Potters Road Personalities

6

Potters Road Personalities

    Gil woke to the sound of strange scraping noises from somewhere outside. He peered at his watch. Help, getting on for eight. In the stretcher bed opposite his stretcher bed, Phil was still snoring in his sleeping-bag. Gil extracted himself from his own sleeping-bag, not without difficulty—they were the sort that didn’t have a handy zipper all round but only an opening at the top—got into his tracksuit trousers, on second thoughts his anorak and boots, it was bloody parky, and went cautiously to look in the kitchen. No sign of Honey. He went through to the toilet—the bathroom arrangements weren’t quite as bad as he’d feared: you did have to cross the little open back porch, but the toilet was properly plumbed in, installed when Uncle Dave’s arthritis had got very bad, apparently Then he tiptoed up the passage past Honey’s room and opened the front door. The view was of short silver curls and a grimy blue anorak.

    “Hullo, there,” he murmured.

    The man looked up. “Hullo. You Gil?”

    Gil nodded meekly. He rather thought that this must be Jack. Exactly why he was tiling Honey’s verandah at eight of a cool Sunday morning wasn’t precisely clear, but Phil seemed to like him very much, so one could but hope!

    “Jack Jackson. They still asleep?” he grunted.

    “Mm. Pleased to meet you, Jack. Can I give you a hand?” whispered Gil.

    “Got any experience tiling?”

    Gil shook his head.

    “Just hand me the tiles, then.”

    Nodding meekly, Gil picked up a tile from one of the piles.

    Jack took it off him. “No,” he mouthed, pointing at a different pile. “Them.”

    Okay, them. Oh—right. Laying small, plain terracotta tiles round the metre-wide patterned square before the front door. It was quite intricate, dull blue hexagons interspersed with small black diamonds and bordered with a black and white key design. The pile from which Gil had incorrectly chosen a tile was terracotta, but larger tiles.

    “So you found some more tiles?” he murmured, wondering if he’d ever be able to talk the chap into letting him pay him for the work and deciding that the answer was probably a lemon.

    Jack nodded. “Mm. Two lots. Couldn’t match the pattern, of course.” He sat back on his heels. “It come off a lady’s house down in the settlement that was being modernized,” he explained. “A lot of it was missing and half the rest of the tiles were busted. Could only manage that patch for ’em.”

    Right. Presumably what the man had done was recreate the original pattern from what tiles had been salvageable. The things were very small—it was almost mosaic work. “It’s a lot of work, Jack,” he murmured.

    “I quite like tiling. Most of it’s preparation,” the expert replied, falling to again.

    Mm. Part of the preparation, Gil now realised, must have been the sweeping of the concrete surface this morning. Sweeping and, he rather thought, taking another look at it, washing. It certainly looked a lot cleaner than it had yesterday.

    The whole of the front verandah had been completed apart from the edging, for which Jack had a heap of special edging tiles, when the front door opened and Honey said: “Heck, Jack! What time didja start this?”

    “Not that early,” he replied calmly. “Toleja it’d go quick once I got started, eh?”

    “Mm!” she said, nodding hard. “It looks really great!”

    “Yeah, nobbad,” agreed Jack pleasedly.

    “Are there enough tiles to do the side verandahs?” she asked eagerly.

    “Nah. Just enough for one side. But George reckons he knows a place where we can get some more. Some dame that’s having her back patio ripped out and a pool put in.” He scratched his chin. “Might not be quite the right colour, mind.”

    “That wouldn’t matter!” she said eagerly.

    “No-o… Well, I’ve gone right across, here. Could just butt them on. Wouldn’t look too bad. Those other ones, the big ones, there aren’t enough of them to finish a side for ya. Pity, ’cos they are the right colour. But we could use ’em for the path.”

    “Jack, you’re not gonna put in a path for us as well, you’re doing too much!” she protested, going very pink.

    “Might as well, got plenny of spare time.”

    “But what about George’s father’s place?”

    Jack looked dry. “We started good. Now the old joker’s digging his toes in, ’cos ruddy Susan’s stuck her oar in.”

    “But she doesn’t even want to live there!” she cried. “Um, sorry, Gil: that’s George’s sister.”

    “Sisters tend to be like that,” he murmured.

    “She is, yeah,” agreed Jack. “The latest is build up, not out, get a better view across the valley. See, some types she knows, they bought a place on the outskirts of Sydney—the bushfire belt, that’d be,” he noted snidely—“and they started off with an old bungalow like old Andy MacMurray’s, not much more than a bach—sorry, weekender—and stuck a new verandah all round it and ripped the top off and built a second storey on complete with individual balconies at the front windows.”

    “I can just see it!” replied Honey with feeling.

    “Yeah. Even worse than what young Phil calls modern Federation, eh? Anyway, like I said to her, what’d the old joker want a second storey for, there’s him and sometimes George in the weekends. And where’s poor old Andy gonna live, just by the by, if the roof’s ripped off from over ’is head?”

    “It’ll be the first step in the ruddy woman’s campaign to get him into a nursing-home before his time, that’s what!” she cried.

    “Yeah,” agreed Jack glumly. “Well, she’s not all bad. But he’s managing okay, and with George living there too he’ll be fine. Anyway, once George gets him calmed down dare say he’ll tell me just to get on with what he wanted in the first place. Any coffee going?”

    “Yes: come in. You can have something to eat, too, and don’t bother to say you’ve already had breakfast,” she ordered firmly.

    “Okay, ta,” replied Jack meekly.

    And with that they went inside, Jack looking terrifically meek and Gil hiding a smile.

    His nephew surfaced, yawning horribly, when the workers were finishing their breakfast.

    “You can go back to bed again, the work’s done,” Gil told him pleasedly.

    “Hah, hah,” replied Phil tolerantly. “Hullo, Jack. What work was this?”

    “Putting a few more tiles on the front verandah.”

    “Oh, great!” With this he went over to the bench and put some bread in the toaster.

    “Is that all you’re going to say?” said Gil faintly. “Phil!”

    “What?” said his nephew mildly, inspecting the inside of the electric jug and switching it on again.

    “Jack’s been slaving over your bloody verandah for hours while you’ve been snoring in your pit! You might at least thank him!”

