18
William Morris And Other Complications
“You—you mean I can’t go, after all?” faltered Veronica in dismay.
Iain felt himself go very, very red. “No, um, entirely up to you,” he croaked.
“I’ve promised... And I was looking forward to it,” she said in a small voice.
“Yes. But, um, well, Laurie doesn’t really need you—I mean, she can’t take any guests yet, until the place is done up, and in any case with the Springers and the baby sleeping there for the rest of the year guests’ll be out of the question. And if they really need a waitress for those half-dozen guests that are all the B&B’ll hold, Gail’s assured me she can find them someone else.”
“It’s not just the B&B, the restaurant’s very popular on Fridays and weekends, even in the winter,” she reminded him.
Iain had overlooked that factor. “Oh—yeah,” he said lamely.
“I—I really don’t think I should let them all down, Iain,” said Veronica in a trembling voice.
Iain looked at the big anxious eyes and had to swallow. “No. Very well, sweetheart, you do what you think best. I think I’ll go for a bit of a run, need to clear my head.”
“Are you very cross?” said Veronica in a tiny, tiny voice.
Oh, God. It had begun to dawn that she couldn’t take that. She was quite a big girl, of course, and, well, looked capable, but underneath she was—well, an extremely gentle personality, perhaps put it most accurately. Not easily led, no, as witness today—but definitely not into screaming, shouting, loudly putting over her point of view or, indeed, standing up for herself. All of which factors had been very common—very, very common—in the ladies with whom Iain had been involved in the past.
“Not with you, no. With Fate and the cretinous new owners of Blue Gums Fucking Ecolodge—yeah. Definitely not with you. We’ll work something out! A run’ll clear my head!” he said on a cheery note, going.
“Oh, help,” said Veronica limply to herself. Was he going to—to decide on things without even consulting her? After some hesitation she went into the kitchen where, as it wasn’t an afternoon she had to go to her clients, Daph was whipping up something that’d no doubt turn out delicious.
“Daph, could I make a phone call to Potters Inlet?”
Daph leaned a hand heavily on the bench. “What’s gone wrong now?”
Veronica tried to smile. “The partners that bought up Blue Gums Ecolodge have decided to resell it. –Don’t worry, Scott’s job is safe!” she added quickly.
“That’s a relief,” conceded his mother drily. “And?”
“They’re not taking Iain on, after all.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Mm.”
“Uh—well, make as many phone calls as you like, love,” said Daph, trying to pull herself together.
“But it’s out of town, won’t it be a toll-call?”
“Uh—STD call, Veronica. No, it’s not interstate, and even if it was, you live here, too.”
“Thanks, Daph,” she said, unaffectedly picking up the extension in the kitchen. Well—extension, it was a spare phone from that old house Iain and Scott had cleared, they’d got it at the same time they’d got that one for Dad, but this was a cream one, while Dad’s was grey—he’d have held out for a black one but those ancient things apparently didn’t work with the modern Telstra infrastructure—typical! Daph had been having a moan about the phone that was plugged into the blimming thingo in the draughts of the passage, so Iain had said there was no need to put up with it and to Hell with bloody BT—he meant bloody Telstra, she’d worked out—he’d fix it up for her. He’d got an extra long extension cord and a lot of little clip thingos and the cord now ran down the passage just on the top of the skirting, you couldn't even see it unless you peered, and under the kitchen door right against the jamb, the door didn’t stick at all, he’d made a little groove for it, and then along the skirting again as far as the end of the bench, where he’d put a new little phone pad he’d bought with a pen attached, so even ruddy Scott hadn’t managed to casually walk off with it, and fixed the phone itself to the wall! It was really, really convenient!
Since Veronica hadn’t gone out to the passage to make the call in private, Daph unashamedly listened.
