Of Biffalo-Buffalo-Bisons

8

Of Biffalo-Buffalo-Bisons

    “Cor!” gasped Jill Davis, staggering back on her front path with her hand to her heart.

    “You can drop that—or I’ll drop you,” offered Adam genially.

    “Anything, anything! Only please can I have your autograph?” she gasped.

    “Are all your cousins this bad?” Adam said to the grinning Joel.

    “Brilliance runs in the family,” he replied smugly.

    Jill recovered herself. “How are you, Adam?” she said, holding out her hand.

    “‘Aw, good’, as they say in the vernacular hereabouts,” he replied, shaking it.

    “Catches on quick, dun’ ’e?” she noted to her cousin.

    “We ac-tors are famous for that, Jill,” he explained kindly, grinning all over his gargoyle face.

    “How’s your head, Joel?” Jill then enquired genially.

    “Almost acceptable: Melinda fed me on paracetamol and vitamin B tablets this morning,” he replied.

    “Better than Hers, then,” noted Jill. “OY!” she bellowed at the house.

    Something solid, square, blonde and greenish appeared on the front porch.

    “CUMMERE! It’s HIM!” bellowed Jill.

    Gretchen approached slowly, with her eyes screwed up against the glare and a hand on her forehead.

    “This is Gretchen,” said Joel simply.

    “It looks more like the monster from the Black Lagoon,” Adam replied with interest.

    “No. The Black Forest,” she replied in a strong German accent. “Gretchen Sachs.”

    “Joel recommends paracetamol and vitamin B for the head,” said Jill helpfully.

    “Ja, and then I cut it off,” she sighed.

    “Well, do it down on the compost heap where it won’t make a mess,” replied Jill heartlessly.

    “Yes: it’ll be biodegradable, too,” agreed Adam, holding out his hand. “Do you feel strong enough to shake hands, Gretchen?”

    “Ja; good morning, Adam; if I am better I am very pleased to meet you,” she sighed.

    “If she was betterer her syntax wouldn’t be worserer, neither,” noted Jill.

    “Cease these non-Chomskian utterances, Jill,” sighed Gretchen.

    “Whew!” noted Adam. “I bet you’re not even up to ‘antidisestablishmentarianism,’ yet,” he added to Joel.

    “Nowhere near it: aren’t these varsity leckshurers wonderful, Adam?” he squeaked.

    Adam gave him a little mocking look. “Some of them: mm,” he murmured.

    “Ja: vhere iss Georgy?” asked Gretchen, peering into the morning glare and wincing.

    “She’s almost this tactful when she’s not hungover,” Jill assured them immediately. She peered at the car. “By God, is that Elspeth Macdonald?” she said in a hollow voice.

    “Er—yes. I see you know her,” said Adam weakly. “Er—she came to visit Georgy very early, annoyed Mrs Harris considerably, I’m unable to tell you precisely how—”

    “Vacuum-cleaners,” sighed Joel.

    “Of course: how could I forget? She told Mrs Harris her vacuum-cleaner was old-fashioned and that her, er, father’s de facto”—Melinda had now explained this usage carefully to Adam, and he and Joel had immediately adopted the expression, to the extent of trotting it out really quite gratuitously—“has one that is much more modern and efficient and, uh—”

    “Picks up leaves and liquids,” sighed Joel.

    “Quite possibly,” he admitted.

    “And this got up Ma Harris’s nose,” noted Jill.

    “Ja, it would: I see her down Puriri shops last veek, again she takes that antiqvated thing to be mended,” sighed Gretchen.

    “Well, there you are,” agreed Jill.

    “Quite,” said Adam, grinning. “And then Georgy’s pupil’s brother dropped her off,”—“He’s not hungover, note the possessives,” said Jill in an admiring aside; Gretchen just closed her eyes, pressed very gingerly on her eyelids, and winced—“and she—the pupil, I mean—incautiously mentioned ‘zoo’, and—”

    “And Elspeth was in there, boots and all, say no more,” sighed Jill.

    “Don’t go, Jill. Only if you stay, do not play that verdammt radio under my vindow,” ordered Gretchen.

    “Why would she do that? Apart from mere spite,” wondered Joel to the sky.

