Temping

2

Temping

    The lady that interviewed Jack at RightSmart was very young. Just a girl, really—more than young enough to be his daughter. Horribly smart, though. One of them black suits. Just as well Susan had insisted on typing up a résumé for him on her computer, ’cos that was the first thing she asked for. Jack hadn’t even known ya hadda have one. Well, heck, for a temporary gardener or driver or odd-job-man?

    When he’d rung them like Susan insisted, instead of just getting on over there, RightSmart had taken some brief details but said they didn’t have a slot free today but they could fit him in for an interview tomorrow with one of their placement consultants. Cripes. Left to himself Jack would just’ve forgotten about the whole thing, frankly.

    That meant he’d been able to get started on clearing out the granny flat, true, but that meant Susan had insisted on putting it down as a job in the flaming résumé! It didn’t seem quite honest to him to put down this month as the period he’d been working on it: well, shit, less than two days? Only she said that was how it was done and he needed to show them he had Australian working experience and if they queried it he could be quite up-front about it. They didn’t query it, in fact the lady was very pleased to see it.

    “Um, it’s not quite finished but see, I can always do it in the weekends,” said Jack awkwardly.

    That went down good. “Of course! So you’re available during the week, Jack?”

    “Yeah.” If it was first names all round—her name was Christie and there was a label on her lapel to prove it—why was the thing so bloody, well, formal, was the only word: it was a proper interview room—he’d never been in one before but it was obvious that was what it was: there was a small round table with a few chairs at it and almost nothing else in the room at all; added to which the door had a label on it, “Interview Room 2”. And the insistence on a typed-up résumé was bloody formal, that was for sure. Not to mention the crapulous wording of the résumé—but Susan reckoned that was how ya did it. And there were courses on it. Yeah, there would be.

    Christie asked him a whole lot of footling questions and made him fill out a kinda test. Well, maybe it wasn’t intended to be a test but it sure felt like one. He did say paperwork wasn’t his bag but she just told him nicely to take his time over it and asked would he like a coffee? Cripes, an employment place that gave ya cups of coffee?

    “Um, yeah, if there’s one going—ta,” said Jack limply.

    “Of course! How do you take it, Jack?” she asked with a bright smile.

    “Um, well, milk and one sugar, if ya got it. Thanks,” said Jack awkwardly.

    “Milk and one sugar! Righto!” she said brightly, going out.

    Cripes. Back home smart ladies like her didn’t say “righto.” Limply he got on with the test.

    It wasn’t her that brought the coffee in, it was an older dame. Scrawny type, also in a smart suit, but hers was grey. With a thingy on the lapel, not pretty enough to be a brooch, really. A pin? Yeah, the experts’d probably call it a pin. No label. Well, must just be a helper, then, not a whassname—consultant. Uh, no: placement consultant. Jack couldn’t of said how he knew she was probably a Les, there was nothing to put your finger on, but that was the way she came over. She was a lot older than Christie: she’d be well over forty.

    “Here ya go—Jack, is it?” she said, handing him the mug of coffee. “How are you, Jack? I’m Gail. How are you getting on with that form?”

    “Ta. –Not that good, actually. Tell ya the truth, there’s words here I never seen before in me puff, Gail,” Jack admitted.

    “Give us a look at it,” said Gail amiably, sitting down beside him. “That coffee okay?”

    Jack came to and tasted it. “Yeah, fine, ta.”

    She read through the form carefully and then said kindly: “Let’s see…” And went right through it with him, explaining what bits they didn’t need and what the stuff he didn’t understand meant and telling him what to put. Well, not the answers as such: wouldn’t of been fair, eh? Only she’d ask him about such-and-such he’d done and then say well, that meant he could put such-and-such in this here box.

    “Phew! Ta, Gail!” said Jack in huge relief, finding the bloody thing was filled in.

    “That’s okay. These forms were originally devised for our office temps and they’re not really suited to people who haven’t spent their working lives chained to a computer,” she said with a friendly grin.

    “I should koko!” agreed Jack with feeling. “So, um, do they take on blokes like me? ’Cos there doesn’t seem to be that much going for a bloke of my age that’s only worked in the building trade, and I met a bloke in a pub that was telling me about opportunities over in Western Australia—mining as well as construction.”

    “Yes, there’s a lot of opportunity over there for a fit man who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty,” replied Gail, “but RightSmart is always looking for men with your skills. We have a lot of short-term jobs filling in for people’s regular gardeners or drivers while they’re on holiday, or handymen jobs where the client wants someone supplied by a reliable firm, not a fly-by-night character they found in the newspaper.”

    “I geddit,” he said gratefully. “Well, if they can find me something, I might stick around. See, like I was telling Christie, I’m cleaning out a lady’s granny flat and I’m gonna do it up for her in return for a week’s free lodging, but I can do that in the weekends, easy.”

    “I see,” replied Gail kindly. “Well, that’s good, that’ll tide you over, but I’m pretty sure we can find you something this week.”

    Jack brightened. “Really? Hey, that’d be great!”

    “Mm…” she said in a vague voice, looking at the résumé that Christie had left on the table. “I see, that’d be the job for Ms Susan Pendleton.”

    “Yeah. Um, well, Mrs, really, but she’s divorced.”

    “Mm-hm. And your other referee, Jack? Dr George MacMurray?”

    Jack’s lean cheeks reddened. “Ya don’t wanna take any notice of that, Gail! I told the silly moo not to put it but by then she’d done it! That’s George, her brother. Met him in a pub. Really decent joker—well, he’s a lecturer at one of your universities, but he knows one end of a hammer from the other. Started off on the shop floor, then he did some study, but he went back as supervisor, worked with ordinary blokes for years until his ex, she made him take this poncy lecturing job. Only like I say, I met him in a pub: never done any work for him at all. Only she reckoned ya hadda have two, um, whassnames. Uh—referees,” he said, looking at the top of the page Gail had been looking at. “Sounds like a footy match, eh?”

    “Yeah, I’ve always thought that!” she agreed with a laugh. “Well, that’s what they call a personal referee, Jack, it’s okay to put them if you haven’t got another recent one you’ve worked for. Christie’ll probably ring him. But it might be a good idea if you could give us a name and number of someone you’ve worked for in New Zealand, too.”

    “Shit, ya mean they’re gonna make a toll-call?” he croaked. “Well, yeah, sure. Hang on.” His pocket diary was in the back pocket of his jeans. “Um… Brian Jones, really nice house up Castor Bay, did ’is conservatory for ’im, that the sorta thing ya need? Um, dunno what numbers ya gotta dial first to get New Zealand, though. Um, it’d be an Auckland number. Shall I write it on the thing?”

    “Yeah, why not?” said Gail comfortably. “And put ‘conservatory,’ then whoever calls’ll know what to ask him. Got any more?”

    “Loads. Lessee… Only built a playhouse for Mrs Lavender—funny name, eh? Ya won’t want—”

    “For the children? But that’s exactly that sort of thing we do want!” cried Gail, beaming at him.

    Jack scratched his head. “Shit, any competent jobbing builder could put one of them up for ya with both hands tied behind ’im, Gail.”

    “Yes, but what builder is available to take on that sort of job? Go on, put her down!”

    He wrote down Mrs Lavender’s name and phone number, adding “Birkenhead, Auckland” and “Playhouse” and watched with interest as Gail wrote “(cubby)” after the last.

