Matters Technical

4

Matters Technical

    “LOOK OUT!” bellowed Bill Michaels. The spotlight fell thirty feet to the flagged floor of the quadrangle, and shattered.

    “YOU CACK-HANDED CRETIN!” bellowed Bill. –He had to bellow: the cack-handed cretin was perched thirty feet above him on a ladder, shivering all over and clinging to a stone gargoyle that redundantly decorated the corner of the fake Victorian Gothic tower housing a perfectly ordinary staircase, and beneath which most of the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was going to take place. The bits that weren’t taking place on the greensward and stone steps (audience’s right), on the “grassy bank” near the foot of the tower (audience’s left), and in the balcony, actually part of the cloisters, next to the tower and above the arch (centre stage) through which most of the cast would eventually trip lightly, or shamble in the case of the rude mechanicals and the chorus of rustics, onto the flags.

    The stone arch, which looked suitably mysterious at night, especially when Mac had got an array of black screens blocking off the back of it, actually only led to the BNZ bank branch, its recently opened rival the ANZ bank branch, the post office branch and the trendy coffee bar that most of the student body avoided because it was too dear and too trendy, and the foot of the staircase. And, if you penetrated further, to a meandering path past the Botany Department’s sacred potting shed, the gardener’s even more sacred potting shed, a corrugated-iron shed that rumour said belonged to the Chemistry Department and which was always padlocked, and eventually, if you didn’t get lost amongst sheds, to the large, hideous, newish University Library and the street that you crossed to get to the Caff and Student Union. Oh, and the bookshop. And definitely the Club (licensed) if you were a graduate. The staircase was even more disappointing, it led only to the doctors’ tiny surgery, and, at the near end of the cloisters, a large dusty room that was used for Jazzercize and Aerobics during the day and behind which was situated a huge locker-room and ranks of female toilets. Mac used this room every year for his dressing-rooms—plural, having discovered resignedly that the male students were incurably shy about changing in front of the female students. They were even shyer about using the female toilets—God knew why, thought Mac every year—but if they preferred to burst, let ’em. This year he was also going to make use of the staircase for Oberon and Puck to appear in a fairy-like way—if he could ever get hold of the flaming janitor to unstick the flaming rusted windows, that was.

    He now popped out angrily from this staircase, rushed onto the flags, and said to Bill Michaels: “What the fuck was that?”

    Bill merely replied: “I wouldn’t stand there, if I was you.”

    Mac glanced up, saw the cack-handed cretin shivering on his ladder, blenched, and stepped aside hurriedly. Then he registered the very dead spot.

    “WHAT?” he roared terribly.

    Bill had got over his. “Yeah,” he agreed drily.

    “DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THOSE THINGS COST?” roared Mac.

    “Yeah,” replied the Dean of Engineering laconically.

    “God!” said Mac, swiping his hand across his sweating forehead.

    “There’s a couple of spares,” said Bill in a dubious voice, rubbing his square and not particularly shaven chin.

    Mac just breathed heavily.

    Bill looked at his watch. “Lunchtime. Fancy a quick one?”

    “Uh—hang on a mo’,” said Mac in a guilty voice. He hurried over to the arch and bellowed up the staircase: “GEORGY! GEORGY!”

    After a few moments a panting Georgy appeared with a clipboard in her hand. “What?” she gasped.

    “Haven’t you worked out those moves yet?” he asked irritably. Not waiting for an answer, he added: “Me and Bill are just going over to the S.C.R. for lunch. I’ll be back in”—he glanced at his watch—“half an hour, say. See if you can put a bomb under those wardrobe moos, wouldja? And try and find the plans for the bloody dressing-room layout while you’re at it,” he added heavily.

    “Yes. Um—Mac?” gulped Georgy.

    “What?” he said impatiently.

    “About the dressing-rooms—I’ve been meaning to ask you—” gulped Georgy.

    “Well, what?” he said impatiently.

    “Um—well—Livia Wentworth and Adam McIntyre and Joel Thring!” gasped Georgy.

    “What about ’em?” he said crossly, aware that Bill Michaels was listening to this interchange with a sardonic expression.

    “Well—” faltered Georgy.

    “Two of ’em are male and one’s female, if that’s what’s worrying you,” said Mac.

    Bill’s expression didn’t flicker.

    “No—yes—I mean, we can’t put them in with everybody else!” gasped Georgy.

    “Why not?” he replied simply.

    Bill Michaels liked Georgy. Besides, he had a daughter around that age. And in spite of the fact that he did the lighting every year for the outdoor Shakespeare production, he didn’t much like Dornford McIntyre. So he said in a super-kind voice: “Because they’ll be used to your actual dressing-rooms, see, with whacking great stars on the doors. –Bits of wood that go in holes and actually close,” he added, even more kindly.

    “Yes!” gasped Georgy, going bright pink and trying not to laugh.

    “Well, they can’t have ’em here,” said Mac sourly.

    “But we can’t— I mean!” gasped Georgy.

    “All right, think of a better solution,” he said sourly. “One that doesn’t entail getting the carpenters in to that bloody Jazzercize room,” he added, very sourly. On a previous occasion Mac had attempted to get the big, dusty room with its unvarnished floor divided up into permanent dressing-rooms. It hadn’t gone down too well with the university’s militant feminists, amongst whom were not only vast numbers of the student body (they didn’t matter, they changed every few years and he’d have had it done in the long vacation), but a good number of the female academics and, even more important if you were aware of the university’s real power structures, several members of the Registrar’s staff.

    Bill Michaels was aware of that particular run-in, so he gave a rude snigger.

    “Um—well—I was thinking... Well, what say we divide the room up like we thought, only we put the girls in one half of it and the stars in the other? –Divided up, I mean!” Georgy gasped, turning pink.

    “And the boys in the quad; yeah: lovely,” said Mac sardonically.

    Georgy looked over to where the carpenters had stopped erecting the frame for the grandstand on the once-pristine grass of the quad, and gone to lunch. “Um—no: in that big classroom at the other end of the cloisters!” she gasped.

    Mac gaped at her.

    “We did it when we did Twelfth Night,” Georgy reminded him.

    “Thousands of hairy rustics tromping down the cloisters when My Actors are trying to speak their lines?” said Mac in a would-be evil voice that came out a lot more strangled than he’d intended.

    “They could have bare feet!” gasped Georgy.

    “Aw, yeah: bare-footed Shakespearean rustics,” agreed Bill. “Or hang on: what about rubber jandals?”

    “That would do. I mean, we could sort of tie bits of cloth or rope or stuff round them and they could be—um—sort of cross-gartered!” gasped Georgy.

    Bill recognized the Twelfth Night influence and swallowed a grin.

    “All right: let’s say we’ve muffled their fucking feet: who’s gonna stop ’em making a ferocious bloody row with their bloody pathetic non-stop engineering hoons’ carry-on all the way down the cloisters?” demanded Mac, glaring at the Dean of Engineering.

    “Oy! My Tech Boys don’t—”

    “Shut up. –Well?” he said to Georgy.

    “Um—I really don’t think they will, Mac. Um—we could station a couple of the A.S.M.s there, maybe,” said Georgy very weakly. The A.S.M.s, every year, were very young female students from Mac’s English One stream (different girls every year, of course, but that made no difference), who’d developed a tremendous, silent, and awestruck crush on Mac.

    “Them?” gasped Mac.

    “They’d have your authority behind them!” gulped Georgy.

    Bill Michaels choked; but this went down quite well with Dornford McIntyre.

    “Ye-ah...” he said slowly. “I’d have to put the fear of God into ‘em, of course—probably before every bloody performance,” he added with an evil look at Georgy. She just nodded fervently. “Yeah. Well, it might work,” he conceded.

    “Yes: and it would free up the staircase for Oberon and Puck,” said Georgy anxiously. “You know you were worried about the rustics jamming it.” Mac had been, true, but only because Georgy herself had pointed it out to him. He frequently got carried away by his own enthusiasm and didn’t see the staging problems his inspired flights of fancy as producer often let them in for, regardless of the fact that he was also officially the stage manager.

    “Yeah. Well, okay: we’ll give it a go. You’d better hurry up and find that fucking dressing-room layout. And while you’re at it,” he added nastily, “start thinking about how to get the bloody rustics off and on from the fucking cloisters.”

    Georgy gulped.

    “Come on,” he said to Bill.

    Michaels stood his ground. “Hang on. What about Georgy? Doesn’t she eat?”

    Mac just gave him an impatient look but Georgy went very pink and said : “Um—no, it’s all right, thanks, Bill: I’ve got loads to do—and I’ve got some sandwiches!” she added desperately.

    Bill reflected that even if the poor little tart didn’t have any sandwiches—because it looked like a lie to him (he was the father of four and besides had been teaching tertiary students for over twenty years)—she’d probably prefer starvation to lunch in the company of Dornford McIntyre; so he said: “Righto, then. Come on, Mac.”

    Mac accompanied him thankfully—for obscure reasons being with Georgy gave him guilt feelings which he wasn’t about to examine—blissfully unaware that the restlessly curious engineering brain had discovered his despised Christian name and was biding its time for a suitable moment at which to produce it. Bill was like that. Especially with English-teaching tits that bullied their junior staff.

    Georgy disappeared up the staircase. Silence fell in the large area which, grass, stone steps, courtyard and all, was generally merely known as the quad.

    On his ladder, perched fifteen feet above the edge of the topmost area of grass, and another fifteen feet above the further drop to the flags, the cack-handed cretin clung to his gargoyle. Below him on the grass at the foot of the ladder his mate, who hadn’t spoken throughout the entire preceding scene, leaned against the sun-warmed stone of the cloisters’ outer integument, looking bored and eating a Mars Bar.

    Finally the cack-handed cretin quavered: “Pete?”

    “What?” said his mate in a bored voice.

    “Um—I’m stuck!” said the cack-handed one in a voice high with fear.

    “Eh?” Pete looked up. “No, you’re not.”

    “I am!” he squeaked.

    “Oh.” Pete would be doing Third-Year Engineering this year. He bent his great Third-Year brain to this knotty problem. “Um… You’ll just have to stop looking down,” he decided.

    “I’m not looking down!” gasped the cack-handed cretin, clinging to his gargoyle with his eyes shut.

    “Aw. Well—uh—any live wires up there?” asked Pete cautiously.

    “Um—I don’t think so,” the cack-handed one replied, opening his eyes in surprize at the query.

    “You’re all right, then,” decided Pete.

    “But I’m stuck!” he wailed.

    “Look, Gar’,”—the cack-handed cretin’s name was Garry, which some persons might have supposed would not lend itself easily to abbreviation; but macho hoonish Antipodean engineering students could abbreviate anything—“you’re not stuck—geddit? You got up, you can get down. You’re just shit-scared, that’s all.” He crumpled the paper of his Mars Bar and, since Prof Michaels had disappeared, biffed it at a rosemary bush.

    “You can’t leave me!” squealed Gar’, as Pete then ambled off slowly to the cloisters.

    “Yeah r’I can,” replied Pete with an unnecessary but customary intervocalic R: “I’m hungry. And you heard what he said: they’ll be back in half an hour, I’m not gonna hang round here starving for half an hour.”

    “But I’m stuck!” wailed Gar’.

    Pete merely disappeared into the cloisters.

    Gar’ clung shivering to his gargoyle.

    Since it was only late January, and Term didn’t start till March, and even Enrolment Week wasn’t until the second week of February, nobody appeared in the quad to come to his aid.

    Upstairs in the Jazzercize Room, which would shortly be the dressing-rooms but at the moment was the Sewing Room, Georgy didn’t put a bomb under anybody: all the ladies doing the sewing were much older and more competent than her. They were mostly assorted wives, mums, and hangers-on of the cast and crew, including several Mature Students who were living off what you didn’t enquire into too closely (possibly Maintenance, more possibly the Domestic Purposes Benefit, even more possibly both), whilst giving themselves a second chance in life.

