Enter Livia

14

Enter Livia

    Dr Keith Nicholls had been at the airport meeting Dr Ariadne (who’d ordered him not to bother to meet her on her return from a conference on Alzheimer’s in Vancouver) and had inadvertently witnessed The Arrival. He’d had to totter on up to the old pub just north of Kowhai Bay on the highway afterwards in order to recruit his forces. –Also because Ariadne, as she always did after a journey, had gone firmly to bed (forbidding him to accompany her) in order to sleep off the jet-lag. Also because the more he thought of a warm wife in their nice big bed after not having laid eyes let alone hands on same for over two weeks, the more he— Quite. Also because there wasn’t anything to eat in the house except muesli, which Keith hated. Not that there was much to eat at the old pub, either, but anything was better than muesli.

    There weren’t many people in the pub at eightish of a Thursday evening—not that there were all that many at any time, The Tavern in Puriri was much handier for most of the residents—and for a while Keith just gobbled crisps and drank beer in mournful silence. Then as he was getting up to get a second beer Bruce Smith came in looking peeved, so he brightened immediately.

    “What are you doing here?” he said to him immediately.

    The G.P. returned: “Evening surgery. Just over. Not that many at their last gasp, this time of year.”

    Keith ignored that. “What are you doing here?” he repeated in the exact same tone.

    Bruce made a face. “Dog-house.”

    “Oh?”

    “Get them in, bugger it,” replied Bruce morosely.

    Keith got them in and they retired to his obscure corner with them.

    “Well?” he said.

    Bruce took a deep draught. “All I said was,” he reported indignantly, “that Patrick’s face looks more like a pug dog every time I look at him, and was she sure he was mine and not that bloody ex’s of h—”

    “You flaming nana!” gasped Keith.

    Bruce looked sulky. “I wasn’t serious, bugger it: why can’t bloody women take a joke?”

    Keith was about ten years older than Bruce; he looked at him kindly from this vantage point and said: “No woman on earth could take that sort of bloody cretinous remark as a joke, what the fuck’s wrong with you, Bruce?”

    Bruce looked sulky. Finally he revealed: “Polly Carrano had us round to dinner a bit back and ever since Catherine’s been nagging me about the ruddy house.”

    Keith gave a shout of laughter.

    “All right for you,” he said sourly. “Ariadne’s got more sense than to go all silly over bloody patio pools and— Never mind.” He drank a lot of beer very rapidly.

    Keith drank his more slowly and said: “Ariadne looks at the price of things and decides we don’t need ’em after all, even if we manifestly do need ’em, if that’s what you consider sense—yeah.” He drank some more and added thoughtfully: “Just as well I don’t give a stuff about patio pools and—uh—microwave ovens and new carpets, eh?”

    “Yeah,” admitted Bruce with a sheepish smile. “You two seem to have got things sorted out, I must say.”

    “We’re older than you, had more practice. Anyway, I knew when I married her I’d have to let her have her head if I ever wanted any peace,” said Keith calmly.

    Bruce sighed. “Yes.” He began to tell him all about Sushi’s new teacher…

     In spite of the name, Sushi wasn’t at all Japanese. In fact her name was Sushila, which Bruce had declared when he’d first unofficially adopted her was a bloody daft name for a white kid, shortening it immediately to what some people thought was also a bloody daft name. Sushi was indeed white, she was a pale, plump, short child of ten. She did bear some resemblance to a pug dog, and her mother certainly didn’t, and so perhaps it was on her father’s side. Bruce’s own Patrick didn’t look in the least like a pug dog, he looked like a wiry, energetic, and very freckled little of seven. They were both very bright, and the fact that Sushi was, in spite of the genes from the unspeakable father, was source of great though secret consolation to Bruce Smith. At least, he fondly imagined it was secret. Keith had guessed it yonks ago.

    Keith let him ramble on, thinking vague thoughts about his own Roberta when little, and how Bruce was a bloody lucky man, really, and how he’d have really liked two of his own, only poor old Ariadne couldn’t: after Roberta the gynaecologist had said… Oh, well.

    Bruce finished telling him in detail all about some bloody project Sushi’s class were doing with sunflowers, and beamed at him, draining his pint.

    “Good one,” said Keith mildly. “Get ’em in, and I’ll tell you a story.”

    “Righto,” said Bruce, mildly surprized but amiable.

    “And see if they’ve got peanuts or something, I’m starving.”

    “Righto.” Bruce ambled off to the bar.

    Keith sat there contemplating the unpolished wooden floor, the small Formica tables and the incredibly battered chairs—a mixture of ancient Windsor, grimy moulded plastic, and those ones with padded seats and tubular aluminium legs that, he rather thought, dated from the Fifties—which were a feature of the pub just north of Kowhai Bay. He also wondered glumly whether it was possible within the laws of physics to get the smell of fish and chips out of a kitchen between the hours of roughly ten p.m. and seven a.m., and as he knew from previous experience it wasn’t, decided glumly he’d better not buy any. He didn’t contemplate for one second the idea of eating them in the car, because if he did tomorrow would be the very day when Ariadne’s car had to be serviced and she had to use his; and then the fat would really be in the fire.

    As he thus sat, young Alan and Susan Harding came in. The pub was the nearest watering-hole to their orchard several miles north of Kowhai Bay and then several miles further inland, and anyone less determined than Phyllis Harding’s daughter-in-law would not have even contemplated driving in to the city campus every day to law lectures, many of which started at eight o’clock in the morning. Keith only knew them slightly but his Roberta had become friendly with Susan quite recently, so he roped them in to hear the story immediately.

