A Girl Like Marlene

12

A Girl Like Marlene

    Nobody had been able to think of a valid excuse for refusing Susan’s kind offer of dinner on Boxing Day, after having turned down her kind offer of Christmas dinner, so they’d gone. The indications were, though she hadn’t actually forgiven Jack entirely, she was considering it. Hell. Luckily they had a really good excuse for not spending the evening, because it was Nefertite’s concert tonight. Just a small one, at the B&B, but later in the year they’d be putting on a bigger one, using that tin carport arrangement over to the rear of the crafts centre. Since Susan was the sort of dame that made a fuss over refusing to let you help with the dishes and then sulked for hours because you hadn’t helped with the dishes, Jack announced he was gonna walk over to the B&B and got out of it right smart before the rest of them had finished their coffee. Not entirely to his surprise, Gil came with him.

    Jack led the way silently up the back of Andy’s place and through that patch of gum trees. Then you could follow the low cliff top above the creek as far as that bit on the Jardine place where there was a huge rocky outcrop and you couldn’t get past. You hadda head down the slope a bit, through another clump of gums and across a really bumpy bit where sometimes, if you weren’t making too much noise, you saw a big lizard sunning itself on the rocks, and then cut through some scrubby stuff, back home he’d of said it was second growth, only round here you didn’t get our heavy bush, maybe that bit had never been native forest at all. Then you had a choice of cutting back up to the creek and following it right along until you met Bob’s bush ramble track, or going on down to the house and down the drive.

    They’d almost reached the rocky outcrop before Gil said: “Susan does realize you’ve cooled off, does she?”

    “Uh—dunno. She keeps coming up here, eh? But heck, it was her that broke it off. Ya know she come up for Labour Weekend?”

    Labour Weekend in New South Wales fell in early October. “Mm. She appeared to think you and George had taken off for a few days in order to spite her, Jack.”

    “It was a flaming coincidence! Dot’s mates up in Queensland had a cancellation at their motel and it’s right next-door to YDI’s ecolodge and George was keen to take a dekko, and maybe get some ideas for Blue Gums, that’s all! And she never let Andy know she was coming until the last minute, like usual!”

    “I know, but it isn’t me you need to convince, it’s Susan.”

    “Well, uh, not logically, Gil, if I wanna get rid of ’er!” said Jack with a sheepish grin.

    “Uh-huh. Do you?” said Gil very drily indeed.

    “Yeah! Um, well, thing is,” Jack admitted, feeling himself go very red, like a tit, “I wouldn’t say I’d cooled off as such, if ya get me drift.”

    “Mm. Funny how one can be distinctly non-keen on the personality but still keen on the sex, isn’t it?”

    “Yeah, hilarious!” agreed Jack with feeling. “Nah, you’re not wrong. Well, cripes, looking back, that Wendy Bishop, she was a real bitch, led the husband a dog’s life and I wouldn’t of had a permanent helping of her if you paid me, but I couldn’t get enough of it.”

    “Mm, sounds like me and the dreaded Naomi Rhys-Davies. It was off and on for years, during which time she became Naomi Venables, Naomi Rhys-Davies again, and then Naomi Williscroft, and finally back to—” He broke off, as Jack had already collapsed in hysterics. “Yeah. She was hot as Hell for it, but the complete nagging bitch with it.”

    “Yeah, funny, eh?” said Jack dreamily. “Dunno that I liked any of them, really… Well, Mrs Garven, Desirée, she was all right within her lights, didn’t pretend to be anything she wasn’t… Couldn’t honestly say I liked bloody Rosalie, either. Got married too young, I s’pose. Well, at first the bitch did put out, then she wouldn’t unless the ring was on her finger. So I gave in.”

    “I am familiar with that syndrome,” agreed Gil on a sour note.

    “Are ya, Gil? Well, yeah. Right. Mind you, me first real girlfriend, she was a nice girl, I liked her. Katie Watts. Kids used to think it was a scream, being called Watts: could never see it, meself. According to my mum her mum was a floozy, but she was always really kind to us kids. Katie used to let me do it in the loft above her dad’s garage. Had some old sleeping-bags up there, her brothers were in the ruddy Scouts.”

    “Mm-hm,” said Gil, smiling at him. “How old were you both, Jack?”

    “Well, Katie was sixteen.” He cleared his throat. “I was fifteen: always was a randy little bugger. Looking back, I don’t think the poor little kid ever had a come, ’cos Gormless didn’t know enough to give ’er one. But her family moved away just before the end of that year, so that was that.”

    “Mm.” Gil began to stroll slowly in the direction of the creek. “My equivalent would have been Lucy Wang. Not a local, though there are generations of British Chinese. No, her father was a wealthy Taiwanese, and they were staying with the aunt and uncle I’d been dumped on for the summer hols—he was doing business with my uncle. I was a lot more backward than you: I’d actually turned sixteen.”

    “Yeah!” said Jack with a laugh. “So how old was Lucy?”

    “More than old enough to educate me about girls very, very rapidly, Jack! At least seventeen.”

    Jack choked.

    “Yeah,” said Gil, grinning. “She’d been to school in America: that helped.”—Jack choked again.—“We did it in the summerhouse the first time—I was a trifle surprised that she seemed so eager to see the garden, which I’d always thought particularly boring, my uncle’s the sort who prunes all his trees within an inch of their lives and sacks the gardener unless the lawn remains one eighth of an inch high all year. Then I was even more surprised when we got to the summerhouse, because she put her hand on my cock.”

