Jack Abroad

1

Jack Abroad

    “See,” the bloke leaning on the bar at Jack’s elbow said ruminatively, “one minute it was all going along like ya might expect—well, like what I pretty much expected,” he noted in a sour aside: “not good, but expectable—and next minute, it all went pear-shaped!” He paused, and swigged his beer. Not Foster’s, like what Jack had sort of expected they’d all drink, over here: something called Toohey’s, there were ads for it all over Sydney and it seemed to be what the pub had on tap, so he was drinking it. No better nor worse than any other beer was, these days: what his old dad would of called “gnat’s piss,” in short.

    “Um, yeah,” he replied obligingly, as the bloke seemed to be waiting for some sort of reply.

    “See, what she reckoned was,” he elaborated sourly, “she needed space to do her own thing. Funnily enough I’d had the idea for the past twenty years that spending all my hard-earned on fancy crap for the house, and a new swimming-pool, and the bloody second car she insisted on, and the sodding alarm system that the kids couldn’t remember to reset and that cost me a bloody fortune in false call-outs was her own thing. She was bloody keen enough on it all, I can tell ya!”

    “Um, yeah,” agreed Jack obligingly.

    “So she pushed off to Queensland with these two mates of hers—not what ya might think,” he noted sourly: “they are bloody Leses, but they’re into it with each other; flaming Gwyneth’s never been into sex, much, of any variety, not since our second was born, and if ya want the flaming truth, not all that much before that, either—and they’ve opened this bloody vegetarian gym place with a bit of flogging off of one of the Leses’ ghastly paintings on the side.” He paused for breath and more beer.

    “Um, vegetarian gym?” ventured Jack cautiously.

    “Don’t ask me, mate!” the bloke adjured him viciously. “They do aerobics and a bit of yoga and that sort of crap, with vegetarian meals and those flaming weird health drinks they’re all into these days: grass or something, revolting.”

    “Um, human stomachs aren’t built to digest grass,” groped Jack feebly.

    “Tell us about it,” he agreed sourly. “No, well, wheat grass, think it is—same diff’, yeah, I know—but they shove it through the juicer, think that eliminates most of the cellulose.”

    “It’d need to,” he allowed groggily.

    “Yeah. Sort of a dirty grey-green. –Dark,” he said thoughtfully.

    “Ugh, cripes!”

    “Yeah.” He drank beer thirstily. “Fancy another, mate?”

    “Uh—on me,” said Jack, hastily drinking his. When they had them in their fists he asked cautiously: “Um, so it’s kind of like a restaurant, is it?”

    “Nope, more like a spa, I s’pose. Well, think of a glorified B&B, with a big tin shed with weirdo dames and a few gays doing aerobics in it, and you’d pretty much have it. Stacy—that’s our daughter—she went up there a couple of months back and she reckons they got a Bali-style courtyard hung with vines, with a fountain and genuine Bali courtyard furniture—don’t ask,” he advised, “and her mum’s relaxed and revitalised thanks to the massages with—uh, not scented, um, therapeutic oils, that’s it!—and the traditional can’t-pronounce-it Hindu whatsit on top of the yoga and meditation, and—get this—the listening therapy. The bloody woman’s never listened to a single syllable another person said to ’er in ’er life!” On this bitter but triumphant note he swigged deeply.

    Jack couldn’t think of an appropriate reply so he just swigged deeply, too. Then he found the bloke was looking at him kind of expectantly so he offered feebly: “Be her age, will it?”

    “Ya can call it that if ya like, and you won’t be far wrong,” he replied sourly. “Kiwi, are you, mate?”

    “Yeah.” Jack could hear their Australian accent, so presumably they could hear his Kiwi one that he didn’t feel he’d got. Half the time they said “fush and chups” to you and fell over themselves laughing or, not always in the scungier sort of pubs, either, made pointed remarks about sheep. Jesus, why hadn’t someone told them to get over themselves a century back? That one had had whiskers on it when his granddad was a boy!

    The bloke looked at him sympathetically. “That pretty much your story, too?”

    “Uh—” Shit, was it written on his forehead? Jack scratched his short silver curls a bit. “Um, well, pretty much, yeah. Well, uh, different in specifics, if ya know what I mean.”

    He did, of course: it was obvious from the way he spoke, never mind the accent, that he was an intelligent, educated bloke. He nodded and stuck out his hand. “George MacMurray.”

    “Jack Jackson,” replied Jack, shaking.

    “Good to meet you, Jack. What about another? Make it a short, eh?”

    Ouch. If he accepted a short then he’d have to stand the next round, which would have to be shorts, too, and his finances were pretty rocky. “Uh, no, ta all the same, George, I’ll stick with the beer.”

    Allowing he was probably wise to do so, George ordered another Toohey’s for him and a double Teacher’s for himself. “So what are the specifics, Jack?” he asked.

    He was pretty pissed, and Jack didn’t know him from Adam—or anyone else in the whole of Australia, actually: it was very restful—so he told him.

    “She got into real estate. Started off when our Keith was about ten. Muggins took ’er at ’er word when she reckoned all she wanted to do was trade in our place for this bigger dump and fix it up a bit. See, I’m a jobbing builder. –Was,” he added in a sour aside. George just nodded sympathetically, not asking, so he went on: “So we fixed the place up, didn’t need all that much doing to it, only it looked bad, ya see, ’cos some cretin had lined it in hardboard back in the Sixties with the joints all neatly covered in strips of plain moulding, and then in the Seventies, think it musta been, another cretin had got hold of it and lowered the ceilings, put them false ones in and sprayed ’em with that glitter muck. –Lumpy,” he elaborated, as George was looking blank. “Goes kinda dark after a bit.”

