Aftermath

19

Aftermath

    With Jardine holiday Horse Treks’ guests occupying the bunkhouse, Jack was sharing Ted’s room. There was room for his sleeping-bag as well as Ted’s stretcher—just. He didn’t think Ted minded sharing and as he wasn’t a talker, it wasn’t too bad, really. Jack would have quite liked to tell him that if he fancied Susan Pendleton she was all his but as he didn’t think Ted was the sort of bloke to take this as meant, didn’t. He woke up early on Boxing Day and decided to get out of it, get some fresh air before flaming Sal Remington appeared in their kitchen and started telling them what everyone could have for breakfast.

    Um, well, if he went along the track as far as the B&B there was always the chance of meeting a jogger or a walker. Well, more like a slow stroller from the B&B, with the lot they had in at the moment, but Blue Gums Ecolodge was full, too, and only too likely to have joggers. Or the sort that were real walkers: hikers. The last two he’d bumped into along here had been real pains in the arse, two Canadian dames that talked non-stop at him all the way down to the end of the bush ramble track. Really keen hikers, had them suede safari boots to prove it. Forty-odd, faces like leather. Always took their holidays together, somewhere with good walks, zat so? Been to New Zealand, fascinating. Done the Milford Track, how surprising. Hadn’t seen much? Fancy that. Six weeks of the year there was a reasonable chance it wouldn’t be pouring non-stop or misted up to Hell and gone. Rest of the year Milford Sound was keeping up that reputation of being the wettest place in the country. Two hundred and fifty inches of rain a year, average. Yeah. Something the tourist brochures didn’t point out. You could fairly say the encounter had ruined a lovely fine morning for him—yeah. And, not so early in the morning, another day had been ruined by a middle-aged couple from somewhere in Victoria in brand-new sparkling clean sneakers and tourist-type walking shorts. The sort with them knee-length legs that tended to catch against each other and ride up in an extremely unattractive way, because they were made in China and shorts weren’t a Chinese tradition. –Well, extremely unattractive on the middle-aged and flabby-knee-ed, put it like that. Would probably have looked all right on, just as a for instance, Elle McPherson. Or, just as another for instance, Desirée Garven.

    Uh—right, he wouldn’t take the flaming bush ramble track. He went the other way, across Andy’s place and right up to where young Phil reckoned he was gonna stage his picnics with his ruddy horses. Well, there was a nice clear patch here, probably no snakes lurking under them bushes, or if there were they’d have the sense to clear out when they heard the horses, and although there were some overhanging gum trees, if you built your campfire over in the middle of the clearing it wouldn’t blaze up and start a bushfire. Probably. According to Honey the guests would definitely all want billy tea. True, she had collapsed in giggles after she’d said it, but Phil went and verified it with Bob, getting the message that yeah, dinkum Aussie horse treks hadda have billy tea, mate. Even if it was putrid and they wouldn’t actually drink it, they hadda have it, geddit? Traditional. Jack hadn’t bothered to say that billy tea was also a Kiwi tradition, it hadn’t seemed the time, really…

    He felt a lot better for the exercise and the fresh air but most unfortunately he couldn’t go down to Andy’s and do them a bit of a fry-up for breakfast, because she was there. Bugger. He headed back towards the Jardine place. Um… couldn’t face Sal Remington, actually. Definitely the sort of dame that wouldn’t let you have bit of a fry-up the day after your huge Christmas dinner. Well, there’d been a huge lot of it, yeah, but he actually hadn’t eaten all that much of it, because firstly Susan was in charge of it, secondly you hadda be on your best behaviour and watch your table manners with Susan in charge of it, and thirdly she’d done something really peculiar to the stuffing for the turkey. Added to which, never mind George and Pete were eating them, kumaras covered in fucking burnt marshmallows were not a vegetable. Uh—sweet potatoes. Whatever, they were kumaras to him. Squashy sweetish muck that she claimed was chestnuts wasn’t a vegetable, either. And flaming sprouting broccoli, half-cooked, wasn’t fit for anything but horse fodder, talking of which, and poor bloody Ted, never mind his nice table manners, had almost choked at the sight of it. –Come out Downunder, thought ’e was never gonna see the muck again: yeah. She’d had them bloody yellow summer squash, too, but Jack would’ve bet his entire bank account on that one.

    … Not that what was in his bank account was worth betting, actually. Well, the Blue Gums job had paid okay, but no way would he of let Andy get away with not accepting board from him, once he’d finished the renovations. And he’d had no transport. Well, didn’t mind hiking into Barrabarra, but it was a fair distance, the distances between Aussie towns were usually huge, and of course the bus didn’t leave at anything like a reasonable time, got you into the city at dead of night—useless. So he’d bitten on the bullet and got a ute. Second-hand but the engine was in good nick. Bit of rust on the bodywork, but who cared? But it had just about cleaned him out. And petrol cost an arm and a leg, the price just kept going up and up.

    Um, well, they’d done the stuff they’d planned to get done today on Christmas Eve. Well, uh… Well, he could just wander on for a bit, perfect morning. Maybe Ann and Bernie’d be up by the time he got there. He could have a cup of coffee with them: Bernie was okay. Well, back when David had asked him if he could possibly collect Nefertite from the airport Bernie had said: “Just in case no-one’s mentioned it, Jack, David’s sister is an opera singer with an international reputation.” Thought he was being kind or something, see? But he meant well, couldn’t help being a Pom that thought he had to be kind to the ignorant Colonials. And Ann was really decent. Come to think of it, back then she’d just told him not to take any notice of anything the others might say, and Nefertite was all right.