    Jack went into a painful spluttering fit, nodding madly.

    “After that she more or less took it from there. At least she had the sense not to suck me off the very first time: as it was I came like a rocket two seconds after I’d pulled the condom on—provided by her, need I say?—and one second after I’d got it up there. After that she introduced me to the concept of cunnilingus, boy was that a surprise. But after a while, funnily enough, I got quite used to it,” he ended on a plaintive note.

    “Yeah, hah, hah,” said Jack weakly. “In my case, that was partly what a mate called Martin Harvey claimed he’d been up to and none of us really believed, ’specially since who he claimed was letting him do it was a girl that went to a private school, uniform and all—”

    “Ooh, er!” said Gil with a shudder of ecstasy.

    “All the schools made ’em wear uniforms, it wasn’t that exciting. I was doing my apprenticeship by that time but that didn’t mean I was getting it. Though some of what the older blokes used to talk about at smoko did sort of start to make hazy sense, after listening to ruddy Martin Harvey. Anyway, we were the same age and he asked me did I wanna go on a double date with him and the girl and her friend. Well, dunno what you Brits might imagine it’s like out here,”—Gil quailed but he ignored him—“but see, Martin Harvey was still at school, his mum wanted him to sit Bursary, so it woulda been Seventh Form, and both the girls were at this flaming poncy private school, cost their poor parents an arm and a leg and never taught them a bloody thing, far’s I could see, though they sure as Hell picked up the extracurricular stuff, and all of their lot wouldn’t normally mix with us apprentice boys, geddit?”

    “I do, yes, though I hadn’t realized those bloody demarcations subsisted out here,” said Gil on a grim note. “Go on: did you get any?”

    “And a half!” admitted Jack with a sudden loud laugh. “Marlene, her name was. Dark girl. Bit plump. Oh, boy! Her parents had gone skiing down The Chateau—well, never mind, it’s still a fancy place to go and sets you back a month’s wages for a night’s stay—and we had the place to ourselves for the weekend. Her aunty was supposed to be checking up on her but she had a new boyfriend, so the checking up consisted of one phone call at one in the morning, pissed out of her brain. Marlene actually had books—think her parents might of been the liberal sort, or something: anyway they believed in sex education for girls, though I dunno that they envisaged it going quite as far as she took it! She woulda let me have, um, two comes, think it was—mind you, she had a couple herself: I don’t mind telling you the yelping and screeching took me aback good an’ proper, not to say the more physiological bits! And then she got the books out and made us a pile of cold lamb sandwiches with a nice chilled bottle of her dad’s best dry white, and we really got down to it! Dunno what Martin and his bird were up to in the spare room but I’d take a bet it couldn’t of been half as good as what me and Marlene did!”

    “No, right!” agreed Gil, grinning. “And did you see anything of her after that?”

    “How much did you see of your Lucy?” replied Jack drily.

    “After that summer? Nothing, her parents whisked her back home and then I think she was sent to college in America.”

    “Yeah. Well, at least you had the summer. Muggins didn’t even have that. It wasn’t Marlene: she was really keen. Anyway, she’d explained she wasn’t allowed to date during the week, she was supposed to be swotting, fair enough. But Friday and Saturday were okay. So Muggins gets all spruced up and gets round there straight after work on the Friday—always finish early in the building trade, ya see, and I calculated she’d of just about had time to get home from school.”

    “Yes?” said Gil faintly.

    “Well, you can probably guess, Gil. Well, not the specifics, maybe. Her mum opens the front door, asks me in, la-de-da like ya wouldn’t believe, Marlene’s at her fencing lesson, so sorry. See, Muggins hadn’t known ya could even do fencing in EnZed, let alone that girls could do it. So she sits me down in the bloody sitting-room and gives me a Coke and explains real nice that they got ambitions—she actually used the word—ambitions for Marlene. Gonna sit Schol, not just Bursary, and go into law like her dad and granddad. And—well, there was a lot of it, and I think she musta said ‘we do understand’ about fifty times, but the long and the short of it’s they don’t want Marlene mixed up with a carpenter’s apprentice. So I got out of it. Well—pointless, eh? Added to which I hardly knew the girl.”

    Gil was looking at him limply.

    “Uh—it wasn’t the love of me life, Gil, no need to look like that.”

    “No. Well, I’m glad to hear that at any rate, Jack. –There’s that sort of snobbery out here?”

    “Yes, ’course, what else are all the bloody private schools about?” replied Jack heavily. “But the mum was right, mind you: a girl like Marlene wouldn’t of enjoyed being a jobbing builder’s wife.”

    “I see,” said Gil faintly.

    “Um, look, we are descendants, well, the majority, of the British nineteenth-century immigrants, and they brought their class structure and their prejudices with them!” said Jack with some vigour. He looked at his face. “Um, sorry if you were picturing some sort of Antipodean Utopia, Gil.”

    “No, I mean, perhaps I was… But surely there’s more social mobility here, at least?”

    “Well, I’d think so, but I’ve never been to Britain, of course,” said Jack indifferently. “If you’re rich you got no difficulty marrying whoever you pretty well please out here, if that’s your point.”

    “Partly. But, well, um, you did an apprenticeship but your boy went to university, didn’t he?”

