Up The Road

16

Up The Road

    George’s gossip about the personalities of Potters Road had outlasted Andy MacMurray’s tinned spaghetti with squashy sausages and Susan Pendleton’s rival offering, healthful tabbouleh. Hers had little pieces of tomato in it, which made the texture too damp, not enough lemon juice or olive oil, which made it too bland, not to say boring, and no fresh mint, which meant it lacked that special little zing. Pete Outhwaite refrained from pointing this out; he’d met Susan before and was well aware that she wasn’t the type of woman who could take being told, wasn’t the type of woman who’d take the hint if you merely demonstrated by example, and was, in fact, the type of woman who’d resent it if you attempted to demonstrate by example, and assume you were trying to dominate her, subjugate her, or all the other modern claptrap. And, although she was the type of woman who asserted strongly that women did not have to be chained to their kitchen benches these days, she was also the type of woman who resented it like Hell if a bloke tried to do anything remotely related to food or housekeeping, barring the traditional rôles of burning the meat on the barbie, putting the rubbish bin out and, but only when asked, getting the vacuum-cleaner out of the cupboard.

    The beer that had helped take the taste of the sausages and tabbouleh away had induced a somnolent mood, so they went out onto the verandah and enjoyed it for a while, until Susan came out and started haranguing poor old George about having a proper Christmas this year and making sure that Honey, Phil and Gil came to them this time, because they had more than enough to worry about with their first guests coming for New Year’s. Pete closed his eyes behind his sunnies in self-defence but unfortunately this didn’t render him instantly deaf.

    “They won’t wanna come, they didn’t wanna come last year, if you recall, and they’ve got Ted and Jack as well!” replied George angrily. –He was, of course, still very pissed off that after swearing she wasn’t going to be here this year Susan had turned up out of the blue.

    “I meant them, too, you idiot! Go and ask them!”

    “Phil’ll probably have his little girlfriend up here.”

    “Yes! Jen as well! All of them!” she screeched. “Go and ASK them, George! And try to look as if you mean it!”

    “I would like them to come but none of us wants a huge fuss, Susan, hasn’t that sunk in yet?”

    “I’m not making a huge fuss!” she snapped. “One turkey between all of us? That isn’t a fuss! I’m not letting those awful men get away with making poor little Honey eat quiche for Christmas dinner again!”

    “Uh—the quiche was her choice, Susan,” said George in a shaken voice. –Pete opened one eye and peered at him cautiously from the shelter of the sunnies. Yep, he looked shaken, all right.

    “Right, and they fell in with it because it was the easy option,” she said evilly.

    “Um, no, I think it was because she really wanted it and she didn’t want to cook,” he muttered.

    “Of course she didn’t want to cook, she hates cooking, I know that, and that’s why I want her to come to us! Has she ever had a proper Christmas?”

    “Well, um, think Jen said her mum had her over one year, Susan, if ya mean a family do,” he said very, very weakly.

    “Of course I do! –Well?”

    “Um, well, there was that… Um, musta had family Christmases when they were kids, surely?” he groped.

    “Do me a favour! With that madwoman for a mother?”

    George had temporarily forgotten the madness of Verity Jardine Corbett. “Uh—no. Well, all right, I’ll ask, but be prepared: they won’t wanna come.”

    “You’re an idiot, George! They won’t want to impose, but just tell Honey I’d be very glad of her help if she’d like to, and of course they’ll accept!”

    George gave in. “All right. Come on, Pete. Walk off that spaghetti.”

    “That beer, you mean!” snapped Susan. She retreated on this victorious note as far as the French doors, where she fixed them with her glittering eye until they actually went.

    “Um, didn’t you say that her and your mate Jack had a thing and then he did the pool cabana dame with the big tits and she’s been pissed off with him ever since?” ventured Pete after the entire length of Andy MacMurray’s rutted, dusty clay drive had been traversed in morose silence.

    “Eh? Yeah. Well, sort of. Came up here last Christmas, self-invited, of course, and that was when it dawned that she mightn’t’ve forgiven him—they don’t forgive ya, mate—but she wouldn’t mind a bit more. Only Jack, uh—”

    “Didn’t fancy it?”

    “Wouldn’t say that,” admitted George glumly. “Didn’t fancy it enough. Not with what goes along with it, in her case.”

    “Right: goddit. Um, doesn’t she realise that Honey’s not up here this week?”

    “Obviously not,” replied George glumly. “I’m gonna have to put it to Gil in words of one syllable, I s’pose.”

    “Rather you than me.”

    “I keep telling you, he’s an okay joker!”

    Yeah. Maybe. Pete said nothing.

    After a bit George offered: “She’ll sweat blood over the turkey, of course, but it’ll be one with one of those timer things that pop out, so don’t try to tell ’er whether or not it’s done, will ya?”

    “Wouldn’t dream of it. Nor give her a better recipe for stuffing,” he replied primly.

    “Ya better not, no. –Have ya got a better recipe?” he asked on a wistful note.

    “Judging by that tabbouleh of hers, yes. Includes finely chopped smoky bacon and chestnuts, plus a slosh of brandy to brighten it up. Sage for flavour.”

    “Right. She’s got two recipes. The one she did last year had bread cubes, ya don’t make crumbs these days from a day-old white loaf like what Mum used to, grated tangelo rind, orange won’t do, soaked dried mushrooms, fresh won’t do, chopped pecans, walnuts won’t do, the cranberry sauce that some of us were thinking might go on the table as sauce, and flaming coriander leaves. And something really peculiar… Chopped ginger, that’s right, but there was something else that made it taste really weird… I know: five-spice! Chinese, isn’t it?”

    “Yes. Can we hope she’ll do the other one this year?” said Pete faintly.

    “Hope and pray. Well, it’s weird, too, only not as sicky. Prunes, um, well, the bread cubes, of course, um, think she chops the giblets up for that one, um, well, there’s a lot of chopped green stuff, ya see. Cooked, I think, anyway she squeezes the water out of it by hand. Or if there’s a mug in the offing he gets forced to do it for her. Only after a surgical scrub-up, natch.”

    “Spinach?” said Pete faintly. In Australia this was always Swiss chard, or what the more old-fashioned Sydneysiders called silverbeet.

    “Y— No, English spinach, that’s it! Six times the price and forty times as scarce, right?”

    “Right,” said Pete drily. He was fond of spinach. Though admittedly it was impossible to buy any here that wasn’t smothered in grit. No matter how carefully you washed it, there was always some left to turn your beautiful buttered organic spinach into a mouthful of Hell. “I suppose if you squeezed it really well that wouldn't be bad, but otherwise I think you’d end up with green sludge stuffing. Actually, without the spinach, it sounds quite good. I’d add some sage.”

    “Yeah, well, don’t tell her that. But if ya stand around looking like a mug she might let ya squeeze the flaming muck.”

    “Good, I’ll do that, then,” he said placidly.

    “Yeah. Oh, and if she makes some flaming putrid thing with sweet potatoes covered in burnt marshmallows and tries to call it a vegetable, don’t say anything, will ya?”

    “Certainly not!” Pete agreed with a smothered laugh.

    “It’ll be Hell, mate, I’m telling you. Well, me and Jack have shoved an air conditioner in the old joker’s kitchen, it won’t be the Hell it once was, but anything with Susan in charge of it is bound to end up with everyone’s tempers frayed to buggery.”