    Phil eyed him tolerantly. “I thanked him before, when he offered to do it.”

    “Yes, he did,” admitted Honey. “And we tried to make him take some money but he won’t.”

    “Don’t be mad,” growled Jack.

    “Very well, gang up on me,” said Gil heavily. “And while we’re on the subject of manners, or lack thereof, Phil, isn’t it accepted kitchen etiquette in your circles to ask if other people might like a refill of coffee and,” he noted pointedly as the jug boiled and Phil switched it off, “fill the kettle again?”

    “No,” he said definitely, rescuing his toast as the toaster sent up smoke signals.

    “In that case, fill it now!”

    “Oh, did you want some more? Righto,” he replied in the vernacular, refilling it.

    Gil breathed heavily but alas, Honey just giggled and Jack advised him: “Kids. They’re all like that.”

    “Bumptious, you mean? Yes!”

    Alas, Honey giggled again and Phil merely smirked.

    By the time Gil’s idiot nephew had finished stuffing his fat face it was pretty clear that although Jack and Honey liked each other, there was no spark there. Uh, well, neither of them was young; possibly they’d settle for something less than mad, passionate lerve? Could but hope: Jack Jackson was very clearly as decent as they came.

    “Sorted the personalities out yet, Gil?” asked Bernie Anderson with a little smile.

    “More or less,” admitted Gil feebly. There weren’t very many of them, really. Potters Road ran up the length of a small peninsula above the innermost end of Potters Inlet proper, which he’d now found out was a minute arm of the Tasman Sea, running inland for miles. There were no houses at all on the lower side of Potters Road. On the higher side, to your left as you drove up from the little settlement of Potters Inlet, the first property you came to was owned by the elderly Andy MacMurray, with whom Jack Jackson was boarding. The Jardine property was next: the two houses were separated by a fair stretch of land, but the properties were technically adjoining. The entire far end of the peninsula belonged to Bob Springer. Most of it was covered in the sparse bush endemic to the area, which apparently Bob left strictly to its own devices. Springer House B&B was to be found up the last driveway on the higher side of the bumpy, rutted road. The B&B’s chef, David Walsingham, and his wife, Dot, who was Deanna Springer’s sister, lived up a separate driveway a little further back down the road, nearer to the Jardine property, but still on Bob’s land. The art and crafts centre, up the same driveway, was inhabited and managed by Bernie and his wife, Ann. The Springers had provided a “bush ramble” track between the B&B and Springer House Art & Crafts Centre, but Bob had already explained that most of their punters didn’t bother with it, mate, they drove their flamin’ four-wheel-drives the hundred metres or so down the road instead, but they were keeping it because it looked good on the website.

    It was extremely clear to Gil Sotherland on very short acquaintance that (a) Bob Springer was the salt of the earth and (b) Bob Springer wasn’t the sort of chap to be taken in for an instant by any of the nonsense he offered his guests. And good for him! It had been rather a shock to see how very, very young Deanna Springer was, but after about five minutes in their company you realized they were meant for each other. Not that she was the salt of the earth type, but in spite of her genuine enthusiasm for plates of little coloured guest soaps, matching sets of towels in ochre, magnolia, or avocado, et al., they were completely on each other’s wavelengths. At least…

    “Um, ’tis Bob’s second marriage, is it?” he ventured.

    “That’s right. Deanna’s parents did their nuts when she got engaged to him, but the consensus is it’s working out splendidly,” murmured Bernie.

    “Got that, Bernie!” replied Gil with a smile. “Just trying to define what it is, that makes it work…”

    “Well, insofar as one can define it,” said Bernie, the twinkle in his shrewd eyes increasing, “I’d say it’s the fact, not only that they accept each other for what they are, but that her attitudes and interests are what he expects a female’s to be, and, contrariwise, that he’s exactly what she expects in the male of the species.”

    “You’ve got it, by God,” he said in some awe.

    “H’I thank yoow! –No, well, was in bed with a rotten cold our first winter up here, and my books were all trundling round the world in a damned cargo container: I had plenty of time to think!” he admitted with a laugh.

    “Right,” said Gil, smiling at him. Bernie Anderson was a thin-faced, brownish-haired, slim, unremarkable-looking Englishman, perhaps in his mid-forties. His marriage was even more recent than Bob’s and Deanna’s, and, Gil had owned wryly to himself, even more surprising. Bernie had admitted to Winchester and a couple of years at Oxford before he’d inherited some cash from an elderly relative and packed in the degree in favour of art school. Eventually becoming, not an impoverished painter in an attic, but a movie production designer for Double Dee Productions. For his sins, according to him. He’d met Ann when the Double Dee team was out here filming The Captain’s Daughter a few years back. She’d been a hack journalist working for one of the big Sydney dailies—“not quite a tabloid,” according to Bernie—and had been the lucky person who’d landed the assignment to exclusively track the movie company and report all the daily doings of the Big Stars. Funnily enough Ann had not been keen at all on this plum job and had done her best to shove it off onto a fellow journo. Having met her, Gil could envisage this very clearly and in fact had asked her spouse in awe: “How did she manage to write convincingly about that sort of crap, Bernie?” To which Bernie had replied, poker-face: “The way she explains it, she put her head in the right shape, Gil.” In spite of the pair’s entirely different backgrounds it was plain to Gil that the self-effacing Bernie and the cheery Ann shared a lack of illusions both about life in general and about the sort of consumer crap worshipped by half the world—or certainly held up by the world media as worth worshipping—together with a complete lack of Angst about their own disillusionment. Another marriage made in heaven, in short. Lucky bloody them.

    The two men had gone for a stroll up to the rear of the Springer property before lunch. It had been a dull morning and was still very overcast; most of the view was of mist, but you could see that the ground dropped away steeply.

    “That’s only a creek down there,” said Bernie, pointing. “It runs into the inlet, which is navigable if you keep to the channel: you can get a fair-sized launch up to the end of the peninsula—that’s the far end of the Springer place.”

    “Uh-huh. No marina, Bernie?” asked Gil, poker-face.

    “Not yet! The peninsula’s more or less vertical. Bob’s been talking about putting in one of those lifts—ever seen them?”

