All Right On The Night?

7

All Right On The Night?

    Elspeth sat up on the silver sand, hugging her bony knees and staring dreamily at the pearly sea. At her right side, the large, black misnamed Puppy sat up on his haunches, panting loudly and lolling his big red tongue out of his hairy, friendly black face. At her left side, Georgy sat up and hugged her knees—less bony than Elspeth’s—and stared dreamily at the pearly sea. It was very early. Behind them in the trees that ringed tiny Kowhai Bay a couple of tuis whirred and clonked and a flock of sparrows chattered and chirped. The sun was up, so cicadas were already starting to zing in the scruffy grass under the trees. The occasional slam of a car door and the sound of a motor starting up drifted down to them from the settlement behind them, but it was too early yet for most of Kowhai Bay’s commuters to be setting off for the city.

    “We thought you weren’t coming!” cried Elspeth, beaming, as Adam joined them.

    “I slept in,” he said simply.

    “We thought you would,” said Georgy hoarsely.

    “Come on, come for a swim!” cried Elspeth.

    Adam groaned.

    “Get in there, lazybones!” said Georgy with a giggle.

    “He’s chicken! He’s chicken!” cried Elspeth, dancing up and down. Puppy arose and danced, too. “SIT!” she roared terribly. The unfortunate animal sat, looking abashed. “On guard! Guard Georgy!” she said fiercely. Puppy approached Georgy. He lay at her feet.

    “Well, at least I’ll know where to find you in fifteen minutes’ time,” said Adam, grinning.

    “Or fifteen hour’s or fifteen years, he’ll only take orders from her,” said Georgy gloomily, trying not to smile.

    He laughed. “Quite! –Come on, horrible, show me where the water is,” he said to Elspeth.

    “Down there, silly!” she cried, laughing like anything. “I’ll race ya! One, two, thr—” She darted away. Adam ran after her without enthusiasm.

    Georgy watched in some amusement. At the same time she found she’d gone all trembly at the sight of Adam’s body, which was both a lot paler and a lot hairier than she’d expected in the wake of the film. Its shape was what she’d expected, though. Georgy’s heart raced and she told herself silently and fiercely it was stupid, it was just a physical thing—and it was stupid. Blitheringly stupid. This sternness had no effect whatsoever on her physical and emotional reactions to him.

    … “Hell’s teeth,” said Adam deeply some twenty minutes later.

    “I’m sorry!” gasped Georgy.

    “No, I am, it was me that was the moron that agreed to drive her to this aunt’s place.”

    “Great-aunt, she’s a very old lady... I hope all that about expecting her wasn’t a lie!” Georgy gulped.

    “Possibly her mother’ll put her foot down,” he ventured.

    “Her stepmother. I don’t think she will, I think, um, well, her and Elspeth’s father sound as if they’ve had another row, um...”

    “And they’d rather have her room than her company, in case they want to make it up or continue with it. Well, that’s understandable.”

    “Do you—do you really think she’s awful, Adam?” said Georgy in a tiny voice.

    “What?” Adam stopped stock-still a quarter of the way up Kowhai Bay Road in his Hawaiian shirt (sky-blue and yellow) and his good bathers (sky-blue and at this precise moment crippling him, he was dying for her. He was damn sure Georgy hadn’t noticed this, however.) “No! No, you idiot, I think she’s wonderful!” he said with a laugh.

    “Oh!” said Georgy in terrific relief. “So do I, and so does your mother—but Mum says she’s a little pest.”

    Adam raised his eyebrows. “Intelligent, eager, and overwhelmingly natural—in what way does that constitute a little pest?”

    “Don’t ask me,” said Georgy on a glum note.

    Adam didn’t. He took her elbow very gently. She twitched slightly. He was very pleased at this physical reaction—and in response to it his own blood raced. The trunks were crippling him worse than ever. He glanced up the road at Elspeth’s rapidly-vanishing back view, and smiled. “I thought the pair of you looked very sweet in your bathers,” he murmured with a laugh in his voice.—Georgy gulped.—“Nymph with attendant Grotesque!” he gurgled.

    “She chose them! I mean, her grandpa bought them, but she chose them!” she gasped.

    “Why didn’t someone stop her?” he murmured.

    “I think—she takes—the grandpa—shopping—and he just buh-buh—” gasped Georgy helplessly, collapsing in giggles.

    “Buys what she tells him to: yes. Oh, absolutely!” he said fervently.

    Elspeth’s new togs were very, very cutaway in the legs. They were of a particularly offensive fluorescent yellow, unimaginably tight even on her skinny frame, and sported between her very small breasts (most of which were exposed in any case) a huge silver heart spiked with a shocking-pink flash of lightning. This motif was not repeated on the back because the back was not there. Nor was most of the bum, thanks to the cutaway style.

    “The nymph was sweet, though,” he added slyly.

    Georgy went very red and hugged her large towel tightly round

    “Has anyone ever told you—” Adam stopped.

    “What?” asked Georgy, looking up into his face.

    The sophisticated utterance he’d believed himself about to make wouldn’t come to his tongue. He looked helplessly into her innocent grey-green eyes and said in a trembling voice: “That you’ve got the sweetest figure.”

    “No,” said Georgy baldly, blushing brightly.

    Adam had reddened, too. His heart pounded furiously. “Well, you have,” he said lamely.

    “Oh.” After a moment she added: “I dno’t think that’s anything to my credit. It’s just a—an accident of nature.”

    “Yes,” he said with difficulty. “I know what you mean—having been treated as nothing but a marketable body for the last few years.”

    “Ooh, yes,” said Georgy slowly. “I suppose you must have been.”

    Adam made a face. “Yes.”

    “You don’t think of men… It’s usually women’s bodies that are—are marketable commodities, isn’t it?”

    “Oh, actors are all kittle-cattle, and out there it’s the cattle market, believe me!” he said bitterly.

    “Yes.” There was a short silence. “Well, why do it to other people?”

    “I’m sorry; I— You don’t understand, one can’t separate one’s physical reaction to—to another person’s physical presence from—from the emotions or the intellect!” he said desperately, very flushed. He pushed his hair off his forehead with an impatient gesture—Georgy had seen him do it innumerable times on the screen and she wondered in huge confusion whether he was acting at this moment—and added energetically: “Or not and remain sane, that is!”

    “No,” she said thoughtfully. “I think I see what you mean.”

    Adam swallowed. “Georgy,” he said with difficulty, “this isn’t some—some abstract concept we’re discussing over the coffee cups in the S.C.R., you know!”

    “No,” she said in, a low voice, staring at the pavement between them.

    “It’s—it’s your body and my body, it’s you and me,” he said hoarsely.

    “Yes,” she whispered, licking her lips.

    “How can we ignore the fact that we are physical beings?

    Georgy looked up at him. “I’ve always tried to.”

    “I think I’ve realized that,” he said shakily.

    “Partly because I don’t think I’d be any good at—at all those things,” she said, blushing again but looking him in the eye.

    “At all those— Sex?” said Adam weakly.

    “Mm,” she said, nodding.

    “Are you a virgin?” he asked baldly.

    “No. Well, Martin Ramsay kept pestering me… It was horrible.”

     Adam was unaware that his nostrils had flared or his lips had thinned. A rush of hatred for the unknown Mr Ramsay filled his entire body. After moment he managed to unclench his fists and say: “Were you in love with him?”

    “No, I said: he kept pestering me.”

   He swallowed. “It makes a difference, whether you’re in love with a person. Um—well, it wouldn’t be horrible if—if you wanted to do it,” he said lamely.

    “I don’t know,” she replied, frowning. “Maybe I’m frigid.”

    “I don’t think you can be,” he said gently.

    “How can you know?” asked Georgy, looking up into his face with a puzzled frown.

    “Because when I—if I touch you,” he said, flushing, “you react. You—you jump, it’s involuntary.”

    Georgy gulped. Her face flamed.

    “And believe me,” said Adam in a low, shaking voice: “it’s very flattering.”

    She was silent. After a while he said: “What is it?”

    Georgy looked up. “Are you pulling my leg?”

    “No!” he gasped in horror. “How could you think I— No, of course not! What in God’s name do you think I am, Torquemada?”

    “No—it only felt like it,” said Georgy with a flicker of dry humour.

    “I’m sorry.”

    “No—it’s all right; it’s just… I’ve never talked about—about that sort of thing, before.

    Adam wanted to say something frightfully sophisticated along the lines of: “Darling, the only right way to talk about these things with a man” but found he couldn’t. After quite some time he said: “You affect me as much as I affect you. More, I think.”

    “I can’t; I mean— You’ve had all that experience!”

    “Chemistry’s got nothing whatsoever to do with experience. Experience only sometimes helps you to see if the other person is affected.”

    “Oh,” she said in a tiny voice.

    “I meant it: all of it,” said Adam awkwardly, as she stared at the road again. “Especially about—about the inseparable nature of—”

    “Yes, the human dichotomy—or dilemma, if you like,” said Georgy briskly, starting to walk up the road again. “Come on, we’ll be late, Mac’ll be wild.”

    “Georgy, this wasn’t just a discussion of—of la condition humaine, damn it!” he said angrily, pursuing her.

    “I know. Only I’ve got to think about it in my own way.”

    “All right,” he said, forcing himself to speak gently. “I understand. Only don’t—don’t intellectualize it out of all recognition, will you?”

    She didn’t answer. They walked on.

    “We’ll go up Weka Street,” she said.

    “Very well. –Don’t my Robin and her sister live near here?”

    “Yes: that’s their place. Look, that’s their mother, over there, in their garden.”

    Adam looked. A woman in a blue and pink flowered cotton housecoat had come out into the garden of a pale yellow wooden bungalow. She nipped a few dead flowers off a hibiscus shrub and proceeded to the garden gate, waving at Georgy. Georgy waved back automatically. The woman retrieved a couple of cartons of milk and a newspaper, and walked back to the house.

    “Everybody else seems to find things so simple!” choked Georgy, staring at her retreating back.

    “Yes; I think a lot of people do, in fact. Possibly because they’ve got simple minds. On the other hand, a lot of them don’t, and the rest of us don’t become aware of it until their marriage busts wide open, do we?”

    “That’s true. I hadn’t looked at it like that.” Georgy turned into Weka Street.

    Adam accompanied her the rest of the way to numbers 106 and 104 Ridge Road without saying anything.

    “Um—I’ll only be ten minutes,” she said.

    “Don’t hurry—have some breakfast,” he murmured.

    “Um—well, I won’t be long!” She dashed away.

    Adam walked slowly down his parents’ steep drive. He was aware that he should be thinking about how serious he meant this to be and whether he might not hurt the little thing. But he was also aware that he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t think rationally about it, his whole being was crying out to him that he must have Georgy. Quite probably, he reflected with a twist of the lips as he neared the house, you weren’t supposed to feel like this at bloody nearly thirty-eight, you were supposed to feel— God knew what: mature, or settled, or some such crap. But whatever social convention might have decreed you were probably, Adam knew he wasn’t. And couldn’t be. Bloody nearly thirty-eight or not!

    “You should have asked me before,” said Angie Michaels. Georgy’s lips trembled. “Never mind, Georgy, it’s not too late!” she added quickly.

    “No,” agreed Barbara eagerly: “the shops are open late tonight, and most of them’ll be open—”

    “Shut up,” sighed her mother.