    Georgy went up to one of these sewing ladies who most assuredly should not have been there: she was Maisie Pretty, the Secretary to the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, and Professor Barlow, the Dean of the Faculty, had been looking for her All Morning.

    “Hullo, Maisie,” she said shyly. “How’s it going?”

    Maisie lifted a pleased, pink, round face to hers. “Oh, very well, dear: look!” she fluted. She held up a pair of diaphanous pale green tights onto which she was laboriously sewing spangles by hand. Maisie had been roped in to do this as a measure of desperation by one of the other sewing ladies, who’d known her for years, because Maisie was one of the few living New Zealanders who could sew spangles onto stretch tights (her daughter had once been top of the Competitions in ballet, and had won a Scholarship to the Royal Ballet!—and never been heard of since). They were Adam McIntyre’s pale green tights. Georgy looked at them dubiously. Surely— There seemed to be fewer spangles on them than last time she’d seen them!

    Mrs Pretty looked at her face and said brightly: “They’re the second pair, dear.”

    “Oh!” gasped Georgy in mingled relief and confusion. “Oh—that’s great, Maisie,” she said weakly.

    “Will they fit him, though?” asked Mrs Pretty worriedly.

    “Um—well, he did send us all his measurements,” Georgy reminded her. “I mean, his agent did.”

    “Yee-uss... What if he got them wrong, though, dear?”

    Georgy goggled at her. She didn’t think Big Stars’ agents were at all inclined to do things like that.

    “I mean—what if he’s put on weight, or gone on a diet, or something?” worried Mrs Pretty.

    At this Angie Michaels, who was in charge of the Sewing Room, came up to them and said firmly: “I don’t think that’s at all likely, Maisie. Not in a few weeks. And if he has, well, they are stretch tights. –Come over here for a minute, would you, Georgy?” She led her quickly away. “They’re like that,” she said drily.

    Georgy gulped.

    “She’s a prize one, of course,” added Angie, drier than ever.

    “Yes! How do you cope, Angie?” asked Georgy, looking at her in undisguised awe.

    Angie shrugged. “Dunno, really. Never letting yourself get on their wavelength is the first law of self-preservation, I think.”

    “Yes!” she gasped with a strangled giggle.

    Angie—who was, of course, Bill Michaels’s spouse—looked at her with a kindly eye and said: “Of course I swore I wouldn’t let myself be dragged into it again this year.”

    “Yes; well—your part went all right last time!” gasped Georgy.

    Angie grimaced. “Yeah.”

    “We couldn’t possibly cope without you, Angie!” Georgy assured her fervently. “Not with all the fairies!”

    Angie glanced round the tulle-filled Sewing Room with a grimace. “Yeah, well, at least the littlies’ mums are all doing theirs at home, that’s a great help.”

    “Yeah,” said Georgy on a glum note. The littlies were little ballet girls. With the sort of mums that you might expect.

    “We can always correct anything that’s drastically wrong, you know,” said Angie kindly. “And Pauline’s doing the wings herself, they’ll be okay.”

    “Mm.” Pauline Wilson was the lecturer from the Art School who, in conjunction with Mac—read, under Mac’s orders—had designed the last five years’ productions, including the costumes. Well, mostly the costumes, there wasn’t all that much you could do with a flagged courtyard with a bit of lawn in front of it, a solid stone arch, a rocky bank with a flight of stone steps, and an upper stretch of greensward. They encroached more or less on the lawn in front of the flags as the productions demanded, but this year, of course, there was the problem of the audiences being much bigger than usual. They were doing an extra week, but— The extra-cheap concessions (sitting on the grass at the front—hangers-on of the cast only) had had to be abandoned, this year.

    “What’s up?” asking Angie, casting a shrewd glance at Georgy’s face and then directing her hard blue eye to the point where two giggling Third-Years who weren’t much good at anything, certainly not acting or English Literature, but had terrific crushes on Mac, were giggling instead of getting on with gluing spangles onto ribbon sashes. The Third-Years stopped giggling and hurriedly got on with gluing.

    “Um—well, it’s the wings.”

    “I thought they looked pretty,” said Angie detachedly. Actually she’d thought they looked Goddawful, in fact she thought the whole production looked Goddawful, but, as her grinning spouse had more than once pointed out to her, she wasn’t into all this Victorian kitsch that Mac and—rather fortunately—also Pauline were terribly into at the moment. In fact Pauline’s whole flat was done out in Victorian kitsch. Or at least in what a New Zealand Art School lecturer with a Dip. Fine Arts who’d never been further than Sydney in her life fondly imagined was Victorian kitsch.

    “Yes, but… I think the big ones: you know: at the back,”—Angie merely nodded at this obscure utterance: the smaller ones were designed to stand upright on the shoulders—“are going to take up more room on stage than Mac’s allowed for.”

    Angie sniffed. “You astound me. Well,” she said to Georgy’s worried face, “better get onto Pauline about it as soon as poss, eh? Try ’em out.”

    “Yes, I’m going over there next,” agreed Georgy.

    “Good. –Hang on.” Angie strode over to the gluing Third-Years.  “Not there: here,” she said with terrible, heavy patience. The Third-Years flinched. “This bit here’s the gap where the bloody things are gonna be knotted: see? You do it between these pencil marks: see? These and these; not these.”

    “Aw. Yeah. Sorry,” they said.

    Then one said timidly: “Um—won’t the pencil marks show, Angie?” –The pencil-marker had used a heavy carpenter’s pencil.

    “Not under the lights,” said Angie clearly.

    “Oh. That’s all right, then.”

    “Um—Angie?” said the other.

    “What?” said Angie tiredly. God, wouldn’t you think they could at least get on with simple gluing without making a song and dance about it!

    “Um—aren’t we making an awful lot of these sashes?” she said.

    Angie sighed. She had explained all of this, it was in one ear and out the other with this lot. “Yes. One for each fairy for each performance, and a few extra for the cretins that manage to take ’em off and lose ’em. This is that cheap blanket ribbon,” she explained clearly. “It usually frays after it’s been tied. And in any case throwing them away is miles cheaper, time-and-motion wise, than ironing them.”

    “Oh, I see. It seems like a waste of money, though.”

    Angie’s nostrils flared. She pressed her lips firmly together. Her bosom heaved.

    At this one of the sewing ladies looked up and said: “I still think we could easily iron them, Angie, it won’t take much time—”

    “That’s all been decided, Meryl,” said Angie firmly, avoiding eye contact.

    “Oh. But—” she began dubiously.

    Angie walked away. “Not that blue with that underskirt, Leanne,” she said to a plump, fair woman who was holding a piece of pale blue tulle over a dark blue underskirt uncertainly. “Everything coded 2A on top of everything coded 2B.”

    “But the 2B’s dark green!” gasped Leanne in horror.

    “Yes,” said Angie firmly. “That’s right: 2B.” She walked away.

    “Pale blue on top of dark green?” whispered Leanne distressfully to the woman next to her, who was machining tulle savagely. “That can’t be right.”

    The woman next to her was a Mature Student who was wishing to God she’d never got herself mixed up in this bloody thing under the delusion that she was Leading the Student Life, or Participating, or some such garbage. Well, Angie was okay, but this lot she’d got here—!

    “Yeah,’r’it is,” she said sourly in the vernacular. “The pale blue goes on top of the dark green. It’s the pale green that goes on top of that dark blue. They’re coded 1A and 1B, if ya can read. And get on with it, we’ll never be finished at this rate.” She resumed fierce machining of tulle.

    Angie returned to Georgy’s side. “Reasoning from insufficient data’s one of the specialties round here, too,” she said drily.

    “Yes! Or from insufficient—” Georgy stopped short, going bright red.

    “—brain cells: yeah, too right,” agreed Professor Michaels’s wife.

    Georgy choked helplessly.

    “You had lunch, yet?” asked Angie.

    “Um—no; but—”

     Angie looked at her watch. “We’ll take a break,” she decided. She blew on a whistle. “RIGHT! EVERYBODY OUT! LUNCH!” she hollered.

    Everybody stopped working and scrabbled for their purses.

    Except Maisie Pretty; but Angie was more than ready for her.

    “Everybody out: no exceptions, Maisie,” she said, going over to her.

    “But they’re nearly finished, dear: if I just—”

    Angie wrenched Adam McIntyre’s second pair of green tights out of her hand. He was getting three: Mac had never forgotten the time King Richard II had laddered his first pair irreparably and hopelessly torn the knee of an emergency pair, and had had to go on in a crippling pair of black ones borrowed off a hippyish girl who was one of the A.S.M.s.

    “Nope. No exceptions. Clear out, Maisie. –By the way, does Dennis Barlow know where you are?” she asked nastily.

    Maisie turned puce, avoided her eye, and saying sadly: “I could finish those in ten minutes or so, dear,” made for the exit.

    “Back in FORTY MINUTES!” roared Angie as the room cleared with remarkable rapidity. No-one headed for the female toilets at its rear, because Angie had learned to keep those locked: otherwise the silly moos went in there and started gossiping and smoking and you never got rid of them. And then they came out and started fiddling round with the costumes off their own bat—disastrous. The sewing ladies had to use the female toilets in the Old Block. Well, it was only a few seconds’ walk diagonally across the upper part of the quad, and not much longer if you went through the cloisters and along the corridor. Many of the sewing ladies who were new this year in fact didn’t even know there were toilets behind the Sewing, or Jazzercize, Room.

    Angie got her big key out. “Come on, Georgy.” They went over to the door. Angie cast an eagle-eyed glance round the room for ladies who might be lurking with the intention of doing things to the costumes off their own bat, and, leading the way outside, firmly locked the door.

    “It helps if you don’t give a damn about being hated, of course,” she conceded, straightening with a grin.

    “What? Oh—yes!” gasped Georgy.

    “I’ll never forget the year that stupid hen—what was her name? Well, doesn’t matter—brought those bloody scones and upset a pot of strawberry jam all over Portia’s best dress,” said Angie reminiscently.

    That had been before Georgy’s time. “Really?” she gasped.

    “Yeah.” Angie steered her firmly down the stairs and turned sharp left under the arch. “Come on. And the year I took over, would you believe they were actually smoking in the sewing room? With all that— It wasn’t tulle that year, it was miles of flannelette, that’s totally flammable. –Julius Caesar: togas,” she explained.

    “Help!” gasped Georgy, accompanying her automatically past the potting sheds.

    “Yeah. –That was quite a decent production,” she admitted. “Well—audible, anyway.”

    “Yes,” said Georgy in a hollow voice.

    Angie’s lips twitched. She shot her a quick glance and then said: “Bill sat in on rehearsals in the hall yesterday to get an idea of the audio needs.”

    Georgy swallowed hard.

    “He reckons,” said Angie Michaels detachedly, “that he’s going to have to stick a mike down Helena’s tits.”

    Georgy swallowed again. “She is pretty inaudible,” she admitted.

   “Yeah. –Oh, don’t worry, he’ll enjoy it,” she assured her.

    Georgy clapped her hand over her mouth. A squeak escaped from behind the hand.

    Angie merely grinned tolerantly.

    They were on the curb of the side street, just opposite the Student Union complex, when Georgy came to and said: “Where are we going?”

    “The Graduate Club. I need a drink after coping with that lot all morning.”

    Georgy began on a gasp: “Um—but I—”

    “Don’t worry, I’m a member, I can sign you in.”

    Georgy was a member because, even though she was of course entitled to use the S.C.R., she’d felt obscurely that, since she was a graduate, she owed it to the University to become a member of the Club rather than let a friend sign her in on the very rare occasions on which she went there. Well, Georgy didn’t have many friends. Most of the girls she’d known at school were married and immersed in their families, and she’d never been really friendly with any of them in the first place. And she’d always been too busy studying to make any close friends while she was doing her degree. She hadn’t been to the Club for ages. The food there, though excellent, far better than that available in the S.C.R., was too dear for one who was paying for her mother’s house to be painted this year.

