Personnel Placement

5

Personnel Placement

    Gail Vickers sprang up and grabbed the sheet of paper out of Drew Rowbotham’s nerveless hand. “He’s from where?”

    “Uh—I said, some mad ecolodge halfway to Outer Woop-Woop. I’ve passed the turnoff that’ll get you there—indirectly, I don’t think there is a direct route—on the way to Byron—”

    “Drew, you idiot,” said Gail tensely, “this is the ecolodge Jack Jackson helped build: it’s owned by YDI!”

    Recognising the name of Gail’s pet, Drew replied kindly: “Oh, is that the place where Jack’s been working?”

    “Not that! YDI!” she shouted.

    “Um, ye-ah, think he did say that was the name... We’ll never find anyone that wants to work up there, Gail. Well, Christie had a lady sea-changer in last week, but she was one of the well-off sort that don’t know what hard work—”

    “You idiot, YDI’s part of the Gano Group!”

    There was a short silence in Interview Room 1 of RightSmart Pty Ltd, currently in use for a staff meeting, there being no handy conference room, while its personnel placement consultants looked dubiously at their boss and exchanged puzzled glances.

    Finally Laurie Hanson rushed in, since no angels were offering. “It’s the Gano Group that are putting up that huge office tower on the spot where my handy bank branch used to be.”

    “Well, yeah!” retorted Gail with feeling. “And the rest! Ya know they own Reilly’s, do ya?”

    Reilly’s Employment Agency was very big in Australia—very big. Huge. There was a dazed silence.

    “Um, I thought it was a public company,” said Drew dazedly.

    Gail snorted.

    “You wanna read BRW more,” advised Laurie drily.

    A copy of BRW—it seemed to have definitively stopped calling itself Business Review Weekly some time between the beginning of the Howard era and the China-led resources boom Australia was currently enjoying—was usually to be found on Gail’s desk, and the back numbers were kindly passed on by Gail to the senior staff and thence, rather fast, to the coffee table in the reception area, so Gail retorted: “He’s not the only one. Look, this is an opportunity we need to grab with both fists before this bloke reports back to his head office and they tell him to go to Reilly’s!”

    After a puzzled moment Drew ventured: “I think he said his head office is in New Zealand.”

    “That’s their regional office, you nit. Hang on.” Gail marched out.

    “Well, I dunno what she’s on about, but as it isn’t one of my jobs, you can pass me that last muffin, thanks, Drew,” said Laurie comfortably.

    Drew passed the muffin plate and Christie Wilkins, who was very young, certainly in comparison to Laurie, ventured: “That lady sea-changer I had last week was hopeless. Actually, I thought she was a client when she came in, I’m sure that was a Carla Zampatti she was wearing.”

    “Mi’ off gop i’ uh uh op sho’,” said Laurie thickly through the muffin.

    “Not an op shop, ladies like her only volunteer there. Mind you, Mum reckons they grab all the good clothes for themselves.”

    “There you are,” said Laurie blandly, having swallowed.

    “Hah, hah,” replied Christie weakly as Drew and Jase grinned. “I suppose it could’ve been from one of those fancy second-hand shops that specialise in recycled fashion garments, but they’re not—” She broke off hurriedly, as Gail came back in, flourishing a copy of BRW.

    “I hope you were gonna say not cheap,” she noted cordially, sitting down.

    “Um, yes,” Christie admitted.

    “Glad to hear it. I won’t ask exactly what it was about but I will just say this: no ladylike sea-changers are gonna be put forward for anything owned by YDI or even remotely connected with the Gano Group, and that goes for the lot of you!” Gail held the mag up, turned to the relevant article. “See? –Pass it round,” she said to Jase, who was at her right hand.

    Jase normally didn’t deal with hospitality staff or, indeed, lady sea-changers in quest of jobs they were totally unfitted for. He looked at the article mildly. “Right: YDI South Pacific is based in Auckland, but its head office is in London. Gee, this ecolodge they’ve got in Queensland looks great... Aw, yeah, two up there, one here, and they’re building another one in Tazzie. Planning one for the Cooks? Good luck with that, they’ll be up against Polynesian laissez-faire combined with New Zealand suppliers!” He collapsed in sniggers, though not neglecting to pass the magazine on to Laurie.

    “Look at it,” said Gail evilly.

    “I’ll look at the pickshas,” replied Laurie equably. “...Mm. My word’d be daft, but then I already know I’m not up with the twenty-first century play.”

    “They may be daft—no, to be fair, they are daft, bloody good word,” decided Gail, “but they’ll pay good money and it can bloody well come to us, not to Reilly’s!”