    Northern New Zealand could be extremely humid in summer. There were those who maintained that it could be even more humid than Queensland or Rarotonga. Keith had never done any research on the subject but as he had stood in the International Terminal dripping, and mentally cursing Ariadne’s plane, which was late, he had felt quite prepared to take these persons’ words for it.

    As he thus stood, approximately five thousand Press bodies—well, about a dozen—rushed up to the barrier which would separate arriving passengers from the hoi-polloi in a state of huge excitement. That was, as far as you could tell behind the black glasses (either wrap-arounds in heavy black plastic with tiny strips to peer through, or mirror glass, with black plastic frames) and the three-day growth. The latter sported only by the male ones, of course. Male-ish. They were all dressed entirely in black, mainly denim and leather, with one or two black singlets and one or two silver chains and medallions and the odd stud in the ear and so on, except for one girl who didn’t seem to have latched on to the Press Look. She had fuzzy variegated red and yellow hair with a big green butterfly clip on top of it, a bright yellow mini-skirt, and a very wide white tee-shirt with a sequined tiger face on it. Drooping off one shoulder to show the strap of a bright purple singlet—why in God’s name would anyone want to wear two layers of cotton-knit on a day like this? Well, come to that, why would anyone want to wear layers of black denim and black leather...

    Keith dripped, and contemplated these Press persons gloomily and decided not for the first time that people put themselves through some extraordinarily uncomfortable hoops in order to conform to what these Press persons would undoubtedly deny was any sort of “norm” at all...

    After a lot of in-group chat that was so far removed from standard English or even Kiwi English or even the English of Keith’s youngest patients as to cause him considerable mental anguish, not to say a strong desire to burst out laughing—the more so as he had a strong suspicion that the dialect would probably be unrecognized by their peers from the other side of the Pacific, on whose in-group chat it was no doubt supposed to be based—and after considerable and quite probably unnecessary focussing and refocussing of huge lenses, there was a terrific commotion and outcry as the International Airport’s public announcement system announced something incomprehensible, and There She Was!

    Draped in, never mind the humidity, a fluffy white fur coat with a huge fluffy collar.

    “Livia!” they all shouted. “How do you like New Zillund? Is Adam McIntyre meeting you? Is it still on between you and Adam McIntyre? Is it true that Derry Dawlish is gonna make a film of the play? Is Derry with you? What about a lovely pose with the chest, Livia?”

    “Darlings!” cried Livia, laughing and displaying her pearly white teeth.—You could buy that stuff down the chemist’s in The Arcade, now. Keith’s dentist’s comments on the subject had been quite unprintable.—“One at a time, please!”

    They ignored this. She hurled off the coat and dumped it on a small, harried male-ish person in summer clothes who was hovering at her left elbow, lugging carry-bags, carry-on bags, and what the not inexperienced Nicholls eye immediately spotted as Duty-Frees. Literally dumped it on him, she didn’t even glance at him as she hurled it off, and it landed on his head. He began to fight his way out of it as Livia shoved her shoulders right back—the shoulder-blades would be at most an inch apart, noted Keith—and laughed a tinkling girlish laugh.

    Keith was not unnatural: he duly goggled as the flash-bulbs popped and Livia, maintaining the pose, alternately smiled charmingly and laughed girlishly. Under the fur she was wearing what the numbed Nicholls eye perceived was a pale green nylon petticoat with lacy—well, lacy tits, frankly. They were not spectacularly big, but, as had by now been observed by the whole of New Zealand, not to say the English-speaking world, not to say the Europeans, Japanese and South Americans who’d bought her now-famous soapie immediately after the Yanks did, sufficient.

    Over the petticoat Livia did have on a blouse, this was true, but it was a bright pink gauze blouse that was undone to well below the waist, in fact to an extremely rude point, Keith registered dazedly, where it was tied in a cheeky bow. On purpose? Yes, undoubtedly. The gauze blouse had long sleeves and huge bright pink shoulder-pads which, fashion dictates or not, looked to an unprejudiced eye like Keith Nicholls’s bloody odd perched there on the tips of the shoulders under the gauze. The bright pink gauze might have had one or two gold squiggles printed on it but these were immaterial.

    Round the throat she wore The Pearls, twisted into a double row and casually knotted so as to more or less conceal the saltcellars, but Keith, being normally male as mentioned, only noticed The Pearls because he’d read about them in a mag in Bruce’s waiting-room when he’d been picking him up after surgery for a drink one day, and he knew that Livia had had them from a wealthy West German businessman and that even the mag had not been able to determine whether this had been for favours received or in the hope of favours being conferred, or whether, in fact, favours ever had.

    Keith registered fleetingly that those must be The Pearls, and dragged his eyes away from the bust and goggled at the lower limbs. These were clad in a skin-tight pair of glowing gold—pirate pants? Well, they were skin-tight and came to mid-calf. How in God’s name had she sat through the long flight in those? No, couldn’t have, they’d have been agony, must have changed in the bog just before they landed... The lower limbs, Keith reflected groggily, did sort of give the game away, because though they were well-shaped, the angle of the tum, though it was not a particularly noticeable tum, and the outline of the hips, though they were not by any means spreading hips, did rather indicate that Livia had passed the menopause.