    “That’s not what ya call ’em over here, is it?”

    “That’s right,” she agreed, grinning.

    “Blow me down flat! Cubby, eh? We got ‘cubby-hole’, but I never heard of ‘cubby’ before! Um, want more? –Okay. Lessee… Built a whole house for Steve Wilson—um, ya better put ‘Dr’, ’cos that’s what he is, actually, only he’s a decent joker, told me to call ’im Steve. Lives way up the Hibiscus Coast, ya won’t of heard of it. North Auckland. They got a nice medical centre there: works there, ya see. Puriri. Um, I better spell it for ya, it’s a Maori word: P,U,R,I,R,I. Um, this here’s his mobile number, Gail.” He read it out and watched dubiously as she wrote it down. “Dunno if you can even ring it from here; I mean, it’s not like ringing Auckland, eh? I better give you the surgery number, I got that, too.”

    “He wouldn’t have an email, would he?” asked Gail with a smile, having noted it down.

    “Nah—well probably has, yeah, only I was never into that. See, before me ex left me—no, well, to be strictly honest, here, before she lost interest in the business and went into buying and selling houses for herself—she used to do the books on her computer. Never been able to figure the things out, meself.”

    “They are quite logical, but it takes ages to get up to speed with the bloody things, and just when you think you’re on top of a program they bring out a new version. So half that time you spent learning up the old one was wasted,” said Gail drily.

    “Yeah, that’s the impression I got,” agreed Jack gratefully. “Well, that do ya?”

    “Yeah, that’s great, Jack. Finished your coffee? –Good-oh. Well, I think that’s all we need, thanks. Someone’ll be in touch very soon,” she said with her friendly grin, picking up the papers on the table and getting up.

    Jack stumbled to his feet. “Christie?”

    Gail’s eyes twinkled just a little. “Didn’t you like her?’

    “No!” he gasped. “I mean, ’course I liked her, I thought she was a very nice girl! Um, smart and that. Um, only she sort of didn’t seem to know all that much about the sort of stuff I’ve done!” he gulped.

    “No, she hasn’t been with the firm very long: used to work for a place that specialises in office workers—clerks, data-input personnel—you know. Well, it might be her or one of the others, depending whose job it is,” she said nicely.

    “Right,” agreed Jack foggily.

    “All the consultants take it in turns to do the interviews but as well they all help manage the jobs that come in. They talk to the client and find the right person for the job, see?”

    “I getcha. Oh: RightSmart! Clever, eh?”

    “Yep: we find the right person and get the job done right smart for you!” said Gail with a laugh.

    “Yeah, and you are smart,” replied Jack seriously.

    “Gotta be, in this business, Jack. –Oh, do you know what bus to catch to get home?”

    “Well, not actually, no,” admitted Jack gratefully. “I know I gotta head into the city first, though. Then I can get another bus from Circular Quay: I’ll be right once I get that far.”

    “Mm.” Gail flipped open the writing-pad that Christie had left behind and found a blank sheet. “You can catch one from just down the road, but they’re bloody infrequent on that route. You need to go one block over.” She drew a neat little plan and explained.

    “Got it. Turn left when I come out the front door, eh? Ta for everything, Gail.”

    “No worries!” replied Gail cheerfully, holding out her hand.

    Gratefully Jack shook it, though not without wondering whether it was because she was a Les that she said that, ’cos so far he’d only heard blokes say it.

    Gail made sure he was headed in the right direction for the lift and then strolled without haste down the corridor to Christie’s office. She was on the phone: Gail just leaned in the doorway until she’d finished.

    “What did you think, Gail?” she asked on a hopeful note.

    “Dunno what you were worried about: I’d say he’s technically what your side’d call a lovely man,” she replied on sardonic note.

    Christie went very red. “I never said he wasn’t nice!”

    No, but she had said she couldn’t get a thing out of him. “You need to communicate with them on their wavelength, Christie,” she said in a kinder tone. “Don’t think of blokes like Jack as interviewees, just imagine you’re talking to your dad or one of your uncles.”

    Christie swallowed. “Oh.”

    “Well, if that was your dad that collected you the day we had that frightful storm and the bloody trains weren’t running—”

    “Yes! You know perfectly well it was!”

    “Yeah. Like him. –Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. But you were perfectly right to hand him on to me.”

    Christie sagged visibly. “Oh, good,” she said limply.

    “Uh-huh. If in doubt, always ask,” said Gail kindly. “Not asking is the mark of a moron,” she added, less kindly.

    “As a matter of fact Dad says that!” she admitted with a silly smile.

    “Thought he looked like a sensible bloke,” conceded Gail.

    “Yeah, um, so—so do you want me to put Jack on the books?”

    “After you’ve done a reference check on the three that I’ve marked, yes. The Aussie one at the Uni of Technology’s only a personal reference but I want it checked anyway, okay? And don’t spend too long chatting to Mrs Lavender of Birkenhead, Auckland, about the cubby he built for her kiddies, will you?”

    Christie gave a gasp. “A cubby? But that’s exactly what Mrs Haskell wants!”

    Quite. Gail eyed her drily. “Mm. Better hop to it, then.”

    “Right! Thanks awfully, Gail!”

    “No worries.” With this Gail handed her the paperwork and ambled down the corridor to her own office. The label on the door didn’t say “Placement Consultant” as Christie’s did, it said “CEO”. Gail, in fact, was RightSmart. Her life-partner also had money in the firm but Gail, after a series of co-executive-directors who for one reason or another—marriage, allergy to hard work, whatever—hadn’t worked out, now ran the whole show and its team of placement consultants, all of whom were firmly under her extremely capable thumb.

    Mrs Haskell was a really nice lady—quite young, she had two little kiddies—and Jack had really enjoyed building her a so-called “cubby”. The reason the husband couldn’t do it himself was that he was a helpless sort of bloke that worked in an office and in any case they were always sending him overseas, places like Tokyo or Bangkok. Christ knew what the firm did—she had said but Jack wasn’t any the wiser: it had sounded like engineering but it wasn’t, it was corporate something—corporate bullshit, was George’s translation when he told him about it—but anyway, the husband was a dead loss. Just a youngish joker, too. When he was home he mostly seemed to spend his weekends playing golf. Well, certainly didn’t mow the lawn: Mrs Haskell paid a bloke called Steve to do that, every second Tuesday. He was okay, didn’t do a stroke more than what he had to but at least he didn’t skimp on the job. Used his flaming whipper-snipper for half the stuff that Jack would of said needed a mower, but it seemed to work okay. Well, meant the lawn needed mowing every second Tuesday—yeah. The husband didn’t skim the leaves off the bloody swimming-pool, either, she paid another bloke to do that. Every Thursday, cripes! Well, yeah, they had a lot of trees near the pool and yeah, gum trees were evergreen, they dropped stuff continuously instead of just in winter—not only leaves, either, great strips of bark—but heck! Nice work if ya could get it! Jack had thought, when she said Kane was coming to do the pool today, maybe he was a schoolkid, gonna do it after school, but no, it was a real job and he had clients all over the flasher suburbs of Sydney. The rest of the garden Mrs Haskell did partly herself, she was keen but didn’t know all that much about it, and partly she paid yet another bloke to do. Mike: he came Wednesday and Friday mornings. He didn’t need clients all over Sydney, because he looked after the gardens all up and down the Haskells’ street.