“Hullo, Laurie, this is Veronica Johnson speaking,” she said. The phone yacked busily at her. “Yes, I know. Iain’s really cross about it. ...Um, yes, his mother probably could afford it, Laurie, but then he’d be working for her, wouldn’t he?”—At this point Daph Harris was driven to raise her eyebrows very high.—“No, that’s what I thought. ...No, I do still want to come! ...I see. ...Yes, if there’s a spare room over there, of course I’ll come over with you. That sounds fine, Laurie. ...Not a couch, but I’ve done a chair. It didn’t look very professional, mind you. …Jack? Really? Oh, great! ...No, dining chairs are really easy, I’ve done loads of those! ...Yes, I love William Morris!”—Who the Hell was he, when he was at home? Daph frowned.—“Well, yes, but if one uses the material sparingly, and picks up the colours for the walls? ...Exactly!” she said with an excited laugh. “I know: Deanna’s got exquisite taste, hasn’t she? It’ll be super having her right there! ...I know they bawl, don’t worry, I used to look after Melanie Drinkwater’s kids when I had the flat. ...Him? No, of course he never knew, Melanie was an unmarried mum that according to him had no right to even be in the block, let alone her kids, poor little things! ...Well, no, Laurie, he couldn’t get them out, much though he’d have liked to, ’cos that would’ve meant letting people know he had an interest in the block! ...Yes, me, too! ...Um, I’m not sure what Iain was planning, but of course I can easily take the bus. About nine-thirty? Okay, great, I’ll expect him then! ’Bye, Laurie!” She hung up, beaming.
“Who the Hell is William Morris, when ’e’s at home?” demanded Daph grimly, before she could stop herself.
“What? Oh!” said Veronica with a gurgle of laughter. “Not a man, Daph! Well, he was originally—over a hundred years ago! It’s a style of interior design. Big curly leaves and things. English.”
“Right, so it wasn’t him that wanted to evict this mate of yours that you babysat for?”
“No, that was horrible Dennis Haverstock,” replied Veronica with the utmost placidity.
“Oh, ’im!”
There was a short silence.
“Um, so you told Laurie about him, then, Veronica?’ added Daph on a weak note.
“Mm, she rang me about an idea for the sitting-room and we were just chatting, you know?”
In other words, Veronica had found a friend! No wonder the poor girl didn’t want ruddy Iain to put the kybosh on the job at Potters Inlet! Daph beamed at her. “I get it, love! Nice person, isn’t she? Always liked her best of all Gail’s placement consultants, meself.”
“Yes,” said Veronica gratefully, smiling.
“Well, you do what you want to, Veronica. Blokes like Iain are too fond of having everything their own way. And don’t worry, I won’t suggest he oughta get ruddy Ellie to buy up Blue Gums Ecolodge.”
“Thanks awfully, Daph! I just couldn’t face it! She’d have such a hold over him!”
Exactly. Bright girl, wasn’t she? And you couldn’t blame any woman under the sun for not wanting to be mixed up with a bloke that was under bloody Ellie Borovansky’s thumb!
“He can pull ’is finger out,” decided Daph on a grim note. “Jack up a flat for himself. High time he did that, anyway. Then the two of you can spend a bit of time in it, eh? The B&B won’t be booked up all winter, and Laurie’s really easy-going, she won’t mind if you nip down to town overnight now and then.”
“Yes,” said Veronica, blushing but smiling. “I sort of thought that’d be best, too, Daph.”
Too right! Added to which, the poor girl had obviously been really looking forward to helping Laurie with her blessed redecorating! Looking militant, Daph switched the big mixer on.
WHI-RRR-RR!
“Oops, given it a bit much!” she realised, hurriedly switching it off. “Never mind, it’ll do, only a lemon tea-loaf!”
“Ooh, yummy!” replied Veronica eagerly.
“Iain likes it. It’s really easy, you could learn to make it. See, you just—” Daph plunged into it.
“I see, so this is what the mixture should look like?”
“Yeah. Well, not whipped to Kingdom Come, really, but that sort of general texture, yeah. Think you could manage it?” she said, scraping the mixture into a greased loaf tin. It was non-stick, but Daph Harris had been greasing tins all her life and non-stick was as non-stick did. Added to which, a cake tasted better if you greased the tin, something that had apparently not occurred to the males that had invented non-stick cookware.
“Yes, I think I could,” agreed Veronica happily. “The thing is, the books tell you to mix it and so forth, but they never tell you what it should look like, do they? So you never know if you’ve done it right.”
“Exactly! You need to watch someone doing it,” said Daph with huge satisfaction. “Now, the oven’s been on for— Cripes, is that the time? Well, you need to give it ten minutes, anyway, to warm up. Then you bung it in,” she said, suiting the action to the word.