    The limbs were supported by terrifically high-heeled gold sandals. (Livia was not a tall woman.) Round one slender ankle was a small gold chain. Keith winced.

    Livia then, encouraged loudly by the photographers, struck a series of poses, throwing back her head, rattling her selection of gold bangles, and laughing a lot. The hair was the same shade of primrose it had been in the soap, and as it didn’t move much when she tossed it, must have been full of gel or spray or something. Well, would need to be, to retain that shape. Sort of pulled up above the ears and off the nape but frizzed out a lot and sort of moppish above that. With a gauzy pink bow. Large.

    That was Livia Wentworth, then, and really the only surprizing thing was that the coat was white and not a poor dead leopard.

    “Strewth,” said Susan Harding deeply at this point in the narrative.

    “Yeah,” her spouse agreed.

    There was a short silence.

    “A petticoat?” croaked Bruce.

    “Yeah. Well, mighta been one of those shorty things. Maybe one of those all-in-oneys? I was gonna buy Roberta one of those for Christmas,” said Keith sadly, “only her mother wouldn’t let me, she said they weren’t practical.”

    “You know that pretty blonde actress that was in Dynasty?” said Alan out of the blue.

    They goggled at him.

    “Young; wasn’t she a princess or something?” he said to his wife, beginning to look confused.

    “Catherine Oxenburg. What about her?” said Susan briskly.

    “Um—she’s got very delicate features; very pretty, really, I sort of thought it didn’t suit her. You know—Dynasty,” he said.

    “YES!” shouted Susan. “What ABOUT her?”

    “Well, you know when I was in Australia looking at those orchards while you were at that conference in Canberra that week?” –Keith looked at him in some envy. He wasn’t as dumb as he looked, wasn’t Alan.

    “Yeah,” conceded Susan, looking bemused.

    “Well, I saw her in an Australian—um—mini-series or something, anyway it was on Australian TV, and she was wearing a petticoat like that!” he said triumphantly.

    “Oh!” they all said, sagging.

    “Probably where this Livia tart got the idea from,” said Susan thoughtfully.

    “There’s more,” warned Keith.

    “Well, go on!” cried Bruce indignantly.

    “Yeah, what the fuck are ya waiting for?” agreed Susan.

    Alan—though he was obviously pretty thick—definitely couldn’t be as thick as he looked, because he then said: “Yeah, what about ole Maurice Black?”

    “Well, exactly!” agreed Keith, leaning forward again...

    The furore of flashbulbs had more or less died down, the photographers were only snapping sporadically, and the reporters, having failed to get anything comprehensible out of Livia about “darling Adam”—though she’d smiled a lot—were writing dazedly in their notebooks or holding up their mikes with numbed expressions as Livia, with a lot of pouting, bangle-rattling, and head-tossing, told a long, detailed and intensely boring story about not being allowed to bring “poor darling little Pootsie” into the country. It took Keith some time to realize that this must be a dog and he doubted if some of the reporters ever did realize it; and he was quite sure that it didn’t dawn on any of them that if she had brought him, he’d have then had to go into six months’ quarantine before she could have got him back into Britain again. The harried-looking little man at Livia’s left had put down a bag of Duty-Frees and a large carry-on bag and was surreptitiously rubbing his mangled fingers under cover of the coat, and the martyred-looking female at Livia’s right had put down an even larger carry-on bag and, under cover of blowing her nose, was wiping the sweat off her upper lip—and Keith Nicholls was glancing at his watch and wondering irritably when in God’s name his wife was going to be restored to him—when there was a commotion somewhere to the rear of the small crowd that had formed—not primarily to gawp at Livia, but in the expectation of seeing their friends and relatives emerge from the hinterland of the International Airport some time within the next two hours—and an official voice shouted: “Make way, PLEASE!”

    And a group of suited men, looking terribly business-like but also rather flushed, accompanied by a couple of uniformed airport officials, and accompanied by Sir Maurice Black, carrying a giant bunch of very pink roses, and dressed in a skin-tight azure-blue tee-shirt and terrifically trendy white linen trou, burst onto the scene and Livia screamed: “Maurie, DAR-LING, where have you BEEN, sweetest one?” and, allowing him to dash up to her grinning all over his thin, dark face, tottered forward at least two steps and threw herself into his arms. He was not a large man so with the heels they were about the same height.

    The reporters all jumped a foot and gasped: “Sir Maurice Black!” and began gathering themselves together and shouting: “Sir Maurice! Sir Maurice! Have you known Livia long? Livia! Livia! Are you and Sir Maurice just good friends?” and the photographers began flashing bulbs madly again and cavorting to get the best angles, and the most bored-looking, blackest, grimiest, most wrinkled and unshaven reporter of all suddenly shouted at his mate who was holding a huge furry microphone: “Get this!”, tore off his sunglasses and pushed his way to the front of the squirming gaggle of his peers and shouted: “TVNZ! Sir Maurice, is there anything in this? Can ya give us a few words?”

    And Maurice Black, having embraced Livia thoroughly, turned to face the reporters with his arm firmly round her waist and, grinning all over his thin, dark face, said brazenly: “No comment.”

    Livia let out a long tinkle of girlish laughter at this—Keith winced—and confirmed: “Definitely no comment, darlings!”—Another trill.