    “—tomorrow morning,” finished Barbara inexorably. “I reckon she ought to wear something really elegant, Mum! You know: simple!”

    “Mm. Name one shop downtown that sells such items and we’ll head straight for it,” said Angie drily.

    Barbara opened her  mouth. She shut it again.

    “Silver—possibly a silver lurex…” said Angie thoughtfully. “I think she should look sort of... sylph-like.” She smiled at Georgy. “I’d say fairy-like, only I’m afraid it’s a dirty word!”

    “Just about,” agreed Georgy with a smile.

    The red-headed Austin twins had just joined them in the Sewing Room, and Vicki put in at this point: “Silver is, too. Why on earth did you let Elspeth come to rehearsal yesterday, Georgy? You mighta known she’d go berserk and start bonking the rustics with a bladder!”

    “I didn’t— I mean, we were going to drop her off at her great-aunt’s, only we got stuck in a traffic jam for ages, and Adam got all nervy, so I thought we’d better come straight on to the rehearsal. And—and anyway she was perfectly all right until that stupid boy started teasing her!” protested Georgy.

    Angie eyed her with great interest. Adam had got all nervy, eh? She knew that there was a good deal more to Georgy than met the eye—and certainly a lot more strength of character and—well—capableness, was it a word?—well, that, anyway, than people who only saw her being steam-rollered by that brute of a Mac gave her credit for. Angie was in no doubt that any woman who got mixed up with Adam McIntyre would need to be extremely capable and possess considerable strength of character. Because if ever she’d seen a bloke with “mother me” written all over him, that bloke was the bloke! And she’d seen a few, in her time: the Antipodean woods were full of ’em. Straight from the cradle to the altar, most of them. Never mind your Women’s Lib, a hot meal on the table when they got home from work, plus milky cornflakes and a shiny morning face over the breakfast table, that was what that lot required. Oh, yes. Angie wasn’t too sure of the details of what Adam McIntyre as such would require, but she had his type down pat.

    Ginny was saying: “Yeah, and then she went berserk.”

    And Vicki was saying: “She didn’t have to grab two bladders.”

    And Angie’s horrible benjamin was saying: “That Gordon Wilkes is a twerp, I reckon he deserved everything he got.”

    “No, he didn’t, Barbara,” said Ginny fairly: “that Puppy of Elspeth’s is pretty scary when he gets going.”

    “Girls!” said Angie loudly.

    Everyone jumped and looked at her guiltily.

    “Look— Hang on, did you say she had that dog with her?” said Angie incredulously.

    “He was perfectly all right in the car,” said Georgy in a small voice, “he’s used to going in theirs. And he was very good at rehearsal, he didn’t move a muscle until—”

    “Until that twerpy Gordon had a go at Elspeth, and then he went berserk, too!” said Barbara with relish.

    “Yeah, r’an then Mac went berserk!” agreed Vicki with a giggle.

    “Did he— He didn’t actually sink his teeth into anyone, did he?” asked Angie faintly.

    “Who, Mac?” said Vicki with a louder giggle.

    They all collapsed in mad giggles, even Angie, so she failed to notice that the girls’ giggles were rather more on the hysterical side than the situation seemed to warrant.

    “Oh, dear. –No,” she said wiping her eyes, “Elspeth’s Puppy. Did he bite that boy?”

    “No: he grabbed his sleeve and growled like crazy, twerpy Gordon was shit-scared!” reported Barbara ecstatically.

    “Yeah, r’an then Mac gave him the order of the boot!” added Vicki ecstatically.

    “The dog or the twerp?” asked Angie confusedly.

    “Mu-um!” hollered Barbara over the distinctly hysterical shrieks of laughter. “The twerp! He chucked him out of the show!”

    “Oh. Well, one hairy rustic the less, good riddance,” said Angie heartlessly. “What did he do to the dog?”

    There was a short silence. The twins, who’d grown up on a farm, swallowed and eyed each other uneasily.

    “Nothing,” said Georgy in a small voice, since no-one else was volunteering. “Um, he took a step towards him and—and Puppy…”

    “Showed his teeth and got his hackles up—literally,” said Ginny, swallowing.

    “Mm. He—well, I suppose he thought he was defending Elspeth,” added Vicki awkwardly.

    “Yeah,” agreed her sibling.

    The twins looked at Angie pleadingly. Barbara looked at her mother uneasily.

    “I suppose he did; I suppose he was pretty muddled, by that time,” said Angie briskly.

    “Yeah. –Dad woulda belted him,” revealed Vicki.

    “Yeah,” agreed her sister.

    “I think it’s different when a dog’s defending a little girl,” said Angie kindly. The twins looked unconvinced. “Well, how on earth did he get rid of him?” she asked, now wondering why on earth Barbara hadn’t come out with all this last night.

    No-one answered. “Barbara?” said Angie.

    “Um…” Barbara went ,very red and looked helplessly at Georgy.

    “Um—well, he couldn’t, Angie; I mean, he was terrified. Well, you couldn’t blame him, Puppy was—was—well, terrifying,” said Georgy.

    “Showing hackle,” muttered Ginny glumly.

    “Yeah,” muttered her twin.

    “Well, someone must have done something, or you’d all still be there!” said Angie loudly.

    “Yes. Um—well, Mac tried to back .away, you see, and Puppy growled at him. And—well, every time he tried it Puppy got worse, so he stopped,” said Ginny uncomfortably.

    “What was Elspeth doing?” asked Angie faintly.

    “Bawling,” they all said glumly.

    “I’m not sure whether it was because Gordon broke her silver bladder, or because Mac was furious and yelled at her, or because she couldn’t control Puppy,” elaborated Georgy, “but anyway she was—well, she went to pieces. Well, she is only little.”

    “Then Mac told one of the boys to ring the pound and—and—” Barbara stopped.

    “And Adam said,” said Georgy in a high voice: “‘If you ring the pound it’ll be over my dead body;’ and—and he got down off the stage and—and Mac said ‘It will be over your dead body, don’t be a bloody fool’, and he was going to shout, only Puppy growled again, so he sort of hissed at him to stay where he was. And Adam said—” She swallowed. “He said Mac was in a blue funk, and the dog had more guts in the tip of his tail than Mac did in the in the whole of his horrible body.”—“Good God!” said Angie, wondering again why on earth she hadn’t been given a blow-by-blow account of this melodrama.—“And then he sort of—it wasn’t exactly a yell, he said to Puppy in a kind of awful voice: ‘What the Devil do you mean by it? Get down!’” said Georgy in her high clear voice.

    Angie just goggled at her.

    “And he walked right up to him and Puppy sort of—” she broke off, gulping.

    “What?” screamed Angie.

    “He whined and lay right down and… I saw Dad do that once to a dog,” said Vicki dully, not sounding at all like the ebullient Vicki they knew.

    “And then he said—still in a sort of horrible voice,” added Barbara with a shudder, ‘Do you want my belt, sir?’ and he sort of was going to take his belt off only Puppy sort of—um—cringed. –It was awful, Mum!” she gasped.

    “And then Adam said ‘That’s all right; that’ll do,’ and he patted his head and Puppy licked his hand,” said Georgy in a small voice.

    “He broke him, love,” chimed in Bill’s voice. “It was bloody—’s why we didn’t want to tell you.” He came over to them and patted Barbara briskly on her broad bum.

    “I see,” said Angie limply. “Well, I suppose men have been mastering dogs for forty thousand years or so.”

    “Yeah, it was pretty elemental,” agreed the burly engineer with a grimace. He scratched his greying dark curls. “Last thing you’d have expected of that nancy-boy McIntyre, mind you!”

    “He isn’t,” said Georgy faintly.

    “He can’t be, Bill, if he could do that,” said Angie feebly.

    “Some people can,” said Vicki without enthusiasm.

    “Have to, love, otherwise the buggers’d eat us and our kiddies afterwards for dessert,” said Bill kindly, patting her shoulder.

    “Puppy went to obedience school and everything!” burst out Ginny, very flushed.

    “He’s still an animal, Petal,” Bill returned mildly.

    “Yes,” she said meekly.

    “Anyway, that wasn’t all,” said Georgy in a tiny voice.

     Bill eyed her uneasily.

    “It was the worst bit,” objected Vicki.

    “No, it wasn’t, Vicki,” said Georgy. “It was awful, only it was like Bill said: it was elemental. No, the rest of it was—um—unnecessary.”

    “What?” asked Angie faintly.

    Georgy went very pink and looked helplessly at Bill.

    “Well,” he said, “first off the Elspeth kid stopped bawling and McIntyre—Adam, I mean—told her all quiet-like to take the dog out to the car. Not neglecting to give ’er ’is keys: someone was keeping their head while all about ’em, eh?”

    “You were paralysed!” said his daughter indignantly.

    “Too bloody right I was. So were we all. Effete products of the twentieth century, one an’ all. ’Cept ’Is Highness, Sir Adam, ’twould appear.”

    “Look, Bill—” began Angie.

    “Yeah. Well, once Elspeth had gone Mac started to bawl out poor old Georgy for bringing Elspeth and the bloody pooch to rehearsal in the first place.

    “Oh, dear,” said Angie, looking sympathetically at Georgy, who was pinker than ever.

    “Yeah, but wait!” said her spouse, holding up a grimy forefinger.

   Angie looked at him in some surprize. In even more surprize she saw that the twins and Barbara were now very pink, too, but also sort of—breathlessly agog? More or less, yes. “Well, what?” she said impatiently.

    “Barely had the first half dozen insults passed his lips—well, never opens his bloody mouth without saying ‘bloody’, ya know what Mac’s like—”

    “BILL!” shouted Angie.

    “Adam laid into Mac,” he said simply.

    “What?” gasped Angie.

    “Yeah. By God, you’ve never heard so much dirty linen aired in all yer— Yeah, well, ancient history wasn’t in it. Mac gave as good as he got, mind you. Better, in some respects.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Some of it was pretty pas-dee-vong stuff, too,” he said, eyeing the girls dubiously.

    “Pooh! I understood every word!” cried Barbara indignantly.

    Bill raised a sapient eyebrow at his spouse.

    “I see,” she said limply.

    “I did, Mum! Anyway, it was awful,” said Barbara, suddenly subsiding like a pricked balloon.

    Bill scratched his chin again. “Yeah. Well, to those of us what had thought these was two gents, true, it was awful. To those of us what had thought we might at some point have an old bull and a young hopeful—uh—head-on confrontation, as ’twere...” He eyed Georgy thoughtfully,

    “It was all LIES!” shouted Ginny suddenly.

    “Yes. It’s all right, Ginny,” said Georgy, very red.

    “An’ I don’t reckon Adam ever did all those things he said!” cried Vicki suddenly, looking as if she was going to cry.

    Oops, deary, thought Bill. Before he could say anything, however, Georgy—wee Georgy, of all people!—said to the red-faced and pouting twin: “No, I don’t think he could possibly have done, Vicki. If he had done he’d be dead of AIDS by now, wouldn’t he? One of those actors had it, and he’s dead: it was in the paper just a while ago.”

    “What?” said Angie very faintly.

    Bill had come round to her side. He kicked her ankle. “Yeah; and I’ll say this for McIntyre, he may look the willowy type but he’s as healthy as a horse.”

    “He’s not willowy, Dad!” his daughter informed him scornfully. “He’s got muscles!”