    “Oh, see whatcha mean. Yeah, that’s possible, only see, the parents have got to want it, Gil. And class prejudice—even in New Zealand, where they still don’t admit to having classes—class prejudice cuts both ways. Most of our street wouldn’t have wanted their kids to go to university and in fact Martin Harvey’s parents were considered pretty peculiar. And it hasn’t changed since, believe you me. Got worse, if anything. Not our particular street, but, uh, I’d say that social demarcations have become more distinct over the past thirty-odd years. Here as well, I’d say. You wanna talk to old Andy, he’s the one that’d put you right about so-called egalitarian Australia and its bloody mateship,” he finished drily.

    “Mm.”

    Jack walked on in silence, wondering if he’d put the kybosh on the poor bugger’s plans—not the ones he’d talked about, but what he was hoping for in his heart, if ya liked to put it that way. They reached the big rocky outcrop: he leaned against the hot rocks, took a deep breath of clean, hot Australian air and said: “I do think there’d be more opportunity here than in Britain, Gil. Say you had kids and you wanted them to go to varsity: there’d be nothing stopping them, see? Up to you to see they did their swot and passed their exams. Um, the Aussie system’s different from ours but from what young Jen was telling me the government subsidises their university course and then takes it back out of their wages through the tax system.”

    “Mm; so—so the system is more flexible and it’s only, really, the immediate family that makes the difference, for good or bad?”

    “Um, within limits, Gil. I mean, if the dad’s been out of work for years they probably can’t afford to keep the kids at school, ya know?” he said awkwardly. “But in essence, yes. Though, uh—well, always been pretty immune to bloody peer group pressure meself—and regretted it when I gave in to it, I can tell ya! But that’s a factor, too: if all the kids in the street are into footy, smoking fags behind the toilet block and graduating from nicking the fags to nicking cars, not every kid’s strong-minded enough to want something different, never mind if ostensibly the system can provide it.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “Um, sorry: bit of a hobby-horse. I was just bloody lucky that my Keith was never that sort. Well, he did play footy, but he wasn’t interested in the rest of the crap the local kids were into.”

    “Jack, he had you for a father!” said Gil with a laugh.

    Jack went red, what a nana! “Shut up, ya clot,” he growled.

    “No, of course it makes a difference,” said Gil, smiling,

    “Then your kids’ll be jake, mate.”

    “Mm?”

    “It’s an expression, ya Pommy nit. Uh—well, one of me granddad’s, I think!” he admitted with a laugh. “Means okay.”

    “Yes,” he said, staring out across the hills. “I see….” Suddenly, not entirely to Jack’s surprise, he burst out with the full update about the Rosemary girl. Well, shit, what could ya say? Half his age, didn’t sound very bright, it was a toss-up whether she’d ever turn up and if she did, whether she’d stick to it, eh? Not that brains in themselves meant much. But Gil was bright: he’d get bored pretty quick with a dumb woman at his side.

    Jack rubbed his chin. “Well, Australia’s the place to bring up kids, all right, Gil, if that’s what she wants. And nothing to stop her doing some study a bit later on, no. Um, though if she isn’t an Aussie I dunno that she’d get their government subsidy: think that’s just for the kids.”

    “Yes… I’ll be forty-five next year,” said Gil bleakly, staring out at the soft blue forms of the hills.

    “Yeah, got that, Gil,” he agreed kindly. “If you wanna do it, you’re not too old.”

    Gil drew a deep breath. “No. And who the Hell knows what’s going to happen in twenty years? God, by the time Rosemary’s had enough I may not even be around!”

    “There is that,” allowed Jack fairly. “’Tis a risk, not saying it isn’t, and a risk for her, too. But if she knows it, why not?”

    “Mm. Her card said she had to spend Christmas at home,” he repeated.

    “Yeah, got that. Dare say the parents insisted: might be the last Christmas they see her, for a bit, eh?”

    To his relief Gil brightened and said: “Of course, yes! Hadn’t thought of that!”

    Jack sagged. Phew! Christmas and a half, wasn’t it? And to think all he’d imagined he’d have on his plate today was keeping out of ruddy Susan’s way and maybe getting to hear Nefertite sing without having to talk to them fancy lot Bob had crammed the B&B full of!

    There were blue-rinsed ladies in fancy frocks as far as the eye could see, with the smell of roast turkey drowned out by a smothering fog of scent, bath powder and hairspray and the stinking aftershave they all forced on the old jokers in walk-shorts and long socks, not to say a deafening babble… The nicest sort of babble, it was, the phrase “Carols from Kings” being heard repeatedly. Jesus.

    Bob was well away on the Christmas cheer, but on the other hand, could ya blame him? He welcomed them in and then disappeared out the back. He’d got the furniture more or less arranged in a semi-circle at one end of the sitting-room, given that it wasn’t a huge room and them sofas were bulky. There was no room for a piano even if fourteen strong men could of hauled that one of Walsingham’s over here, which they couldn’t, actually, so who or what was gonna accompany her was anyone’s guess. The B&B guests, all six of them, were already sitting on the sofas and the easy chairs—with Ted Prosser, incidentally, installed between that nice Jan Martin and flaming Susan on one of the sofas. Two strings to his bow, eh? Though if Susan was the one he fancied, good luck to ’im, he could look forward to a dog’s life for the rest of his natural! Bernie, Ann and Dot were sitting on a row of dining chairs behind them. Gil went and sat with them but Jack slid in unobtrusively at the end of the row. Unfortunately it didn’t work as well as what he’d hoped, because Susan got up and came over to him, looking cross.