    Little Bobby Haskell was about seven and really keen on basketball but his dad didn’t spend his weekends showing him how to chuck a ball through his hoop. Not the weekend that Jack had spent working on the playhouse, anyway. And Janey Haskell was only four and as cute as all get out but that didn’t mean Mr Haskell had time to have a tea party in the half-finished playhouse with her. What the fuck had the man had them for? Well, no, it wasn’t an uncommon syndrome in other circles, either, but Christ, he wasn’t doing double shifts at the meatworks or holding down a second job as night watchman to pay off the bloody mortgage, was he? He had the time to spend with his kids, why wasn’t he doing it? When it wasn’t golf it was his yacht or, get this, backgammon. Belonged to a club for it. Sunday arvo was their preferred time for getting together to play it. All youngish blokes, around his age. Sometimes the other wives came over with their kids and had a bit of afternoon tea with her and her kids, those Sundays. Self-defence: yeah.

    Anyway, it had been a good job and Mrs Haskell was very nice and he’d enjoyed doing it. And Bobby and wee Janey were thrilled with it. So when Christie from RightSmart found him another job straight away he was really pleased and took it, no questions asked. Muggins that he was. Well, the work was okay, yeah. Dismantling a shed—Mrs Stevenson called it a cabana but a shed was what it was—and building a rose arbour with trellises on the spot. She had a picture of what she wanted, she’d found it in a magazine and none of the garden centres or the garden designers and specialist conservatory builders she’d tried would do what she wanted. Well, it was reasonably fancy and they’d all tried to sell her one of their standard designs instead, but heck, you could buy loads of nice trellis at the timber supplies joints, or even at some of the garden centres themselves, the Aussies seemed really keen on trellis. So he got on with it.

    The first blow fell some time after morning smoko time on the first day. During the previous job he’d sort of got used to nice little Mrs Haskell coming out and telling him it was time for smoko, at which point they’d go into the kitchen and have it together—Steve or Kane or Mike as well, of course, if it was one of their days. Usually gave them a bite of something, too, maybe a nice sweet muffin, or buttered English muffins with jam, or even cake. One day she’d only had plain biscuits and had apologised for them. Really nice lady, ya know? Anyway, by the time he looked at his watch it was well past smoko time. So Muggins went round to the back door and tapped.

    After quite some time it opened. It wasn’t Mrs Stevenson, it was a sallow-faced middle-aged dame in an overall that looked down her nose at him and said: “Yes?”

    “I was wondering if there’d be a cuppa going,” said Jack meekly. “Could boil the jug up for meself, if it’s a bother,” he added quickly.

    “I’ll have to okay it with Mrs Stevenson,” she warned.

    “Uh—yeah, sure. Do that,” he said feebly, wondering if a bloke was allowed to take a leak in the place, at all.

    “Wait here,” she ordered, shutting the door on him. Jesus! What’d she think he was gonna do, nick the teaspoons? He waited.

    The door eventually did open again, though he’d begun to think it wasn’t gonna. “You can come in, but take your boots off,” she ordered.

    “Yeah. All right,” said Jack feebly, taking his boots off. “Um, the ground’s pretty dry,” he offered.

    “Mrs Stevenson doesn’t want dirt on her floors.”

    Okay, she didn’t. He trudged after her. It was a huge kitchen: all white, even the floor.

    “I can give you one mug of plain tea or coffee,” she said grimly. “Don’t ask for the Earl Grey or the expresso coffee.”

    “Wouldn’t dream of it. Mind if I use your toilet while you’re making it?”

    She drew a deep breath. “It isn’t mine, it’s hers. You can use the staff one, and mind you flush it after you. And don’t leave the seat up!”

    Cripes, she was as bad as bloody Rosalie! “What is it with you women and lav seats?” said Jack heavily.

    Reddening, she retorted in a sort of vicious hiss: “It’s not me, it’s her! She inspects it!”

    Oh, cripes. “Right, goddit. So can I know your name? I’m Jack.”

    “Mrs Fitzgerald, to you. I’m the cook-housekeeper.”

    “Right. Got a first name?” said Jack limply.

    “Mrs Stevenson doesn’t like the outdoor staff using it. Kathleen,” she said grimly.

    “Why in Hell do ya go on working for her?” he croaked.

    “It’s a job, and I’ve got a husband with a bad back, and three teenage kids still at home, and a granddaughter with cystic fibrosis, if ya must know. I can’t afford to be out of work and if I left her she’d never give me a reference. And it is well paid. I could ask why you’re working for her.”

    “I’m technically working for RightSmart and they didn’t warn me. And it’s a job,” said Jack drily.

    “There you are, then,” replied Kathleen Fitzgerald with a sort of grim satisfaction. “It’s down that corridor, first on the left and if she asks, I showed ya to it and stood outside listening to every drop, in case you thought you might nip up the passage and nick her antiques that aren’t nailed down or alarmed to Kingdom Come: goddit?”

    “Yeah, ta,” said Jack, tottering out.

    That was about as friendly as he ever got with Kathleen Fitzgerald, even though he saw her every day, usually twice a day, for smoko. Not at lunchtime: twice was about all he could take: Mrs Stevenson didn’t let her waste her time gossiping with the outside staff, unquote. He knocked off for lunch and, since the neighbourhood was too fancy to have a pub and the nearest little dairy was half a mile away, usually went down the road and round the corner, hopped on a bus and hopped off at the first stop near a shop that sold food. It was a fairly long journey and since the shop was a little convenience store he usually ended up buying a pie: they didn’t do sandwiches but they had a microwave they’d bung the pie in for you. Charged for the privilege, mind, and for the tomato sauce if you wanted a squeeze of that on it. There was just time to eat it and drink a Coke or something at the bus-stop at the other side of the road before the bus back arrived.

    The second blow was, of course, Mrs Stevenson herself. Particular? And a half! Looked like a sweet old white-haired granny, hah, bloody hah. Came out every bloody day, usually twice a day, to inspect. It was pointless, she didn’t understand what needed doing, but okay, if she wanted to pay him for his time while he tried to explain— Couldn’t see that if ya stuck an arbour on an uneven patch of ground with no foundations the thing’d fall over in the first storm. And fortunately George had wised him up about white ants and he’d then had a look at the regs, so he was able to say yeah, Mrs Stevenson, the posts did have to sit in them “metal holders,” and yeah, they did cost but it was them or have your fancy arbour eaten by white ants. And had she seen a verandah lately without said “metal holders”? –She wouldn’t have: all the done-up Sydney villas and fake “Federation” houses—that was what they called their Sydney lace stuff, Edwardian it was, really—all of them had them, he’d sussed them out. Then she wanted to know why, if he was going to all that amount of trouble with the foundations, the thing couldn’t sit on a slab. Jack had seen some of the Aussie builders at work on their slabs, so-called, by now. Disasters waiting to happen, more like. Well, they weren’t earthquake-prone here like back home, but heck, when ya looked at the map, Newcastle, where they’d had a shocker well within living memory, was only up the coast a bit! Well, distances were huge in Australia but it was like saying to someone that lived in Gisborne, “You don’t need an earthquake-proof house, ’cos Napier, that was completely flattened by one in 1931, is only round the coast a bit.” Jesus! Anyway, what ya did with the slabs was, see, ya got your grader in and first having carefully removed every skerrick of topsoil and carted it off to somewhere the owners’d never see it again, you graded the site into submission, flat as a pancake and compacted to Hell and gone, never mind if it was solid clay, then you poured ten centimetres or so of concrete on ’er and Bob was yer uncle. Then you bolted your uprights onto that and in the first earthquake the whole thing fell over sideways ’cos there was no give in— Yeah. Anyway, slabs were the go, over here. So he explained very carefully that if he put the arbour on a slab she wouldn’t be able to plant her roses anywhere except round the outside, and hadn’t she said she specially wanted some inside with grass as well? –Yeah. Grass didn’t grow too well on slabs but if she wanted more of a gazebo thing— That was the magic word, and that was exactly what she didn’t want and she’d told such-and-such a firm and such-and-such another firm and— Yeah. Exactly.