    Um, and maybe Dot would have something she needed doing, ’cos David wasn’t much of a handyman anyway, and at the moment he was really busy, with the B&B full—and, wouldja believe, they’d had outside bookings for lunch as well, for today! Boxing Day? Lunch at a poncy restaurant three hours’ drive from anywhere? What about just slinging the kids and a chillybin in the back of the car and heading off for a lazy day on the beach? No, well, according to Bob people still did, mate, and ya meant esky, mate, ya said chillybin again, but only real people. Once ya got yer two-car garage with the games room behind it and one of those two-storey square-topped arches over the front door, you were too good for yer good ole Aussie Boxing Bay. Just as well for him and Deanna, eh? And he didn’t know what the punters’d be expecting, but what David was gonna give them was rack of lamb, or spinach and fetta roll with filo pastry if they were vegetarian, with a bit of salad with a few rocket leaves in amongst the lettuce and tomato to make it look fancy, take it or leave it. Before Jack could say that it sounded far too good for them, actually, he’d added that the pudding was kiwifruit ice cream that David had whipped up last winter when things were slow and the price of kiwifruit had hit rock bottom ’cos the Kiwis were flooding the market with theirs, mate, and before he asked, it did taste ruddy peculiar, not to mention the colour, but that was what the punters were looking for: they could go home to their two-car garages and their total security systems with the steel roller shutters down over every orifice making the house hot as Hell and boast to their neighbours what a flaming up-market Boxing Day they’d had, see?

    Well, anyway, he’d see if Dot needed a hand. Might be something to do in the garden. Ask him, it needed more compost as well as more digging over and a lot more water—could haul a bit up from the creek, why not? All it was doing was draining into the inlet and going to waste. And so long as you didn’t install an actual pump, the council wouldn’t care. Whistling softly, and unable to prevent his mind designing a really nifty system of pipes and pumps, Jack headed down towards the art and crafts centre and the Walsinghams’ place.

    Okay, Ann and Bernie must still be asleep—though actually it wasn’t that early. Well, it was their day off, after all. According to Ann you only hadda be slopping round in your curlers and dressing-gown at nine-thirty for the craft-hunters to turn up in their shiny Mitsubishis. She didn’t use curlers, of course, but otherwise, Jack had a fair idea she wasn’t wrong. Never mind the big notice down the end of the drive that said clear as clear they didn’t open until 10.30. He went quietly past the silent arts and crafts centre and headed over to the Walsinghams’ house.

    Crikey, that wasn’t the maggies! Must be her. Automatically he looked at his watch. She was late this morning. She practised every morning and he did know enough to know it must be what the experts called scales, and it was certainly nothing like anything he’d ever heard on the Concert Programme back home, but if you asked him it was better than actual songs, it was just… glorious. Jack headed for the little picket fence round the Walsinghams’ house. Kind of felt you were drowning in it, ya know? It just went on and on and on. Just as musical as the maggies, ya know? In fact, even better. More, um, varied? …Glorious.

    She’d stopped. Bugger. Well, um, they must be up, they wouldn’t be sleeping through it, that was for sure. He could go round the back, see if Dot needed—

    Ooh, she was starting up again! The picket fence was in his way: Jack stepped over it, not even noticing he was doing it, and got closer to the music.

    David walked round the corner of his own house and stopped dead. Noiselessly he retreated…

    “So what?” said Dot grimly at the end of his report. “We know he likes her singing. It’s not confined to the Walsinghams and the rest of the flaming upper classes!”

    “I thought it was, out here,” he replied drily.

    Evilly his wife returned: “A musical education is, yeah. Being able to like the stuff isn’t. And don’t you dare say anything to him!”

    “Uh—no, all right,” said David feebly. He sat down at the kitchen table with a sigh. “I wish I could do something, though.”

    “You did do something. You walked away and let him listen,” replied Dot serenely.

    “Uh—yeah. Um, well, help him to, um, learn a bit more— I never spoke!”

    “You’re right, there, mate,” she agreed grimly. “And listen: just don’t expect him to like your modern stuff. ’Tisn’t natural, to people that’ve only been exposed to a bit of ordinary classical music and pop songs all their lives.”

    David’s mouth twitched.

    “Yeah, go on, laugh,” she invited cheerfully.

    “That or cry! No, well, you’re right, of course, darling.”

    “He’ll enjoy the concert tonight!” she said cheerfully.

    “Yes, but— No, I’m shutting up!”

    “He loved it last year, you said so yourself,” said Dot firmly.

    David sighed. Quite.

    When George surfaced on Boxing Day there was no sign of Pete—hardly surprising, as his watch, once he managed to focus on it, informed him it was nearly eleven. Astonishingly enough, when he finally staggered into the kitchen, having had a shave as well as a shower so as not to get screamed at for being sloppy, his sister just said mildly: “Oh, there you are. You’d better have a cup of coffee.”

    “Yeah,” George agreed faintly, sitting down. Once he’d got half the coffee down him it sort of started to come back to him. Most of Gil’s lot had managed to escape some time after Susan’s so-called Christmas dinner—well, it hadn’t started until two-thirty, so by the time they got out of it it must’ve been sixish, but Ted had stayed and, uh, she’d gone for a walk with him, was that it? Um, yeah.

    “Uh—where’s Pete?” he ventured.

    “Dad thought they might get some nice fish for lunch, so they took the boat out early.”

    Eh? Dad was up early? On Boxing Day? On second thoughts he wasn’t gonna query it. “Right. Uh, where’s Jack?” he groped.

    “I don’t know, he’s not staying here,” said Susan mildly.

    Uh—no, nor he was. George held his head. Jesus, what a clanger! But why wasn’t she screaming at him?

    “Have you taken some Panadol?” asked Susan—but quite mildly.

    “Mm.”

    “You’re drinking too much, George,” she warned—but quite mildly.

    “Mm. Uh, well, I’ve stopped,” admitted George. “I sort of wondered why Dad wasn’t drinking that firewater ’e got off old George Kelly, and now it’s sunk in.”