    “The expert,” said Angie faintly. “Um—yes, well, it all sounds like a storm in a teacup to me; all families quarrel.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Bill quickly, not revealing that he’d had to take Barbara out of the hall yesterday: she’d bawled all over him, and had needed a quick nip from the special Engineering bottle that lived in a locked Engineering toolbox that was never far from his side on the occasions of the summer productions. The box also contained, amongst other necessities, several tourniquets, and a filled syringe which Bill hoped to Christ he’d never have to use but which a doctor mate of his who would remain nameless practically guaranteed would restart the human heart after electric shock. Bill had no intention of revealing any of these details to any of the females here present, however.

    “Yes, it was very silly,” said Georgy firmly.

    “Mac said—” began Vicki.

    “That’ll do, Petal,” said Bill, suddenly swooping on her and putting his hefty arm round her shoulders. “Look, what say we all shoot off to that Chinese place that has the fried ice cream, eh? And have a real good nosh-up!”

    “Ooh, yeah!” cried Barbara.

    After some hesitation and demurring—not by Barbara—it was agreed. Angie promised they’d to the really good material shop afterwards and buy a length of silver fabric for a simple little dinner dress for Georgy—Bill groaned but didn’t say he wouldn’t accompany them—and she would cut it out this evening and run it up for her tomorrow! Georgy protested but was overborne.

    Angie then gave the girls her keys and packed them off to the Ladies’.

    “Phew!” she said, sagging against her husband.

    “Gerroff,” he replied genially, pinching her bum.

    “Ow! Don’t do that,” said Angie unconvincingly. “If you were present at this shindig yesterday, Bill,  why in God’s name didn’t you tell me about it?”

    He sniffed. “We-ell… In the first place young Babs was bloody upset over the dog thing, didn’t want to rake it up again. –And by Christ, bloody Mac came out with a few ripe ones, I can tell ya!”

    “What in God’s name was all that Georgy was spouting about AIDS?”

    “Oh—that.” He glanced warily in the direction of the Ladies’. “Well, a fair bit back, young Adam was in one of these gung-ho type, all-lads-together pickies. It was either manly sports or one of them manly jousting in tin-can armour jobs. No ladies, see?”

    “Barely, can’t you tell it in plain English?”

    “Well,” said Bill heavily, “in plain English, according to Mac, all the boys on set was up all the other boys, see? The flower of the English thee-ay-ter as it is today was there. I use the word flower—”

    “All right!”

    “—advisedly,” finished Bill inexorably. “Anyway—well, this is only according to Mac, and it sounded like sheer spite to me—the rumour is that pickshas was took, and they’ve been circulating in certain English theatrical circles—ya get me?”

    “Pooh! What would Mac know about English theatrical circles, dirty photos or not!” said Angie scornfully.

    “Exactly. That bit struck me as bloody thin, too. And Sir Adam, I might add: he pounced on it, too. Plus with a real nasty one: something to the effect of tinpot Antipodean amateurs that wouldn’t know a real stage—” He shrugged. “Well.”

    “That would have gone down well,” acknowledged Angie weakly.

    “Yeah, it did: Mac descended to the level of shrieking he was a whingeing queer—young Vicki, there,”—he nodded at the Ladies’—“got her dander up at that and screamed out he wasn’t, only fortunately Mac didn’t catch which of ’em it was—and Adam told him he was spouting clichés again!” He chuckled richly.

    “Help,” said Angie in a hollow voice.

    “Yep: it was good.”

    “Did they make it up?”

    “Not before these very eyes, no. Adam walked out—told old Nunky he’d be back when Mac could behave like a civilized human bean—and he was back this arvo, and they were both being very polite to each other.”

    “Crumbs,” said Angie numbly.

    “Yeah.”

    “What was all that Ginny was saying about Georgy and all lies?” she asked, frowning.

    “Ugh. That had better be for your ears only,” he admitted. “I don’t think half the kids even got it.”

    Angie hissed in his ear: “Did Mac have the gall to say he’d had a go at Georgy?”

    “Yeah—don’t do that!” he said, shaking his head. “More or less, mm. Kind of implied it was being spread around the family.”

    “Well, Adam may be a willowy whatever you said, but he’d have to be blind, deaf and stupid to believe that!” said Angie roundly.

    “And so say all of us,” said Bill mildly. “Actually I thought he was gonna throw up. Then he slapped his face for ’im.”

    “Not really?” she gasped.

    “Yeah; ya coulda heard ye pin drop, all rightee. And wee Georgy says into ye dead silence, cool as a cucumber,” said Bill with a hasty glance in the direction of the Ladies’: ‘It’s all right, Adam, I wouldn’t touch him with a barge-pole or any other kind of pole,’”—“What?” gasped Angie, her eyes on stalks—“‘and he knows it.’ Then she pushed off to see if young Elspeth was okey-doke.”

    Angie merely looked at him limply.

    Bill picked up a costume and inspected it. “Lousy bit of work.”

    “What? Oh—Ellen. It doesn’t matter, it’s only an underskirt.”

    “Just as well,” said Bill, poking his finger through a gap in the seam. “Here—convenient, eh?” He waggled the finger at her.

    “Don’t,” said Angie weakly, very pink.

    Bill waggled his eyebrows. And the finger.

    “Stop it!” gasped Angie.

    He grinned, and stopped. “Whass all this silver-dress-for-wee-Georgy bit?”

    “Don’t call her that, Bill. Um—well, I’m just going to run her up a little dress: evidently dratted Polly’s asked her and Adam to that frightfully expensive French place her and Jake go to—you know, in town.”

    “Blimey, Ange! This thing you’re gonna run up’ll have to compete with one of Polly’s flaming Paris moh-deels, ya realize that?”

    “No, it won’t,” said Angie with a knowing smile. “I didn’t phrase that quite right: Polly invited Adam and a partner, and Adam invited Georgy!”

    “Stone the flaming crows,” he said feebly.

    Polly held the receiver away from her ear and shook it disbelievingly.

    “Who is it?” grunted Sir Jake.

    “Angie,” said Polly loudly. “She’s gone potty, she’s asking me what I’m going to wear tonight!”

    “Gimme that,” he said with a grin. “Oy, Ange,” he said to their sufficiently old friend: “ya don’t have to grub in Grub Street for Metro mag for pennies, ya know;”—Polly goggled at him, she’d have sworn he was incapable of that—“we can put you on the payroll in the Building!”

    The phone said something and Sir Jacob gave a fruity chuckle.

    “What did she say?”

    “Nothing, it was Bill,” he said, grinning.

    “God!” muttered Lady Carrano.

    “Eh?” he said. “GOR!” he said loudly. “More!” he demanded loudly.

    Lady Carrano groaned and lay down flat on her big Regency bed in her petticoat.

    “Yeah—right—see ya,” he said at long last. “Eh? Aw, righto, Ange: no silver. Gotcha.” He hung up. “Given me all the dirt,” he said pleasedly.

    “I got that,” groaned Polly. “Who on? Some macho idiot of your mutual acquaintance? Some clown from the Golf Club?”

    “Uh—dunno where to start, really.”

    “Start by putting your underpants on,” said his wife wearily. “Unless you want to give old Madame’s fat clients a treat.”

    “Eh? Aw—righto. –I think I need some new ones,” he decided.

    “Jake Carrano! The house is full of your discarded hardly-used underwear! Put those on!” she screamed.

    He put them on.

    “Well, go on,” she said.

    “Ah! Will I need a singlet?”

    “No, Sir Jacob, it’s the middle of summer,” she sighed.

    “Might do. Ole Madame’s got the egg-nishner, now, ya now!”

    “Put a singlet on, then, Sir Jacob,” she sighed.

    He wandered over to his huge wardrobe and looked at shirts instead.

    “Give me the DIRT!” yelled Polly.

    “Thought you’d crack,” he said, turning with a grin. He grabbed a dress-shirt and came and sat beside her. “Hard to know where to begin, really. –No, honest!” He gave her the dirt.

    “Good, wasn’ it?” he said at the end of it.

    “Super-good. And knowing Bill, super-apocryphal. Also super-all-round-the-university before 10 a.m. Monday morning.”

    “Yeah. No, well, it already is, I should think,” he said. “Yeah, well: bound to be.”

    “Give me that phone!”

    “We’ll be late,” he warned.

    “Shut up,” said Polly, pushing buttons fiercely. “Bill? Either get off the line and let me talk to Angie or give me the exact and precise details of this putative row that Adam and Mac are rumoured— WHAT?” she screamed. “RUBBISH!” she bellowed. Bill spoke at some length. Sir Jacob wandered off into the ensuite. When he came back she was hanging up, looking numb.

    “It seems to have been a hum-dinger of a row,” she admitted.

    “Mm-hm.”

    “Um—Puppy and Elspeth seem to have been what you might call the catalysts—for God’s sake don’t tell Hamish!”

    Sir Jacob agreed he wouldn’t tell Elspeth’s father.

    “As for what Mac implied about dear little Georgy—!”

    “The little Anglo-Saxon-y girl that Adam’s bringing: yeah. Said it to spite young nevvy; why else?” he pointed out, climbing slowly into his trousers.

    “Yes. Did you tell Adam black tie?”

    “Too late, now.”

    “No, it isn’t,” said Polly, reaching for the phone.

    “YES!” he howled. “Of course I did! He said he’d wear his Hawaiian tux and I said he could wear a flamin’ frangipani behind his flamin’ ear, if he wanted to: so long as he doesn’t smoke in the bloody restaurant ole Madame won’t give a bugger!”

    “Talking of buggers,” said Polly in a hollow voice.

    “Nah!” he replied scornfully. “Well, by my calculations,”—he winked at her—“round about the time in question he was up someone else entirely.”

    “Who?” said Polly weakly. “And how in God’s name do you know?”

    “Ah!” He laid a finger to the side of his nose.—Polly winced.—“Well, they made that movie not far from Bordeaux, see?”

    “Did they?” said Polly blankly.

    “Yeah! That all-boys thing, didn’t Bill tell ya?”

    “Ye-es... He didn’t mention Bordeaux, though.”

    “No, because he doesn’t know. Only I do, see? He reckoned it mighta been one of them sporty ones, only it wasn’t, see, it was one of them fake medieval-type ones. Had a few Frogs in it, only they were all on the other side. Anyway, it musta been in ’76, see?”

    “No.”

    “It was when I was over in Canada, ya see, doing all those deals with— Never mind. Anyway, I popped over to London, it was the summer they had the big heatwave.”

    “So of course you dashed off to be in it.”

    “Nope. I dashed off to see what the idiots in the London office— Anyway,” he said hurriedly, “the wine-boys over there was all excited-like,”—Polly groaned—“because they reckoned it was gonna be one of the best vintages this century, see?”

    “NO!” she shouted.

    “I’m telling ya!” he said in an injured voice. “I nipped over to Burgundy, did a bit of a tour round, picked up a few cases, put me order in for— And then I thought I might as well do the thing properly, you know, take in Champagne and— Yeah, well, anyway, these Frogs invited me down to their maisong dee campayne just outside Bordeaux.”

    “God!” said Polly weakly, fanning herself with her hand in an exhausted fashion.

    “He’s in tractors, farm machinery—you know.”

    “JAKE!” she bellowed.