“I see, in the middle... So when they say ‘preheat it to such-and-such’, they don’t mean and then turn it off?”
“No!” cried Daph in amaze.
“They don’t say,” said Veronica simply.
Daph thought about it. “No, you’re right, they don’t. –Mad. –Never mind, love, I’ll show you!”
“Yes,” said Veronica with true gratitude. “Thanks awfully, Daph.”
“I’ve been thinking!” said Iain on an eager note on his return from his run.
Veronica sat on Daph’s comfy couch and let him get right through it without saying anything.
“What do you think?” he asked eagerly.
She thought he was mad, that was what! Did he want his awful mother to have a hold over him for the rest of his life? Buying Blue Gums Ecolodge, building a place for them next-door—on the bit that overlooked the swamp, just incidentally—managing the ecolodge between them, Jacqueline coming up with her massage stuff— That’d be two women telling him what to do! Talk about never being able to call your soul your own!
“I think it sounds really silly, Iain,” she replied firmly.
Iain’s jaw sagged.
“I’d say Potters Inlet would the last place to suit your mother, though I’m sure she would agree to buy the ecolodge for you. But if it was entirely in her name—”
“Of course!” he interrupted, going very red.
“Then you’d be at the mercy of her whims and fancies. What if she got bored and decided to sell out because she wanted to buy a really nice house somewhere else?”
“But—” Iain broke off, gnawing on his lip. Finally he said: “I can just see her doing it, too. There’d be apologies and ‘darlings’ all over the show, and probably several bouts of tears, but— Yeah.”
“Mm. Do you really want to go into the hospitality industry?”
“Uh—well, not really, no. I mean, it was fun temping at the ecolodge, but the clients were the living end, ’smatter of fact,” he said sheepishly.
“Mm. I thought they sounded awful. And even Bob and Deanna’s sound really tiresome. The over-nice middle-aged sort, you know?”
“Yes,” he agreed, swallowing.
“So why exactly did you dream up this involved scheme, Iain?”
Oh, Lor’! Um, um... “Couldn’t see any other way to get us both up to Potters Inlet at the same time and, um, gainfully employed,” he admitted, swallowing hard.
“That’s what I thought,” said Veronica in some relief.
“Okay, go on, what’s the sensible solution?” he said glumly.
“I wouldn’t call it a solution, but it’s a compromise. Given that I don’t feel I can let Laurie and the Springers down.”
“No, wasn’t expecting you to. Go on.”
“I think you need to give up any thoughts of getting a job up at Potters Inlet and take a flat in town. I’m sure I won’t be all that busy, the B&B won’t be booked out all winter, far from it. And I know the restaurant’s pretty busy during the weekends, but I could take some time off during the week. I’m sure Laurie wouldn’t mind if took the occasional day off.”
“And night!” said Iain, grinning broadly. “What a positively splendid idea!”
“Oh, good,” said Veronica, sagging. “Well, Daph had the same idea, actually.”
“Then it’s bound to work!” he said with a laugh.
“Yes, um, don’t go overboard, Iain. Just an ordinary little flat.”
“Of course! We need to save our pennies for a house of our own!”
“Yes,” said Veronica going very red but looking him firmly in the eye. “We do.”
“Come here! Give us a kiss!” He kissed her very thoroughly.
“And you see, helping Laurie with her redecorating will give me lots of useful experience,” said Veronica on a firm note.
“Mm? Mm.” Iain’s hand was investigating that lovely soft jumper she had on...
“For our own house!” said Veronica rather loudly.
“Mm? Oh! I see! Yes, absolutely!”
“Do you like William Morris?”
Who the Hell was he, when he was at— Oh! “Mmm,” he said, giving in entirely and burying his face in the front of the jumper. “In moderation,” he said indistinctly.
“Ooh! Your breath’s very warm,” said Veronica feebly. “Um, yes, of course in moderation.”
“Not in all things,” he warned very, very indistinctly.
“No,” she agreed faintly. “Not all, Iain.”
“OH! Iain!” she shrieked, three painful weeks later, as he got down there at last.
After quite a lot more shrieking Iain sat up to get his breath, grinning like a maniac. “Thought so!” he announced pleasedly.