    “What firewater?” asked Susan—but quite mildly, was Ted a miracle worker?

    “Dunno. Japanese. Might of been meant to be whisky. Firewater.”

    “Honestly, George!”

    “Yeah.”

    “Are you coming this evening?”

    George chanced his luck. “Um, no, I’m not into classical music.”

    “Last year’s wasn’t highbrow, you’ve have liked it. Pete’s looking forward to it.”

    George waited for her to say that at least Pete knew how to behave, or words to that effect, but she didn’t: okay, maybe Ted had a miracle dick.

    “Have some more coffee,” Susan offered kindly.

    “Thanks.” He drank a bit more and than asked cautiously: “So, what ya doing with the leftover turkey?”

    “Just slicing it up for Phil’s sandwiches, since I’ve got the electric carving knife,” she said happily.

    Uh—right. He didn’t tell her to be careful, that’d distract her because she’d have to snap back that she knew what she was doing: he just sent up a prayer to Whoever might be listening that she wouldn’t cut her hand off. Well, His birthday yesterday, eh? He might be in a good mood. Unless His rellies were just like— Er, yeah.

    “Um, so you’re gonna let Phil have it?” he said cautiously, as Heaven was merciful and she laid the knife down and started wrapping the sliced turkey in Gladwrap.

    “Yes, most of it: there’s far too much for us to get through.”

    George quite liked cold turkey sandwiches with mayonnaise and cranberry jelly, but as there was none of either in any cupboard Susan was in charge of, he didn’t raise any objections. Instead he got up, staggered carefully over to the bench, and very carefully turned the fucking knife off at the wall. Then he unplugged it and rinsed and dried it for her.

    “Thanks,” said Susan in surprise.

    “No problem.” George found his legs were trembling, and he didn’t think it was all down to the firewater, either. What fuckwit had invented fucking dangerous electric saws for bloody women to use in kitchens? He sat down again. “So Gil’s lot are gonna have a picnic, are they? Taking the horses down the trail?”

    “Not exactly. The children wanted lessons, so Phil thought he’d spend the morning on that and then just take them a little way for a nice picnic. Of course, I haven’t been on a horse for years,” said Susan with a silly laugh, “but there are plenty of spare mounts, so I thought I’d go, too! Well, I won’t be the only amateur, Ted admits himself he’s only been on a horse a handful of times!”

    Aw, gee, it was all becoming strangely clear, in spite of the throbbing at the temples. “Right; well, you were a champ at your pony club, weren’t you?” he said tolerantly.

    “That was years and years ago!” replied Susan with a silly laugh. “Of course, I did a little at the country club, when Hermia was keen.”

    Yeah, and thereby hung a tale or seventeen. In the first instance it had only been a so-called country club, just a glorified pony club, but the owners had wised up to a good thing and shoved in a clubhouse with a licence for the parents and something that called itself a tennis court. And in the second instance poor little Wormy had hated it, but she’d been made to keep on with it because Susan had had a crush on one of the instructors—male, slightly more than half her age, and that was all you could say for ’im—and bloody Graham, to George’s certain knowledge, in the third instance had been up one of the more up-market pony-clubber mums. Until she’d opted for a second honeymoon at Club Med Noumea with the hubby.

    “Uh—right, ’course ya did. Got your jeans up here, have you?”

    “Of course! I’ll change later.”

    Right. In that case they’d be designer jeans, ’cos normal people that were merely slicing up a bit of cold meat in their dad’s kitchen wore their j— Oh, forget it: he’d known for years she was mad.

    “Uh—think I might sit on the verandah for a bit,” he muttered feebly.

    “All right, George,” said Susan mildly.

    Pete and Dad got back around one-ish, by which time he was able to report: “It’s all right, she’s pushed off. Got some fish for lunch, have ya?”

    “Hah, hah,” returned Andy stolidly, heading inside.

    Pete sat down beside him, so George was able to ask: “What the Hell happened last night?”

    “You got pissed out of your brain on Andy’s firewa—”

    “Yes! Not that! She’s in the good mood to end all good moods and she’s gone riding with Phil’s lot because Ted said he was going!”

    “Well, you might not remember, but Ted accepted her invitation to stay on for supper and they went for a walk before it, and then she walked part of the way home with him.”

    “That It?”

    “Yeah. I realize now that I should have crept after them with me infra-red video camera in me hot little ha—”

    “All right, knock it off! No, um, well, he did a bit of walking with that nice Jan Martin last Christmas, and nothing came of it,” said George on a lame note.

    Pete just looked at him limply.

    “No, well, maybe that’s as far as ’e goes,” said George very lamely indeed.

    “You’re the one that knows the bloke, George!”

    “Well, sort of. ’E doesn’t give much away, ya know. The thing is, how long is this good mood of Susan’s gonna last?”

    Pete could have analysed this question in depth and produced several possible answers, but he didn’t bother. “At least she’s left us in peace for now. Feel like a cold one?”

    “No,” said George, wincing.

    “Feel like lunch?”

    “No,” said George, wincing.

    Pete got up. “In that case I’ll just get some for me and Andy.”

    “He won’t touch anything fancy.”

    “I know. Thought I might do some chips.”

    “Yeah? Well, there’ll be plenty of potatoes, given she never let us have any yesterday,” said George sourly.

    “Exactly,” agreed Pete calmly, going inside.

    After a while the smell of frying chips began to percolate to George’s senses but he just sat there on the verandah, from time to time prodding cautiously at his temples.

