’Tis The Season Of The Hard Rubbish Collection

9

’Tis The Season Of The Hard Rubbish Collection

    The Springers were sitting on their verandah steps. The guests had breakfasted and gone off in their four-wheel-drives, the rooms had been tidied, the bathrooms cleaned and fresh towels provided—it was no use pretending that they could make do with the one lot over a week, like the motels did: once the towels were soggy they needed to be replaced, so they’d bitten on the bullet and resigned themselves to doing a load of laundry every day. The towels were going round right now. It was too soon to expect David, and they were grabbing a well-earned break, making the most of the summer weather before it turned stinking hot. Unfortunately there was nothing to sit on, which was more or less the point they were examining.

    Bob looked glumly through the Ikea catalogue. “Ye-ah…”

    “Their prices are very reasonable,” said his spouse on a hopeful note.

    “Not as reasonable as plastic garden sets, though.” The latest was, it’d be lovely if the guests could have breakfast on the verandah on a nice morning. Well, yeah, it would, only the verandah was only as wide as your average Aussie verandah, and tables were as wide as your average Aussie table, so there ya were. Or rather, weren’t. There was also a plan to put private verandahs on the two guest suites that were converted sleep-outs. It might make the place look a bit unbalanced, but the guests’d love it, she was right, there, only no way were they gonna do any more renovations until the exchequer had recovered. And never mind that lump sum from YDI for the Blue Gums Ecolodge site, it was in a fixed-term deposit account, which was where it was gonna stay. Mingy though the interest the bloody bank offered was. “These aren’t the right style for us, anyway,” he concluded, laying the catalogue down.

    “No, but see—” Deanna plunged into it. Buy a couple of basic little tables, cover them with fancy embroidered tablecloths— Beg ya pardon: cut-work, eh?

    “I can knock up a couple of little tables they’re not gonna see for a fraction of the price, no sweat! And, um, well, wrought-iron chairs, maybe? Them lace ones.”

    “They are lovely, but  those garden sets aren’t cheap.”

    “Not a set, what’d we do with the table?” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Do the rounds of the tips? Second-hand shops? Get young Phil on the job: he’s got all arvo to do nothing in.”

    “Bob, we can’t ask him to do it for nothing,” she said in a low voice.

    “You can’t, maybe, but I can! Me and Jack’ve put enough hard yacker into that dump of his! Get him and Honey to watch the verges, too, eh? Might be a few hard rubbish collections. I’ll ring ya dad, too,” he decided, getting up and going indoors.

    Deanna sighed, and tried not to wonder what wrong and terrifically expensive chairs Phil Sotherland might come up with—it wasn’t that he didn’t have taste, he did: only even after two years out here he still had no real idea what things cost. Well, you didn’t, really, until you were a house-owner, she reflected ruefully, thinking of her carefree bachelor-girl days and wincing. The amount of money she’d spent on boots alone—! …Those cane sets were nice, basket chairs, and you could get them already painted white, but the tables were only coffee tables. The sofas were very sweet, though. But Bob was right, really, in saying they were unfitted for the human bum. Or at least the male Aussie bum. They were Filipino or something: the Filipinos must be very short, skinny people. …If they were very, very lucky someone might find something good on the verge. That Lazy-Boy chair of Dot’s had come off the verge, and it was very comfortable. Its foot rest wouldn’t go down, but still, it wasn’t bad for something that had cost nothing. David sat in it a lot and Dad always sat in it if he came up for a visit. Plastic garden sets were ugly, really…

    Ted Prosser looked in some amusement at the slim, dark-haired girl in the designer jeans sitting on the front step of what was presumably Springer House B&B, deep in an Ikea catalogue. Shades of his ex: she’d been demented over the bloody stuff. He hadn’t realised it had reached the Antipodes. Well, plus ça change— Words to that effect.

    “Good morning,” he said tentatively. He had been in the Antipodes long enough to realise that the local style was a simple “Hullo,” or a breezy “Gidday!” but not long enough to produce either naturally. Well—naturally: Ditterminster School had long since got him out of anything that might have been his natural speech patterns.

    Deanna looked up with a start. “Good morning,” she smiled. “Can I help you?”

    “I hope so,” said Ted politely. “I’m looking for the site of Blue Gums Ecolodge: am I even on the right road, do you know?”

    “Yes, Potters Road, that’s right,” she said nicely.

    Mm. It hadn’t had any road sign that he’d noticed. Ted nodded a trifle wryly. “Good. Haven’t missed it, have I?”

    “No, just keep going: it’s right at the end of the road.” She took another look at his dusty boots, well worn-in shorts and bulging backpack and said kindly: “Are you looking for work? Just ask for George MacMurray or Jack Jackson.”

    Ted had been under the impression that the project was Hill Tarlington’s show. Certainly good old June Biggs from his home village, which was where Tarlington was living with his lovely Hattie, had written in great, if possibly inaccurate, detail telling him it was, and urging him, not for the first time, to make use of his contacts and ask Hill for a job. Well, he’d managed reasonably well in New Zealand without having to ask the bloody man for a job on one of YDI’s projects, but although he’d scraped together the fare to get across the Tasman Sea, that was about it, and if he didn’t find some work pretty soon— Yeah.

    “Thank you. Er—I don’t suppose you’d know if Hill Tarlington’s on the site?”

    At this a man’s voice said: “She would, ’cos he’d be staying here if he was, but he isn’t. You a mate of his, then?” and a middle-aged chap in very ordinary jeans and a clean but tired grey tee-shirt appeared at the front door.

    “Not a mate,” said Ted temperately. “An acquaintance. He’s got a cottage in my village.”

    “I getcha. Working holiday, is it, mate?”

    “It would be if I could find the work, yes.”

    “Don’t worry, they’re desperate to get blokes to work out here, you’ll be right. Walked up from Potters Inlet, didja?”

    “Yes—well, most of the way from the town where the bus stops. I’m sorry: I’m not quite sure how to pronounce it. Bar-rab-erra?”

    Bob eyed him tolerantly. “Barra-barra, mate. Ya can’t second guess ’em, mind. Heard of Coonabarabran?”

    “Don’t sing!” said the girl quickly.

    He winked at the startled Ted. “Wouldn’t dream of it! Well, if ya walked most of the way from Barrabarra, ya better come in and have a beer, mate. Or a cup of tea or coffee, whatever ya fancy. I’ve just put the jug on.”

    “That’s very kind, but I’m rather dusty, I’m afraid.”

    “Cripes, not in the flaming sitting-room, mate, the bloody guests might come back!”

    “They won’t, they’ve all gone out for the morning,” said the girl, scrambling up and smiling at him. “But we’ll have it in the kitchen anyway. We’re Deanna and Bob Springer.”

    “How do you do? I’m Ted Prosser.”

    Neither of them offered a handshake but after a year in New Zealand Ted wasn’t surprised, and merely reflected it must be the norm on this side of the Tasman Sea as well. He followed them meekly down a very pretty passage, perhaps Edwardian colonial in style, into a fair-sized kitchen. It had clearly been recently renovated, with a big industrial stove, giant chest freezer, two enormous refrigerators—certain warnings about the Australian climate that he’d cheerfully ignored came back forcibly to Ted Prosser at this juncture—and all new cupboard doors. Quite a model B&B kitchen, in fact, except for the bottom right-hand corner of what was presumably the back door, which sported a large piece of nailed-on, partly flattened corrugated iron. The large wooden-legged table in the middle of the room had unfortunately been surfaced with a lovely sheet of industrial steel. Well, it matched the bench tops—yes.

    “They’ll shut ya down if ya kitchen’s not hygienic, mate. We been inspected by every type of ruddy inspector ya care to name—eh, love?” Bob said cheerfully, following his glance.

    “Yes, and most of them had the cheek to expect a free meal on top of it!” she agreed, very flushed.

    “Yep. Their hard luck, ’cos me and Deanna, we can’t cook, and David, that’s our chef, he hadn’t turned up at that stage.”

    “So Bob offered the health inspector his choice of peanut butter or banana sandwiches for lunch!” added Deanna, suddenly collapsing in giggles.

    “Right!” agreed Bob with satisfaction.