    Then the group of business-suited persons resolved itself into Mac McIntyre (Keith didn’t recognize him, but it was), and the University Registrar (Keith did recognize him and his eyes started from his head), a town councillor whom Keith vaguely recognized as having spoken on something to do with the Art Gallery, and the Minister for the Arts. (He was also Minister for several other things, New Zealand having a tendency to not only double but treble and quadruple its portfolios, but no doubt it was the Arts that were the excuse on this occasion.) The reporters gave a collective jump and started shouting: “Minister! Minister! Does this mean-” And things about arts subsidies and the tax policy on film productions, which Keith didn’t listen to; and Mac rushed up to Livia and fawned all over her; and there you almost had it.

    “Shit. Pity we missed the News, eh?” said Susan to her spouse.

    “Yeah. Coulda done with a good laugh,” he replied with a grin.

    “Hang on, what’s the time?” said Bruce eagerly, looking at his watch. “It’ll be on the News Summary at nine-thirty, won’t it?”

     “Uh—isn’t that at ten?” said Susan confusedly.

    “Um—no, they’ve changed it again, haven’t they?” said Keith confusedly.

    “Um—is it still the Summer Season?” said Alan confusedly.

    Bruce ignored all this and got the barman to switch the TV on. Once he and the barman had determined it was the right channel, their party all went over to the bar to watch.

    So did most of the other clients, the old pub north of Kowhai Bay didn’t offer much choice in the way of entertainment on a Thursday night. Well, nothing, really.

    There was a News Summary of sorts (whether because it was still the Summer Season or not, no-one hazarded a guess) and they all waited impatiently as the cricket scores and then the situation in the Gulf were analysed with immense superficiality but very with-it jargon, the cricket beating the Gulf crisis by several lengths in the verbal circumlocution stakes, and then There She Was!

    “Phew,” concluded Susan, as TVNZ cut the Minister off after two words and the camera refocussed on the now retreating Livia and Maurice, still entwined tenderly.

    “Phew’s right,” said Bruce in a shaken voice. “I mean, Gawdelpus, Maurie Black’s pushing seventy!”

    “Good on him, if he’s still getting it at that age. I should be so lucky,” said Keith morosely.

    “Come on, what about getting some fish an’ chips?” Susan said bracingly.

    “Yeah, but let’s go to the good place, up Sir John Marshall Av',” said Alan anxiously.

    “YEAH!” she shouted.

    “Oh, good. I was thinking you might of meant the other place.”

    “Don’t ask why, we never go there,” said Susan to the company.

    She marched off. Alan followed her obediently.

    “Come on,” said Keith, giving in completely.

    “Yeah, righto. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. She won’t have any tea for me, anyway,” replied Bruce, replacing his glass on the bar with unnecessary force. “See ya, Merv,” he added to the barman.

    “See ya, Bruce,” replied the barman, and Bruce and Keith ambled in the Hardings’ wake.

    They took all the cars, because Keith lived on The Hill in Puriri and so wouldn’t want to come back for his, and Bruce couldn’t be bothered having to detour up here to get his and then dodge back to Kowhai Bay even though the Hardings would happily have dropped him off.

    As it was a very mild night they ended up sitting on the beach to eat their packets of greasies.

    Susan lay flat on her back when she’d finished and looked up at the stars. “I’m glad we live here,” she said.

    “We don’t, exactly,” said her husband cautiously.

    “No, but in Puriri County. ‘Out of the swing of the sea’. Is it swing?”—Alan certainly didn’t know and Bruce and Keith weren’t sure.—“Something like that,” she said contentedly.

    Keith lay propped on his elbow and looked at her with a little smile. “Why just now, Susan?”

    “Eh? Aw—dunno, really. Well, I suppose seeing that bloody Livia dame—all that carry-on—you know.” Susan gazed up at the stars and pulled a little face. “How the other half lives, or something. You can have it, for mine.”

    They all agreed. Even those that were in the dog-house or faced the prospect of returning to a zonked-out, jet-lagged wife and muesli for breakfast because they’d forgotten to buy bread.

    After a while Alan said in a puzzled voice: “Where was that Adam McIntyre bloke, anyway?”

    “Yeah, that was a bit funny,” realized Susan.

    “Well, possibly not with his Uncle Maurice all over Livia like a rash,” allowed Keith.

    “No-o...” she said dubiously.

    Bruce was emanating a knowing silence so after a bit Keith said: “That wouldn’t be a knowing silence, would it, Smith?”

    “Um—well, I did see Melinda Black the other day—his mother,” he explained to the Hardings. “She’s got a bit of arthritis in one wrist: been doing too much gardening, I think—” Keith groaned.—“Yes, well, anyway, she was saying McIntyre’s using the Carranos’ bach at Carter’s Inlet this week. Taken a bit of fluff from the university with him, evidently.”

    “Quick work,” noted Keith.

    “Known for it, so they tell me,” replied Bruce.

    “Runs in the family,” added Keith.

    “Yeah.”

    “What bit of fluff?” asked Susan in a strange voice.

    “I told you—” began Alan.

    “Shut up,” she said tensely. “WHO?” she said loudly to Bruce.

    “Um—she lives in Kowhai Bay, I saw her once for the flu—dunno if you’d know her, her name’s Harris, Ge—”

    “Georgy Harris?” gasped Susan.

    “I told you it was her in that car,” said Alan.

    “Yeah,” she agreed numbly.

    Alan explained: “We saw them. Him and her. At Carter’s Bay, on Monday. They were getting a bottle of milk, I think. We’d been up there to pick up some timber, and we’d decided to drive along the Inlet a bit for a picnic. –I said it was her,” he said to Susan.

