The Cruellest Month

35

The Cruellest Month

    Georgy spent the holiday period in a sort of stunned daze. It was a slightly more aware stunned daze than that of the previous fortnight, but only slightly. Most of her well-wishers, at least so Georgy dazedly thought, didn’t seem to perceive this. In fact most of them, though without verbalizing it, seemed to think she should have got to the pulling-herself-together stage by now. Georgy didn’t feel she was together, at all.

    The ordeal at Ralph’s on the evening of Good Friday was the first to be got through. She duly put on the pale peach brocade evening dress Adam had bought her with the sandals Bill Michaels had painted silver for her, and made up her face very moderately, and brushed out her hair and tried to put it up and failed and brushed it out again and left it like that, and got herself down her steps and up Ralph’s at the appointed hour. Not having noticed that there were no cars parked in the big turning sweep and that in fact only one car had arrived, a large limo, and it had deposited only one passenger: Derry Dawlish.

    A handsome dining table was set for seven and adorned with sparkling glassware and silverware, not to mention sparkling napery, but as Georgy had seen Ralph and Mr Morton carting the table down Mr Morton’s steps and up Ralph’s earlier in the day, swearing at each other, she wasn’t as impressed by it as she might have been. However, the two low bowls of flowers on it were lovely. She didn’t ask him why he didn’t buy himself a decent-sized dining table, as he had already gratuitously informed her that so far, scour the country though he might, he couldn’t find one he could stand the sight of, let alone one that didn’t swear at every other item of furniture in the room.

    Having admired Georgy’s frock extravagantly, and got her a drink which she didn’t much want, Ralph waved his hand airily, said he believed she knew the company, and disappeared.

    “Am I too early?” said Georgy in a small voice.

    “Not precisely. I think you’ve probably come at the appointed hour,” returned Derry.

    “Yes.”

    “Me, too. Sit down, Georgy.” He patted the sofa beside his substantial form.

    Weakly Georgy came and sat down beside Derry on Ralph’s beautiful 1930s white wool sofa with the chromium trim. “I thought Lucinda was coming.”

    “She is, but I’ve just discovered that our tactful host told everybody else half an hour later,” said Derry on a grim note.

    “It won’t work!” said Georgy loudly.

    “I’ve just pointed that out to him in no uncertain terms.”

    “Oh.”

    “Never mind. Let’s talk about Rotorua.” Derry produced a list of possible sites and their attributes. Georgy looked at it limply: she had heard of most of the names but had no idea what the places actually looked like. She then managed to tell Derry that the whole area would be booked solid for the holidays but he revealed that he’d been on to Phyllis Harding, who had friends with a large holiday home on Lake— Lake—

    “Taupo?” ventured Georgy.

    “No, darling! At Rotorua!” he said testily.

    The only one Georgy knew of there was Lake Rotorua; she just looked at him limply.

    Ralph came in with a silver tray on which reposed minute and very beautiful things to eat and said: “Tarawera.”

    “Yes. –Is this crab?” said Derry, peering at something minute and very beautiful in pale pink with a wee green bow on it.

    “Crayfish. Spiny lobster to those from the North.”

    Derry ate it anyway.

    “Did you make them, Ralph?” asked Georgy feebly.

    “Certainly. You will not,” he assured them gravely, “find a single toothpick amongst the lot of ’em.”

    Georgy reflected this was just as well, since Derry had put the pretty little crayfish thingy straight into his mouth whole. She tried to look at them narrowly without appearing to. They were definitely not sitting on crackers.

    “Have that one,” suggested Derry, pointing to it.

    Weakly Georgy took a little circle, composed of tiny bright orange globules that looked like Petey’s hated cod-liver oil capsules enclosed in a very thin black ring of something or other. Ugh! Then she realized it hadn’t gone horribly off, it was supposed to be fishy and salty, and smiled weakly.

    “Are they all seafood?” said Derry, peering again.

    “These ones are, certainly,” replied Ralph smoothly.

    Derry took a little white one that looked rather like a miniature sandwich: it had layers of green between the white. But Georgy could see the white wasn’t bread.

    “As I was saying, Phyllis Harding’s friends have kindly lent me their holiday home on Lake Tarawera,” he explained.

    “Too bad if Tarawera blows its top again,” responded Ralph calmly, setting the tray down on his glass coffee table before them. “Excuse me, I’ll just whip up a few hundred more of these.”

    “Do that,” agreed Derry, taking another pink one.

    “I think Tarawera is the volcano that blew its top off,” admitted Georgy. “It covered the Pink and White Terraces.” She paused. “And the Buried Village. I think.”

    “Mm. Charles informs me that’s one of the most boring sights in the known world. Buried primitive huts being no more enticing than non-buried primitive huts. In fact possibly less: muddier.”

    Georgy swallowed.

    “So I thought I’d skip it. However, the brooding crags across the lake,” said Derry, feeling in the jacket pocket of his dress-suit, “might be said to have something. Here.” He handed her a pile of dog-eared Polaroids.

    Georgy looked through them limply. The crags were brooding, all right. But if the lake was really that blue, it must be a very beautiful sight. “Is this the effect you want?” she ventured, as Derry engulfed another little circle of orange globules.

    He nodded, and swallowed. “Poshibly. Shows the terrible and—er—inexorable power of nature, don’t you feel?”—Georgy looked at him numbly.—“What else is the play about—Hell, what else is life about?” said the great director, shrugging his heavy shoulders. “Slug ’em with the image of the life-force in all its blind beauty and horror to start with: you know, for the intro: swooping in low over the lake with these broken grey crags.—Helicopter, of course.—Then cut to Rangitoto, Roddy thinks; swoop over the harbour—or maybe cut in a bit of lake, depends—soft-focus over the edges of the city and the Domain, and nice hard-edged shot of the Museum on its hill against the skyline!”

    “The Palace of Theseus,” said Georgy weakly, handing him back the snaps. “Complete with Cenotaph.”

    “Eh?”

    “It’s bang in front of it,” she said drily.

    Derry looked indignant and muttered a bit.