    George was the type of bloke that if it was in print, he’d read it, even the cornflakes packet, so as he’d been in the granny flat when Jack had left the paperwork from RightSmart lying around, he’d read it. So he was able to point out: “Look, if the woman’s driving you bats and stopping you getting on with the job, tell RightSmart: they’re your employers, not her, and their bumf actually says in black and white to report any problems—”

    “She’s not that bad; I’ve had miles worse. At least she doesn’t keep changing her mind about what she actually wants.”

    “Not yet, ya mean. Has RightSmart got a copy of her final plan?”

    “Think so, yeah. Young Christie, she looked after all that.”

    “Mm.” George rubbed his chin, looking thoughtful. “I know you’re on an hourly rate: is it an hourly rate to the end client, too?”

    “They don’t show us contractors the agreements with the clients, but yeah, actually, ’tis: Gail explained it to me, when I said Mrs Haskell’s smokos were great only sometimes she’d keep ya talking for ages, poor little dame: lonely. Thought I might be wasting the firm’s dough, ya see.”

    Alone amongst the workforce of the twenty-first century! “Yeah,” said George, smiling at him. “Right. Well, they won’t be bothered, then, however long ya take. So long as ya can take it, if ya see what I mean!”

    “Um, well, they might, ’cos there is a deadline. Well, Gail said it wasn’t a deadline as such but it protects them and the client, ya see, if the contract’s only for a specified period.”

    “I get it. To be extended if the work’s gone good and you need a bit more time to finish, eh?”

    “Yeah, that’s it. But if she blahs on too long I just work a bit later.”

    Of course he did! “Right. Uh, this Gail, she sounds a decent type,” he said cautiously. “What’s she like?”

    “Thought I said? Bit like good ole dykey Helen. Runs the whole show, as well: had that wrong to start off with!” he reminded him cheerfully.

    “Yuh—uh yeah, your Prime Minister,” said George weakly. “No, um, obviously she’s extremely competent, but what’s she like, Jack? As a woman, I mean. Attractive?”

    Jack ran his hand through his short, silvered curls. “Ya got it all wrong, George!”

    “Aw, face like the back of a double-decker bus, then?” he said sadly.

    “No—I mean, not pretty, but not a bad looking woman, but she is one!”

    “Uh—oh!” he said with a shout of laughter. “Ya mean she’s gay? And here was me thinking the two of you might hit it off! Great balls of fire!”

    Jack looked at him drily. “Yeah, she’s got them, too.”

    Promptly George collapsed in an awful sniggering fit.

    “Yeah. Besides, the managing bit’d be enough to finish me off all on its ownsome: had some of that, ta,” said Jack, shuddering.

    George blew his nose. “Right. ’Course ya have. I’ll have to stop reading Mills & Boons, that’s what! But listen, if Mrs S. gets too bad, you tell Gail.”

    “I will, but she won’t,” replied Jack mildly.

    He was right, as it turned out, she didn’t get any worse. Well, when he got to the painting stage first she queried how many coats he was putting on the thing because he was wasting paint that she’d be invoiced for, and then she ordered him to put another coat on, but— Yeah.

    By now it was starting to look like something where you might plant a few roses, so Ken, who was the luckless bloke that did Mrs Stevenson’s garden, for his sins—she did a lot of the planting and weeding herself, and all of the planning, but Ken got to take orders and mow the lawn and do the heavy digging and turn the compost, that sorta stuff—Ken got quite interested and started wandering over to take a dekko and, so long as Mrs S. was well out of the way, have a bit of a chinwag. He’d been doing her garden for years, he was a bloke in his mid-fifties. And it was only at this stage, nearly at the end of the two-month contract, that Jack learned that there was a Mr Stevenson.

    “Yeah. Ya can just see his room from here,” said Ken, squinting up at the house—it was a big old-fashioned two-storeyed job with a red tiled roof, woulda been built in the Thirties, probably, and the garden was full of lovely old established trees and unexpected old-fashioned plants that you didn’t see much these days. “That one at the end, over to the right, see? If he’s up he’ll be lurking behind the Venetians with ’is binoculars. Her story is, he’s a birdwatcher.” He sniffed. “Ornithologist to you, my good man.”

    “She’s never actually called ya that, has she?” croaked Jack weakly.

    “Six times a week and twice on Sundays, mate!” replied Ken promptly. “Anyway, the old bloke’s a semi-invalid, ya see: got a little lift to take ’is wheelchair up and down: you seen that?”

    “Nah, never been in that part of the house.”

    “Right: ya might nick some of them nailed-down antiques of hers,” he agreed with a sniff. “He’s supposed to have really bad arthritis, dare say it’s true enough, but ’e might be incapacitated but ’e’s not incapable. He is a birdwatcher, but ’e’s a bird watcher, mate, if ya get me drift!” He winked, and turned to point away from the house. “See that big pink house, couple of sections over?”

    Jack peered. “Um… yeah. Fancy plastered job.”

    “Rendered to you, my good man,” replied Ken with satisfaction. “Yeah. Got them little towers and balconies and crap all over it, see? Belongs to a very fancy dame that doesn’t realise she’s putting on a show every arvo round three-ish for Ole Man Stevenson. The house is higher than its neighbours, s’pose she thinks none of them can see ’er. He got me to bring up a bottle from ’is cellar one day when the old bat was out playing bridge and she’d sent Mrs Fitzgerald down to bawl out her fancy butcher what wasn’t giving the service one would expect no more, my good man. So I take it up—used the little lift, why not? What the eye doesn’t see!” he said with a wink, “—and there’s the old codger in his wheelchair over by the window, glued to it, and ’e says, ‘Come over ’ere, Ken, and you’ll see a sight for sore eyes.’ So ’e hands me the binoculars, and crikey! There she was, large as life and twice as bloody natural, not a stitch on ’er, doing the aerobics stuff in front of ’er windows! Full-length poncy French windows with a little iron balcony, geddit? Best pair of knockers I’ve seen since me older brother, Russ, he got hold of a pic of Jayne Mansfield when ’e was about fourteen, used to charge us sixpence a look, the cunning bleeder,” he said with a reminiscent sigh. “Anyway, the filthy ’ole bastard, ’e says: ‘Better make hay while the sun shines,’ and bugger me! ’E’s getting it out, gonna pull it! So I left ’im to it. But I tell ya, mate, ya couldn’t blame ’im. Forty-inch, they’d of been. D-cup,” he said, sighing deeply.

    “Cripes,” said Jack in some awe, eyeing what little was visible of the pink house.

    “Ye-ah… I’ve scouted round, mate, but ’is room’s the only bloody place ya can see ’er from!” reported Ken bitterly.

    “Mm,” agreed Jack, trying not to laugh. “Pity, eh?”