    “Would this be the Greek island sort with a winch and a basket, or the more today hydraulic variety that only costs an arm and three legs?”

    Bernie replied solemnly: “Oh, definitely something like that,” and Gil collapsed in sniggers.

    Politely waiting until he’d recovered, Bernie murmured: “It isn’t quite a pipe dream, Gil.”

    Gil blew his nose. “No?”

    Serenely Bernie returned: “Well, of course the whole thing is, pretty much. But—well! None of us envisages making a fortune, in fact we’ll all be quite happy just to get by.” He gave Gil a wry look. “Not all of us are what you might call emotionally unscathed. Well, who is, by the time they hit forty?” He shrugged a little. “We are starting to get some custom, and Bob’s had one career: he’s pretty content to do whatever takes Deanna’s fancy. And David, of course, has got another career entirely—and a bit stashed away; added to which his father may be an ill-natured old prick but he’s only got two kids to leave it to and David’s the only son—Sir John Walsingham, the conductor, if no-one’s mentioned it.”

    Gil had assumed the chef’s name was merely an odd coincidence. Gulping he croaked: “But surely, that means he’s—”

    “David Walsingham, yes,” said Bernie calmly. “None of ’em really realise, bless ’em, not even Dot. Well, don’t come from musical families, you see, setting aside the Downunder syndrome. Ah—you won’t have been out long enough to realise, Gil, but if it isn’t Australian it isn’t really real. It’s not unique to this side of the world, by any means: I spent a block of time in France at one stage, and never mind the EU, the rest of Europe’s merely peripheral to the Frogs. I dare say Britain’s the same, but we can’t see it—too close to it!”

    Gil just nodded limply: David Walsingham’s serious work placed him in the top handful of composers of the last quarter century.

    Bernie looked down at the narrow creek below them and smiled a little. “Personally I’m just bloody thankful to have found Ann before it was too bloody late.”

    “Mm.” After a moment he said: “I did grasp that you met her through making that film, but what about the others, Bernie? Were they friends of hers?”

    “No, quite the reverse! We met them when David and I were both working on The Captain's Daughter.”

    “That thing with Lily Rose Rayne? He did the music for that?” Gil had been in Iraq when the film came out but various kind friends and relatives had ensured he didn’t miss out on it, and the messes had been full of recordings of it. It was a Fifties romance, swamped in Fifties clichés: pointed bras, strapless evening gowns galore, gigantic full skirts with layers of petticoats, and drippingly saccharine musical numbers pinched from old Fifties musicals. Like the television series which had inspired it, it was set against a background of the Royal Navy flying the flag for lesser breeds without the law in Gib, KL and Singapore, but this, oddly enough, only made it sillier.

    “Yes: combining the Fifties songs our great director had ordained into something approaching a coherent musical message was quite a challenge, one gathers, though not one that he’s eager to repeat.”

    “No,” said Gil faintly. “So, uh—sorry, how do the girls come into it?”

    “You’ll realise the moment you set eyes on Dot. She and Deanna are Lily Rose’s cousins, and in fact—”

    “No, they can’t be! I mean, I’ve met them, back in England!”

    Bernie’s shoulders shook. “Think you might have met some different ones, old chap.”

    “Um, well, wasn’t taking all that much notice: it was at an old comrade’s funeral—he was Lily Rose’s husband’s cousin,” he said feebly. “Two blonde lovelies, very like her.”

    “Exactly. Two more cousins. Neither of them like Deanna, at all: she takes after her father’s side—but very, very like both Dot and Rosie. –Lily Rose.”

    “Uh—yes, that’s right, she is called Rosie in the family…” said Gil dazedly.

    “Those who claim that the delightful Lily Rose is unique are wrong, you see,” said Bernie primly. “In fact, as I was about to say, Dot did double for her: she broke her leg just when we were about to start filming, very inconvenient. And Dot being Dot—”

    “Wanted to be in the fillums: one sees it all,” he said heavily.

    “Wrong again. She waited until our great director offered her twice megabucks to do it and then agreed. –Completely unimpressed by the whole movie shtick!” he gasped, collapsing in helpless sniggers at last.

    “I think I get it,” conceded Gil faintly.

    Bernie wiped his eyes. “Mm. –Hang on: I think the weather’s clearing,” he said, grabbing his arm.

    Gil held on…

    Golly. The mists lifted and they were suddenly face to face with ranks of steel-blue hills, marching away, layer upon layer, into the incredible far distance under an enormous sky… After quite some time he managed to croak: “Now I get Potters Inlet, Bernie. Or at least why you chose it.”

    “Mm, well, it was a factor,” he murmured. “When I first came out here I thought that the crap I’d read about the limitless Australian sky was just crap—well, in the cities, the horizon seems quite close, doesn’t it?”

    Gil nodded numbly.

    “Yes. It’s because the land’s so flat, you see. But up here… One can almost see the curve of the world.”

    “Mm.”

    Bernie’s eyes twinkled just a little. “’Tis possible, you know. Ever seen it? –No? I have: in India, once, flying out of Delhi, early in the morning. Got above the clouds and there was the peak of Everest—I kid you not—and the rim of the world. It was worth the whole trip: the Delhi-belly, and the vile hotels, and the impossible crowds of extras, and the incomprehensible English and the great director’s unending tantrums… Just every so often, when Potters Inlet turns on this sort of view, I get something approaching the same feeling.”

    Gil breathed deeply. The air was actually scented. Not pine, exactly… It must be the gum trees. “Yes.”

    Bernie stared out at the view, not speaking, for some time. Then he said simply: “I’ve given up trying to paint it.”

    “Understandable,” conceded Gil.

    “I do paint so-called landscapes, but they’re just studies of the odd eucalypt or two with the backgrounds washed in. The customers lap them up, and it’s all grist to the mill. I honestly don’t think the European tradition is capable of handling the Australian landscape. No, I take that back, Fred Williams got the essence of the Outback landscape: very, very dry, very, very flat: different from this, but equally un-European. Used enormous canvases, six foot square or more…”

    “You’d need to.”

    “Mm… Dunno if you’d properly call him in the European tradition, though!” he admitted with a sudden laugh. “He painted… the land, I suppose. They aren’t views!”