    “Um, no, I’m a member,” she began awkwardly.

    Angie Michaels, mentally kicking herself, said quickly: “My treat.”

    “No, I can’t let—” began Georgy, very red.

    “Rubbish!” said Angie briskly. “You can treat me another time.” She led the way across the road without waiting for a reply.

    “Oh—well, then—thanks, Angie! I will!” gasped Georgy, stumbling in her wake.

    At the Club Angie led the way firmly into its up-market pink and mushroom Formica ladies’ room. Georgy followed thankfully, she was busting.

    Then Angie signed them in and they joined the queue. It wasn’t a very long queue, because of course Term hadn’t started yet, but the Club was usually quite busy because of its excellent food. Angie heaped her plate with huge amounts of cold chicken, potato salad, carrot salad, and lettuce and tomato salad. She quite fancied the hot chicken, but today it was really a bit humid, and after being shut up in that Sewing Room with tulle and sewing ladies all morning she’d decided that cold food might be a good idea. However, she said to Georgy: “Why not have something hot?”

    “Yes—um—I’m awfully hungry,” she admitted in a small voice.

    Angie had thought so: the girl looked half-starved, and come to think of it she never had seen her eat since the bloody production started. “Their hot chicken’s always good,” she said.

    Georgy plumped for the hot chicken with gravy and chips. And salad, not vegetables, the vegetables looked a bit boring (sliced zucchini with marjoram or sliced carrots with thyme) and also a bit overcooked, and besides, Mum’d have veges tonight, she nearly always did. Done in the microwave, which certainly did them nicely but made them boring. Mrs Harris had never latched onto the concept of putting herbs on them; besides which, she believed firmly, in spite of the fact that Georgy had always been slim as a lath, that butter was fattening. Well, it might have been: who could tell, Georgy’s physiology had certainly never had a chance to find out. Mrs Harris’s table always offered margarine, however, either in a hand-made pottery margarine holder that was just the right size and shape to take one carton perfectly, or in a turned wooden one that ditto, both of which had been acquired at Art For Art’s Sake in Puriri, which went in for that sort of thing. Georgy hated marg, it tasted exactly like coconut oil in her opinion. So she never ate it.

    In the Club proper Angie headed for an empty table. The place wasn’t very crowded, though Georgy noticed with a sort of sinking feeling that there were, as usual, lots of large, capable-looking, clean young men there in nice jeans or cotton trousers and neat shirts or nice tee-shirts (the later metamorphosis of Bill’s hoonish engineering students, mostly, though she had never realized this), and lots of ladies in their thirties in smart dresses or slacks and tops with those smart shoulder pads and lovely hairdoes and big earrings. Also as usual. There were also a scattering of librarians, a fair proportion of these indistinguishable from the latter group, and some of these looked at Georgy with interest, recognizing her as clever Dr Harris who’d ordered all those new books on Anglo-Saxon at the beginning of last year that they’d had to take an extra part-time cataloguer on for; but Georgy, who was modest to the point of self-extinction, would never have believed that these librarians had recognized her, and so didn’t look at them and didn’t see their hopeful little smiles of recognition.

    Suddenly Angie swerved in her pursuit of an empty table. Georgy followed her automatically, as she went up to a sturdy, merry-faced girl with brown hair in a long, untidy plait and said to her: “Barbara! What the Hell are you doing here?”

    “Aw, hi, Mum,” replied Barbara with neither interest nor surprize. “Having a good nosh-up, whaddelse?”

    Angie took a deep breath. Barbara would only be starting the third year of her B.A. this year and so was not entitled to be a member of the Club. She was lunching alone, so there was no question of any misguided fool (like her father, for instance) having signed her in.

    “Whose name did you sign?”

    “Dad’zsh,” said Barbara with her mouth full. She swallowed, and added: “He doesn’t come here as often as you, so I thought I’d give him a turn.”

    Angie took another deep breath and set her tray down.

    Georgy had come up to the table. “Hullo, Barbara,” she said shyly.

    Barbara was going to be one of Georgy’s Third-Years this year, having developed a totally unexpected passion for Anglo-Saxon last year that had thoroughly rocked her parents—up until then the only thing Barbara had ever been passionate about in her not-quite twenty years was her horse, a seventeen-hands, gangling brute of a thing. So if anyone was going to be shy—whether as of undergraduate caught out breaking the rules of the Club, not to say committing forgery, or merely as of undergrad to lecturer, it should have been Barbara, but no-one present was silly enough to expect that.

    “Gidday, Georgy: howsit?” she replied with what might almost have been called enthusiasm. “Take a pew.”

    Angie sighed. “Yes, sit down, Georgy. I’m going to have a lager; would you like one?”

    Georgy went very pink and hesitated.

    The Michaelses all ingested huge amounts of lager in summer without a second thought, but Angie recollected hurriedly that all were not as they. Some people were positively abnormal, indeed, and drank only soft drinks, which, according to Bill, were calculated to addle the brain, curdle the liver and soften—well, never mind what, in mixed company.

    “Or what about a shandy?” she added quickly.

    “I’ll have a lager,” said Barbara through a mouthful of chicken.

    “Um—well, I’ve never— I mean, what exactly is shandy, Angie?” asked Georgy.

    Barbara goggled at her with her mouth open and a forkful of chicken halfway to it.

    “Shut that flytrap,” recommended her mother briefly. “It’s a mixture of lemonade and lager, Georgy: it’s very refreshing, and not as alcoholic as lager,” she said kindly, purposely avoiding the word “beer” which, it was now blindingly evident, would make Georgy shy away from all offers of decent refreshment and probably—here Angie was getting carried away—run like a startled deer right off the Campus entirely.

    “Half an’ half,” explained Barbara, putting her forkful in her mouth. “Hoo swhee’,” she added through it.

    “Yes, it is sweeter than lager,” said Angie.

    “Oh—um—well, that sounds nice; thanks very much, Angie!” gasped Georgy, turning from bright pink to scarlet.

    “Righto then; I’ll get ’em,” said Angie, ambling off to the bar.

     Georgy subsided limply onto the chair beside Barbara.

    “Doeszh ’e wan ush tuhday?” asked Barbara with her mouth full.

    “Um—yes. Rustics at half past three this afternoon.” Barbara was a hoonish female rustic, they didn’t have many of those, but she’d come to collect her father from a meeting with Mac one time, and Mac’s eyes had positively glowed at the untidy brown plait, the round, cheerful, tanned face and what her parents were somewhat sadly agreed could only be classed as cheerful hoonishness.

    Barbara swallowed noisily. “Righto.”

    “Um—they’ll be doing your dress soon.” The Sewing Room was due to start on what Mac referred to as “the grotesques” next week; Barbara had possibly been classed with them so as to distinguish her from “the hoons”, all of whom were male, and required tunics, not dresses.

    “Potato sack, ya mean,” Barbara corrected her cheerfully.

    “Um—ye-es...” It wasn’t actually a sack, but it was hessian. Georgy said cautiously: “Barbara, I’m afraid it’ll be awfully scratchy.”

    “Aw, I’ll be right!” Barbara assured her breezily, waving her fork.

    “Ye-es...” Hunger overcame Georgy and instead of waiting politely for Angie, as she’d intended, she started on her chips. Ooh, they were good, especially with the gravy! “Don’t you think you’d better wear something under it, though?” she asked timidly.

    “Under what?” asked Angie mildly, setting a large shandy in front of Georgy, a large lager in front of the benjamin of the Michaels family, and a large ditto in front of her own plate. “I’m famished!” She sat down and attached her potato salad ravenously.

    “Her dress for the play,” explained Georgy.

    “Potato sack,” corrected Barbara, eating up the last of her own potato salad and looking sadly at her mother’s.

    “Oh! Well, Maisie Pretty reckons she’s going to line it for her, Georgy.”

    “What with?” replied Georgy cautiously.

    “Some of that grey satin lining material we bought for the grey fairies and Titania: don’t worry, there’s miles of it, that stuff’s cheap as dirt.”

    Georgy winced. She’d been wondering for some time how Livia Wentworth would take being dressed in something cheap as dirt that Angie Michaels had picked up from a marvellous cheap material shop she knew near Farmers’.

    Angie took a gulp of lager. “A-ah!” she sighed. “Titania’s Number One, I mean,” she said to Georgy.

    Georgy nodded. This didn’t mean Titania’s best dress, it meant the first dress she wore. She had a new dress almost every time she came on, Mac had said bugger the Three Unities, this wasn’t fucking Racine—rather loudly: Bill Michaels and Georgy were both very fond of Racine and had injudiciously let this become known. Mac was rabidly opposed to the French classical dramatists on principle.

    “Um—well, it’s a good idea, only—um—will she have time, Angie? I mean, what about her work?”

    Angie swallowed a mouthful of chicken. “She’s going to take it home with her.”

    “Oh—good!” Georgy was terrified of Professor Barlow. She sagged with relief.

    “Waste of time,” said Barbara briefly, scraping up the remains of her carrot salad noisily.

    “And Barbara,” said Angie in a slow and steely voice, “is going to thank her very nicely for doing it.”

    Barbara made a face at her, but conceded: “All right, I will.”

    “You’re right, there,” replied her mother mildly. “What’s the hot chicken like, Georgy?”

    “Haw-hush,” said Georgy with her mouth full.

    Angie understood this, being the mother of four, of whom Barbara was the benjamin but not necessarily the most hoonish.

    “Good. This is gorgeous, too.”

    “Always is,” said Barbara wistfully, having polished her plate. “Best nosh-up on campus.” She looked wistfully at Georgy’s plate. “I wish I’da had chips.”

    “Don’t,” warned Angie in an iron voice.

   Georgy flushed and didn’t offer Barbara any of her chips. She drank some shandy. Ooh, it was lovely!

    “You can have some pudding with us,” said Angie to her horrible offspring, relenting somewhat.

    “Ooh, ta!” replied Barbara fervently. “Um—c’n I have pavlova, Mum?”

    “Anything,” replied Angie, forking up salad busily.

    “Good. Um—I think I’ll just go and have a look—” She got up and headed purposefully for the desserts.

    Angie sighed.

    “She’s lovely,” said Georgy with a smile.

    Angie shuddered.

    “No—she is. So natural and—um—”

    “Hoonish.”

    “No! Unaffected!” gasped Georgy.

    “She’s that, all right.”

    “She was awfully disappointed when Mac said she couldn’t carry a silver bladder, only the grey fairies and Puck could have them,” she revealed, her eyes twinkling.

    “God,” muttered Angie, trying not to smile.

    “I like her. –We did some Anglo-Saxon last week—you know: when she came up on Sunday; and I think she’s going to be really good!” said Georgy with enthusiasm.

    Choking slightly, Angie gasped: “Are you trying to tell me that that—that female hoon is turning into a scholar?”

    “She’s not a female hoon!” protested Georgy, unaware that Barbara herself would have been totally unaffected by the appellation. “Um—well, it’s a bit soon to tell,” she added cautiously, “but on her showing so far, I’d say it’s a possibility. If she keeps it up.”

    “Christ!” said Angie. She had recourse to the lager. “It’ll kill Bill,” she announced.

    “No, it won’t, he adores her,” said Georgy, smiling at her.

    “Mm.” Angie ate some chicken. “Eat it up, don’t let it get cold.”

    Obediently Georgy got on with her lunch.

    Barbara came back from her foray and reported sadly that the pavlova was the dearest.

    “I said you could have whatever you liked, Barbara,” said her mother tiredly.

    Barbara’s face lit up, but she said cautiously: “They said if you have it with fruit salad it isn’t as much as fruit salad by itself.”

    “This is logical,” noted Angie acidly.

    “Mu-um! The fruit salad by itself is two-eighty! But with the pav, it’s two dollars!”

    “Plus the price of the pav, this would be, I presume?”

    “Yeah! Of course!” said Barbara crossly.