    Had they themselves been going to have peanut butter or banana sandwiches, or was the whole thing a joke? Certain warnings about the Australian sense of humour that he’d cheerfully ignored came back forcibly to Ted Prosser at this juncture. He smiled weakly.

    “What ya fancy, love?” asked Bob, hefting the electric jug.

    “A cup of tea, thanks, Bob,” replied Deanna, sitting down at the table. “Have a seat, Ted.”

    Gratefully Ted sank down beside her. There were half a dozen wooden chairs: a real mishmash. They reminded him forcibly of Hattie’s kitchen, back home in the village, except that the Springers didn’t have anything approaching the gem of her collection: a thing with a heart-shaped back and seat. Hattie’s were all painted bright yellow, but Bob and Deanna hadn’t gone that far— Damn it, he must stop thinking about Hattie! He’d never had a hope there, she’d fallen for ruddy Hill Tarlington when she’d first laid eyes on him and never given him, Ted, a second glance.

    “What?” he said, jumping. “I’m sorry, Bob.”

    “Name your poison!” repeated Bob cheerfully.

    “I’d love a cup of tea, thanks.”

    “Not Earl Grey, Bob,” warned Deanna.

    “Nah! Whaddaya think I am? Ordinary!” he replied vigorously. “Do you like it, mate?” he demanded.

    “Earl Grey? Not really,” replied Ted weakly. There were occasions, say, mid-afternoon or early evening of a Sunday when he was feeling distinctly effete, when a delicate cup of Earl Grey, frequently in combination with a bit of Mozart, really hit the spot, but for elevenses?

    “See, it’s a myth!” Bob announced cheerfully.

    “John likes it, though,” replied Deanna on a dubious note. “And I’m almost sure Aunty Kate said David liked it.”

    “Balls. Dare say he mighta drunk it, yes. Wouldn’t dare not to, if ruddy Kate put it in front of ’im, would ’e?” Bob winked at Ted. “What it is, Kate’s heart’s in the right place, only she’s one of them dames with ladylike ideas,” he explained helpfully.

    “Mm, I know the syndrome: the village back home’s full of them,” Ted replied drily.

    “Right. This’d be where Hill Tarlington lives, eh? Would you say he was upper-class? In British terms, I mean.”

    Ted’s jaw had sagged slightly. Bloody Tarlington was as upper-class as you got without being in the fucking peerage! He was, in fact, though to give him his due he didn’t use the handle, a baronet. Sir Hilliard, yet. At one stage his family had owned a huge part of Sussex, not to mention giant acreages in his, Ted’s, part of Wiltshire. Admittedly the family estates were long since broken up and his brother was farming what was left of the principal estate, but— “Yes,” he croaked. “Very much so.”

    “Right. Well, we thought so, eh, love? Only ya can’t always tell. I mean, if you’ve been to a fancy private school—”

    “Public school,” she corrected.

    “Whaddever. If ya been to one of them, ya do speak with a plum in yer mouth, eh?”

    “With a nice accent,” corrected Deanna firmly.

    “Yer Aunty Kate’d say so, yeah,” he responded drily. “—You know Star Trek The Next Generation, mate?”

    Ted was just about capable of mentally forming the words “non sequitur” by now. “Yes.”

    “Right, well, poncy Captain Picard, he drinks Earl Grey, right?” said Bob on a pleased note.

    Ted looked wildly at Deanna Springer. She nodded encouragingly at him. “Does he?” he croaked, as Bob seemed to be waiting for a reply. “I’m sure you’re right.”

    “Yeah. So some of us thought it must be an upper-class Po—British thing.”

    “Aunty Kate, for instance!” squeaked Deanna, suddenly collapsing in agonised giggles. “And Mum!” she gasped through further paroxysms.

    Bob grinned. “Yeah. Well, can’t count ya Mum, she’s bats on Patrick Stewart. See, Kate give ’er this classical music CD for Christmas one year, Ted, and the whole family thought she’d lost it—”

    “Vivaldi?” croaked Ted.

    “Yes: The Four Seasons,” confirmed Deanna placidly.

    Abruptly Ted collapsed in an agonising fit of gasping, wheezing sniggers.

    “’E knows it, see?” discerned Bob pleasedly.

    “Don’t!” he howled, off again.

    “Gil was just the same, mate,” Bob reported when he was at the nose-blowing, eye-mopping stage. “See, we been testing the theory.”

    “Uh—oh! The Earl Grey theory! I see!”

    “Right. See, Bernie, he’s okay, only ya gotta admit he’s got a plum in ’is mouth—well, forget what school ’e went to, but it was a fancy one. But he hates the stuff. And Gil, he said it was like drinking scent.”

    “We don’t know all that many Englishmen,” explained Deanna kindly.

    “I see,” replied Ted feebly.

    “But you see, our cousin Rosie’s husband, John, he’s a Captain in the Royal Navy, well, he likes Earl Grey,” she explained seriously.

    “Not for morning tea, though,” said Bob, suddenly appearing to recollect the object of the exercise and hurriedly pouring. “Not too stewed, good. –See, first off, we thought her ruddy Aunty Kate was right and John was the proof of the pudding. He’s a really decent type, mind. Come out here for a bit of a honeymoon and got exposed to their ruddy Aunty Allyson and never turned a hair. ’Course Kate was all over ’im, ya can’t count her, but old Jim, he got on like a house on fire with him! Took him down the RSL, and everything!”

    “That’s my Aunty Kate’s husband,” added Deanna helpfully.

    “I see. Er, but what is the RSL?” Oh, dear, they were both gaping at him!

    “Ya gotta have them in Pongo, mate, surely?” croaked Bob after an appreciable pause. “I mean, your lot won the fucking War!”

    “Um, sorry, Ted,” said Deanna, pinkening. “Britain. It’s a club for the returned servicemen.”

    “Returned Services League,” explained Bob. “Ya gotta have them! Shit, even these days, when the old diggers have mostly dropped off the twig, there’s one in every other suburb!”

    Ted ran his hand through his thinning, greying brown hair. “The British Legion, I suppose,” he said limply. “Er—Royal British Legion, technically. It’s the body that supports ex-servicemen and women.”

    “Um, yeah. Well, dunno about support, so much. There’s the clubs, of course, and they march on ANZAC Day,” said Bob.

    He’d lost him again. “Remembrance Day?” said Ted feebly.

    “Um, maybe they don’t have ANZAC Day. I don’t think the British were at Gallipoli,” ventured Deanna dubiously.

    “They gave the flaming order to go and get killed, though!” replied Bob vigorously. “Um, no, ya right, love. Just our troops, eh? Whenever there’s a really dirty job to do, it’s send in the Aussies! And the Kiwis,” he added fairly.

    “Never mind that, Bob!” she said quickly.

    “No, please: I hold no brief for the military policies of successive British governments,” said Ted very drily indeed.

    The Springers were now eying him warily. “Uh—no,” said Bob, clearing his throat. “Don’tcha? Good on ya, mate. Well, Blair’s a tit, eh? See, Gil, he was in the British Army, officer and all that: got shot up in Iraq, lost a lung, but even he admits the man’s a tit.”

    “Glad to hear it,” said Ted drily.

    “I think they ought to bring our boys home!” said Deanna vigorously.

    “Yeah. Drop it, love. –Thing is, Ted, think the whole country’s pretty much agreed on that one, only see, what’s the alternative to ruddy John Howard? The financially incompetent Labor ning-nongs?”

    “Didn’t you just say to drop it?” said Deanna, smiling at him.

    Bob winked at Ted. “Yeah, ya right, love, I did. Grab the biscuits, for the love of Mike!”

    She got up, still smiling, and fetched a screw-top plastic jar.

    “Arnott’s. Last of one of them selections. Dry-as-dust plain ones or them things filled with yellow scent, even worse,” noted Bob, helping himself. “Anyway, that makes three to one against, so ruddy Kate was wrong, eh?” he said somewhat thickly through one.

    Ted swallowed yellow scent with some difficulty. The outer integument of those ones was also dry as dust. Not that shop-bought British biscuits were anything to write home about, either. “Three to one against Earl Grey, or voice-overed Vivaldi?” he returned smoothly.