    Georgy ignored this muttering. She peered at the tray. Finally she said feebly: “Derry, are these those sushi things?”

    “In that they’re fishy, and small, I suppose so. Not the classic Japanese sort: I think Ralph’s cooking is of the inspirational variety, isn’t it?”

    “Well, if that’s what he told you, it’s bound to be,” recognized Georgy limply. “No, thanks, I don’t like them,” she said as Derry urged one on her.

   He shrugged, and took another white and green sandwich. When he’d eaten it he said: “I wish you’d reconsider, Georgy, love.”

    Georgy replied: “What if it’s an almighty flop?”

    “They’ll blame me, not you,” said the great director simply.

    “I suppose they will, mm.”

    Derry sighed. “If I do it, it’ll have the advantage of having Joel as Puck.”

    “What?” said Georgy feebly.

    “Hadn’t you realized?”

    “No,” she said limply.

    “Main reason I came out here. Well, wanted to get in a bit of big-game fishing, of course!” he said hurriedly. “But I wanted to vet his performance. He was even better than I’d thought he might be, actually. I’ve told him it’s his. If you’ll agree to do the Titania, of course,” he added casually.

    “You—you don’t really mean,” said Georgy in a shaking voice: “that you won’t do it unless I agree?”

    “Darling Georgy,” returned the great director in astonishment: “I thought I’d explained? You’re the sine qua non. I may eventually make it without you, but it certainly won’t be within the next ten years: got too many other things in the pipeline. And Joel’ll be a bit past Puck by then. Next winter’s the only time I’m free in the foreseeable future. –Your summer,” he added on an irritable note. “Something else fell through.”

    “There must be any number of English actresses who could do it better than me.”

    “Pain’ed tartsh,” said the great man thickly through a tiny pink thing with both a green bow and a bright yellow squiggle on it.

    Georgy’s hands shook and she clasped them tightly in her lap.

    “I won’t do it without you. I’ll do it without Adam if I have to, but not without you, even if I get him. Anyway, Jake won’t back it without you,” he reminded her. “Though I have got some backers who’ll come to the party if Adam’ll agree.”

    “I don’t— I didn’t realize you wanted Joel... Did you say you’d told him?”

    “Mm,” said Derry, picking up a small caviar boat and eyeing her sideways. “Over the moon at the thought that he may not have to go off with Piggy-Whiskers touring Canada all winter. –Our winter.”

    Georgy gulped.

    “These caviar things aren’t bad,” the great director noted in surprize. “Thought this might be cucumber, only it isn’t. Have one?”

    “No, I don’t much like strong fishy things.”

    Derry ate the second caviar boat. That left the final circlet of salmon caviar looking lonely, so he ate it, too.

    “My God, has he eaten all of those?” said their host graciously, coming back just as this disappeared down the directorial gullet.

    “Yes. Well, I had a round thing.”

    “Sham’n caviar,” said Derry thickly. He swallowed. “Good.”

    “I won’t put out any more, then,” noted Ralph, removing the tray.

    “When are the others coming?” said Georgy.

    Ralph replied insouciantly: “Asked for about ten minutes’ time, should be here within the next thirty minutes.” And exited.

    Georgy bit her lip.

    Derry eyed her sideways again, but began to chat blandly about possible further sites for the film; and continued chatting blandly until the others arrived.

    Mr Morton came and sat on a chair next to Georgy’s end of the sofa and embarked on a joking conversation about the perils of life at Willow Grove: marauding dachshunds, sharp-elbowed trendies with trailer-sailors, pink cardies, etcetera, and Georgy actually began to enjoy herself. Although, not surprisingly in view of the tête-à-tête she’d just survived, with a strong feeling of unreality as she did so.

    She was sufficiently compos mentis, however, to escape when Derry’s limo came to collect him, and Tom and Jemima and Lucinda all accepted lifts from him.

    “Sucks,” noted Mr Morton, as Ralph closed the front door.

    “All are not as low-minded as you, dear boy: one was not even contemplating a final tender five mins alone with the delicious Georgy.”

    “Not bloody much!” returned his old friend with feeling.

    Ralph shrugged.

    “Did the Cunning Plan work?” Mr Morton then asked drily, pouring himself another brandy.

    “Apparently not,” he said, shrugging again. “Though she hadn’t realized that Thring was in line for the Puck: Derry thinks she might be weakening slightly. Well, it’s a point to work on, don’t you think?”

    Mr Morton eyed him sardonically. “I’d say it was a point to leave severely alone. Like one or two others I could mention. Haven’t you got enough on your plate without hankering after little girls that are besotted by bloody Overseas Fillum Stars?”

    Ralph returned with some heat: “They’re not currently on my plate, in case you hadn’t noticed!”

    His old friend merely laughed hard-heartedly, and, having finished his brandy, took himself off.

    Derry rang Ralph the next morning and reiterated his hope that the Joel consideration might be causing Georgy to weaken slightly, and smothered him in thanks and— Blah, blah. Ralph hung up with a shrug, asking himself why the fuck he’d bothered to help the man. The planned epic sounded frightful, and if Dawlish succeeded in getting Georgy as his Titania the probable outcome would be that she and McIntyre would get back together. He shrugged again.

    Georgy felt a bit brighter in the morning. This was probably largely due to the amount of protein and alcohol she’d absorbed the evening before but this didn’t occur to her. She also began to feel distinctly angry with Ralph, and to a lesser extent with Derry, though not blaming him quite so much, after all film-making was his life; so by the time Ngaio, Petey and Denny arrived to collect her, she was livelier than she had been for the past two weeks, really.

    In the course of the morning this liveliness was to wear off somewhat...

    “It’s lovely!” protested Ngaio in amazement.

    Georgy thought the anor— windch— parka was horrible. She didn’t say anything.

    Ngaio sighed. “Well, let’s see if they’ve got it in green.”

    They looked. The shop had it in two shades of blue plus a turquoise, in a bright pink, a yellow, a fawn, a dark brown and a red, but no green. Well, possibly they had had it in green but that shade had sold out.