    “I don’t think the syndrome’s confined to your family, George,” said Pete drily.

    “Isn’t it? I once spent Christmas with ole Mac Simpson and his family—not long after Gwyneth walked out on me, it was. There was him and good ole Helen, and their son Jim and his wife, um, Daphne, that’s right, and their three kids, they’d’ve been about ten, twelve and fourteen. We just packed the kids and their presents and a load of beer into the cars and took off for their weekender. On the coast, well down past Wollongong, lovely spot. Pretty basic, but it had ceiling fans. Helen and Daphne just made big bowls of jelly and we had cold sliced ham with cranberry sauce or mustard—no garbage about baking the thing for five hours till the whole house feels like an oven, air-con or not—tomato and lettuce salad, jellied beetroot, ’cos their Jim, he loves it, and then ice cream and jelly for pud. Funnily enough with a bit of room after it for Chrissie cake with our coffee.”

    “Perfect! Always did think ole Mac had sense,” replied Pete with a smile.

    “Yeah, but ’is wife and daughter-in-law have too, mate!” retorted George with vigour.

    “Maybe it’s cause and effect.”

    George made a face. “Yeah.”

    “It is only one day,” said Pete soothingly.

    “Well, two: since she’s already here she’ll start the food the day before, but yeah, I suppose I can bear it. But I was planning on doing fuck-all, just throwing back a few frosties with Dad!”

    Pete sighed. “Mm. That’s a bloke’s idea of Christmas. There is no way any woman under the sun’d let you get away with it, old mate. –Or if a miracle occurs and you find one that does, grab her!” he added with a laugh.

    “It’d be a miracle,” George assured him. “What’s your idea of Christmas? Turkey with all the trimmings in ten feet of snow?”

    “At my old gran’s place: more or less, yeah! Well, this is going back forty years,” he reminded him: George nodded, Pete was the same age as he was; “and working-class families could rarely afford turkey. I dunno how hellish it might have seemed to the grown-ups but to us kids it was pretty perfect. Gran used to do a couple of roast chickens—they weren’t cheap, either, but turkey cost an arm and both legs—well stuffed, of course. I think it was only onion and bread, with a bit of sage, looking back! We lived in a mining town and none of the houses had gardens, but she did grow her own herbs in pots: always had sage, used to dry it in big bunches over the stove. Then there’d be giblet gravy, and roast potatoes—we’d never heard of sweet potatoes, back then—and roast parsnips, all us kids loathed them, and of course boiled carrots and sprouts on the side.”

    “Sprouts?” fumbled George,

    “Brussels sprouts, George: they’re a traditional Christmas accompaniment to the bird. Well, they are a winter vegetable.”

    “Brussels sprouts,” said George numbly. “You poor bugger! And I thought I was badly off, with Susan’s ruddy burnt-marshmallow sweet potatoes!”

    “It’s amazing how edible even an overcooked sprout can be, smothered in rich gravy.”

    “Only if you’re too young to know better, Pete!”

    “Yeah,” he agreed with a sigh. “Boy, Gran’s kitchen with the Christmas chooks roasting… Granddad always demanded Yorkshire pudding with anything roast, so she always did that, too. Came up light and fluffy with a crisp top. Poor Mum could never manage it, bless her. She gave up trying once we got out here and it dawned that no-one else ever ate the muck!”

    George smiled: he’d said “moock”. “Yeah. Susan tried that one winter—when her and Graham were still together. Often used to have us over for dinner when she wanted to try out something new. Did it under the roast of beef, I think was the story. All the kids refused point-blank to touch it, of course. It was pretty bad: dampish on the inside, kinda chewy on the outside. We decided it was just another Pommy myth and gave it away. So what’d your gran turn on for pud?”

    “Christmas pudding with hard sauce, of course! Granddad used to buy her a—I think it was a quarter bottle of brandy, looking back. So big,” he said, holding his forefinger and thumb about twelve centimetres apart. “Some went in the cake, some went in the pudding, and some in the hard sauce, and there was still a bit left over for the adults to have nips to finish the meal! Me old Aunty Sybil lived with them—she was me great-aunty, really, Gran’s sister—so there’d be the three of them, plus Mum and Dad, plus Aunty Alice, she was a widow, Uncle Harry got his down the mines. Six very small nips!” he finished with a laugh.

    George was trying to imagine it. It woulda been a little stone row-house, presumably. All of them crammed into it, two chooks between the lot of them… “Did your Aunty Alice have kids?” he demanded.

    “Mm? Yes, four.”

    Bloody Hell! That made six adults and seven kids sharing two chooks for Christmas dinner! He swallowed hard. No flaming wonder Pete’s parents had decided to emigrate when he was about nine or ten.

    “It must have been a culture shock, coming out to Oz, Pete,” he said in a low voice.

    “Aye, lad, it was that an’ a half!” said Pete with a robust laugh. “Ee, youw lot didn’t ’alf talk foonny!”

    “Right. Not just that.”

    “No boiled sprouts at Christmas? Yes, that was a culture shock! No, well, Dad was a clerk in the mining company office, you see, and he got that job out here with the insurance company—right, the same mob he was with when he retired, they still had the concept of permanent employment in those days—and so the mores of the ultra-respectable suburban circles we moved in were no different from those we’d known back home. The outward manifestations were different: you didn’t religiously scrub your front step or wash your net curtains every week, and you had a detached bungalow on a quarter of an acre with what seemed like a giant back yard, but most people still went to church on Sundays and stood up for ladies and older people on the bus, not to mention for God Save the Queen—don’t count on your fingers, it was the mid-Sixties, Australia was still very conservative. Think it would have been at the end of the decade, or even the early Seventies, when they threw The Who out of the country for being found in possession of pot.”

    “Was that the story? Didn’t they throw them in jail first? No, well, I see what you mean.”

    “Mm. The weather was a lot hotter, of course, but ladies still wore white sandals and nice floral cotton sunfrocks in summer, mate, whatever the Mod girls might’ve been shocking their elders by getting around in.”

    “Cripes, yes: I can remember Janice in a mini-dress, she must have been about fifteen, and Dad completely doing his nut! And he’s always been as easy-going as they come.”

    “There you are, then. Rock ’n’ roll was sinful, God was in His Heaven, the Yanks were in Vietnam, and all was right with the world.”

    “How the Christ did we end up here?” said George limply.

    “Uh—came up the road, George.”

    “No! The fucking Vietnam War!”

    “Sorry,” said Pete glumly.

    “So ya should be! We were both ten years too young to go, Pete, so drop it!”

    “Yeah. It just came to mind. Well—our little suburban world was so complacent, and to think at the same time—”

    “There’s no point in brooding about it,” said George firmly. “Come on.” He headed up the driveway of Jardine Holiday Horse Treks.

    Phil was discovered in a daggy grey tee-shirt, old khaki shorts and rubber flip-flips, all of which garments, registered George MacMurray with silent amusement, he wouldn’t have been seen dead in when he’d first come out here, standing on the newly gravelled front sweep before the old bungalow, hands on hips, supervising Jack up a ladder adjusting a long hanging sign over the front verandah. “Jardine Holiday Horse Treks”—quite.

    “Left hand down a bit!” said Pete with a chuckle, just as George was going to.