    “Oh, good grief! I had a flat with ceilings like that when I was a student! Yeah, bloody horrible,” he agreed, grinning. “Go on.”

    “Well, ripped the lot out, did it up like what she reckoned ’ud be the go, repainted the outside, fixed up one or two weatherboards that had gone, tightened up the tiles and replaced a few and give them a good clean, and then she decided we could make so much on the dump we hadda sell it, not live in it. Should of seen the writing on the wall right then,” he noted glumly.

    “I’ll say. Like that time bloody Gwyneth enrolled herself in the bloody meditation class on the very evening Todd had fucking Scouts and I had my modelling club; so as Dumbo’s was only once a month and theirs were every week, guess who hadda give up his hobby and take the kid to and from Scouts?”

    “Yeah. Um, what about the second car, though, George?”

    “It was taking her Ladyship to the other side of the city to the class that conveniently started at the exact time Scouts did: goddit?”

    “Too right.” Jack drank beer thirstily.

    “So that was the thin end of the wedge, was  it?” prompted George kindly.

    “Eh? Yeah. Sold the next one, too, and by that time she’d made so much that we could afford to live in the next one while Muggins did it up and buy another as well. And by that time she’d done this flaming course and was a qualified land agent. –Never knew you hadda be, thought ya just hung out your sign and did it.”

    “There’s courses for everything these days, no-one just gets on with it,” replied George drily.

    “Right. Anyway, that was pretty much it: ya couldn’t of called it a marriage after that. Never saw hide nor hair of ruddy Rosalie all day and half the night, and in the weekends I was so busy doing up the dumps she bought that— Anyway. She dumped me the year Keith turned eighteen—at least she had the grace to stick it out while the poor kid did his exams. And I’ll say this for her, she wanted him to stay on at school and go to varsity.”

    George MacMurray blinked a little: in his socio-economic group everyone wanted their kids to go to university. “Uh—yeah. Well, good. So what’s he doing now, Jack?”

    Jack moved his wide, wiry shoulders uneasily. “Well, you might of heard of it,” he acknowledged. “Genomics.”

    George raised his eyebrows and whistled slightly, so very evidently he had heard of it.

    “Yeah. Gone to California: America’s where they do most of it, apparently. Not that I’d of wanted to hold the kid back, but…”

    “Yeah,” he said sympathetically. “So ya shook the dust, didja, mate?”

    “Um, pretty much. Well, I’m not saying the bust-up was all her fault, I’ll admit I was doing that tart Wendy Bishop from down the road—well, she threw herself at me but I’m not claiming yours truly hung back. These days divorce is supposed to be equal but somehow Rosalie ended up with everything she’d made and half of what I had, and the business never recovered. Well, there is plenty of building work in Auckland, yeah, but— Well, working for yourself’s no joke, out on the sites all day and doing the bloody books all night, and paperwork never was my thing. And when ya come right down to it I just didn’t have the incentive any more. Anyway, like you say: pear-shaped.” He drained his glass, sighing. “Bloody Rosalie’s worth about ten mill’ now, wouldja believe? Living in a huge fancy place up North Auckland somewhere— Oh, well.”

    “Have a short and then we’ll go and grab a decent steak,” decided George briskly. “No, I’ll get them, Jack,” he said firmly. “I ended up with half of everything—well, if ya don’t count the crap she quietly removed from the house and the ten thou’ in cash credit-card withdrawals the bitch got away with the month before she announced she was dumping me, but— Yeah. On me.”

    Jack gave in and let him. After which they adjourned to a place that was guaranteed to do you a decent steak. When they got there he blenched: it looked large, shiny and expensive to him; but inside it was full of pretty ordinary-looking groups: some blokes just together, and a couple of clutches of giggling females, but mostly families, and if some of the blokes were in shirts and ties most were in tee-shirts or those knit Bob Charles-type short-sleeved tops. It certainly wasn’t McDonald’s but it wasn’t yer five-star nosh house, either. Well, okay, the average Aussie did himself pretty well, Jack had already realised that. The pubs were either done up and incredibly fancy, like the one they’d just been in, or real dives where your shoulder blades got that uneasy feeling a knife could be heading for them any moment, ya know? Nothing sort of in-between and just slightly scruffy, like back home.

    The steak was really great—bonzer. Best meal he’d had since he got here. Even the chips weren’t bad: might of been near a potato somewhere in the last year or so, instead of tasting like reconstituted dehydrated deep-frozen fuzz. The place was fully licensed, too—spirits as well, judging from the bottles behind the bar—so the licensing laws must be more generous than what they were back home, though mind you they had loosened up a lot since Dad’s time. A lot of people were drinking wine but on top of all that beer, not to say the whisky? They settled for more beer. This time it was Foster’s but it didn’t taste that much different.

    George talked quite a lot over the meal but most of it was more of the same at first so Jack didn’t really listen, just made sympathetic noises from time to time. Then he started telling him about his job. Cripes, worked at the Sydney varsity? Uh—one of them. Unis, he called them. Oh, university of technology? Glorified tech institute: right, goddit. Uh—production control? Ri-ight… Manufacturing processes, just-in-time systems—kanban, that sorta stuff, lean manufacturing, lean assembly. Okay, he’d lost him completely. Done an engineering degree, and his management qualifications, plus a stint on the shop floor—Jack didn’t think he meant on the machines but at least as a supervisor he’d more or less of got his hands dirty, that was a relief; then he’d got all interested in the theory of it, done his Ph.D. in the design of assembly systems. Whatever they were when they were at home. But there was nowhere much to go with it, out here. The car factories only stayed open because the state governments kept giving them huge subsidies, bribes to the likes of us, mate. So he’d given in to the constant nagging and gone into lecturing. Not a bed of roses—no. In the first place you spent half your time justifying your bloody existence so as the department wouldn’t be closed down and in the second place the students were either button-down-collared types aiming at a so-called Business Studies degree, incapable of understanding the first thing about the practicalities of managing blokes on the shop floor, or tech boys that’d had been forced to stay on at school too long and would’ve been much happier doing an apprenticeship, if there’d been any of those around these days, mate, and couldn’t write a simple sentence. Goddit. Jack looked at him sympathetically.