“Um, yes,” said Veronica faintly. “Beastly Dennis used to be really mean about that, once he found out how much I like it.”
“Sod him, then. I shall never very be really mean. ...Mmm,” he finished indistinctly.
“OH!” shrieked Veronica, putting her legs right up, how encouraging to a chap! “I love it, I love it! Oh, IAIN!”
Very, very generously Iain let her have a belting come that way before he managed to haul the condom on, fall on top of her and— Oh, GOD! JESUS! “AAARGH! Uh—AAARGH!”
“Help,” said Veronica as the echoes finally ceased ringing.
Iain just panted.
At very long last he was able to articulate— Nope. Some time after that he was able to produce: “Omigod.”
“You really yelled.”
“Qui’.” He managed to pull her head onto his shoulder and then just lay there for ages and ages and...
“You really yelled,” she repeated.
“Mm, ’cos it was really, really good! If that didn’t disturb old Mrs McManus in Flat 6, nothing will. –I stand corrected, you might!”
“She’s deaf, silly one,” said Veronica, biting her lip.
“That’s what I mean. I have had ladies that enjoyed the tongue before this day, I have to admit,” said Iain getting his hand on one of those gorgeous large, squidgy tits, since it was right there, “and some of them were quite loud about it, too, but I can’t recall any that yelled my name with quite that many decibels. Not to mention the shrieking that followed.”
Veronica gulped.
“Oh, I enjoyed it!” he assured her with a laugh in his voice.
“Oh, good,” she said weakly.
“Tomorrow morning,” said Iain with a cracking yawn—“shit, ’scuse me, darling, haven’t been sleeping all that well lately, can’t imagine why—tomorrow morning I might manage to go another round. Might try poking the old man up there and seeing if you can take it off, for a change, eh?”
“Um, I don’t always come that way,” she croaked.
“Good, that’ll prolong it nicely, and if you don’t come like that, I’ll give you a choice: incarcerated on a desert island with me and me tongue for life, or—“
“Shut up!” said Veronica with a strangled laugh, turning puce.
“—or merely a very, very regular dose of cunnilingus in our truly appalling pea-green flat,” Iain finished complacently.
“That’d be good!” admitted Veronica with a sudden guffaw.
“Mm,” he agreed, squeezing the tit again...
“Ooh, gosh, did I go to sleep?” he croaked, waking to find the light of well-past-dawn filling the pea-green flat and her head on the pillow next to his, looking at him with those great big, serious dark eyes.
“So did I.”
“That’s good,” Iain admitted. “Come here. Ooh!” he gulped, getting two good handfuls.
“Um, I have to have a pee,” said Veronica in a strangled voice.
“Of course you do!” he agreed, dropping a kiss on that very nice, straight little nose. “Go on, then, sweetheart. –And oy,” he added as she went over to the door, ”if the Jolly Green Giant’s lurking in that abortion of a bathroom, tell him to shove off, I don’t care how giant his is, I’ve got one here that’s a positive towering inf—“
“Shut up!” she choked, disappearing into the awful pea-green bathroom.
… “They must have really liked green,” she noted, coming back shivering and hurriedly popping under the covers.
“That or it was an extremely mean landlord with a few gallons of paint that fell off the back of a lorry. –Cummere! Ooh!” he said, cuddling her very hard.
“That’s right, warm me up,” said Veronica happily, pressing it all against him.
He’d do that, all right! ...Er, if he didn’t explode first.
“Eventually,” he said in her ear, nibbling it gently, since it was there—she gave a startled mew and pressed closer than ever, though Sir Isaac might have thought that wasn’t possible—“eventually I will manage something approaching a nice long fuck.”
“Mm?” replied Veronica vaguely.
“Mm. But just at the moment I’m too bloody excited. Well, how many years has it been? –Don’t answer that, sorry! Um, so can I just shove it up there and go off with a bang?”
Veronica drew back a little and looked at him doubtfully. Oh, dear, he was looking really sheepish: weren’t men silly? Well, very flushed and excited, but sheepish as well. “Yes, of course,” she said mildly.
Forthwith Iain fell on her and shoved it up her and— Oh, God, oh, God! Oh, GOD! JESUS! “AAARGH! Uh—AAARGH!”