    Pete had efficiently done the lunch dishes, ignoring Andy’s sardonic enquiry whether he was getting rid of the evidence, and as George was asleep in his deck-chair on the verandah and the old man had now dozed off in his big chair in the front room, there was little point in sticking around. Andy had a collection of old books, some of which dated from his father’s day and were very odd indeed, but most of which were his own—politics and history, mainly, though none of it published within the last thirty years—but they didn’t appeal. TV certainly didn’t appeal—well, there’d probably be some cricket but he didn’t want to disturb the old man. He put on the battered canvas hat he wore on the boat—it was the army surplus sort, with quite a wide brim, but he anointed his face with sunscreen as well, added some more to his forearms and the backs of his hands, and embarked on a hunt for his sunnies. At home he always put them in the same place but the room he was sharing with George didn’t have a featureless, colourless dressing-table in precisely that place. Where the Hell were the bloody things? His keys were in his pocket, but… Okay, back-track. What had he done when he’d come inside? Uh—kitchen, cold one. He wouldn’t have put them down in the kitchen, he never did that! But they certainly weren’t in the bedroom. Pete went into the kitchen and sheepishly retrieved his sunglasses from the top of the fridge. Okay, he was losing it.

    He could go up along the creek but there was always the chance of bumping into the horse trekkers, and he had a feeling he could wait till this evening to find out if Susan was still in a good mood, thanks all the same. Potters Inlet itself didn’t appeal at the best of times, and Boxing Day afternoon certainly wasn't the best of times. Well, maybe they could do with a hand over at the Jardine place. Pretending to himself that he wasn’t going over there because he wanted to see Honey again, Pete set off up the road.

    The front sweep was deserted, apart from three parked vehicles. The fawn four-wheel-drive was Gil’s, or perhaps the enterprise’s: it bore the legend “Jardine Holiday Horse Treks” on its doors and a picture of a horse’s head which was possibly their legally registered logo but which Pete, eyeing it drily and wondering whether they’d got Bernie Anderson to paint it for them, would have taken a bet wasn’t. The very old ute, newly painted scarlet, was Phil’s. But the large, modern and very dusty station-waggon… Oh, must belong to the early guests! Let’s see: twelve bunks: well, even with three parties of four the sweep was going to get pretty parked up, wasn’t it? In their place he'd have extended the drive off to the left, put in a parking lot for the guests. He followed the newly gravelled path at the right of the house, rather than knock at the front door.

    “Hullo!” he gasped.

    Honey was sitting on the back steps, hugging a soft toy. “Hullo, Pete,” she replied mildly.

    “All on your ownsome?” said Pete inanely.

    “Mm,” she agreed, nodding that mop of curls. Looked as if they might have been washed very recently: they were all soft and fluffy. “Phil and Jen have taken the Grovers off for a picnic with the horses, and Jack and Ted decided to go, too. They won’t go far, the children only had their first lesson this morning and Anita and Lance aren’t very experienced riders, but they thought it’d be a nice way to spend the day.”

    “Right.” He took the bull by the horns and said: “So what’s Gil doing?”

    “He’s asleep,” returned Honey calmly. “He doesn’t sleep all that well at night, and he gets tired unexpectedly. So when they’d all gone I said why didn’t he have a lie-down, and he went out like a light.”

    Pete bit his lip. He sat down beside her on the worn wooden steps. “Right,” he said after a moment. “Only got one lung, that the story?”

    “Yes. He had a terrible wound: his chest’s very scarred. And his shoulder’s all cut about, they had to, um, rebuild it, I think’s the expression. He calls it a tin shoulder but it’s got a bit of titanium in it, really. He has to wear a big elastic bandage on it all the time.”

    “I see. Penalty of going into the Army,” said Pete wryly.

    “Yes. I don’t think he ever thought of doing anything else; his father was a career soldier, he’s a general, and so was his grandfather. I think it’s a family tradition. And Gil’s always been a very active person, I think.”

    “Uh—likes rushing around with guns, killing people. Right.”

    To his surprise Honey returned calmly to this: “I can’t really sympathise with it, either, but I think their sort of person truly does believe in serving their country with honour.”

    Pete went rather red. “Yes,” he managed.

    “Of course if there was no jingoism at all and the human race could get over its stupid territorialism there’d be no wars, but realistically that isn’t gonna happen, is it? And pacifism doesn’t really work.”

    “I think it worked for Ghandi,” replied Pete on a grim note.

    “Satya graha? It worked until he got shot, yes. But there were other forces at work, too: the tide of history had turned and the British couldn’t afford their empire any more after the War. And look at the way India and Pakistan are always at each other’s throats these days!”

    “Uh—that’s true enough. But shit, where’s Gil been posted, besides Iraq, Honey? Poor bloody Northern Ireland? The Falklands? Did the British have any right to be in either place?”

    “No, but it’s the tide of history again, isn’t it? They’d got all those Protestants in Ulster and the British settlers in the Falklands, you can understand why they felt they had to fight for them.”

    “Right; now tell me Northern Ireland would have been less of a bloodbath if the bloody British had just turned Ulster over to the Irish with the rest of the place!”

    “Ssh! No, I won’t tell you that, Pete, but could it have been more of a bloodbath?”

    Pete swallowed. “Uh, probably not,” he admitted.

    “Come to that, we’ve got no right to be here, either,” said Honey very drily indeed.

    Pete had to swallow again. “Yeah. That had dawned.”

    “I’m just glad we are,” she said serenely, smiling at the view of dusty back yard, scruffy bushes amidst scattered rocks and more dust, and the sufficiently featureless bunkhouse. If you stood up the edge of the barbecue area with its awning was just visible, but not from this angle.

    “Mm,” Pete admitted, breathing in warm, dusty air and the faint scent of the eucalypts.

    After a while she turned her head and smiled at him. “Have you ever been back to England?”