    “So she wanted you to do the uni stuff, eh?” he ventured.

    George shrugged. “Yeah. Well, worked there herself—Communications, so-called. Radio and television journalism. Propaganda for the masses, I’d call it. Well, I did call it that, actually: that was more or less what provoked the first big row. Well, serious row—you know.” He shrugged. “Just struck me as an ordinary row at the time.”

    “Yeah. –My dad, he really had his knife into them media journalist types, too,” said Jack reminiscently. “Red-hot Labourite, all ’is life. It was either propaganda or… Can’t remember. Something else beginning with P.”

    “Pabulum?” suggested George sourly.

    “Yeah, that was it. ’Course, back in his days, the Labour Party was a labour party. Read a book on it once, by an old bloke Dad knew: Red-Feds under the bed or something, they usedta say. And to think all we got now’s good ole dykey Helen, eh? –Dad actually was a Communist, at one stage—when ’e was a young bloke, back before the War. Used to wave a flaming red flag and sing the bloody Internationale.”

    “Cripes, not really? So was my dad!” gasped George. “Just after the War, this was. Came back and found they hadn’t made a better world, the bloody pollies were as bad as ever. Mind you, back in those days half the unions were red-hot Communists—didn’t have a clue what conditions were really like in bloody Russia, of course, poor silly sods.” Eagerly he began telling Jack all about the Great Waterfront Strike of 1951, then diverging onto the much more recent and strangely fizzling-out Patrick Corp waterfront fiasco. Explaining that his dad reckoned the current lot, and he did include fucking Somebody from the ACTU, had sold out. With the government backing fucking Patrick’s, if Jack got his drift.

    “Um, yeah. Um, your, um, do ya say federal here? –Right; your federal government, would this be, George?”

    “Too right. See, the minute the bloody Liberal party got in they started to break the unions! Still at it, fucking Howard’s bringing in more laws to de-unionise everybody.”

    “I get it. So, um, where do the state governments come in?”

    “Well, not in anything to do with exports, mate, that affects GNP. But there’s the ports authorities and half the flaming useless education system—real mess, that is—and the bloody health system that in any sane country of barely twenty-five million people’d be nationalised. See, the states get a big subsidy from the federal government, but—” He plunged into it. Ending: “Trouble is, they’re still all living in the nineteenth century and none of the buggers are willing to give up an inch of their bloody empires. And any federal government that tried to bust it up’d be lynched. Pretty sure they’d have to rewrite the flaming Constitution, and to do that, think they’d have to get the states’ agreement.” He shrugged. “Some people reckon it’s checks and balances: see, with a Liberal federal government and the states gone Labor, it’s supposed to strike a balance. Then when you pin them down they can’t say a balance of what: all it boils down to is they’ve got a vague feeling it’s safer. The fact that the state governments have no influence whatsoever over federal decision making doesn’t seem to occur. See, it’s the federal government that wields the tax stick, they’ve got all the real power.”

    “Yeah. Um, but surely the same people musta voted for the Liberal federal government and the state Labor ones?” said Jack dazedly.

    George made a wry face and raised his eyebrows at him.

    Jack gulped.

    “Yeah,” concluded George with a sniff. “You oughta meet Dad: think you’d get on with him. Still got all his wits about him—in his eighties now, but still marches on ANZAC Day.”

    “Dad used to, too, right up until the last. Wasn’t living in the old house no more—me bloody sisters made him go into this flamin’ retirement village. So he died in bed with a smirk on ’is mug and Ma Jensen from the next-door unit’s head on the pillow next to him!”

    Regrettably, at this shocking piece of intel George MacMurray broke down and laughed till he cried.

    After which it seemed pointless, really, for Jack to take a taxi back to his hotel and for George to have to take another taxi to his flat, since he’d had too many to risk being breathalysed and in any case couldn’t remember where he’d left the car, so Jack might as well come back to the flat, kip on his sofa. So they had one last one for the road, George consulting the menu and generously offering one of those fancy coffees if Jack fancied it but Jack not fancying any sort of mucked-up drinks, ta all the same. So they made it whiskies. Doubles. Cheers, George. Yeah, cheers, Jack, and perdition to all bloody women!

    Jack woke up to find a completely unknown skinny woman in tight jeans and a fancy frilled blouse standing there in George’s sitting-room with her hands on her hips, glaring at him. He sat up groggily. “Um, hullo.”

    “Who the Hell are you?” she retorted angrily.

    Uh—shit, was this a girlfriend what George had forgotten to mention to him? “Jack,” he replied meekly. “George gimme a bed for the night.”

    “Jack Who?”

    “Jackson.” Jack cleared his throat. “Jack Jackson.”

    “I suppose I believe you,” she said unpleasantly. “Where did he meet you, as if I need to ask!”

    “In a pub, but I dunno its name.”

    “Well, where is he?” she demanded impatiently.

    “Eh? Um, in the bedroom, I suppose.”

    “He’s not there!” she snapped.

    “Well, uh… dunno. Um, gone out to get a carton of milk?”

    She marched across the room, rounded the divider, and opened the fridge. “No. There’s plenty.”

    “Well, uh… Gone to work?”

    “It’s seven-thirty!” she snapped.