    “They don’t want a cook, do they, Drew?” asked Laurie.

    “No. This bloke—what was his name, again? Uh—Vince, that’s right—said they want housekeeping staff, preferably someone with experience in a decent hotel, think he’ll have to whistle for that, plus someone to do the rooms, and a receptionist.”

    “No drivers or gardeners?” asked Jase. He managed most of those jobs for RightSmart, though any of the placement consultants could handle any type of job: Gail required her consultants to be flexible, not to say not mind pitching in when they had a rush on.

    “He didn’t mention them.”

    “Office staff?” asked Christie. That was her area of expertise, she’d come to them from a big employment agency—not Reilly’s, though a branch of one nearly as big—and after giving her considerable experience with a variety of other areas, Gail was letting her pretty much manage their office jobs now.

    “Only the receptionist, Christie,” said Drew kindly. She was an efficient girl, but her mind wasn’t what you could call flexible. She was, however, completely on the wavelength of the job applicants they got for office positions, and knew all there was to know about data input personnel and the speed at which they could be expected to input, expert word processors and inexpert ones, those who could actually do records management and those who claimed to be able to, those who could actually manage a PABX system and those who only claimed to—etcetera.

    “I could find you someone,” she said happily. “Dorinda Connors might do, she’s very experienced and her mum’s in Byron Bay, if this place is on the way it might suit her.”

    “Uh—about five hundred K south of it, I think,” said Drew weakly.

    “Potters Inlet,” said Gail heavily. “All right, you’ve never heard if it. About forty-odd K out of Barrabarra. It’s about a three hours’ drive from town.”

    Her fellow Sydneysiders looked at her in undisguised horror.

    “Three hours?” croaked Jase. “Drew’s right, we’ll never find anyone for them, Gail!”

    “You could— Um, no,” muttered Christie. “Um, well, say you left around six—the traffic’d all be going in the other direction, that’d be a plus—well, you could start at nine, would they need anyone on Reception earlier than that?”

    “How early would their clients have to check out to get their flights from Kingsford Smith?” returned Drew drily.

    RightSmart’s placement consultants were about to break into animated discussion on this point but Gail said loudly and firmly: “They want live-in staff, do they, Drew?”

    “Yes, or they wouldn’t mind if they wanted to live locally, but he did say they can provide really nice staff accommodation.”

    “It’d have to be,” she admitted drily. “Potters Inlet’s hardly a tourist mecca. Though there’s a nice B&B up there, Fee’s parents stayed at it for a long weekend. Lovely restaurant attached to the B&B. –Oh, yeah, and a crafts centre, Fee’s mum went to some china painting sessions there, that’s right.”

    “Sounds dire,” noted Laurie drily.

    “I’m with you, but it’s the norm for the affluent baby-boomers with more super than sense. Okay, Christie, you get onto the receptionist, make sure you stress that there’s really nice accommodation available. Drew, be sure and work out a decent rate with the client, don’t let him knock anything off for board and lodging. And Laurie, go through all the cook-housekeepers with a fine-tooth comb and find someone that can manage a household plus pitch in and do the work herself. Or himself, Dwayne Roberts might do if he’s free, he was saying he’s sick of buttling for the Double Bay set, none of them know what a butler is, for a start. Well, we knew that.”

    “Um, there’s a lot in the database that could do housekeeper or cleaner but not cook,” said Laurie dubiously.

    “Yes; I was about to say Drew can do those—housekeeper or cleaner, not housekeeper and cleaner, Drew—plus the maids. Did this Vince give you the impression that he knows the difference between a housemaid and a cleaner?”

    “I’d say he knows but he doesn’t care, he just wants someone to do the work.”

    “In that case, some of our cleaners might be just the ticket.”

    Drew looked at her uneasily. “Most of them are older women with families, they won’t want to work three hours out of the city.”

    “Just get onto it, Drew. Find a divorced one with grown-up kids,” she said on a dry note. “It’s your job, you coordinate it, all right? And make sure you have a get-together and sort out just who rings who before anyone picks up a phone, this time. But I want all hands to the pump on this one.”

    “Except me, presumably,” said Jase meekly.

    “I'm glad you spoke, you can give Drew a hand to ring the cleaners.”

    “Good!” said Drew with a laugh. “Well, we’ll do our best, Gail, but I honestly wouldn’t be too optimistic.”

    “I wouldn’t mind doing it myself, if it’s really in Outer Woop-Woop,” said Laurie dreamily, picking up the BRW that had somehow got discarded on the table. “If it’s this one with all the eucalypts and things?”