    “Hah, hah,” replied the boy, not turning his head. “Up a little bit, Jack!” he cried.

    Jack readjusted the sign—it was hanging on short chains, they could now see—and, sensibly not trying to turn round, cried: “How’s that?”

    “Great!” cried Phil. “Oh, hi, it’s you,” he said mildly.

    “Yeah. Place is looking good, Phil,” said George kindly.

    “Thanks!” he beamed. “See, we wanted a traditional look; more the old homestead look, y’know? Have you seen the Springer House bungalows yet, Pete? Well,” he said as Pete shook his head, “they’ve used bright colours, they look good, mind, but Uncle Gil thought we ought to try for something different.”

    The old bungalow was now painted white, with its verandah posts and windowsills pale green. It did look more like a homestead, yes, except possibly for the roof, which was still bright red.

    “This is Jack Jackson,” explained Phil as Jack came down the ladder. “This is George’s mate, Pete Outhwaite, Jack.”

    “Hullo,” he said amiably. Pete stuck out his hand, with the customary Aussie greeting in the form: “How are you, Jack?”, emphasis on the “are”, so, looking mildly surprised, he shook it, replying mildly: “Not bad, ta.”

    After that, of course, Pete had to have the complete tour. The tiled verandah was duly admired, as was its eclectic collection of verandah furniture. All painted bright white, so that it almost looked as if it was meant. Inside, the main part of the house was shabby but clean, and according to Phil wouldn’t be used by the guests. Gil was discovered in the kitchen, indulging in some sort of refrigerator worship.

    “Hullo, new vinyl!” discerned George.

    “Yes. ’Orrible, isn’t it?” he replied cheerfully. “We were so glad to find it. It clashes frightfully with the stuff Andy Mallory was so kind as to put down for us in the laundry.”

    “Got it over in Barrabarra,” put in Jack. “There wasn’t much choice. End of a run.”

    “Yes, but mind you, there were some full rolls that were almost as ’orrid, only when we saw this we had to have it!” explained Gil eagerly.

    George had now had time to realise what the attraction was. It was another Spanish tile pattern, not the same as the one in the laundry, but similar in kind: leering devil faces. In addition, if you glanced away from its nasty combination of yellow, navy and green for an instant the stuff flickered at you. “This’ll be a real inducement for all those applicants for cook you’re getting, will it?” he said drily.

    Gil got up from his position in front of the empty fridge, carefully closing its door. “We sincerely hope so, George!” he agreed with a laugh. “Jack pointed out in no uncertain terms that no woman’ll want to work in a daggy kitchen, so even though these days it’s possible that one might get a non-sexist applicant,”—“Hah, hah,” noted Jack stolidly—“we decided to make an effort.”

    “Why did the effort include painting the cupboards navy blue, instead of covering them with some nice hygienic sheets of Melamine?” asked Pete artlessly.

    “Well, two reasons, really, Pete!” returned Gil nicely, smiling at him. “One, the price of Melamine, and two, the fact that Barrabarra Hardware had this paint on special. High-gloss, hardwearing, couldn’t be better, really.”

    “Except that no woman under the sun’ll want to work in a navy-blue kitchen,” noted George.

    “It doesn’t look bad at all, with the kitchen walls white, I think,” put in Phil loyally, “but we do realise that these days kitchen cupboards are never coloured, Pete. Well, maybe very pale oatmeal, but nothing brighter. But Mummy really likes it, and she got a couple of little pots of sample paint and did the chairs herself!”

    Pete hadn’t been going to remark on the chairs, because he was quite sure that Gil Sotherland would have a smart-ass reply to silence him with. “They’re very effective,” he said kindly. There were six chairs. One was bright lime green—not the same green as the grassy shade of the vinyl flooring, but at least it didn’t clash with it—one was bright yellow, almost the same yellow as the one in the lino, and two were navy—left over from the cupboards, quite. The other two were dark green plastic, the very cheap sort sold for garden furniture. Possibly some maniac had taken the old wooden table in hand, because it had very evidently been sanded within an inch of its life and lovingly polyurethaned. “And the table’s great,” he added.

    “Yes, it’s come up beautifully, hasn’t it? Ted did it: he said he needed a hobby for the evenings!” explained the boy with a laugh.

    “I think you would, up here,” agreed Pete seriously. “What sort of TV reception do you get?”

    “Look, you’re not risking life and limb climbing on their roof to put up a fucking dish for them!” said George crossly.

    “The reception’s not bad,” said Phil calmly. “But none of us are that keen on TV, really. But we’ve put in a dish for the bunkhouse.”

    “It seemed the preferable alternative to the clients coming and sitting in our sitting-room,” explained Gil.

    “Not only that, if some of them bring their kids, it’ll be something restful for them to do after a hard day out with the horses,” Phil explained.

    “Right,” agreed George. “’Specially in that crucial period—you bachelors won’t be aware of this, of course, but me and Jack are—between the day’s activities and tea.”

    “Too right!” agreed Jack. “When the whingeing starts up.”

    “Uh-huh. Not to mention the Coke-drinking, the biscuit-nicking, and the attacks on  the siblings.”

    Pete smiled. “I get it: sound move, then. Are you getting any applicants for cook?”

    To his annoyance, though several other people blinked, Gil Sotherland was completely unphased by this abrupt return to a previous subject, and returned smoothly: “Not since I asked George to ask you if you might know of anyone, no, Pete. Don’t suppose you do, do you?”

    “Can’t think of anyone,” he admitted. “Well, some of my students are looking for work, but they’re not the sort that’d want to come up here. Or that can do plain cooking.”

    Gil sighed. “No. It’s really only breakfasts, help with the picnic lunches—Phil’s in charge of them—a few lunches for those that stay here for it, and basic stuff for the dinners. We are going to provide barbecue equipment for the guests to cook their meat themselves, but they’ll need salads and stuff.”

    “And pudding,” added Jack.

    “Mm. Well, fruit and ice cream, we think, but it’d be nice to be able to provide the occasional cheesecake or fruit flan.”

    Pete winced. “None of my students can do those, that’s for sure. You'll have to fall back on frozen cheesecakes, they’re readily available.”

    “They’re putrid, though, Pete!” cried Phil,

    “Well, yeah,” he allowed fairly.

    “I was so disappointed, I bought one for Mummy: the picture on the packet looked yummy, but it was nothing like it! Just over-sweet slime with some sort of pink gluey stuff on top if it.”

    “Strawberry,” spotted George unerringly.

    “Mm,” Phil agreed sadly.

    “If you look at the list of ingredients—” began Pete.

    “We know!” said George loudly. “It’s all gobbledegook to the average consumer, you nana, especially those ruddy numbers!”

    “You can buy a little booklet—”

    “Shut up, Pete. –Food technology is his subject,” he apologised to the company for him, “but that doesn’t really excuse him.”

    “It allows one to make allowances, though!” said Gil with a laugh. “Presumably these little booklets are only available in the most arcane specialist health food shops in the very largest metropolitan centres, Pete?”

    “Um, well, Diabetes Australia might— Um, well, yeah,” admitted Pete sourly.

    Gil looked wry. “Oh, dear.”

    “If you really want one, Uncle Gil,” said Phil kindly, “Sal knows of a very good health food shop. Not cranky, at all. It sells organic produce, too. I think it might have them.”