    “Where’s George?” she hissed.

    “Uh—dunno. At your place, last I saw of him. Was he gonna come?” replied Jack limply.

    “Yes!” she hissed crossly.

    All right, he’d been going to come. Probably seized the chance to open another bottle of Teacher’s while she was out of the road, if she really wanted to know. As she didn’t look as if she really did, he didn’t say it.

    “He’ll be encouraging Dad to drink!” she hissed crossly.

    Going on Jack’s observations over the past few months, old Andy didn’t need any encouragement. Though he did know how to pace himself. He didn’t say it. This didn’t work, either, because she then hissed evilly: “Well?”

    “Uh, well, yeah, but Christmas is the time of year for having one or two,” he offered feebly.

    Susan snorted. “One or two!”

    “Look, if you’d just leave them alone maybe they wouldn’t drink so much.”

    “What’s that supposed to mean?” she hissed angrily.

    Exactly what it said, what else? Jack sighed. “Put it like this: even if your way’s better, they’re grown men, they don’t wanna hear about it. They like being sloppy. And up here, nobody cares, geddit? –Well, this lot apart,” he added, eyeing the assembled company drily.

    “They’re letting themselves down. Especially George!” she said bitterly.

    Were they? If she said so. Jack refrained from shrugging, but it was an effort. “If you wanna sit beside Ted, you better go back to ’im, because that Jan woman looked to me like she had ’er eye on ’im, before. –I’m gonna see if Bob needs a hand,” he added, escaping.

    In the kitchen Bob was discovered sitting placidly at the industrial-steel-topped table drinking what was possibly ginger ale but possibly not, while Deanna poured a trayful of horribly dinky fancy drinks complete with little wee coloured umbrellas and bits of pineapple and cherries on sticks. “Have a belt,” he said mildly.

    The bottle at his elbow read “Jim Beam.” Okay, it wasn’t ginger ale, fancy that. Jack pulled up a chair beside him. “I wouldn’t mind a beer,” he said mildly. “What’s she mixing up?”

    “Dunno. She got it out of a book,” said Bob, passing him one of the cans that stood at his other elbow.

    “Ta. Not a book of David’s, was it?” he asked, unable to stop himself.

    “Nope. One of ’er bloody cousins give it to ’er for Christmas. Don’t want a glass, do ya, mate?”

    “No,” Jack agreed, snapping the can open and drinking thirstily. “Aah!”

    “Cheers,” allowed Bob, not ceasing to drink. “Just as well your lot never come over yesterday, they made short work of the turkey.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “And the ham. Barely enough left for lunch today.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “And that fancy ice cream muck with the nuts and Christmas mince. Can’t stand frozen nuts, meself, but David reckoned it’d be the go for our type of punters, and gee! ’E wasn't wrong. Half of them asked if it was on again today.”

    “Uh-huh. Greek, was it?”

    “Italian,” said Deanna. “Cassata, Jack.”

    “If you say so!” Bob allowed cheerfully. “Fancy another, mate?”

    “No,” said Deanna firmly. “You’ll be in no fit state to listen to Nefertite, Bob!”

    Bob winked at Jack. “’S’all Greek to me, anyway!”

    “Yeah, hah, hah,” he said weakly.

    “That lot still carrying on in there?” Bob then enquired with a jerk of his head.

    “Ya mean that babble about how lovely the carols from Kings were and how lovely the flamin’ Queen’s Christmas message was and assorted how’s-yer-fathers? Too right.”

    “Bob,” said Deanna firmly, “we knew what they’d be like when we decided to do it.”

    “Yeah, sure. Just checking. Well, checking to see if I’ll need a bit more anaesetiz—uh, anaeset—numbing before I go back in there and try to shut them up,” he conceded with a wink at Jack.

    “Anaesthetizing,” said a dry voice from the back door, and they all jumped.

    “Come in, and see if you can pronounce that with a glass of glug out of a book of ’er cousin Martina’s down yer,” offered Bob.

    David came in, grinning.

    “Where’s Nefertite?” said Deanna immediately.

    “Just bringing in the piano for me,” he replied smoothly.

    Jack had to cough suddenly.

    “Er—yeah,” said Bob a trifle limply. “Well, if anyone could, my money’d be on—”

    “That’ll do, Bob!” said Deanna firmly.

    Bob winked at Jack but said to David: “Actually, mate, if you wouldn’t mind tasting that glug for us, I’d be grateful, ’cos I don’t think she’s got a blind notion what it’s meant to taste like, and my taste buds are slightly numb.”

    “Uh-huh.” David picked up a glass and sniffed it cautiously. “What is it?”

    “Technically, glug,” replied Bob judiciously.

    “Uh-huh.” He tasted it. “Glug it is. Galliano, Bacardi, and peach juice, and I won’t ask why,” he pronounced.

    “Yes,” said Deanna weakly. “You are clever, that’s exactly what’s in it. Um, chilled.”

    “That does counteract the effect but only very slightly,” David assured her.

    Bob sighed. “All right, bung a mauve orchid in each glass and we’ll call it quits, okay?”