    “He’ll be a great Puck,” Jill assured Adam with a wink. “I’ve been weeding the herb garden, her room looks out onto it,” she said to her cousin.

    “Do herbs get weeds?” he replied wildly

    “Efferything does here, it iss New Zealand, and the rainfall iss— Neffer mind,” sighed Gretchen. “Ugh. I think I go in now, and consume Jill’s vitamin B. Enjoy your zoo—as much as possible.” She gave a faint smile and staggered indoors.

    “Is that natural disillusionment, or pure hangover?” asked Adam uneasily.

    “Both. She’s been to the zoo with Elspeth before,” explained Jill grimly.

    “Let’s stay here,” said Joel immediately.

    “That would leave your mate Adam and my mate Georgy to manage E. Macdonald and two small obstreperous boys, are you MAD?” his cousin replied.

    “The bloody dog isn’t coming,” Adam volunteered mildly.

    “You betcha boots, matey!” replied Jill fiercely.

     Adam grinned. “Well, are you ready, Jill? Er—if you and Joel could take Elspeth—”

    “It is a far, far better thing,” groaned Jill. “Hang on, all: I’ll get me hat.” She ambled into the house.

    “Why aren’t my cousins like that?” grumbled Adam.

    Grinning, Joel replied smugly: “Because your family doesn’t come from Bognor Regis, dear lad.”

    “Let’s swap,” said Adam glumly.

    Joel smiled. “No, I rather like my new-found cousin.”

    “What about the hung-over Valkyrie?” asked Adam curiously.

    “Quite a sensible woman. A bit on the macho side. I think they complement each other rather well. Incidentally, I rather think she drank so much last night because she was afraid she might not make a good impression on the unknown English cousin: it was rather sweet.”

    “On you?” gasped Adam.

    “Admittedly she’ll know better next time,” he sighed.

    “Well, if she was focussing this morning—yes.” He eyed Joel’s new shirt.

    “It’s going to be my best!” Joel held its skirts out delicately with a pleased expression.

    Joel’s new shirt had a white background but this was immaterial. It was almost completely covered with cabbalistic signs that said things like “Hollywood” and “Pop” and “Sunset Boulvard” (not “Boulevard”: “Boulvard”) and “Broadway” and “Pepsi”, and with representations of neon lights and McDonald’s stands and—suchlike. Something that might have been the Golden Gate was in there, too, and there were definitely several palm trees. All of these were in shades of—well, everything, really. Turquoise and orange, and pink, and yellow, and a particularly offensive green, and certainly scarlet— Anything that could be simultaneously fluorescent and hideous. Joel had got it, and would readily tell people so—though Adam considered this was self-evident—at the Emporium in Puriri. It was at least four sizes too large for him, and its skirts hung down almost to his knees, while its short sleeves hung down well below his elbows, but according to Joel this made it better. He was wearing it with royal blue cotton Bermuda shorts but mercifully (because the blue clashed with everything in the shirt) only about three inches of these showed beneath it. It went well with the green flax hat, too. And the luminous pink feather in the hat.

    Joel had got the hat at a Polynesian market in the south of the city that Christopher had taken him to yesterday morning, ostensibly in search of good cheap fish and good cheap watermelons, both of which they had found, but really, and Joel had perceived this quite clearly, to throw a scare into him and show him what it was really like in the Anty-podes by entirely surrounding him with enormous brown bodies, all of which overtopped his scrawny figure by about fifteen inches and outweighed him by about six stone. Especially the women.

    Elspeth had assured him that the shirt was ace, so of course that proved it.