    Not entirely to his surprise, Bob Springer collapsed immediately in a terrific wheezing, spluttering fit, slapping his thigh ecstatically and eventually gasping: “Both!” Also not to his surprise, Deanna Springer just smiled tolerantly.

    “This is it,” explained Jack, very much later that day.

    Ted looked dubiously at the tumbledown little wooden bungalow: it didn't look occupied. “Uh—are they home, Jack?” he ventured.

    “Gil’s around somewhere. He’s all right,” he added kindly.

    Yeah. This Gil Whatsisface was not only ex-Army, he was, Ted had now learned, an Army pal of Hill Tarlington’s. He really could have done without that! Though doubtless it was his own fault for turning up at one of the man’s projects. Not that he had anything against Hill, really, except that an unjust Fate had awarded him the delightful Hattie whilst decreeing that she’d never give him, Ted, a second gl— Uh, yeah. Jack was heading not for the front but the back. Possibly that was what you did, in Australia? Well, back home in the village his back step was regularly infested by old June Biggs from next-door, and wasn’t it more than likely that the working-class generations who’d had the sense to escape from Britain and its bloody class system in the nineteenth century had brought their customs with—

    The back door opened in response to Jack’s hammering. Yes, well. Possibly Ted was prejudiced but he’d have taken the man for ex-Army, officer class, with his eyes shut. In fact especially with his eyes shut. Sounded just like Tarlington.

    “Yes, of course,” he agreed nicely to Jack’s suggestion. “Have the dining-room, Ted. I was more or less expecting a friend from England to turn up this Christmas, so there’s a bed of sorts in there.”

    “Thanks, but what about your friend?” replied Ted awkwardly.

    Gil ran his hand through his hair. “Met a lovely American girl, gone off to help her and her father run their dude ranch in Montana.”

    “Shit, not your mate Adam?” asked Jack.

    “Yes. Had a letter from him this morning, Jack.”

    “Cripes. What about the plans for the property, then?”

    Gil shrugged a bit, and winced. “Well, there won’t be as much cash to chuck away on horses and bunkhouses, that’s for sure. Have to pull our horns in a bit, I suppose. Haven’t really had time to think it out, as yet. Anyway, silver lining, Ted: means the room’s available for as long as you want it!” he added with a smile. “Come on through.”

    “Hang on a mo’, Gil,” said Jack as he turned for the passage door. “That flaming shoulder not playing you up, is it?”

    Gil made a face at him. “I lifted a big piece of wood, Mummy, I’m a bad boy.”

    “Yeah,” replied the New Zealander stolidly. “Siddown, let’s check your strapping. –See, he’s got an elastic bandage on it, but it shifts,” he explained to Ted. “If he’d just let the muscles settle down it’d get better, but he keeps doing too much. Not that he oughta be heaving hunks of timber around with a bad lung, anyway.”

    At this Ted gave in almost entirely and asked: “Iraq, was it, Gil?”

    “Yes,” he said with a sigh, sitting down at the battered kitchen table. “Go on, Mummy, kiss it better,” he said to Jack in a silly voice.

    Ted watched silently as Jack peeled the shirt off his left shoulder. Nasty. Even nastier once the elastic strapping had been removed.

    “I’m left-handed, before you put your foot in it, Ted,” said Gil heavily.

    Ted dumped his pack on the floor and pulled up a chair beside him. “That’d be right. You in the regiment with Hill and his friend Colin?”

    “Mm. Did you meet Colin, Ted?”

    “Yeah, just briefly. Nice fellow. As a matter of fact,” he revealed abruptly, as Jack began reapplying the bandage, “it was the day he had to tell Hill about the DU ammo scare—fucking so-called Gulf Syndrome. He took him for a walk to get him out of their girlfriends’ way, and they ended up outside my dump. I poured a couple of whiskies into them.”

    “Right. Bloody bad show. We were damn’ lucky that only a couple of our chaps were affected.”

    “Yes,” said Ted, his mouth very tight. “I was out there in the sodding Gulf myself, not long after Desert Storm. Civil engineering—clean-up job. Never had a notion what the fuck we were handling until a bright young chap working for us started wondering why exactly the Kuwaitis wanted us to dump piles of sand into bloody great holes, and waved a Geiger counter around. We got the boys out of it, but it was too late: more than half of them were affected.”

    “Bloody rotten luck, Ted,” returned Gil grimly.

    “Yeah. Uh—I was very sorry to hear about Colin,” he added awkwardly.

    “Mm. Thanks.”

    “Clench your fist, Gil,” ordered Jack unemotionally.

    “Ooh, I can’t, it’s turning blue!” he squeaked.

    “Hah, hah. Go on. That too tight?”

    “No, it’s fine, thanks, Jack.” He stood up, fumbling for his shirt sleeve, raising no objections when Jack helped him back into it. “Totally tarsome,” he said to Ted with a wry smile.

    Ted’s jaw sagged. After an appreciable pause he ventured: “E.F. Benson?”

    “Of course!” replied Gil with a laugh. “Had Queen Lucia with me all the way through Desert Storm, then in the last lot decided Mapp and Lucia would probably be the thing to keep a chap sane.” He pulled a face. “My mistake: somewhere between Tell Al-How’s-Your-Father and Tell Us-About-It some helpful idiot managed to lose it for me.”

    “This woulda been when they were getting him out of the bloody dump with a couple of bullets in ’im,” explained Jack drily.

    “No sense of priorities, Jack!” replied Ted with a laugh. “Did you manage to replace it, Gil?”

    Gil gave a shamefaced grin. “Yes; ended up with three copies, in fact: Hill, my brother, and my Aunt Bea all turned up trumps. Bitched about it more than I realized I was doing, kind of thing. –Come through, let me show you our gracious facilities.”

    The so-called dining-room contained one stretcher-bed which bore a brightly striped mattress.

    “’Tisn’t actually a sun-lounger, Ted, though you might be forgiven for assuming as much,” said Gil smoothly. “Evidently they come like that in these tropic climes.”

    “The new ones do, yeah,” noted Jack. “And it’s subtropical: they’ll think you’re mad if you call it tropic climes, they got real tropics in Australia, ya know. I better be off, old Andy’ll be expecting me. –Seven o’clock start tomorrow, Ted,” he reminded him. “See ya!”

    Ted himself returned what he felt was the required offhand, macho “See ya,” to this, but Gil Sotherland, interestingly, merely murmured: “’Bye, Jack, and thanks again for the practical nursing.”

    “Um, how much do you want for the room, Gil?”

    “Mm? Oh—no idea, Ted! Well, if it was up to me, nothing, but the place actually belongs to my nephew and his mother. They won’t want to accept anything, mind, but—”

    “No, of course I’ll pay board!” said Ted quickly, flushing. “Well, um, about what I was paying in New Zealand?” He told him the amount, adding dubiously: “I dunno about the rate of exchange. Think the Australian dollar’s worth a bit more, but the cost of living seems a bit higher over here.”

    “Depends what you want to buy: a chap could live off pineapples and avocados here, you know! No, well, I’ve no idea, Ted, but if you were paying that in New Zealand I think there’s some faint hope that if we both twist her arm, Honey—my sister-in-law—will eventually agree to accept it!”

    “Right.”

    “Oh—and perhaps I should just mention,” said Gil with a little smile, “that when Jack says a seven o’clock start, he himself will be on the site shortly after six.”

    “Think I might’ve guessed that,” admitted Ted.

    “Mm. George found him enough workers, yet?”

    “I wouldn’t say so. Couple of chaps on the big machines, and the other three are just brickies’ labourers. Willing, but that’s about it. George is down in Sydney, recruiting.”

    “Uh-huh. Any sign of the architect today?”

    “No.”

    “Mm. Well, I don’t know what their time-lines are—in fact I’m keeping well out of it: bloody Hill’s been trying for months to drag me into his project management stuff—but I’d say that’s you gainfully employed for the next year, minimum, Ted!”

    “Good,” admitted Ted.

    “Provided, of course,” said Gil with a twinkle in his eye, “that you can manage to get on with a foreman as tempestuously emotional as Jack.”

    “Very bloody funny.”