    “I’m telling you, aren’t I? And she does amateur thee-atrics and was all excited-like at the fillum company being in the district. And a mate of hers—no, hang on, you know them: this was the first time I met them, ya see: Henri and Catherine—”

    “Maison de campagne? Jake, it’s a bloody château!” she gasped.

    “Not their place, ya nana, this other bloke’s, the tractor bloke’s!”

    “Oh. Oh, I see! He introduced you to Catherine and Henri!”

    “Goddit in one,” he groaned.

    “Your narrative was so clear, I could hardly get it in less.”

    “All right, be like that.”

    Polly bashed him with a pillow.

    He wrested it off her with ease and said: “And Catherine was giving one of her bloody pool-parties—you didn’t know ’er back then, this was before she got a bit of sense. She was having it off with this Frog film star bloke, dunno how poor ole Henri put up with— I’m coming to it!” he said hurriedly. “Anyway, this Adam type was there, see? Barely out of the egg. –Thought I’d seen ’is mug before,” he said ruminatively, “only funny hats kind of got in the way.”

    “What are you TALKING ABOUT, JAKE?” shouted Polly.

    “Adam McIntyre. And Lady You-Know-Who.’’ He winked.

    Polly’s jaw sagged.

    “Catherine’s best mate!” he said impatiently.

    “I’ve got that!” she retorted witheringly. “But you don’t mean—”

    “Told me himself: playing hooky over a long weekend from all that all-boys garbage. Him and Ladyship had been having it off for the last few months whenever they could get it together. ’S why she was staying with Catherine and poor ole Henri.”

    “She’s old enough to be—”

    “’Is grandma. Well, quite. Well-preserved, though. And this was a fair bit back, remember. He must have been about—uh—cripes, twenty-two?”

    “She’d have been at least fifty!” gasped Polly. “She’s older than Catherine.”

    “Good on ’er,” he replied.

    “It doesn’t entirely let him off the hook.”

    “No; but he’da had to have a fair amount of stamina. Specially if ’Er Ladyship was on form, by all accounts. Mind you, ya do, at twenty-odd.”

    “Spare us the lurid detail,” she sighed.

    “Hadn’t you better get dressed?” he replied mildly.

    “Help!” Polly dashed over to her dressing table.

    “Mac never got hold of that one,” he pointed out.

    “No. And don’t you dare mention it tonight.”

    “Well, I won’t mention who he was doing— All right, I won’t mention what he was doing. But I’m gonna find out for sure if ’e was over there then—mind you, I’m ninety-percent sure it was him. Lessee...” He began doing sums, muttering to himself.

    “He’s thirty-seven,” said Lady Carrano heavily.

    “Ah! Well, that makes it much easier! Um... yeah, he’da been about twenty-two, eh?”

    “Doesn’t it depend whether his birthday is before or after the vendange?” she replied nastily.

    “Well, don’t you wanna know?” he demanded indignantly.

    “Yes. But I don’t want you putting your great flat feet in your mouth tonight and embarrassing the pair of them to death.”

    “All right! I won’t say a word, all bloody evening!”

    “An excellent idea,” approved Lady Carrano.

    “I could order a ’76 claret!” he said brilliantly.

    She threw another pillow at him.

    “Darling!” sighed Adam.

    Georgy giggled ecstatically.

    Since he’d sighed it in the fruity accents of Piggy-Whiskers, so did Polly. Sir Jacob grinned tolerantly. He’d just about been able to sit through five minutes of the latest series of Piggy-Whiskers’s interminable series of television series starring Piggy-Whiskers in his world-famous rôle as a pontificating but lovable modern clergyman before falling sound asleep.

    “And then,” said Adam, finishing his story, “she fluffed around a bit—you must have seen her do it—and dropped her eternal knitting bag—the sound man just about had kittens—and replied with her next speech but two: thus neatly eliminating Piggy-Whiskers’s best joke of the entire play. One critic actually noticed the thing ran a bit short.”

    “Ooh!” gasped Georgy, clapping her hand over her mouth.

    Polly gave a contralto gurgle.

    Sir Jacob liked to get things straight. “On the BBC, ya said?”

    “As ever was. You do that sort of thing on the BBC with impunity if you’re a Dame.”

    “We hardly ever get English radio plays,” said Polly.

    “Good,” muttered Sir Jacob.

    “I never realized she fluffed around like that in real life,” added Polly.

    “Oh, God, yes! Well, perhaps I should say,” Adam amended with a twinkle, “she fluffs around off-stage. No-one has ever been able to determine if it’s genuine or not.”

    “Mee-ow!” replied Polly, laughing.

    “I can’t imagine her and him— Well, I loathe elderly love stories, anyway,” confessed Georgy.

    “Mm. It could only have been done on radio, I think,” mused Adam.

    “Yes, how could he kiss her, his stomach’d get in the way!” choked Polly.

    “Easy,” said Sir Jacob instantly. “She sits in the chair—”

    “That’ll do!” she gasped.

    “I was only gonna say,” he said with terrible injured innocence, “that then he comes up and bends down a bit and pecks ’er on the cheek—see?”

    “That would work,” agreed Georgy with genuine innocence, smiling at him.

    “Providing he can bend,” allowed Adam.

    Georgy giggled ecstatically again.

    Polly at this point hurriedly came to and stopped her husband refilling her glass. “No. I don’t like it.”—He winced.—“It tastes really peculiar with these tomates en quartiers,” she added.

    He winced again.

    “I like champagne, and I like some red wines, and I usually like French white wines—well, some,” she said to the table at large.—He sighed.—“But really, I prefer spirits.”

    Sir Jacob began heavily: “This is a perfectly good little—”

    “Not with tomates en quartiers,” said Adam, smiling at Polly. “Have they got saumon fumé in them, Polly?”

    “I don’t know: it’s something fishy. I’m very fond of them.”

    “It’s a Chablis, I’ve seen you lap it up with fish, what’s wrong with you, Pol?” Jake demanded heavily.

    “Nothing. I think it’s the tomatoes.”

    “There’s nothing wrong with ole Madame’s tomatoes, you can bet your bottom dollar!” he said heatedly.

    “Don’t be silly. I mean the wine tastes funny with the tomatoes.”

    “It’s all right,” said Adam, noticing Georgy’s face: “married persons carry on like this. Regardless of their audience.”

    Georgy gasped: “Oh! No—I wasn’t—”

    “He’s always trying to make me drink miles more than I fancy, Georgy,” explained Polly with a twinkle. “And eat more, of course.”

    “Shoulda had the pâté: ’s always good,” he grunted, shoving the last hunk of his into his mouth.

    “It’s too filling,” replied his wife mildly.

    Jake swallowed. “Only ordered the Chablis because you girls weren’t having the pâté.”

    “Well, next time you’ll know better,” replied Polly mildly.

    “I think the wine’s lovely, Jake!” gasped Georgy, turning puce.

    “See?” he said to his wife.

    Polly merely said to Georgy: “You don’t have to say that. Oncle Julien didn’t want him to order it, so it’s bound to be wrong.”

    “Oncle” Julien was the little, dried up, elderly waiter: he was rumoured actually to be the uncle of Madame who ran the restaurant but everyone—according to Polly—called him Oncle Julien. Or Uncle Julien. Sir Jacob referred to him as “ole Julien” and addressed him as “Whaddaya reckon, Julien?”, but that was apparently an idiosyncrasy of his own. Georgy couldn’t help liking the genial Jake, even though she knew she shouldn’t, because what he stood for was against her principles. It hadn’t dawned that beneath the geniality he was an extremely acute man and had sized her up in about two seconds flat. It had dawned on Adam, however, and he was enjoying the evening very much.

    “I do like it!” she gasped.

    “What are the duchesses like?”, asked Adam kindly.

    Georgy was having duchesses Sultane as her starter. Mainly because, it had been clear to everybody, old Julien had assured her she would like them. When the dish had been presented she had been immediately entranced by the pretty way the profiteroles were scattered with pistachios, so it was clear to all of them that Julien had also sized her up in two seconds flat.

    “Lovely!” said Georgy, smiling at him. “Very delicate—I can’t describe them.”

    Immediately encouraged, Sir Jacob winked at her and said: “Come on, sweetie, eat the rest up!”

    Georgy went puce again and gasped: “Um—”

    “No, don’t, Georgy, you won’t have room for your main course,” warned Polly. “Let alone pudding.”

    “Um—no. Well, I think I might leave it. I mean, they’re delicious, but I’d hate not to have room for that pudding!” she said to Jake, face lighting up.

    It was pretty clear to Jake that he could just have fed her on baisers de vierge (heh, heh) and a wee sip of a decent white—she’d barely touched the Chablis in spite of what she’d said about it—and she’d have been happy as Larry.

    “Righto, love,” he said immediately, reaching over a large brown paw and grabbing her plate.

    “Best food in the Southern Hemisphere,” he concluded, finishing the profiterole. He thought about it. “Well, best food outside France,” he amended.

    “There was that place we went to near Oxford,” said Polly dubiously.

    “Pommified,” he retorted briefly.

    Georgy swallowed and looked anxiously at Adam but he merely asked with interest: “What was its name?”

    After some thought Sir Jacob divulged its name.

    “Oh, yes: I’ve been there. He’s right, Polly, it is Pommified. Nice food, though.”

    “Solid, anyway,” allowed Sir Jacob. “None of your nouvelle bloody nonsense.”

    “He’d live on thick soups and cream if I let him,” Polly explained somewhat redundantly to Georgy. “Not for very long, though,” she added with a hard look at him.

    “Um—no. Oh! I see!” gasped Georgy.

    “Might change me mind and have the soup,” he said, rubbing his chin.

    “You won’t have room for pudding,” warned his wife. “And your nose’ll run, it always does with hot soup.”

    Jake winked at Georgy. She went into a fit of the giggles. He then said resignedly: “S’pose we’d better just settle for the trout, then.”

    “I’ve never had it,” said Georgy shyly.

    No-one had thought she had. New Zealand was famous—in certain circles—for its trout fishing but that didn’t mean you could walk into a fish shop and buy trout. Or even order it at most restaurants.

    The elderly Oncle Julien duly cleared their table—taking away the wine, to Georgy’s stunned amazement, and producing a bottle of something different—and brought the trout.

    “Well?” said Adam with a little smile.

    “Ooh, it doesn’t taste like any other fish, does it? It’s lovely!” declared Georgy fervently.

    “Tole ja,” said Sir Jacob simply.

    “Joel should be here: he adores trout,” said Adam with a smile. “We did a thing together in France once, and he wouldn’t set foot inside a restaurant unless they offered trout—we must have walked for miles, some days, before we got any lunch. I kept telling him there are a few other things to eat in France, but he wouldn’t be convinced.”

    “No wonder, if it was like this!” sighed Georgy.

    “It wasn’t,” said Adam drily.

    “What’s the recipe called?” Georgy asked Polly shyly.

    “Grenobloise.—Those are capers.—It’s very simple, but when I try it, it never comes out this good.”

    “Drink a bit of that plonk with it, sweetie,” advised Jake.

    Very pink, Georgy did so.

    After the trout Polly said with her lovely smile: “I was going to ask you how rehearsals were going, but awful rumours have reached my ears, so I won’t!”

    “Mac and Adam had a row,” said Georgy glumly.

