll drive.”

    Iain bit his lip. “Scott, there’s really no need, I can get a ta—”

    “Bullshit. You ready, Mum?”

    “I’ll just get my handbag and go to the toilet.”

    “Airports have got toilets,” noted Scott as she hurried out. “—Hey, you wanna bring your mum out here!” he suggested on an eager note.

    “Er—if she’ll come, Scott. I mean, she’s never been anywhere except France with Rudi and one or two little trips with him—trains, mainly, she wouldn’t go on long trips in the car with him because of his driving—fully justified, wasn’t it? She’s not really interested in anything architectural or historical, so they had a few shopping trips to Paris or Rome. Oh—and one disastrous trip to Greece, she got a tummy-bug. Not from trying Greek food, all Anglo-Saxon prejudice to the contrary: she wasn’t game to tackle it, so she found some foul dump that catered for the English with fish and chips and warm beer.”

    “Heck. So what’s she eat in France?” he asked in awe.

    “French doesn’t count as quite so foreign as Greek—that may be geographical. She can’t cook—Rudi was a superb cook, so she didn’t need to, not that he bothered all that often. The French have wonderful salad vegetables and delicatessen foods—pâtés and so on—so they ate a lot of those. With lots and lots of French cheese, and fruit for afters.”

    Daph had resurfaced in time to catch the last of this. “Sounds okay,” she conceded as they got into her car.

    “Yeah, pretty good,” agreed Scott. “What about a roast?”

    “Rudi quite often did a roast for Sunday dinner.”

    “Right. They’d’ve been able to get really good wine, too, I s’pose,” he said thoughtfully.

    “Mm.” There was no point in asking Scott to come with him—it cost far too much, for one thing, and for another he didn’t have a passport. Shit, when you thought of the way he, Iain, used to drive all round Europe for old Skin-Flint McMurtrey without a second thought...

    “Um, Daph, can I ask you to do something for me?” he croaked as Scott finally got them onto the right road for the airport, after a considerable amount of shouting had taken place.

    “Yes, of course, Iain, love.”

    “No, um, don’t say yes until you’ve heard what it is.” Iain swallowed hard.

    “Go on,” she prompted mildly.

    “Um, well—oh, shit, there’s RightSmart, too!” he remembered.

    “Don’t worry, I’ll ring Gail first thing.”

    “Thanks.” Praying that Scott wouldn’t interrupt, he said rapidly: “Could you possibly contact Veronica and explain that I’m living here and that I was looking forward to seeing her again and—and I don’t know when the Hell I’ll get back but could she please wait for me?”

    “I wouldn’t call it wait, exactly,” said Scott judiciously before his mother could reply.

    “Shut up, was anyone talking to you? Yes, of course I’ll tell her, Iain, love, don’t worry.”

    “I thought—“

    “Shut UP, Scott!” she howled.

    Unmoved, he pursued: “No, I thought you didn’t have her contact number, Iain?”

    “No,” Iain admitted.

    “I’ll get it out of Penny Harper,” said Daph calmly. “Don’t worry about a thing, Iain!”

    “Thanks awfully, Daph.”

    “What about your mates up at Potters Inlet?” asked Scott.

    “What? Oh. Well, I only told Gil I might be up there some time around New Y—”

    “I’ll tell him!” he said eagerly.

    “Uh—thanks. But I don’t know his number,” he realised.

    “That’s okay, I can look up Jardine Holiday Horse Treks on the Internet!”

    “Y—er, yeah.” He hadn’t thought Scott had taken in all that much of what he’d said about Potters Inlet but apparently it had been every syllable. “Thanks, Scott,” he said limply.

    And that was pretty much that. They saw his baggage checked and since he had an electronic ticket there was no mucking around and before he knew it Iain was through the initial gate and in the long, long queue of persons being electronically zapped before they and their electronic tickets were allowed on the plane. On the one hand he felt quite stunned but on the other hand it seemed impossible that very soon—once this bloody queue had moved—he was gonna be on the other side of the world from Daph and Scott and all the Sugdens, and the Australian summer and Cotty’s Christmas dinner of prawn-stuffed avocadoes, roast turkey, ice cream and Christmas pud in thirty-five degree heat, and the hope of seeing Veronica in the foreseeable future... Not that that last had ever seemed real, anyhow.

Next chapter:

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