    “Isn’t it easier just to look at the list of ingredients and if it includes chemicals and numbers, not buy the muck?” said George drily.

    “I’d of thought so,” agreed Jack. “What about pies?”

    There was a short silence.

    “Pies,” he repeated mildly.

    “Good old Aussie pies—yeah, we know,” conceded George, “Thinking, thinking… Some of them come in packets these days. They’d have the ingredients on them.”

    “If you’re worried, Jack, I can tell you what they put in the average Aussie pie,” said Pete kindly.

    “No, ta. I mean, I oughta be worried but they all do it these days, don’t they? So whichever brand ya buy, you’re no worse off. I just wondered how you’re supposed to tell what’s in them when they can’t be labelled.”

    “All regulations in Australia are contradictory, anomalous and based firmly on lip service and whitewash, Jack,” said Pete with a twinkle in his eye, “and the food regulations are no exception.”

    His audience all laughed—though he wasn’t too sure that Gil wasn’t doing it in a spirit of kindly toleration—and Phil added eagerly: “Gosh, Mummy’s always going on about lip service being an Australian characteristic, too!”

    “Yeah,” said George wryly. “Only in these modern times, I think. –Don’t think ya do mean whitewash, though, do ya, Pete?”

    “He does,” said Phil firmly, “but not in the sense the local sports commentators use it. Have you noticed?”

    “I do mean whitewash, in the long-accepted sense of a cover-up of something nasty,” said Pete drily. “Apparently the sense of a resounding defeat in a sports match does exist, at least according to the crap dictionary that comes with your computer these days. –I was using my laptop while the radio news was on,” he explained, “so I looked it up on the spot. It didn’t indicate what country the usage might have come from.” He shrugged.

    Several people were goggling at him and Phil finally croaked: “Golly, you mean it's an accepted meaning?”

    “Yeah, well, that seems to cut out Britain, doesn’t it?” he said drily.

    “America,” suggested several voices.

    “I don’t think they’ve used whitewash there since Tom Sawyer, have they?” murmured Gil.

    “I can’t remember ever hearing it back home,” said Jack dubiously. “You’re right, though, Phil, they do use it in the sports broadcasts over here.”

    “So are the Kiwis more or less likely to Americanise their usage than the Aussies, Jack?” asked Gil.

    Pete had just been going to ask that. He was bloody sure the man was taking the Mick. He scowled and tried not to look eagerly at Jack.

    “I’d say marginally less, these days,” Jack replied thoughtfully. “There’s traditionally been more resentment of American influences, but I’d say it was dying out. My dad, he couldn’t stand anything American in the way of slang or food or, well, fads, I s’pose, but he liked a lot of American films. John Wayne, mostly,” he admitted with a smile. “Talking of cheesecakes, I remember when they first came in he said they were American muck!”

    “Didja have cottage cheese when you were a kid, Jack?” asked George with a grin.

    “Nah: never heard of it,” he admitted cheerfully.

    “Me too neither!”

    “What about you, Pete?” asked Gil with a nice smile.

    “Are you taking the Mick? Working-class Yorkshire: what the fuck do you think?”

    “Uh—no, sorry, I wasn’t taking the Mick,” said Gil in dismay. “Nothing like cottage cheese ever got past Nanny when Julian and I were kids—not that bloody Father would have allowed it in the house—and school was just as bad—but, um, well, sorry,” he ended lamely.

    “Pete, you’re a tit,” said George heavily before Pete could utter.

    Pete was now very red. “All right, I am. Sorry, Gil, shouldn’t’ve jumped down your throat. Didja mean when we came to Australia?”

    “Mm. But please don’t feel obliged—”

    Pete was redder than ever. “I don’t mind! Well, these days I’ve seen Mum eat rye bread with a half inch of cottage cheese on it and a slice of fresh mango on top of that without a flicker. But I can’t recall them ever having it in the house up until… Shit, woulda been well into the Eighties, I think. They’d moved into their townhouse by that time… Yeah. Mum decided they ought to lighten their diet and after thirty years of giving her complete sway on the dietary front, Dad didn’t really have a leg to stand on. I won’t say he never set foot in the kitchen, he was a really decent type, for his generation, and always dried the dishes without fail. But he never cooked so much as a slice of toast for himself.”

    “Right; I remember, last time they had me over for dinner, I think it would have been about six months before he had to go into hospital,” George recalled: “your mum had sprained her wrist badly and the old man explained—he had a terrific dry sense of humour, Gil, I think you’d have liked him very much—he explained with a twinkle in his eye that they’d worked out a system for managing the meals: they both went into the kitchen, and he lifted things and cut things up to her orders!”

    “That’s right,” said Pete with a smile and a little sigh. “He was a dry old boy, but laugh! You never heard anything like it when something really tickled his fancy!”

    “You were lucky, Pete,” said Gil simply. “My father’s a mean-spirited martinet, incapable of humour.”

    “Worse than that!” cried Phil. “Did you know he made Mummy sign me over to him the minute I was born?”

    Pete did know that, of course, thanks to George’s full report, but he wasn't too sure that he was meant to. He glanced a trifle desperately at George.

    “Never mind that now, Phil,” said his uncle mildly. “We’re both well out of his orbit, thank God. May I ask, does your mother live in Sydney, Pete?”

    “No. She dithered for a bit after Dad went, but townhouses like theirs were selling like hotcakes and she’d always wanted something a bit more tropical, so she went up to Bryon Bay.”

    “Gosh!” cried Phil. “Not really? Granny lives up there!”

    “That right? Couldn’t stick it meself, the bits that aren’t full of right-down weirdos are too la-de-da for words, but Mum loves it. Got a little house, think you might call it a duplex, it’s been done up really nicely. The other half belongs to a pair of gay artists, and she was a bit worried about noisy parties, but they’re really quiet people. Tiny front gardens, crammed with broad-leaved tropical plants and a couple of palm trees. The back garden was a bit of a worry: narrow, but long, but the previous owner had put in a patio and divided the rest of it in half with a nice lilly pilly hedge: made separate rooms of it, you know the style of thing? So she just uses the front bit and she’s let the gays plant fruit and veggies in the back. They're really into organic gardening and they were terrified their new neighbour’d object to the permaculture wilderness they’ve got back there, stuff dripping over the wall and so forth, so it's worked out really well all round.”

    “It sounds lovely!” cried Phil. “I’ve seen organic gardens on Gardening Australia; I was wondering if we could start one here?”

    “Dry summers and cold winters: it’d be lot of work, Phil. But you could, yeah. Have to get in a load of topsoil and a tonne of manure to start you off, I think. But a proper permaculture garden looks after itself, more or less, after a bit!”

    “Balls, it requires twenty-five hours’ solid yacker out of the twenty-four,” said George firmly. “Ignore him, Phil, he’s talking through the little hole in the back of his neck. His garden consists of a shaven lawn, period. Well, the front. The back consists of a paved drying green and dustbin shelterer, period. Anything he says about organic gardening is straight out of some blithering magazine.”

    “Ooh, is there a magazine?” cried Phil.

    “Phil,” said his uncle heavily, “you’ve seen how David and Ann are both struggling with their gardens. For God’s sake, last winter Ann had to buy in beets to feed her bloody hens!”