    “Lovely fellow, isn’t he?” he murmured. “I was hoping to be able to employ him, eventually: we’re planning to start a sort of combined dude ranch and riding-school here, but now that bloody Adam’s pulled out, I don’t know if we’ll be able to pay him a living wage. Not that Adam’s a millionaire, either!” he admitted with a laugh. “But yours truly was a naughty boy who chucked his pay away on the necessities of life like polo ponies and the stabling for same for something like twenty years. –Since the divorce,” he added with a grimace. “Well, between you and me and the absence of a gatepost out there in the Australian dust, the pretty ladies and the consequent over-priced bottles of fizz and dainty dinners came into it, too.”

    “Right,” agreed Ted drily. “I’ve tended to avoid the pretty ladies, myself. One round of matrimony was enough. Added to which, too busy building up the business, until the bloody Gulf Syndrome thing ruined us—the Kuwaitis sued the pants off us for breaking the contract. Not that it mattered: George, my partner, known him since our university days, died six months later and Ned Cummins, that I’d known all my life and thought I was doing a favour by offering him a job, finally succumbed about a year back to a dose of stomach cancer that the fucking doctors tried to claim had nothing to do with swallowing a load of radioactive dust.” He sank down limply onto the stretcher. “Sorry, Gil. Didn’t mean to burst out with it.”

    “That’s okay, we’re all more or less lame ducks up Potters Road,” replied Gil calmly. “Even Jack: the divorce knocked him for six, reading between the lines, and he pretty much let the business go to pot after that. His boy’s working at Caltech: I don’t think that’s helping, particularly.”

    “I see.”

    Gil propped his back against the doorway. “Heard of David Walsingham?”

    “Uh—the composer? Yes; why?” replied Ted limply.

    “He’s living up the road, doing chef for Springer House B&B.”

    There seemed no reason why the man should make such an outrageous claim unless it was true. Either that or the stint in the desert had affected his mind. “What?” said Ted very faintly.

    “Mm. He was living in South Australia for a while: that was where he first met Dot, his wife, I gather. Classical music doesn’t exactly bring in the shekels, and he’s always loved cooking, so when Dot’s sister and her husband decided to open a B&B and found, too late, that neither of them could cook, he volunteered.”

    “Y— Uh, hasn’t he been doing a bit of film music, though?” he fumbled. “Ilya, My Brother, wasn’t it?”

    Gil had been assuming that, if he recognised the name at all in conjunction with film music, he’d link it to the execrably Fifties Captain’s Daughter. “Yes,” he agreed, smiling at him. “‘Bits of Tchaikovsky tacked on to bits of almost authentic Russian Volk music,’ is how he tends to describe it, but yes, that was him. He did one more film and then decided to give it away: sort of chap that likes a challenge but once he’s conquered the technique, gets bored.”

    “Then let’s hope for the wife’s sake he doesn’t get bored with cooking for the B&B!” returned Ted with some feeling.

    Gil’s mouth twitched. “I don’t think that’s likely, somehow. For one thing, he’s been cooking all his adult life. And for another, his second film was The Captain’s Daughter: have you seen it?”

    There being not that awfully much to do when you’ve immured yourself in a tumbledown cottage in the middle of a very backward part of rural Wiltshire, Ted had spent a fair amount of time in the cinema during his last few years in England. He nodded grudgingly.

    “Mm. David’s wife, Dot, is Lily Rose Rayne’s cousin and a dead ringer for her—doubled for her in the film, in fact.”

    Ted Prosser swallowed hard.

    “Exactly!” said Gil with a laugh. “Any chap with red blood in his veins’d do almost anything to stay married to one of them! But she’s a level-headed little thing, and I’d say… No, that’s wrong,” he murmured to himself. “I was going to say she’ll keep him on the straight and narrow, but that’s not it, at all. I don’t think he’ll experience any desire to stray from the straight and narrow. And she seems to understand him completely. Doesn’t mind if he gets an inspiration and sits at his piano for hours on end instead of doing whatever mundane household task might have been scheduled. And she’s not into the relentless acquisition of shiny consumables, unlike some.”

    “Unlike most, I’d say,” replied Ted sourly. “Well, glad to hear it.”

    “His sister’s out here, too,” added Gil casually.

    “What? Balls, she was in Vienna—” Ted broke off.

    “Time flies, doesn’t it?” agreed Gil drily. “She arrived quite recently. Intending to settle. She’ll do a bit of teaching in Sydney, but that’ll only be part-time. The voice is as glorious as ever, in my ’umble opinion,” he added, smiling at him, “but she’s had enough of touring. She’d be well into her forties, now. Ah—don’t know if you know anything of her personal history, but there was a husband, some time back: if you hear her or her brother refer to ‘the Unlamented Corrant’, that was him. The daughter’d be—early twenties? Well, had her twenty-first, forced her mother to disgorge her hard-earned to help pay for it, whereas the bloody father could well have afforded to cough up for the lot. Bit of a bone of contention on the Walsingham side, we gather.” He rubbed his chin, looking rueful. “She’s about as improvident, reading not very far between the lines, as yours truly. Oh—calls herself Nefertite these days, not Antigone.”

    “Right,” said Ted groggily.

    “And before you ask, yes, I’d class her very much as another of the lame ducks of Potters Road,” said Gil calmly.

    “She has had a very successful career,” he protested feebly.

    “Of course, yes; wouldn’t deny it. But her personal life’s as much a mess as mine, Jack’s, and his friend George’s, and, not to mince words, as David Walsingham’s was up until he married Dot, as Bob Springer’s was up until he married Deanna, and as their business partners Bernie and Ann Anderson’s were before their recent marriage! And, frankly, as my poor little sister-in-law’s is, thank to the combination of my bloody useless brother, our prick of a father, and yours truly’s being too absorbed with his bloody Army career at the time she was pregnant with Phil to take notice of what bloody Father was up to! –Let me show you the rudimentary wash-place, Ted, and then we’ll have a beer and I’ll really bend your ear!” he finished with a laugh.

    Ted got up, smiling. “Don’t think you need to, now, Gil, but a beer’d hit the spot.” He eyed his backpack full of dirty laundry. “Um, if I was to say washing-machine—?”

    “Never heard of ’em!” said Gil with a laugh, heading back to the kitchen. “No: got a nice, shiny new one coming up from Sydney this week as ever was, Ted. Various very kind persons offered to find me a second-hand one in working order, or to salvage a second-hand one off the verge for me and get it into working order, but what with the isolation, somehow the thought of a nice, shiny guarantee won the day! Even though various kind persons also assured me that no matter what the guarantee says, They—that’s a capital T, by the way—will never replace it. Send unending relays of ever-crosser technicians out to replace bits of its component parts—yes. Swear blind there’s nothing wrong with it as the thing floods your laundry and shorts out your electrical system—yes. Replace it, no. But then,” he concluded cheerfully, opening the back door of the kitchen and ushering him ceremoniously across the tiny open back porch, “the whole of life’s a gamble, isn’t it?”

    It was pretty much, yes, especially if you’d spent the last several years of it fighting Iraqis in the fucking polluted desert: it was no wonder Gil had never bothered much with saving money, concluded Ted Prosser silently, eyeing the laundry tub and ominously placed large plastic basin dubiously.

    “Various kind persons have explained how to make a genuine bush shower, which if you were ever forced to be a Boy Scout under canvas I rather think you’ll recognise as being where Baden-Powell got his inspiration, but so far I’ve resisted the soft impeachment,” said Gil sweetly. “But if you fancy it, there’s a nice big gum tree just out—”

    “Shut up, you bugger!” replied Ted with a sudden loud laugh. “It’ll do! Jesus, and to think I was shit-scared the place’d be a done-up village filled with Ma Everton clones!”

    “It’s coming,” Gil assured him, his eyes twinkling, not bothering to ask for clarification of the precise reference, because his meaning was clear enough. “Only not just yet, thank God!”

    “Thank God!” echoed Ted, grinning.

    He woke with a start to Armageddon. Uh—not Armageddon, but what the Hell was that racket? The light was filtering through the horrible old floral curtains at the room’s one window, so it couldn’t be as early as it felt, which frankly, was about three-ish, but—

    “Don’t fall out of that stretcher,” said a voice from the doorway.