    Those who might have thought this was one of his jokes were wrong: looking defiant, Deanna opened a drawer, produced a packet of mauve orchids and carefully put one in each glass.

    “Plastic, there was not only a cost factor but a possible poison factor with the real ones,” said Bob smoothly.

    Silly tit, couldn’t he see the poor girl was starting to get real fed up? “Look, drop it!” said Jack loudly. “I’ve been offered worse than that as yuletide cheer, I can tell ya! You wanna try me bloody ex’s bloody dad’s flamin’ Bourbon eggnog with the humidity pushing ninety percent before you start whingeing about a bit of chilled peach juice! –Come on, Deanna, wanna take them through? Lemme get the doors for you.” He got up and, ignoring completely the fact that both the host and the chef of Springer House B&B had now dissolved in sniggers, conducted her out.

    “Nice instincts,” said David feebly, wiping his eyes.

    “Or not as pissed as me—yeah,” allowed Bob. “Just promise me one thing.”

    “What?”

    “Ya won’t let her sing one of them fa-la-la, la-la things.”

    “Never! At the very most, Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht!” said David with a loud laugh. “Silent Night, it’s posher in the Deutscher Sprach,” he explained smoothly.

    “How pissed are you?” returned the host of Springer House B&B suspiciously, peering at him.

    “That peering would probably be a lot more effective if you were doing it with both eyes instead of one, Bob, old mate, and the answer is, not as pissed as thee!” replied the chef cheerfully.

    Jack had come back in time to get this last exchange. “Are you planning to accompany her like that?” he demanded grimly.

    David hadn’t realised he was standing there: he gasped. “Uh—well, yes,” he said limply. “Only plink-a-plonk on me little banjo, though, Jack,” he added, recovering.

    “Over my dead body!” replied Jack angrily, very flushed.

    “Um, no, it’s all right,” said Nefertite’s voice from the back doorway. She came in, looking shy. “His cello, he means. He’ll just play a few chords. He isn’t really drunk, Jack, it’s reaction from yesterday. It was a very traditional sort of Christmas dinner and he was nervous about it. We all told him it’d be fine, but he was still on edge.”

    Jack was still very flushed, though the fact that Nefertite was wearing a very low-cut frock might have been a factor. “Right,” he said weakly. “Well, uh, want me to fetch it?”

    “It’s in the car: if you wouldn’t mind, Jack?”

    “No!” said David in alarm.

    “Just shut up, David,” murmured Bob.

    “I mean,” he said lamely, “have you ever carried a cello before, Jack?”

    “It’s in its case,” said Nefertite mildly.

    “I’m not drunk,” said Jack grimly. “Anyway, I’m getting it.”

    “It is heavy, Jack,” said Nefertite on a weak note as he came over to the door.

    “Yeah? I’ll watch out for it.”

    “Thank you,” she said limply, standing aside to let him out.

    Jack went out on a wave of French perfume, feeling slightly dizzy. Uh—heck. He’d assumed Nefertite must have come over in the four-wheel-drive that Dot drove. He looked limply at David’s bright red elderly Jaguar. “Cripes,” he muttered under his breath. He’d forgotten to ask her for the keys. He could see the cello case, laid on its side on the back seat with the seatbelts done up over it. He tried the back door. Unlocked, fancy that. He unbelted the thing and got it out carefully. Heavy? This was heavy? They were bats! Well, it wasn’t light, but— Bats.

    He went inside with it. Bob had disappeared but the Walsingham brother and sister were still there. “This isn’t heavy, dunno what you were on about.”

    “It’s irreplaceable, Jack,” said David feebly.

    “Right. Stradivarius, is it?”

    “Not quite,” he said, swallowing.

    “Right. Still doesn’t mean I’m gonna drop it. Want it in the front room, do ya?”

    “Yes, please, and perhaps you’d like to turn for me as well?” replied David sweetly, getting his second wind.

    “Only if you’re up for that daft nodding they go in for, ’cos I can’t read music,” returned Jack stolidly.

    “They’re very simple little pieces, he doesn’t need the music,” said Nefertite weakly.

    The long dress she was in was a draped dark red thing. Silk, possibly—soft-looking. Outlined every inch of them curves and then some, not to mention the cleavage. A complete bloody turn-on, actually. He made a great effort and managed to reply lightly: “Funnily enough, Nefertite, I never thought he did.”

    Then he carted the cello out, because frankly, he couldn’t’ve stood another split second of it. Know who she reminded him of? Marlene, that was who! Plump Marlene with the sex books, and, to be strictly accurate, still the greatest pair of knockers he’d ever seen in the flesh—not quite as big as Desirée Garven’s but a better shape—and definitely the greatest bush. Definitely. Nefertite’d be the mature version, but— Yeah. Exactly what you would’ve imagined Marlene might’ve developed into these days if she’d never had that bloody la-de-da mother of hers.

    Talking of la-de-da, the guests all made cooing noises as he came in with the cello, but Jack just set it down carefully at the far end of the room, not looking at them. Then David came in, and smiled really nicely and said: “Thanks, Jack. The acoustics in this room are nothing much, but if you go down the back you’ll get the best effect, I think.”

    “Right. Um, gonna open it?”