    “You mean silverbeet, Gil. Though you’re not wrong,” admitted Jack. “Her garden’s not sheltered enough.”

    “No, and she hasn’t taken an organic approach,” said Phil eagerly. “David’s garden’s doing okay, though.”

    “Before you use this in support of your argument, Pete,” said Gil with a sigh, “David’s half-Greek and anything he’s succeeded in growing would do really well in Greece, which is about as arid as our hillside, with very much the same climate. Scads of spring greens, then with a lot of watering reasonable crops of tomatoes, aubergines and peppers, limited success with zucchini—he didn’t realise how much water they’d need—and hugely flourishing bushes of rosemary. His parsley and basil do well in spring, then bolt to seed in summer and die the death. Likewise his garlic and onions—that disconcerted him, eh, Jack?’

    “Too right,” he agreed drily. “And that herb with the funny name. Grew into lovely little bushes, he started patting himself on the back, then bingo! Covered in flowers and setting seed like crazy.”

    “Uh-huh. Oregano,” said Gil. “His beautiful fennel did exactly the same thing, alas. The lavender’s doing well, though. Unfortunately very few clients require lavender-flower ice cream, it’s been discovered.”

    Even though this might have been said to be a score against him Pete broke down in splutters at this point.

    “Yeah,” said Gil, grinning broadly. “Well, Deanna’s using it for lavender bags for the B&B, it’s not being entirely wasted. And the prettier lavender bags she makes sell like hotcakes up at the art and crafts centre.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Jack with a grin. “Two dollars a throw for a wee bit of muslin and a piece of ribbon and a tiny wee strip of lace, with free lavender off David’s bushes.”

    “Two dollars? Surely that isn’t cost-effective these days?” worried Pete.

    “God!” cried George, clutching his head. “Will ya drop it?”

    “No, he has got a point, but you see, Deanna’s been collecting fabric scraps and bits of ribbon and stuff for years: she’s got a huge cupboard full of stuff here and more in storage at her parents’ place,” explained Phil kindly. “She does lots of patchwork.”

    “See?” said George nastily to his old mate.

    “Yeah,” conceded Pete weakly. “That sounds better.”

    “Added to which, the bags all have a little card attached with the craft centre’s name, address, website and contact numbers!” added Gil with a laugh. “Computer-printed on the premises, of course!”

    “I get it, the lavender bags are really an advertising gimmick,” he said, looking happy.

    “Yes,” agreed Gil, rinsing out his sponge firmly at the sink.

    “Finished that fridge at last?” asked Jack with kindly interest.

    “Yes, Mummy, it’s lovely and clean.”

    “Ya could switch it on again, then,” he noted.

    “Oh—bugger.” Gil leapt to it, to the accompaniment of sniggers from the assembled company.

    Phil then urged them on to the bunkhouse but under Pete’s pointed glare George sighed and said: “No, hang on, Gil. Can I have a word?”

    “Yes, of course,” he said, looking surprised. “Shall we meet them up there, then?”

    “Uh—no, it’s not private. Um, well, Susan told me I hadda ask you all to Christmas dinner this year and—uh, well, put it like this, if you don’t accept me life won’t be worth living. Or Pete’s, dare say.”

    “Doesn’t she like him?” asked Phil with interest.

    “Hush!” ordered his uncle, his shoulders shaking.

    “Boy, he’s young,” said George heavily.

    “The thing is, Phil, ’e’s male, and if ’e was present when George didn’t manage to carry out her orders— Geddit?” said Jack kindly.

    “Crumbs. Um—yes,” he acknowledged weakly.

    “Yeah. Well, just male and a mate would probably do it,” admitted George, “but yeah.”

    Gil cleared his throat. “Okay, then, chaps, in a spirit of male solidarity, shall we agree to accept Susan’s very kind invitation to Christmas dinner?”

    “Yeah,” agreed Jack with a sigh. “Unless Honey was planning on something else.”

    “I think she was just planning on a lazy day with a few rum and pineapples,” admitted Gil.

    “I was thinking we could try out our barbecues,” said Phil sadly.

    “Boxing Day!” promised his uncle with a laugh, patting his shoulder.

    “Thanks,” said George with a sigh. “And if anyone can find bloody Susan a bloke of her own for Christmas, I’ll be their slave for life!”

    “A crate of Johnnie would do,” admitted Gil, grinning at him. “Um, let’s see… Well, none of us so far have passed muster, in fact Jack might be said to have fallen after the final fence.”

    “Shut up, ya bugger!” choked Jack, going bright red and collapsing in splutters.

    “Ooh, I know! What about Pete?” said Gil brightly.

    “I don’t want her, thanks,” said Pete drily over the rest of the company’s mean sniggers.

    “But does that count?”

    “Well, not much,” admitted George on a sour note, “but she doesn’t want him, either: last time they met he told her the proper way to make some bloody filo pastry thing.”

    “Ouch!” gasped Gil, shaking his hand as if he’d burnt it.

    “Yeah, it was the right move, wasn’t it?” drawled Pete sardonically.

    At this Gil collapsed in splutters, gasping: “Too—bloody—right!”

    After which they all went up to the bunkhouse, Pete Outhwaite somewhat sourly admitting to himself that Gil Sotherland wasn’t as bad as he’d assumed.

    The bunkhouse was a little further up the slope from the house, along a meandering path of dry clay sparsely dotted with stepping-stones. On closer inspection broken bits of concrete, but they made quite good stepping-stones. It was basically a large steel shed of the sort seen all over Australia—colour-steel, as Phil pointed out to Pete. In this case the colour was not the expected grey but a dull, matte grey-green. As Phil pointed out to Pete, a second shed had been added to form an ablutions block. Gil translated this helpfully as “bathroom”, but this time Pete was bloody sure he was taking the Mick, so he didn’t smile.

    Inside, the bunkhouse, which was long and narrow, had two main rooms, the rear one with six bunks against each long wall, in three sets of two. It was plain but quite pleasant-looking: the wooden bunks, clearly built in situ rather than bought ready-made, were painted a cheerful scarlet and the curtains at the two small windows were serviceable navy denim. The floor looked like pale woodgrain but was actually vinyl, over, as Jack explained, a concrete slab. With underlay, of course! The bunks each had thick foam rubber mattresses—comfortable, as Phil demonstrated, sitting on one—with plain denim coverlets. The room was, as Phil pointed out, finished. This big cupboard at the end held the bedlinen—so it did: towers of dark brown, dark green or navy sheets and pillowcases, and shelves of folded-up navy dunas, that the punters certainly wouldn’t need in summer.

    “It has been noted the duvets are somewhat over-optimistic, but we have already had a couple of enquiries about Easter,” murmured Gil.

    Pete managed to forgive the “duvets”, it was clearly the bloke’s English vernacular. “Right. This dark linen’s practical,” he admitted.

    “Mm, that was the consensus. –I think Ted must be working in the next room,” he said, opening the door. The guests’ sitting-dining room was revealed. Two round dark green plastic tables, each with six matching plastic chairs round it, three sagging but evidently recently re-covered sofas: they were different styles but all covered in dark blue denim; and an assortment of easy chairs, all covered in a sturdy scarlet cloth. Those that had visible wooden parts had very evidently been stripped, sanded and polyurethaned. The effect was neat but, given the woods that Australian furniture manufacturers apparently deemed appropriate under their customary dark mahogany glossy varnish, not exactly uniform. Against the far wall was a long bench which at the moment held a bag of tools, a modern television—the oblong-screened variety, but by no means a giant plasma thing—and a DVD cum video-player with trailing cords. Pete looked dubiously at the thin man in shabby khaki shorts and a brown tee-shirt who was carefully screwing a set of shelves on thin metal legs onto one end of this bench. Jack dashed forward and supported the structure for him.