    “That’ll be why it feels like seven-thirty,” admitted Jack, sitting up cautiously and feeling his head. She didn’t say anything, merely glared at him from the kitchenette, so he offered: “My bet woulda been he’d be out cold till lunchtime, the amount he put away last night.”

    “He wasn’t the only one, by the look of you.”

    “Yeah. Look, I dunno who you are, Missus—”

    “I’m his sister, you moron!” she snapped.

    “Aw. Right. Well, I gotta take a leak and those are my jeans over there on the chair, so if you’re gonna stay here you got two choices, really. Given that I haven’t got a clue where me underpants are but I can tell you I’m not wearing them as of this min.”

    Grimly she marched round the divider and over to the chair, where she grabbed his jeans, handing them to him with the evil remark: “The underpants are under the chair with some disgusting-looking socks.”

    “Right. Ta,” said Jack feebly. “Sing out if ya spot a blue tee-shirt anywhere, wouldja? Bluish,” he amended fairly.

    She gave him a filthy look and went over to the window, where she wrenched the curtain back and stood with her back to him glaring at the view of the equally unlovely apartment block next to this one.

    Hastily Jack got into his jeans and made for the bathroom.

    When he came back she was at the bench grimly making coffee.

    “Ta,” he said feebly as she handed him a mug with the milk already in it. “Um, expecting you, was ’e?”

    “Yes, but as the appointment was made a week ago that’ll be his excuse for forgetting all about it.”

    “Right,” said Jack limply, going over to the sofa and sitting down. He looked warily round the room but couldn’t spot the bloody tee-shirt. She was right about the flaming underpants, though, they were under the chair, all right.

    Susan Pendleton took a very deep breath, picked up her own mug, and went to sit in an armchair at a decent distance from the tall, wide-shouldered, good-looking man in nothing but faded jeans and a very nice chest. He was about her own age, that wasn’t helping.

    He didn’t say anything, so after a bit the silence got too much for her and she said: “So have you known George long, or did this meeting in a pub take place last night?”

    “Yeah, last night.”

    “I see. And do tell me, Jack,” said Susan, acid-sweet, the more so as he was looking determinedly into his mug and not at her, “did you come home with him merely because you were paralytic or because you’re actually homeless?”

    “If I was homeless I might be tempted to wring ya neck and grab that fancy purse of yours, Missus, so I’d drop the smart remarks, if I was you. I come home with him because he seemed like a decent bloke that wasn’t gay and he seemed to want me company; dunno if you get that, it’s a blokes’ thing.”

    Susan was now very red. She glared impotently.

    Jack drank coffee. Aussie instant coffee was as revolting as ours, fancy that. “Think ’e might of gone to find ’is car, actually,” he said thoughtfully.

    “What?” she croaked.

    “Yeah. Well, I probably would, in his shoes. See, we got a taxi last night. Though mind you, he couldn’t remember where he’d left it, that’s right.”

    “How drunk was he?” she gasped.

    “Dunno. I’d of said, a bit drunker than me. Well, I could still remember the name of me hotel.”

    “Wuh-well, did he leave it near the pub, or what?” she faltered.

    “Dunno, Missus. Like I say, I only met him in the pub. –Look, what is your name?”

    Susan went very red. “Susan,” she faltered.

    “Right. I only met him in the pub, Susan, and I’m sorry but I can’t tell ya where it was or what its name was. All I know is it was one of your flashy done-up Aussie pubs, not one of the scungy dives. Um, had ads for Toohey’s beer all over it, don’t suppose that rings any bells?”

    “No,” she said faintly. “Was it—was it near the University of Technology?”

    “Dunno. Might of been, I don’t know Sydney at all.”

    “Well, for Heaven’s sake, you must know where you’d been!”

    “Not really; I was looking for work. Walked for miles, took about five different buses—” He shrugged. “One place the lady said I shoulda taken the train, it woulda been quicker.”

    “And?” said Susan weakly.

    “Well, nothing, only I was somewhere where the train goes, at one stage.”

    “But there are loads of different suburban trains!”

    “Aw. Right. –That’s probably him, unless your purse is wired for sound.”

    Doing her best to ignore that last, Susan scrabbled in her handbag for her mobile phone.

    Jack sat back and eyed her sardonically as she shouted: “What do you mean, where am I? Where are you?” And: “I said I’d meet you here, you moron!” And: “Get back here, George, if we’re not there by nine on the dot the bloody agent’ll sell it to someone else! –You do want it! It’s completely suitable in every way, and this place is a dump! –It won’t take an hour and a half to the uni, I told you before, David and Melia Hathaway live there and it’s a straight drive down the—YES! I told you that, George! Get OVER here!”

    He let the ringing silence that then reigned lengthen before he said: “Forcing him to buy a house, are you?”

    “A very nice townhouse,” said Susan grimly. “Completely suited to his socio-economic status.”

    “Yeah, he struck me as a bloke that’d be really worried about those,” agreed Jack sardonically.

    “At least he might meet some compatible people in that area!” she snapped back.

    “Ta,” said Jack drily.

    Turning scarlet, Susan gasped: “No! Not you!”

    Jack raised his eyebrows slightly.

    Gulping, she admitted: “I meant the frightful woman in this block who’s been making eyes at him, actually.”

    “Right. Works for ’er living, does she? Or”—his very blue eyes twinkled—“is she actually a working girl?”

    “No. Don’t be disgusting.”

    Jack just waited.

    “She’s forty-five if a day, smothered in make-up, dyes her hair a horrible harsh red that wouldn’t deceive a blind child of two that it’s her natural colour, and dresses like a teenager! She gets round in these frightful skimpy singlets with bits of flesh bulging out of them, top and bottom!” She shuddered.