    “Once, to see the relations, about ten years back. And once was enough. Tiny cramped stone houses without gardens, huddled together in a shallow valley, with their backs turned to the view of the rolling moors. How anyone could live like that beats me! I did visit some lovely country houses—saw how the other half lives, or used to live, they were nearly all National Trust houses—but they weren’t enough to make me want to live there!” he admitted with a shudder. “Dad had been really keen to go back and I think maybe he had some idea they might stay, if Mum seemed keen, but he took one look at the place and said he’d never realized how small and dirty it really was until now.”

    Honey nodded seriously. “I see. And what about your mum?”

    “Had a lovely time gossiping with the rellies, couldn’t wait to get back to her spanking new modern kitchen and her flower garden!” admitted Pete with a laugh.

    “Oh, good.”

    “Yeah, pretty good. My cousin Ken’s about my age and I tried to put the hard word on him to up stakes—he’s an electrician, he’d be able to make a good living here—but he wasn’t interested. They’d just bought a house: semidetached, pocket handkerchief of a front garden—literally one stride wide—about enough of a back yard to swing a cat if it was a small cat, and a lovely view of the old gas works over the roofs of more semidetached houses just like it.”

    “There are huge areas of Sydney that are no better.”

    “Right, and there are huge areas that are miles and miles better! Their Jessica was really keen on swimming, used to take two buses to the municipal baths. I showed him a picture of Bondi but I still couldn’t convince him to even consider moving.”

    “I think there are lots of people who can’t really envisage a life outside of what they know, Pete,” said Honey seriously.

    Pete sighed. “You’re right: that’s Ken.” She was still hugging the soft toy; after a moment, since he couldn’t think of anything else to say he said feebly: “That belong to your guests’ kids?”

    “What? No; he’s mine. Bunnifer. He’s an antique—well, almost!” admitted Honey, smiling. “Phil gave him to me, the Christmas before last. We got him in at work and I really fell for him. Kyle, that’s one of my bosses, he said he’s handmade, a one-off, y’know? Not a commercially produced toy and so he’s not really collectible like old teddy bears. He thinks he’d be around sixty, probably made during the War when toys were very scarce. He’s suede, see? Made from an old pair of lady’s gloves, Kyle thinks. He can’t of been played with much, he’s in very good condition for his age.”

    “Um, yeah,” said Pete feebly. The thing was a standing rabbit, about forty centimetres tall including the upright ears, which were lined with rather faded pink satin. The suede of its face, ears and front paws was tan. The rest of it consisted of a striped waistcoat over a blue shirt with a red bowtie, and enormous baggy grey bloomers. Grey serge, so probably recycled school shorts. A fluffy tail featured on the bum of these trousers. Possibly a piece of real rabbit fur.

    “The bowtie’s new, he’d lost his own one,” said Honey.

    “Mm.”

    “Normally he lives on my tallboy, but I brought him up here because it’s Christmas.”

    “I see,” said Pete very feebly indeed.

    “I know it’s silly,” said Honey, smiling happily, “but I just fell completely in love with him!”

    “Right. –Gil approves of it, does he?” said Pete on a sour note before he could stop himself.

    “Yes, of course. If ‘approves’ is the right word! He said it was an awful pity he’s a one-off because he was sure Rosemary would adore one like him. –That’s his English girlfriend. We’re hoping she’s gonna come out and join him this year.”

    “Mm. So, um, you’re interested in collecting antique toys?”

    Honey’s jaw sagged. After a discernible pause she said weakly: “You don’t understand at all, do you?”

    “Don’t I?” replied Pete crossly, reddening. Bloody Sotherland apparently did, of course!

    “A person can love something as a—a one-off without wanting to collect them. I just… fell for him,” said Honey feebly. Help! How else could you put it? Was he always that rigid in his thinking? “Haven’t you ever seen something in a shop, or maybe just a beautiful rock or a piece of bark, and wanted it just because it was so lovely?”

    “Um, well, I was mad keen to own a Swiss Army knife like Jonno Reynolds’s one when I was about ten. Well, um, not since then, I suppose.”

    “I'm glad I’m not that pragmatic,” said Honey simply.

    Okay, they had nothing whatsoever in common. Pete scowled. “I dare say.”

    “Didn’t your wife have a few things that she loved just for their own sake and not because they were practical or useful or collectible?”

    Pete stared blankly at the dust.

    “Um, sorry,” said Honey in a tiny voice as the silence lengthened.

    “No, that’s okay. It was a Helluva long time ago… Janet was a very pragmatic person, I suppose, but she had a set of old glass buttons with, um, sparkly bits in them. She’d picked them up at a school fair, I think. They were junk, really, and she didn’t use them for anything. I mean she didn’t put them on a blouse or anything. She used to put them in a row along the base of the dressing-table mirror. Not on the frame, just sitting below it. They made the dusting incredibly inefficient… I don’t know what happened to them when she died: I think her sister grabbed them. –Well, I told her to take the lot.”

    “Mm,” said Honey, looking at him sympathetically.

    “There was a stupid china cat, too. A cheap thing. Grey, sort of slimy-looking, with an awful smirk on its face. She admitted it would have looked awful in the sitting-room. She put it on the kitchen windowsill at first but it was in danger of getting knocked off every time we opened the window, so then she put it on top of the fridge. I got so used to the thing being up there that I completely forgot about it until I was due to move out. Everything else was packed… My neighbour came over to ask me to have tea with them, so I gave it to her little girl,” he said dully.

    “I see.”

    “I regretted that bloody cat for years,” said Pete with a smothered sigh. “Oh, well. Haven’t thought about it for ages. We were very young—she was only twenty-three when she had the accident. –It wasn’t her fault, she was a very careful driver, it was a bloody truck. God knows whether we’d still have been together. I suppose, looking back, she was as much of a control freak as me—I’ve got worse over the years, though, living on me tod, as George could tell you. We had this stupid row over the best way to arrange stuff in the kitchen cupboards…”

    “Um, I think most ladies like to decide that for themselves,” offered Honey timidly.