    “Well, there’s nothing in that: Mac has rows with all his leading players, every year,” Polly replied calmly. “Those with any guts at all, that is. Anyway, what about the play? Do you think you might salvage something from the ruins, Adam?”

    This attempt at diversion didn’t work.

    “And have you and yer uncle kissed and made up?” Jake asked immediately.

    “Well, to answer your query first, Jake—forgive me, Polly,” he said politely, “but I don’t want my host to burst with curiosity all over Madame’s sparkling napery—yes, we have made up. I rang him and said I was sorry for most of what I’d said but I’d say considerably worse and then leave him flat if he ever dared to—well, say as much as a quarter of what he’d said about—um—a member of his company,” he said, carefully not looking at Georgy. “But that he could bad-mouth me up hill and down dale for the run of the show, if he wanted to, I’ve taken much worse in my time.” He grinned at them.

    “What did he say?” asked Polly in spite of herself.

    “You know Mac: he didn’t actually apologize. But he said I ought to know him by now, he was always shooting off his mouth and he never meant anything by it. And on that we more or less agreed to drop it.”

    “Good,” said Georgy sourly.

    “And I thought I was being the knight-errant incarnate,” he said sadly.

    “You were,” she said, not quite meeting his eye; “only I’m used to Mac. And nobody believed it for a moment.”

    “Darling,” said Adam with a little laugh, “most of ’em didn’t understand it for a moment!”

    “No, well, there you are. Anyway, I was grateful,” said Georgy gruffly.

    “Good,” he said huskily.

    At this point Lady Carrano’s emerald suede sandal connected gently with her husband’s ankle under Madame’s spotless white napery for an instant.

    “And in answer to your query, Polly,” said Adam, all smiles—she jumped—“yes, I think the thing may work. The fairies are bumbling idiots, of course, but they’ll all be dressed up and either pretty or grotesque, so that’ll work, I think; and I believe there’ll be—er—son et lumière, so that’ll brighten it up.”

    “Tom’s bits’ll be good,” said Georgy.

    “Quite,” he agreed with  smile.

    “Isn’t his voice wonderful?” said Polly simply.

    “Yeah,” put in Sir Jacob unexpectedly. “In any civilized country he’d chuck in that bloody teaching job of his and sing fulltime. Christ, in any civilized country they’d be begging him to!”

    “I could have a word with Clem—my agent,” said Adam. “He doesn’t handle singers himself, but—”

    “No!” said Georgy loudly.

    They looked at her in some surprize.

    “Don’t, Adam: Jemima and Tom are very happy with their lives: he does a lot of singing but he likes gardening and doing up the house and so on, and they’ve just got married, and— Anyway, they like it here,” she said, now very red.

    “Yes. They’ve got a huge old house—he’s done wonders with it,” explained Polly, “and— Well, I can understand it seems a waste to you, Adam, coming straight out here from Europe; but…” She hesitated.

    “More to life than culcha,” grunted Sir Jacob.

    “Yes,” she agreed, touching his hand gently.

    “Yes. I’ve only been to their place once,” said Georgy shyly, “but it’s lovely. –It’s a bit hard to get to it, there’s no bus,” she explained to Adam.

    “Oh. Uh—well, couldn’t you borrow your mother’s car?”

    “I can’t drive,” said Georgy simply.

    Adam was silenced. He knew he was pretty hopeless, himself, but he at least knew how to drive, even if he didn’t enjoy it! He couldn’t think of any other person under the age of thirty—no, make that forty—that didn’t know how to drive.

    “Jemima doesn’t drive, either,” said Polly. “I think it’s the nerve factor: if you haven’t learned by the time you get to a certain age—say, twenty or so,” she added with a smile at Georgy, “it’s unlikely that you ever will.”

    “Yeah. Didn’t your mum have a car back then?” demanded Sir Jacob.

    “Yes. Ngaio—that’s my sister,” she explained shyly—“she can drive, only— I don’t know. I never thought of it, I suppose. And Polly’s right: I couldn’t face it, now. I’m even nervous as a pedestrian,” she ended, somewhat abruptly.

    “Ya not the only one,” said Sir Jacob gloomily. “Try taking this one round Paris,” he said to Adam.

    “They don’t have enough pedestrian crossings,” said Polly simply.

    “It’s Goddawful: she grabs yer arm an’ hollers, and then makes ya walk for miles looking for a bloody crossing!”

    “Do you good, Jake: exercise, after all those thick soups with cream,” Adam replied, grinning broadly.

    “They’re ganging up on me,” Sir Jacob noted glumly to Georgy.

    “Yes!” she squeaked with a giggle.

    Adam sipped his wine and smiled. Then he said—somewhat unwisely, the Carranos decided, talking it all over later—“But don’t you think, Georgy, that with a gift like Tom’s, he should be given the chance to—well, make something of it? Go as far as he can with it? Not to mention—well, a voice like that—it seems almost immoral that it shouldn’t be—well, be giving the world pleasure!” he said with a deprecating grimace.

    Georgy flushed and said sharply: “He does give a lot of people pleasure; and Jemima would just hate that sort of life: concert tours all the time, and—and Tom being away for ages and… Everything.”

    Before Adam could argue—he was obviously about to—Polly said quickly: “Yes: I don’t think either of them would be happy in that sort of life. And Georgy’s right: Tom does give everyone who hears him an immense amount of pleasure.”

    “What, audiences of fifty or so in draughty little small-town halls two or three times a year?”

    “Yes!” cried Georgy loudly. “It’s the highlight of their year! You live in London, you can go to the best music and theatre and ballet in the world whenever you feel like it: how can you imagine what it means, to—to suddenly hear something really excellent!”

    “Yes, but that’s what I’m saying: if he was promoted properly—made decent recordings and so on—he’d give hundreds of thousands more people the same pleasure! Look,” he said in a lower tone: “does someone with a gift like his have the right to deprive the rest of the world of it?”

    At this point Jake opened his mouth, but his wife kicked him swiftly under the table and he subsided.

    “That’s sentimental nonsense!” cried Georgy scornfully. “How can there be a ‘gift’ without a giver? He doesn’t owe anybody anything, just because he happens to be able to sing, any more than—than you owe anybody anything because you’ve got blue eyes!”

    “What are you, a nihilist?” asked Adam, raising his eyebrows.

    “No! I’m not any sort of an ist! But I do believe that if people have any rights, it’s the right to he happy in their own way! And Tom and Jemima are happy!”

    “And do people have any rights?” he drawled.

    “Look, before someone drags in the dread word eggy-stentialism,” said Sir Jacob heavily—thus revealing to his audience, had they not been too het up to remark it, that in spite of his manner he was by no means an ignorant man—“could we get round to the main course?”

    “Yes. I’m sorry, Jake,” said Georgy, flushing, but directing a glare at Adam.

    Adam shrugged. “Well, you know these people—I don’t. But it’s a pity.”

    “Only to an ethnocentric Brit,” said Georgy in a hard voice.

    “Yes,” agreed Polly, getting up. “I think I’ll go to the Ladies’ before the next course. –See what comes of filling me full of grog?” she added to her husband. “Coming, Georgy?”

    Georgy didn’t really need to but she fell on this excuse to get away from the table and stop quarrelling with Adam. “Um—yes!” she gasped, scrambling up, and dropping her little evening bag. An old one of Angie’s: silver, to match the narrow little dress.

    Adam picked it up and handed it to her, rising politely as he did so.

    “Thank you!” she gasped, avoiding his eye.

    As the ladies retreated Sir Jacob remarked with a wink: “Weak bladder. Typical, eh?”

    Adam replied drily: “Oodles of tact, you mean. I’d say that was pretty typical of your wife, too.”

    “Only with people she likes. Like when she spots they’re about to make flaming tits of themselves,” he replied genially, refilling Adam’s glass.

    “Yes,” he said with a sigh.

    “Oh, you and wee Georgy, both,” Jake assured him.

    Adam’s nostrils flared. He drank his wine without looking at his host.

    Jake eyed him thoughtfully—if a touch sardonically. “Nice wee thing. Looks pretty tonight, eh?”

    “Yes,” said Adam in a tight voice.

    “Bright, of course. That’s Pol’s trouble, too.”

    After a moment Adam said in a strangled voice: “What in God’s name do you mean by ‘trouble’?”

    Jake shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Too bright for ’er own good. Well, I don’t know Georgy that well, of course, but that’s certainly Pol’s problem. In the first place,” he elaborated, ticking off points on his fingers, “she can see half a dozen sides to every question and gets really pissed off when, um, when people sort of force her into arguing—doesn’t mean she doesn’t argue, means she gets ratty as Hell because she can feel it’s pointless: geddit?”—Adam nodded numbly.—“And in the second place,” said the millionaire heavily: “she finds it bloody difficult to believe in anything much, down to yours truly,”—he made a face—“her own kids, and—um—well, the validity of anything she mighta thought she felt yesterday, or even two seconds ago.”

    Adam opened his mouth. He shut it again.

    Jake drank some wine. “This really contributes to yer average typical suburban marriage.”

    “It must do,” Adam admitted, looking at him in some awe.

    “And— Was I up to the third place? Yes, think I was. Well, in the third place, if ya don’t see to it her brain’s occupied, she goes flaming potty—pottier, I should say—and starts doing all sorts of bloody silly things.” He paused. “I’m not saying Georgy’d do the same sort of bloody silly thing, she’s not the same type as Pol. Only I dare say she’d find some mischief to get up to.”

    “Uh—yes,” said Adam faintly.

    “And let me tell you, it took five years of pretty near purgatory for ’er to admit she can’t cope with teaching on top of marriage and kids and her bloody research!” he said energetically.

    “I see,” he said faintly.

    “No, well, actually, there were some damn good bits in between,” Jake added sheepishly, grinning at him.

    “What? Oh! Yes, I’m sure there were,” he said, smiling at him.

    “Yeah. Well, do ya see what I’m getting at? These intellectual-type women,”—he rubbed his nose slowly—“they’re bloody tricky.”

    “Yes, I see. Thank you very much, Jake,” said Adam politely.

    “Yeah, go on: laugh,” he replied glumly.

    “No!” gasped Adam, trying not to and not quite succeeding. “I mean it—I’m very grateful, I hadn’t quite thought...” He broke off, a little flushed.

    “Sweet wee thing,” the older man rumbled. “Doesn’t mean she hasn’t got brains, though.”

    “No. Thanks, Jake,” said Adam again, now rather hoarse.

    Jake topped off their glasses again. “Listen, when you go over to Aussie—”

    “Yes?” said Adam nervously, wondering what in God’s name was coming now.

    Jake broke into a long, earnest dissertation on the virtues and otherwise of Australian wines, ending up by writing in very large letters in Adam’s diary: “COONAWARRA REDS”.

    Unaware that most normal people felt a trifle limp in energetic Jake Carrano’s company, Adam looked at him weakly and said very limply indeed: “Coonawarra reds. Thanks, Jake.”

    “It’s lovely, but—” Georgy hesitated, looking at the foie-gras stuffed fillet steak on her plate.

    “I told you the trout would be too much if we were having starters and a meat course,” Polly said placidly to her husband.

    Georgy was rather pink. “Yes. I didn’t realize...”

    “The fish course wasn’t that big,” Jake pointed out to his wife.

    “Some of us haven’t got as large a frame as some of you others, Sir Jacob,” she replied, looking hard at him.