    “Melaleucas, yeah,” said Jase in a bored voice.

    “The setting looks lovely.”

    “Laurie, you’d hate it, these tiny country towns are full of rednecks, you know that,” said Gail heavily. “You’ve got a perfectly good job here, don’t be silly.”

    “Thought you hated housework?” put in Drew with a grin.

    “Only my own, I don’t mind it as a job,” replied Laurie tranquilly.

    Gail got up. “Yes, well, find us a placement consultant who’s as good as you at handling all those middle-aged moos that think they can cook, and I’ll consider letting you go.”

    “Pigs’ll fly before that day dawns,” predicted Jase. “You need a holiday, Laurie, that’s all.”

    “Yes: you could go up there!” contributed Christie eagerly, if perhaps unwisely.

    “Two thou’ a night per person, that makes four thou’ per room,” noted Drew very, very drily.

    “Help!” she gasped, dropping her ballpoint.

    “Not two thou’?” croaked Laurie.

    “Yes, this YDI mob only run very up-market hospitality concerns, if you’d look at the words instead of just the pickshas,” replied Drew with satisfaction.

    Christie picked up her ballpoint. “No, I know what! You could stay at the lovely B&B that Fee’s parents stayed at!”

    “The hills of New South Wales in the middle of winter,” said Jase in a hollow voice.

    “Is it near the Blue Mountains?” asked Laurie dubiously.

    “It’s within reasonable distance,” said Gail briskly from the doorway. “That’s a bloody good idea, actually, Laurie, you do need a break. Take a long weekend. I’ll get Fee to get you the name of the place.” With this she vanished.

    “Help!” said Laurie with a nervous giggle as the silence lengthened. “Was that a promise or a threat?”

    “Both,” replied Drew drily, getting up. “Come on, Jase, we’d better see just how many cleaners the database’ll spew out.”

    “Can we eliminate the ones that are working as of this moment?” he groaned.

    “No, some of them might like a change, but we could provisionally eliminate the ones on contracts that are gonna last more than another six weeks. –Come on.”

    Jase groaned, but came on.

    Laurie looked glumly from Christie to the empty muffin plate. “I wish I hadn’t eaten that last muffin.”

    “It was only a bran and date one, it’ll do you good,”  she replied kindly.

    “Uh—no, that came out wrong: I wish I still had that last muffin to eat. She’s gonna make me go, isn’t she?” she said sadly.

    Christie had worked long enough for RightSmart to be able to reply confidently to that one: “You bet.”

    Laurie sighed. “Yeah.”

    Miss Trix O’Connell looked down her charmingly tinted nose. “Three hours out of Sydney?”

    “Yes, but they’re offering really comfortable staff accomm—”

    “No, thanks. Reilly’s have offered me two nice jobs with downtown law firms.”

    “Trix,” began Drew without hope, “you mentioned to Christie that you didn’t want to work for another law—”

    Miss O’Connell got up. “It’s better than being stuck three hours out of Sydney. Keep me in mind if something in town comes up.”

    … Miss Kirstie Walker recoiled. “In the country?”

    “No, it’s only three hours out of—”

    Miss Walker looked down her charmingly tinted nose. “I’m only looking for jobs in the city, thanks, Drew.”

    … “Who?” said Miss Georgia Harbison blankly.

    “YDI. They’re a big British-based hospitality company,” Drew explained.

    Miss Harbison looked down her charmingly tinted nose “Aw—hotel work. I’m only looking for an office receptionist position.”

    … “Well?” said Drew to Christie at the end of a very trying week.

    They had agreed to share the agony of interviewing possible receptionist applicants for the Blue Gums Ecolodge job, so Christie was able to reply promptly: “Nah. None of them wanna work in Outer Woop-Woop, and can ya blame them?”

    He sighed. “Not really. Mind you, half of mine seemed to think it’d be like working in a ruddy pub.”

    “I never gave them that idea,” warned Christie.

    No, well, God knew what idea she’d given them to drag them in for an interview, actually, but no, Drew was ready to believe that that one was all their own. And these were the cream of the crop, the ones Christie had thought looked possible and who had actually wanted to come in for an interview!

    “Any luck with the housekeepers?” she asked kindly.

    That had been the other half of Drew’s very long week. “No. Well, some of them can clean and a few of them know what a housekeeper’s job in a hospitality concern is, but you’re right, none of them want to work in Outer Woop-Woop. Full board or not.”

    “Nah. You fancy coming to happy hour?” asked Christie kindly.