    “Like to see it close up? Of course!” He opened the case before Jack could lie and say don’t be silly, he wasn’t a kid. Wow! It was beautiful. Kind of golden wood. With some stripier bits on the back. Thing was, poor bloody David had something wrong with his left hand, so it was odds-on he couldn’t play the thing properly. Well, a tune, yeah. Not the harder stuff, though. The little finger didn’t seem to work at all and both it and the one next to it were a funny colour. And that was the hand he had to use for the strings.

    “My fingering’s limited, but enough for what she needs,” he said, apparently quite cheerfully.

    “Mm.”

    “It was over twenty years ago. Car crash. Forced me to plump for composing; just as well, because I couldn’t make a choice between the piano and the cello and my father was starting to get really furious about it.”

    “I see. So you couldn’t of played both?”

    David shook his head. “‘Not seriously. It’s sixteen hours a day solid practice if you’re a concert performer.”

    “Cripes.”

    “Hard yacker!” he said with a little laugh. “I think you’ll be safe down the back, Jack, that skinny blonde bit’s buttonholed Ted.”

    He was right, Susan was jabbering away like nobody’s biz and Ted was starting to look dazed, hah, hah. On his other side Jan Martin was looking glum, poor dame.

    “Right, if you think the back’s the best place, David, I’ll get down there.”

    David watched with a smile in his eyes as the tall figure in jeans and a neat blue tee-shirt edged down the far side of the room from the skinny blonde bit and took up a position as far as possible from her.

    Jack knew that when the performer came in there was either an expectant hush or they all broke out in rustling and talking—and then they clapped. Funnily enough this lot did the rustling and talking, couldn’t of guessed that. They did clap but it didn’t have quite the effect, in a medium-sized sitting-room with an audience of this size. It wasn’t just the half-dozen B&B clients, there was another half dozen that had booked specially for a restaurant meal and the concert, but still.

    Bob was doing introductions. “I’ll leave it to her to tell you what she’s gonna sing,” he finished—mercifully, with the amount of booze he had inside him—“and merry Christmas, everyone!” With that he sat down beside Deanna, over at the front, to the side.

    Everybody clapped, so Nefertite had to wait to tell them. Then she said—she’d worked it out, it was a little routine, Jack registered with interest: “Merry Christmas, everyone! It’s so lovely to be here. I’m just going to sing a few little Christmas songs.” Then she added, “And by special request, the first one is for Dot and little Rose—yes, you, Rosy-Posy!” she smiled as the wee girl gave a crow from Dot’s knee.

    Then David struck up on the cello. Eh? Jack’s mouth fell open. It couldn’t be—

    But it was. Jingle Bell Rock. It didn’t sound anything like when she was practising in the early mornings, that was for sure. Nice, mind you. He looked round cautiously. Most of them looked even more flabbergasted than he felt. Bernie was grinning like mad, though: that was a bit of a relief, really. Dot looked really pleased, that was good!

    When she finished, Dot and Bernie clapped like mad, so the rest of them did, too. Jack could see it still wasn’t what they’d expected, though.

    Then David got up and said: “Thank you, Antigone, on behalf of my wife, my daughter and myself. “And now for something more traditional!” he added with a laugh in his voice, sitting down again.

    “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,” said Nefertite, smiling at them. “I’m used to singing it in the German.” Then she sang it. Right, goddit, it was Silent Night. It was so different from those tinny, nasal, swoopy versions you got in the supermarkets over Christmas that it didn’t even feel as if it came from the same planet.

    Jack was sitting at the end of the row, next to Phil. When it was over he found the boy was trying to shove something into his hand. He looked at him dazedly. Phil nodded encouragingly. Uh—oh. Groggily Jack wiped his eyes with Phil’s handkerchief under cover of the loud applause.

    After that he didn’t know what she sang, really. All short songs but really lovely. There was one he did recognise, that they used to have at school in assembly: kind of old-fashioned, not really a carol as such; he’d always thought it was a lovely song, well, lovely when Miss Masters played it on the old piano in the school hall and sang it for them, but putrid when the whole school tried to sing it. The choir had managed it reasonably well the year they had Shorty Allington in it, but then his voice had broken. The Holly and The Ivy. She made it sound… rippling. That was it: rippling, you sort of saw the woods and the holly trees and saw the branches moving in the wind and the deer running and all that. No, felt it, more than saw it. Maybe it was partly David’s bits, as well: he certainly sounded better than Miss Masters ever had, never mind his wonky hand. Jack didn’t recognise any of the others, and a lot of them were in foreign languages, but it didn’t matter, they were all lovely.

    All of the B&B guests were all over her when she finished. Plus and ruddy Susan, of course, in fact she was just about the most all over her, with the possible exception of the dame with the bouffant hair with a touch of apricot in it, in a frilled and draped green creation that made her look as much like a walking Christmas tree as was possible for a fifteen-stone grandmother in her sixties. For God’s sake, even the blokes were all over her! One was about seventy-five with a hearing-aid as well as the walk-shorts and the long socks but he was all over her, all right, and another was maybe seventy and well under the thumb, but he was all over her when the wife let him get a word in edgeways. A third one was about sixty-five, plumpish but horribly hale and hearty, with a nasty little pointed grey and white beard and an unstoppable expert flow on anything ya cared to name. Put it like this: so far Jack had overheard him on electric lawn mowers and the likelihood of John Howard standing for another term and he knew all there was to know about both subjects and managed to put over his point of view at the same time as coming on as judicious and impartial as ya please. God! The sort of bloke that made ya long for some good, simple, solid prejudice—yeah. He managed to be judicious about other performances him and the wife had heard at the same time as he was all over Nefertite.