   Joel had been thrilled; he had assured her fervently that her outfit was also ace. Elspeth had beamed. Adam had cringed: Elspeth’s skinny form was shrouded in— It was difficult to know how to prioritize these garments, and Adam hadn’t been able to, really—but possibly most notably, huge baggy shorts in fluorescent orange and yellow. The pieces of material that formed this garment were joined at unlikely angles, nothing so ordinary as your mere parti-coloured legs, oh, no. The shorts were in a heavy cotton and rather obviously new, and so stuck out at either side of her skinny thighs like—like nothing on earth, really. Her top garment was also loose, but limper, so it might have been older. It featured three shades: screaming lime, shattering pink, and, possibly because someone up there had taken pity on suffering humanity, black. Large abstract shapes, again flung together in no recognizable system; but after all, a certain amount of suffering was required for the good of the soul. It had a boat neck, so that the child’s skinny salt-cellars were clearly displayed, together with a very pretty little coral necklace. Mrs Harris had already asked her in a steely voice if her stepmother knew she was wearing that, dear, and Elspeth had replied scornfully: “’Course!” Not even Mrs Harris had been able to determine if that was a lie.

    Elspeth’s long, skinny legs were bare, but where a person of normal expectations—well, Adam—might have expected sandals or at least the endemic rubber flip-flops at the ends of ’em, she was instead wearing sneakers. Gi-normous, humungous— They were the largest sneakers Adam had ever seen on a female person under the age of—well, anything, really, and he’d been transfixed by them. The sneakers more or less followed the design of Joel’s shirt in that they had a white background. They were new this summer, Elspeth having grown out of her old ones. Only Mrs Harris had been able to respond to this conversational gambit, and even she had only managed: “I see,” in a hollow voice.

    The long, fine black hair had originally been flopping all over the place but Mrs Harris had settled that: it was now in a very neat plait.

    Beside Elspeth’s and Joel’s sartorial magnificence everyone else’s outfits paled into insignificance, really. Even Georgy’s nephews’. Denny, who was only four and, Adam had already decided, quite adorable, was wearing a washed-out tee-shirt that had evidently started off black (rather too big for him, but then, loose garments were preferable in this climate), over a pair of baggy lemon yellow and pale green shorts. Presumably his mother was colour-blind. He also had on a peaked cloth cap (with a neck flap) in two shades of blue. To this was affixed a strange olive-green plastic badge, about which Adam was not enquiring: it looked like a Ninja turtle to him, and he and Joel had been plagued by those all the way across America and throughout their stay in Hawaii. It had been funny to start with. Then it hadn’t been funny at all.

    Petey was older, he must have been at least six. He was in jeans, they kept slipping down below his tummy-button. He was pretty adorable, too. Missing front teeth and all. His tee-shirt was red—a washed-out red, true, but nevertheless a mistake, because his hair was a flaming ginger. Fortunately most of it was veiled by his cotton cap (peak and neck flap all present and correct), which was in shades of a curiously virulent yellow and a harsh green and was, Petey had not failed to explain proudly, an Australian cap. It had a small map of Australia on the front, surmounted by a large legend in gold lettering, “Australia”, so this could well have been so.

    Both Denny and Petey wore rubber flip-flops and both Adam and Joel would have been awfully disappointed if they hadn’t.

    Barbara Michaels was also shod in rubber flip-flops. With battered denim shorts, rather short, displaying a considerable acreage of hefty brown leg. She had accepted Georgy’s invitation to the zoo with alacrity and had explained cheerfully once the party was assembled that she’d had to come up early to Puriri anyway to groom her Dandy, who was being grazed not far out of the township, and take him for a bit of a ride. Joel had whispered faintly: “In those?” goggling at the shorts, and Barbara had replied blankly: “Why not?”

    Mrs Harris had then asked her if she’d had any experience in keeping an eye on young children, dear, and Barbara had replied breezily: “Nah. But there’s nothing to it, eh?” Mrs Harris had quite plainly concluded from this, though much too nice to say it, that she was a broken reed, then. Ngaio Cornwell—both the children’s parents had brought them round to their grandmother’s house and Adam was under no illusion as to why—had then dragged her eyes away from Adam and said faintly: “They’ll be okay, Mum, Georgy’s very good with them.” To which Mrs Harris had replied in a voice full of steely meaning: “I wasn’t thinking so much of the boys, dear.” When Joel had limply suggested his cousin might like to come and Elspeth had cried, once she’d made him divulge his cousin’s name: “Ooh! I know her!” and then added sadly: “She won’t let me bring Puppy, though,” Mrs Harris had hurriedly seconded the suggestion.