    “That’s good,” murmured Gil, gazing at the hills. Possibly the Chinese tradition? No, the hills were quite the wrong shape for that. Impossible either to translate into paint or to describe, really, but very, very beautiful… He took another deep breath. Liberating, was the word. Mmm, and so gloriously scented!

    “Smell it?” murmured Bernie.

    “Mm! Isn’t it incredibly aromatic?” replied Gil eagerly.

    “I think so, but if you value your sanity don’t mention it to the locals.”

    “Uh—don’t they like it?” he groped.

    “They don’t notice it!” he returned with feeling. “At the most you’ll get an ‘Aw, yeah, the eucalypts,’ in response to your Pommy rhapsodies. –That was Ann, to yours truly,” he explained primly. “Young Phil was really cut down to size: he made the mistake of going into rhapsodies to Dot: she’s about the most down-to-earth little creature that ever walked, in spite of the pretty blonde doll look! –‘It’s the bush, whaddareya?’” he quoted carefully. “She did refrain from calling him a Pommy nong that time, but only just.”

    “No wonder he’s come on something incredible!” replied Gil with a laugh.

    “Mm. Well, Honey’s good value, too,” he murmured.

    “I’ll say!”

    Bernie Anderson’s shrewd eyes twinkled a little. Doubtless Honey’s other supporters would be glad of a confirmatory report, but he wasn’t in much doubt that his darling Ann had already spotted that the greatly feared Colonel Sotherland was a bloody good bloke. Well, she’d addressed him as “Hey, Gil,” five times in his hearing!

    “I think we’d better get back for lunch,” he murmured.

    They’d already lost that argument with the Springer House chef, so Gil just nodded meekly and accompanied him back down to where the faint track up to the cliff met the rather better defined “bush ramble” track. Little pokerworked signposts an’ all. Deanna was very keen on pokerwork, she’d done it in her high-school art course. Oh, gee, there were no bush ramblers on it.

    “No bush ramblers today,” murmured Bernie.

    “Don’t!” he howled, collapsing in hysterics. “—In thems very words,” he explained feebly, wiping his eyes.

    Bernie just grinned, and they ambled on down to Springer House.

    Springer House’s colour scheme, Gil was in no doubt, bore no relation to anything the old bungalow had ever worn in its eighty years or so, but it looked really good. The body of the house was a deep, matte blue, with the verandah’s posts and wooden lace picked out in a heavy yellow which had just a hint of pumpkin in it. The wooden pickets of the front fence were also done in this yellow but the heavier fence posts and the gateposts picked up the blue of the house. The front gate was bright lime green, as was the front door. The artist who had chosen the colour scheme had refrained from making the window surrounds stand out: they were a softer, lighter version of the blue. The verandah floor was painted a darker shade of the blue, as were the front steps.

    At the moment the gate was decorated by a little, curvaceous, blonde lovely in a clinging red sweater—possibly not her colour, but who cared? Gil’s eyes were on stalks—and a tight pair of faded jeans. There was absolutely no doubt this was the famous Lily Rose’s cousin: she had the very same mop of pale gold curls, the rosebud mouth and the round, pink-cheeked face with that very sweet smile.

    “Thought you’d fallen off the cliff!” she greeted them with a laugh.

    “No, no: we followed the pokerwork signs,” Bernie assured her.

    “Hah, hah,” replied Deanna’s sister, grinning.

    “This is Gil Sotherland, Dot,” Bernie began.

    “Yeah, got that. I’m Dot Walsingham. How are you, Gil?” she said, sliding off the gate and holding out a little pink hand.

    Gil took it gingerly: he didn’t want to be accused again of being a rough Army man. To his surprise it shook his firmly and pretty little Dot gave him a very shrewd look. Hmm. Well, Walsingham hadn’t struck him as precisely a moron, no, and in fact Dot’s famous cousin was a very intelligent young woman, but any man could have been excused for taking up with one of the blonde cousins for the looks alone.

    “I’ve been deputed to watch out for you—” she began.

    “Yes, we got that, Dot,” said Bernie smoothly.

    “Hah, hah. If you’d let a person speak, because there’s two carloads rolled up for lunch without booking, and—”

    “Hell, has he done his nut?” croaked Bernie.

    “Look, we don’t need feeding!” said Gil quickly.

    “No! If ya’d let me speak, ya pair of macho morons!”

    The pair of macho morons shut up, grinning broadly, and she went on: “So instead of bunging you in the dining-room with them, David thought ya might wanna eat back home. Unless ya want the agony, ’cos they’re the usual sort.”

    “No, we don’t want the agony!” said Bernie quickly.

    “No, er, what are the usual sort, Dot?” asked Gil feebly.

    “Think they know about food, ask for balsamic vinegar in their salad dressing, drink red wine with fish, and generally drive him ropeable.”

    “My God, we definitely don’t want that agony!”

    Dot eyed him drily. “No, thoughtcha wouldn’t.”

    “Is there fish?” asked Bernie innocently.

    “Yeah, baked salmon à la Get knotted, Bernie,” she replied genially.

    Grinning, he said: “Well, is it safe to go in, Dot?”

    “Wouldn’t say that. One of the dames was in the front hall when I came through, admiring that faked-up telephone table Deanna’s mate from that woodworking class slung together. Kind of art nouveau, according to the experts, Gil,” she added kindly. “Wanna go round the back instead?”

    The two male cowards immediately agreeing, she led them off, asking as they went: “Like the blue, Gil?”

    “Very much, Dot!”

    “It’ll fade like buggery, but Bob’s got loads of paint, he grabbed some of the stock from the shop before he sold it,” she said in a detached tone.

    “It’s really lovely: I like the whole effect,” he said weakly. Did she like it?

    “Oh, good!” beamed Dot. “I’ve got no taste,” she explained cheerfully. “Deanna and Bernie dreamed it all up between them. Our places are the same style but the colours are different. Didja see the driveway? There was a notice but it faded to buggery last summer, so Bob took it down: Deanna’s repainting it. By the stringybark,” she elaborated helpfully.

    “Er…” replied Gil feebly.

    “It’s a kind of gum tree. Eucalyptus,” said Bernie primly.

    “Shut up, Anderson,” he managed.