    “Um—how much is the pavlova, Barbara?” asked Georgy cautiously.

    “Um—four-fifty; but—”

    “What?” cried Angie. “Bloody robbers,” she muttered.

    “But it’s got strawberries and blueberries on it, Mum!” said Barbara impressively.

    “I could make three whole pavlovas for that,” said her mother heavily.

    “Yeah, but you never do!” cried Barbara aggrievedly.

    Angie pinkened a bit. “Um—no, I suppose I— Well, I’ve been awfully busy with this play nonsense just lately, dear.”

    Barbara winked at Georgy. “Neglecting her housewifely duties, eh?”

    Georgy choked but looked in a horrified way at Angie.

    “Cut it out,” Angie said mildly to her daughter. “You could make a pav, come to that, you’re home more than I am, these days.”

    “That oven hates me,” said Barbara sulkily.

    Georgy jumped. That was exactly how she felt about her mother’s oven!

    “Don’t be silly, dear, it’s just that you don’t get enough practice,” said Angie mildly.

    Georgy winced. That was what her mother said. But on the other hand, when she did offer to cook Mrs Harris always had some extra-special thing she wanted to use the stove for at that precise time. Always. Georgy had barely cooked a thing on her mother’s stove since her toffee-making days at about fourteen.

    “Anyway, you can have pavlova with fruit salad if that’s what you want,” said Angie peaceably.

    Barbara brightened. “Ooh, ta!”

    Georgy felt better. She ate and drank eagerly, vaguely reflecting that Barbara was lucky, her parents were... Well, in some ways they were just like everybody’s parents, weren’t they, but in others—though she didn’t feel she could define these—they weren’t.

    When they all were eating pavlova with fruit salad, she said cautiously: “Um—Angie?”

    “Mm-mm?”

    “You know those green tights for—for Oberon?” said Georgy in a voice that shook a little.

    Barbara gulped down a mouthful of fruit salad in order, apparently, to make a rude noise, so Angie said firmly: “That’ll do. What about them, Georgy?”

    “Um—those spangles!”

    “What about ’em?” asked Angie, trying not to laugh.

    “Well— I thought— Did Maisie do them right?” gasped Georgy, turning puce.

    “Exactly as in the sketch.”

    “But—they look rude!” gasped Georgy.

    Barbara made a strangled noise.

    “Shut up, Barbara! I think they’re supposed to, Georgy. Wasn’t Mac spouting some crap about wanting to stress Oberon’s and Titania’s sexuality, or something?”

    Barbara made a sick noise but Angie managed to ignore it. Just.

    “Ye-es... But— It’s not in the text!” gasped Georgy.

    Angie scratched her blonde curls. “No—but they are in the middle of a matrimonial row, aren’t they? It would sort of fit.”

    “Um—yes, I suppose they are,” admitted Georgy unhappily.

    At this Barbara put in unexpectedly: “Yeah. I was reading it. It’s good, eh? Just like that time when Dad got the new car and wouldn’t let you drive it for ages, Mum!”

    “Yes. Shut up,” said Angie.

    “Well, it is. I told Col and he said I was right!”

    “That’s a first,” muttered Colin’s proud mother.

    “Well, it is,” repeated Barbara firmly.

    “Um—yes. I always sort of feel they’re more human than the humans,” offered Georgy timidly. “Than the court ones, I mean.”

    “They’re more human than that Lysander type, anyway!” chortled Barbara.

    Angie gave a strangled cough: Bill’s claim was that they were gonna have to stuff the poor boy’s tights with cottonwool. “Um—yes,” she said weakly. “Um—well, what’s a few spangles more or less between friends, after all, Georgy? Besides, no-one’s going to notice Oberon’s spangles, once they get a load of that dress of Titania’s,” she ended on a grim note. She didn’t even have to say its number, she knew that Georgy would immediately know what dress she meant.

    Barbara gave an agonized snort.

    “If you’ve finished,” said her mother heavily, “you can push off.”

    “No,” said Barbara. She sat back and undid the snap fastener of her jeans.

    “He’s not really going to go ahead with that, is he, Angie?” said Georgy faintly.

    “Yes. It’s all cut out and everything. Even that idiot Kathleen woman that’s sewing it has mentioned that it looks a bit low.”

    Barbara let out an ecstatic whoop.

    “Surely Livia Wentworth won’t— I mean!” gasped Georgy.

    “Pooh, what about that foul soapie she was in?” said Barbara, recovering herself. “Dad reckons she rouged her nipples for that, he reckons they do that; he said—”

    “That’ll do!” said Angie crossly. “I noticed you were glued to it.”

    “Not as glued as Dad and Mark and Col. They all reckoned they were gonna have a good laugh,” she informed Georgy, “but of course they all watched it with their eyes on stalks, eh, Mum?”

    “Yes,” sighed Angie. “Have you finished?”

    “Yeah, ages ago,” replied Barbara in surprise.

    “Not— Oh, never mind,” said Angie tiredly.

    Barbara winked at Georgy. Georgy bit her lip. Barbara, unaffected or not, was of course far from stupid. Sometimes you forgot the—the chiel was watching you! She  felt a twinge of disloyalty at this ageist thought, but nevertheless had no strong impulse to suppress it.

    “Anyway, I suppose we can always put a bit of lace on it, or something,” said Angie.

    “What? Oh! Yes; ‘tuck’,” said Georgy thoughtfully.

    Barbara goggled at her but Angie said: “Yes. Very Jane Austenish. –Wasn’t Adam McIntyre in one of those TV versions? Quite a while back.”

    “Yes,” said Georgy in a strangled voice.

    “He was wet. I only watched it because there was nothing else on,” contributed Barbara.

    “As I remember it, you watched it because you didn’t want to get on with your Third Form homework,” noted her mother drily.

    Barbara merely replied: “Shit, was it that long ago? Hey, he must be ancient, then!”

    “Who?” said her mother faintly.

    “Adam McIntyre, of course! Anyone fancy a cup of coffee?”

    Ignoring this last suggestion, Angie: said faintly to Georgy: “Well, he’s more than not-quite-twenty and silly with it.”

    “We dunno that he’s not silly,” objected Barbara immediately.

    Georgy was now trying not to giggle. “Um, his mother did tell me— I think he’s thirty-seven!” she gasped.

    “That’s not young,” Barbara pointed out immediately. “How come you know his mother?” she suddenly spotted keenly.

    “They live next-door to us. You know: that nice man that spoke to us over the fence when you came round on Sunday: you said his eyes were like chips of sapphire.”—Angie choked.—“He’s Sir Maurice Black’s brother, he’s got the same eyes, too,” added Georgy.

    Angie recovered herself. “That’ll be the brother that’s a physicist, then?”

    “Yes.”

    “All the Black brothers are clever—a clever family, really,” she murmured.

    “Soppy Adam McIntyre must be a real disappointment, then, eh?” noted Barbara.

    Angie spotted that Georgy had gone fiery red. She and Bill had known Maurice Black for years; if Christopher Black had a tongue anything like his brother’s incisive one… Poor Adam. She was not, however, so naïve as to suppose that Georgy’s fiery blush was caused entirely by Christopher Black’s attitude to his son’s choice of profession, and she also thought: Poor little Georgy. Still, she’d get over it. Pity, though; she had a feeling they might need at least one member of the cast and crew to be capable of keeping their heads about Mac’s Big Stars.

    All she said was: “That’ll do. I don’t think I’ll have coffee, I’ve got to get back to it,” and got up.

    Georgy scrambled to her feet, looking at her watch. “Ooh, yes: I want to grab Pauline before— Um, thanks very much for the lunch, Angie, it was lovely.” –Here Barbara muttered sadly: “Wish I’da had chips,” but they both managed to ignore her.

    “That’s okay; see ya later!” said Angie cheerfully.

    “Bye-bye!” Georgy rushed off.

    “Fallen for soppy ole Adam McIntyre: thought she had more sense,” noted Barbara glumly.

    “You should talk! Chips of sapphire?”

    “That ole man’s a-ancient,” replied Barbara simply.

    “Are you taking up too much of Georgy’s time?” returned her mother in a hard voice.

    “No!” cried Barbara, very hurt.

    “Well, whose idea were these coaching sessions?”

    “Hers! I never even hinted!” she cried indignantly.

    Angie gave her a very hard look but Barbara just looked indignant. “Mm. Well, just see that you arrive at the appointed time, not an hour or so before it, and don’t stay longer than she said. –What did she say?”

    “Um, an hour and a half,” muttered Barbara, looking sulky.

    “This would explain why you left straight after lunch and didn’t get back until nearly seven,” noted Angie.

    Barbara went very red and glared at her. “We were talking,” she muttered.

    “You were, you mean. Barbara, Georgy has to have some time to herself; and she’s got all her preparation to do for next term: I don’t know how she’s fitting it in, Mac’s working her to death over this bloody play.”

    “All right, I won’t go next weekend,” muttered Barbara, looking as if she was going to cry.

    Angie put an arm round the solid shoulders. “I didn’t mean that, dear, don’t be silly. Just, um—well, just don’t outstay your welcome. I mean: you were away for six hours!”

    “I wasn’t! And anyway, part of that was travelling time!”

    Angie had friends not far from Kowhai Bay so she knew how long it took to get there from their place in her little car, which was what Barbara had used. About forty-five minutes unless you drove like a maniac, and she knew Barbara wouldn’t, she was very responsible on the roads. And while it was possible she might have got caught up in the Sunday drivers coming home— Yes, well.

    “Yes. Well, I don’t want you not to go, dear, I think she’s a very lonely girl,: she needs a few friends.” Here Barbara went very red: Georgy, after all, was a Lecturer. Angie squeezed her shoulders again and released her. “Just be sensible about it, that’s all. Come on, you want to show those idiot Third-Years of Mac’s how to stick spangles on bloody ribbon?”

    “Eh? Haven’t they got it right yet?”

    “No,” said Angie, leading the way out of the Club. “And what’s more, they can’t count up to six, they’re wasting spangles: can you keep an eye on them for me?”

    Barbara beamed. She had been intending to go over to the Library until she was due to rehearse her shambling-on as a female rustic, but she immediately gave that one away without a passing sigh. “Righto! I’ll settle their hash!”

    “No more than six per sash,” stressed Angie as they crossed the side street. “The spangles cost more than the ruddy ribbon did. Come to think of it, if you add them all up, they’ll have cost more than all the flaming tulle.”

    “Yeah. Tell ya what, I could salvage them off the ribbons, and then you could re-use ’em another time!”

   This was a definite thought. The Drama Club of course recycled and re-used its costumes endlessly, but there was a limit. You couldn’t dress fairies in frowst. As to where on earth Mac had got the money from, this year—!

    Mac had used a very simple tactic. He’d found out which day Polly, Lady Carrano, formerly merely Dr Mitchell of the Department of Linguistics and in fact usually seen around the university in that persona, had been due to see the Ph.D. student she’d been supervising last year, had gone over to the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics staff room at the salient time, and bearded her there as she was recovering from the Ph.D. student over a strong cup of the French Department’s coffee. Not failing to help himself to a cup of the French Department’s coffee, Mac had simply asked her for the money. After giggling madly and saying in a silly, high voice: “May husband and Ay will have to discuss thett, Meck,” Lady Carrano had simply written him out a cheque. Mac had disclosed this tactic to no-one. For one thing, it had been a measure of desperation. And for another—well, they were all happy enough to spend the money, bugger them! And for a third, he had a feeling he might need to use the tactic again next year: if he could persuade this year’s Bottom he was up to tragedy, and get in a bit of coaching, he had an idea he might give Othello a go. With really rich-looking Renaissance costumes and Persian rugs. Very Venetian. Only the wardrobe was a bit bare in the Renaissance department, and there was only so much you could do with old maroon corduroy and gold paint. But Polly Mit— Carrano could more than afford to shout them a few lengths of—um—furnishing velvet? Lovely sheen! Othello (if he did it) would be Mac’s swan-song and he had every intention of going out in a blaze of glory.