    Ngaio found another parka that was almost the same style and was green, but had to admit that particular shade of drab olive made Georgy look totally washed out.

    Georgy suggested for the second time that they try that seconds place.

    Sighing, Ngaio conceded the seconds place.

   The seconds place was not a total loss, as Ngaio bought three tee-shirts for each of the boys—drab olive-green, but never mind—and three pairs of underpants for Ross, all pale blue, which would go greyish after two washes at the most but never mind; but Georgy didn’t find anything there that she either liked or that fitted.

    After that she got very edgy so Ngaio took her home again. Promising to return later. After Denny, who apparently had believed himself to be about to join his aunt’s luncheon party, had burst into loud roars and refused to be comforted by either an apple (his mother’s offering) or a cold hot-cross bun (Georgy’s offering—Petey ate it), they went home, leaving Georgy to prepare for her guests, it being only eleven-thirty.

    “Here they are!” said Hamish Macdonald with a laugh, some thirty-five minutes later. “Sure you want to go through with this?”

    Georgy couldn’t quite understand why Elspeth’s father, who after all was a very tall man about twenty years her elder whom she scarcely knew, was smiling at her so very nicely, but agreed she wanted to go through with it. It didn’t occur to her that he was naturally predisposed to like anyone who treated his little daughter as kindly as she did. She explained that Ngaio had said she’d bring them home and he grinned, wished her luck, and departed. That left Georgy with the two girls and the large black Labrador.

    Not for long, however: they had just followed her into the kitchen and Elspeth had just boomed “SIT!” at her unfortunate pet (who was his usual quiet and well-behaved self, since his mistress didn’t need defending from silver-bladder attacks), when the doorbell rang.

    Georgy groaned, and sank down onto one of the stools from the breakfast bar.

    “There’s someone at your front door,” offered Whetu.

    “Yeah. It’ll either be a nosy neighbour in a pink cardy or a nosy neighbour in maroon satin jogging shorts and huge sneakers,” said Georgy, overlooking the fact that both girls were sporting huge sneakers and she herself was also wearing them, though admittedly not so huge.

    “Shall I go?” offered Elspeth. At home she would have said “I’ll go!” and shot out before anyone could stop her. So in spite of her father’s claims, there was probably hope for her yet.

    “I’ll go,” groaned Georgy. The girls followed her as a matter of course. Puppy followed Elspeth as a matter of course, as she hadn’t bellowed “STAY!”

    It was Miss McLintock. She had been unable to help noticing the big dog and of course she knew dear Georgy was very responsible—since Georgy was an adult and thus ipso facto responsible the two girls goggled at her—but—

    Georgy assured her that Puppy was guaranteed not to eat dachshunds.

    Whetu clapped her hand over her mouth and went into a terrific sniggering fit.

    “Yes, of course, dear,” said Miss McLintock, smiling gamely.

    “We won’t let him out on the drive,” said Georgy quickly.

    “Nah. –Is that your dog’s territory?” demanded Elspeth.

    “Er—well, he does like a little stroll on the drive, dear, yes. Only when there are no naughty car-cars about, of course!”

    “No, I don’t mean that; I mean has he marked—”

    “That’ll do,” said Georgy hurriedly. Just as well she’d had a bit of practice at saying that with Petey and Denny, she reflected. Though she’d never managed it with Aunty Christine’s terrifyingly capable and decisive offspring.

    Elspeth desisted but added reassuringly, rather Scottish: “Puppy’ll no be bothered wi’ a wee bit of a thing like your dog; he only kills rats.”

    Whetu nodded frantically in confirmation of this.

    “Oh—er—that’s nice, dear,” said Miss McLintock weakly. “Well—er—enjoy your lunch, dears.”

    “Thanks, Miss McLintock,” said Georgy politely.

    Miss McLintock took herself and her cardy, today blue, down the steps and Georgy closed the front door, only possibly not before Elspeth’s voice might have been heard on the breeze stating, more local than Scottish: “That’s the one with the cardy, eh?”

    “Yes. Not pink today,” said Georgy limply.

    Elspeth’s brow furrowed in thought. “How did she know we’re here for lunch?”

    “It is lunchtime,” offered Whetu.

    “Yes. Only—um—she came over earlier and—”

    “Winkled it out of you,” finished Elspeth.

    “Yes.”

    “Aye. We’ve got a neighbour like that, only Mirry just ignores her. They give up after a while.” Elspeth forged back to the kitchen.

    They followed obediently.

    Elspeth had just said: “What are we having?” and Whetu had just given her an anguished, frantic look, as Mrs Taylor would have been down on that one like a ton of bricks, when there was another ring at the front door.

    “That’ll be the one with the maroon jogging shorts!” choked Elspeth. She and Whetu went into fits.

    Georgy staggered up the passage. Behind her the fits abated: footsteps thundered eagerly in her wake.

    “Georgy, darling,” fluted Ralph, striking an attitude, one hand on the hip: “I do hope that big doggy-woggy doesn’t eat dachsies for his din-dins?”

    This did not go down precisely the way he’d hoped. Georgy goggled at his hips, gasped: “Maroon satin!” and went into whoops. Behind her two unformed figures staggered round the cabbage-rose passage, shrieking.

    “Er—quite,” he said, not managing to conceal his annoyance.

    “Go—away—Ralph!” gasped Georgy. “This is a girls-only lunch party!”

    “Aye!” choked one of the figures amidst the cabbage roses. The other went into further fits.

    Ralph shrugged. “Very well, I’ll go, if you insist. But I thought you might like me to cook something decent for you?”

    “No. We’re having pancakes,’’ said Georgy tersely.

    “Yay!” cried the figures in the passage.

    They would undoubtedly be out of a packet and undoubtedly not decent but Ralph knew a female peer-group ganging up against a mere male when he saw it. He shrugged again, and said: “Any lifts home needed later?”

    “No! Why do you assume I’m totally incompetent?” replied Georgy crossly.