    “Yeah,” agreed Dot, grinning. “I’ll show ya, Gil.”

    Ooh, goody! Once the likeness to the luscious Lily Rose had been mentioned Gil had been conscious of the feeling that bloody Walsingham was one of the luckiest buggers in the world, but now that he’d met her—! Adorable, was just about the word. It didn’t hurt that she couldn’t be much more then twenty-five and thus a good twenty years Walsingham’s junior.

    The Springer House chef was a slim, sallow-faced, dark-haired man. Apart from the black hair he didn’t look particularly Greek but as he was the David Walsingham he must be: somewhere lurking amongst all the crap from the flat that Gil had shoved into boxes and sent down to Father’s place, possibly giving the old bastard the notion that he looked upon it as his permanent home, too bad, was a programme from one of his concerts with a brief biog that included the intel that his mother was Greek and his sister was the famous contralto Antigone Walsingham Corrant. Gil didn’t wonder why the man had decided to become a part-time cook and settle here: it was glaringly obvious that he was besotted with the delightful Dot and would have flown to the moon if she’d suggested it. Not that that level-headed little person would have suggested any such thing! She was, as Ann had already told him, a database designer and IT support person, only not just at the moment, because Baby Rose Walsingham was only just about to turn one year old.

    Ooh, gosh, this must be her! Ooh, she had her mum’s pale gold curls and rosebud mouth!

    “Takes after Dot, thank God,” said the chef, grinning all over his thin face as he jigged her gently on his hip. “I was terrified she’d have my ugly mug. Almost decided against the whole thing, when that frightful thought occurred.”

    “Bullshit,” said Dot sturdily. “He went bananas when the scan said it was a girl, Gil: started ringing up the old aunties in Greece and gabbling on about lace christening gowns.”

    “Them an’ all!” admitted David with laugh. “’Es, who’s Dada’s pretty girl?” he cooed. “Baby Rose! Baby Rose!”

    “Dada,” the cherub replied obligingly.

    “Ooh, gosh, she can talk!” gasped Gil as the proud father smirked.

    “She can say Dada, yeah: knows what side her bread’s buttered on, like all of them. He’s spoiling her rotten now: what’s it gonna be like when she’s a teenager?” groaned Dot. “Whaddam I saying, by the time she’s five and starts demanding flaming pink ballet tutus!”

    “Darling, there is no way our Baby Rose could possibly turn out as silly as your cousin Wendalyn’s daughter,” said David firmly.

    “Ya wanna bet?”

    “Of course she won’t, Dot: the poor little thing’s got Wendalyn for a mum and Aunty Allyson for a grandma,” said Deanna on a firm note from the huge, shiny industrial stove. “Am I stirring this right?” she asked the chef.

    “Probably not,” replied David placidly. “I’ll swap ya this for that spoon.”

    “No, I say, couldn’t I take her?” breathed Gil.

    “Another one?” groaned Dot.

    “If she’ll go to you,” conceded David, grinning. “Want to go to Uncle Gil, Rosy-Posy? That’s a good girl!” he cooed as Miss Rose Walsingham decided she liked Gil and uttered a gurgling noise.

    “Man-mad,” muttered her mother.

    “Pooh! Dad reckons she looks exactly like you at that age,” said Deanna sturdily, “and you turned out real sensible.”

    “I’ll hang on to that thought, then, Deanna,” replied her sister drily, “’cos Uncle Jerry reckons she looks exactly like Rosie at that age!”

    Deanna was observed to gulp, but replied firmly: “She’s okay. She’s not taken in by the film star garbage, ya know.”

    “Now tell me she’s not man-mad.”

    “Um, well, not since she married John, Dot,” replied Deanna on a pathetic note.

    “That’s true enough,” said Bob firmly from the doorway. “Stop predicting doom, Dot. You been taking your iron pills?”

    Dot’s pretty little round face turned puce. “Yes! Honestly!”

    Bob winked at Gil. “They’re all the same. Put a roof over their heads and they think they gotta martyr themselves. –Hey, David, ya know that basil ya thought ya saw in that sheltered spot down the back of the garden?”

    “Yes?” said the chef eagerly.

    “Thistles,” replied the proprietor of Springer House briefly.

    Promptly all his friends and relations collapsed in horrible sniggers at the chap-fallen David’s expense, so Gil gave way and joined in. Even Miss Rose Walsingham joined in, with a series of little crowing noises. Boy, wasn’t Life unfair? The adorable Dot, the completely irresistible Baby Rose and, if the smells emanating from that stove were anything to judge by, the man could cook like an angel as well!

    The smudges of reddish paint that he had now discerned on Dot’s bright red jumper were possibly explained, Gil realised as she led them over there, by the exterior of her house. The paintwork was finished, but then the jumper was manifestly not new. The house was not dissimilar in style to the Springers’ ancient bungalow—or, indeed, to Uncle Dave Jardine’s dump—but both it and the Andersons’ place had been erected from kitsets. Federation style, the experts had informed Gil. He’d just laid low and said nuffin, like Brer Rabbit. The Walsingham bungalow had a dark red background, fawn verandah posts and wooden lace, and a forest-green front door. The wooden floor of the verandah was varnished: very attractive. As Gil admired it Dot apologised in advance for the furniture, explaining cheerfully that a lot of it was David’s old stuff, and it had cost so much to get his piano over from Adelaide that what with the baby coming they’d decided new furniture could wait.

    “My God, yes, you’d have had to have a specialist carrier for that, Dot!”

    “Yeah. His orchestra mates wised us up on the right firm, but it cost a bomb. Mind you, the fridge works good, but it’s older than I am. My grandma, she used to have one just like it back before she went gaga. Like, round-topped, y’know?”

    “Yes, like Uncle Dave Jardine’s: the original Frigidaire!”

    “Yep. They were built to last, see? David’s is lie-lack.”—Er, was that a brand, or had his ears merely gone funny?—“Or ya could call it mauve,” she added kindly.

    Gil gulped. “You could repaint it, I suppose.”

    “He thinks it’s funny. His kitchen in Adelaide, it was sort of Sixties. But the fridge looked pretty good in it, actually. Only these kitset houses, they come with the option of having a built-in kitchen and we went for that, we didn’t wanna be mucking around forever trying to put the cupboards in ourselves. Anyway, come in, you’ll see!”