    “Yeah, an’ I said it couldn’t be,” said Susan numbly.

    “You know her, then?” asked Bruce cautiously.

    “Not that well. She’s a friend of Jemima’s, we met her at their place,” said Susan numbly. “I’d never have said— I mean! Heck!”

    “She’s very nice,” ventured Alan.

    “Well, exactly,” she agreed. “What’s she on about, having a fling with a bloody film star?”

    “Why not?” said Keith airily.

    “How would you like it if it was Roberta?” demanded Susan.

    Keith was very taken aback. “Oh. See what ya mean.”

    “She is a very quiet little thing,” said Bruce uneasily.

    “Didn’t Mum say she’d met him?” ventured Alan. “Yes, that’s right, at The Royal. With Polly, wasn’t it? He had lunch with them.”

    “Well, there you are,” said Susan. “If he’s the type that lunches with Phyllis at the bloody Royal—!”

    There was a rather depressed silence. Those who were over thirty, and particularly the one who was well over forty, began to wish they hadn’t stuffed their faces with all those greasies, because they seemed to have gone straight to the pit of the stomach, where they were lying in an uneasy mass, no doubt getting ready to clog the colon and encourage the bowel cancer that was pretty well endemic to the New Zealand diet anyway.

    “Well, that’s spoiled a nice evening,” said Susan finally.

    “Sorry,” said Bruce humbly.

    “I suppose it’s not your fault if Georgy Harris is making an idiot of herself with a ruddy film star all over Carter’s Inlet,” allowed Susan, grinning in the dark.

    “Thanks, Susan,” said Bruce, also grinning.

    “Maybe he’s quite nice,” said Alan cautiously.

    “WHAT?” she screamed.

    “Um—well, it was just a thought.”

    “Well, don’t,” she recommended kindly. “Come on, better get back, another long today tomorrow.”

    “Yeah,” said Alan, yawning.

    They all scrambled up and returned to their vehicles.

    Susan earbashed her husband for a while on the subject of Georgy and Adam McIntyre as they drove north, but as they didn’t know Georgy at all well and only knew of Adam what they’d seen on the screen they both soon gave up on that topic and talked about their orchard instead. By the time they got home they’d forgotten all about seeing Livia’s arrival on the News Summary and were quite stunned—and in Susan’s case very cross, because they would normally be in bed at this hour—when as they were cleaning their teeth Phyllis rang them up to ask them breathlessly if they’d seen it. And did they know that darling Polly was having a garden party for the film people, and she was sure that she’d invite Alan and Susan if she, Phyllis, mentioned—

    Alan said firmly that she needn’t mention it. NO, Mum.—Alan had got quite good at dealing with Phyllis since being married to Susan.—Phyllis then urged them to come to lunch at the Yacht Club tomorrow, or at least on Saturday, but as Susan was glaring at him Alan said they couldn’t, they were really busy. Then they went happily to bed in their small house in their obscure orchard to Hell and gone in one of the muddier and obscurer corners of Puriri County and didn’t give film stars from Overseas another thought.

    Since they were very young it did not occur to either of them that Phyllis was lonely since Alan had left home and this was why she’d rung them at such a strange hour, and why she kept inviting them to the sort of up-market does they both loathed.

    Phyllis dithered a bit and then, though she knew the Carranos’ answering machine  would be on if they’d gone to bed, didn’t ring Polly after all: she knew she didn’t share her enthusiasm for Livia Wentworth in particular or film people in general. After some thought she rang her bridge-playing friend, Joan, instead, and in the course of the conversation managed to mention extremely casually that of course she was going to darling Polly’s garden party and as a matter of fact, Polly had consulted her, Phyllis, on the food for this event! Joan was unable to conceal her envy so after that Phyllis felt much, much better and graciously consented to let the meek Sir John Harding make her a cup of tea and then went to bed, face and neck well creamed, feeling quite in charity with her world and mentally planning What to Wear.

    Bruce Smith drove home to the big old villa at the far end of Ridge Road very slowly, regretting all those chips and trying to figure out if they really could afford a patio pool. Well, they could, but what about paying off the mortgage instead? Which was what he’d always been under the impression that Catherine saw as a priority, because Sushi really was very bright and if she wanted to go on and do some sort of higher degree they might as well face it, it was them that would have to cough up for her support while she did it, because the Tertiary Bursary went nowhere, even now, and with the way the bloody country was going she’d be lucky if even that was available by the time she was in the Seventh Form...

    He didn’t give Livia, Adam or Georgy a single thought.

    Keith also drove home very slowly: very slowly indeed, he had much less further to go. Ruminating on things such as would his daughter in fact wear that pretty set of underwear he’d got for her, did his daughter really have a crush on that bloody creep from the Classics Department who Keith was sure was older than he was himself, and would she ever make up her mind about her specialty, or at least make it up before Ariadne drove him insane by harping on the topic. And thanking God that though Roberta might be a bit stroppy and a bit of a worry, being in her fifth year of Med. School with this silly crush instead of a real boyfriend (at that age Ariadne had already had Roberta), at least she had enough sense not to get herself mixed up with some flaming dreep of a Pommy film star! Even if he could read poetry bloody well.

    From time to time he did spare Livia a passing thought, or more correctly he wondered—very idly—if Livia and Maurice were already doing it or if Livia was jet-lagged like Ariadne.