    Barbara’s upper garment was merely a pale yellow tee-shirt. True, it had spread, or possibly it had been an odd shape to start with, so it was very broad and loose but very short, displaying a couple of inches of brown Barbara above the waistband of the shorts. But its colour was not objectionable. And she was wearing a bra under it—a black one. One of these points satisfied one of Mrs Harris’s sartorial criteria, Adam had immediately perceived. He hadn’t even needed Barbara to say, as she did immediately they were in the car: “Why was your mum goggling at my tits like that, Georgy?” for this point to be confirmed. As Georgy, in a strangled voice, had done. Barbara had then laughed herself sick.

    Georgy herself looked adorable, or so Adam considered, and he was waiting for a chance to tell her so, in a loose, short-sleeved white broderie Anglaise blouse over stretch jeans with tiny zips up the calves. Adam was unaware that the blouse was an old one of Ngaio’s, who was several sizes larger than her younger sister, or that it had been the subject that very morning of a dispute verging on the acrimonious between Georgy and Mrs Harris. On the grounds that (a) Georgy couldn’t wear that old thing, (b) Georgy couldn’t possibly wear that blouse without a bra, and (c) didn’t Georgy care what anyone thought of her—meaning, what Adam McIntyre in particular but more generally the residents of Kowhai Bay would think of her going around almost wholly covered but bra-less, Georgy was in no doubt.

    The sub-text of this dispute had been not that Georgy ought to wear something much more respectable and enticing in order to catch Adam McIntyre, but that Georgy shouldn’t be going out with him at all, especially not right on top of going out with him and Those Carrano People. Where precisely Mrs Harris had got her picture of the Carranos from it would have been hard to say, though it was true that every year and often several times a year the up-market Metro magazine did its best to rake up the dirt about Puriri County’s richest residents. By the time that Mrs Harris had referred to them twice as “Those Carrano People” it had been perfectly plain to Georgy how she felt about them, so it hadn’t really been necessary to go on doing it.

    Mrs Harris had also, that morning, scoffed at the notion that Adam McIntyre wanted to go to the zoo with her grandchildren, and in fact had only been silenced on this topic by Adam’s appearing in person at her back door bright and early. In fact before Georgy had done much more than say she didn’t want scrambled eggs, she’d had far too much to eat last night, and she didn’t want muesli either, actually, she thought she’d just have a drink of orange juice, and just as Mrs Harris had started telling her that the way Those Carrano People lived couldn’t be healthy. Adam had immediately asked Mrs Harris, without being prompted, whether she thought the little boys would be allowed to come to the zoo today, so that had settled her hash on that topic. As Georgy was already wearing the blouse without the bra her hash had been settled there, too: she wasn’t the sort of woman who would tell her daughter in front of a strange man to put on a bra—not because the daughter would have sunk through the floor, but because decent women didn’t talk about things like that in front of strange men, whatever those people that Georgy met at the university might say or do to the contrary. Words to that effect, Georgy had heard it all a million times. She had looked at Adam with a sort of dumb gratitude, merely on account of his presence, and Adam had been deluded enough to believe it was because of him. And feel all hopeful about the day ahead.

    Incidentally, being a man of his times, not to say a man, he had definitely noticed the absence of a bra and much appreciated it: Georgy’s breasts were a very adequate size and a very nice shape. He’d looked at Georgy, rather flushed and warm-looking in her mother’s kitchen drinking orange juice in her broderie Anglaise blouse, and got rather stiff.

    The advent of Elspeth on the horizon had only slightly clouded it for him—after all, he could push her onto this cousin of Joel’s that Georgy seemed to know.

    Joel’s cousin was by far the neatest of the company—Jill was, it was quite evident, the sort of person who would be the neatest of almost any company. Pale blue cotton slacks, neatly ironed, a neat checked blue and white short-sleeved blouse which was so crisp it must have been a cotton and Dacron mix, and comfortable-looking tan sandals. When she emerged from the house she was also wearing a neat white cotton hat of the bowling variety. Possibly the green under-brim did nothing for her unremarkable lightly tanned complexion but the hat was certainly a practical accessory.

    “Hullo,” she said, bending down to Georgy’s window and smiling.

    “Hullo, Jill!” screeched Elspeth before Georgy could reply.