    “Yeah,” said Pete wryly: “that dawned, after I’d calmed down. –She put everything by category regardless of size, it used to drive me demented. I’d say to her, why can’t you have two sections for tinned fruit, put the big economy-size tins down the bottom, but no, it all had to— Never mind,” he said heavily. “It meant there were two narrow shelves in the pantry that were almost completely wasted, all they’d take were flat tins of fish, and we didn’t buy all that much. The Marmite could have fitted, except that it had to go with the other spreads. Though when Caitlin came along she put her jars of baby food there.”

    “Then they weren’t wasted,” said Honey calmly.

    “Right. –Caitlin would have been about the same age as that nice little Jen, now.”

    “I’m very sorry, Pete,” said Honey in a strangled voice.

    Pete made a face. “Thanks. It’s okay. Well, twenty years—you get over it. But just sometimes I wonder what she’d have turned out like. Well, as obstinate as me and Janet put together, I think: she was already as stubborn as a mule!” he admitted with a sudden grin. “Used to scream ‘Me, me!’ when her mother tried to spoon her slop into her.”

    Honey was incapable of speech: she just nodded inarticulately.

    “At least I had her first two years,” said Pete. “You missed all of your boy’s growing up.”

    “Mm, but I knew he was being taken care of. And I’d have been a terrible mother, I’m hopelessly disorganised. And I was only seventeen: the whole idea,” said Honey slowly, “scared me stiff. I think that was why I gave in so easily when his grandfather wanted to take him. Anne, that’s my sister, she warned me it was taking the coward’s way out and I’d regret it, but— Oh, well. He’s turned out okay. He had a lovely nanny: she was more like a granny, I think: she was Gil’s and Julian’s old nanny. She did spoil him, but fundamentally he’s okay. A bit weak, and he’s a follower, but if he marries Jen she’ll look after him.”

    “Yes, she struck me as a very sensible girl.”

    “Mm!” agreed Honey, hugging her absurd rabbit and smiling at him over its head. “Would you like a cuppa? Or a beer?”

    “A cup of tea would be nice. Let me make it,” said Pete, getting up.

    “Okay; thanks,” replied Honey comfortably. “I’d better put Bunnifer away.” Before he could hold his hand out to her she was scrambling up with the thing. Pete followed her into the house slowly, reflecting that she might be hopelessly inefficient and, well, a bit mad, what with toy rabbits at her age—though in a way it was understandable, if the baby had been taken away from her—but at least she wasn’t the sort of female that refused to let you make a cup of tea in her kitchen. Which Janet, for all her good points, had been. It had always been: “No, I’ll make it.” Except for suppertime, when she’d always let him get it. Um, possibly because her mum had always let her dad do it?

    “I meant to ask you before, Honey,” he said when they were sitting at the kitchen table sipping, “what’s the situation with your cook?”

    Going very red, Honey replied in a strangled voice: “The girl that thought she might do it has changed her mind. The one Dot and Deanna’s Aunty Kate thought might be interested.”

    Pete looked at her uncertainly. “That’s bad luck. Pity Jen’s mother couldn’t have stayed on and given you a hand.”

    “Not really: she’s the sort of person that gives people what they ought to have instead of what they want. And you can’t treat guests that way. You might think she’d know better, what with her sandwich shop business, but this morning she tried to make Jen just put out muesli and wholemeal bread and the spreads and let them get on with it, when we advertise full breakfasts. –You see, Phil said if they’d had a hard day’s riding the day before or they were going on a trek later in the day they’d need a decent breakfast. As it turned out the children just wanted cornflakes and Anita and Lance had muesli with fruit, but heck! We had to offer them the choice!”

    “Yeah. The Susan type,” he said drily. “Not that I mind muesli, usually have it at home anyway. So are you and Jen gonna do it between you?”

    “I suppose so. Phil’s in charge of the lunches, but some days he’ll be out with the treks, of course. I mean, I hadn’t really thought about it, but if they don’t go off on the treks they’ll be here,” said Honey glumly. “And he has to get up early and feed the horses—they don’t just eat grass, you see, they have to have oats and hay and stuff as well—and groom them, that’s really hard work, and then he might be spending all day out riding, so it doesn’t seem fair for him to be getting up at crack of dawn to make loads of sandwiches.”

    “Well, he’s a fit young man, it won’t kill him, but I see what you mean: not fair when there are other hands to share the load, eh?”

    “Mm. So what we thought, he can write down the sandwich combos and me and Jen can make them up.”

    “Sounds okay.”

    “Yes, only there’s the stuff for their tea as well,” said Honey, swallowing. “Jen can't really do that, most of the time she’ll be on the treks. And don’t say potato salad’s easy, it isn’t!”

    “You’ve got to know what potatoes to use and not assume that every variety’s going to cook up the same way,” replied Pete mildly.

    “Not only that, not assume that if it worked yesterday it’ll work today!” replied Honey bitterly.

    “Mm. Well, need a hand?” he said easily.

    Honey was again very red. “Have they been hinting?” she croaked.

    “Uh—no, no-one’s been hinting,” said Pete weakly.

    “Oh. It was just—you made all that lovely stuff for us with the mangoes, so they all said— Never mind. You’re on holiday, Pete, it wouldn’t be fair to let you.”

    “Aren’t you nominally on holiday, too? Anyway, I’d like to.”

    “But what about George?”

    “He’s capable of knocking back the beer and being screamed at by Susan on ’is own,” replied Pete drily. “No, well, say I leave the sandwiches for the treks to you lot, come over about elevenish? What time were you planning to have lunch for the ones that don’t go out?”

    “I—I dunno. Well, it’ll be on Gil’s timetable.” Honey got up and consulted a giant coloured chart on the wall, finally admitting: “I can’t understand it.”