    Angie and Barbara dived down between the potting-sheds and Angie pointed out reluctantly: “They are using Liquid Nails, dear.”

    “No prob!” Barbara assured her fervently. “Meths’ll dissolve that! Yeah, tell ya what: I’ll salvage the sashes after each performance and take ’em home and soak ’em in meths! Whadda ya reckon?”

    Angie reckoned she’d do it in the garage, that was what she reckoned. Still, at least she hadn’t proposed doing it in the dressing-room, she was improving!

    “Yes, great idea, dear.”

    “And if it doesn’t work, or if it dissolves the spangles, or something—well, it’ll only be Dad’s meths I’ve wasted, eh?”

    Shaking slightly, Angie conceded this. Bill’s purse could stand it, the mean sod. After all he’d spent on that rotten car of his, he’d had the cheek to say she didn’t need a new dishwasher—when the old one made a noise like a 747 taking off and made the TV go berserk! “Um—what, dear?”

    “I said, I reckon that Livia female’s gonna look a proper fright, anyway!” Barbara was very red and cross.

    “Um—no-o, I think she’s very pretty… Why, Barbara?” said Angie weakly.

    “Well, I do! And she can’t act! And anyway, when I was in the hall the other day he was rehearsing Bottom, and the Titania understudy was late, and he made Georgy read it, and she was good, Mum!”

    “I’m quite sure Georgy would die of stage fright if she had to actually get up on stage, Barbara: she’s a bundle of nerves, you know.”

    Barbara looked sulky. “Well, I reckon she’d be better, see!”

    Actually, Angie doubted she could be worse, after that soap, but— Oh, well, perhaps the woman really could act, perhaps it had all been acting, or something. Rouged nipples and all. God knew Mac expected his actors to do weird and wonderful things: why should English television directors be any different?

    “Come on, spangles, ho,” she said, not attempting to argue or explain, or—anything, really, you got quite good at changing the subject, when you were the mother of four.

    “Yeah! An’ listen, I reckon I could—” Barbara advanced a theory involving recycling something unlikely, but Angie didn’t listen, she was worrying about that woman that was due to do the costumes for Cobweb, Mustardseed, Peaseblossom and Moth, and that had supposedly done the Knit-Wit course. By God, she’d better have done it, no-one else except Maisie Pretty knew how to sew knitted fabrics, and Maisie was supposed to be at work...

    The Art School was very silent. In fact if it hadn’t been for one of the girls from the Art School Library, who popped out of a door, gave Georgy a cheery wave and popped down a corridor, Georgy would have thought there was no-one in at all. She went upstairs and wended her way through a maze of corridors and over-ramps towards the studio where Pauline usually worked. The Art School had been designed in the Seventies and it had been built around, not over as was more usual on the City Campus, several large, scraggy puriri trees and three cabbage trees that flowered with an overpowering sickliness work every year and that the entire Art School, environmentalist principles or not, would now have voted overwhelmingly to chop down. Georgy couldn’t have told anyone how to get to the studio, she only navigated herself there by going into sort of an automatic mode. Possibly it had something to do with the colour coding in the corridors: when you got to the chocolate-brown walls and the vinyl changed from bright yellow to bright blue, you knew you were almost there.

    She opened the door cautiously. You never knew: one day they’d been welding in there and it had given her an awful fright.

    They were doing something with electrical stuff and it was hissing and that, but it wasn’t welding, it was that other stuff they did. Georgy approached the bench cautiously, avoiding the dangerous-looking canisters of gas and stuff with a nervous glance, and stepping carefully over cables and stuff. Before getting involved in Mac’s productions and being introduced to Pauline’s art room, she’d had no idea that art entailed so much—um—engineering stuff.

    “Hi,” she said in a small voice.

    Pauline looked up briefly from her soldering. “Hi, Georgy.”

    “Hi, Greg,” said Georgy timidly to the boy who was helping.

    “Hi,” he grunted, not looking up.

    Georgy felt rather relieved at this response, she’d had an instant’s panic that it wasn’t Greg, for where his hair had formerly been yellow on the top of his head and very short and black round the ears and at the back, it was now glittering silver all over.

    “See Greg’s hair?” grunted Pauline, bending over her work again.

    “Yes,” admitted Georgy in a strangled voice. “It’s very pretty, Greg.”

    “Yeah,” he said, not looking up.

    “Whaddaya reckon? Grey fairies?” said Pauline, not looking up.

    “Um—yes—but some of them are only children!” gasped Georgy in horror.

    “Nah! The adults!”

    “But—um—would they?” said Georgy in a trembling voice.

    “What I’ll say,” said Pauline, not looking up and soldering carefully: “I’ll say they won’t get the chance to act with Adam McIntyre if they won’t bleach their hair—see?”

    “Yes, I see,” she said, swallowing.

    “There’s millions more where those grey fairies come from, ya know,” Pauline assured her, not looking up. “None of ’em speak, or sing, or dance, eh?”

    “No.”

    “And most of the kids are gonna be wearing those little caps, anyway,” Pauline ended, ceasing to solder and stepping back and surveying her efforts with a frown.

    “What? Oh, the little grey fairies! Yes!”

    “That reminds me,” added Pauline, setting her soldering iron down carefully on its rest: “you know that girl Vicki with the legs?”

    “Vicki Austin—yes. What’s she done now?” asked Georgy resignedly.

    “Nothing. Well, nothing I know of. No, she reckons she knows a shop where ya can get those real keen antennae that were In a bit back—remember?”

    Georgy looked blank.

    Greg looked up suddenly and said: “Nodding ones.”

    “Nod— Oh! Really, Pauline?” she cried.

    “Yeah,” said Pauline pleasedly. Nodding.

    “Silver ones,” elaborated Greg.

    “Yeah.” Pauline pulled Georgy over to a nearby drawing-board.—Before meeting her, Georgy had always believed that only architects used those.—“See? I’ve modified the costume a bit.”

    “Ooh, yes!” cried Georgy with tremendous enthusiasm.

   Pauline beamed. Then she said anxiously: “Those mums all know that grey lining stuff has to be cut on the cross, eh?”

    “Don’t worry, Angie’s cut it all out for them.”

    “Thank God for that! Um—and they do know that the suits aren’t supposed to be tight?”

    “Yes. Well, Angie’s explained it to them,” said Georgy dubiously.

    “We can but hope, then,” said Pauline heavily, not reminding her what had happened with the costumes in that midwinter production when Mac had gone crackers and shoved that trail of little kids in so-called wrinkled peasant tights into Everyman, because she didn’t want to think about it. “And they do understand the buttons are supposed to be in the front and are supposed to show, do they?”

    “Ye-es... Well, they’ve all got a photocopy of the drawing, Pauline.”

    Pauline sighed.

     Georgy looked admiringly at the drawing. “It’s such a sweet costume, Pauline! Kind of a dear little sleeping-suit!”

    Pauline beamed.

    Georgy didn’t add that it reminded her of the little boy’s costume in that book Where the Wild Things Are that her littlest nephew was crazy about, because she thought she might be offended. Possibly, since Pauline, who taught the course on illustration, had got the idea from that book, this restraint was a good thing; or possibly not.

    “Needs a flap at the back, I reckon,” said Greg, suddenly coming up and looking over their shoulders.

    “It’s not a ruddy pantomime!” replied Pauline, offended.

    “No,” agreed Georgy pacifically. If only they could do a pantomime! It’d be fun, and it wouldn’t matter if half the cast couldn’t act. Only there were English Department funds in the summer production, and pantomimes weren’t literature. “Um—these antennae won’t clash with the elves’ ones, will they?” she asked timidly.

    “No: those all light up.”

    “Mm. Have you started on those?”

    Pauline shook her head firmly. “Nope. The minute Bill Michaels started raving about wires and batteries, I was out: O,U,T. The Engineering types can do them, and good luck to ’em!”

    “Anyway, they won’t nod. Ours’ll be miles more effective!” said Greg.

    Georgy perceived that certain demarcations, not to say rivalries, not absent from certain other areas of university life and not absent from past summer productions, either, were again coming into play, so she just said: “Yes. Nodding silver ones’ll look much better: the spots’ll kill the elves’ lights.” Not adding that in the Twilight Procession, so-called, there being virtually no twilight this far north, the elves’ little lights were going to look magical.

    Greg and Pauline then told Georgy, sort of antiphonally, just what modifications would have to be made to the little grey fairies’ caps in order to fit them round the antennae, given that bands on foreheads was how the antennae were held on; and Georgy, rather horrified, listened carefully and pointed out that this would probably entail removing and re-sewing all the little hoods, because those little caps were attached. And that material frayed like crazy. Pauline only replied Yes, and just as well she’d thought of it early enough, and could Georgy get Angie to ring all the mums and tell them? Georgy agreed faintly she could, but hadn’t they better get the antennae, first? According to Pauline Vicki was coming round later this arvo and her and Greg were gonna do that, as soon as Greg had finished this job he was working on.

    Then they showed her the soldering jobs they’d been working on. Greg’s was prototype shoulder wings. To be worn by tulle fairies whose waists were swathed in sparsely spangled sashes.

    “This one’s done: try it on, Georgy,” urged Greg. He settled the frame on her shoulders. The wings stood up appropriately, from little metal plates. A strip of metal joined the plates across the back, about two inches below the shoulders. Greg fiddled with a piece of string, eventually threading it through a hole in the front of one plate, leading it under Georgy’s arm, and tying it to the frame at the back.

    “That’ll be elastic, eventually,” he explained, doing the other arm.

    Georgy moved uneasily.

    “Jig up and down a bit, let’s see if it shifts.”

    Georgy jigged a bit, nervously looking for stray cables on the floor as she did so.

    “Ye-ah... Should be all right. The elastic under the arms won’t show under the lights,” he said.

    “Good,” said Georgy.

    “Bend over,” ordered Pauline.

    Georgy bent over. The wings held firm.

    “Stand up quickly.”

    Georgy raised herself abruptly. The wings wobbled a bit.

    “I think that’ll do,” said Pauline with a sigh of relief.

    “Yeah,” agreed Greg, beginning to liberate Georgy from the frame.

    “Um—it presses in a bit, don’t you think— I mean, after a whole performance?” she murmured, rubbing her shoulders.

    “Oh, this is only the prototype!” Greg assured her breezily.  “The real ones’ll have a bit of foam plastic under ’em, don’t worry!”

    “Good,” she said in relief. She was about to mention the dimensions of the other wings, only Pauline then produced what she’d been working on: Vicki Austin’s wings. Mac had made her design Vicki a special costume after he’d got a look at the legs: it was a sort of tiny, spangled white bathing-suit over spangled white tights. It would not look like something out of the Folies Bergère, as some had claimed—or not very much—because as well as the lovely legs Vicki had very small tits. Little pointy ones, and Mac had forbidden her loudly in front of the entire chorus of rustics and fairies to wear a bra under the costume. Vicki had only laughed cheerfully, she was that sort of girl. Her twin sister and Georgy, neither of whom were, had both cringed. Mrs Pretty would shortly be sewing the spangles onto the whole thing including the tights by hand. Having volunteered eagerly to do so. Unfortunately both Mac and Pauline had got carried away at the thought of tall, pointed and spangled wings sprouting from Vicki’s shoulders. Pauline had then had to go away and figure out the engineering principle that would keep these wings attached and aloft while Vicki tripped on and off. About a foot had got lopped off the projected height of the wings in the process, but they were still pretty high: about two feet.

    “Oh! It’s very light!” gasped Georgy, as Pauline urged her to lift the frame.

    “Yeah. Aluminium,” explained Pauline with a guilty glance at Greg. They’d had to buy the special aluminium solder out of Art School funds.

    Pauline then explained how the heart-shaped armour plating on the back, plus, again, elastic under the arms, and the elastic belt at the waist would keep the wings in place.