    “Aw, yeah, I know whatcha mean. With a bra?” he asked with friendly interest.

    Susan’s mouth tightened. “Either with, in which case it’ll be either black lace or a screamingly bright colour that clashes with the singlet, or without, in which case she—she sort of shakes them at him!”

    Jack broke down in a painful wheezing, spluttering fit.

    “Don’t laugh!” she cried in agony. “She’s dreadful, she’s all wrong for him! They’ve got nothing in common at all! She’s the sort of woman who plays the pokies and—and goes to the dog racing!”

    “Yeah,” he said limply, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “That’s real clear, Susan. –Talking of bras, ya do know your nipples show right through that blouse, do ya?”

    “What?” she gasped, clutching at them conclusively.

    “Mm. Just thought I’d mention it. That white bra ya got on isn’t helping much. Mind you, I’m not objecting to—” He broke off. Still clutching them, Susan had rushed into the bedroom.

    Jack waited. There came the noise of long curtains being wrenched back. Then she wailed: “Oh, Christ!”

    He got up and wandered over to the doorway without haste. She was glaring at herself in the mirror. “Hey, nobody minds a bit of nipple these days, ya know. But I gather your hubby didn’t bother to mention it?”

    “We’re divorced,” said Susan. “I mind, I can tell you! It’s those stupid downlights he insisted on having in the bedroom, they’re hopeless!”

    “Can’t be as good as natural daylight, nope,” agreed Jack mildly. “George gonna be long? ’Cos if ’e is we could make hay while the sun shines.”

    “What do you mean?” she snapped.

    “Ya know bloody well what I mean, there’s you that’s divorced and here’s me that’s divorced and you been sitting there with them nipples hard as Hell under that blouse, gaping at me chest, and I—”

    “How dare you! I have not!” she gasped.

    “Now tell me it’s a chilly morning,” he drawled.

    “It’s no such thing! Let me past!”

    “I’m not stopping you,” said Jack, not moving from the doorway. “But if he’s gonna be more than fifteen minutes, why not? It’s a nice big bed. And I think you’ve noticed I’m up for it.”

    “This is ridiculous,” said Susan, putting her chin in the air.

    “I’d of said natural. But if you don't fancy it, forget it. Or are you involved with someone?”

    “No, if it’s any of your business.”

    She was glaring at him but she hadn’t pushed past him, so Jack felt slowly in the back pocket of his jeans. “I got some condoms, ya don’t need to worry about that.”

    Susan swallowed convulsively. “Haven't you got a hangover?”

    “Bit of a headache, that’s all. Doesn’t seem to be a cure for it,” he noted, slowly sliding his zip down.

    “Stop that,” said Susan unconvincingly. “We—we don’t even know each other!”

    “This could be a way of getting to know each other. Or is your place only a few minutes away?”

    “No, it’s about forty minutes.”

    “All right, what are we waiting for?” He stepped up to her. “Come on, Susan,” he said softly.

    “This is completely ridiculous!” said Susan with a mad laugh. “At our ages?”

    “I've always found that makes it better,” said Jack, taking her very gently by the upper-arms. She shuddered all over, so he put his mouth on hers, also very gently.

    That was all it took, really: she kissed him back madly, grabbing him fiercely, and then shoved her hand in his jeans. So he lifted her bodily onto the bed, shucked his own jeans, got her zip down, undid the blouse, and got it and the bra off her. The tits were about what the blouse and the bra had indicated: not very big, wee bit limp, well, after all, she wasn’t a kid, and with big dark nipples to which he had no objections at all, so he bent down and sucked them a bit. She let out a long sort of wail, not the sort that indicated she didn’t like it, so he knelt up on the bed and eased the jeans down. Ugh, bikini-line, why the Hell did they do that? The panties were pretty, though: white lace. He kind of breathed into them and this time she gave a low moan. So he pulled them right off her and stuck his face in there.

    “Oh, Christ!” she shouted. “Oh, Christ! Oh, Christ—oh! Oh, JACK!”

    Boy, that was discouraging, hah, hah, funny joke. He came up for air and breathed in her ear: “Hey, ya liked that, eh? Hey, ya taste good, love.”

    “Oh—Jack!” she gasped, shuddering and clutching at him. “Graham hardly ever did that!”

    Musta been something wrong with the bloke, then. “More fool him, eh?” he said kindly, massaging a tit, since it was there, and getting her hand— “Jesus! Yeah, rub me, Suse!” he gasped. “Ooh, Jesus—ooh, that's good, ooh, Jesus! Come on, bit of a sixty-nine, eh, sweetheart?” he gasped, turning round and lowering himself carefully over her.

    “Uh—ya do wanna do it, do you, pet?" he said as she didn’t move.

    “Mm. I was just—admiring you,” said Susan faintly, swallowing. She put a hand gently on his old man and Jack did a bit of shuddering himself. Then she just stroked his equipment very softly all over, it was real unusual, y’know? But good: he did a bit more shuddering. And a bit of groaning.

    In fact it got so good that he gasped: “Just suck me tip a bit, love, and I’ll do you with me tongue real quick, ’cos I think I might come quite soon at this rate, it’s too bloody good—Jesus! Yeah, do that, do that— Mmm-mmf!” he ended thickly.

    She did suck him for a wee bit, and just when he was thinking he’d have to tell her to stop or he was ruddy well would come, stopped and gave this sort of mewing noise and grabbed his bum real hard, he could feel the nails digging in, and started to pant real loud and hard. Smiling to himself, Jack kept doing what he was doing, not breaking the rhythm ’cos at his age if he knew one thing about them it was that if ya broke the rhythm when they started to pant real hard it put them off. Sure enough, she thrust herself up at him and started making noises in time with the panting, and then she raked his hips with her nails and let out a shriek to raise the dead and pulsed like crazy down there. He helped her along for as long as he humanly could, then turned round, had the usual fight with the condom packet, hauled the ruddy thing on and got up there. Jesus, she was still coming! Jesus—God—Jesus—Oh, GOD! And he let go with a mighty roar and poured into her.