    “Thanks,” he grunted. They watched silently as he finished the screwing on one tubular metal leg and did the other three.

    “It looks sort of Fifties, don’t you think?” said Phil on a proud note as, the screwing finished, the artisan stood back and surveyed his work. At the same time Jack stood back and scratched his head, eying it uneasily.

    “Sort of Fifties and sort of about to fall down. The whole structure’s resting on sixteen little screws, Ted,” said George. “Why didn’t you fix it to the wall?”

    “Yeah,” agreed Jack.

    Ted glared. “It came off a free-standing sideboard, and it didn't fall down!”

    “What happened to the rest of it?” asked Pete.

    Ted gave him a sour look but Gil said pacifically: “We don’t know, exactly. When Phil and his girlfriend found it on the verge it was minus its cupboard doors and its legs, and one end panel was busted. The top had been veneered; it must have been a nice sideboard, once.”

    “Fifties, you know: kitschy but nice!” urged Phil.

    Well, possibly. Pete’s bet would have been Sixties rather than Fifties: the shortish tapered metal legs weren’t chromium plated, but matte-finish stainless steel, and a cocktail cabinet rather than a sideboard as such, the two wide shelves having had a backing of mirror glass. They weren't now backed at all. Well, it’d make the bloody thing lighter, that was for sure.

    “See, we’re only going to put DVDs and videos on it. I think it looks great!” said Phil eagerly.

    “It looks all right, yeah,” granted Jack dubiously. “I’d of countersunk the legs.”

    “As well as putting those little metal feet round them?” asked Phil.

    “Yeah.”

    “It’ll be against the wall, after all, and its weight’ll hold it in place,” said Gil comfortably. “So did you solve the problem of the telly-thieves, Ted?”

    “Yeah. Drilled a hole through the edge of the frame—couldn’t use the foot, they make the bloody things detachable—and attached a chain, see? Same with the DVD player. Well, that was a bit trickier, hadda take its case off, make sure I wasn’t drilling into any essential parts.”

    There was a dubious silence. Pete wasn’t gonna be the first to shove his foot in his gob, and he tried to give George a warning look.

    “Oh, jolly good!” said Gil cheerfully. “Loop the chains round the legs of the shelves, then solder the ends together once you've got the damn things linked up and working, that the story?”

    “Yeah,” said Ted gratefully.

    ‘”I see!” said Phil brightly. “I’d’ve put them round the legs before I screwed them in.”

    “No, would’ve made the bloody equipment harder to manoeuvre, Phil,” Ted explained. “The damn things are both black on black, you need a really strong spotlight to see what the Hell you’re doing. And all the instructions are in Japanese Business English, or Chinese Business English, as the case might be, that they learned off IBM in the first place, and their manuals are famous for being completely incomprehensible. –Don’t suppose you’ve set up one of these modern TVs, have you, George?”

    George looked at it glumly. “Not exactly. I’ve got one, can’t remember what bloody model it is. Not a plasma screen, they cost an arm and both legs. LCD. Even fuzzier then me old set, and you can’t adjust the colour at all. Or the contrast, or the brightness. Um, well, I just plugged it in, turned it on, and fumbled my way through the fucking pamphlet that came with it—you’re right about the Japanese Business English. It found the channels for itself. I wouldn’t have a clue how you hook it up to a DVD player, though. I’d have gone back to my old set, to tell you the truth, but it had conked out. The thing does pick up SBS better, if that's an advantage.”

     There was a short silence.

    “Not unless you want to watch the Eurovision Song Contest or the Tour de France, I think, George,” admitted Gil.

    “I like the Tour,” said Jack. “Never watched anything else on it, though.”

    “Jen and me like Inspector Rex—well, it’s silly, isn’t it? A dog couldn’t do all that, they can’t understand complex instructions,” admitted Phil. “Um, well, they do sometimes have a really good foreign film. Um, and some of the Japanese manga films have been interesting.”

    This time the silence was a dubious one .

    “Yes, well, be that as it may, this isn’t getting us any forrarder!” admitted Gil. “Oh—let me introduce you, Pete.”

    Pete was duly introduced to Ted Prosser, and had to admit that he only had an old set.

    “We’ll wait until Jen comes up,” decided Phil. “She set up Sal’s DVD player for her.”

    Weakly the older generation agreed they’d wait until Phil’s girlfriend got there.

    After that it but remained for Phil to demonstrate that the modern, off-white plastic, reverse-cycle air conditioners high on the walls in both rooms did work—the visitors recoiled from the icy blasts—and to show them the ablutions block! It was, of course, a separate steel shed. It adjoined the sitting-dining room and was reached by a narrow passage which some inspired person had created out of a bent sheet of corrugated colour-steel with a skylight of corrugated PVC sheeting.

    “Did you get planning permission for this?” worried Pete as they went through it in procession.

    “Shut up!” choked George, giving him a shove in the back.

    “We did, but the bureaucrats seemed more concerned that we knew about clearing the leaves out of our gutters regularly in the fire danger season. Well, bureaucrats, it was Ken Carpenter from Potters Inlet, he’s a volunteer fireman,” explained Gil smoothly. “This is all a bit institutional, I’m afraid, but we didn’t feel it was fair to ask twelve bodies to share one toilet and one shower.”

    The narrow passage had debouched into a small lobby area, almost equally narrow but at right angles to the passage, and containing only some hooks and two doors, one marked “MEN” and the other “WOMEN”. Disappointingly, they were not painted pale blue and pale pink, but navy. As, indeed, were the walls.

    “Hang on,” spotted Pete. “Is this some more of the navy paint that was on special at your local— Yeah,” he said feebly as George dissolved in helpless sniggers.

    “The Men’s isn’t quite finished,” said Phil, nonetheless opening its door.

    An expanse of concrete floor was revealed with on one side two doorless showers—tiled, but doorless—and on the other, two doorless lavatory cabinets. At the far end were two small steel handbasins, set into a tiled bench, and topped by a stretch of mirror. All the walls and the woodwork of the cabinets were painted navy. However, the tiling was white, so the effect wasn’t too lugubrious.

    “Looks smart, eh?” said Phil proudly.

    “Yeah; I like white and navy,” agreed George kindly.

    “Yes. Um, how unfinished is it?” asked Pete feebly.

    “Don’t worry, it’s not an army barracks ablutions block!” the boy replied with a giggle. “The toilet doors are coming, aren’t they, Ted?”

    “Yeah. They’re outside, the paint’s drying. We got them on a promise, but they took longer to arrive than we thought and then they hadda be cut down to size, eh, Jack?”

    “Yeah, they turned out to be ordinary interior doors: too wide for the cabinets. We decided to make them short doors, too, like you’d have in a public lav, just in case there was a problem with some nit getting locked in.”

    “Right. Um, and the showers?”