    Pete came to look over her shoulder. “Oh, right, these are his schedules for the riding lessons and the treks. Lessee... Presumably between twelve and two.”

    “Um, yes, I think that’s right, ’cos he said the afternoon rides would start at two.”

    “Uh-huh. Get back between five and six… Um, dinner not until seven?”

    Honey swallowed. “Mm. I did try to tell him the children’ll be hungry earlier than that.”

    “I should say they’ll be starving and want feeding the minute they get back, the man’s mad! Well, give ’em time to have a shower—or in the kids’ case be forced to by the parents—but frankly, I’d plan to be bunging a steak on the barbie no later than six-ten, unless you’ve got a group of very experienced riders—with bums like leather, incidentally—that’ll want to spend a whole day on the flaming trails.” To Honey’s horror he then produced a pen and made alterations to Gil’s schedule.

    “I’ll do the potato salad and some coleslaw at lunchtime—coleslaw’s much better if it has time to mature—and that’ll leave me the arvo free to spend with George. I’ll come back no later than five, get everything sorted out, fire up the barbies and be ready to go just after six. Have you thought what you’ll do if you get a heatwave?”

    “Yes, the bunkhouse has got air-con, so they’ll be able to eat in there.”

    “Good. Let’s see your meal plans!” said Pete cheerfully.

    “Um, all the plans are on the wall, Pete,” said Honey limply.

    “You must have planned what to give them for each meal!”

    “Um, no, we just bought a lot of stuff… I can always go down to the shop when we run out, I quite like shopping,” said Honey on a hopeful note.

    “Let’s see what you’ve got in.” He got up and investigated their freezer, fridge and pantry. “Got any paper?”

    “Um, yes, it belongs to Gil’s computer. Hang on.” Honey hurried out.

    “Here,” she said, coming back with a sheaf of A4.

    “Thanks. Were you thinking of sparing them the barbies one evening and putting on something like lasagna instead?”

    “Um, no.”

    “I think you should. Make them feel they’re being looked after, see? Added to which, lasagna is much cheaper than meat.”

    “Mm.” Honey just sat down limply at the table and watched while he wrote out a detailed weekly timetable for the dinners, with the amounts of the different sorts of meat and vegetables they’d need.

    “Why Wednesday for the lasagna?” she ventured at long last.

    “Breaks up the week nicely. You could do them a roast one night, too.”

    “But it isn’t just the meat, it’s vegetables and everything, and we’re fully booked for January: that’s enough roast potatoes for twelve people, Pete!”

    “Why not? The oven’ll do it, no problem. How long are most of them booked in for?”

    “The January ones? Just a week. I don’t know how Gil worked it out, ’cos it isn’t necessarily the same days of the week, but he seemed to fit them in. Um, I think when some wanted it to be over a weekend he just told the next lot that he could fit them in as from the Tuesday or whenever it was.”

    “Right. First come first served, eh? Well, with weekly stays it won’t really matter if they don’t get a roast one night. But I think we could make an effort with the puddings.”

    “We thought just ice cream and fruit salad,” said Honey faintly.

    “Have a heart! Give them cheesecake or a fruit flan, at least!”

    “But there’ll be twelve of them,” she said weakly.

    “Then two cheesecakes or flans’ll do it nicely.”

    “And us,” she said very faintly.

    “Three,” replied Pete, writing.

    Honey subsided.

    When Gil staggered groggily into the kitchen she was just sitting limply at the table, surrounded by screeds of paper.

    “Hul-lo!” he said with a laugh, picking up a sheet. “Meal schedules?”

    “Meal plans, I think he called them,” said Honey feebly.

    “Uh-huh. Pete, would this have been?”

    “Yeah. He wrote on your timetables; I’m sorry, Gil.”

    “Good heavens, if anyone wants to correct my feeble efforts, let ’em!” Gil went over to the wall. “Right: scheduled the dinners too late, did I?”

    “Yes, especially for the children.”

    “Uh-huh. Where is he?”

    Honey swallowed. “He’s rushed off to get his laptop ’cos it’s got a program in it that tells you what quantities to buy for—for meals. Something to do with a hospitality course he taught one year because the other man was on leave. Him and another man, they worked it out. You—you put in the number of people and the—the type of food, I think, like meat, and it tells you the quantities to buy.”

    Gil whistled.

    “Mm,” she agreed with a wry smile. “It doesn’t tell you what to do if the supermarket in Barrabarra’s run out, though.”

    ‘No!” he gasped, collapsing in ’orrible sniggers at last. “Honey, my dear,” he said weakly, sitting down at the table and wiping his eyes, “just tell me if he’s driving you mad, and I’ll get rid of him.”

    “No, that’s all right, Gil,” she said, going pink but smiling at him. “He’s an efficient person, that’s all. I couldn’t do it myself, and actually I wouldn’t want to, but it will be good to know the quantities, ’cos then I’ll be able to buy the right amount of vegetables instead of buying the meat and then having to rush down to the supermarket again because there’s nothing to go with it.”

    “Good. Uh, there is the point that if the computer tells us three dozen lamb chops and we buy ’em, there’s no guarantee that the punters will all like lamb chops,” he ventured.

    “Well, actually Aussies always like lamb, Gil!” replied Honey with a laugh. “It’s our natural food, you see: lamb, steak and sausages!” She collapsed in giggles. Though then admitting: “He said we were offering them too much choice. Like, if we’ve got steak and chops and sausages they can choose from, if they mostly choose steak—I did say the kids’d probably choose sausages—but anyway, if they all choose steak and we’ve put out chops as well, we’ll have to throw them out, ’cos if they’ve been out for a while they’ll spoil in our climate.”

    “I see,” said Gil groggily.

    “You need to calculate how much meat one person’s gonna eat on average and stick with it.”

    “Honey, that sounds rather, er, cheerless,” he said cautiously.