    He saw, and could only be thankful that the disposition of the parties round the big old kitchen table for lunch resulted in his being seated with his back to the fridge. Lie-lack, it was. Definitely.

    “My God, he cooks like an angel, Dot,” he said reverently over the wonderful lunch.

    “Yeah, this salmon’s nobbad, eh?” replied Dot through a mouthful of it.

    “Ambrosia,” said Gil, sighing deeply. You could have said it was just baked salmon with a little fennel— No. Ambrosia. God knew what was in the sauce—well, cream, little more fennel—white wine, maybe? Well, God knew. Ambrosia, in short.

    The chef’s house’s layout was very like Uncle Dave Jardine’s, so perhaps his was genuine Federation, whatever that was? Anyway, it was divided down the middle by its passage, with one large front room on the right as one entered—containing the piano and an old sagging sofa of about the vintage, not to say the colour, of Uncle Dave’s, plus a large, relatively new recliner chair of the hefty and unlovely sort and a couple of other null-looking newish easy chairs. The walls were lined with bookcases: looked as if they were built in. One could envisage using it as a sitting-room in the evenings, yes, and presumably David worked in here during the day when he had his composer’s hat on, but what about Dot and the baby? There were two bedrooms on the other side of the passage but neither of them was huge. At the moment the front one held a king-size bed and the baby’s cot and the rear one held a workstation, an ergonomic chair and a clutter of computer equipment, but what about when the little girl was bigger? Well, perhaps they’d build on. The rear of the house featured a good-sized kitchen, a little enclosed back porch and off it, a tiny laundry and toilet. Good grief, did the man make the poor little thing tramp down here in the middle of the n— Oh. No. Ensuite bathroom attached to the master bedroom. Yes, all right, Phil, “modern Federation,” very amusing, and once he got him alone he’d make the little bugger tell him what the Hell “Federation” meant!

    The ambrosial salmon was followed by a real salad. The chef, who’d remained on duty at the B&B with the Springers, had evidently given his orders before letting his wife loose: Dot produced a bottle of made-up vinaigrette from a cupboard, explaining cheerfully: “He does his nut if ya put it on too early. Any volunteers?”

    “Yes,” said Bernie simply, grabbing it off her and shaking it scientifically.

    Winking at the company, Dot sat down again. “It’s only lettuce,” she warned.

    Cos lettuce, ’smatter of fact, and real vinaigrette, absolutely no balsamic vinegar in sight! Yum!

    “All right?” asked Bernie.

    “All right in the same way that beluga caviar is all right, yes!” admitted Gil, grinning.

    “Yep! There’ll be some all right cheese to follow, I think. –Youse lot can eat them beer-flavoured pieces if youse prefer,” he said kindly to his spouse.

    Gil cringed, but Ann just grinned and said cheerfully: “I might! Is it that stinky cheese?”

    “Yes, definitely.”

    … Real Stilton. Oh, boy!

    “I thought that English people always had cheese last but Phil said if you’re really posh and learned to eat real food in France you don’t,” said Honey cheerfully as Bernie offered the cheese. “No, I hate that blue-vein stuff, ta, Bernie.”

    “Okay, it’s pudding or Ann’s beer-flavoured cheese pieces,” said Dot happily.

    “Please, please, just have pudding,” whispered Gil.

    “Stop it!” she said with a laugh. “Well, dunno that I do fancy cheese actually flavoured with beer, come to think of it.”

    “No. It makes ya burp, too,” said Ann thoughtfully.

    “Okay, let’s just have pudding!” said Honey.

    The Almighty being merciful, the ladies just had helpings of something miraculous. Greek, was it? Okay, Bernie, pigs might fly and this yere was a Greek pudding.

    “You could go in the lounge-room and digest for a bit, if you like, Gil!” said Dot with a giggle as Bernie got up to make the coffee. “Put one of his CDs on, if you like.”

    “Help, am I allowed, though, Dot?”

    “Yeah, he’s not as much of a maniac as he looks!” she said cheerfully.

    Er—he did look pretty much a maniac, actually. However, he went in and… Christ Almighty!

    “He’s got the entire output of the European music industry since about the thirteenth century in here, Uncle Gil,” explained his nephew kindly.

    “Yes. In maniacally rigid order,” he whispered.

    “Think you’d have to, if you wanted to keep track of a collection this size. Well, uh, something easy-listening?”

    Gil winced. “Very well.”

    “There’s a nice recording of his sister singing Monteverdi and Schütz somewhere.”

    “Under M,” he suggested. “Er, are the ladies going to consider that easy-listening, Phil?”

    “Yeah, they’re used to him now. Well, him and Bernie,” he allowed fairly. “Didn’t I tell you you’d be right at home here?”

    Gil smiled feebly. “Yeah. –Go on, then.”

    Phil found the CD without difficulty: it was under Monteverdi, all right. Gil didn’t ask what the man did when the selection on the recording consisted of works by more than a couple of composers because, frankly, he didn’t think he could take the answer.

    After the music and the coffee and quite a period of digesting, they all went over to the other side of the shared driveway to admire the Andersons’ kitset house. Exactly the same style—Bernie explained, poker-face, that that was how they came—but they’d chosen the colours and painted it themselves. He’d rejected the original notion of doing it entirely in the dark cream in which such bungalows had once all been painted.

    “Villas,” corrected Ann firmly.

    “Um, yes, they do tend to call them that out here,” agreed Phil, looking at his uncle’s face. “We’d call them bungalows back home, Ann.”

    “Mm. California-style,” said Bernie smoothly.

    “Bullshit!” retorted his spouse. “Hey, that reminds me, what about turkeys?”

    “Darling, let’s walk before we even consider the possibility of flying,” said Bernie firmly. “We’ve haven’t really mastered the ducks, yet. And, er, well, I won’t mention the hens.”

    “Aunty Rae’s mate can let us have some nice pullets, no prob’.”

    “No prob’ until they all turn out to be cockerels like the first lot,” Bernie explained to the company.