    Before he could answer the skinnier figure of the two unformed ones came up beside her and, glaring, said: “Aye: why? We’re going shopping with her sister later and she’s taking us home.”

    “‘See?’” he added nastily. “Very well, but don’t say I didn’t try to rally round,” he warned Georgy.

    “‘Rally round’? I’ve have called it manipulation, at the very least,” she replied in a hard voice. “And don’t try to tell me it was Derry’s idea: I don’t care whose idea it was, the point is you did it.”

    “Only for the sake of Art with a Hay,” he said plaintively.

    “Bullshit. Go away,” said Georgy, closing the door.

    As it closed he heard the skinny one say with satisfaction, but to give it its due probably not meaning him to hear, they usually weren’t that calculating at that age: “That’s got rid of him!”

    Elspeth then asked Georgy what Ralph had done, and Georgy was so cross with him that she told her. Both Elspeth and Whetu were overcome at the idea of Georgy’s having been offered a starring role in a Real Film and having refused it—which Georgy, had she thought about it for one split second, would of course have realized that they must be. She went very red, and said nothing.

    “But why don’t you want to do it, Georgy?” pursued Whetu.

    “The whole thing’s stupid and—and the filming life’s stupid, and I don’t want to get mixed up in it,” said Georgy, starting off quite strong and ending up very weak.

    After a moment Elspeth said cautiously: “Is Adam going to be in it?” Both Hamish and Mirry had adjured her not to mention Adam unless Georgy did so first, but Elspeth’s brain, in the curious way of the brains of the young, excused her lapse to herself on the grounds that they had meant about personal things and this was only about a film.

    “No, he thinks it sounds stupid. Well, Derry wants him to be in it, but he won’t,” said Georgy, redder than ever.

    “Is Joel?” asked Whetu.

    Georgy gulped. “Um—yes. If—if Derry makes it.”

    She then had to explain the detail of this “if” and by the time that was over felt very limp indeed.

    “Shall we start the pancakes?” said Elspeth helpfully.

    “Oh! Um—yes.”

    “Have you got any aprons?” asked Whetu keenly, Both her mother and Mirry provided aprons when she or Elspeth assisted in the kitchen.

    Weakly Georgy indicated a drawer. She didn’t know whether they were supposed to use them, but as Mrs Mayhew had left a drawerful of neatly ironed frilly aprons at her tenants’ mercy, supposed numbly that she could well have intended this. Unless, of course, it was an unwritten law which only Georgina Harris of the entire country didn’t know about that you didn’t touch your landlady’s aprons in a semi-furnished townhouse.

    Very fortunately Elspeth and Whetu both knew about pancakes and little Teflon pans, so the pancakes were not such a disaster as they might have been had Georgy been left to make them by herself. The girls certainly ate the results up hungrily. They then raided Georgy’s fridge and ate up the rest of her cheese and drank the rest of her milk. Whetu then discovered that there were oranges in a pudding dish on Georgy’s bench and Elspeth, head in the fridge again, discovered there was a large piece of watermelon in Georgy’s vegetable crisper. So they made a huge bowl of fruit salad. It was actually quite nice and Georgy ate her share gladly.

    Whetu then suggested they do the dishes and just as they were contemplating the flood of orange and watermelon juices on one half of the bench and the pile of sticky bowls and beaters on the other, the doorbell rang, and it was Ngaio. No-one mentioned to her that they hadn’t done the dishes: they just, at her prompting, went to the toilet and washed their hands, and got their parkas (it being a windy afternoon they had both worn them) and in Georgy’s case got into Miss McLintock’s pale pink jersey, which the kind-hearted spinster-lady had now officially given her, and went happily off to buy Georgy some warm clothes.

    By three-thirty Ngaio was frankly so shagged out that she led them all into The Primrose Café and ordered a cappuccino to go with her lamington and strawberry tart and let both her own two boys and Elspeth and Whetu have cream doughnuts with their Coke.—Whetu was not normally allowed by her careful mother to consume either of these delectable treats but no-one mentioned this point.—Since no-one attempted to bully Georgy into a cappuccino she just had a plain white coffee and a strawberry tart.

    The afternoon tea revived Ngaio to the point where she conceded they’d go back and take another look at that white parka Georgy had liked, even though white was impractical, and that she supposed the heavy cabled white sweater Georgy had bought was very pretty even though it wasn’t wool but some shiny artificial yarn that would probably drop and the sleeves were far too long. Elspeth pointed out sturdily that everyone was wearing their sleeves pushed up anyway, and even though none of the customers of The Primrose Café observedly was, Ngaio conceded that that look was In. Whetu pointed out that you had to be very careful with wool: even if it had the Woolmark it often felted when it was washed, and Ngaio conceded, very limply indeed, that this was correct. Both girls then pointed out that the white jeans Georgy had insisted on buying at Jeans United were ace but although Ngaio didn’t think so she had earlier had to admit that they looked fabulous on Georgy, so she just nodded numbly.

    They went back to the shop that had had the white padded parka and very fortunately no other lady had pounced on it. Also very fortunately its multiplicity of silver zips and pockets then reminded Ngaio of a pale green parka that she’d seen Polly Carrano in at Play Group a couple of times. Elspeth explained that that was the one Uncle Jake had got her in the Ginza, it had cost a bomb only he’d said so what, it was pretty. Even more fortunately Whetu, inspecting the white parka’s label, then discovered it was machine-washable.

    Whetu then led them off to a new shop that had just opened, at the other end of the shopping area, on Sir John Marshall Avenue. Her mother had bought a lovely jersey there. This should have been sufficient warning but nevertheless both Ngaio’s and Georgy’s jaws dropped at the prices. Georgy didn’t have enough money left, so that was very nearly that. even though Whetu and Elspeth had found the most fab-you-luss-uh jumper and were urging it on her, literally and figuratively: but Ngaio, overcome by its black, green and apricot trendiness, reminded her that she had a credit card. Georgy had forgotten she had a credit card: it was one of those things she’d let the bank force upon her. Like transferring most of her meagre savings into a term deposit account where she couldn’t touch them at the point where Mrs Harris’s car had needed a new battery. Some would have said at this point, and at least two from Pohutukawa Bay, had said, “Good on the bank,” but it had been very inconvenient, Mrs Harris had had to put it on her Visa card and pay immense amounts in interest.