    “It’s better than going broke. But it doesn't have to be one sort; like, we could say three chops and a sausage per man and two chops and a sausage per lady, see?”

    “Yuh—er, yeah. Has this programme got sexes in it?” he croaked.

    “Yes. It’s proportions, ’cos see, him and the man that invented it, they wanted quantities for big conference lunches, and sometimes they’re all ladies.”

    “Right.”

    “And the way we were gonna do it there was the danger that they’d all fill up on the meat and the salads’d go to waste and our food budget’d blow out to immense proportions. Whereas if you only give them a set amount, that doesn’t happen.”

    “Yeah,” he said groggily. “Good show.”

    “I dare say he’ll find that in real life it isn’t so simple, but never mind,” said Honey serenely.

    “Yes!” agreed Gil with a laugh. “So he’s agreed to help us out?”

    “Mm. Well, he suggested it. He did say no-one hinted,” she said, eyeing him cautiously.

    “Speaking personally, I was very, very tempted to hint, Honey, especially after that exquisite mango tart, but I refrained!” said Gil with a laugh. “I’m glad he offered.”

    “Yes. Um, he seems to think when we do get a cook they’ll be pleased to have all the amounts worked out.”

    Unless the cook was another complete control freak and wanted to do it all by him- or herself—yes. Or, contrariwise, completely disorganised and incapable of keeping to any sort of schedule. “I should think so,” said Gil mildly.

    “Deanna said her Aunty Kate rung up, she was really wild that girl had let us down and she’s gonna look for someone else. And Ann said her Aunty Rae might find someone, and Jen’s got a friend that might be interested, she’s saving up to go to Africa, to one of those conservation parks, and it’s very dear.”

    Uh-huh. Oh, well, sufficient unto the day! “So when’s Pete going to start?” he said easily.

    “Um, I think he has started, actually,” replied Honey feebly.

    Jolly good! In that case he needn’t worry about when the meat should be hauled out of the fridge, need he? With an heroic effort that night to killt him, Gil refrained from laughing. Well, he was bloody grateful to the man. But it was, the control freak thing apart, pretty bloody obvious why he’d offered, wasn’t it?

    He got them each a cold one and listened sympathetically as Honey told him in great detail what she’d gleaned from Pete this afternoon about the marriage, the wife, the little girl, the sparkly glass buttons and the china cat. And when Pete came back with his laptop watched with genuine interest as the program duly worked out quantities. It was bloody clever, actually, and as a matter of fact Hill Tarlington might be interested in it for YDI’s houses: the ecolodges didn’t work with particularly large quantities, of course, but their big hotels certainly did.

    “Yeah,” said Pete at the end of his speech. “Well, me and Bill Wilson’d be interested in selling them a version of it, Gil, if it was down to us, but according to our employment contracts the intellectual property in it resides with the uni. We had the same idea as you: flog it off to the big hotel chains; but when that dawned we decided we’d sooner cut our throats. We put hundreds of hours of our own time into the thing—thousands, probably. It wasn’t the programming side, so much, that’s pretty straightforward, it was working out the basic amounts per person for each ingredient per each dish. Well, it is only a sample program, we’ve only got about two hundred recipes to choose from, but as far as we’re concerned they can choke on their flaming intellectual property.”

    “I’ll say!” cried Honey, very flushed. “Gee, that’s unfair!”

    “Mm. Our own fault for signing the bloody contracts, I suppose, but we needed the work, like the rest of the world,” said Pete very drily indeed. “Mind you, there’s no version on the computers at work—well, Bill did have one but the IT cretins told him his files were taking up too much room on the system, so he took it off, along with every other skerrick of work he’s ever done for the buggers. So if we ever resign from the dump there’ll be no proof we were employed by them when we did the work.” He shrugged.

    “I’d resign and get a job with Gil’s friend, then!” cried Honey.

    “They’ll have the same type of employment contract: they’re owned by a huge Japan-based multinational,” said Gil drily. “I’d resign, sell them the program and then take up their eager offer to employ you, Pete!”

    “Yeah, hah, hah,” he said, grinning.

    “No, seriously… Look, would you mind awfully if I wrote to Hill about it? They are very much into computers, there’s some girl he was telling me about who started off as his PA and then went on to higher things managing their supplies with some sort of, um, tracking program. Right from the ordering up to the delivery and final disposition of the stuff, is the story, I think.”

    Looking tolerant, Pete replied: “Supply chain, eh? Well, yeah, write to him if you like, Gil.”

    “Great. You and your friend Bill may shortly find yourselves headhunted, then!”

    “Bill’s due to retire in about six months, he won’t be interested. Where’s their head office: Tokyo?”

    “No, that’s their owners. YDI’s based in London.”

    Pete shrugged. “That’s a non-starter, mate, you’d have to hogtie me to get me to Britain, but if you wanna write to him on that basis, why not?”

    “See,” began Honey eagerly, “if they paid you a lot for your program—”

    “I could retire on the proceeds? I don’t think so!” said Pete with a loud laugh.

   “No,” agreed Gil. “You never know what might come of it, though.”

    It was very obvious that Pete Outhwaite was of the sane and sensible opinion that nothing would come of it: he eyed him tolerantly again and said kindly: “That’s true.” For his part, Gil was very much aware that life wasn’t nearly as cut and dried as the control freaks among us would like it to be. He would write to Hill: that job of Pete’s sounded positively deadly and, well! You never knew.

    What you did know was that Phil’s horse-trekking lot would be back very soon, however, so Gil pulled himself together, reminded them of the time and—once again heroically refraining from laughing—stood by to offer any feeble help that might be wanted—putting out cutlery or something of the sort—as Pete shot to his feet, assumed a clean apron, and took complete charge of Jardine Holiday Horse Treks’ kitchen.

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