    The section of the wider Sydney metropolitan area which housed RightSmart, nestling coyly in a highish block behind decorative concrete slabs irritatingly half-veiling irritatingly narrow slits of windows, was composed largely of smallish white-collar firms like their own, with a few garages and a handful of warehouses thrown in. Plus the pubs and cafés that serviced them. The choice was therefore between The Blue Boar, renamed and done up in the Seventies with fresh wrought iron on its balcony and further done up in the Nineties in a different colour scheme entirely and with a completely new lunch menu of beef rendang, salmon steaks, grilled trout, Thai prawns or Caesar salad replacing its ploughman’s, steak or sausages, and The Ambassador, its old name, done up in the Nineties with fresh wrought iron on all its balconies and with a more expensive lunch menu of Wiener schnitzel, grilled barramundi with pommes frîtes, tagliatelle marinara or Caesar salad replacing its schnitzel, fish and chips or spaghetti bolognaise. The Blue Boar’s beef rendang and superior Caesar salad were greatly appreciated by those of the local gay set who weren’t vegetarian, and so it and its happy hour had become theirs, while The Ambassador’s extremely solid Wiener schnitzels—the things generally overlapped a large white dinner plate—had made it popular with the male hetero set who either weren’t yet watching their cholesterol count or who were getting away with murder whilst out from under their wives’ eyes. Numerically there were about as many female workers as males in the area but they weren’t lunch habitués and so generally just chose the nearest watering-hole for happy hour. The drinks the two pubs served were in any case identical, and if you were a female you always got a straw, never mind if you’d ordered a short. Neither pub had apparently perceived that the truncated straws with which they provided the ladies for their shorts refused to stay in the glasses, though Laurie Hanson had kindly pointed it out to the barmen of both establishments.

    Drew was gay and though he wasn’t precisely prejudiced he had a fair idea what The Ambassador would be like at happy hour, so he replied cautiously: “Well, which pub did you and Laurie have in mind, Christie?”

    “Laurie hasn’t actually said she’s coming.”

    “She will!” predicted Drew with a laugh.

    “Yeah. Um, well, she won’t mind. We could make it The Blue Boar, if you like, Drew,” she said kindly.

    Drew’s eyes twinkled but he agreed sedately: “Righto, that’d be nice.”

    Laurie was discovered telling her computer screen: “The Hyatt? Hanging from the highest tree’d be too good for the woman!” so she was hauled off it and told it was time for happy hour. There was probably no need to ask if she’d had any luck with the Blue Gums Ecolodge job but Christie asked anyway.

    “No, they all claimed to have experience housekeeping but as soon as they realised where it was they said they were only looking for a cook’s position, or were only looking for a job with a private employer.”

    “What about Miriam Abbott?” said Christie. Mrs Abbott had been heard only the previous week complaining very loudly—she had a loud voice and she hadn’t bothered to shut the door of Laurie’s office before she launched into it—that she’d never work for those jumped-up dames at Double Bay again as long as she lived even if they offered her three times as much, the more money they had they worse they treated you.

    “Her as well, in fact she had a dummy-spit at the mere idea of full board three hours from town!”

    “Personally I’d call it a good offer,” said Christie valiantly. “I mean, if you were saving up?”

    “So would I, but none of them can see past the end of their noses. Well, to be fair, if you give up a flat in Sydney you’re a mug, and so they’d still be landed with their rent.”

    “But heck, you could save an awful lot if you stopped paying rent, Laurie, it’s an opportunity, really!”

    Laurie sighed. “The older ones see their flats as security. But it’d be an opportunity if you were saving up to put a deposit on a house, yeah. Try putting it to your receptionists like that.”

    “All right, I will!” she said with determination.

    “Did you actually place anybody this week, Laurie?” asked Drew glumly as Laurie shrugged herself into her elderly parka.

    “Yes, one of my cooks, Jill Garrett, don’t think you’d know her, with Mrs Brocklehurst.”

    Mrs Brocklehurst was a recurring theme at RightSmart, not that they didn’t appreciate the custom, so Drew said weakly: “Again?”

    “Yes, she was going on the QEII, and then a cruise of the Greek islands, so she let the last one go.”

    “Nice to be some people,” he concluded drily.

    “My stomach wouldn’t agree, but yeah. Still, we won’t have that problem again, will we?”

    “Uh—copped a bad calamari?” he groped.

    “You don’t have to go overseas for that,” noted Laurie drily. “No, aren’t they retiring it?”

    “Uh—oh, the QEII? Yes, think you might be right, but they’ve built a Q— Um, well, it’s a second Queen Mary but I dunno what they’re calling it.”

    “QMII?” ventured Christie.