    Georgy paid for the big coloured jumper with her credit card. Very much spoiling the picture by saying afterwards in a bewildered way to her sister: “Where does the money come from?”

    Ngaio gulped, and hustled her out of the shop. “You only have to pay the interest!” she hissed.

    “No, but, um…”

    Breathing hard, Ngaio explained.

    “Help,” said Georgy numbly.

    “Dad says credit cards are an invention of the Devil,” reported Elspeth helpfully. “He always pays off his accounts the minute they come in, he reckons that’s the only way to beat them at their own game.”

    “Yes.” said Ngaio weakly, reflecting that if she had Dr Macdonald’s income—he was a professor or something: anyway, head of that Institute thing up at Puriri Campus—and lived in a huge great two-storeyed house in Kowhai Bay she’d undoubtedly do the same.

    Elspeth was explaining in great detail to Georgy that that way you didn’t have to pay off the interest; Whetu was explaining helpfully that some credit card companies made you pay immense members’ fees; words such as “American Express”, “Diners’ Club” and “Gold Card” began to be bandied about freely and Georgy began to look very lost.

    Taking a deep breath, Ngaio led them off firmly to the car, ignoring Petey’s wail that the pet shop was just down there and he wanted to buy Puppy a toy bone.

    Puppy was where they’d left him: on guard in Ngaio’s car. He’d evidently forgotten who Ngaio was and barked angrily when she tried to unlock it, but after a bit of shouting from Elspeth he got the point and lay down with his chin on his paws, looking sheepish.

    What with dropping the girls off and coming in for a few minutes to talk to Mirry and Hamish (and what with Ngaio’s desire to see the inside of the Macdonalds’ big white modernistic two-storeyed house) and then the drive out to Willow Plains it was nearer six than five by the time Georgy got home, and Ngaio had to shoot off in a hurry to get Ross’s tea.

    Georgy went into the sitting-room and just flopped.

    She’d roused herself to the point of starting on the mountain of washing-up, in a dazed sort of way, when there was a ring at the doorbell. If that was Ralph, she’d—she’d—

    It wasn’t Ralph, it was Stephen. Georgy gasped; her hand flew to her mouth.

    “Hi, Georgy; didn’t you get my message?” he said, smiling.

    “Message? Um—oh, help, the machine’s still on!”

    “I thought you might like a bite to eat first,” he explained.

    “Oh,” said Georgy in a hollow voice. “Um—I’m not ready or anything. Um—come in.”

    Very dashed, Stephen came in. Georgy showed him into the sitting-room. He blenched.

    Georgy had got so used to it that she didn’t see it any more. “Oh,” she said lamely. “It’s the landlady’s décor. Um—sit down. Um—shall I get changed?”

    Stephen’s former girlfriends had not been in the habit of asking him this sort of question: he blinked. “Uh—yeah, if you want to.” he said numbly. Apart from the pink and blue hydrangea-ed apron he thought she looked pretty good in what she had on, which was the pale pink fluffy jersey from to the lady next-door and a pair of stretch jeans with little silver zips up the calves.

    Georgy went over to the far door, and hesitated. “What shall I wear?” she said lamely. Stephen himself was looking unwontedly smart in proper trousers, and although he was again wearing the elderly brown leather jacket, he had a shirt and a very pretty tie on. The slacks were a conservative grey flannel, the shirt was a conservative pale blue and the tie was dark blue silk patterned in silver and grey, not a combination which Adam, for instance, would ever have worn with a casual brown leather bomber-jacket—and besides, the tie was extremely old-fashioned and Adam would never have worn it anyway—but Georgy didn’t recognize that Stephen was so far Out as to be beyond the sartorial pale, she only recognized that he looked awfully grown-up and quite beyond her power to deal with. Or even talk to.

    “Well—uh—I dunno,” he said feebly. “Um—what do you wear when you go to concerts with that girlfriend?”

    “Just what I’ve had on all day.”

    “Uh—yeah.”

    There was a short pause. Georgy continued to look at him helplessly. It suddenly dawned on the incredulous Stephen that McIntyre must have told her what to wear! Jee-sus! On second thoughts, he could just see it: yeah. “I don’t mind what you wear,” he managed to say.

    “Well—well, I’ve got a new jumper.” She swallowed. “Will it be cold?”

    “Um—there’s a bit of a wind. The cathedral probably will be, actually. Well, you’d probably be okay in what you’ve got on. actually.”

    “Oh,” said Georgy feebly. “Um—I’ve got some new white jeans. You know: jeans material, only it’s white.”

    Stephen nodded weakly. “Denim,” he croaked.

    “Um—yes, I suppose it is. Would they be all right?”

    “Yeah, sure. Oh! Do you mean for the Cathedral?” She nodded and he said weakly: “Of course. It’s not a service and even if it was, you can wear anything to church these days.”

    “Oh. Aunty Christine always gets all gussied up. Okay, then,” she said, disappearing.

    Stephen only had time to sag on the couch before her head appeared round the door and she said: “Will I have time for a shower?”

    He nodded limply and the head disappeared.

    “Jesus,” he muttered.

     Even though Georgy had a shower and put some make-up on and changed her mind three times about which top to wear with the new jeans, finally plumping for the shiny white jumper with its cables, and then dithering about whether to wear her coral earrings and finally deciding she would, Stephen didn’t consider it rated as being kept waiting, at all. And he should know: he’d been kept waiting by female experts, in his time, he reminded himself on a grim note, standing up and smiling at her.

    “I should have offered you a drink: I’m sorry,” she said in a tiny voice.

    “That’s okay: I’m driving. You look great, Georgy.”

    “Thanks,” said Georgy, swallowing nervously. “Will I need my parka?”

    She was carrying it, so he said kindly: “Better bring it, ya never know.”