    “Well,” said Jack on a wry note, “the old guy from Barrabarra Hardware, he reckoned a mate of his could let us have some nice folding ones at cost—safety glass, ya know? Only it fell through. So we had a look at what the bathroom display places downtown have got. That was a bit of an eye-opener. Well, I’ve done a bit of temping, seen a few fancy Sydney bathrooms, but cripes! Anyway, Gil and Ted costed it out, but no way! So we decided it could be cheap plastic shower curtains, and soon as they get mouldy or torn we’ll rip ’em out and shove up new ones. Didn’t even have to buy ready-made ones, ’cos Deanna Springer knew a shop that sells whole rolls of plastic, see? She’s been really decent: done a Helluva lot of sewing for us on her sewing-machine, eh, Gil?”

    “Yes, she has,” he agreed, smiling. “And Jack’s found he’s got quite a knack for it, haven’t you, Jack?”

    “Yes. See, re-covering cushions and armchairs, it’s not like sewing, really, it’s more like construction, you gotta have your measurements exactly right. It’s all in the measuring and cutting. Same with curtains: cut ’em wrong and they don’t hang right. Well, not saying I’m up to Deanna’s level, you oughta see the piping she did on their sofas!” he beamed. “Really professional! She wants to learn how to do buttoned work, too, but that takes a lot of strength: that sort of upholstery’s more a man’s job, really. Anyway, she’s found a WEA class on it, so we thought we’d go together, next winter.”

    “Mm,” agreed Gil somewhat drily. “There is the thought that Jack could have discovered he had this skill years back and have been making use of it ever since, were it not for the fact that the Antipodean housewife won’t let the male near the sacred sewing-machine.”

    “Right. Except to lug the ruddy things about,” agreed George. “Susan’s one weighs a ton. Young Godfrey keeps well clear when there’s anything like hard yacker in the offing, so Guess Who was the mug that hadda risk his back lugging it out of the spare room when it was only the spare room, and back into the spare room when she’d turned it into a crafts room?”

    “You poor little thing!” said Gil with a laugh, patting his shoulder kindly.

    “Yeah,” said George with a silly grin. “Aren’t I? No, well, she can sew, so if you need any help with anything fancy like frilly cushion covers, just sing out. Aw, yeah, specialises in frilly pillowcases, too. Ordinary-size ones, big square ones, little square ones, and triangular ones!” He went into a fit of the splutters.

    Okay, decided Pete Outhwaite heavily, Gil Sotherland could handle men. Jesus!

    The Ladies’ then had to be inspected. Same layout, same colour scheme; finished apart from its shower curtains. Unsurprisingly, its toilet doors were navy.

    George looked at its vinyl flooring and laughed. “Ladies rate vinyl while blokes don’t, that the story?”

    “We only had enough for the one and finances were getting a bit tight, so the ladies’ delicate feet were awarded it, yeah,” agreed Ted. “Your sister came over the other day specially to tell us it was discrimination,” he added drily.

    “She would. Sorry,” said George feebly.

    “Right. You oughta see her own bathroom!” put in Jack with feeling.

    George brightened. “Too right! Ya can’t move in there for the flaming candles and bowls of this, that and the other crap, and matching fluffy whatsits till they come out yer ears! She’s even got a chair in there with a fluffy seat!”

    “What for?” asked Phil in mystification.

    His elders, on the whole, wouldn’t have dared. They looked at George eagerly.

    “Dunno. It’s not yer actual sheepskin, mind you, it’s a fully washable, removable artificial thing. Well, uh, sit on to dry your feet?”

    Envisaging this scenario very clearly, the older gentlemen gulped.

    “So is it more like a towelling cover?” asked Phil.

    “No, laddie, it’s like ruddy fluffy artificial sheepskin,” said George heavily.

    Forthwith the older gentleman in his audience exploded in splutters.

    “Yeah, hah, hah,” said Phil weakly. “No wonder she reckons you lot are sexist!”

    “Never mind, Phil, show Pete your Palomino,” said George kindly.

    Brightening, Phil led Pete out, to the accompaniment of Gil’s asking Jack kindly: “New since your day, this fluffy seat, is it, then?” and Ted’s collapsing in further splutters.

    The Palomino and the other horses had been inspected and admired, the workers had knocked off for a smoko, the smoko had been drunk, with a few aspersions cast on Gil’s decision to clean out the fridge on a warm afternoon, and George and Pete strolled on up the road.

    “The art and crafts centre’ll be busy, I think. Bernie and Deanna usually have classes in the arvo when the B&B’s full,” said George on an uneasy note. “Well, quick dekko at the B&B while the guests are still out of the way?” he suggested, looking at his watch.

    Pete wouldn't have minded meeting the little blonde lovely who was reputed to look like the actress, Lily Rose Rayne, actually, but he agreed mildly and they strolled on up to Springer House B&B.

    “Round the back,” said George, after Pete had admired the colour scheme and decided that it was like some of the older houses up at Byron Bay. With the rider that those colours weren’t traditional on Federation bungalows, which George duly ignored.

    The back door was opened to them by the world-famous contralto, Antigone Walsingham Corrant. Pete gasped and took a step backwards.

    “Gidday, Nefertite! So your stint at the Conservatorium’s over for the year?” said George breezily.

    “Yes, and the last lot of Master Classes that weren’t on the original schedule they gave me!” she replied with a deep, gurgling laugh. “Come in, George.”

    George came in, introducing her to Pete as: “David’s sister, Nefertite. Living up here, now, when the Conservatorium’ll let her out of their clutches.”

    “It’s an honour, Nefertite,” said Pete feebly, shaking hands. “I knew you were Walsingham’s sister, of course, but I had no idea you were living here.”

    “Nominally,” she replied, looking rueful. “I had to take a flat in Sydney, in the end. I thought we’d agreed on reasonable part-time work; only then they started adding on the Master Classes, and, well, people kept inviting me to sing…”

    “In short, she let herself be bossed round, as always,” said a severe voice from the doorway. “Hullo, I’m David Walsingham,” he said, coming in. “Think you must be Pete?”

    Eagerly Pete shook hands, mentioning that he’d heard him conduct his symphony, a few years back, and he had a recording of his suite for trumpet and orchestra, and in fact most of that trumpet player’s jazz records…

    George sat down at the big, industrial-steel-topped table with a sigh and just waited it out. He had a feeling they weren’t gonna score a cup of coffee until Pete had seen the B&B, either… Right. All the guests had departed for the afternoon, whether to Bernie’s sketching class or elsewhere, so—

    Pete looked admiringly at the dining-room. “Mm, nice varnished floor.”

    “Not varnished,” said David, grinning. “Sanded down lovingly with the aid of a micrometer and a level to the approximate smoothness of a baby’s bum, and then varnished.”

    “Goddit,” acknowledged Pete weakly, ignoring George’s sardonic look.

    “Yeah. Let’s see… Well, I’d like to show you the Mimosa Room, but we’d better not invade the guests’ privacy.”

    “Mimosa?”

    “Deanna discovered from a book,” said David in a detached voice, “that what the gardeners among us call acacia and the rest of the population tends to call wattle, is known as mimosa in the South of France. QED.”

    In reply to this, Pete merely managed a feeble smile, his old mate wasn’t too sorry to see. “What about the other rooms?” he then asked feebly.