    “I’m as fit as a flea!” he protested.

    “Pooh: you were like a washed-out rag after ten lengths of the pool this morning, while Akiko was barely breathing faster.”

    “Barely—!” he choked. “She’s young enough to be me flaming grand-daughter, she just missed being picked for the bloody Olympics, and she’s—”

    “A tenth of your weight: yes.”

    “I noticed you were keeping well out of it!” he retorted.

    “I’m not much of a swimmer,” Polly returned calmly. “Just leave the meat, Georgy.”

    Georgy was now very red. “Um—yes, well, I think I… To tell you the truth, I’m don’t eat much  meat. I really like fish better.”

    Yes, thought Polly, rather annoyed with herself, and you thought the fish was the main course, and, unthinking imbecile that I am, I never stopped to think that you might! “A full French menu is a bit much,” she said mildly. “I think I ought to warn you, Jake’s ordered a salad course, and cheese. After that we might finally get to the pudding—if he hasn’t bored us all to death by then.”

    “Who, me?” he asked indignantly as Georgy gulped.

    “Yes: did I or did I not hear the dread words ‘Double Bay’ as we came back from the Ladies’?” she asked in a steely voice.

    “I was only—”

    “He’d already warned me about the Melbourne antique shops, Polly, so he was warning me about these other ones in— Would that be Sydney?” said Adam politely.

    Jake choked.

    “Yes,” agreed Polly pleasedly. “It would. This Melbourne warning would be regardless of the fact that you’d tried to tell him you weren’t going there, I presume?”

    “Of course.”

    “He might,” objected Sir Jacob.

    “Shut up,” she ordered ruthlessly.—Jake winked at Georgy. She gave an explosive giggle.—“Ignore every word Jake says to you on the subject of antiques,” she said firmly to Adam: “he’s a fanatic.”

    “Rats.”

    “Shut up, fanatic.”

    “Here, I tell ya what! You two’ll have to come over and see me wee French rococo ceiling!” he said with immense enthusiasm.

    “What?” said Adam faintly. Georgy just looked at him with her mouth slightly open.

    The ceiling had come from a burnt-out château not a million miles from Bordeaux, in fact not a million miles from their friends Catherine and Henri’s place, and Polly looked at her husband’s blandly genial face with some foreboding. She wouldn’t have put it past him to have begun to work the conversation round to Bordeaux circa 1976 by way of antique shops in South Yarra or Double Bay.

    Jake described his ceiling with great enthusiasm. He urged his wife to fix a date for Adam and Georgy to dine with them.—Under it, it was the ceiling of their small dining-room.—Polly produced a small white leather diary from her green silk purse. “We’ve got Cedric and Andrew next Saturday,” she reminded him glumly.

    “All Brits together, eh?” he returned genially.

    “No, not if Ken Takagaki’s coming,” she replied mildly. “That’s Inoue’s son,” she explained to Adam. “They’re all people from the Group, it’ll be tremendously boring. Don’t come.”

    “We won’t!” he gasped.

    “Can you come during the week?” she asked.

    “Well—Mac permitting, yes,” said Adam.

    Georgy sighed. “I’d almost forgotten about him... Oh, dear. Well, he can’t rehearse the lovers in the evenings, Adam: Demetrius and the girls have all got evening jobs. And he can’t rehearse you and Titania, she isn’t here yet.”

    “Joel and I are here, though,” noted Adam.

    “Bottom’s got an evening job, too, he’s a service-station attendant,” remembered Georgy.

    “Darling, does this make it worse or better?” asked Adam with a smile in his voice.

    “Worse,” admitted Georgy hoarsely, wishing she had the guts to tell him not to call her that, it was awful and meaningless: just a stupid habit.

    “Come on Thursday,” decided Polly.

    “Yeah: if Mac kicks up, tell ’im we won’t give ’im the rest of ‘is bloody silver bladders,” agreed Sir Jacob.

    Polly was about to tell her husband to stop eyeing Georgy’s leftover meat when his unfortunate intended victim then said to him with an unsuspecting smile: “By the way, Jake, how on earth did you get hold of that ceiling of yours?”

    “Ah! Now!” he said, not looking in his wife’s direction. “Came from a château what got burnt down. –Funny you should ask that, we were just down that way not long since, dropping in on a couple of friends of ours.”

    “Not long since?” echoed Polly indignantly. Not with much hope of side-tracking him, though.

    “Yeah. –Near Bordeaux,” he said to Adam. “Staying with some mates of ours—well, usually do when we’re in the area. Henri and Catherine Lachaise.”

    “Good Lord, do you know them?” said Adam with a smile.

    “Yeah, known ’em for donkey’s ages. Well, I have; Pol, here’s, only known ‘em since—uh—that woulda been our honeymoon, eh?”

    “Yes, Sir Jacob, that would have been our honeymoon,” she agreed heavily. “Unless you’re thinking of some other occasion entirely.”

    “Nope. May hols, eh? –Couldn’t go after the actual wedding, this here leckshurer had to give ’er classes,” he said to Adam.

    “I’ve known the Lachaises for donkey’s ages, too. In fact...” He looked dubiously at Jake.

    Jake rubbed his nose. “Yeah. Did’n’ we once bump into each other there?”

    “We-ell... Do you know, I think we might have? Years ago, if it was the time I’m thinking of. I was over there making a foul pseudo-medieval piece of junk—I was deluded enough to think it sounded as if it might be rather fun,” Adam admitted glumly. “Actually it was merely Hellishly uncomfortable and sweaty; and the bloody armour produced such a Goddawful collection of clanking, scraping and rustling noises that the entire soundtrack had to be dubbed on afterwards. Not fun, and not exactly acting. Or so I believed at the time: it was the first film work I’d done, I must have been about—” He stopped. “God,” he said in a hollow voice.

    “Oh, about that, eh?” said Jake with an artless grin, ignoring the fact that his wife looked, in spite of the elegant emerald-green chiffon in which her charming form was draped, as if she was about to explode. “Uh—yeah; think that’d be right: woulda been when I was over there for the great ‘76 vintage, if I remember rightly. Weren’t you with...” He paused, and frowned artistically, ignoring the fact that his wife’s lips thinned and she took a quick, hissing breath through flared nostrils.

    “Oh, darling Moyra!” remembered Adam with a choke of laughter. “God, how could I have forgotten! Yes, of course: it was at the time that Catherine— Uh, well,” he ended somewhat awkwardly, “I remember that Henri seemed very glad to have another unattached male of his own age to—er—talk to about business and so on!”

    “Yeah, me an’ the tractor bloke,” agreed Jake calmly. “What the Hell was ‘is name? –Nope: it’s gone. One o’ those Froggy names.”

    “Thierry?” suggested Adam instantly.

    “Don’t joke: she knows one of those.”

    “Thierry’s one of my oldest friends,” explained Polly. “He’s gay, but that isn’t why Jake objects to him: he mainly objects to him because he talks non-stop—a feat, in Sir Jacob’s company—and once fed him on- “

    “Don’t!” he warned.

    “—amourettes,” finished Polly with a little smile.

    “They taste like brains,” murmured Adam.

    “Yes, but Jake hates those, too.”

    “Cat-spew,” he muttered.

    “Georgy’s looking sick: I think we’d better change the subject,” noted Adam.

    “No!” she gasped.

    “Anyway, it was then, wasn’t it?” Adam said to Jake, smiling.

    “Yep, that’d be right. –Yeah, ta, Julien,” he said as the old waiter took his plate. “That’d be the first time I met Moyra, too: wasn’t she draping herself in saris and stuff at that stage?”

    “Not exactly. Layers of tunics and floating scarves and pantaloons—they were all Indian muslins or silk chiffons, certainly. Plus the obligatory clashing bangles and—”

    “Bells on ’er toes!” exclaimed Jake.

    “Precisely.”

    “Not literally toe-rings?” said Polly faintly.

    “Yes,” said Adam definitely. “She picked them up in India. She’d been on one of those—er—what did they call them? Retreats, or something. To an ashram. –This was post-Sergeant Pepper, India was still terribly trendy, Georgy,” he explained.

    “Nah: going out, really. But Moyra was still into it,” said Jake.

    “Toe-rings and all,” murmured Adam.

    “Yeah. Did she wear ’em in bed?” he asked keenly.

    “On occasion: certainly.”

    Jake choked.

    Polly saw with dismay that Georgy had gone very red indeed and was looking both as if she wanted to sink through the floor and as if she wanted to die. Poor little soul! Oh, dear: well, she really was very naïve, wasn’t she? She kicked her husband’s ankle swiftly under the table and said: “I seem to recall an awful medieval film, Adam. Hang on, it wasn’t in French, was it?”

    “No: English. It was supposed to be—er—Camelot, I suppose.”

    “Ooh! Thank goodness!” said Polly, sagging artistically in her chair, and ignoring the sardonic look her husband cast her. “For a moment I thought you meant that gloomy French thing that was all wounds and agony and filmed almost entirely in the dark. In the middle of a wood. A dark wood.”

    By this time Adam was choking hysterically. “No! I wasn’t that eminent!” he gasped when he could speak. ‘

    “What French film was that?” asked Georgy, very puzzled.

    “Never mind!” he gasped.

    “It was horribly arty,” explained Polly kindly.

    Jake nodded tolerantly. “Woulda been, yeah.” He then he blotted his copybook good and proper by saying casually to Adam: “Haven’t clapped eyes on old Moyra for years. Pol has, though, she popped down to her place when I was stuck in London on business, a bit back. She must be about a hundred by now, eh?”

    “Oh, at least. Well—did you say that was 1976, the year we were in Bordeaux?”

    Jake nodded and replied thickly through a mouthful of Georgy’s meat: “Yesh. Vin’-ashe.”

    “Yes. Well, to my certain knowledge she was fifty-four, then.”

    “Fifty-four!” gasped Polly involuntarily.

    “But—” squeaked Georgy.

    “Fifty-four’s not past it, sweetie,” Sir Jacob informed her kindly. “Ouch!” he gasped as his wife’s foot connected most ungently with his ankle. He glared at her.

    “Stop showing yourself up!” she said crossly.

    “I’m not, I’m just giving this hee-are young gal,” he said with a leer at Georgy—“the benefit of my—OW! Stobbit!—Years of experience,” he finished inexorably.

    “Moyra must be—Christ, nearly seventy,” said Adam in some awe. “Last time I saw her,” he said reminiscently, “which would have been about—mm—three years ago, I think—the hair was deep mahogany and extremely short, in fact it would be fair to say it was an Eton crop, apart from the spiky gelled bit at the front, and she was wearing a black leather miniskirt, a black jacket smothered in braid and beads, with gigantic shoulders like something out of Dynasty, and high-heeled orange suede ankle-boots. They matched the orange fox-fur Russian hat, but she wasn’t actually wearing that: she’d taken it off,” he explained. “Oh, plus dinner-plate silver earrings and a gigantic silver breastplate thing.”

    Sir Jacob narrowed his eyes. “This woulda been day wear, eh?”

    “Heavens, yes. Lunch wear, specifically, Jake!” said Adam with a choke of laughter.

    Jake sighed pleasedly. “Good ole Moyra, eh?”

    Polly agreed with him quickly, because she could see from the look on Georgy’s face—

    But unfortunately Georgy hadn’t been distracted; she said to Adam, in a very high voice: “But in 1976 you must have been about twenty-two!”