    “My God,” said Susan very, very faintly, some time later.

    “Uh,” replied Jack indistinctly.

    “Um, sorry, I can’t breathe!” she gasped, some time after that.

    “Uh. Sorry,” he managed, rolling off her and flopping onto his back.

    Quite some time after that, she said faintly: “How did you know to do it like that?”

    “Um—dunno. Thought ya might tell me not to if it was the wrong thing? Ya seemed to like it, so I just did it.”

    “Mmm… I don’t know why,” she said in a dreamy voice, “but sometimes they resent it if you come like that.”

    Uh—did they? Must be morons, then. “Yeah? Drongos, these’d be, would they?” he said kindly.

    “Mm. Complete drongos!” agreed Susan pleasedly.

    Jack lay back, smiling, and pulled her head onto his shoulder…

    “Help, George’ll be back!” she gasped, sitting up convulsively,

    “Eh? Aw—shit. Well, didn’t take it long as what it felt like, but yeah, ya better have a nice shower, eh?”

    “Yes!” she gasped, vanishing into the bathroom.

    Jack followed slowly and dumped the condom in the bog. He was quite tempted to get under the shower with her—save water, eh? Australia was evidently having a water shortage—but that might slow the process down, so he didn't.

    There was time for both of them to have a shower and for Susan to make a round of toast and some more coffee before George got back, cursing the bloody Sydney traffic.

    “Never mind,” said his sister soothingly. “Have some toast and coffee.”

    “Thought you reckoned we were gonna be late and this land agent’s gonna sell the dump to someone else?”

    “No, it’s all right, I’ve rung him,” she said placidly. “Sit down. Stop fussing.”

    “Me? I’m not fussing!” George sat down at his scungy little kitchen table. “What’s come over you?”

    “Nothing.”

    “She had a bit of breakfast, that helps,” said Jack laconically.

    “Yeah. All right, give us some toast. I don’t wanna buy a poncy townhouse halfway to Outer Woop-Woop, anyway.”

    “You’d be closer to Dad,” said his sister calmly, pouring him a coffee.

    “Thanks. –This is literally true, I would be closer to Dad, but as he lives in Outer Woop-Woop itself, the point’s academic, Jack,” explained George.

    “Right. This Outer Woop-Woop: it’d be very near the back of Bourke, would it?”

    Taken completely unawares, George collapsed in startled sniggers.

    “Hah, hah!” cried Susan loudly. “Someone said that to you in a pub, did they, Jack?”

    “Yeah. In between the off-colour remarks about New Zealanders and sheep.”

    “I know!” she cried sympathetically. “People here are so parochial, aren’t they?”

    George looked a trifle limply at good old Jack but he just replied stolidly: “Right, parochial is what they are, Susan.” Whereupon she smirked like billyo.

    She remained in a terrifically good mood all the way out to see the bloody townhouse—poncy as all get-out, what else—and all the way through the excruciating demonstration of the wonders like the freeform pool in the back yard—correction, misshapen pond that was the back yard—fully ducted air conditioning, huge plate-glass windows that meant ya needed the fully ducted aforesaid, giant automatic blinds over the said windows, and the giant rainwater tank that’d allow you to water the miniscule pocket-handkerchief of a front garden without wasting Sydney water—etcetera. Granite-topped kitchen benches, yeah. That sort of crap.

    But when they got back to his place and found that Jack had vanished the good mood vanished too. Crikey. That was quick work. He wouldn’t have put good old Jack down as a ladies’ man. Well—good-looking bloke, yeah. Kept his figure, too.

    “Where is he, George?”

    “Gone back to his hotel, I s’pose. Said he was job-hunting—that’s right.”

    “Which hotel?” she demanded tensely.

    “Uh—I dunno. He never mentioned it. Well, bumped into him in the pub—”

    “Shut up about the bloody pub, George!”

    Had he mentioned the pub before? But he’d shut up about it, she needn’t worry about—

    “What’s its name?”

    “George, of course.”

    “Very funny!”

    “Uh, no, ’tis The George. Well, see, caught sight of it, thought, gee, my pub! So I hadda go into— All right, I never spoke.”

    “Could you find it again?”

    “Well, yeah. But I gotta say it, Susan, if the bloke never told you where he was staying—”

    Oh, Hell, she’d burst into tears. Desperately he got her to sit down and went to get her a drink of water—what good that was supposed to do, God knew, but— Oh. “Hang on, he’s left a note! ‘George: Thanks for everything. Might see you at the pub this evening unless I find a job miles away today. Jack.’”

    Susan blew her nose loudly. “Let me see.”

    He let her see it, though it said exactly what he’d read out.

    “I might come to the pub with you.”

    George swallowed a sigh. “You don’t like pubs.”

    “He said it was a very nice one.”

    George woulda taken a bet the phrase wasn’t in his vocabulary. “Yeah. All right.” He didn’t tell her not to get her hopes up because there was no point, was there?

    He didn’t have any lectures this morning, which was why he was free to be dragged around the wilds of upper-class suburban Sydney looking at poncy townhouses he didn’t want. But he did have tutorials this arvo, so he pushed off, promising his sister that he would go to the pub and okay, she could come round and meet him after work and YES, he’d wait for her! Jesus! The bloke wouldn’t be there, of course.