    “No!” gasped Ted, falling out of it. “Why do they go on making the things so low?”

    “No idea!” returned Gil cheerfully. “I’m just going to investigate that Goddamned racket: want to hold me wee hand as I do it?”

    Ted scrambled up. “No, but I’ll come. Um, is it coming from the back?” he croaked, holding his head.

    “All around,” replied Gil, holding his. “Uh—no, think so,” he admitted, as it suddenly stopped. “My first guess’d be Jack, but as he’s finished his self-imposed task of tiling the verandah, I can’t guess doing what.” As he spoke he led the way into the kitchen and opened the back door.

    Past the little open porch and the closed door of the cupboard which housed the toilet they had an excellent view of a complete stranger and a giant Ingin in the laundry. The more so as the laundry’s door had been bodily removed and was leaning against the back steps.

    “Do excuse me, but who the Hell are you?” croaked Gil.

    “Gidday. Would you be Gil?” returned the middle-aged stranger stolidly. “Andy Mallory.” He held out a hand.

    “Um, not Jack’s landlord?” fumbled Ted as Gil, looking completely numbed, shook hands with Andy Mallory.

    “No, that’s Andy MacMurray,” replied Gil numbly. “I’m sorry, Andy, but would you mind clarifying who you are?”

    “Eh? Dot and Deanna’s dad, of course!” he replied in astonished tones.

    Gil Sotherland was observed to sag. “Oh,” he said weakly. “I see.”

    “Bob said ya needed a flatbed sander,” he explained.

    “Right,” said Gil, running hand through his hair. “Do we?”

    “Ya do if ya wanna get a sheet of vinyl onto this laundry floor, yeah, mate,” replied Andy Mallory without emphasis.

    Ted cleared his throat. “Yes. I mean, you’ll need a good flat surface for the washing-machine, Gil.”

    “Right, or they’ll have even more excuse to claim there’s nothing wrong with the bloody thing and it’s all your fault,” agreed Andy Mallory cordially. “Ted, is it?”

    “Yes,” said Ted limply, shaking hands. “Ted Prosser. Good to meet you, Andy.”

    “Er, I don’t think anyone mentioned you were coming, Andy,” explained Gil limply.

    “Didn’t they? Told Bob and Deanna yonks back I was. Wasn’t too sure I could get the sander for this weekend, though.”

    It wasn’t the weekend, it was only Friday. “Yes. Well, it’s terribly good of you,” he said lamely.

    “That’s okay, makes a nice change from sitting in a bloody air-conditioned hutch in downtown Sydney doing flaming conveyancing with the only relief the view of another high-rise next to us!”

    “Oh—yes; I think David did mention you’re a solicitor.”

    “Yeah. I’d give it away if I could afford to, mate,” said Andy Mallory sourly. “Well, the twins are nineteen, now, both at uni, you’d think I’d be able to afford to, eh?” He gave a bitter laugh.

    “Not if Australia’s anything like Britain,” ventured Ted cautiously.

    “You said it! Shit, at their ages I’d been flatting for over a year! But kids these days can’t ruddy well afford to leave home. Mind you, they might if they’d lower their standards a bit: there was eight of us in a two-bedroomed flat. Mixed, as well: I’ll leave the rest to your imagination!” He winked. “No, well, Nick Giorgopoulos rang me up yesterday arvo, said his brother-in-law had the sander going begging, it was now or never, so I told the bloody bosses I had a raging temperature and wouldn’t be in today at all, and pushed off. –They more than owe me, done untold hours of unpaid overtime for the buggers,” he explained.

    “That makes it very clear, Andy, except possibly who this Nick Giorgopoulos is!” said Gil with a laugh.

    Ted was also burning to know, but on the whole wouldn’t have dared ask, in case it was incorrect male etiquette; he just smiled weakly.

    “Eh? Oh! His dad lives down the road from me sister-in-law,” he said, grinning. “Clear as mud?”

    “Terrifically!” agreed Gil, laughing. “Thanks so much, Andy! Fancy some breakfast?”

    “Yeah, wouldn’t mind, ta. Oh—Bob sent over a choice of vinyl. It’s in the kitchen.”

    “That’ll be what those rolls of vinyl are doing leaning against the kitchen table, then,” replied Gil smoothly. “Bacon and fried bananas?”

    “No, ta all the same. You know anybody back in Britain that’d fancy fried bananas for breakfast?”

    “No, but everything’s so tropical and exotic out here,” said Gil on a plaintive note.

    “Funny bugger,” replied Andy Mallory simply, returning to his sanding.

    Grinning, Gil shut the kitchen door on the noise and said, perforce loudly, to Ted: “There’s another one of ’em!”

    “One of what? Chaps that don’t like bloody fried bananas?”

    “No: salt of the earth!” he said with a laugh.

    “Mm,” agreed Ted, smiling.

    “Salt of the earth and doesn’t realise that some chaps don’t want to get up at five,” added Gil wryly.

    “Mm.” Ted had a fair idea the man didn’t sleep too well: there were blue shadows under his eyes. Just how painful was that shoulder? And the scar on his chest, though healed, looked as if he’d been chopped about a fair bit—well, what with the bullet and then the damn surgeon’s knife— “The two go together, especially in these parts, I think, Gil.”

    “I’ll say! Er, I’m not seriously proposing frying them, but what does one do with a huge load of bananas one misguidedly bought at the supermarket in Barrabarra because they were frightfully cheap, not realising that their greenness didn’t indicate they’d keep for a nice long time, it indicated they’d all bloody well ripen simult—” He broke off: Ted had collapsed in helpless sniggers.

    “Banana—sandwiches!” he gasped, wiping his hand across his eyes.

    “Poddon?” said Gil weakly.

    “Banana—” Ted was off again. “I don’t—think—it was—apocryphal—after all!” he gasped.

    “It wouldn’t have been, if you heard it round these parts,” admitted Gil, opening the elderly refrigerator. “We call this the Boeing,” he explained as its motor suddenly turned over with a rumble.

    “Understandable,” he croaked. “Um, I’ve heard of banana cake,” he ventured.

    “Wot?” replied Gil gormlessly.

    Hill Tarlington’s Hattie, who was a superb cook, had mentioned a recipe for it. Ted found he’d gone rather red, what a tit! “Um, never had it. But it was an Australian who mentioned it to me.”

    Gil raised his eyebrows very high. “If desperate, incorporate into a cake?”

    “Probably. You’d better ask your sister-in-law.”

    “Can’t cook, old chap,” replied Gil, looking wry. “I think there’s only one person between here and Sydney who can, but he doesn’t do Australian cakes. Though possibly the banana cake is also a Greek tradition.”

    “No,” said a voice from the doorway.

    They jumped and swung round. Andy Mallory was looking at them mildly. “No,” he repeated. “He did a thing with fried bananas for us one night, though. Goddawful, but he poured brandy all over it, that improved it.”

    “Set alight to it?” asked Gil with friendly interest while Ted was still shuddering.

    “Yes, but not enough to burn it all off. You want banana cake, my sister-in-law May’d be your best bet. If ya like banana cake, that is.”

    There was a short silence.

    “Neither of us ignorant Poms has ever had it, Andy,” admitted Gil.

    “Then I wouldn’t start,” he recommended kindly. “Tried freezing ’em?”

    The two ignorant Poms eyed him warily.

    Andy was slim and dark-haired, rather like his daughter Deanna. His thin, good-natured face was unmoved. “I’m not joking,” he said mildly. “Though mind you, the skins do tend to go black, ’tis off-putting. We only discovered it by accident. Had a couple of kilos that all got ripe at once, and Sal can’t bake a decent cake to save her life, and the kids won’t touch the things once they start to get spots on them. Anyway, yeah. Freeze them. Then eat them with a teaspoon, straight out of the skins, or if you can’t stand the black, peel it off. Like the nicest sort of ice-cream, but not too sweet.”

    “This old Boeing’s only got a tiny freezing compartment, unfortunately,” said Gil very weakly, after a quite considerable period of Pommy staring had elapsed.