    “I wouldn’t think so, the QM is how English people used to refer to the Queen Mother,” said Laurie tranquilly before Drew could formulate a reply.

    “Aw, right. No, it would sound a bit rude. Mind you, she’s dead, though.”

    “Yeah. Well, no doubt in due time Mrs Brocklehurst will enlighten us!” said Laurie with a laugh as the lift deposited them in their building’s draughty, dingy lobby.

    “Yeah,” agreed Christie with a grin, trying to peer through the nearest floor-to-ceiling, thirty-centimetre-wide glass slit partially veiled by a concrete slab.

    “Still raining?” asked Drew.

    “Dunno. All I can see is concrete. The footpath looks wet, though.”

    “Oh, well, come on, girls, it’s only a short dash to the pub!”

    Bravely the three RightSmart placement consultants dashed.

    “You see,” said Christie with a lovely persuasive smile, “it’d be a really good opportunity to save a bomb, ’cos there’d be no rent and nothing to pay for food or electricity or anythink and they’re offering a really good rate on top of that!”

    Miss Aileen Leggett’s protuberant blue eye brightened. “That’s a point. Me and Tone are saving up to put a deposit on a house. You wouldn’t believe the dumps we’ve looked at!”—Christie would, actually; she nodded and smiled encouragingly.—“There’s nothink under three hundred thou’, these days, even in West Sydney, and you can say what you like, some of those areas aren’t safe! And we don’t wanna live miles up the coast, I mean, heck, Tone’s Uncle Jake’s got a two and a half hour journey at each end of the day, and that’s on his motorbike! It is nice where they are, but heck!”

    “Yes, and the motorways are really dangerous in the rush hour,” agreed Christie with perfectly genuine sympathy. “And see, you could pop down to Sydney for your days off, easy as anything.”

    “Yes, that’d be okay. Well, yeah, okay, I wouldn’t mind giving it a go.”

    … “You see,” said Christie with a lovely persuasive smile, “it’d be a really good opportunity to save for your trip, ’cos there’d be no rent and nothing to pay for food or electricity or anythink, and they’re offering a really good rate on top of that!”

    Miss Angela Raimondi’s lugubrious brown eye brightened. “Yeah, I could give up that flat! Well, see, Gina was planning to go home for a bit anyway to save money”—Christie nodded, perfectly understanding that this meant to her parents’ home—“and that would of left me and Chris, but her and Nick have set the date—well, Father O’Malley agreed to squeeze them in but they won’t get a decent reception place at this short notice, only her old Uncle Joe, well, he’s got this place out in the Hunter Valley somewhere, they’re having it there. It’s not an actual winery as such, he only grows the grapes, but there’s a big shed they quite often use for family get-togethers. But she’ll be seven months by that time and heck, like Mum says, beggars can’t be choosers, y’know? Would there be parking, though?”

    Used though she was to her candidates’ habits of discourse Christie blinked slightly at this sudden return to a previous topic, but allowed that there’d be plenty of parking at Blue Gums Ecolodge.

    “That’s okay, then. Well, yeah, okay, I wouldn’t mind giving it a go: me and Gina want to go on a really decent trip, y’know? Not one of those awful cruises where all they do is drink and slip ya Rohypnol.”

    “Good, I’ll put you forward, then,” said Christie happily.

    Up in the hills of New South Wales it wasn’t quite clear why Vince Pettigrew had brought Blue Gums Ecolodge’s applicants’ résumés down to Jardine Holiday Horse Treks, except that misery loved company. And it was a cold, drizzling winter’s day with no guests currently booked in at either establishment. Jardine Holiday Horse Treks’ full-time personnel consisted of Gil Sotherland, who was doing CO, faute de mieux, his rather new fiancée, Rosemary Laingholm, as chief cook and bottle-washer, and his idiot nephew, Phil Sotherland, as adjutant, horse wrangler and general factotum. Honey Jardine, who was Phil’s Mummy and co-owner of the fifty acres or so of rocky clay which comprised the horse trekking enterprise, had a job in the city, and Phil’s girlfriend, Jen Remington, was finishing her sports medicine diploma at one of the city’s several universities, so as it was the middle of the working week there were only Gil, Rosemary and Phil to form a sympathetic audience for Vince.

    “This one’s pretty!” discerned Phil with a laugh. All the résumés were formatted exactly alike—obviously RightSmart’s house style—and they all included a small coloured portrait of the applicant.

    “Shut up, you’ve got your lovely Jen, you don’t need a highly coloured receptionist!” returned his uncle genially, grabbing it off him. “Looks like a pouter to me,” he decided, handing it back to Vince.