Ten aeons later he managed to mutter: “Shorry.”
“Don’t be, I said to go ahead.”
“Mmf.” He managed to sort of roll off her and sort of snuggle his nose into her soft upper-arm...
“Bloody Hell, did I drop off again?’
“What?” said Veronica dreamily. “I think perhaps you did... We could paint it white but it’d need at least two coats.”
Eh? Oh! Not his old man—no. “No, it’s the bloody landlord’s property: not putting good dough into something we don’t own.”
“That’s very sensible,” she approved.
“Ta,” said Iain weakly as it started to trickle through to his thick male brain that he hadn’t actually given the poor girl a come, had he? Er, no.
“Um, that back there was on account of over-eagerness and too much anticipation and the fact that you turn me on like crazy, ’specially without your clothes on,” he admitted.
Veronica had gone very pink but she replied calmly: “I said, it’s okay.”
Uh—had she? Oh, well, jolly good show! He squirmed down in the bed and nuzzled gently into her lap.
“What are you doing?” said Veronica faintly.
“Giving you one, you twit. Put ’em very wide apart.”
He heard her gulp. Then she put ’em very wide apart...
“OH! Iain! Oh, oh, oh... Oh, IAIN!”
Yeah, well, couldn’t be bad, eh?
“Christ, what is it?” he croaked, goggling at the giant, nay humungous Thing that had suddenly appeared in their inadequate pea-green living space. If it was half its size you might have called it a chaise longue, with a certain stretch of the imagination.
Veronica appeared from the tiny, cramped nook that was the kitchenette, very flushed. “Oh, there you are.”
“Yes, here I am, and here, apparently, is this. What is it?” he croaked.
“Um, Honey found it for me. –Honey Jardine, Iain!” she reminded him. “Phil Sotherland’s mother.”
“And?”
“She works in a junk—I mean antique shop,” Veronica corrected herself lamely.
“‘Junk’ will do. What the Hell is it?’”
“It looked smaller in the shop,” she said feebly. “It‘s a chaise longue.”
“It is not!”
“Well, um, if it only had one end I think it would be. Um, I suppose it’s a sort of Victorian sofa, Iain. Um, Victorian-style: Honey said it only dates back to maybe 1975. It’s not real rosewood.”
Iain took a deep breath. “It is too big for this miniscule flat.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” agreed Veronica mildly.
“Then what’s it— Oh, is it for Laurie?”
“No.”
He took another deep breath. “You realize that if we keep the bloody thing, not only will we have to edge round it every time we need to go out the front door—the only door—but we’ll to have to buy a house to fit around it?”
“Mm.”
Oh, Christ, she’d fallen in love with the bloody thing! “Very well, darling, if you like it, I suppose I can put up with edging round it,”
“We’re never in here, anyway,” she said on a hopeful note.
Not so far, no: this was true. Well, up until today the room had only held, near the kitchenette end, one tiny table with a plasticized woodgrain top and two very hard plastic chairs of the garden set variety; but he had sort of thought about maybe buying a nice buttoned leather sofa: the small sort, you could get very pleasant two-person ones... Oh, well.
“Mm? Er—no, nor we are,” he agreed on a lame note. “Um, you do know that having this sort of thing reupholstered won’t be cheap, do you, darling? I mean, all those buttons.”
“Yes, but that’s the thing, you see! Jack knows how to! He’s been doing a course!”
“Y— Uh, we’d still have to pay him the going rate, Veronica,” said Iain cautiously.
“Yes, of course, but Laurie says he won’t rip us off, you see!” she beamed.
Uh-huh. Right. So be it.
Jack leaned on the bar in the Potters Inlet pub, gazing thoughtfully into his beer. “Well, yeah, Phil Sotherland reckons it’s a monstrosity,” he allowed. “Them two gays that Honey works for, they’ve being trying to get rid of it for years.”
“You don’t say!” replied Iain with feeling.
“How bad is it?” the older man asked kindly.
“Er, well, the frame’s very nice, done by someone with a real feel for wood, I’d say, and it’s actually very comfortable to sit on, if rather slippery. I thought I could stand purple—I’ve got an old purple car somewhere on the high seas as we speak—but this is a horribly shiny purple that sort of glows. And it’s not exactly small.”