    “It would’ve been easier if we could have just had criss-cross straps across the front, but Mac went spare at the idea of anything that might interfere with the line of her breasts,” said Greg glumly.

    “Yes,” croaked Georgy, pinkening. “Um, won’t she be awfully hot with this on her back?”

    “No,” replied Pauline. “I’m gonna drill holes all over it. But I had to mould it out of one piece—see?”

    Georgy saw.

    “I’ve been reading up about birds’ skeletons, and the muscular support they have for their wings: it’s very interesting,” volunteered Greg.

    This explained all the big books round the studio that were open at pictures of eagles and seagulls and— “Yes,” said Georgy weakly.

    “Yeah: no wonder we’ve been going flaming spare trying to fit wings onto humans,” said Pauline on a sour note.

    “Too right!” he agreed pleasedly.

    “Yes. Um—Pauline?” Georgy croaked out her enquiry about the size of the waist wings.

    “Those ones have been a breeze!” replied the artist. “Just attach ’em to a belt—see?” She showed her the working drawing, which was nothing like the artistic drawing she’d shown Mac, Georgy, Angie, and the fairies themselves. Georgy goggled at it. “These are the specifications, they’ll all be the same size, I’ll write ’em down,” said Pauline, doing so. Georgy put the piece of paper carefully in the hip pocket of her jeans.

    “Don’t forget that bums stick out, anyway!” said Greg breezily.

    “Um—no. Oh, I see what you mean! –Help, those ones are huge!” said Georgy in a sort of horrified awe, staring at two huge pairs of waist wings propped up on a table by themselves.

    “Eh? Aw—those! Those are for Puck’s fairy, and Ginny. These very big butterfly ones are for Puck’s fairy: she comes on by herself, eh?” Pauline led her over to them.

    “They’re beautiful, Pauline!”

    Pauline beamed. “And these are for Ginny: they’re not finished, Greg’s got to give them another going-over with the air-brush.”

    “A bit of gold: She’s a gold and green fairy, eh?” said Greg, coming up beside them.

    “That’s right,” Georgy agreed. “What about her hair, though, Greg?”

    “The paint’ll be dry by then!” he assured her.

    “Ye— Um, yes. But her hair’s supposed to— I mean, won’t it get in the way of the wings?”

    “No. Well, yes. Look, hang on, yours is about as long as hers; let’s undo it, and I’ll show you.” Without further ado Greg began unplaiting Georgy’s long auburn hank. Georgy, who had never been in any of the productions she’d helped Mac with ever since her second M.A. year, and was therefore unused to having her body treated like an object by persons of any and all sexes, trembled a little as the boy’s hands touched her shoulders and back impersonally and spread out her hair carefully. He draped it over her shoulders, then gently fastened the wings round her slender waist. “Hang on,” he said, recuperating some of the hair and spreading it out gently between the wings. “There! –Looks ace, eh?” he said to Pauline. “She oughta be in it.”

    “Yes, what a waste,” she agreed. “Come and look, Georgy.”

    Greg and Pauline had installed a big mirror in their art room, they did a fair amount of trying-on. They led her over to it.

    “The wings sort of glimmer through and round the hair,” explained Greg earnestly.

    “Ginny’s gonna have a little light at her waist, that’s what this little socket’s for: Bill Michaels reckons he can fit a battery into it,” said Pauline in an unconvinced voice, gently removing a few strands of auburn that had got caught in the socket.

    “It’ll be lovely,” sighed Greg, looking admiringly at Georgy’s reflection in the mirror and forgetting in his enthusiasm to say “ace.”

    Georgy went very pink; but in spite of this embarrassment she did recognise that their admiration had nothing to do with her, Georgy Harris, as a person, but everything to do with an accident of colouring and Greg’s and Pauline’s appreciation of their own artistic endeavours.

    “Ooh, lovely! Heck, Georgy, why aren’t you a fairy?” gasped a new voice at this point, and a plumpish, panting woman of about Pauline’s age—thirty-twoish, older than Georgy—dumped a pile of plastic carrier-bags on a table and pushed a strand of her own, very unexciting, fawnish hair off her forehead. “This is Rewi,” she added to the company at large. “He’s gonna help.”

    Rewi was not, as might have been supposed from the name by those unacquainted with the customs of the Antipodes, a young bronzed god. Or even a round-faced, smiling brown-skinned person like the Carrano Group’s driver. He was a pale, plain, fawn-headed boy of possibly sixteen and none of the other three so much as considered the possibility that he might have a drop of Maori blood in him. Pakeha through and through, that was Rewi.

    “Hi, Anna,” said Georgy, smiling at her. “I suppose I’m not a fairy because I’m an assistant producer.”

    “Unpaid slave, ya, mean,” said Anna. “I got that felt, you were right, those clowns did have it in,” she said to Pauline. “And the beads—hey, Rewi, show Pauline the beads.”

    Rewi began delving in a plastic carrier-bag. No-one had introduced anybody to him, but this was customary, and he didn’t appear in the least embarrassed by it. Georgy, however, did feel embarrassed on his behalf, but she couldn’t see exactly how to manage introductions, so didn’t try.

    “I’ve done all the big flowers, now, come and see, Georgy,” said Anna, leading her over to the far side of the room and suddenly flinging a large, grimy sheet off a table.

    “Ooh!” she gasped. “They’re wonderful, Anna!”

    Making large felt imitations of the vegetable world was Anna’s profession. Though large felt rubber-plants and aspidistras weren’t quite as In as they had been a few years ago she still had a fair few orders to fill from various trendy offices in places like Parnell and the lower floors of the Carrano Building downtown. Nevertheless she went very pink at Georgy’s unfeigned admiration, and growled. “Thanks. Glad you like them.”

    “Ooh, yes!” sighed Georgy. “Ooh, look at the daisies! How did you do these pink tips, Anna?”

    “Air-brush,” said Anna simply.

    This was one of the expressions she was accustomed to hear from Pauline’s circle, so Georgy didn’t react to it. She bent over the bluebell with the drooping head, the yellow daisy with the drooping head, the perky, open white daisies and the shining faces of the open buttercups (all about three foot long, inclusive of their stems), and sighed.

    “Pick one up,” urged Anna.

    Georgy looked dubious. The flowerheads were all considerably larger than her own head. She picked up the bluebell gingerly.

    “Oh!” she laughed. It was as light as a feather.

    “Filled with Dacron,” explained Anna simply.

    Georgy didn’t know what that was but she nodded.

    “I reckon we oughta have more,” said Pauline firmly. “Some of the fairies in Oberon’s crew could have ’em, too. And what about—uh—thingy: Peaseblossom; couldn’t she?”

    There was a short silence.

    “She’s a ballet dancer: she has to sort of—um—jump,” said Georgy dubiously.

    “Yeah, but these are rilly light!” urged Rewi, suddenly entering the conversation.

    Anna rubbed, her nose. “Yeah. Um—well, what sort of a flower is it?” she asked Pauline.

    Pauline shrugged. “Mac reckons it’s a pea. Not a sweet-pea, a greenish-white flower. I just did what he said, for her bonnet.”

    “Yes,” agreed Georgy. “Um—it is a pea, Anna, a garden pea: they ate a lot of peas in Shakespeare’s time, at least the lower classes did, it was the staple diet all through the Middle Ages and right up to the Jacobean period. Before potatoes took over.

    They all looked at her dubiously.

    “That bonnet’s very sweet,” she said to Pauline.

    “Pease porridge!” exclaimed Rewi suddenly.

    “Exactly!” agreed Georgy, beaming at him. He looked a bit taken aback: five thousand watts from a raving auburn-haired beauty of a fairy clutching a bluebell more than half her own height would probably have taken anyone aback in a warm art room on a sticky, humid Wednesday afternoon.

    Georgy put the bluebell down carefully. “I’ll talk to Mac: I think these should be a feature of the whole thing, Anna.”

    Anna went very pink again.

    “Will she have time, though?” worried Pauline. “There’s the creatures, and the caterpillar—how’s that going, anyway?” she asked.

    “Good!” beamed Anna. “I finished it last night after you’d gone: look!” She threw back another sheet from the adjoining bench.

    They all gasped, and laughed.

    The caterpillar was about five foot long, stem to stern. It was a nice bright green (two shades) and plumply segmented. Its front part was raised, it wore a silly grin, and between its long, pale green, bobble-ended antennae, which nodded cheerfully in the wake of the removal of the sheet, it had a bright blue top-hat with a puce band round it. Pauline had got the idea out of Alice, and in fact the fairy who was slated to pull it along would, though wearing a tulle skirt, a spangled sash, and shoulder wings, have an Alice-like apron, a lace collar, and long blonde hair. Why not? It was a Victorian Dream.

    “It’s only sitting on its trolley,” Anna warned.

    The trolley was a tiny, flat cart with gold-painted wheels.

    “Oh, you’re right, Pauline: of course the wheels should show!” Georgy cried.

    “Yeah: Victorian nursery toy,” said Greg, enthusiastically if possibly not accurately.

    “I think we ought to let that very little grey fairy use his toy horse on wheels,” decided Georgy.

    “So long as it doesn’t look too authentic,” said Pauline anxiously. “It’s all supposed to look a bit unreal, you know, Georgy.”

    “Mm. Well, you can see what you think.”

    “Righto! Um, how old is that kid, anyway?”

    “Three.”

    “Shit, what if he goes to sleep?” gasped Pauline.

    “His mother’ll carry him: she’s a tulle fairy. Blue, I think. Is she? No, I can’t remember. Anyway, she’ll carry him, it’ll look sweet!” said Georgy, beaming.

    Pauline objected: “But the grey fairies are all in Titania’s crew and the blue tulle fairies are in Oberon’s!”

    “Oh. Well, she might be a green one. But it won’t matter: by the end of the show they’re all friends, you see, and the two crews—I mean trains—are all mixed up!”

    “Oh,” said the designer blankly.

    “Well, better get on with it!” said Anna cheerfully, removing her outer integument, a sort of floating floral tunic. Under it she was wearing a grey halter top which showed about eight inches of plump midriff above her faded navy cotton trousers. No-one remarked on this: Pauline was wearing a black bra and grimy magenta cotton shorts and Greg was wearing denim shorts and jandals. It was very warm in the studio.

    Anna sat down at her sewing-machine. “I’m just starting on the creatures!” she informed Georgy happily. “I’m gonna do the Dormouse first.”

    “That’s great, Anna. Well, shall I ask Mac if he wants more flowers, then?”

    Anna agreed cheerfully.

    “Whadd’ll I do, Mum?” asked Rewi.

    Georgy jumped slightly. She’d had no idea— How old was Anna, then? Hadn’t Pauline said they’d been students at Art School together? ...Heck„ she must have had him when she was about—well, say he was only fifteen, that’d still make it… Well, Anna couldn’t possibly be more than about thirty-three. Help!

    “I think you’d better start sewing the gnomes’ hats,” decided his mother.

    “Righto.” Rewi sat down at the other machine and picked up some scarlet felt.

    “Well—” said Georgy on a valedictory note.

    Greg grabbed her arm. “Not with those wings on, ya don’t, do you know how many hours’ work are in those things?” he said with a grin.

    “Oh—” Georgy was beginning in terrible confusion when the door burst open and Vicki Austin came in, flushed and laughing. The legs very much in evidence, as she was wearing very short white shorts and high-heeled gold sandals. Her lilac cotton-knit singlet was the same style as Georgy’s greenish one, but mysteriously, it managed to look incredibly trendy on Vicki.

    “Hi! I hope I’m not late!” she said with a laugh, pushing back a red-gold curl behind one ear.

    “No: early,” replied Greg, carefully unbuckling Georgy.

    “Oh—good!” she said with another laugh, “Hey: you look great, Georgy, you oughta be that speaking fairy instead of Twin!”

    “She can’t be everything: Mac’s already got her working like an unpaid slave,” said Anna, not looking up from her machine.