    They went. He was there: propping up the bar, with half a glass of warm-looking flat beer in front of him. Bore all the earmarks of a bloke that had been nursing it for some time. How broke was he? George didn’t suspect him for a moment of wanting to bludge off them, in fact quite the reverse, he was the type that’d never accept anything more than a glass of whisky from you and at that you had to practically force it on him—like, if he remembered correctly, last night. The thing was, bloody Susan had no tact, added to which, never mind good old Dad’s red-flag waving pinko background, she’d lived in the lap of middle-class luxury most of her life: Mum’s dad had been a car-dealer, got in on the business in the relatively early days and by the time he died had outlets all over the state and had expanded into Victoria as well. Left it amongst his three kids but there’d been plenty to go round. Dad had got over the Commie stuff by then, and didn’t mind accepting capitalist lucre for his kids, so they’d all gone to fancy schools and then on to uni. Ten to one if she didn’t offer Jack actual cash she’d offer to feed him or God knew what. Subsidise him while he looked for a job or God knew what.

    He hadn’t had any luck job-hunting, so in the vain hope of shutting the helpful Susan up George launched into a pithy description of the townhouse. It didn’t work. She had the brilliant idea that Jack could use the flat as soon as George moved into the townhouse!

    The poor bloke had gone very, very red.

    “Leave him alone, Susan,” said George heavily.

    “But it’d be ideal! It’d give you a base, Jack, and it’d mean you wouldn’t be throwing money away on a hotel!”

    “Shut up, Susan!”

    Susan looked from one to the other of the red male faces. “You men are so silly! Why should false pride matter? In the current economic climate, one might as well face it: there are very few jobs available and once one’s over forty job-hunting becomes just so much harder. We all know that, Jack, don’t let’s blink at facts! And we are all adults—”

    “Will ya SHUT UP, Susan!” roared her driven brother. “Leave him alone!”

    “Yeah, um, ya mean well, Susan, but it’s not on,” croaked Jack.

    “Then at least let us help you look for a job.”

    “I been looking. You’re right, no-one wants a joker of my age: they can get an unqualified brickie’s labourer with no experience to do the job for half the pay and see, if ’e hasn’t got the skill he’s got the brute strength. Or that’s what they all think,” he said, shrugging. “And it isn’t over forty, it’s over fifty.”

    There was a short silence.

    “So when ya said your boy’s in California, is he studying still?” asked George.

    “Nah, finished his Ph.D., George, working at Caltech. He’s twenty-eight. –I’m fifty-one, Suse, but that’s old to a subcontractor that’s thirty-five and got five dozen blokes in their early twenties lined up for each job he’s offering.”

    “Mm. I see. You never mentioned your son was in California,” she said in a small voice.

    “Uh—no. Mentioned it to George. S’pose it was mad to come over here, but I thought as it’s such a big country there must be more jobs around. Well there, are only not for has-beens.”

    “You’re not!” she cried, very flushed.

    Apparently she’d know. George swallowed a sigh but said: “Not to us, but I’m a couple of years off his age and you’re completely over the hill, too: didn’t ya say that skinny little moo in the zoot-suit with the buck teeth and the straight yellow hair got that last job you applied for?”

    “Yes, but I didn’t want it anyway!” she snapped. “It was full-time!”

    “Yeah, well, probably needs it more than you do,” he said tolerantly. Graham, the ex, had left her with pots, she didn’t need to work. If you could call it work: she was, ye gods, an art museum administrator. Well, started off in tertiary administration—that was mad enough, these days, too, all polysyllables and endless meetings and committees, the journal his lot put in everybody’s pigeonholes every month had to be seen to be believed, the most pompous, overwritten, verbose crap he’d ever seen—but then she landed a job with one of the big museums through blatant use of her old-girl network—half of the cows she’d been to school with were so rich they gave to the art galleries and museums, they didn’t work there—and had been doing quite well at the time she decided to chuck it in to concentrate on the kids that she’d named, poor little sods, Cluny, Godfrey and Hermia. (Known to their peers in their younger days as Clueless, God-Sod and Wormy.) The kids were now all off her hands—Susan was forty-seven, two years younger than him—and in recent years she had had a few part-time jobs in small galleries for peanuts. Or as a volunteer in some instances.

    Pointedly ignoring her brother, Susan said to Jack: “I’m sure we can find you something, Jack. It doesn’t have to be in the building industry, does it?”

    “Uh—no. Don’t mind what I do, only that’s what I can do, ya see.”

    “Mm… Did you bring your driver’s licence?”—Jack was nodding innocently. George blenched: she’d have him in a chauffeur’s uniform before the cat could lick ’er—“And what about gardening?”

    “Um, used to have a bit of a vege garden. Um, Rosalie always made me do the gardens up before she sold the houses.”

    “Landscape gardening!” she cried, beaming.

    “Landscape bullshit,” replied Jack stolidly, two seconds before George was going to.

    “Yeah. That,” he agreed.

    “Rubbish, George! That does open up opportunities!” Eyes shining, Susan launched into it. After quite some time it was revealed that she knew of an agency that specialised in temping jobs for people who could turn their hands to anything—in the service industry area, usually—and with handyman skills as well as practical landscaping and gardening, and a valid driver’s licence—

    “Service industry my arse. She means slaving for the flash moos in silk frocks and giant real pearls over at Double Bay and those places,” said George sourly. “All ya’d need is to be able to cook and they’d have it all wrapped up in one package, then all they’d have to do would be slip the ring through your nose and Bob’s yer uncle: slave labour in the twenty-first century. Very nice.”

    “Be a slave bangle, wouldn’t it?” replied Jack with a lurking twinkle in his eye.