    “Well, allowing for the ensuites that had to be forced into the place, and for the fact that Bob and Deanna have to kip somewhere, there are only three guest rooms altogether. Between you and me, two of them used to be sleep-outs—semi-enclosed verandahs—but Bob’s enclosed them. Or finished doing so: put in nicer window frames and replaced the bits of rotten timber,” he said, smiling at him. “They’re the Gum-Nut Room and the Banksia Room, the latter largely on the strength of some very nice botanical prints Deanna found.”

    “I see.” Pete looked with interest at the pale green walls in the dining-room. They also featured what seemed to be botanical prints. Typical Australian flora: wispy grey-green foliage and wispy flowers in shades of red shading through to brown, or yellow shading through to brown.

    “These aren’t banksias, they’re grevilleas, eucalypts and boronia,” said David kindly.

    At this point in the tour Bob appeared. “There you are. –Yeah, gidday, Pete, thought it must be you,” he agreed as George informed him it was. “You types want coffee?”

    “Who’s making it?” replied David cautiously. “Not Dot?”

    “Nah, we dropped her off at your place, Rose was getting whiny. Nefertite’s making it.”

    “Oh, God!”

    “Calm down, she’s just boiling the jug. –See, last time she forgot to put the water in the bottom part of the pot and it got almost white-hot before he spotted it,” explained Bob on a tolerant note. “Ruined the pot, of course. Luckily it was one of ours, not his sacred one dating back to Alexander the Great.”

    “In that case it’ll be instant, and I can only apologize for it,” said David to Pete with a sigh.

    “His Greek coffee, it’s so strong a spoon could stand up in it,” added Bob helpfully.

    “Wonderful!” replied Pete with a laugh. “But instant’ll be fine.”

    “It looks as if it’ll have to be,” noted David drily. “The next room’s the sitting-room,” he said, opening its door.

    “Pretty. I like this soft blue,” approved Pete, looking at the walls.

    The room featured, in addition to the smooth-as-a-baby’s-bum plastered and painted walls, a lovely old marble fireplace, varnished woodwork round the windows and French doors, dark blue linen curtains and a fitted body-carpet in a soft oatmeal wool, very slightly variegated.

    “What’s the carpet?” asked Pete with interest.

    “Feltex Berber,” explained Bob. “New Zealand. They make good carpets.”

    “Yeah. That and Australia doesn’t ride on the sheep’s back any more,” put it George drily.

    “Times have changed since Nevil Shute, apparently,” said David smoothly.

    “Yeah,” agreed Pete. “These days it rides on its bulk exports of coal to Chi—”

     “Knock it off, Pete!” said his old mate loudly.

    “Sorry. Um, gave poor George an earful the other day,” he said weakly. “So, these’d be the sofas that Deanna re-covered, eh? They look great!”

    “Yeah, well, turned out not bad,” admitted Bob, evidently highly gratified.

    One suite was a heavy old cane-backed thing with a mahogany frame, its cushions covered in a lovely deep blue brocade. David looked at it, smiling. “That one’s got real down cushions: wonderfully comfortable. They were originally a horrid mustard yellow. The other one was almost as bad: dirty puce cabbage roses.”

    Pete nodded. It was a plain modern sofa, now simply upholstered in a pinkish fawn linen. The effect of the two against the soft blue walls was completely charming.

    “Those are a couple of Bernie Anderson’s landscapes,” added David. “He calls them pot-boilers, but personally I rather like that pair, he’s caught the shades of the hills in winter. Well, feeling brave enough to face that instant?”

    They were, so they went back to the kitchen.

    “Where the fuck’s she gone now?” demanded Bob aggrievedly.

    “Deanna? She said she was going to give Bernie a hand, he’s got a big group in at the crafts centre,” replied Nefertite placidly. “I’ve put the rest of the shopping in the pantry.”

    “Uh—yeah. Have ya? Thanks, Nefertite,” he said on a weak note. “Um, that bottle of Kahlua probably doesn’t need to go in there, it can go straight into the liquor cabinet in the sitting-room—the buggers drink the muck like water!” he said to Pete and George. “Likewise that Scotch Mist muck. Deanna’s mum knocks that back, always thought it was just her.”

    “It’s that age group,” said David soothingly, handing coffees.

    “Right.” Bob sat down with his mug. “So, Pete, whaddaya think of Outer Woop-Woop?”

    Pete sat down, grinning. “Well, I have been here before, but not for some time. Your place is lovely, and the old Jardine place is looking good, isn’t it? Blum Gums Ecolodge was a shock to the system, though. But at least they’ve left the road alone.”

    Bob looked wry. “Wouldn’t mind if the surface was upgraded, meself, but yeah, they want the natural look. Though half them acacias and stuff up there are planted, George tell ya?”

    “Yeah, I think I gave him the dinkum oil,” said George. “Only once we got here and he’d copped a gander at the dump, mind you: didn’t wanna spoil the surprise.”

    Nefertite was putting biscuits on a plate but at this she paused. “You mean you didn’t warn him?” she said in naked horror.

    “Nah. Well, might’ve used the words ‘ecolodge’ and ‘poncy’, Nefertite.”

    “Personally them rammed-earth arches holding up nothing are my favourite,” said Bob dreamily.

    “And so say all of us!” agreed David with a laugh. He passed the plate of biscuits. “Have one of these, Pete. Whatever they are.”

    “From the supermarket,” explained Nefertite. “Deanna said she bought a dozen packets, and it’s pointless making those lovely little crescent biscuits of yours, David, because the guests only eat them.”

    “That’s right: pearls before swine,” said Bob mildly, taking a biscuit. He winked at Pete.

    Smiling, Pete took a supermarket biscuit.

    … “Yeah, I do get it that she’s Walsingham’s sister, in fact I’ve known it for some years, George!” he said quite some time later that evening. Susan’s idea of “a light supper,” had been consumed, and Susan was now voluntarily immured in the kitchen, cleaning the oven. Which according to George was perfectly clean anyway: Dad didn’t use it and he’d cleaned it himself only a couple of months back. The menfolk had with one accord retired to the verandah with a few beers to fill in the gaps left by the light supper. And after George had lit a mosquito coil and Susan had come out and angrily replaced it with a much better mosquito lamp, they were able to enjoy the peace of the evening. Stars were twinkling over the valley and only three 4WDs had ground past heading up the road to the B&B or the ecolodge.

    “Then what are ya going on about?” asked George mildly.

    “Well, crikey, George! Antigone Walsingham Corrant’s settled up here?”

    “More or less, yeah.”

    “Go on, ya might as well tell him the lot—you were wondering about Ted earlier, too, Pete, eh? And get on with it, before she sticks her oar in,” advised Susan’s father sourly.

    Taking a precautionary swig, George obligingly updated Pete about the remaining personalities of Potters Road. A bloody odd mixture, Pete could only conclude. And, cheerful though the self-styled “Nefertite” had seemed, he still couldn’t quite come at the idea of one of the world’s greatest living contraltos actually wanting to live up here. And ditto for her brother! David Walsingham cooking for a ruddy B&B halfway to Outer Woop-Woop? For God’s sake, never mind the swept-up new ecolodge at its far end, Potters Road was pretty much the ultimate dump!

Next chapter:

https://theroadtobluegums.blogspot.com/2022/11/marleys-ghost.html