    “You can try your wings, on, Vicki,” decided Pauline, leading her away.

    Greg removed Ginny’s wings from Georgy’s back and took them carefully back to their table.

    “Um—well, see ya!” said Georgy brightly to the assorted backs and bent heads.

    “See ya!” they all said, not looking up.

    Georgy went out without pausing to think that her hair was all down her back.

    After a few absorbed minutes’ activity, Anna said: “If you ask me, that Mac needs his head read!”

    “Yeah: why the Hell didn’t he cast her as Titania instead of that Pommy tart?” asked Greg. “Hey: did I tell ya? Bill Michaels reckons Livia Wentworth’s had her face lifted and her breasts, um, you know: silicone implants.”

    “She looks it,” said the robust Anna with a sniff.

    “Yeah,” agreed the bony, rangy Pauline

    “Anyway, Mac must be blind!” decided Anna.

    “Yeah,” they all agreed, even Rewi, who was, in fact, sixteen.

    In fact Rewi then said in a careless voice: “Who is she, Mum?” and when they’d ascertained he meant Georgy and had told him she was a lecturer, had great difficulty in believing them.

    In the quad the carpenters sweated and cursed over the grandstand. The head carpenter, who was actually employed by the University Maintenance Department as a carpenter, also sweated and cursed over his moronic student helpers, most of whom appeared never to have had a hammer in their hands before. He got this thankless job every summer, but that didn’t mean he liked it.

    The cack-handed cretin and his ladder had disappeared. Several large lights were now in place round the tower, the arch, and the cloisters; and the carpenter’s next thankless task—though actually Bill Michaels would take him down the pub and pour whisky into him by way of thanks—would be to oversee the erection of the electricians’ stand to the rear of the grandstand.

    Bill himself was in the section of the cloisters directly above the arch. “The balcony”: they’d done that several years ago, and it hadn’t been a success, what production would have been with both hero and heroine totally inaudible? It was since that period that Bill had, off his own bat, got in touch with some old engineering mates who were now sound engineers for TVNZ and got hold of these dinky little body mikes... He and his Tech Boys had simply built the huge array of computer-controlled lighting- and sound-control gear that would shortly be hoisted up onto the electricians’ stand: it was no use waiting for Mac to tell you to do anything faintly smacking of the twentieth century, you just went ahead and did it. Then when he had yet another of his bright ideas you explained that maybe you could just swing that as a terrific favour if you and your Tech Boys worked all night and day for the next month, and by the way, when that vote for the new—whatever-it-was—came up in the Senate... (Bill’s ultimate aim was a linear accelerator for the as-yet unborn Nuclear Engineering Unit—well, every man had to have a dream.) Worked like a charm. Never a cross word between the English Department and the Engineers, at Senate level.

    “Go on, then: lower away,” he said to his Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering. Senior in name only: he was about thirty-five, a gangling, uncoordinated man with a nervous swallow. According to Bill, he couldn’t actually read, either. Not words. He could, however, draw anything that involved wheels, levers, pulleys and such-like and you could be perfectly confident that, provided you didn’t put an arsehole of a Third-Year onto translating the drawing into reality, the thing would go.

    The Senior Lecturer swallowed nervously. “Um—you wind this handle, here.”

    “Oi’ve ghot that, Paddy me bhoy-o!” Bill assured him breezily.

    He swallowed again. His name was Patrick, no-one ever called him Paddy, or even Pat, and though his surname was O’Reilly no-one in his family for the last four generations had ever laid eyes on Ireland, or wanted to. He wished Bill wouldn’t do it. He didn’t dislike Bill: he was an immensely fair man to work for, and very supportive of his staff in inter-departmental fights, or run-ins with the cretins in the Registry that tried to tell them that nobody could possibly use that many steel rulers and/or pocket calculators in a year, where had they all gone to?—and such-like. But as he didn’t have much sense of humour he never knew how to respond to Bill’s remarks.

    “Um—well, go on,” he said finally.

    “Not me, me bhoy-o!” returned Bill fervently. “This Mothu project’s all your show: you can have the honour.”

    While Patrick was wondering for perhaps the thousandth time since the project had started why Bill persisted in referring to it as “Moth-oo”—he got the “Moth” but why the “oo”?—one of his helpers said hoarsely: “It does work, Bill. We tried it out the window of the Department, first.”

    It was an old campus for the Antipodes, though sadly most of the buildings on it demonstrated only the history of New Zealand architecture since the late Fifties. 1959, actually, the pink-sided abortion that housed the Chemistry Labs had gone up, and now—it being full of expensive gas-fitting and plumbing—the chemists were stuck with it. Heh, heh. The Faculty of Engineering occupied a building about fifteen years old, facing onto the incredibly busy road which bisected the campus.

    To Bill Michaels’s certain knowledge the windows of the Mechanical Engineering Department directly overlooked this road from the fourth floor of this building. Tough tit if a little old lady had been walking underneath it, eh?

    “You got third-party Mothu accident insurance, Paddy?” he said mildly to his Senior Lecturer.

    From Bill, this was a reproof. Patrick gulped and turned scarlet. “I’m sorry, Bill!” he gasped.

    Bill hung over the balcony. “Yeah, well, better than lowering it right here an’ now—for Chrissakes nobody touch that lever, I hate to think of the damages we’d have to pay if— OY! POLLY!” he bellowed over the balcony. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY!”

    Below, a long-haired, curvaceous figure in pale green shorts surmounted by a white broderie Anglaise blouse had just come through the arch from the potting-shed direction, holding the hand of a very small red-headed figure in a yellow tee-shirt and white shorts. The taller one looked up and waved. “Hullo, Bill!”

    Patrick looked over the balcony. He swallowed.

    “Hullo, Patrick!” she called, waving.

    Now, to Bill Michaels’s certain knowledge, Patrick O’Reilly and Polly, Lady Carrano, were not only the same age but had known each other ever since their mutual days in Maths One—Polly was a statistical linguist, not one of what Bill referred to as “literary bods.” Why, then, had the joker gone approximately the colour of a par-boiled peony?

    Sighing at the ineptitude, not to say inanity, of his so-called senior staff, Bill leant over the balcony again and called: “Get out of the WAY! We’re doing a SPERIMENT!”

    There was a contralto gurgle. “Ooh, goody! Can we come up and watch?” she called.

    Bill groaned, muttering. “Better up here than down there squashed flat and letting us in for hundreds of thousands in— YEAH!” he bellowed. “COME ON!”

    They disappeared under the arch. There was a scrabbling noise in the stairwell.

    “Lotsa things!” said a little gruff voice.

    “Yes: tools, darling. Don’t touch, they might have electricity in them.”

    “Whassat?” said the little gruff voice.

    “That’s a brace and bit,” said the contralto informatively. “Like a big drill.”

    “Make a big hole?”

    “Yes.”

    There was another scrabbling noise, and Polly and Katie Maureen appeared, panting and beaming. The stairs were very steep. Well, they’d had to be fitted into the fake Victorian, fake tower.

    Bill greeted Lady Carrano with: “You must be the only Ladyship in the country that knows a brace and bit when she sees it.”

    “I’m not that dumb!” she replied with feeling. “How are you, Patrick?”

    “Fine, thanks, Polly,” he said, swallowing like anything. –Bill repressed a sigh.

    Polly asked nicely after Patrick’s family. He replied appropriately—though with a lot of swallowing.

    Katie Maureen was pawing at Bill’s hairy knee. The engineer was in his usual summer garb: grimy denim shorts. Today he did have a sort of tattered Thing on his upper body. Charitable persons of large mind and wide experience might have conceded that it could once have been a black singlet.

    He hoisted the little girl up and gave her a smacking kiss. “How are ya, Petal?”

    “Goodoh!” she chirped.

    Bill laughed, and kissed her again. “How are those bad brothers of yours?”

    “Those boys were very, very bad!” Katie Maureen informed him with glee.

    “Were they, just?” –She usually said that; usually a downright lie, mind you. He gave her the benefit of the doubt. “What’d they do this time, eh?”

    “Took alla water outa the pool,” she informed him pleasedly.

    “Eh?” he gasped. “Did they, Polly?”

    “Yes, the patio pool. Just as well nobody flung themselves in joyously without looking, wasn’t it?”

    Bill shuddered. “How? Thought ’is Sir-ship had it all locked up?” he croaked.

    “We think Davey stole Bob Grey’s keys. Well, one of them did. He spent the whole morning looking for them.”

    “Christ,” he whispered.

    “We still haven’t worked out whether they knew exactly what they were doing. Well, we know they broke into the pool control-room on purpose, they must have tried all the keys until they found the one that fitted. Then they went in and turned everything that would turn.”

    He shuddered again. “Sounds pretty deliberate to me.”

    “Yes. Well, they might have been trying to make a flood, rather than drain it. Anyway, they knew perfectly well they were being naughty.”

    “What about— You don’t still use that chlorine muck, do ya?”

    “No, we switched to the salt system ages ago. But they managed to get the lid off’ the container of that that had been opened, and strew it everywhere. Fortunately the other ones were still sealed.”

    “Those boys, they were very naughty! Bob gave them a big smack!” cried Katie Maureen ecstatically.

    Bob Grey was the Carranos’ driver, janitor, and general factotum. Not to say Polly’s right-hand man and mainstay in every emergency that arose in the mansion in Pohutukawa Bay. He was a respectable widower in his late fifties, otherwise Bill might have thought something of it, with Sir Jake being away so much.

    “Did ’e?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

    “Yes. I asked him to,” replied Polly composedly. “He did it very competently: he is a grandfather, you know!” she ended with a laugh.

    “Crikey, it sounds almost as bad as the time our Mickey blocked the toilet,” said Patrick in awe.

    “Nothing could be as bad as a blocked toilet,” replied Polly firmly.

    “She oughta know: one of her twins dosed one of theirs with Superglue,” explained Bill.

    Patrick gasped.

    “Johnny done that!” shouted Katie Maureen hoarsely.

    “Yeah, we know. Shuddup,” said Bill, kissing her forehead briefly.

    “It was a while back, now, but the elephant never forgets,” said Polly wryly.

    “I’m nodda elerphant!” she shouted.

    “No; I’m sorry, darling: it’s just a saying. Elephants are supposed to have very, very good memories. But I won’t say it again, if you don’t like it.”

    “No,” she said, pouting.

    Bill winked at Patrick. Patrick choked slightly.

    “Whass your name?” she said, fixing him with a hard grey-green eye.

    “Patrick.”

    “Patrick Smiff!” she said pleasedly.

    “No: Bruce’s little boy is Patrick Smith, that’s right, sweetheart,” said her mother. “But this is Patrick O’Reilly, he’s a very old friend of mine.”—She gave him a blinding smile. Bill noted resignedly that the poor goop went that par-boiled peony shade again.—“Patrick and I used to do very hard sums together, Katie Maureen.”

    There was a short silence.

    “Before I was born?”

    “Yes: a long, long time ago.”

    “Before Daddy was born?”

    Choking slightly, Lady Carrano replied weakly: “No, not as long ago as that.”

    “Oh. –Pummee down, Bill!”

    “Uh—righto. But you’ll see the experiment better, if I hold you. –Oy, that reminds me, yer Ladyship: didn’t you see the sign down below that said ‘Danger: Speriment in Progress’?” –Katie Maureen was struggling, so he put her down.

    “No: where was that, Bill?”

    “On the trestle we put across the flaming tunnel to stop cretin-heads coming through it!” he replied loudly.

    “Oh. Well, we did see the trestle, didn’t we, darling?”

    Katie Maureen replied vaguely: “Big tresser,” and toddled up to Mothu. She looked at it with tremendous interest. Patrick’s three large helpers watched her nervously. As was customary, Bill hadn’t introduced them. Not because Polly was Lady Carrano but because she was a lady—with a small L—and they were only students.

    “Only it didn’t have a notice on it,” Polly went on: “it had the man’s shirt on it, didn’t it, Katie Maureen?”