    “I’ll say. Made my day, I can tell, ya, mate! Didn’t do me no good, mind you, ’cos I get home, frisky as buggery, and she knocks me back with: ‘The water bill’s come and that’s the last rosebush you’ll water this summer, Ken Clark, and I’m letting the spare room to me cousin Corinne’s kid while ’e does ’is course, and you can lump it!’”

    “They’re all the same,” said Jack sympathetically.

    “Tell us about it! –’E come, built like a ruddy tank, ate us out of ’ouse and ’ome and—get this—took these huge long showers ten times a week!”

    “Ten?” said Jack feebly.

    “Yep. Once a day, in the morning: meant no-one else couldn’t get near the bathroom, hadda get up at sparrow-fart to get over here on time, that or skip the shower entirely—that’s seven, right? Then every Friday night before ’e went out with ’is poncy mates: eight; Saturday arvo after ’is fucking footy game: nine; Saturday night before ’e went out with ’is poncy mates again: ten!”

    “Right. Me son, Keith, wasn’t that much better when ’e was a student, come to think of it.”

    “Yeah. But you didn’t have a water shortage, didja?”

    “Nope: plenty of water in New Zealand. So what happened, Ken: she give it away, tell ’im to sling ’is hook?”

    Ken sighed. “Eventually, yeah. Put ’is board up twice and had a flaming row with Corinne—yeah, go on, laugh,” he invited as Jack collapsed in splutters at last.

    It had brightened up the day, that was for sure—bit of a laugh, eh? Jack didn’t think much more of it. Only somehow when he got home that evening he was randy as Hell, couldn’t wait to get into Susan, made her put the nice tea she was making on hold—even though he knew they loathed it when ya did that—and hauled her off to the bedroom. And fucked like a buck rat—long and hard.

    “Sorry,” he said faintly, rolling off her at last.

    When he’d stopped panting Susan said cautiously: “That was a bit impersonal, wasn’t it? What’s up?”

    “Nothing,” replied Jack faintly. He took a deep breath. “Well, me: been stiff as buggery all arvo. Ole Ken, he told me a dirty story—well, mildly grubby. Must of got to me.”

    “What about?” she croaked.

    “Uh—well, nothing really, Suse. Turns out there’s a Mr Stevenson and ’e’s a bit of an old perve, wheelchair an’ all. Watches this dame a few doors over that likes to do her aerobics starkers, that’s all.”

    After a moment Susan said: “You mean you watched her?”

    “Eh? No! Rumoured to have big tits, that’s all. The idea must of got me turned on—sorry. Want me to do you, love?”

    “I don’t think I do, now, Jack. I do realise that when a man wants sex it’s immaterial who it’s with—”

    “I wouldn’t go that far!”

    “I would,” said Susan flatly. “As I say, I do understand that the basic drive takes over and you can’t help yourselves. But no wonder it felt impersonal!”

    “Basic drive,” said Jack sourly to himself as she got out of bed and vanished into the ensuite. “Yeah, something like that.” He looked at the closed door of the ensuite and made a face. “Shouldn’t of mentioned the big tits,” he admitted.

    She did come right—not to say come—later that evening, after she’d got a decent amount of tea inside her plus half a bottle of a very nice red—she'd forced the bloody ex to divvy up the contents of his cellar after he’d walked out on her with a twenty-five-year-old bimbo, and good on ’er. In fact she had a belting come kneeling on her fancy sitting-room rug—she’d got down there to see if an invisible-to-the-male-eye mark on it was a scorch mark from the log fire she’d had last winter, and since she was only wearing a fuzzy towelling dressing-gown he kind of seized the opportunity. Well, got down there, whipped the tail of the dressing-gown up and stuck his face in there, to be accurate. Whereupon Mrs Susan Pendleton let out a shriek to raise the dead. So he got on with it. He was bloody sure she enjoyed it. It wasn’t all that boring for him, either, so after he’d got the last twitch out of her he shoved the naked old man up there in all that wet and—Christ! Whipped it out and got her hand on it and—WHAM! Jesus!

    “Holy shit,” he concluded after a certain period had passed with a lot of panting on both sides.

    Susan gave a smothered giggle. “Two in how many hours, Jack?”

    Yeah, well, he did know that a bit of cunnilingus softened them up like nobody’s biz, but crikey! Bit far from the “basic drive” and “impersonal” stuff, wasn’t it?

    “It’s your fault, why’d ya have to be so wet up there?” he murmured.

    Susan just gave a smug giggle.

    After this episode, and one or two more a bit like it, it was all the more surprising that the Mrs Garven incident should have occurred.

    Mrs Garven was what’d probably technically be described as a nubile red-head in her maturer years. She wanted a cabana put up by her pool. A shed, right. It was gonna have this, that and the other. A shed with fancy awnings—like that. Built-in benches? Okay, she was the boss. Built-in benches. Room for a day-bed? Look, the flaming pool was surrounded by sun-loungers, giant swing-seats, day-beds and any type of how’s-your-father you cared to mention, barring your actual basic deckchair. But okay, if that was the size she wanted it, so be it. There’d be room for a day-bed.

    “Yeah, it’s possible, Christie, but what’s it for?” he asked after they’d jointly interviewed the client and seen what the job entailed.

    Christie gave a loud giggle. “Don’t ask, Jack! She’s ready to pay for it, that’s all we need to know!”

    Right. Goddit. She also wanted it by the day before yesterday but she’d get it when it was done and not before.

    The first day was okay: he spent most of it buying materials and taking them over there in the hired ute that RightSmart was making Mrs Garven pay full whack for. Though one of his fellow-contractors that he sometimes bumped into in the reception area had now told Jack that they got a discount from the rental-car place.

    Second day he was working on it out by the pool, measuring and pegging out, when out she came in a tiny green bikini and the most glorious pair of knockers he’d seen since a certain issue of Playboy hit the streets in its sealed plastic packet back when he was still young enough to have to buy it instead of doing Cindy Roberts in the back of Dad’s beat-up second-hand Austin or Marg Coster in the back of her dad’s brand-new— Uh, yeah. Jack did try not to gawp with his eye on stalks, but it didn’t seem to be working. He wasn’t under any illusion that Mrs Garven would ever see forty again, but cripes! She was tall; on a shorter woman you might’ve said them thighs were too hefty and maybe the hips were too meaty and the tummy was too, um, tummyish, gulp, for a bikini, but she was tall enough to get away with it. He was six-foot-two himself but she must be nearly that in her high-heeled sandals.

    She gave him a coy wave, kind of wiggling a bit, kicked the sandals off and dived into the pool. Just as well, ’cos if she’d stood there one minute longer— Yeah. He got on with it, firmly turning his back on the pool.

    After quite a bit of swimming she came up and asked how it was going, sort of patting herself in a perfunctory way with a towel—Australia was bloody warm and they were well into summer now, you wouldn’t actually need to dry off after a swim. Jack had been expecting this, more or less, so he was able to reply with something relatively coherent. More or less. She seemed very pleased, reminded him to come inside for a cup of coffee whenever he felt like it, batted the mascara-ed eyelashes—all the make-up must be waterproof, none of it had come off, not even the shiny lipstick that made them wide, full lips look extremely rubbery and in fact more like the lips of— Uh, yeah.

    “Yeah, ta, a cup of coffee’d go down good in a bit, Mrs Garven,” he croaked.