    By this time he fully expected her not to have any suggestions about where to go for tea, and she didn’t, so he decided that they’d try The Tavern in Puriri: its food was supposed to be okay.

    Georgy had always firmly believed The Tavern to be populated by beer-drinking yobs and hairy drunks (where these would have come from in respectable, middle-class Puriri County she hadn’t paused to ask herself) so although she agreed, it was in a tiny voice.

    When they got there it was full of beer-drinking yobs such as the Anderson boys with a lady who must be their mother and an older man who must be their father (and therefore, presumably, Jemima’s Uncle Greg), and hairy drunks such as Dorothy and Janet from the Puriri County Library, Mrs Baxter who worked in The Deli and her husband, who was Sergeant Baxter, together with an elderly Maori lady whom Georgy had often seen in the library, and who she now realized must be a relation of Mrs Baxter’s, and Roberta and Michaela with a large boy who looked like a student and a tousled-haired, amiable-looking man whom she didn’t recognise as Roberta’s father, Dr Keith Nicholls.

    She didn’t eat very much, but then Stephen hadn’t expected her to. In the car going into town she didn’t say much, but he hadn’t expected that, either. He had been looking forward to the performance but he was too nervous and excited at being in Georgy’s company to be able to enjoy it properly.

    Georgy felt too tired by this time, and again too dazed, to be able to take in the music. She was also very nervous at the thought of having to be driven home by Stephen, which didn’t help. She didn’t see anyone she knew there, but Stephen waved to several people. Most of the audience was middle-aged and evidently prosperous but there was a scattering of younger people there, many of them in jeans, so she didn’t feel out of place.

    In the car going home she didn’t say anything. Finally Stephen said: “Did you enjoy it?”

    “Oh! Um—yes, I did. –I didn’t realize they’d do it in German.” ‘

    “Mm.”

    “Thank you for taking me,” said Georgy politely.

    “That’s all right,” he said limply.

    After that there was silence.

    At last Georgy said desperately: “How’s the work going?”

    Stephen didn’t return a conventional reply: he was thinking grimly that if he ever wanted to get anywhere with Georgy they’d better start treating each other as individuals, and she, in particular, had better start seeing him as one. So he actually told her, in detail. This narrative lasted until they were well up the last stretch of motorway.

    Georgy was relieved at having a neutral subject to discuss: she listened with interest and got quite involved in the topic and even ventured on some good advice.

    Stephen didn’t realize that the intellectual part of her mind had taken over: he imagined that the interest was in him, not in his subject, and felt encouraged, and much happier than he had all evening. However, he judged that it was too soon to try and kiss her, so he just drove straight on up Willow Grove’s well-lighted concrete drive and drew up by her garage. And said casually: “Thanks for coming, Georgy. What about lunch one day next week, would you fancy it?”

    “Oh!” gasped Georgy in confusion. “Don’t you— I thought he would have— Aren’t you a friend of his? I thought he would have said!”

     “What?” said Stephen numbly.

    “I’m going to Rotorua with Nigel and Imogen next week!” she gasped.

    After she’d admitted that Nigel had talked her into it and Stephen had agreed that he was a very persuasive bloke, in fact at times he reminded him of Mac—Georgy gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth—he said he’d see her in at varsity the week after, then, and let her go. At least, Georgy felt he let her go: Stephen would have been very upset to learn of it.

    Lunch with Jemima and Tom and their neighbours on the Sunday was entirely pleasant. Tom apologised for the ponderance of boys but Georgy only laughed. After lunch the boys, except for the oldest one, went outside and had what appeared to be a prolonged fight in the road, but as a soccer ball was involved it probably wasn’t, really. The adults sat round in a torpid state in Tom and Jemima’s very pleasant sitting-room and talked desultorily about books and music and art, apart from Bill from over the road, who went to sleep in Tom’s big armchair. His wife explained apologetically that he was a headmaster: he did a lot of sleeping in the holidays. Georgy giggled, and nodded. Eventually they all worked up the energy to walk up to the far end of Blossom Avenue, a fair way, to Michaela’s friends’ place, which was where Michaela had her kiln, in order to look at Michaela’s pots.

    Nobody, least of all the artist, seemed to expect Georgy to buy anything; in fact Michaela, suddenly turning very red, growled: “Here,” and thrust a small bowl into her hands.

    It was, of course, the inarticulate potter’s way of showing her sympathy with her for having being dumped by Adam McIntyre, but fortunately this didn’t dawn on Georgy, though everyone else had a pretty good idea of the thought behind the gift, and in fact the burly headmaster coughed suddenly and got kicked on the ankle by his wife.

    “You’ll be able to sell it and retire on the proceeds in ten years’ time,” Tom assured her, grinning.

    This was a slight exaggeration, but the bowl was very nice, featuring on the inside a pale greenish shade, lightly speckled with fawn like a bird’s egg, and on the outside the brown biscuit with a thick, shiny black glaze sort of negligently dripped over it. Georgy thought it was wonderful. Added to which it would swear at every single item in Mrs Mayhew’s collection of Conservative Horribles: hah, hah! She hugged it to her bosom and thanked Michaela fervently.

    Later in the afternoon Tom simply drove her all the way to the Austin twins’ place.

    Georgy had been rather afraid it might turn out to be a student party, but it wasn’t. At first only the twins were home but after a while, during which Vicki forced a cup of tea on her and Ginny, and Georgy started to get rather too absorbed in Ginny’s collection of dog-eared paperbacks, a grinding noise was heard from outside, and the front door opened, to reveal Euan, carrying a large chillybin, and followed by a thin, ugly, smiling man in a heavy checked wool shirt and faded jeans, who looked very familiar, but—

    “Take the esky out back, Euan, them flounder won’t leap out and cook themselves,” he drawled, as Euan dumped the chillybin in the main room.

    “Oh!” cried Georgy. “Hullo!”

    The nice American from Carter’s Inlet who knew Jemima and the Carranos and ran a boating-supplies store grinned and, evincing no surprize that Georgy was alone, and in fact not mentioning Adam’s name at all, proceeded to shake hands and then make himself entirely agreeable to everybody for the rest of the evening. Euan was working for him most weekends, he explained.