“Aussies do have huge sofas, though: I’ve noticed,” the New Zealander replied calmly.
“Uh—s’pose they do tend to, yes,” Ian agreed limply, thinking of Daph’s, Roz’s and Cotty’s giants. “But the style is all wrong for a modern house.”
“Well, antique-looking, eh? Ya might make a feature of it, could look quite nice. I can do it up in any fabric ya like, Iain,” he said kindly.
“That’s very good of you, Jack: thanks. We’ll take you up on it eventually, but at the moment we can’t even afford a deposit on a house, it’s pointless to think about colour schemes. Not to say pointless to buy the thing! –Oh, well.”
Jack eyed him drily but with a certain sympathy. “Most of them are like that.”
“So I’m discovering,” he sighed. “I suppose you’re claiming Nefertite isn't?”
“No, she isn’t,” he said calmly. “Not into the interior decorating stuff at all. Well, can’t envisage how a room’ll look, but that doesn’t stop most of ’em, does it?”
“It certainly doesn’t stop Veronica, she’s been bending my ear about William Morris fabrics—any William Morris fabric’d die the death on that thing, even I can see that!—and picture rails, don’t tell me they no longer exist in Australia, thanks, I’ve verified that one empirically—and ever more unlikely colour combinations, the latest being dove grey, whatever that is, and light tan. Possibly marginally better than the previous favourite, which was ‘soft clay’, unquote, dirty yellow in other words, and ‘creamy lime’, also unquote: than which,” said Iain with precision, draining his glass, “a more nauseating combination could scarcely be imagined!”
“Yeah, pretty sicky. Her and Laurie have got all keen over the old MacMurray place, ya see. Been trying out all sorts of combos. Pity about that nice neutral oatmeal me and George carefully painted them main rooms in for the old bloke, eh?”
“Exactly. Um, what’s milk paint, Jack?”
“Dunno. Some Aussie thing. Deanna was gonna have it in their place, too, until Bob got a gander at the price. Be one of those things they call Federation, I think, Iain: date back to the turn of the century. The 19th century, or if you’re really up with the Federation play, the 20th,” he clarified drily.
“Right, got it.”
“Shouldn’t think it’d take, over that washable stuff me and George chose,” he noted detachedly.
Iain winced. “No, I tried to tell her that.”
“I’d keep well out of it,” he advised. “Fancy another?”
“Uh, my round!” said Iain coming to. “What about a whisky?”
“Don’t you have to drive back to town?”
“No, Jack,” he said heavily, “I’m apparently kipping in the old MacMurray place tonight.”
“What on?” returned Jack simply.
“Probably the floor. Depends whether I fall off the edge of that bloody single bed she’s got.”
“Yeah. That’s George’s old bed. Quite a new mattress, mind. Him and Lisbet, see, they’ve got a nice new kingsize.”
“Not a need-to-know,” sad Iain heavily. “Red Label?”
“Ta, Iain, don’t mind if I do.”
A couple of rounds later it occurred to Iain to wonder why the chap was down here boozing with him, if everything in the garden was as rosy on the home front as he gave the onlooker to believe. So he asked.
“She’s got three musical bods come up from the Conservatorium and they were all yacking their heads off and the little fat one, can’t stand ’im, he said he’d shout them to dinner at the restaurant, which means David’ll get dragged into it, too, so I left ’em to it. Well, can’t understand a blind word any of ’em say, pointless sticking around.”
“Sorry I asked,” admitted Iain.
“Most of them are okay. Well, not saying they include me in, once they get carried away, but it’s their subject, I can live with that. But I really can’t stand the little fat one, he’s an up-’imself nit of the worst kind. Only comes up here when ’e wants something out of ’er, too.”
“Ouch!”
“Yeah,” said Jack glumly. “Let’s hope David puts the kybosh on it. Well, he is nominally doing manager for ’er: stops the buggers getting endless freebies and loading her up with too many engagements all over the country that she’s not up for no more, only see, if he gets carried away as well—”
“Right.”
“Think I’d manage better with the occasional purple satin sofa, on the whole,” he admitted glumly.
Iain bit his lip. It did sort of pale— No, wrong word! That purple really glowed. But in comparison with a load of musical trendies, it didn’t seem so bad.