    Smiling coyly, she cooed: “Call me Desirée. I’ll expect you, then, Jack,” and wiggled off. Cripes!

    Jack found he was sweating and he didn’t think it was just the Aussie sun.

    He didn’t go in for a smoko but she called him in anyway; but as she was now wearing a brightly coloured long thing with slits up the sides to about three inches below where the panties would have come to if she had of been wearing any, which he, Jack Jackson, would take his dying oath she wasn’t, he was more or less able to get through it, given that the woman kept looking at his hard-on and smiling.

    She hadda go out in the arvo so she just left him to it. Leaving the sliding doors to the patio unlocked so as he could use the bog and the kitchen. Could of nipped in and nicked the fancy crap she’d put in her huge modern fancy house, eh? But Gail from RightSmart had explained they were mostly like that: when they asked for somebody ten to one they’d act as if it was gonna be Jack the Ripper and the Great Train Robbers combined, then when the person had actually started it was open slather and in two seconds flat they were telling you their life stories and giving you the run of the house and in certain known cases, going out leaving hundreds of dollars lying around loose on the dressing-table or desk or leaving the ruddy safe open! Mrs Stevenson being an exception to the usual rule. And don’t ask her, Gail, what prompted them to assume that RightSmart’s contractors were a cross between their favourite hairdresser and an old family retainer!

    The next few days were more of the same. To pretty much the point of unbearable, yeah. Well, the cabana was going good: no preparation to do, to speak of, just check the levels of the pool surround, and bung it up. See, what it basically was, was a colour-steel shed, only he was gonna line it, bung some cabana-like louvered shutters on it and since a louvered double door was what she fancied, put in one of those. Then paint the whole thing pale cream to match the rendering on the house and since bright white was what she fancied for the louvers, use up a few spray cans on them. Well, strictly speaking he’d do them before he put them up, miles easier. Just in case cream and white might be dead boring Mrs Garven had decided that all the mouldings and sills hadda be very pale pink and the thing hadda have a very pale pink shingled roof. Well, okay, he was capable of faking up a little gable on top of your basic colour-steel shed, no sweat. Then she was gonna have a couple of pink frangipanis, brighter, in pots to either side of the thing, see! Okay, whatever turned you on. And he could put up with it, could he? Ouch!

    After the plans had been approved Jack had had a session with Christie just to finalise everything and he’d reported this final titbit to her and she’d said seriously: “Yes, a lot of ladies have things done when their husbands are overseas, Jack. He’s a top-flight civil engineer with a big construction company, he’s gone to Dubai, and she could’ve gone with him and stayed in a lovely modern hotel, but it’s the Middle East, you see, so she wouldn’t. Don’t worry, we’ve got her signature on everything, we’ll get paid.” Okay, so be it. But he’d rather not be a fly on the wall when Mr Garven got back from Dubai, ta all the same.

    The linings were in and he was working on the built-in bench which she’d decided hadda have drawers under it when a throaty voice said from the doorway: “It’s such a hot day, Jack, would you like a beer instead of a coffee this morning.”

    “Uh—yeah, ta, Mrs—um, Desirée,” said Jack feebly.

    “Ooh, it’s looking lovely already!” she cooed. “Those drawers will roll out easily, will they?”

    “Yeah, these modern runners are a breeze. Come on, ya wanna try them?” He demonstrated, tit that he was. She came over and squatted down beside him, oh, cripes! Today she was in very short yellow shorts, high-heeled sandals, again, and two other garments, one of which was an extremely skimpy pink singlet—shoestring straps, those were called—it came to just above the waist whereas the shorts came to just below the tummy-button, gulp. And the other of which wasn’t there to hold ’em up because it wasn’t doing that: it had shoestring straps as well, take something more like a crane to hold them pair up. Purple, it was. ’Bout the same shade as his face felt it had gone, to be strictly accurate. Purple with bits of lace on it. You could see right down it as she squatted there peering at the drawers. Ooh, yum!

    “Mm-mm,” she said, pulling a drawer in and out, ooh, Christ! Jesus, it was agony, Ivy! “Mm-mm. Doesn’t it go in and out smoothly? Mm-mm!”

    Jack stumbled to his feet. “Yeah. Well, how’s about that beer?” he croaked.

    Whatever he’d said or done, he was to reflect later, would’ve had the same result. Desirée smiled up at him and said: “Sure! Help me up, then, Jack!” And held out a hand. She then let him haul her up bodily and let herself fall against him.

    Well, heck, he was normal, and the bloody woman had been giving him the eye for a week, now! Jack gave in and kissed her. After that he didn’t have to do anything else, really: she had his tee-shirt, jeans and underpants off him before you could say “knife” and was sucking his old man. Possibly other blokes could resist that, but Jack bloody well couldn’t, especially when a dame did it without being asked. Ya could of said he was putty in Mrs Desirée Garven’s hands from that moment on. So to speak. Funnily enough there was a condom in the pocket of them yellow shorts, fancy that. So they did it right away on a big sun-lounger. She wanted him on top, well, gee, he was up for that, and wanted him to do it slo-ow-ly—right, like the drawers. He did do it slowly for a bit only then she started shoving herself up and down on it yelling rude words, so he did it a bit quicker and then she just made noises so he kept that rhythm up and then she clawed his shoulders to blazes and came with a terrific shriek, so he—WHAM! Christ! Jesus! GOD! …Jesus.

    “So you’re a screamer when you’re coming, Jack!” she concluded with a throaty gurgle, once they were both more or less breathing normally again.

    “Yeah, hah, hah,” said Jack with a sheepish grin. “Not the only one, eh?”

    “Mm,” she replied in a very vague voice, looking at his old man. “What? Oh! Yes! –You have got a nice big cock, Jack, sweetie!”

    “Uh—yeah, thought you’d noticed that, Desiree?”

    “No! Silly!” replied Mrs Garven with a girlish giggle, bashing his thigh. “Not when it’s relaxed.”

    Right: this would be the first time it had been like that in her company, yep.

    After that they took it from there. On the sun-lounger again, in the big swing—fun, if dangerous—on the shaggy rug in her “family-room”—twice the size of the average EnZed suburban house, yeah. On the big sofa in ditto, her on top, kind of propped on her elbows, with most of her torso glued to his. She always seemed to like to be on top on the sofa. Them tits dangled on your chest like nobody’s biz, it was quite exciting, actually. Well, too exciting, really. So she decided to pace it, her form of pacing being a sixty-nine. Okay, so be it, that was pacing. He wouldn’t of said it had a calming effect, exactly. They also did it upstairs in her bed: huge, about the size of your average rugby field, so there was plenty of room for manoeuvring. And in the ensuite: she liked having the old piece of meat shoved up her while he kind of propped her against the wall of the shower, but didn’t come for him like that unless he fiddled with the clit with his finger as well. Well, goodness, when he fiddled with it she mewed, on top of everything else! She did have, he discovered when he was looking for tissues, quite a variety of implements and aids in her bedside cabinet, but though she said they could if he wanted to, he personally didn’t see the point of tying the other person up to the bed with handcuffs. At which she admitted that neither did she, but Paul liked to handcuff her and do her like that after he’d had a little snort of Coke.

    Jack made a face. “Needs that to get it up, does ’e?”

    “Well, not always. Just sometimes. But now that they’ve invented Viagra, that really helps!”