    “Franklin,” said Bob’s voice in Jack’s ear at this point.

    “Eh?” he gasped, jumping.

    “Franklin. Specialises in never telling you you’re wrong or the other bloke’s wrong but making bloody sure ya know it all the same, and don’t ask me how ’e does it, mate! I have come across it before, but not often in the male of the species,” said Bob, directing an evil glare at the back of Mr Franklin’s neat balding head. “Epitome of the nice middle classes, in’ ’e? Mind you, he’s been everything, in ’is time. Sold insurance for years, but at one point ’e was a repo man.”

    “Eh?”

    Bob shrugged. “Yeah. Then he worked for one of them charities that employ the handicapped for less than the minimum wage. As a supervisor or somethink. Anyway, he took a package at sixty, we gather, but then he qualified for the dole—dunno how, but him and the wife are into working the system, you better believe it—so flamin’ Little Johnny offered him the choice of having to find a job pronto or doing voluntary work until he hit sixty-five, so ever since he’s been volunteering at this, that and the other, boring his fellow volunteers solid.”

    “Right,” said Jack weakly.

    “If they ever let David go,” added Bob, eying David in the grip of a tall, white-haired woman in a grey silk frock, a large amethyst brooch, and a pair of grey suede shoes that Deanna reckoned would of set her back five hundred nicker, min’, “there’s supposed to be some little nibbles in a bit.”

    “Uh—could we get them?” replied Jack feebly.

    “Don’t think they’re ready, mate, but we could go out there.”

    “Right, let’s,” he said in huge relief.

    Usually after a performance, however informal it might have been, Nefertite was in a state of euphoria and very hungry. She hadn’t eaten very much Christmas dinner—David had known she wouldn’t, with a performance next day—even though, as he wasn’t keen on a huge, hot meal in the early afternoon of a very warm day, he’d just prepared some cold salmon with a little mustard mayonnaise, potato salad because Dot loved it, and a simple tomato and lettuce salad for them. Followed by jelly and ice-cream, largely for little Rose’s benefit. They’d had a light supper last night but Nefertite hadn’t eaten much of it, either. This morning she had only had a cup of tea and she’d only managed a couple of slices of bread and butter and another cup of tea for lunch. And of course she’d refused dinner entirely. Now she ate a quantity of his savoury tartlets eagerly, but she didn’t seem very up.

    “This a bit of peach rolled up in ham? Odd,” said Dot mildly, examining a little roll on a stick. She ate it, nevertheless.

    “Odd?” enquired David politely.

    “Yeah.”

    “One could serve them tied with a dinky bow of chive—”

    “Right, and cradled in yer hot hand for hours while ya do it. No, thanks.”

    “Quite. Added to which, my chives haven’t done so well that I can spare them for that sort of thing.”

    “Nah: bolted to seed, Dad told ya they would.”

    Possibly an outsider would have concluded from this that her father was an expert gardener. In actual fact his front yard consisted of a patch of scruffy lawn and a weathered hibiscus tree whilst the back yard consisted of a patch of scruffy lawn, a lemon tree which Andy Mallory left to its own devices, and a Hill’s Hoist clothesline. “Indeed he did,” agreed David politely. At the other side of the room his sister was now being harangued by the apricot-haired wrinklie, what time the egregious Franklin stood by nodding judiciously, ready to shove his oar in and take the floor. He eyed her thoughtfully but didn’t pass any remark.

    “Bit mish’able,” said Dot indistinctly.

    “Mm?”—The guests were, certainly. And if she meant his sister, Nefertite did seem rather down. Well, she was thrilled to be with them at last, yes, but— “Mm.”

    Dot swallowed. “That was nice; what was it?”

    “I shan’t tell you, you’d decide it was odd.

    “What was it?”

    David sighed. “It was a tongue canap—”

    “Tongue? Ugh!”

    “—canapé. See?”

    “Well, it tasted all right. Only couldja kindly warn me, the next time there’s anything like tongue or brains or—“

    “There are no brains in anything!” David took a another look at the participants. “Not in anything,” he concluded drily.

    “The B&B lot are always like that,” she reminded him.

    “Mm-hm.”

    “Not getting bored with the whole bit, are you?” asked Dot anxiously.

    “No! Of course not, darling!” David put his arm round her waist. “Um, I am beginning to get the feeling, however,” he said very, very quietly, “that Nefertite’s not too happy.”

    Dot looked up at him in dismay.

    “It’s not Australia, I don’t think. And certainly not you or Rose—where is she, by the way?”

    “Kidnapped five hours back. No, Deanna’s got her, ya nong!”

    “Oh, so she has,” he realized feebly. “Well, she’s gone and committed herself to far too much for next year, of course: can’t say no. I think I’ll have to take up where Francis Cooper left off.”

    “Eh? Oh, her agent, right. Well, I could do it, I can say no, all right, only I don’t know enough about music, I’d be turning down the wrong ones.”

    “I don’t think that’d matter,” said David somewhat drily. “But I was about to say, that’s only a contributing factor. Uh—you might not have noticed, but Jack’s been absent for some time.”

    “Wasn’t he down the back?”