    There was nothing of the would-be admirer about Sol Winkelmann—this was his name, Georgy remembered after several people had addressed him as “Sol”; and as he was, as Adam and she had discovered, an intelligent man with a great sense of humour, they all spent a very pleasant evening indeed and didn’t even need to have recourse to the videos of E.T., Working Girl, and Steel Magnolias that Vicki had hired on a three-for-the-price-of-one offer from the Puriri Video Shop and for which Euan had borrowed a video player from the university’s Electrical Engineering Department. They did, however, watch the video of The Rocky Horror Show that Ginny had hired. Georgy hadn’t seen it before—probably the only living human being in the country under the age of forty not to have done so, as Euan noted in shock—and she enjoyed it very much. In fact they all did, even Vicki, who, though at first affecting to despise it, got up and gyrated to The Time Warp.

    By the end of this pleasant, undemanding evening Georgy was very happy to have Sol drive her home. She bade him “Night-night, Sol!” with a beaming smile and ran up her steps, very warm and happy for the first time in—though she didn’t pause to realize this—many weeks.

    Sol Winkelmann was not, as persons of his acquaintance less innocent than the Austin twins or Georgy Harris recognized, either a naïve man or a man who was immune to pretty little red-headed morsels twenty years his junior. He was not, however, in the habit of forcing himself on girls who were manifestly experiencing the stunned aftermath of a short-lived but torrid affaire, and who manifestly considered him in the light of an elderly uncle. Unlike some, he noted, casting Ralph Overdale’s apartment a glance of extreme dislike, before driving his battered jeep carefully down the concrete drive. He hadn’t revealed the fact to Georgy, but he knew Ralph Overdale fairly well. Knew and didn’t like him.

    Easter Monday featured nothing more challenging than lunch with Val and tea with Jill and Gretchen. Georgy tidied the flat and did some washing in the morning. Then Val picked her up and they had a nice lunch in Val’s own little flat in Puriri.

    In the evening Jill and Gretchen talked either about books or about the iniquities of such university personalities as Dennis Barlow, who was making his period as Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics as unpleasant as possible for everyone under him, Jill’s immediate boss, Kevin McCaffery, who in the dyed-in-the-wool bastard stakes was about a nose away from Dennis, and Gretchen’s boss, a mild-mannered man who was incapable of standing up to either of these other Lang. and Ling. personalities and therefore inevitably wound up with the scrag-ends in the way of tutorial rooms, language laboratory times, and so forth.

    Georgy should no doubt have felt soothed by this entirely normal conversation with her colleagues but instead, though responding appropriately at appropriate times, she felt entirely alienated from the whole thing: as if she was looking at them and their concerns from an enormous distance, perhaps from another planet. She found herself wondering madly what on earth all this had to do with the real life of Georgy Harris. And how in God’s name she had got herself into a position of letting this apparently become her real life. Well, certainly be considered so by those who were absorbed in it. Help.

    It was Jill’s turn to get drunk, so when Gretchen came back from driving Georgy home she marched into the sitting-room where Jill was still getting drunk, and said scornfully: “Ho!”

    “Eh?”

    “The whole effening,” said Gretchen crossly, “if you are not too drunk to notice it, went ofer like a lead balloon!”

    “Eh?”

    “She iss asking herself,” said Gretchen loudly and angrily, “vhat the Deffil she is doing, letting her life dvindle avay to the point vhere mad shpinsters from the Lang. and Ling. Faculty expect her to be as closely involved in the idiocies off the Lang. and Ling. Faculty as they are!”

    “Eh? Oh. Well, then, she better do sump’n ’bout it,” said Jill blurrily.

    “Ja: vhat?” she said angrily. “Run after Adam McIntyre?”

    “That’d—”

    “Marry that bore Shtephen Berry?”

    “—do,” finished Jill blurrily. “Either,” she corrected herself.

    “SHUT UP!” shouted Gretchen angrily, stomping off to bed.

    Jill looked owlishly into her brandy. “Wise advice,” she decided, drinking it.

    Mid-semester break went by in a blur for Georgy. A contributing factor might have been the double dose of travel-sickness pills she’d taken first thing on the Tuesday, in order not to disgrace herself in either Nigel’s or Derry’s car. It was both, as it turned out: Nigel and Imogen picked her up, then at some place in the middle of the North Island where they had lunch at Derry’s expense, Derry kidnapped her and bore her off in his hire car.

    Derry was accompanied by Charles, Roddy and a very good-looking young man who at first Georgy thought was the driver. Then it turned out he was Gwillim, the student whom Derry wanted for his Lysander. But as well as that Derry was paying him for doing the driving. Possibly this helped with the blurring, too.

    At first Georgy stayed with Nigel and Imogen at his aunty’s place. It was quite a large house and she had a room to herself. Nigel’s Aunty Barb was a pleasant, middle-aged, plump woman but it was just as well Georgy hadn’t expected her to be the easy-going Maori mum of popular myth, because she wasn’t. She was a Maori, and she was a mum, but as well as that she was the senior science teacher at the nearby high school. Pretty obviously brains ran in Nigel’s family. Aunty Barb’s husband was a Maori, too. Though his name was Jock. But this could have had something to do with the fact that his surname was Campbell.

    The Campbells’ garden would have disappointed Christopher Black: it did not feature any stationary rusting Holdens, or cars of any sort. It did feature a canoe, which belonged to one of Nigel’s cousins, but this wasn’t stationary or rusting: it came and went with the cousin; and it did have a lot of pretty shrubs which were rather overgrown, but apart from that its considerable area of lawn was as well mown as Christopher Black’s own. Or indeed, as Mrs Harris’s: in fact Georgy looked at it and recalled that it was weeks and weeks since she’d done Mum’s lawn. She sort of felt that if she’d been capable of feeling anything, she would have felt guilt, at this point.

    The Campbells, in short, were an ordinary, friendly suburban family of the type Georgy had known all her life. It was therefore a mystery why her feeling of alienation and disorientation grew, quite distinctly, as the week progressed, instead of diminishing.