    “Hullo, Elspeth. You can come with me and Joel,” responded Jill.

    “Ooh, can I? Can I go in the front?” Elspeth scrambled eagerly out of the back of Christopher’s car.

    “No, Joel’s going in the front.”

    “Aw! I’ll be all by myself in the back!” she whinged.

    “Never mind, it’ll be less distracting,” said Jill with a wink at Georgy, not specifying for whom.

    “I’ll come with you, if you like,” offered Barbara, getting out.

    “Ooh, yeah!” Elspeth began to tell the unfortunate Barbara about her own prowess at dressage, show-jumping, indeed all aspects of the equestrian art. Barbara appeared unmoved.

    “Yes, go on, then,” agreed Jill. “It’s all right: Barbara knows her,” she said to Adam with a sidelong smile as Elspeth immediately dragged Barbara off to the other car.

    “Phew!” he said, sagging. “I’d hate to think we might be responsible, even indirectly, for ruining this Dandy creature’s mouth.”

    “I don’t think that’s possible. Not that Elspeth wouldn’t give it her best shot. But if that’s the horse Angie Michaels was describing to me with feeling not so long since, it’s a bony brute of a thing with a steel jaw.”

    “Does everyone know everyone else round these parts?” returned Adam weakly.

    “Definitely! This is the Anty-podes!” grinned Jill.

    “You’ve done it now,” said Georgy to Joel out of her window.

    “Who, me?”

    “Yes. Well, unless she caught it off Adam in the last five seconds. It’ll be ‘Anty-podes’ all over the S.C.R. now: all the New Zealanders whose backs haven’t been put up already by the Cambridge degree and the Cambridge accent will immediately go into high dudgeon!” said Georgy with a laugh.

    “Ooh, into high dudgeon with their backs up!” he squeaked.

    “Like you in that foul telly Hunchback,” noted Adam.

    “Darling! So you watched it!” he gasped with his hand to his heart. “I didn’t know you cared!”

    “I don’t: I was stuck at home with a tearing cold and incipient bronchitis, and the opposition were screening Piggy-Whiskers in full canonicals, and something possibly called The A Team.”

    He had pronounced it “the a”; Georgy went into a choking fit.

    “Christ, is that the sort of muck they’re screening at home? We’re better off here,” decided Jill.

    “No, we’re not: we get Piggy-Whiskers and The a Team, too!” gasped Georgy ecstatically.

    “Ah, but we don’t get Joel as the Hunchback!” Jill reminded her.

    “Ooh, no: that is a boon.”

    “Just for that, I won’t give you a lend of my best shirt!” pouted Joel.

    “Come on,” said his new-found cousin, grabbing his skinny arm: “steer that neon abortion over here. And for God’s sake be careful, we don’t want to be run in for blinding stray pedestrians before we’ve even started.”

    They went over to her car. Jill’s voice was borne on the breeze asking where in God’s name he’d got it, and Joel’s was borne on the breeze telling her. Jill’s choking fit was also borne on the breeze.

    “Small world,” said Adam, getting into the driver’s seat.

    “Yes!” gasped Georgy from the back seat.

    “Darling, in the wake of your delightful Barbara’s exquisite tact, don’t you think the least you could do is come in the front with me?”

    Georgy gulped. “Barbara wouldn’t—!” she gasped.

    “Of course she would, could, and did. I’ve never seen such elephantine tact.”

    “Rubbish!” said Georgy crossly.

    Adam twisted round with his arm along the seats and smiled at her. “Angel Georgy: the child turned positively puce and carefully avoided catching our eyes: what do you imagine she thought she was doing, if not exercising tact?”

    “Don’t call me that!” returned Georgy crossly.

    “Get in the front,” he said, lips twitching.

    Glaring, Georgy said: “All right, I will, but only because I get sick in the back seat, see!”

    She got out while Adam’s jaw was still dropping.

    “You didn’t feel sick last night, did you?” he croaked, as she got into the front passenger’s seat~

    “No, it was a very comfortable car, wasn’t it?”

    “Yes,” said Adam, sagging in relief. “They do design ’em like that.”