    “Yeah. You wanna get yourself a decent fridge, mate! This old thing dates back to Honey’s old uncle’s day!” he said energetically.

    “Mm.” Gil fetched a banana. Experimentally he poked it into the small freezing compartment. “Ooh!” he said. He got a couple more and carefully inserted them…

    “Just don’t forget they’re in there,” said Andy drily, after Ted was over the hysterics.

    “How long do they take?” asked Gil hopefully, getting out a packet of bacon and a carton of eggs.

    Andy pulled his ear. “Uh—well, in our freezing compartment, mate, ’bout half an hour. I’d say they’ll be ready by teatime this evening, with a bit of luck. –Dinnertime, to youse two,” he explained drily.

    “Oh, yes, dinnertime,” said Gil, looking mildly puzzled. “Is that when they serve the bully beef as well as the hard tack?”

    “Yeah, all right, uncle,” replied Andy Mallory amiably. “Want me to make some toast? Got any bread?

    “Er—yes. It’s in the fridge because of—”

    “The ants and the giant cockies, yeah. Under that Boeing is where they’ll be nesting, mate,” he advised. “Or in it,” he noted fairly.

    “It’s perfectly clean and the seal’s new!” returned Gil indignantly.

    “No, mate, in its works, where you been living for the last— Don’t answer that!” he said with a laugh. “Oh, and when ya chuck it out, do the world a favour and take the bloody seal off, will ya?”

    “Of course, if you advise it, Andy,” replied Gil, looking as puzzled as Ted felt.

    Andy sighed. “There have been instances of little kids—even little white kids, before anyone starts, not just little Aboriginal kids—getting into abandoned fridges and suffo—”

    “Good Christ!” gulped Gil, dropping a knife into the sink.

    “Yeah,” said Ted, swallowing. “Hell’s teeth. I suppose it could happen in Britain, too, but—”

    “You’re more urbanised: less likely to dump the things in a handy field or on the verge,” allowed Andy. “Yeah.”

    “That, too, but fridges as a normal domestic aid haven’t traditionally been a feature of our society as a whole, Andy. We certainly never had one when I was a kid—never needed one,” he said with a little smile. “Five kids in a three-bedroomed cottage, before you ask.”

    Andy Mallory was sixty. Ted Prosser, he calculated, would be in his mid-forties. He stared at the bloke. “Never needed one?”

    “Dad, Britain’s like that,” said a voice from the back porch.

    Jumping, he gasped: “Don’t do that!”

    Dot came in, smiling. Drily Andy Mallory registered Ted Prosser’s narrow jaw dropping and his lightly tanned cheeks turning purple at the sight of the Lily Rose hair, curves and smile.

    “Sorry,” she said sunnily. “Didn’t mean to make you jump. It doesn’t usually get hot enough over there in summer for people to really need a fridge.”

    “You told me your bloody cousin’s got a thing the size of the Empire State Building!” he retorted indignantly.

    “Rosie? Yes; her friends call it Battersea Power Station,” replied Dot cheerfully.

    Gil went into a spluttering fit, gasping: “Graphic!”

    “She just bought it automatically because she’s an Aussie same as the rest of us, Dad,” added Dot on a tolerant note. “The older people in their village don’t bother with fridges, though.”

    “Yes, exactly,” croaked Ted, stumbling to his feet. “Our village was just like that. –I think you must be Dot?”

    Hurriedly Gil pulled himself together and introduced them nicely, then somewhat spoiling his effect by urging his bowlful of bananas on Dot.

    “I’ll take some, Rose and David both like them, but we can’t get through this lot! Why the Hell didja buy so many?”

    “Mm,” murmured Ted. “Why?”

    “They were there,” said Gil mournfully. “The Everest syndrome.”

    “Hah, hah!” returned the entirety of his audience smartly.

    Smiling broadly, Gil said: “Yes, well, that’s pretty clear. –Fancy bacon and eggs with the male peer group, Dot?”

    “No, thanks. Actually, I came over to stop you feeding Dad,” she admitted.

    “Too late!” replied Andy, putting bread in the toaster.

    “Yeah. –Ooh, did you get a new toaster, Gil?”

    “Yes. And I’m seriously contemplating a new fridge.”

    “Eh? These old ones work really well!” she objected.

    “Mm, even when not painted lilac,” he murmured, his lips twitching. “No, but how am I to freeze my bananas when the freezing compartment’ll barely take three? It’s not the length, but the combined circumferences,” he explained mournfully.

    Dot rounded on her parent. “Da-ad!”

    “Not just for the bananas, you nit. He does need a decent fridge-freezer.”

    “He doesn’t. The old ones are miles sturdier than the new models. –Buy a chest freezer, Gil,” she ordered.

    Andy began : “He doesn’t need—”

    Loudly Dot proved that he did, citing the imminent advent of horse-trekking holidaymakers in support of her thesis.

    “Yes,” her father sighed. “I was merely trying to say, if he wants a chest freezer he doesn’t need to buy a new one, because that mad moo Marianne Gridley-Smythe next-door to May and Jerry is getting rid of theirs. –Nothing wrong with it, mate, the woman’s mad,” he explained clearly to Gil.

    “Jocelyn’s Mum?” croaked Dot.

    “Come on, Dot, the whole of Sydney admits the woman’s daft as a brush!”

    “Yeah—um, not that, Dad. Why get rid of their freezer?”

    “Puts out too much greenhouse gas,” he said, looking smug.

    There was a short pause. Dot’s huge blue eyes were seen to narrow. Then she said: “What you mean is, he tried to claim it didn’t.”

    “Got in it in fourteen,” replied her father placidly.

    Dot smiled somewhat weakly at Gil. “Well, yeah, Gil, I’d nip in quick if it’s going begging. ’Cos the only stuff Marianne’s ever kept in it ’ud be some plants for her dyeing, and maybe a cake or a casserole or two from Aunty May. Oh, and one year a man gave him a couple of ducks he’d shot and he put them in there for Christmas dinner, only that was the year she went back to vegetarianism.”

    “On purpose?” asked Gil very, very faintly.

    “Yes,” replied Dot simply. “It’s that sort of marriage.”

    “God!” croaked Ted. “Thank Christ I’m divorced!”

    Gil’s eyes rested thoughtfully on the delightful Dot. “Mm. Well, one wouldn’t wish still to be chained to the cow in question, no,” he murmured.

    Andy sniffed. “Marianne and poor old Whatsisname have been together for—shit, must be over thirty years now, Jocelyn’s the same age as Rosie, eh?” he said to his daughter. “He’s a banker, but in his quiet way he’s as bloody-minded as she is. It isn’t all one-sided, by no means.”

    “Never is,” Gil agreed. “Sure you won’t have something to eat, Dot?”

    The big blue eyes twinkled. “Well, just as a special favour to you, Gil, I’ll have banana on toast, thanks.”

    Gil gulped. “Don’t feel obliged.”

    “No, I like it!” she assured him cheerfully.

    She couldn’t have been lying: she ate two pieces of toast, each liberally spread with banana, which she sprinkled with a little of the raw sugar warmly recommended to Gil by his idiot nephew as being a bit more expensive than the refined stuff but much better for you and not in fact dear, as of course it came from Queensland, where they made the Bundaberg rum. Both Gil and Ted watched her eat in fascination, but Andy Mallory, consuming toast, bacon and eggs with a very dry look on his thin face, wouldn’t have taken any bets it was on account of the banana.

    Ted woke up with a gasp. Arma— No, it must be Andy again. Uh, no, he’d finished the sanding yesterday and to boot, by the time Ted got home from the Blue Gums Ecolodge construction site up at the far end of the road, had laid both the underlay and the vinyl. Gil had chosen the most hideous of the three patterns on offer but even on relatively short acquaintance Ted wouldn’t have taken any bets he wouldn’t. It was nominally a Spanish tile pattern, but of the sort that not only leered at you, when you glanced at it sideways sneering devil faces sprang out at you. This particular effort was in red, tan, black and yellow on a yellowish cream background, and quite undoubtedly it had been on special because no-one else in the entire world wanted— What the Hell was that racket? Wearily he crawled out of the stretcher.