    “See a man dig,” she replied in a vague but obliging voice, staring narrowly at Mothu.

    Michaels choked. “See a— Ya don’t mean one of the flaming gardeners has— Look, Andy, for Chrissakes nip downstairs and tell ’im where ’e gets off!”

    “Righto.” With a last nervous glance at Katie Maureen, one of the large engineering students flung himself at the staircase and stumbled down it.

    “What is it?” asked Polly with interest, staring at the contraption.

    “Well, fundamentally, of course, it’s a pedal-car,” began Patrick.

    “Shuddup, ya raving ning-nong!” Bill ordered him loudly. “Guess!” he said to Polly, on the broad grin.

    Polly eyed it narrowly. Mothu was in its unpainted state, but... “I can see it’s for the production, I bet he got the idea from that Swedish Magic Flute,” she said. “Um—hang on... Crikey! I know: Mothu!”

    “See?” cried Bill, as Patrick swallowed convulsively and the boys choked.

    “Mothu!” cried Katie Maureen. She then gave a shaky bow and said: “Konichiwa, Mothu-san.” And something else that none of them understood.

    “What was that?” said Bill feebly.

    “Don’t ask me, her Japanese is miles better than mine, she’s soaking it up from Akiko like a sponge.”

    “What did you say to Mothu-san, Petal?” he said, kneeling beside the tiny figure.

    Katie Maureen replied with a horrible scowl: “Welcome in New Zillun’, you’re stupid, Bill!”

    “Christ!” he gulped. Patrick just gulped.

    “That’ll do, don’t call Bill stupid!” said her mother sharply. “Bill can say lots of things you don’t understand! Um—say something, Bill,” she ended limply.

    Grinning, Bill recited Pythagoras’s theorem. The engineering students sniggered.

    “You’re all STUPID!” she hollered.

    “Here, thadd’ll do,” he said, scooping her up. “We’re not as smart as you, that’s for sure. How’d you like a ride in Mothu?”

    “YEE-AH!” she roared, struggling madly to get down.

    “He’s not ready just yet, Katie Maureen,” said Patrick hurriedly. “We’ll have to test him first. Then you can go for a ride in him.”

    “I meant while he’s still on the G,R,O,U,N,D, fathead,” said Bill tiredly, setting Katie Maureen down carefully. “And while we’re on the subject, who was going on about anthropomorphism, and naming inanimate objects, a while back?”

    The students sniggered again. So did their peer, who’d just panted up the staircase. “I tole—him!” he gasped.

    “Good,” said Bill.

    “Look, who—or what—is this dratted Mothu?” said Patrick limply. “And for God’s sake, how do you spell it?” –Did this prove or disprove Bill’s theory that he couldn’t read words? Bill wasn’t sure.

    “M,O,T,H,U,” said Polly.

    “Big moth: come outa sky!” explained Katie Maureen.

    “Good an explanation as any,” noted Bill.

    “Yes, that’s right, darling: clever girl!” approved Polly.

    “Me an’ Akiko, we like him,” she said suddenly to a large, hairy student.

    Jumping and blinking, he replied weakly: “That right?”

    “You tape it?” said Bill keenly.

    “Yes,” said Polly.

    “Good, I’ll come and borrow it: make a pirate off ya pirate.” He winked.

    “Righto. –It’s a very old Japanese science fiction movie, Patrick,” she explained, taking pity on him. “It’s—well, it’d take too long to explain,” she added with a wary glance at Katie Maureen, “but sociologically, it’s absolutely fascinating.

    Bill added helpfully: “Full of echoes of Hiroshima. Yanks as big bad wolves. This Mothu, he comes out of the sky, all rightee—he’s what ya might call symboleek.”

    “That’ll do,” said Polly hurriedly. “Katie Maureen loves the bits with Mothu,” she explained.

    “I see,” said Patrick weakly.

    “Was that one of those ancient SF films late on Sunday nights?” asked one of the students. Polly nodded. “Aw, I musta missed that one. Hey, I saw that one with the pods, though,” he said, brightening. “That was ace, eh?”

    Bill shut his eyes for a split second.

    “Yes. Quite a classic, for its time,” said Polly kindly.

    “Mothu gonna fly?” said Katie Maureen to a different hairy student.

    “Uh—” He looked warily at Bill.

    “Yeah,” he said, swooping on her, “but first you can have a sit in ’im, eh?” He popped her in him. It was quite easy, he was a twin-seater Mothu. Probably a trainer, Bill had explained earlier, but various assorted cretin-heads and fatheads hadn’t got it. “Twin-seater,” he said to Polly. “Probably a trainer Mothu, eh?”

    She gave a contralto gurgle. Bill regarded her with undisguised approval.

    The adults watched as Katie Maureen “drove” Mothu happily for some time, peddling madly on the pedals that were about ten inches off the ground. Her legs weren’t quite long enough to reach them from a sitting position, but she was an experienced stealer of her brothers’ pedal-cars, and stood up on them. It took a terrific lot of energy and her face got very red, but only the students started to look worried about this.

    “That’ll do,” said Bill at last. “Patrick has to do some work on him, now.”

    “Aw-wuh,” she said sadly, patting him, and panting. “Pummee down!” she gasped as Bill picked her up.

    “Yes—um—do, Bill, I think she has to—um—B,O,W,” said Polly in a weak voice.

    Bill did. She did

    “Whaddis she, a budding kamikaze?” he croaked. The students choked. Patrick smiled.

    “I think she might have, um… Well, what with the V,I,D,E,O, and the—um—S,H,I,N,T,O that she’s been getting off Akiko, and, um— Well, I think she might have developed a small C,U,L,T, there, Bill!” she gulped.

    “A Mo—” Bill broke off. “Boy, ain’t it teejous when ya gotta spell,” he noted. “A M,O,T,H,U  C,U,L,T?” he spelled tediously.

    “Mm. She always um—genuflects when she sees it on the screen.”

    “Gawdelpus,” he muttered.

    “Mummy, I been in Mothu!” she gasped, tottering over to her.

    “Yes: was it good, sweetheart?”

    “Yeah. Pick me up,” she ordered.

    Polly picked her up. They all watched with interest as Patrick fussed over Mothu.

    “Go ON!” said Bill loudly.

    “Yes.” He swallowed. “Um—just check down below, wouldja, Dave?”

    Dave peered over the balcony. “She’s right,” he reported laconically.

    “Right. –Up.” Patrick shoved a lever. “Turn the HANDLE!” he said loudly. One of the students leapt to obey. Mothu rose up with a graunching sound. The audience—well, Polly—perceived that it was linked by several long ropes to one of those things that lifeboats were lowered from, at this juncture.

    “Out,” said Patrick to himself: He pushed another lever. “TURN it!” he said. The student turned. The davits swung Mothu outwards.

    “Don’ drop him!” roared Katie Maureen. –Michaels choked.

    “No, he’s not going to, darling. He’s going to—um—well, he’ll lower him on the ropes and, um, then Mothu can pretend he’s flying,” said Polly, not in the voice of one, convinced that this was an engineering marvel.

    “Mothu fly.”

    “Sort of, mm.”

    They all peered over the balcony except the student at the handle. Patrick shoved a lever and said: “Down!” This time the student wound without being told to. Mothu descended with relative smoothness to the level of the top of the arch.

    “Yeah, them fairies’ll look good leaping out from there onto them paving-stones and saying ‘Here I am, yer Queenship’,” noted Bill acidly.

    “Um—well, it’s only a trial. We haven’t got much rope,” said the inventor.

    “Mothu! Don’ drop him!” wailed Katie Maureen, peering over the balcony from her mother’s arms.

    “Don’t drop her—shall I take her?” offered Bill.

    “Thanks, Bill!” panted Polly.

    Bill took her and held her very tight. “They won’t drop him, those ropes are very strong,” he assured her.

    Katie Maureen was unconvinced. “Mothu!” she wailed. “UP, UP!” she shrieked at Patrick. He blinked, and swallowed.

    “Yeah, I’d up ’im, if I was you,” agreed his boss. “Before there’s F,L,O,O,D,S of T,E,A,R,S.”

    “Yeah,” decided Patrick. “Turn it!” he snapped, having adjusted his lever.

    “Eh? Aw. Righto, then.” The student turned the handle. Mothu ascended, swung in, and was duly grounded—the Michaels engineering eye observing there were no glitches, and his students and subordinate all nervously observing Bill observing.

    “Mm. Not what you might call a magical moment,” Bill decided, as Katie Maureen, released from his grasp, tottered over to Mothu and patted him fervently, assuring him he was “all safe now.”

    “It’ll be lovely at night, with the fairies getting out of it,” said Polly loyally.

    “Yeah: onto them paving-stones.”

    One of the students began injudiciously: “We didn’t have enough—”

    “’Bout enough to hang yaself, I’d say,” observed his professor genially.

    Suddenly one of the others burst out: “Andy can’t multiply by four, ya see!”

    They sniggered and shoved one another.

    “Come on, darling, let’s go to the hall,” decided Polly, taking her offspring’s hand. “We might see the fairies with the silver bladders.”

    “Yeah! –I gotta big badder, Bill!”

    “Good on ya, Petal.”

    “Those bad boys took it!” she said with a horrible pout.

    “Uh—they would, eh?”

    “Not those bad boys: certain bad Tech Boys, Bill,” said Lady Carrano pointedly, “who disgraced themselves by having a big badder fight. During which Katie Maureen’s very own big badder was broken, wasn’t it, darling?”

    “Yes! They’re MEAN!” she shouted.

    “Horribly mean. But it was all right, wasn’t it? The nice man gave you another one, didn’t he?”

    “New badder.”

    “This ‘nice man’ wouldn’t equate to our old mate Mac McIntyre, would ’e?” croaked Bill.

    “Yes. Well, he more or less had to, we bought most of them.”

    “From a Porium,” Katie Mauri explained. “With Daddy.”

    “Mm. And Vicki: she found the big badders to start with, didn’t she?” said her mother.

    “Vicki’s gonna be a fairy!” she said to Bill.

    “Yeah: a pretty fairy, eh?”

    “So now we’ve got a garage full of spare bladders,” added Polly heavily.

    Bill rubbed his chin. “I geddit. This’d be Sir J. not doing things by halves, eh?”

    Polly gurgled agreement, wished him and Patrick a fond farewell, allowed her offspring to pat Mothu and then bow to him, only slightly rolling her eyes behind Katie Maureen’s back during the performance, and departed.

    After a certain pause, during which certain people looked at insufficient rope and mused a while, Bill said: “Yeah. Well, it works.”

    Patrick swallowed.

    Bill went over to the staircase. “Only get—your—fucking—security—tightened!” he said loudly and angrily.

    Patrick turned scarlet. “Yes. Sorry.”

    “Block off that bloody tunnel permanently!” said Bill.

    Patrick opened his mouth to say something about the Registrar and egress, and thought better of it. “Yes, I will.”

    Bill returned tightly: “By yesterday, preferably!” and stomped down the stairs. Quite a feat, in his rubber jandals.

    Silence fell in the balcony.

    Finally one of the students said weakly: “Well, it worked okay.”

    Nobody answered.

    After a considerable period Patrick said: “I’m not gonna ask who was told to check that trestle, or to put up the other trestle that apparently never got there. I’m not even gonna ask whose shirt that really was.”—The students gulped.—“But I am gonna say, if you wanna stay on this project, get—yourselves—TOGETHER!”

    Silence again.

    Eventually one of the students said timidly: “Who was that lady?”

    Patrick replied tiredly: “Does it matter? Wouldn’t squashing any lady and her little kiddy flatter than a beetle do?”

    The students gulped.

    “But if you must know,” said Patrick even more tiredly, “it was Dr Mitchell from the Linguistics Department.”

    More silence.

    Then one of them said: “Heck! Isn’t she the lady that’s married to Sir Ja—”

    “YES!” shouted Patrick. “AND GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!”

    They got.