    “Mm,” said Georgy, struggling with the seatbelt.

    “Let me.”

    “No. Ow!” she gasped.

    “Let me, Jill’s hooting at us,” said Adam with a grin as Jill hooted at them.

    “What’s he done to it?” complained Georgy, surrendering the seatbelt.

    “Dunno, but Joel often has this effect on seatbelts, the hostess between—where was it? Somewhere foul and somewhere foul: Chicago and Los Angeles, I think—had to rescue him from one so as he could go to the lavatory,” he said, head down, wrestling with it.

    “You do say it, don’t you?” she said gloomily.

    “What? Ow!” panted Adam.

    “Lavatory.”

    At this Denny emerged abruptly from a peer-group interchange with his brother—they may have been pretending to be Ninja turtles, who knew? Or possibly Mickey and Minnie Mouse, or two space ships firing at each other—who could say? And said: “I been, Georgy!”

    “Yes: good boy,” she agreed.

    “So’ve I!” cried Petey immediately. “I allus go when Mum says.”

    “Yes: you’re a good boy, too,” agreed Georgy.

    The boys plunged back into whatever-it-was and Adam said: “U and non-U?”

    “Yes. You can reverse everything that book said and that’s what the nice people say here,” she said glumly.

    “Obscure, but I know what you mean.” He hauled on the belt. “God!”

    “The trouble is, if you don’t say ‘toilet’, they think you’re rude,” she said glumly.

    “Yes!” gasped Adam, suddenly looking up into her face and laughing. Georgy went very pink and looked helplessly into his sapphire eyes. Adam also flushed. He looked equally helplessly into her grey-green eyes.

    Jill blew a long blast on her horn and they both gasped.

    “Try it now,” he said weakly.

    “Um—thanks.” Georgy did the belt up. It was twisted, but at least it wasn’t strangling her, or so loose that she’d fly through the windscreen.

    Adam stuck his head out of his window and yelled: “All RIGHT!”

    Jill honked again, but this time as of one responding to his call, and pulled out slowly into the street.

    “‘Sire Roland, car sonnez votre oliphan,’” he muttered, following suit.

    Georgy swallowed. “Do you read Old French?”

    “A bit. –I was reading it, when I chucked in my degree,” he admitted.

    “I see. –Oh!” gasped Georgy, clapping a hand over her mouth.

    “What?” he said with a tiny laugh.

    “That—that recording. In English. It was you, wasn’t it?” she gasped.

    “Lord Roland, sound your horn!” said Adam in stentorian tones.—Georgy jumped and gasped.—“Yes, it was: have you got it?”

    “No, I heard it on the radio: at first I was cross because it wasn’t in French and then, um, I quite enjoyed it,” she finished in a small voice.

    “We did a whole series: it was great fun. Only a couple got recorded for posterity, though. Or for sale, if you like to put it that way.”

    “Yes!” gasped Georgy. “Um—what else did you do, Adam?”

    “We-ell... They were all mucked around a fair bit, I’m afraid. A sizeable chunk of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—did you ever see the film of that, by the way?”

    “No—what film?” asked Georgy in amazement.

    “Sean Connery in green whiskers, if I remember rightly,” said Adam thoughtfully. “They didn’t call it that, or anything like it. I only came across it by accident.”

    “So you weren’t in it?”

    “Lord, no. In fact I’m not too sure that it was Connery... It wasn’t Brian Blessed, was it?”—Georgy choked, so it was obvious they had a certain common cultural heritage.—“No-o... No, I think it was Connery. It was putrid but interesting, if you know what I mean.”

    “No,” said Georgy frankly.

    Adam’s lips twitched. “Don’t you enjoy really bad shows?”

    “No! And how can you, you’re an actor!” she gasped.

    “Dunno. Part of me cringes all over and another part of me sits up and laps it up and says happily: ‘Boy, this is really bad: this is a real doozy!’”—Georgy gulped.—“Well, why not? Dad and I both do the same with books, I’ve just taken the next logical step.”

    “Yes, but— What a waste of time,” she murmured.

    Adam laughed. “I don’t go out of my way to look for ‘em. They come to me, it’s not hard. –No,” he said, glancing at her with a glinting smile: “I usually manage to find one or two on the box when I’m home with a feverish cold, or something.”