    Vince looked dubiously at the highly coloured Miss Aileen Leggett. “It’ll be a digital photo, the colour’s always exaggerated. Um, well, she can’t help the shape of her mouth, Gil.”

    “I think she was just trying to look soulful for the camera, Vince,” said Rosemary kindly.

    Vince winced. “Sir Maurice will not want soulful!”

    Phil was examining another one. “This one’s worked at a hotel. Where is Ballarat?”

    As Rosemary and Gil were as English as he was they just looked blank but Vince was able to say: “Victoria. It’s the place that’s got that kind of pioneer town for the tourists. You know: gold rush days or something.”

    “Wait: I know!” cried Rosemary, bouncing up. She rushed out.

    As the confab was taking place in Jardine Holiday Horse Treks’ front room, which was the oldest part of the late Great-Uncle Dave Jardine’s tumbledown house and thus contained a large fireplace with an excellent chimney, they had a good fire going, but Gil took the opportunity to get up and add another log to it.

    Rosemary rushed back with a plate. “Look! I knew I’d heard of it before!”

    They looked. It was a bread-and-butter plate of very heavy white china, bearing a small crest on the rim which incorporated the minute legend “Royal Hotel Ballarat.”

    “Where did this come from?” croaked Gil. Phil and his mother had inherited Great-Uncle Dave Jardine’s furniture and the contents of his cupboards along with the old bungalow and the clay, scrub and rocks which comprised the real property, but, certainly by the time Gil had come out to join them, the crockery had consisted of three chipped white enamel plates, navy-trimmed, with one matching mug, two chipped fawn enamel plates, brown-trimmed, one very dented but serviceable tin plate, five floral bone china saucers, and one heavy old white china jug, cracked, which Honey was wisely using only as a flower vase—the property did not support flowers as such but there were plenty of acacias and bottlebrushes. Gil had not hitherto been aware that the bottlebrush could attain a height of twenty feet if left to its own devices. His subsequent purchases for the place had not included any heavy white bread-and-butter plates, with or without crests.

    “Dear old Andy MacMurray gave it to me, as a going-away present, ’cos he knew I love it!” beamed Rosemary.

    There was a short pause. Old Andy’s recent disappearance to join his son’s very new girlfriend in the environs of Byron Bay on the New South Wales coast—not Byron as such, admittedly, but an obscure little bay a little to the north of it—had stunned his neighbours in Potters Road, who’d assumed that Andy was a fixture. It had also, just incidentally, lowered the number of occupied properties in the road to three: Blue Gums Ecolodge, the Jardine place and Springer House B&B. The last did incorporate three households besides the B&B itself: its crafts centre and chef’s house, plus the chef’s sister’s house, but they were all on Bob Springer’s property.

    “Help, does that mean he’s not coming back?” croaked Phil.

    Gil eyed him wryly. “After he’d spent Easter with George and Lisbet, I got the impression he was even keener on her than George is, old chum, so I’d say it’s odds on.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Vince. “Jack was up at Ginger Bay with him that first time George met Lisbet, he reckons she’s really decent, and what’s more her uncle owns the whole little cove! It sounds lovely, and their weather’s miles milder than ours, it’ll be doing Andy’s arthritis good. If only his place was next to us!”

    There was a short silence.

    “I see, would Sir Maurice buy it up, Vince?” said Phil kindly.

    The legendary Sir Maurice Black was Vince’s boss, the CEO of YDI, the fair-sized British hospitality company which owned Blue Gums Ecolodge. Vince was merely the ecolodge’s manager, he wasn’t responsible for the selection of the site, the potty design of the place, or how YDI advertised the delights of a fully environmental ecolodge in an unexciting bit of rundown rural New South Wales, but for matters involving the day-to-day running of the place, the buck stopped with him.

    “Yes,” Vince agreed, “if it was next-door, see, but as it is, he’ll never wear it, and what if that daughter of Andy’s gets hold of it? It’ll be smothered in awful holiday homes for her up-market friends before ya can say knife!”

    “Ugh, yes, and broadleaved plants and those funny-looking things they have on Gardening Australia!” cried Phil.

    “Er—vegetables?” ventured Gil.

    “Very funny, Uncle Gil! No, um, very exotic... Brightly coloured, um, flower spikes.”

    “Orchids?” ventured Rosemary.

    “No. Some of them are a bit like orchids, though. No, um, do I mean ginger plants?”

    There was a blank silence. His fellow Poms didn’t know and Vince was no gardener.

    “Anyway, not native vegetation,” said Phil definitely.

    “Exactly, Phil!” agreed Vince. “It’ll ruin the ambiance!”