    Nothing was happening at the back. He went along the passage. Gil’s door was open and his room was empty. Cautiously Ted opened the front door. Gil was out there in his sleep wear, an ancient khaki tee-shirt and an even more ancient pair of grey sweatsuit trousers, waving his arms, no, well, his good arm: the bad one, Ted registered with a certain grimness, wasn’t doing much, at a small truck which was backing inexpertly up to the house. It was this truck which was producing the—ouch!—racket.

    “The boy can’t drive,” said Gil as he came up to his side.

    “Yeah. What the Hell’s he trying to do?”

    “Back up sufficiently to allow him to offload that pile of crap he’s got in the back with the minimum of— PHIL!” he bellowed. “For God’s sake just park the bloody thing!”

    The truck paused in its efforts and a girl’s head poked out of the passenger’s window. “Hang on, Gil, I’ll do it!”

    There was a cry of “No!” from the interior of the vehicle but this had no effect: she jumped down and went round to the driver’s side. After a bit of shouting on the lines of “YES! You’re HOPELESS! Move OVER!” she got in. The truck then backed quietly and expertly up to the verandah.

    “It isn’t his ute, that rusting heap parked over there’s his,” explained Gil. “That’s about the only excuse for him I can think of, however.”

    “Right.” So that was what they called these small trucks of the pick-up variety? “Ute?” he ventured.

    “The origin of the name is lost in the mists of time,” murmured Gil. “The story goes that an inspired farmer out somewhere at the back of Bourke, well past Outer Woop-Woop—”

    A slim boy with ruffled straight fair hair—or perhaps it was gelled into a fashionable style, who knew, these days?—had jumped down from the passenger side. “You’re not funny, Uncle Gil! Most people do still remember! –It’s short for utility, or utility vehicle,” he said nicely to Ted. “They chopped the back off an old Holden to make the original one. In the Fifties, I think. Hullo, I’m Phil Sotherland,” he added with a smile, holding out his hand.

    Limply Ted shook it. “Ted Prosser.”

    “I know, Ted: Uncle Gil said you were here when I rang,” he said with a blinding smile.

    “Er—yeah. Hope it’s okay, Phil.”

    “Of course! Mummy and I were hoping we might get a boarder out of the Blue Gums project! This is Jen—Jen Remington,” he said as the girl came up to his side with a chair she’d hauled out of the back of the ute. “Ted Prosser, Jen,” he said as she lowered the chair.

    Possibly Ted was prejudiced, but if he’d met Jen Remington anywhere in the world he rather thought he’d have taken her for an Australian. She was not particularly tall—the myth that Australian women were was, he had had ample time to discover, just a myth, though it was true that there were tall ones. She didn’t have a figure like Elle McPherson’s, though that one wasn’t entirely a myth—that was, such figures could certainly be observed, though not on the majority—but she did have a perfect tan, a flawless complexion and, well, a sort of healthy, clean look to her that Ted couldn’t define but that he had certainly noticed as he tramped or bussed round Sydney looking for work in the vain hope he wouldn’t have to ask for a job on Tarlington’s project. She was perhaps about five-foot-seven, slim, and quite wiry, and the perfect tan was accompanied by very clear grey eyes and short, light brown hair, the ends turned up in perky little wisps. She was dressed in a faded green vest and a pair of baggy camouflage cargo pants and Ted Prosser, who was old enough to be her father, looked at her with a smile and was conscious for the first time in his life of a strong feeling of regret that his busted marriage hadn’t taken and that he didn’t have a nice little daughter just like her.

    “How are you, Ted?” she panted, holding out her hand.

    Smiling, Ted shook the little, wiry, capable hand. “Let me take that chair, Jen.”

    “No, that’s okay!” she grinned, hefting it again.

    “Just a minute,” said Gil firmly. “Before you take it inside, Jen, I think we’d better get it clear just what all this stuff is and whether there’s going to be any room for people in the house once it’s in there.”

    “It’s not all for us!” said Phil quickly.

    “Go on,” replied his uncle neutrally.

    “Um, well, most of it we found on the verge. A couple of suburbs were having a hard rubbish collection, like Bob thought. It’s amazing what you can pick up!” he beamed.

    “Junk,” said Ted faintly. “I thought they grew out of that at about eleven.”

    “No, I distinctly remember my brother Julian coming home at thirteen with a busted sundial he’d found on the verge in the village. The year after that, however, he came home with a yellow-headed, over-lipsticked dollybird,” said Gil drily. “I wasn’t home at the time but funnily enough I heard all about it.”

    “Yes, hah, hah,” said his nephew tolerantly. “There are some really nice armchairs!”

    Gil looked drily at Jen’s chair. It was not an armchair, in fact it wasn’t an inside chair. In fact it looked as if it was made of wrought iron. Lacy wrought iron once painted white but now distinctly rusted.

    “We got some rust-proofing paint, this’ll clean up nicely!” she beamed.

    Gil, to Ted’s considerable amusement, replied on a very weak note to this: “Will it? That’s good, Jen. Um, you didn’t find a pair, I suppose?”

    “No, but we found another one that almost matches!” she beamed.

    “Good show,” said Gil very weakly indeed. “Well, uh, if you’re going to paint it, Jen, I think possibly—uh, well, we don’t want paint splashes on Jack’s lovely new verandah flooring, do we?”

    “No, but I’ll just put it there to see the effect!” she beamed, suiting the action to the word.

    The two men looked at it limply. It looked like a rusted wrought-iron garden chair sitting there on the verandah.

    “Yes,” said Gil feebly. “Very nice. Um, find a table?”

    “Yes, a couple, only they don’t go with it, but we thought you could use them!” she beamed.

    “In the bunkhouse, Uncle Gil!” panted Phil, staggering up to them with another chair. This one was an easy chair. Well, sort of. The wooden-armed sort that one saw in cheap motels. Minus its seat cushion. The varnish on its wooden arms was not in particularly good repair.

    “It hasn’t got a cushion,” admitted Jen, “but we can easily get a piece of foam rubber! You could put it in the front room, Phil.”

    “Yes!” he panted, staggering past them.

    “Um, I thought that the idea was that Phil would look for chairs for Bob?” said Gil feebly to his nephew’s girlfriend.

    “Yeah, sure, we found some! They’re at the back. See, we thought we’d unload here first.”

    Gil’s eyes twinkled. “I think you mean you did, Jen! Come on, let me help you.”

    “No, you don’t,” she replied firmly. “He’s got a bad shoulder, Ted: he’s not allowed to lift stuff.”

    “Yes, I know.”

    “I can use my other arm!” said Gil indignantly.

    “No, heavy loads’ll put too much strain on your chest,” replied Jen definitely. “Come on, Ted, let’s grab that table!”

    Avoiding Gil’s eye, Ted hurried over to the ute with her.

    Ninety percent of the junk, it was eventually revealed, was for them. It all needed to be repainted, repaired, revarnished, recovered, reupholstered or re-whatever the word was for replacing entire seat cushions. With the exception of the antique lamp. Well, not quite antique, no. It was one of those Goddawful coloured oil things with bubbles in it.

    “Um, it might not be a genuine Sixties one,” admitted Phil as his uncle discovered the rune “Made in China” on its bottom, “but they are quite collectible, these days!”

    “Has your mother seen this lot?” he replied faintly.

    “Some of it, yes,” returned Phil defiantly, sticking his chin out.

    Gil sighed. “Mm. Very well, let’s see what you’ve found for Bob and Deanna.”

    “Real canvas chairs! Director’s chairs! A whole set!” he beamed.

    So they were. Six—er, no, seven of the things. It seemed a very odd numb— Oh. Found at three different addresses. Two of them needed mending, but it was only that the legs had come adrift. Uh-huh. The seats and backs were not canvas or anything like it and all of them without exception were torn or horribly faded or both. Bob and Deanna of course would replace them with proper canvas! Uh-huh. And, see, what Jen thought was—the two older gentlemen looked at her with identical kindly smiles on their faces—they could sand down the woodwork and paint them in really pretty colours! White canvas and coloured legs and arms, see?

    “That would be very pretty, yes,” agreed Gil, not allowing the words “lumbar support?” to do more than hover at the very back of his consciousness.