    “Then we’ll take the ruddy things back—or David can cook them,” replied Ann on a firm note. “And Aunty Rae says there’s definitely a lady that raises ducks that we can talk to, her place is quite near.”

    “Quite near in Australian terms can mean a half-day’s drive,” Bernie explained.

    “Yes!” choked Phil, suddenly collapsing in agonised splutters.

    Smiling, Gil looked at Bernie’s and Ann’s new Federation kitset house. Or, as the large sign over its verandah said: “Springer House Art & Crafts Centre.” The walls were a deep chocolate brown, and one might have expected that the trims would have been soft grey-greens, tans or rusty reds, in keeping with the shades of the native flora. No: the verandah posts were bright turquoise with the wooden lace adorning the right angles where they met the roof a bright mimosa yellow. The door and window-surrounds were bright blue, as was the floor of the verandah. The front steps were likewise but the three risers were filled in with gay Spanish-style tiles: white decorated in shades of blue, yellow, green and… Jesus. A not-quite-flame red with a hint of pink in it, which the shiny front door exactly matched! How in God’s name—? Possibly Bernie had mixed it himself.

    “I would just of put those tiles in the bathroom,” said Ann cheerfully.

    Jumping slightly, Gil agreed: “Mm.”

    “They were on sale. Once we got them home he had an inspiration. Do you think it looks funny with the brown?”

    “No, it looks great, Ann,” he said honestly.

    “Good. Deanna really likes it, but she’s as artistic as he is. –Come in.”

    They went in. Oh—different layout, no passage. “We’ve altered the original layout quite a bit. The bedroom’s at the back, adjoining the kitchen: we’ve used the whole width of the house for the studio and display room,” explained Bernie.

    “Shop,” corrected Dot firmly.

    “Very well, Scrooge, shop!” said Bernie with a laugh. “We may build on a separate room for the shop if we manage to make enough dough,” he added.

    Disappointingly, the big room was painted a matte fawn, with a serviceable tan vinyl flooring. Some of the artefacts on display looked interesting, but apart from some flower studies the paintings were all the landscape type that Bernie had described earlier. Bernie showed them through the door in the rear wall, smiling just a little.

    “Ooh!” gulped Gil. He had been expecting a passage. Instead they were in a large room which was obviously used as a combined kitchen-living room. Its walls were bright pink. Over on the far wall was a steel sink-bench set against bright emerald tiles, under a set of windows trimmed in white high-gloss.

    “See, Ann can stand at the bench and keep an eye on the ducks and chooks!” said Dot with satisfaction.

    “Yeah,” agreed Ann. She went over to the sink bench, smiling. “Bernie and Bob put this windowsill in for me, the original ones were all those modern narrow things, but I wanted to be able to put plants on it, see? These geraniums are doing real well: if they get a bit of sun they flower all winter.”

    They were bright scarlet geraniums. Were they meant or had the artistic Bernie simply let her have her own way? Gil avoided everyone’s eyes as the beaming Ann opened the door in the back wall.

    “We got them to stick on an extra verandah at the back,” said Bernie with a smile as it was revealed in all its blue-floored glory. “Well, I was on a decent salary for a while and too busy to spend it, and I got a good price for my London flat, and Ann loves verandahs.”

    It was now pretty clear, not that it hadn’t been before, really, that the two of them were as besotted with each other as David and Dot or Bob and Deanna were. Lucky bloody them.

    “Yeah, and out the back,” said Ann in conspiratorial tones: “we’ve got lattice. Wanna see?”

    They accompanied her obediently, Gil wondering frantically if Phil was as baffled as he was.

    Er—yes. Lattice was what they had. Wooden, the laths running diagonally, at either end of the back verandah and semi-enclosing its left-hand section.

    “See, you wouldn’t know, but lattice used to be really big in Sydney on the old houses,” explained Dot kindly. “My Grandma Leach, she had lattice on her verandahs.”

    “Yeah,” said Ann with a deep sigh, looking up at her blue lattice between her turquoise verandah posts. “Lattice.”

    Gil found he suddenly had to swallow hard and blink, rather.

    Quite some time later, after a wonderful dinner of spit-roast lamb with garlic and rosemary that David had insisted on sending over from Springer House in spite of Honey’s red-faced objections, he leaned back into the grip of Uncle Dave’s saggy old sofa and said: “Isn’t Dot adorable?”

    “Um, well, yes,” replied Honey on a cautious note.

    Oops, he’d used his own vernacular without pausing to think of the effect it might have on the unaccustomed ear. “I meant nothing by it, Honey.”

    “I know; it’s the way you talk,” replied Honey calmly. “She is nice, yes, but… Um, well, they all are, and they’ve been really kind to us, eh, Phil?”

    “Mm-hm,” he agreed into his book.

    “But?” prompted Gil, sipping whisky.

    “Um, well, we have noticed it before with the B&B guests.”

    “Mm-hm,” murmured Phil.

    “Noticed what?” said Gil on a cross note.

    “Um, people like them, and like the area, and—and sort of imagine they can do it, too. But they’ve all worked really hard, Gil, and they’re not making very much money at all.”

    “That did dawn, Honey.”

    “Mm. Good,” she muttered. “Um, not just that. They’ve been lucky enough to find the person who’s right for them.”

    Gil sighed. “Yes, so they have,” he said heavily. “All one can say to that is, half their luck.”

    Phil looked up. “And down the hatch. Have another?”

    Why not? Gil downed the last dregs and held out his glass. “Thanks, Phil. Down the bloody hatch.”

    Apparently old Andy MacMurray’s son George would be staying with him in Potters Road this weekend: jolly good show, because if he was a friend of Jack’s he must be okay, and maybe he’d be the one for Honey! Deaf to all frugal objections, Gil hired a car in Sydney, loaded the pair of them into it, and drove them up to Potters Inlet on the Friday evening. Fortunately the Barrabarra supermarket was open: he’d overlooked the small fact of food in his matchmaking eagerness.

    As a very great favour Andy had invited Gil had to come out with him, George and Jack for a bit of fishing down the inlet on the Saturday. Gil had asked with twinkle in his eye why his idiot nephew wasn’t being included in the expedition and the old man had replied drily: “Number one, can’t get out of ’is pit in the mornings—they’re all like that at that age. Number two, can’t stop running off at the mouth.”