    “Well, possibly, but I was under the impression Andy intended leaving the property to George,” said Gil, trying to be brisk but not too obvious about it.

    “Gil, once people move on they don’t care,” he said bitterly.

    Gil decided to be obvious. “Let’s not anticipate trouble. Which of these applicants are you going to interview, Vince?”

    “Oh! Well, um, all of them, I suppose. None of them sound very likely, though.”

    Phil examined the photo of the sultry, dark-eyed Miss Angela Raimondi. “Crumbs, this one’s another pouter!”

    Gil took it off him. He winced. “Er—modern photography?” he ventured, passing it to Rosemary.

    “Yes, this is definitely a salon portrait,” she agreed.

    “I think they all are,” said Vince sadly. “That’s the sort of applicants one can expect these days.” He eyed Rosemary wistfully. “They’re not ladies. Just imagine Sir Maurice ringing up...”

    “Hands off, you can’t have her!” said Gil with a laugh.

    “No,” he said sadly. “Well, at least darling Annabel doesn’t mind filling in on Reception, and you can’t say she isn’t a lady!” He beamed proudly at them.

    Very, very luckily Gil’s idiot nephew was so used to the gay Vince’s pride in his ladylike head housekeeper that this one just passed right over his head. Gil himself had to swallow very hard but fortunately he was spared the effort of speech, as Rosemary was agreeing with complete sincerity that of course Annabel was a lady and at least Vince didn’t have to worry about the massages any more, because even if Jacqueline Corbière was very difficult to live with, she was a very experienced masseuse and knew all about tai chi and yoga as well.

    “She was complaining the other day that she couldn’t find any frangipani petals to use in her water-therapy sessions, but yeah, she knows her stuff, all right.”

    Very, very luckily Gil’s idiot nephew was so used to the daft goings-on at Blue Gums Ecolodge that this one just floated right by him—like the petals, right.

    The résumés from RightSmart bore fruit in that several snappy little modern cars were seen and heard torturing their engines horribly as they crawled up the clay ruts of Potters Road. Vince could, of course, have interviewed the applicants in town but he’d decided to bite on the bullet, there being no point in giving someone the job and then having them turn round and walk off the minute they got a look at the place. However, the résumés didn’t bear fruit to the extent of producing the right person.

    Vince stabbed the photograph of the sultry Miss Angela Raimondi with a vigorous forefinger. “Italian.”

    “Mm, the name indicated that,” agreed Gil mildly.

    “Gil, she’s got the accent!”

     There was a short silence.

    “Sorry, didn’t mean to shout,” he said sheepishly.

    “Shout all you like. A recent immigrant, is she?”

    “Eh? Aw, see whatcha mean. No, it isn’t that. I can’t describe it, but a lot of them speak like it. Dunno whether it’s partly the parents still speaking Italian at home, but... Well, all I can say is, she seems like a nice enough girl but she sounds common, and Sir Maurice’ll have a blue fit if I let her anywhere near the phone!”

    “Oh, Lor’. Was she the one who’d worked at the hotel in Ballarat?”

    “No.” Vince sorted through his papers. “This was her. Melanie Little. She wasn’t bad on the phone, she’s done receptionist for a big law firm. Quite well presented.”

     Gil looked at his drooping face. “But?”

    “Hadn’t realized how far out of town we are. Said she’d think it over.” He sighed.

    Ouch! “Any more?”

    “Your pouter,” said Vince heavily, showing him the photo of Miss Aileen Leggett. “I finally got her to admit—she wriggled like blazes, too—I finally got her to admit that her and the fiancé are saving up for a house. I spotted the engagement ring, you see.”

    Gil took a deep breath. “Then she’ll be happy to live in your staff accommodation and save on rent, Vince. That sounds ideal.”

    “How long will she stay?” he retorted bitterly.

    “I think you’re going to have to bite on the bullet and accept that you can expect a pretty high turnover in receptionists. And judging by Jack’s experience with RightSmart, they’ll really work at finding staff for you, I don’t think you can go past them. If you get a succession of young women who are saving up to buy a house, so be it. At least they’ll take it seriously.”

    “Yes, and there’ll be no mooning over the latest boyfriend, that’s a plus,” he conceded.

    Heroically Gil refrained from laughing. “There you are, then. Tell her the job’s hers.”

    “She’s acceptable but that’s as far as I’ll go,” he warned.

    “This is rural New South Wales, Vince, old man, I think acceptable’s as much as one can reasonably hope for.”

    Vince smiled sadly at him. “Yes, you’re right, of course, Gil. Only I just wish it was you that’s gonna have to tell Sir Maurice that!”