    When he got home even these idle thoughts went straight out of his head because on the fridge was a large, angry note in black felt-tip, anchored with a ladybird fridge magnet, that said: “KEITH. Why is there only MOOSLY in this HOUSE?”—Ariadne never bothered about the spelling of non-medical words.—Under this was added: “P.S. Get MILK”.

    Keith peeped nervously in the fridge and confirmed that at some stage Ariadne must have arisen from her jet-lagged torpor and drunk the milk. Help. Thanking God they still got it delivered up here in Puriri County, he fumbled frantically in the jar for tokens, found he’d used them all, and scrabbled in his pockets for change, ending up in desperation grabbing a five-dollar note. He rushed out to the gate, realising as he did so that the milk boy would probably steal the five-dollar note and not deliver any milk in order to make it appear the note had been stolen before he, the milk boy, ever got there...

    Then he returned morosely to the house and went to bed next to the torpid, snoring form of his jet-lagged wife, as quiet as a mouse so as not to disturb her. It was ages before he got to sleep, what with the soggy chips in his gut and the need to do Ariadne. He certainly never gave Livia and Co. another thought.

    Livia Wentworth was an intensely pragmatic woman and it would not have surprized her to learn that these reactions to her arrival in New Zealand were a pretty fair sample of her impact on the country as a whole. Had anyone been silly enough to ask her if she believed this—not that anyone would, that sort of thing wasn’t News—she would, of course, have disclaimed such a belief at once, with all the obligatory lash-flutterings, bangle-rattlings, and “Darlings”.

    Being, though with her very different style, quite as pragmatic as Ariadne Nicholls on such subjects as jet-lag, she hadn’t immediately welcomed Maurice Black into her bed at her up-market hotel. Not as up-market as The Royal: though the University was helping to subsidize her accommodation it wasn’t that generous. Nor was it generous enough to defray the full costs of the hotel a hop, skip and a jump away from its doors that Livia’s agent had chosen as being both appropriately up-market and near enough to the university for the cost of taxis to and from to be minimal. Livia herself, or rather the ad for the Christmas pens, was paying the difference. She had tried to force Adam to stay there, too, but he had refused, hoping that it would put her off the whole idea. But Livia had several schemes in her head and was not to be put off.

    She told Maurice firmly she was going to bed to sleep off the jet-lag during the afternoon, and that he could pick her up for dinner somewhere nice around eight o’clock, posed for a few last shots in the lobby, and went off to her suite. Not failing to remind Jacky when she got there that although he was staying at a quite nice motel down the road at her and Adam’s joint expense (Clem had arranged that), meals were NOT included, nor her martyred cousin Amy that though Amy was staying here in this nice hotel with her, Livia, at her, Livia’s, expense, meals were NOT included, they had to come out of Amy’s salary. And rubbish, no-one got sick on those big jets, Amy couldn’t be feeling air-sick, it was all Amy’s imagination, and WHERE were her very special bath-salts? Not the ones she’d advertised as the Livia Wentworth Collection, no! And she would want Amy to help her dress for dinner.

    Then she made Amy run her a bath, soaked in the bath till she felt sleepy, creamed her face and neck well and went to bed with her black sleeping-mask on, enjoining Amy on pain of death not to let Maurice into the suite unless she, Livia, was up and dressed. She meant up and made-up, but Amy understood that.

    Livia slept like a log until seven in the evening. Amy tossed and turned restlessly until about five o’clock, got up, and made herself a cup of tea from the English tea-bags she’d brought with her, drinking it without milk because in the first place she was terrified of Room Service and in the second place was terrified it might get put on Livia’s bill by mistake and in the third place had not realized that the small cabinet by her bed was a fridge that contained milk for her to use. Then she unpacked a lot of Livia’s dresses and began ironing them.

    Jacky dumped the coat and the bags he’d been lugging, went downstairs to check up on the rest of the baggage, sorted out his own bag from it, saw the rest delivered safely upstairs and went off morosely in a taxi at his own expense to his motel. There he recollected that he hadn’t arranged about Press for the dinner that evening and went into a flat spin because he had no idea of where Maurice might take Livia. He rang the number Maurice had given Livia but Maurice wasn’t yet home. Then he rang Mac’s home number, getting Cherry McIntyre, who crossly gave him Mac’s extension at the university and told him not to bother her again, she was far too busy to waste time on that sort of nonsense. Then he rang the university and asked for Mac’s extension and Mac was there. Since it was Enrolment Week he was certainly supposed to be, signing Course Cards in his capacity as Head of Department, but that didn’t mean Jacky wasn’t lucky to catch him.

    Jacky duly panicked into Mac’s ear. Mac told him off with a few well-chosen phrases and then informed him that Maurice lived on the North Shore, which was Greek to Jacky, and he’d better ring him later. Which Jacky did. Shortly after that getting hold of the Press and arranging for photographers. Lying only slightly by saying he was sure Adam McIntyre would be with Miss Wentworth. Then he drank a brandy from the fridge beside his bed, belatedly read the notice that detailed the prices of the refreshments in the fridge and decided to open his duty-free whisky next time, and fell into bed exhausted, but setting the alarm for seven in the evening, just in case.

    Maurice went home, told Suzanne with a rueful grimace that he was being dragged off to some bloody do with those film people of Adam’s this evening and where was his best dress-shirt—not that old-fashioned thing, his new one—and no, he couldn’t get out of it, both Mac and the Registrar would have his guts for garters if he tried (a bare-faced lie), and he might be very late, if so he’d kip with an old mate in town, she wasn’t to worry about him. It was very probable that Suzanne didn’t believe a word of all this but they both acted as if she did.