    Jock was working but Barb of course had school holidays, so she took them personally to some of the more popular tourist attractions. The geysers and mud-pools were so exactly as Georgy had expected them to be from endless exposure on TV that she felt even more disoriented: it was as if she was seeing them, but somehow not really there at all. However, she hadn’t expected the sulphurous smell, and this helped to make her feel a bit more awake.

    The Wednesday was enlivened by Imogen’s buying last week’s Bulletin at a stationer’s in Rotorua itself while Nigel and his aunt were arguing over Nigel’s map, and discovering a review of Adam’s play. Which, if anyone had been counting, had opened on the Saturday before Easter. The Bulletin’s reviewer was apparently ravished by it. And by Adam’s performance in it. In fact the reviewer took credit for the discovery that Adam McIntyre could act. Georgy felt dully that she ought to be feeling something, as Imogen read the review aloud. She wasn’t, though.

    The Thursday was rendered hideous by Derry’s capturing her very, very early in the morning and dragging her off on a flight in a tiny little plane over Lake Tarawera, which was terrifying enough, and then over the even more terrifying dark grey broken remains of the blown-apart Mount Tarawera itself. Terrifying but blurred: Georgy took another double lot of the travel-sickness pills.

    Derry made her sleep that night in the horrendously up-market holiday home that belonged to Lady Harding’s millionaire pals, but Georgy was so blurred that she didn’t even notice that its furnishings, in their up-market way, were just as horrible as Ma Mayhew’s.

    Possibly Derry was exercising extreme tact, this week, for he talked eagerly about locations but didn’t mention Adam and didn’t attempt overtly to persuade Georgy to do the film.

    On the Friday he insisted on her driving back in his hire car, but though he forced poor Charles and Roddy to go in the back of Nigel’s heap in order to have her to himself, this cunning was wasted: Georgy took a travel-sickness pill and, worn out by all her new experiences, such as climbing terrifying rock staircases under terrifying waterfalls and tramping for hours round Buried Villages and Blue and Green Lakes and by the hours and hours of riding in cars with which these new experiences were interspersed, not to say by having to stay in a strange lady’s house, on top of all the socializing she’d been forced to do over the long weekend, fell asleep almost immediately and apart from groggily eating lunch somewhere in the middle of the North Island, slept for the entire trip.

    Sucks, as Charles didn’t fail to note. Derry retorted angrily that Charles had been a lot of use! Charles merely shrugged. Roddy pointed out that it wasn’t Charles’s department, and started to say something about “Vunce the rockets are up” but got shouted at, and ran away. Derry then pointed out that at least the garden of the holiday home, which featured many palms and tree-ferns and sloped right down to the lake, was ideal for the forest glade, but Charles merely retorted coldly: “So what?” and walked away.

    Derry took himself off angrily to his bathroom, where he got into a deep bath with lots of bubbles, and sulked and drank brandy and thought very hard for nigh on two hours.

    Georgy slept most of the following Saturday. She didn’t go out, or do anything. Possibly Miss McLintock or Ralph Overdale might have rung her front doorbell during the morning, but Georgy didn’t wake up until past noon, so she wasn’t aware of it if they had. She started to read a book in the afternoon but fell asleep over it. In the evening she watched television groggily but it didn’t seem to be making sense, so she went back to bed. It never occurred to her that tonight must be the last night of Adam’s play in Sydney, as it had only been intended to run for a fortnight.

    It wasn’t until the evening of the Sunday, when she sat down in front of the TV again and inadvertently saw Adam with some of the cast of his play in an Australian news snippet, that everything came over her at once, and she staggered into the bedroom and threw herself on the bed and cried and cried.

    Most of the following week passed in silent and bitter self-recrimination: if only she had said or done— But at heart she knew drearily that nothing she could have said or done could really have influenced Adam: he had to want them to be together for himself.

    On the Thursday afternoon Polly Carrano found her drinking lukewarm instant coffee in the English Department’s staffroom and reminded her that it was Livia’s wedding on the coming Saturday.

    Georgy had forgotten about it again: she hadn’t even replied to the invitation card. She gasped; her hands flew to her cheeks.

    “I thought you must have forgotten. Your answering-machine’s been on all week, too: did you know?” said Polly in a detached tone.

    “Um—no,” gulped Georgy. “I’d forgotten all about it.”

    “I thought you must have.”

    There was a short silence.

    “I haven’t even got anything to wear!” gasped Georgy in horror.

    “I thought you might not have: that’s partly why I reminded you. We could go shopping, if you haven’t got a class.”

    Georgy nodded numbly. After a minute she said: “I don’t even know what I should buy. What—what sort of thing do people wear to weddings?”

    “Well, it’s a morning wedding. I suppose you can’t go wrong with a nice suit and a dressy blouse. But actually, it is difficult to know what to wear for a May wedding: the weather can be so changeable.”

    This was met by a stunned silence.

    “We’ve got plenty of time to find you something, Georgy,” said Polly kindly.

    “Yes—no— I’ve got classes most of tomorrow up at Puriri— Um, no, not that: it can’t be May already!” gasped Georgy.

    Polly had already scrutinized, without appearing to, the deep shadows under the eyes, the redness of the eyelids, and the unwashed state of her hair; so she merely replied calmly: “It is on Saturday.”

    Georgy looked at her numbly.

    “We’d better get started,” said Polly calmly.

    Georgy got up numbly. “Yes. –No: wait!” she gasped.

     Polly waited.

    “Will—will Adam be there, Polly?” she asked in a trembling voice.

    “I don’t know, Georgy,” replied Polly gently. “He was invited, I do know that. And of course they originally planned it for April. But Livia said he did say he’d come. Only as to whether he really will turn up...”

    “No,” said Georgy numbly. “I see.”

    “If he does, I’d be very, very kind to him, if I was you,” said Polly.

    Georgy gulped.

    “Even if you don’t feel like it. Come on.”

    Numbly Georgy came on.