    Right. Poor bloody moo. And, come to think of it, poor joker. That in his bed and he needed help to do ’er? Other people’s lives, eh? He hadn’t been going to torture himself with guilt over Desirée anyway, she was so bloody keen, but after that revelation he never gave the guilts so much as a single, solitary, passing mental glance. You were a bloody long time dead.

    A trifle unfortunately Desirée’s keenness for doing it on the sun-lounger meant that he got some sunburn in very odd places that he had to hide from Susan or explain away, not very convincingly. Also Desirée’s just all-round keenness meant that he was getting home rather late because he hadda make up the hours, wouldn’t of been fair to RightSmart not to put in a full day’s work, and rather shagged out and didn’t always fancy Susan. Well, Desirée’s tits were just so much better, and them wide hips compared to Susan’s bony ones; and that tummy turned him on like crazy: in fact one day, they were fooling around, it was a very hot afternoon, and she’d ordered him to knock off because it was far too hot to work outside, and the air-con wasn’t coping that well with the humidity, he found he could come real quick just looking at the tummy and pulling himself. Desirée didn’t mind at all, in fact she reciprocated, so to speak. Not his tummy, no, something a bit lower down. Just liked looking at blokes’ equipment, eh, didn’t even have to be stiff for her to get all turned on? Well, good on ’er. After she’d come she had a good long bawl against his shoulder and told him a lot about flaming Paul that frankly he’d rather not of known, but there. We were all human. He told her a few things about bloody Rosalie he’d never told a soul, too.

    After that, as it was still incredibly bloody humid—he’d thought Auckland was bad but when Sydney turned it on it she really turned it on—they filled the big bath with cool water and turned them spa jets on and got into it with cans of very cold Foster’s and just stayed there for ages, sipping and relaxing. Actually it was one of the nicest evenings he’d ever spent. She wanted him to have some steak and salad and stay the night, but though of course him and Susan hadn’t agreed on anything, let alone not to see anyone else, he had a strong feeling she’d notice and be suspicious and annoyed if he didn’t come home at all, so he didn’t stay.

    And much good it did him. The next day Desirée had tennis all afternoon and then a dinner date with some mates, so he got home at a reasonable hour. Susan came over to the granny flat about ten minutes after he’d got in, looking very casual. Jack did know enough about women to be very wary when they got that look on their dials, ta.

    “Do you feel like steak, Jack? We could have a barbie, if you like.”

    “Yeah, um, later, eh? Too hot to eat, really, isn’t it?”

    “Mm. Why don’t you have a shower?”

    Well, he’d been gonna, but see, if he did that it was ten to one she’d wander in after him and spot that new streak of sunburn on the bum—he’d thought it had been miles too early in the morning for the sun to get that hot, but no, this was Australia—and the new scratches on the shoulders that had happened round about the time Desirée was flat on the sun-lounger shrieking: “Fuck me, Jack!” and he was pumping like crazy, yelling: “JESUS! God! I’m gonna come, Des—can ya?” Words to that effect.

    “Give a bloke time, thought I might finish this here beer, first. Want one?”

    “Not really, it’s too hot and sticky for beer,” said Susan, with a sigh, pulling at the front of her sleeveless blouse. This would of been a lot more effective if she’d of had the equipment under it that Desirée had, but nevertheless Jack found he could work up a flicker.

    “Yeah. Well, why don’tcha nip back into the house and have a nice cool bath in the air-con?” he said, tit that he was.

    “I might,” said Susan looking at him hopefully. “So will you come over?”

    “You’re buying too much steak for me, love.”

    “No, well, you can bring some beer!”

    Jack gave in. Well, shit, she was there, and she obviously wanted it, and he was here and beginning to feel he wanted it, and that casual look on her dial had probably only been because she wanted sex and was too nice to come right out and say so. “Yeah. I’ll be over in a bit, then,” he said, swallowing a yawn.

    “Good. I will have a cool bath, I just can’t stand this humidity,” said Susan, plucking at the blouse again and going.

    He gave her a good fifteen minutes, by which time he calculated the bath would of had time to relax her, and went over. Well, that was promising: too humid for beer or not, she was sitting in the bath surrounded by them floating leaves she went in for with a glass of bubbly in ’er fist and one of them stinky candles of hers going on the vanity. Well, vanity, it was long enough for fourteen women to do their faces at it, but—yeah.

    “Feeling better, are ya, pet?”

    “Much better, it was such a good idea of yours, Jack!”

    “Yeah,” he said, grinning like a tit, the deluded tit that he was. “Might join you! Rescue you if them leaves look like going up rude places, eh?”

    Susan gave a loud giggle so he tore his clothes off and got in.

    “Ooh!” she squeaked with another giggle—the fizz going to her head, talk about your one-pot screamers!

    “Yeah: tends to do that if I get into a bath with a naked woman that looks as good as you. Wouldn’t like to give me a wee wash, wouldja?”

    “Are you dirty, though?” replied Susan with another giggle.

    “Very dirty,” said Jack, poking his tongue out just a wee bit at her. He’d discovered if ya did that she turned purple and got wet as Hell down there. Well, she’d turned purple, all right! And was grabbing up one of her big fancy sponges—real sea sponges, never mind the environment she was always going on about protecting, sea sponges imported from the other side of the world didn’t count, apparently—and starting in to soap his chest. So Jack grabbed a flannel and started doing her chest. This made her get really giggly, he’d known it would, and she got very daring and without having to be prompted started soaping his prick and balls.

    “Oh, Jeez,” sighed Jack, leaning back and closing his eyes and just letting her get on with it. “Yeah, do that, lovey, do that… Aw, cripes, that’s good, Susan, aw, ooh, yeah, keep doing that, lovey…” She kept doing it for quite some time: until, in fact, he just grabbed her and sat her on top of him. “Come on!” he gasped, trying to adjust her.

    “Without protection?” said Susan faintly.

    “Look, let’s face it, Susan, you’re not gonna get preggy, ya told me yaself you haven’t had a period for months, and I haven’t got anything catching, ’cos I haven’t done it without a condom since Kingdom Bloody Come, and will ya come on? It’s killing me!”

    “Me, too!” said Susan on a gasp. “Oh! Jack!” she screeched as he finally manoeuvred himself into position and got up there.

    “Christ!” gasped Jack, turning purple, “I am gonna come! Oh, Suse, oh, Suse!” She wasn't heavy, so he just grabbed her under the arms and moved her up and down on him, oh, God, that was good, oh, God oh, Christ— “Oh, God, oh—GOD!” WHAM! Jesus! GOD! …Jesus. Phew!

    “Give ya one—’na minute,” he mumbled. Experimentally he bit her ear.

    “Oh, Jack!” she gasped, clutching at him. Hurriedly he fiddled with her clit and she let out a high-pitched squeal like she usually did when he did that—which didn’t mean she’d ever ask him to do it, silly moo—and jigged up and down like crazy and came with a sort of high-pitched whistling shriek. Very satisfactory.

    So the bubbly had all been drunk and she’d changed the water—okay, she was particular, but he didn’t stop her, it was her water bill—and she’d added a few more of them leaves and decided to light another stinky candle, so she got out and did that, and then she decided to wash him properly, so he obligingly moved down the bath a bit and she got in behind him and—

    “What are these scratches on your shoulders?” she gasped.

    “Uh—well, dunno. Ask yaself,” replied Jack easily, tit that he was.