    “Darlings! Silly!” tinkled Livia. “No comment!”

    “Yeah: no comment,” said Maurice, grinning.

   The photographers cavorted and snapped in the pale puce lobby of The Royal, making the best of a bad job.  The reporters, undisguisedly very dished, tried to get out of Livia where Adam was, but Livia successfully concealed from them the facts that she had no idea and was furious with him. She didn’t manage to conceal either of these matters from Maurice, and Maurice, being nothing if not detached about ladies like Livia, was silently considerably amused by it.

    Finally he said: “Whaddabout letting us get some nosh down us, eh?” and Livia gasped: “Ooh! Isn’t he the masterful one, then!”—Tinkle tinkle.—“That wasn’t a comment, darlings!” she, added, tinkling even more. They got the point, then, and wrote it down. Then Livia at her own insistence posed for just one more, leaning on Maurice’s arm and managing to look at him adoringly while showing her good profile and minimizing the slight sag under her chin. The photographers snapped and Maurice was finally able to drag her off to the Poenamo Room. Remarking when they were in the lift that The Royal was doing bloody well, publicity-wise, out of her and Adam, and if that Jacky of hers had an ounce of common—which he, Maurice, doubted—he’d speak to the manager and see they got a rake-off. Livia became very thoughtful, the more so as there was no-one in the lift but themselves.

    Maurice knew the way to the Poenamo Room and even if he hadn’t was not the sort of man to get lost in hotel corridors, so that was no problem. Livia made a triumphal entrance, only slightly disconcerted to find there were no further reporters lurking in the actual dining-room. Though there were lots of American tourists, some of whom actually recognised her. And all the New Zealanders gasped and stared. Some because they knew who Maurice was, but this fortunately did not occur to Livia. She was, however, considerably disconcerted to find the dining-room was all pale puce, and in view of the fact that she was wearing a very subtle shade of powder-blue that was just off lilac, and that only persons with the whitest of skin could get away with (or so the woman who’d sold her the dress had assured her), felt angrily that Somebody Should Have Warned her.

    Maurice had little eye for colour, except where choosing shirts for himself was concerned, but he did notice that the puce killed Livia’s dress stone dead and thought: Ouch. This’ll be tricky. Better butter her up good.

     Livia exclaimed over the menu, declaring that it was so-o exotic, and poor little her had no idea, really, and if darling sweetie Maurice would—?

    Maurice knew what ladies like Livia liked—even if he hadn’t already escorted her to places of similar awfulness in London and had already ordered her a foully exotic cocktail that called itself “Tropicana Royale.” God knew what it had in it and Maurice didn’t give a stuff, but he did know it was striped pink and yellow, and frothy, and served in a coupe. Just the ticket, in fact. He now patted her hand, sardonically noting the liver spots on it, and purred: “Leave it to me, sweetie.”

    Livia subsided with a little girl’s “Fank you, Maurith darling!” not voicing her feeling that she’d like a nice juicy steak with a big salad and a baked potato with sour cream like they did in the States, because she knew such fare was hopelessly down-market.

    Maurice took a mental vow not to start counting the lisps, it would become an obsession and drive him bonkers, not to mention making it impossible to concentrate on anything else, and purred: “Now, let’s see...” He rapidly dismissed from consideration anything smothered in fattening batter like the revolting fish, banana and pineapple thing, and ended by ordering her the pawpaw and himself the caviar to start, insisting he wanted the latter without the sour-cream sauce. For their main courses he ordered a plain fillet steak for himself, very rare, blue if they knew what that was (Of course—scrape, bow. Lies, all lies, thought Maurice, eyeing the waiter drily) and “Caille en gelée aux raisins noirs avec ananas” for her—horrible: not only did it have the stewed grapes and pineapple set in sickly sweet jellied gravy, it was presented on a bed of fine shreds of this same jelly mixed with beansprouts and the now endemic Japanese salad greens—but the whole beautifully decorated with sprigs of fennel, borage flowers and marigold petals. Maurice’s sardonic azure eye noticed that she ate most of the muck up hungrily, though baulking at the jelly shreds and the greenery.

    There had been women in Maurice Black’s life who would have remarked on the oddness of the hot vegetables offered with this concoction, but Livia was not one of them.

    Maurice ate hungrily: he had good teeth for his age and a healthy appetite, though he was careful not to eat too many of his chips. The meantime flattering Livia appropriately and teasing her just a little as was appropriate from an older man, and studiously avoiding such topics as where the fuck was his nephew, and why hadn’t Derry Dawlish accompanied Livia, and the colour of The Royal’s appalling décor.

    Livia refused dessert on the grounds of calories and her waistline—girlish laugh. Maurice protested accordingly—not too hard, he didn’t want to get blamed for her making a pig of herself—and ordered the “millefeuille” for himself, not expecting it to be anything but EnZed pavlova, which was just as well, and carefully not eating ninety percent of the whipped cream with which it was smothered.

    With his small cup of black coffee—it wasn’t bad, but on the other hand it wasn’t good—Maurice had a Cognac. He had expected Livia to choose something very sweet and since in his mind it was only a toss-up between Kahlua and cream and Irish coffee, he wasn’t surprized when she chose the latter. Complete with calorific cream on top of its own calories. All of which she lapped up like a lamb, but then Maurice had long since given up expecting ladies like Livia to act with any sort of logic.