    He raised his eyebrows. “And?”

    “Oh, nothing! Us ignorant provincial colonials are just a bit staggered by all these glamorous, sophisticated, worldly goings-on regardless of the age of the parties concerned!” said Georgy angrily.

    Adam flushed. He looked at her uncertainly. “If you’d ever met Moyra—” He stopped.

    “She’s a lovely person, Georgy,” said Polly gently. “And quite irresistible, I’d say.”

    “Yes. And at fifty-four, she was... Quite something,” finished Adam with rather a helpless look on his face.

    “I dare say; I’m afraid that’s too sophisticated for me, thank you, I just think it’s disgusting!” said Georgy fiercely.

    There was a short silence.

    “I think I’ll go to the Ladies’,” said Georgy in a choked voice. “’Scuse me.” She got up and hurried off.

    “You bloody fat-head,” said Polly to her husband in a low, evil voice.

    He grimaced. “Sorry.”

    “Uh—no, it was my fault as much as Jake’s,” said Adam uncertainly.

    “Of course it wasn’t!” she replied fiercely. “He knew it was you at Catherine and Henri’s that time, he remembered earlier tonight! He was just checking. –And meddling,” she added evilly to him.

    “I wasn’t!”

    “For one who keeps telling me people aren’t laboratory specimens, Sir Jacob,” she said heavily—Jake winked at Adam, he knew it was okay if she was pulling his leg over the knighthood again—“it was pretty bloody good.”

    “Yeah. Well, poor little thing, how was I to know she’d take it like that?”

    Polly sighed. “Sometimes I think you’ve got about as much forethought as your elder son. Less. –Davey crept up on Bob this morning while the rest of us were watching Akiko beat the Hell out of Jake in the pool,” she explained to Adam—“this was while the poor man was washing the car—and yelled ‘Boo!’ And poor Bob let out a yell, and kicked his bucket over. And when he roared at Davey what had he done that for, the little sod said ‘I wanted to make you jump, Bob.’”

    “Yeah,” agreed Sir Jacob, grinning proudly. “So Bob says: ‘I geddit; and I suppose ya wanted me to belt you a good one after I’d jumped, eh?’ And young Davey comes out with: ‘I reckon it’s worth it’!”

    Adam choked delightedly.

    “Bob laughed so much he was incapable of even wanting to belt him, after that,” said Polly, smiling.

    “Yes!” gasped Adam. Then his smile faded and he said awkwardly to her, glancing in the direction Georgy had taken: “Polly, don’t you think—um—”

    “Yeah: you go after her, love!” urged Sir Jake.

    “No,” replied Polly mildly. “For one thing, I’m obviously very elderly and on the side of the worldly sophisticates.”—They both choked, though Adam still looked anxious.—“And for another thing, she has to grow up some time, and stop putting people into silly categories according to some dratted idée fixe that her mother’s brainwashed her into,” she finished calmly.

    “Here!” protested Sir Jake.

    “You know New Zealand mothers are all like that, darling, stop being silly,” she replied mildly.

    “Yeah, but wee Georgy’s quite bright,” said Jake limply.

    “Only on an intellectual level, darling: she knows nothing about people and understands less,” his wife returned tranquilly.

    Adam swallowed.

    Sir Jacob swallowed, too.

    “Anyway, if she’s going to be that jealous every time anyone mentions an old flame of Adam’s, she’d better come to grips with it and learn to cope with it sooner rather than later,” finished Polly calmly.

    Adam turned very red.

    “Yeah, there is that,” acknowledged Sir Jacob.

    Silence fell at the best table in the best restaurant in the Southern Hemisphere.

    Georgy made her way timidly back to the table. Nobody was looking at her, Polly had said something and she was smiling and the men were laughing. Georgy felt a surge of jealous hatred. It wasn’t fair! Polly was so beautiful and sophisticated and poised—and clever, too. She knew just what to say to people... Georgy knew that she herself was not unintelligent, but she also knew that that didn’t mean she ever knew what to say to people. Ever. Especially not to— And he was used to ladies—to women like Polly, that was obvious. She came up to the table. Adam and Jake immediately stood up.

    “Don’t,” she said in a strangled voice: “it’s sexist.”

    “Yeah, only when I was a boy,” said Jake, smiling at her, “old Sister Mary-Theresa woulda taken her belt to me if I hadn’ta got up when a lady came up to me table.”

    Georgy gaped at him.

    “He was a Norphan: found in a Norphan Basket and brought up in a Norphanage. By the good nuns,” explained Polly.

    “Oh,” said Georgy in a voice that trembled a little

    “And I was brainwashed at my public school,” said Adam: “what more can I say?”

    Georgy looked blindly at him. He smiled and said: “Sit “

    “What? Oh! Thank you!” she gasped, realizing he was holding her chair. She subsided onto it, not looking at him. “I thought it was a Church school,” she said.

    “Yays. Terribly nayce,”

    “Oh,” she said numbly.

    “Salad now!” explained Jake, rubbing his hands.

    By this time Georgy was long past caring or wondering why they were having salad all by itself. The salad was some funny kind of lettuce that she’d never had before—not that red stuff that Mum had once got at the greengrocer’s in Puriri to try, that had been enormously expensive and tasted of nothing—no: something else. Crisper. Pale green. It had an oil and vinegar dressing on it, which Georgy thought she’d had in lunch places in town but now realized she couldn’t have. The salad was, in fact, marvellous and she could have happily eaten just it and the trout and not dreamed of wanting or asking for more.

    After that they had cheese. Also all by itself. The dear little old man came and explained what the cheeses were. Georgy revealed to no-one that when she’d been blowing her nose in the Ladies’ he’d come in and been really kind: he’d said he could call a taxi for her if she liked, and when she said she was all right, had said—sort of tactfully, she couldn’t have repeated his exact words, but they hadn’t been nasty or at all pointed, that Sir Jake and Lady Carrano were used to a very sophisticated lifestyle and doubtless Mr McIntyre was too. Well, she couldn’t have said why it made her feel a lot better, but it did.

    “Go on, Georgy, try it!” said Adam with a little laugh. She’d let the old waiter talk her into Roquefort. The other cheese was fresh goat’s cheese—local. Adam on the whole thought that the waiter had been correct to urge Georgy to the Roquefort: there was no denying, though he adored it himself, that fresh goat’s cheese tasted somewhat goaty. Especially if you weren’t used to it.

    They were all watching her. How ridiculous, it was just a bit of stupid cheese, and anyway she hated blue-vein, it had that awful bite to it when you weren’t expecting it and sometimes it was really bitter. Georgy tasted the Roquefort. Her eyes went very round. A pleased, astounded expression came over her face.

    “She likes it,” said Sir Jake definitely. “Good.” He attacked his own with enthusiasm.

    The dessert was after that. Georgy had had an idea that cheese was usually last but by this time didn’t even wonder about it. She ate baisers de vierge with a dazed expression. Jake couldn’t remember whether it was the crystallized violets or the rose petals that were the classic thing, or both, but anyway old Madame always did ’em with both, and his earlier notion that Georgy would have been happy as Larry with just them and a sip of sweet wine was reinforced.

    “I tried crystallizing flowers once, only they went mouldy,” said Polly sadly. “Our climate’s too damp. I’ve made pot-pourri, though: you need orris root for that.”

    “Oh,” said Georgy faintly.

    “Not to mention a garden full of roses and lavender,” murmured Sir Jake.

    “Well, we’re getting there,” said Polly.

    “Sort of. She made the gardener rip out a whole bed of roses last year, she found out they weren’t scented,” he said heavily to Georgy and Adam.

    “What a waste,” said Georgy faintly.

    “No, it wasn’t,” replied Polly calmly: “we donated them to the local gardening club—well, first we asked all our friends if they wanted any.”

    “Oh—good,” said Georgy faintly.

    “Now she embarrasses me every time we go into a Garden Centre by marching up to the bloke at the counter and asking ’im where the scented roses are. And when ‘e shows us, she outs with this flaming book and checks up on ’im!” revealed Sir Jacob.

    “Good on you, Polly!” gasped Adam.

    “You have to,” said Polly on a grim note.

    “Yes!” Adam told them about his Cheese Shop experience in the city. He made a very amusing little anecdote of it and quite failed to realize that his host and hostess had drawn the obvious conclusions from it. Polly’s conclusions might have been summed up as “Sweet but wet: just like I thought” and Jake’s conclusions might have been summed up by a polite person as “Not much go in ’im.” Georgy, however, looked at him with great fellow-feeling and Adam felt quite warm and happy.

    In the back of the Carrano Rolls on the last leg of the journey home Georgy and Adam were silent. Georgy because once again she couldn’t think of anything to say to him and Adam because there was too much he wanted to say to her and he neither knew where to start nor dared to. Besides, the driver was there—though admittedly with the glass discreetly rolled up between them.

    Finally he said: “What are you doing tomorrow?”

    “Why?” replied Georgy in a hard voice, successfully concealing from him the fact that at the thought that he might be going to ask her out again her heart was pounding so that it felt as if her whole body was being violently shaken.

    “Oh—because I’m desperate for some suggestion as to something to do on a Sunday in the Anty-podes that doesn’t involve hitting or kicking a ball,” drawled Adam, not concealing his annoyance.

    “There’s the Museum,” she offered after a certain period of silence had elapsed.

    “Dad assures me it’s full of Polynesian artefacts,” he replied in a totally neutral voice.

    “It’s got an excellent collection,” returned Georgy tightly.

    “I saw that ‘Maori’ exhibition when it was on tour. I think my tolerance level for Polynesian artefacts was just about reached at that point.”

    “I see,” Georgy admitted glumly. “My nephews always drag me into the meeting-house, they like hearing the recording. You can make it go: you know.”

    “Oh, the most modern type of museum.”

    “Yes. It was really good when I was a kid,” said Georgy glumly.

    “I see. What about the zoo?”

    “They always drag me off to the monkeys, I can’t stand them, they give me the creeps!” said Georgy rather loudly.

    “I see. Which of the animals do you like?”

    “The bears and the birds. There’s a peacock that just walks up to you. And—” Georgy broke off.

    “Mm?”

    “I like the baby llama in the children’s zoo, it comes up to you and— Never mind,” she said sulkily,

    “Baby llama? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one,” he replied with interest.

    “They’re very woolly,” said Georgy in a small voice.

    “I see,” he said gently.

    There was a short silence.

    “You can’t go in there unless you’re accompanied by a child!” said Georgy, rather loudly.

    “What? Oh, the children’s zoo! Well,” he said with a laugh in his voice, “shall we take your nephews? I think two of us might manage to keep ’em off the monkeys. Or I could keep an eye on ’em while you turned your back firmly on the monkeys.”

    There was a short silence.

    “Is this a joke?” said Georgy tightly.

    “No. Would you like to take your nephews to the zoo tomorrow, Georgy?”

    Georgy swallowed. “They’ll want to see the lions being fed,” she warned him.

    “Yes. Well, I thought perhaps a picnic lunch?”

    She swallowed again. “They don’t feed the lions until about three o’clock.”

    “Picnic lunch, wander round in lackadaisical fashion—avoiding monkeys if poss—see lions fed, potter home,” said Adam with a laugh in his voice.

    Georgy swallowed. “Um—ye-es...”

    “Will you?”