    “Frightens the fish! Yeah!” he choked. “I’d love to come thanks, Andy.”

    To which the old man had merely replied with a grunt. Gil had crept off and asked Honey if that was the accolade and had got the answer he richly deserved, namely a terse “Yes”.

    The expedition resulted in precisely nothing, piscatorial-wise and romance-wise. George was merely pleasant and—well, kindly was the only word, really, towards her, and Honey, Gil had to concede, didn’t seem to see him as a chap of the opposite sex. Less interest than she showed in Jack, actually. Er... well, Jack was a very good-looking fellow, whereas George was just an ordinary-looking chap, and a bit plump with it. And there was no doubt that Julian had looks, if he didn’t have anything else. Presumably Honey preferred ’em tall, slim and pretty. It was a Helluva pity, though: George seemed extremely easy-going, they were both middle-class Australians and pretty much on the same wave-length— Okay, as a matchmaker, he, Gil Sotherland, stank.

    The expedition did have one surprising result, however. The creek was usually too shallow up by Andy’s place to be navigable, so he kept his boat down below the cliff, right at the end of the promontory, below Bob’s property.

    Over the chips that Honey kindly provided for the fishermen’s lunch, even though there wasn’t any fish to go with them, Gil remarked admiringly on the native bush-covered site at the end of the promontory.

    Andy scratched his chin dubiously. “Well, yeah: eucalypts, bit of melaleuca, I’d of said it was pretty much scrub country, meself. You might not realise it at this time of year, Gil, but it’s dry as buggery most of the year. Useless country, really.”

    “That’s why he’s living up here!” explained George with a laugh.

    “Yeah, too right,” the old man agreed.

    Gil smiled. “Mm. I wasn’t about to claim it’s ripe for development, Andy, but the Springer property’s quite extensive, really...”

    ‘Um, yeah be about a hundred hectares, all up,” replied the old man, eyeing him warily.

    “The thing is,” Gil explained, “a friend of mine’s been looking for sites for ecolodges in Australia for some time.”

    “Eh?”

    “Ya mean those poncy does with spa pools and five-course gourmet dinners in the middle of the pristine wilderness, accessible only by helicopter or an eighty-K journey up river past the crocs, Gil?” asked George. “—Right. Read an article in a fancy mag of Susan’s about one of those they got in the Top End somewhere. Nothing for miles but crocs and a few Aborigines laughing their heads off at the bloody place. Forget what it said they put on their menu along with the Coonawarra reds, but if it wasn’t yer genuine ethnic mud crabs it was close.”

    “How big are they?” asked Jack in astonishment.

    George held his hands about eighteen inches apart.

    “Oh, cripes,” said Jack lamely. “We only get tiny wee ones, back home.”

    “It’s the Tropics, mate,” explained George kindly.

    “Yeah. Mud crabs and croc meat, is it?” asked his father.

    “What?” said Gil faintly. “Honey, you said they were protected these days!”

    “She’s right, they are. These’d be farmed ones, Gil,” said George simply.

    “It’s true, Uncle Gil,” added Phil quickly.

    “I’m sure it is,” said Gil very, very feebly.

    “Anyway, that the sort of dump? Thousand dollars a night and they’ll throw in the massages with scented oil of frangipani?” pursued George.

    “Mm. Well, more on the eco-friendly side, but—mm. They have a limited clientele—”

    “Ya don’t say!” noted Andy sardonically.

    “I mean it wouldn’t mean thousands of trippers polluting Potters Road, Andy.”

    “Up here?” croaked George.

    “Yes; think Bob might like to sell off a bit of land?”

    “Like to—” Words failed Andy.

     “Gil, it isn’t, um, exotic,” said Jack uneasily.

    “Not rainforest: no, exactly,” croaked George. “I mean, heck, don’t these types want organic foods and—and—”

    “The genuine eco-experience. The thing is, given the setting, YDI, that’s the firm my friend Hill Tarlington works for, is more than capable of faking up the rest. They’ll fly in organic fruit from Queensland if they have to; they’ve already got one ecolodge up there.”

    Andy took a deep breath. “How many rooms?”

    “Fewer than a dozen, Andy: that’s part of the attraction: exclusivity, you see.”

    “Exclusivity,” echoed Honey limply.

    “Mm, with a terrific view down the inlet!” added Gil with a laugh.

    “Aw. Well, yeah, the inlet’s not bad,” Andy conceded. “S’pose that is the best site, really—yeah. Well, Hell, yeah, Gil, talk to Bob! The B&B’s starting to do quite well, but I’m bloody sure he could do with a bit of cash dough.”

    Andy was right: Bob’s face lit up as if all his Christmases had come at once.

    So Gil rang up Hill Tarlington.

    “Sounds great, Gil, I’ll get our South Pacific chap onto it straight away. We looked at one site with a view of the Blue Mountains: it was lovely but Sir Maurice wouldn’t wear the risk of bushfires. But if this place is right on the water, I think he'd come at it.” He took down the details, but of course didn’t leave it at that. “Look, seriously, old man, this could work out rather well: you could—”

    “‘No. We have had this conversation, Hill,” Gil reminded him.

    “Not the project management stuff, the Hospitality side: manage the—”

    “Hill, we have definitely had this conversation before, and there is no way I'm up for managing a high-class ecolodge for rich Greenies! I can’t imagine anything more tarsome!”

    “But you’re not doing anything, are you? And you’ll be aware of local conditions—”

    “Shut up, Hill. You’re a tit. But if you’re interested in hiring chaps who know the local conditions, I do know someone who’d make an excellent project manager—and come to think of it, another chap who’d make a perfect foreman.”

    Hill brightened all the way down the line from England. “Good! Make sure they’re on deck when Jim Thompson comes over from Auckland and he can suss them out.”

    “Okay, I will. Um, when’ll that be?”

    Tomorrow, was the answer. Gil bade the project-managing fanatic goodbye and ’ung up with a shaking ’and. Well, perhaps Auckland wasn’t all that far by Jumbo, but— Good grief. Well, now he only had to break the news to George and Jack, both of whom he barely knew, that he’d found brand-new careers for them, didn’t he?

Next chapter:

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