    Beaming, the two young people piled into their ute—Jen in the driver’s seat—and headed off to the B&B with their bounty.

    Then a dead silence fell on the scruffy, barely gravelled sweep before the old Jardine place.

    Ted cleared his throat.

    “Don’t dare to breathe the words ‘lumbar support’,” warned Gil.

    “Very well, then, I won’t, but for God’s sake, Gil, most of the B&B’s clients are middle-aged or elderly!”

    “Then breakfast on the verandah will prove a less popular option than Bob and Deanna are anticipating,” he returned smoothly.

    “Yeah,” he said weakly. “Uh—what’s the time?”

    Gil squinted at the sky. “I can’t say, Ted, but at a guess, seven-thirtyish?”

    Ted swallowed. “What time must that pair have had to get up?” he croaked.

    “I can’t say, Ted, but at a guess, fourish?”

    Ted smiled weakly. “Yeah. Um, where’s his mother?”

    “I can’t say, Ted,” replied Gil smoothly.

    At this Ted gave in almost entirely, laughed weakly and said: “Adorable, aren’t they?”

    “Jen is, certainly. He’s an idiot.”

    “Oh, come on!” he protested, laughing.

    Gil smiled a little. “Almost verging on the adorable, only needs a bit more solid indoctrination from his lovely Jen, that do ya?”

    “Pretty much, yes! Fancy breakfast?”

    “Might as well, since we’re awake,” agreed Gil drily.

    “Uh—Gil, go back to bed if you’d rather.”

    “I’d rather not, thanks! I am not an invalid. Disregard anything that pair may say: I’ve discovered that he’s been brainwashed by letters and phone-calls from my bloody aunts, and she’s still young enough to believe what comes out of his mouth.”

    “I’ll disregard the bags under your eyes and that blue look round your mouth, too, shall I?”

    “Oh, shut up. Don’t be tarsome. Think of what to do with the rest of those damn’ bananas.”

    “Um, Jack recommends them sliced on cornflakes,” said Ted dubiously, heading indoors.

    “That would be good, if we had cornflakes. Next?”

    “Sorry, that was my best shot! No, well, go into town to whatever doubtless up-market garden suburb this madwoman inhabits and grab that chest freezer off the verge?”

    “Yeah.” Gil investigated the fridge. “Damn, we’re out of milk. Uh—black instant coffee?”

    “I think I’d rather have black tea, thanks. What about that rumour that Australia’s long since been invaded by the immigrant Italian coffee-pot?”

    Shades of darling Rosemary! Gil just looked at him limply.

    “What?” said Ted defensively.

    “Nothing. Uh—well, Phil and Honey do have an Italian coffee-pot, it’s the brand Jen’s mother recommended to him. It’s down in Sydney in the flat. I concede that Honey doesn’t use it for breakfast, but she’s getting there!” he said with laugh.

    “Right. So would it be rude of me to ask why you didn’t ask where he bought it and go out and get one, Gil?”

    “Not only rude, quite tarsome!” he squeaked.

    Ted just eyed him drily.

    Gil cleared his throat. “Sort of been hanging fire, to tell you the truth. Er—well, expecting Adam to come out, you see: sort of had a mental picture of really getting started then. Um, well, used to having a crowd of subordinates and a whole infrastructure to fall back on, I suppose. Now tell me I’m a brainwashed Army cretin and incapable of self-motivation.”

    Ted wasn’t going to tell him any such thing, but he did have an idea that there was something wrong and it was possibly not just his friend Adam’s letting him down. He did strike as very much the Hill Tarlington type, and he’d been a full colonel to boot, hadn’t he? Ted didn’t hold all that much brief for the armed forces but he didn’t think you got that far if you were brainwashed and incapable of self-motivation. Hill, who’d been a major, was very much the sort that never let the grass grow under his feet—too much so, if anything—and Ted was pretty sure that in his natural state Gil Sotherland’d be the same. Well—having your lung shot to blazes would be a setback for anyone, of course. And then the loss of his career… Mm. And he himself had certainly spent the last few years lurking in his cottage doing nothing very much except go for long country walks and nod off in the cinema over to Ditterminster. Okay, the poor bastard needed to be cut some slack.

    “No, I won’t tell you that, Gil,” he said slowly. “I am rather fond of a decent cup of coffee, though. I might buy a pot.”

    “Uh—yes, by all means, Ted. If Phil can’t remember the shop I’m sure David Walsingham will recommend one.”

    “Good,” said Ted mildly, boiling the jug for tea. “Was that the last of the bacon we ate last night with that cheese on toast?”

    Gil checked the fridge. “Yes, ’fraid so.”

    “Okay, toast and tea!” said Ted cheerfully.

    “Fine.” Gil sat down rather heavily. After quite some time he said: “Sorry. I am a bit pooped, actually.”

    “Yes.” Ted took a deep breath, turned round from the bench and said firmly: “I do understand. After the Gulf Syndrome fright, when we lost the business and poor old George died, I spent several years lurking in my cottage doing nothing much except go for long country walks and nod off in the cinema. June Biggs used to nag me into action every so often—we drove up to the races at Newbury several times—and occasionally my brother and his wife dragged me over to Ditterminster for a family dinner, but that was about it.”

    “I see. So June was a friend, Ted?”

    “Mm. About the only person of any intelligence in the dump until Hattie came to live— Uh, no,” he gulped. “In her sixties, Gil!”

    “I see. No-one younger, then?”

    Ted passed his hand over his hair. “Bloody Miriam Green. We were kids together but her family left the village when she was about ten. She came back and took over the village shop and wouldn’t have minded taking over yours truly, but Christ! I left the village in the first instance to get away from that sort and their conformism and bloody closed minds!”

    “Ugh, you’ve just described my family!” replied Gil with a shudder.

    “Well, in a different walk of life,” said Ted a trifle weakly.

    “I don’t think the walk of life counts against the conformism and the closed minds,” he said drily. “With the exception of Father, they all mean well, however.”

    “That’s Miriam, all right,” agreed Ted, wincing. “It got to the stage where it was more or less stay and give in or tell the woman to her face I wouldn’t have her if they were giving her away with a bar of soap.”

    “Uh-huh. Is that why you got on out of it?” said Gil sympathetically.

    Ted almost lied and said yes, it was. Perhaps he would have if Gil had said something flippant instead of sympathetic. He took a deep breath. “No. Your pal Hill Tarlington had got engaged to Hattie and the fucking stomach cancer had finally taken poor Ned Cummins off. There was nothing to stay for. Miriam was only a minor factor.”

    “I’m very sorry, Ted,” said Gil simply.

    “Yeah. Thanks.”

    As the last of the tea vanished Gil ventured: “Shall we go into town and grab the madwoman’s chest freezer?”

    Ted gave him a dry look. “I’d be up for it, but I’m not going to let you lift anything.”

    Gil smiled a little. “Ooh, you’re mean, Mummy! No, well, plan B: get her phone number off Andy, phone her, tell her we’ll take it, and arrange to have it hauled up here at tremendous expense? It’ll still be cheaper than buying a new one: I’ve discovered the buggers charge extra for delivery if you live in Outer Woop-Woop.”

    “Don’t they want to make a sale?” croaked Ted.

    “No, mate!” said Gil with a laugh. “This is Australia: commercial enterprise is confined almost entirely to salvaging other people’s unwanted hard rubbish off the verge! And—dare I say it? It ain’t all bad!”

    Ted was beginning to come to that conclusion, yes. “Okay, let’s,” he agreed. “It’ll make shopping more efficient: we’ll be able to buy in bulk. And if you like, perhaps we could draw up a schedule of what needs to be done to put this place in order and prepare for your riding school. Only if you’d fancy it, Gil, of course.”

    “I would, actually,” he said, grinning at him. “Mind you, any schedule will have to include that junk the kids brought.”

    “Of course. Stripping, painting, varnishing and reupholstering are very much on the agenda!”

    Gil rubbed his hands. “Good show! –I say, do Chinese bubble lamps explode?”

    “I was wondering that,” admitted Ted.

    They looked at each other and burst into roars of laughter.

Next chapter:

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