“So what’s your one up to, this evening? Haven’t had a row over the sofa, have you?” asked Jack kindly.
“No, when it dawned she’d fallen in love with the bloody thing I shut my big trap. Um, no, Laurie’s got a couple of mates up: there’s that girl, Christie, who works for RightSmart—oh, right, you know her,” he said as Jack was nodding—“and the Penny woman who filled in for them for a bit—didn’t meet her? Well, complete hen, incapable of using Gail’s lovely clear database suite, but quite a pleasant woman. They’re not talking about the personnel placement profession, that might actually be interesting, they’re talking about colour combinations.”
Alas, Jack broke down in helpless sniggers at this point.
“There doesn’t seem to be any dinner going,” Iain admitted sadly.
“No, there wouldn’t be!” he gasped, mopping his eyes and blowing his nose. “Gee, that done me good!” he grinned.
“Four women in the house and the kitchen cold and—” He stopped, as Jack was sniggering again.
“Fish and chips,” he said, blowing his nose again.
“That be nice, but from where, exactly?” replied Iain acidly.
“Barrabarra. Come on, I’ve got the ute. Might bump into Gil over there, ya never know.”
Iain drained the last of his third whisky and followed him obediently, not pointing out that Jack had had two, though he had gone back to the beer after that.
Oh, gee, Gil was there! Sitting on a hard little bench against the wall, waiting for his greasies. Iain let Jack put in their order, as he was the one that knew the ropes, and sat down beside him. After the conventional pause which acknowledged the peaceful silence that was reigning, he ventured: “Where’s your one tonight?”
“Sydney. Shopping. Close friend of a distant cousin, or possibly distant cousin of a close friend. In summation: Sydney. Shopping. Where’s yours?” replied Colonel Sotherland stolidly.
“Hen party at Laurie’s. Colour combinations.”
Alas, at this sad piece of intel Colonel Sotherland abruptly collapsed in wheezing sniggers, gasping: “It comes to all of us!”
Apparently it did—yeah.
“’Ullo,” said Bert in surprise, finding Iain ensconced on Daph’s large, comfy couch on a wet Wednesday night mid-week. “Thought you might of gone up to Potters Inlet tonight.”
Iain awarded Mr Sugden a bitter glare. “No.”
“Don’t tell us the flamin’ trendies are heading up to the flamin’ restaurant mid-week in this weather!”
“No. –Flaming foodies,” he corrected sourly. “No.”
“You and her had a row?” asked the sapient Mr Sugden, sitting down in the big armchair, since Scott’s posterior wasn’t there to hog it.
“No, Bert, we have not had a row!” he shouted.
“Keep yer hair on, only asking.”
“Very well, then, to give you chapter and verse,” said Iain nastily, “in the first place I’ve got another barcoding job on that starts at six in the morning fifteen miles out of town in the other direction, and in the second place she’s forbidden me to drive up there at breakneck speed, unquote, and break my neck, unquote, dashing back again in the wee small hours, and in the third place, Laurie’s house is infested with bawling baby, exhausted new mother and Bob in the filthiest mood since Marie de’ Medici saw off the Huguenots, and in the fourth place, the B&B is full of FEMALE LIONS!”
Since Daph was now leaning in the doorway eying him drily Bert was able to say to her: “Quite a flow when ’e gets going, eh?”
“Yeah. Give him a drink, Dad, for Pete’s sake.”
“He can get ’imself a drink, he’s not helpless, is ’e?”
“He’s a GUEST, get him a DRINK!” she shouted.
“Uh—no, I’ll get them, Bert,” said Iain hurriedly, getting up. “Any sherry left, Daph?”
“No, Roz and Cotty drank it all,” she said with a sigh.
“I’ll buy you a new bottle,” he promised.
“Could of brung one tonight,” noted Bert.
“Shut up, he brought a bottle of wine,” sighed Daph.
“Good,” replied the old man insouciantly. “Go on, Iain, tell us the bad news,” he prompted as Iain peered into the depths of Daph’s ornate sideboard.
“Uh—seems to be a choice between Australian port and Bailey’s Irish Cream.”
“Give us a port, you can only die once. –Not female Lions, they wouldn’t be,” he noted.