    Gil wouldn’t have minded telling him, that and a few more things: he sounded the ultimate prick, actually—though on the other hand, after a long stint in the British Army, the last part of it as a full Colonel, he was aware of the syndrome that insisted on turning its superior h’orficers into monsters. “Try telling him that she’s a nice, natural Australian girl who’ll relate well to your punters!”

    “Yes, well, at least the pouting was only for the photo.”

    This nearly overset Gil but he managed: “Good. Anyone to help Annabel on the housekeeping side?”

    “A Mrs Gordon—wait on. Here.” A plain, middle-aged face looked blankly up at Gil from the résumé. “Kathleen, that’s right. Kathleen Gordon. Quite a lot of cleaning experience, nothing in a decent hospitality establishment, mainly offices, but she’s worked in a motel over the summer season, so I said I’d try her out. At least she’s willing to live in. Divorced, one son over in WA. Well, one can’t ask them that as a criteria, y’know? But the trick is, get them chatting and none of them’ll tell you you’ve got no right to ask about their family circumstances!” he said cheerfully.

    Mm. So much for workers’ rights in the twenty-first century, eh? “That sounds good, Vince,” said Gil easily. “The punters won’t care, so long as the rooms are clean and the linen crisp and fresh.” –As soon as the words had left his mouth he wished them unsaid: what if Vince had lost his prize ironer? The woman didn’t do anything else, she just ironed, but in Potters Inlet he was bloody lucky to have her. It was all right, however, Vince just nodded and agreed, with merely a passing reference to the desirability of tasteful vases of native flowers in every room.

    Phil and Rosemary had both been out with the horses, so on their return Gil was able to give them a very full report.

    “Couldn’t you’ve made that need-to-know only, Uncle Gil?” groaned Phil at the end of it.

    “Certainly not! I suffered, so you can bloody well suffer, too!”

    “Has Vince actually got any bookings for this winter?” ventured Rosemary.

    Gil rubbed his nose. “Mm. Party of four Swiss booked in for a week before they do the Red Centre. Apparently very keen to try the relaxing massages advertised on bloody Sir Maurice’s bloody website—just as well Vince took on that French masseuse full-time, isn’t it? But what they’re going to do with themselves for the rest of the time, don’t ask me. Well, the horses will be available, if they fancy trekking in the rain.”

    “I know!” cried Rosemary. “Those R.M Williams coats!”

    “Wot?” replied Gil gormlessly.

    “Ooh, yeah,” said Phil slowly. “Genuine Outback gear. I dunno that the coats are from R.M Williams, actually. Hang on, Jen’ll know!” He rushed to the phone. This resulted in: “Dry as a bone? –I can spell it, Jen! ...Oh. Doesn’t that spell drizz? ...If you say so! ...Yeah, see ya!” He hung up. “I knew she’d know! They have special hats, too, they’ll be ace!”

    “Absolutely!” cried Rosemary, clapping her hands.

    Around the time Rosemary joined him—well, after he’d got over the shock of finding that she really did want to, she hadn’t changed her mind over the intervening agonising period which he’d insisted on, to let her grow up a bit and think it over before she committed herself to a crock more than twice her age with one lung and a tin shoulder—around that time, Gil Sotherland had taken a vow that he wouldn’t treat the two of them as a pair of young idiots compared to his all-knowing adult self. But at this point he found himself saying: “The pair of you can forget that idea entirely. No way are we funding absurd Outback wet-weather gear for hugely affluent eco-punters who think nothing of coughing up the best part of two thousand pounds a night for a room at the bloody ecolodge!”

    “No, silly!” cried Rosemary. “Blue Gums pays for it!”

    “Yeah, of course, Uncle Gil!” cried Phil. “They supply the proper gear, you see, and we just supply the genuine Outback horse treks!”

    “Uh—’tisn’t really the Outback, we’re three hours from Sydney, ten minutes from Potters Inlet on foot and barely twenty minutes’ drive from Barrabarra,” he said feebly. “Well, yes: by all means phone Vince—” Phil was already doing so.

    There was no doubt at all that the man’d put it to Sir Maurice as all his own brilliant idea, but never mind. Might net them a few more eco-punters for damp winter rides than they’d otherwise have got! Twenty-first century commerce, eh?

    Gil didn’t voice his strong suspicion that if Blue Gums Ecolodge hadn’t started to make a decent turnover by the time it had been going for a year—next October, that’d be—the fabled Sir Maurice might pull the plug. Sufficient unto the day. And at least for the moment it was providing a few people with jobs.

Next chapter:

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