    By this time he was aware—not that he hadn’t scented something of the sort in the wind long since—that there were several ulterior motives for Livia’s presence in the land of his birth. Maurice was more or less indifferent to this. He thought drily that if one of ’em was snaring Adam she’d have her work cut out for her, because that particular joker, dumb about women though he undoubtedly was in many ways, was, Maurice had no doubt at all, the type that was as slippery as an eel when ladies like Livia got the matrimonial glint in their eye. He had been aware for some time, what with the girlish little hints, that Livia wouldn’t half mind (having discovered more or less what his financial status was) if he ditched his Suzanne in order to spend his declining years as little Livia’s mainstay and support, but he was far too canny to fall for .that one. And Livia, give her her due, was far too canny to insist.

   After a while he got out of her perhaps not the full story, but the fullest version anyone was ever likely to get, -of the West German businessman and The Pearls. Maurice indulged in a long bass cooing chuckle, squeezed her hand on top of the table and her knee, very hard and very quickly, under it, and told her she was a naughty Puss. Livia had been looking pretty much like a naughty Puss anyway; as woman who knew a cue when she heard it she now looked more like a naughty Puss than ever, squeezed his hand back, touched her toe fleetingly to his, and told him he was a cheeky boy.

    Whereupon Maurice said: “Let’s give this dump away, eh, Puss? Go back to your nice hotel and try out your nice big bed for size?”

    Livia squealed and exclaimed and threw her head back (a mistake, the throat was a bit past that, thought Maurice clinically, never mind The Pearls), squeezed his hand again, and consented—being as eager as he was.

    Up in her suite Maurice deduced that she hadn’t had it for a bit—well, she was getting on, of course: probably didn’t get nearly as many offers these days as she’d have liked people to think—because she let him get the dress right off her immediately without squawking about putting it on a hanger or anything, and let him get right down there into the very blond bush (dyed or not, it was fun) and shuddered and yelped and grabbed his wiry shoulders. Maurice was in no doubt it was genuine, especially since it. was accompanied by certain unmistakeable physiological manifestations.

    So after a bit he stood up, grunted in her ear: “Come on, sweetie, I’m dying, for ya,” and propelled her towards the bed, Livia meanwhile gasping: “Oh, Maurith! You’re tho mas-cu-line!”

    Maurice bloody well hoped so, at this particular point in time.

    He got up on the bed and they had a bit of a sixty -nine, with Maurice, who also hadn’t had it for a bit, hanging on like grim death, and Livia gasping and squeaking. All quite genuinely, because she did like it. And Maurice wouldn’t have bothered with her if she didn’t. Then Livia wailed: “PLEE-EASE! Dar-ling!” and Maurice, with huge relief, sat up and hauled on a condom and plunged it into her without further ado. Just giving her neck a wee bite as he did so.

    Livia didn’t even scream not to bruise her before her photo session next week, she just let out a shriek and dug her fingernails into his back and came like fury. Whereat Maurice fucked wildly for a few moments and let go shatteringly. God, he’d needed that.

    … “God, I needed that,” he said weakly, some time later. “You’re hot stuff, sweetie.”

    Livia gave a contented little purr.

    He pulled-her comfortably into his side and drew the covers up over both of them. But above her primrose bird’s nest his azure eyes were thoughtful. What exactly was she up to? Hoping for a part in that Dawlish bloke’s next film? Maybe the bloke was going to make a film of the bloody Dream—though Mac had scoffed at the idea and Adam had laughed like a drain. But he couldn’t see a director of Dawlish’s stature casting Livia as Titania, she was (a) too old for the close-ups, (b) not well enough known on the big screen for someone with Dawlish’s reputation to cast in that sort .of rôle, and (c) not a good enough actress. The last, in Maurice Black’s estimation, not counting for all that much: pretty women that were willing to show off their tits didn’t need to be. In fact, he found most competent actresses extremely boring and rarely went to serious films unless his current mistress happened to be really keen. In which case he would go, but spend most of the time trying to slide his hand between the thighs of the lady in question. He enjoyed live theatre, however—whilst recognizing that the local efforts were pretty bloody. –Mm, well, it probably was something to do with her ruddy career. Though mind you, at her age she couldn’t expect all that much more of the career, however successful that soapie had been. And there couldn’t be a sequel—well, not one with Livia in it—because her character had been bumped off in the second-to-last episode. Spectacularly. But mistakenly, just like the bloody Brits: they could never manage to do anything properly.

    —Intending to flaunt herself round the place on his arm complete with pics in order to make the West German jealous and get him to come up to scratch? Now, that was a thought. Or to make Adam jealous? Well, if she was dumb enough to think that, she had another think coming: Adam was a fastidious animal, that sort of thing could only disgust him.

    Maurice yawned, kissed her forehead, said: “Don’t let me sleep too late, sweetie, s’pose I’ve got some sort of reputation to think of,” and closed his eyes.

    Livia was very satisfied and very sleepy, so she only murmured: “Mm,” and switched the bedside light off. It wouldn’t hurt to skip her face for one day...

    She drifted off pleasurably. But her last conscious thought was, as it always was—without realising it, she was a determined devotee of Coué—“Elizabeth Taylor’s diamond ring.” Livia didn’t kid herself she could manage those heights. But something decent. And if she bore that goal firmly in mind, well, why not? If Rudi didn’t come to heel, then there were other sufficiently good fish in the sea, and Livia had determined that now was the time to grab one. For keeps.