    The accompanist smiled a little. “Mm, wiping his eyes after Stille Nacht. No, he was here throughout the concert, sweetheart, but now he seems to have vanished.”

    “Well, heck, David, can ya blame— Oh, fuck,” said Dot numbly as it sank in.

    “Something like that, yeah,” agreed David very drily indeed. “We did think, not long after she arrived, that she fancied him, if you recall.”

    “You did, ya mean! Um, well, Ann told me she was pretty upset about him at one stage,” said Dot, swallowing.

    “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

    “Ssh! Because I thought you’d react like that, you twit. Thought she’d got over it—realized they had nothing in common. Well, she’s been seeing a fair bit of the Conservatorium people, hasn’t she, and you gotta admit it, he’s not into that sort of lifestyle.”

    “I do admit it, but which is cause and which is effect, Dot?” replied David grimly as the crowd of jabbering, eating, drinking retirees shifted slightly and he caught a glimpse of Nefertite’s face as Franklin bored on and on and on—

    “Oh, bum,” said Dot lamely. “Ya mean she is keen… Only heck, she’s had loads of boyfriends, hasn’t she?”

    “Er, ye-es. Not sure what you mean, sweetheart.”

    “Well, um, heck,” said Dot, going rather red, “she must know how to encourage a bloke, surely?”

    “Oh! Right! Well, I know this sounds stupid, but I think she’s only up for that when the bloke in question fundamentally doesn’t matter a damn to her.”

    “It doesn’t sound stupid at all,” said Dot slowly. “Only I just never thought Nefertite was like that, too.”

    “Too?” said David very weakly indeed.

    “Bad as me,” Dot admitted. “And you.”

    “Yeah.” David cleared his throat. “’Specially me, I rather think. No, well, in our case there was the bloody age difference, darling.”

    “I see: in her case it’ll be their different, um, backgrounds, then. I don’t just mean the class crap, I mean they’ve been used to very different lifestyles.”

    “Mm. And, uh, well, even if she did nerve herself to make the first move, I don’t think… Well, I’m pretty sure Jack’d be up for it, so to speak: when she asked him to lug the cello in he didn’t seem at all unimpressed by that ruddy red thing she’s in. That is, if the symptoms are the same Downund—Ow!” he gasped as Dot bashed his arm. “No, well, that is pretty bloody crucial, Dot.”

    “Yeah, all right, it is. So what’s the but?”

    David made a face. “The background thing. I’d say he’s even more sharply aware of it than she is, or why isn’t he here, making a move?”

    “Right, instead of leaving her to ole Franklin’s tender mercies.”

    “That bloody old creep gets a hard-on whenever he’s within five yards of her!” he hissed angrily.

    “Noticed that,” replied Dot calmly.

    David gulped. “Yeah.”

    “Nothing in it, he’s the sort that’s too chicken to make a move, even if Mrs ’ud let him off the leash long enough to,” she said calmly. “Shall we push off?”

    “Absolutely! Let’s claim it’s past Rose’s bedtime!” he said in huge relief.

    “Yeah; well, it is, if ya didn’t know she had a nap earlier. And Nefertite must be very tired, ’cos she was up at crack of dawn, practising.”

    “She’s usually up at—Oh!” said David with a choke of laughter. “Too bloody right!” he agreed in the vernacular. “Lead on, MacDot!”

    Dot didn’t need urging: she was forcing her way through the babbling retirees already.

    Jack had got on out of it. Well, shit, what did he know about music, and never mind Franklin and his ilk, one of those blokes with the expensive silk shirts that had come up from Sydney especially for the concert and two of the dames with the fancy hairdoes and the half a kilo of make-up per cheek and the flaming gold jewellery were not only completely on her wavelength but were in music, too! He was a violinist with what they called the ASO and it had taken him, J. (Muggins) Jackson quite some time to work out was the Australian Symphony Orchestra, and the two dames were in a group of some sort. Anyway, musical. It was true the violinist bloke was about five-foot-five and plump, which that black cummerbund round his tummy didn’t help to disguise, but Jack was bloody sure he wasn't gay. Bloody sure. Anyway, he didn’t want Nefertite to fancy him for his ruddy looks, he wanted— No, well, bugger it, he might even settle for that!

    He walked angrily up the road, not realising where he was until he was right up at the Blue Gums site. Well, there’d be nobody up here, that was for sure. Jack went up the rutted clay path, past the embryo ecolodge and right to the end of the promontory. There he just sat and gazed out over the dark water for ages and ages. It was a beautiful night: the bush smelled even better at night, and the sky was full of stars. There was the Milky Way—funny to think it was the spiral arm of our galaxy, eh? And there were the two pointers, so—uh—yeah, there was the Southern Cross.

    After a very long time he got up and said sourly: “Yeah, well, it isn’t gonna happen. Maybe if I’d of had the sense to let poor ole Miss Carter down the road give me some music lessons that time she offered, instead of letting bloody Rosalie give the poor ole dame the brush-off... Well, maybe she did fancy me looks, like the bitch said, but heck, she was in ’er sixties and a lady, don’t think she even knew what it was!”

    He stared unseeingly at the quiet inlet, finally concluding: “It’s the same like Marlene: we got nothing in common and it’d never work out, so you can bloody well lie down again!”

Next chapter:

https://theroadtobluegums.blogspot.com/2022/11/easter-break.html