    “Yes, I could ring Ngaio in the morning, she’ll probably be glad to get rid of them— Oh, no: I’ve just remembered, Barbara’s coming round.”

    “Put her off,” he said briefly.

    Georgy wanted to, very much. Only she didn’t feel she ought to. There were also some anti-zoo, or more accurately anti-Adam feelings in there which she avoided looking at. “I can’t: I promised to give her some coaching,” she said hoarsely.

    “A student? Darling, I’m quite sure she’d dump you without a second thought if the boot was on the other foot,” he drawled.

    “Very probably. So what?” replied Georgy crossly.

    “So dump her!”‘ he said irritably.

    “She has to come up all the way from Devonport.”

    Devonport had already been mentioned in the context of the pretty little narrow silver dress she was wearing. “Oh, is she some relation of the woman who made your dress?”

    “Yes, her daughter.”

    “Then ask her to the zoo with us, darling.”

    Georgy’s heart hammered wildly. “Would that be all right?” she said timidly.

    Adam hadn’t said it entirely out of altruism, or even entirely out of a wish to please Georgy—though the latter had certainly been in there somewhere. He’d had a vivid mental vision of this Barbara, whoever she was, corralling Georgy’s young nephews while he and Georgy strolled along about three yards in their wake, arm-in-arm. “Mm, perfectly.”

    “Well, I’ll ask her,” said Georgy in a small voice. “And she’s got lots of friends up here, if she doesn’t want to come to the zoo she could always… Um—so maybe she wouldn’t mind having her lesson in the morning.”

    “No,” he agreed. He touched her hand gently. She quivered and was silent.

    “All this chauffeur stuff’s a bit of a pain,” he murmured.

    Georgy swallowed. “Polly gets nervous when Jake drives at night on the motorway—she told me. And she thought you might both want to drink wine.”

    “She was right, there. That was a damn good burgundy!”

    “I thought it was very strong,” said Georgy on a defiant note.

    “Mm, that’s right,” he murmured.

    Georgy couldn’t tell whether he agreed with her, whether he’d said it to annoy her, or whether he was patronising her. Her cheeks burned in the dark.

    “I’ll come over and see what you’ve arranged about this Barbara girl straight after breakfast, shall I?” he said.

    “What? Oh—yes,” she said limply. “All right.”

    He touched her hand again. “Good.”

    Georgy didn’t say anything; her heart galloped. She could hear him breathing, and she didn’t dare to look up at him. He touched her hand once again and then closed his tightly over it. Georgy didn’t attempt to pull away. She just sat there with her heart galloping and her whole body hot and trembling.

    ... “This is your road, eh?” said the genial middle-aged Bob Grey, lowering the glass and twisting in his seat to smile at them.

    “Yes. Thanks, Bob,” said Adam.

    Bob replied frankly: “Don’t blame me, I’da let you take the car yaself, after we dropped them off. This was all Me Master’s Voice’s idea: he’s getting on, ya know. Forgotten what it’s like to be young.”

    “Yes!” gasped Adam delightedly.

    “You can nip out here,” he said kindly. He’d stopped in Ridge Road, just above the Blacks’ driveway.

    “Right,” agreed Adam. “Um—probably going down that side street would be your best bet, Bob.”

    “Yeah. The old girl’ll take Kowhai Bay Road, no worries,” he assured them, patting her steering wheel.

    They got out and Georgy bade him goodnight in a timid little voice. Adam, grinning, said: “Thanks again, Bob!”

    “See ya!” he replied cheerfully, driving away.

    “He’s as old as Jake, I’m sure,” said Georgy in a bewildered voice.

    “Makes it better!” gasped Adam, breaking down and laughing like a drain.

    Georgy smiled in the quiet night. “It’s the classless society again, Adam.”

    “Yes!” he gasped. “Come on.” He put his arm gently round her waist and walked to her driveway.

    “Can you manage in those shoes?” he murmured, stopping her gently as she was about to go down: their part of Ridge Road sloped precipitately for about twenty-five feet, and the houses were built on a sort of plateau at the foot of this slope. Christopher had already relentlessly told Adam far more than he wanted to know about the problems of run-off and drainage this entailed for the residents.

    “Yes, they’re my old white sandals. –Bill Michaels painted them with silver paint,” she explained quickly.

    “Bill— The sound man?”

    “Yes. He’s the Professor of Engineering,” she explained.

    “Is he? Mac didn’t bother to explain that to me,” he said weakly.

    “No, he wouldn’t. Angie’s his wife. She made my dress,” she explained.

    “Oh, I see! So they’re friends of yours, Georgy?”

    “Um—not really. They’re miles older than me. Um—Angie’s very kind,” explained Georgy shyly. “Um, I have been to tea at their place a couple of times.”

    “I think we can say they’re friends, then!”

    “Ye-es...” she replied dubiously.

    “Can’t people of different ages be friends in New Zealand?” asked Adam slyly.

    Georgy didn’t relate this remark to her earlier disapproval of his relationship with Moyra. “Actually, that’s a very interesting point,” she said, looking up at him seriously. “I don’t think they can: all Mum’s friends are her own age, and so are Ngaio’s and Ross’s. Polly’s got lots of friends of different ages, though. Maybe that’s because Jake’s so much older than her, though.”

    “Mm. Or maybe it’s because she’s managed to liberate herself from the working-class ethic that seems to prevail here,” said Adam limply. “Honestly, Georgy: it’s like something out of—of Zola, or something! Peer groups!”

    “I don’t think Zola would have recognized the phrase,” replied Georgy sedately.

    “No!” he gasped with a laugh. “But you know what I mean: technologically it’s more advanced than a peasant society, but— Well, really!

    “Yes. Post-Industrial-Revolution working class: you’re right. It is interesting. You can see it clearly in the S.C.R, now I come to think of it—it isn’t just age that determines the peer groups, it’s sex, too. All the old men in a huddle, all the young men in another huddle, all the middle-aged ladies in a huddle, and— Well, the young women are usually in two huddles.” She looked up at him with a twinkle.

    “Let me guess,” said Adam glumly. “Married versus single?”

    “Yes!” gasped Georgy ecstatically, shaking all over

    “This is appalling,” he noted. “I mean, for God’s sake! At university?”

    “It’s—classless—society!” gasped Georgy.

    “Mm—the other side of the coin,” he agreed drily.

    “Well, is it any better than a society where you have to keep to your age- and sex-defined peer groups if you’re working-class, but if you’re more upper-class and educated and trendy and liberated you can go round socializing with any age or ‘ sex and calling people you hardly know darling?” demanded Georgy fiercely.

    “You left out ‘and dressed up like a teacup from Bond Street’,” he noted detachedly.—Georgy choked.—“Uh, well, I don’t know, Georgy, I haven’t been here long enough to grasp the consequences of it, really. But I will say that very few of my close friends are my own age and I can’t imagine the—the sort of spiritual and intellectual impoverishment that must result from being forced to fraternize only with your peer group!”

    “No,” agreed Georgy in a small voice.

    “I’m sorry: I didn’t mean— I keep forgetting it’s your home,” he said awkwardly.

    “That doesn’t mean I have to be blind to its bad points!” she retorted fiercely.

    “No,” he agreed weakly.

    There was a short silence.

    “I suppose there’s always books,” said Georgy faintly.

    “Darling, you can’t live your life out of books!” he returned in horror.

    “It’s better than living your life being bored to desperation!” cried Georgy angrily.

    Adam had gone through a stage of that in his teens. He could barely remember it, now. “Er—yes. Why stay?”

    “Oh, a few odd reasons that a person like you wouldn’t understand,” she replied tightly.

    “A person like me at least had the good fortune to have a couple of parents that let him leave the bloody nest once he was fledged!” replied Adam loudly.

    “Yes. Well, half the time she pushes me out into the arms of creeps like Martin Ramsay that’ll drag me into conformity with the social norms, and the other half of the time she’s busily reinforcing a picture of me as totally unable to cope with the real world,” said Georgy rather tiredly.

    Adam gulped. “You have thought about it, then?”

    “I’m not totally gormless!” she replied crossly.

    “No. And I suppose... Well, I suppose not many opportunities for escape have come your way, have they?” he said gently.

    “No.”

    There was a short silence. Adam had a strong impulse to offer her an opportunity for escape here and now, but he knew it was ridiculous, he barely knew the girl. Finally he said: “Well, I hope this evening’s experiences weren’t too—er—socially abnormal.”

    “Yes. It was a relief,” said Georgy briefly.

    “Uh—good. And did you enjoy the food?”

    “Yes, I did. Was it really good, Adam?” she asked, looking up at him.

    “Yes,” said Adam hoarsely. “It was excellent, sweetheart.”

    “Don’t!” gasped Georgy.

    “Why not?” he replied lightly, though his heart was pounding wildly. “I can’t help thinking of you like that.”

    “It’s silly,” said Georgy in a stifled voice, glaring at her mother’s s shrubs.

    “All right, I’m silly,” he replied amiably.

    She looked up quickly, startled.

    Adam smiled. He put a hand gently under her chin and very softly touched his lips to hers. Georgy quivered but didn’t draw away. “Was that nice?” he murmured. “Or at least, not horrible?”

    “Yes. Your mouth’s very soft,” she said in a bewildered little voice.

    Adam clenched his fists. His blood raced. “Yes,” he said huskily, not knowing what he was saying. He swallowed. “You’d better pop down by yourself, I refuse to indulge in fond goodnights outside your front door with your mother standing just behind it.”

    “What? Oh—yes,” said Georgy dazedly. “She does that. In her curlers.”

    “Naturally!” he gasped. He took her gently by the shoulders. “Don’t be scared of me, Georgy,” he said.

    “I’m not!” gasped Georgy.

    “Liar,” he said softly. He bent and touched her lips again briefly. Then he put his arms round her very gently and pulled her against his body.

    Georgy’s heart felt as if it was going to burst out of her chest. He was very warm against her. She could smell his aftershave, which was nice, not too strong. Since, although very naïve, she wasn’t entirely innocent, she could also feel his erection. She was too inexperienced to react in a directly sexual way to this but she registered that it was there and felt both flattered and glad and at the same time slightly bewildered, because he was experienced with women, and famous, and a very handsome man, and she was just dull Georgy Harris.

    “Go on,” said Adam in her ear. “I’ll see you in the morning. And don’t forget to ring your Barbara girl.”

    “What? Oh—no. All right,” said Georg confusedly, as he released her. “Um—thank you for asking me. Good-night.”

    “Good-night, darling,” said Adam with a little laugh.

    Georgy stumbled down the drive. She could feel him standing there. She looked round. He was still there.

    “Go on,” he said in a low, clear voice.

    She jumped. Of course he knew how to pitch his voice— Ooh, heck, he was being a gentleman or something and waiting for her to go in, that was what he— She fumbled with her key.

    Adam leaned on the Harrises’ letterbox and watched her with a smile. If she dropped the key he’d go down and— No, she hadn’t. Pity. The door was opening, was her mother just behind—? Ooh, surprize, surprize, she wasn’t. Probably lurking, curlers and all, just behind her bedroom door. Or possibly in the sitting-room, in case Georgy should be so foolish as to—

    “Good-night!” he called softly.

    Georgy turned and waved. Quite blindly, Adam rather thought. Then she closed the door.

    He ran along to his parents’ place with a little smile on his lips.