    Apparently this didn’t alert Susan to the fact, which George had already had an inkling of, that he wasn’t as dumb or as ignorant as he obviously liked people to think—well, couldn’t be dumb if he had a kid that was working in genomics, could he? But not as unlettered, either. Anyway, Susan just snapped back with: “Neither of you are taking this seriously! Just listen!”

    All right, they’d listen. Well, George just sort of kept a watching brief, he left the real listening to Jack.

    “Yeah,” said Jack finally. “I getcha. Always thought temping was just for dames, before. You know, like office jobs. Typing stuff up on the computers and stuff.”

    “It was set up especially in order to specialise in—” Yeah, yeah. Niche market, yeah, yeah.

    “Can’t hurt to roll along and see them,” concluded George. “Ya might strike it lucky. And listen, mate: give up the bloody hotel, you can kip on my sofa.”

    No, Susan had a much better plan, he could use the granny flat!

    “Shed behind the garage, is what she means. Full of junk last time I looked,” said George, as Jack’s lean cheeks reddened.

    “It is not a shed! It was built as a granny flat!”

    “Never been used as one, though. Not since you and Graham had the place.”

    “You can leave him out of it, thanks!”

    All right, he would. “It’s one room, combined sleeping-living-kitchen, ya see, Jack, with an ensuite. No furniture, no carpet, full of junk. Well, uh, vaguely remember young Godfrey having a few mates kipping out there at one stage, but they just put their sleeping-bags in between the junk. Tell ya what, Susan: Jack could clear it out and clean it up for ya, that’d equate to a week’s rent and then some.”

    “Yes! Ideal!” she beamed.

    Jack scratched his chin. “Doesn’t sound like a week’s rent’s worth to me... Um, you’d need a skip, mind.”

    “Um—oh, yes, of course! One of those big removal skips that they carry away with a giant truck!”

    “You’d get half the street shoving their junk in it as well, but yeah,” conceded George. “Well, yeah, why not, Jack? Best of both worlds, eh? You’d have your independence but a bit of company when either of you felt like it.”

    Susan’s cheeks were very pink. She looked at Jack hopefully.

    “I’m not gonna bludge off you, Suse,” he said firmly. “But okay, I’ll give it a go for a week, see if this temping place can find me some work, eh?”

    “Yes! Lovely!” she beamed.

    Mm. Well, he seemed a really decent type, and as a matter of fact anything’d be better than that ruddy aerobics instructor she’d taken up with a bit back—half her age and only interested in two things, his flaming abs being the other.

    So that was settled. George shut Susan up firmly on the subject of lovely little Spanish tapas place, lovely little Thai place, and they had steaks again at the steakhouse they’d been to last night. Well, him and Jack had steak again, she had grilled salmon with baked potato, leaving most of its sour cream, but that was her choice, eh? She had her car, she’d followed him to the pub, so afterwards he just let Jack accept her offer of a lift, not breathing a word.

    “Um, you don’t want to go to the hotel, do you?” said Susan in a remarkably small voice as she headed the car down the road.

    “Not really, no.”

    “Um, well, I’m not trying to take you over, Jack, honest, but, um, would you like to come back home with me?”

    Jack didn’t say it was obvious he would, ’cos she was the sort of nice lady that didn’t deliberately look at a guy’s crotch—and besides, did he want to, apart from that? It could well be the thin end of the wedge, what with the granny flat, ’specially if he didn’t find a job real soon, but heck! She was okay, when she forgot the airs and graces and the lady shit. She was a blonde—well, helped along, but blondish, and he really preferred brunettes, and she was too skinny for his tastes, really, but this morning hadn’t been bad at all. And apart from that he hadn’t had it for ages. Well, Wendy Bishop had been ready, willing and able but Rosalie had of course insisted on selling the house and getting her pound of flesh out of it and he’d had to move, could only find a really scungy flat miles away. He had rung her but it was bloody hard to get together, she couldn’t get away in the evenings and he was working all day and though she only worked part-time it was a long way for her to pop over to his flat. And since he wasn’t doing up houses for bloody Rosalie on his tod any more, there was no opportunity to nip into a done-up room of an empty house and use the handy lilo he kept rolled up under the seat of the ute, was there?

    “Yeah,” he said quickly, realising that she was swallowing hard. “Sorry. Just thinking about, uh, stuff. ’Course I’ll come round to your place. You can show me the granny flat tomorrow morning, too, eh?”

    “Yes,” said Susan in a voice that shook. “Of course, Jack! Lovely!”

    Smiling a little, Jack put a hand gently on her thigh.

    “I don’t want you to think I—I make a habit of this sort of thing, Jack!” she said loudly.

    “Never thought anything of the sort. Nor do I, come to that. Well, haven’t had it for ages and ages, if ya must know. Reason I come so quick, to get strictly clinical.”

    “Mm,” she said, swallowing. “Me, too. Well, there was Gianni, but—but that was really stupid. He was half my age: an aerobics instructor at the gym and—and I could see perfectly well what sort he was, Jack! I mean, George said I must be blind, but it wasn’t that I didn’t realise! He was the sort that gives everybody the eye. I just—I suppose I just thought why shouldn’t I, for once?”

    “Yeah,” he said mildly, patting the thigh. “I get it, love, ya don’t have to explain. We’re all human.”

    “Yes,” said Susan gratefully.

    Jack sat back, smiling. Not as bad as what she come over as at first, was she? And heck, she was keen enough! He didn’t grab her hand and put it on his dick because he didn’t want her to crash the car, but he certainly thought about it. Though at the same time reflecting that it was a bit mad, because they had nothing in common except sex. Only shit, when ya came right down to it, at their ages it wasn’t realistic to expect more, and in fact they were bloody lucky to have that much! Few good fucks before they put you in the nursing-home, eh? He’d settle for that.

Next chapter:

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