    “Jack, my nails couldn’t— These scratches are ten centimetres long!”

    “Um, well, you must of.”

    “I didn’t! And you’re sunburnt right down here, too!” she discovered, prodding at his buttocks.

    “Must’ve been bent over working in the sun,” he lied easily.

    “Wearing those jeans of yours? They don’t ride down like that!”

    Ouch. “Look, drop it, will ya? Do I interrogate you about every odd mark you got? I been working in the sun—”

    Susan scrambled out of the bath. “That’s a lie, Jack Jackson! And all those times you’ve been late home—there’s someone else, isn’t there?”

    “No,” he lied crossly, very red. “Just drop it, can't ya?”

    “How did you meet her?” she snapped. “Not at Mrs Garton’s, I presume!”

    “Eh? I haven’t been working for a Mrs Garton,” he said feebly.

    “You have! You told me yourself! Mrs Garton, over at Double Bay! George was at school with her son, Simon!”

    “Um, not at Double Bay.”

    “You said Double Bay!”

    “No, bit farther over. The bus lets me off at Double Bay, ya can’t get nearer by public transport, have to walk the rest of the way. The name isn’t Garton, it’s Garven: Mrs G—”

    “That awful woman?” she gasped. “Paul Garven’s wife?”

    Oh, boy. “She’s a lady that wants a cabana thingy by the pool, that’s all—‘

    “And the rest! She’s a notorious man-eater! How could you, Jack? She’s slept with half of Sydney behind Paul Garven’s back!”

    Jack was now very flushed. He stood up in the bath, angrily conscious that a bloke did not look his most convincing standing up stark, bollock naked in a lady’s bath, limp as that damp flannel she’d dropped. “Look, shut up, ya not me ruddy wife! I might of done the woman—so what? She threw herself at me and by all accounts the husband’s bloody—”

    Bursting into angry tears, Susan rushed out.

    “—useless,” finished Jack lamely. “Bugger.”

    “Just come into my office, would you, Jack?” said Gail neutrally.

    Glumly Jack stumbled up and followed her down the passage to her office.

    “What’s the trouble?” she said bluntly as soon as he’d sat down. “Christie says you’re leaving us.”

    “Um, yeah. Thought I might try Western Australia for a bit,” he mumbled.

    “Why?” demanded Gail baldly. “We were under the impression you liked working for RightSmart.”

    “I do!” he said desperately. “The jobs have been good, Gail, and I really appreciate the chance!”

    “But?”

    “No buts, really,” he muttered.

    Swallowing a sigh, Gail got the job file up on her computer. “According to this that last job went really well. Christie spoke to the client and she was really pleased.”

    So she oughta be, he’d given the woman enough comes. But the cabana had turned out okay—yeah. “Yeah. Well, wouldn’t of painted the roof pink meself, but that was what she wanted.”

    The helpful Christie had suggested they attach digitised pictures of their contractors’ work to the job files for practical jobs like this, as their database software would handle it, so Gail clicked on the picture icon. Her lips twitched as her screen filled with a picture of Mrs Garven’s cabana in all its white-louvered, pink-roofed glory. How in God’s name had he attached that giant roll-up awning? –Don’t ask, just be thankful he hadn’t jibbed at the idea, or, indeed, at the whole idea of a poolside cabana with shutters and whatever the other nonsense had been.

    “Mm. So what’s gone wrong?”

    “Um—nothing,” said Jack, very red. “Um, well, ya know I've been living in a lady’s granny flat, eh?”

    They did have over five thousand contractors on their books—not all of them employed simultaneously, true—but in this instance, she did recall the point. “Yes.” She got his file up. “Yes, a Mrs Susan Pendleton. She gave you a reference, that’s right.”

    “Yeah, well, she won’t give me another, I can tell ya! No, well, it was my own fault, it was bloody stupid. Only she never said it was serious and I never made her any promises and heck! Ya can’t say you’re living with a woman when you’re just using her granny flat! And I was paying rent. Not enough, but she let me, in the end.”

    Gail took a deep breath. “Chucked you out, has she?”

    “No, she’s too fair for that, only she’s really wild with me, so I better go,” he said glumly.

    “I see. Jack, your private life’s none of my business, but if the other woman was one of our clients, could you please say so?”

    “Yeah; I was gonna, anyway, reason I come in,” he said glumly. “It was Mrs Garven. –I’m really sorry, Gail! She threw herself at me, it wasn’t my idea!”

    Gail eyed him drily.

    “Well, heck, I was up for it,” said Jack, turning a deep scarlet, “but I wouldn’t of made the first move, honest!”

    “No, I don’t think you would,” she agreed mildly. “But we did mention this sort of thing when you signed on with us, didn’t we?”

    “Yeah,” he said miserably. “Only you're not a bloke, don’t think you can understand what it was like. I mean, she literally threw herself at me. Plastered herself to me, and—well, shit!”

    “Shit, indeed. Hazards of the job, Jack. You must have encountered that sort of thing before, surely, if you've worked as a jobbing builder for years?”

    “Usually they’re nice ladies that give you great morning teas and tell you about their kids or their grandkids,” he said glumly.

    God, Antipodean suburbia! “Mm. But there were one or two predatory females, surely?”

    “Um, yeah. Only I was me own boss, s’pose it was no skin off anyone’s nose— Um, yeah. But heck, one of them I didn’t do, and she got really spiteful and started saying the job was taking too long and she was gonna get her lawyer to look at the contract!”

    “Mm, pretty much a no-win situation. Look, we’ll write it off to experience, Jack, but if you’re working for us and a client comes onto you again, come and tell me straight away, would you?”

    “Yeah, um, I mean, ta, Gail, that’s really decent of you, only see, I’ve decided to try Western Australia, get out of Susan’s way for a bit, ’cos see, George and me, we’re mates and it’s a bit hard to see him and not her.”

    Good Christ, was George the husband? How much of a cock-up was the poor bastard making of his life? Trying to look extremely neutral, Gail got his personnel file up. Right, Dr George MacMurray. Different address from hers. “What was their relationship, again, Jack?”

    “He’s her brother.”

    Of course he was! Gail sagged. “Yes, of course. No, well, I can see it could be awkward, but couldn’t you just see him at the pub or some such? Get yourself a little flat?”

    “He wants me to use his spare room, he’s let her talk him into buying this poncy townhouse, but it’s miles out and there’s no-one to talk to—he’s divorced. The wife went funny. Took off for Queensland with a pair of Luh—gay mates when she’s not even one of them and set up some ruddy vegetarian B&B with aerobics and—and Bali gardens.”

    “That’s gone funny, all right.”

    “Yeah, hah, hah,” he replied with a glare,

    “No, honest!” she said with a laugh. “The poor guy!”

    “Yeah,” said Jack gratefully. “Well, anyway, think I better give Susan time to cool down, and it'll be easier all round if she doesn’t have to worry about bumping into yours truly if she goes round to George’s.”

    Mm, well, his mind was obviously made up, so Gail saved her breath to cool her porridge, shook hands warmly, wished him all the best and promised him a job with RightSmart whenever he was in Sydney. After which she coded the files: PF on the client’s (predatory female) and DM on Jack’s (defenceless male). Pity: it could lose him quite a few jobs, but that was S,E,X for you. Or human nature, if you preferred.

Next chapter:

https://theroadtobluegums.blogspot.com/2022/11/ill-tak-low-road.html