“Yes, but they call themselves something else. You sometime see the ads for them in the back of the local paper,” said Daph hazily. “Um, not toastmistresses... No, it’s gone again. Some really odd name. –I’ll have a port too, ta, Iain, I don’t really fancy Bailey’s before tea.”
Iain poured three ports. “According to Laurie they’re like female Lions and she and Veronica both have to be over there because some idiot told them they could squeeze a couple more into each room and they’ve ended up with ten of them crammed into the three guest rooms. They’ll be there for the rest of the week, up until Sunday afternoon, when their male belongings are due to collect them. –They’re all local women, from Barrabarra and environs; I think the poor woman who’s married to the pig farmer is one of them.”
“Not the CWA, is it, Iain?” asked Daph.
“Um, no, don’t think so. Bit like the WI, is that?” he groped.
“Country Women’s Association.”
“No, definitely female Lions. Giving themselves a real treat, being collected in time to make the useless wankers their Sunday teas, one gathers.”
“Laurie said that, did she?” spotted Daph.
“Mm.”
“So ’ow many days is that?” asked Bert.
“Can’t you count, as well as all the rest?” replied his daughter unkindly.
“’Is narrative wasn’t clear,” retorted Bert superbly. “Down the ’atch!”
“Cheers,” agreed Iain, sipping, perforce. God! “Well, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and half of Sunday, Bert.”
“Four and a half days away from the wankers,” said Daph drily. “A record. Bob that booked them in, was it?”
“Mm; one gathers the local male Lions’ leader is a mate.”
“Par for the course,” she acknowledged, disappearing.
“No-one’s making you drink that muck, ya know, mate,” noted Bert conversationally.
“Uh—no, I’ll drink it, it’s extremely alcoholic,” said Iain with a sigh.
“You’re the one that went and let ’er hare orf to flamin’ Potters Inlet,” he reminded him.
How very true. Iain sighed...
“What’s on tonight?” ventured Bert.
“Shepherd’s pie.”
“Oh. Well, Daph’s is better than most!” he assured him.
Exactly. And there’d be quite a decent shiraz to go with it. Why was it that once upon a time this would have seemed like a great, shining treasure, just waiting for them to pick it up?
“Marry the girl. Leg-shackle ’er,” the old man advised, draining his port.
“Well, that might work, mm.”
“So long as she doesn’t go off and join the flamin’ female Lions!” Bert collapsed in a horrible spluttering, cackling fit.
Yeah, hah, hah. Why had he thought it’d all be smooth sailing once—er, once he'd got up her, to be brutally frank.
“Life,” noted Bert, sniffing faintly.
“Shut up, Bert. Have another port,” he groaned, dragging himself to his feet.
“All right, I will!”
Iain poured it but held it out of his reach. “Are you gonna shut your cake-hole?”
“All right! Jesus! You’re not the only one, we’ve all hadda go through it, mate!”
“Three hours’ drive even to get near her, and half the time I can’t even do that, because of some footling—”
“Yeah. Can I have that port, or NOT?”
“Sorry, Bert,” said Iain sheepishly, handing it to him.
“You met Lou’s sister-in-law, Maeve Taylor, Swettenham that was? Well, ex-, now, I s’pose,” ventured Bert once Iain’s second port had vanished.
“Um, don’t think so.”
“See, that dim Baz Taylor, ’e was sure ’e’d cracked it, she’d been living with ’im for over eighteen months, so ’e popped the question. Well, pretty much an understood thing for some time, they were saving up to put a deposit on a house.”
“And?” said Iain faintly.
Bert gave one of his sniffs. “’E bungs the rock on ’er finger—paid through the nose for it, too—and blow me down flat, she goes right back to ’er mum and dad’s place!”
“Uh—broke it off?” he fumbled. “Poor cha—”
“No, ya dill! Decided she’s not gonna give ’im any until the wedding night!”
Iain’s jaw sagged. “After eighteen months—“
“Yeah.”
“But why?” he croaked.
“Why? Well, I’ll give ya two choices, Iain,” said the old man at his driest. “One, Why’s a crooked letter and Zed’s no better; Two, she’s a ruddy female.”
Iain swallowed. “Right; got it.”
“And you think you’re badly off, mate!” Bert concluded on a triumphant note.
https://temps-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/11/rightsmart-third-round.html
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