    “Oh,” she said in some relief

     There was a short silence. “Do you get lots of colds, Adam?” she asked in a tiny voice.

    “God, I’m whingeing on like your typical Pom, am I? Mm, I suppose I do get a fair few. Mother says it’s a combination of draughty theatres, my overheated block of flats, and not enough vitamin C.”

    “That sounds fairly average,” agreed Georgy mildly.

    “What?” he said blankly.

    “For a mother!” explained Georgy, peeking at him with a little smile.

    “Yes!” he gasped delightedly.

    Her little hands were on her denim knees. He touched one fleetingly. “You’re delicious,” he murmured.

    “I’m not a dessert!” she replied crossly.

    Silence—apart from the Star Wars in the back seat. They followed Jill at a sedate pace along the highway.

    “What else did you do besides Sir Gawain?” she said abruptly.

    “What? Oh! Well, a bastardized hunk of the Nibelungenlied—you’d have hated it; topped off with a dessert of carved-up Roman de la Rose—don’t but me any buts, I’ve heard it all, and in any case I was merely the vehicle.”

    “All care and no responsibility,” she murmured.

    “Such has always been my motto,” Adam agreed firmly.

    Georgy smiled a little, but, he saw with a quick glance, she was also looking very thoughtful.

    “It is integral to the poor player’s position,” he murmured.

    “Mm,” she agreed, but she was still looking thoughtful.

    “Lions!” cried Denny.

    “Nah! Monkeys!” cried Petey, much louder.

    “No: first we’ll look at the birds,” said Adam firmly. “Lovely parrots—have they got parrots? I like parrots,” he said to Georgy.

    “So do I. Yes, they’ve got quite a few.”

    “Lots of keas,” said Jill helpfully.

    “Eh? Wot?” asked Joel gormlessly.

    “Native parrots—well, kind of: they’ve got huge beaks. They reckon they attack weak lambs,” said Barbara. “But Dad reckons they only attack your watch, and your hubcaps, and anything metal like a teaspoon or that little teapot Mum always takes with her when we go camping.”

    “How very clear,” said Joel cordially.

    “I thought that was wekas?” said Elspeth in confusion.

    “Nope. Well, wekas, too, they’re attracted to shiny things. Only they just toddle up on their pins and grab ’em. Dad reckons he’s seen a kea actually swoop down on a bloke’s watch—well, he was an American, it was a huge great hunk of metal, serve him right,” said Barbara, not lowering her voice.

    Adam looked round in a hunted way for possible Americans.

    “It’s all right: it’s Sunday, they’ll all be up at the Museum,” said Jill kindly.

    “Yeah, with the Japs,” agreed Barbara, not bothering to lower her voice.

    “Looking at the Polynesian artefacts!” gasped Georgy.

    Adam’s face was all smiles. “Yes. Well, shall we head for the birds, then?”

    Denny tugged at his jeans. “What?” said Adam, smiling at him.

    “Carry me,” proposed Denny.

    “Denny! Not already?” said Georgy faintly.

    “Yeah! Then we can go to the bisons!” said Petey, jumping a bit. “Come on!” He was about to race off, only Barbara grabbed him. Thus quite possibly proving the point she’d put to Mrs Harris.

    “I don’t mind,” said Adam.

    “He’ll need to be carried later,” explained Georgy.

    “He’s a baby,” said Petey scornfully.

    “I AM NOT!” he screeched.

    Adam took his hand. “No, of course not, Denny, you’re a big boy. Let’s walk to the—uh—the birds and the bisons, and, um, later on we could have our picnic, and then maybe I could carry you.”

    “Yeah. You can lift me,” he decided.

    Adam looked round weakly for help.

    “He means lift him up, so’s he can see!” explained Elspeth scornfully.

    “Oh, of course! Yes, Denny, I’ll lift you up to see the animals.”

    “Yeah. And the bisons!” he gasped, hanging on tightly to Adam’s hand and jumping a bit.

    “Bisons are animals!” said Petey scornfully.

    “Never mind,” put in Georgy quickly.

    Jill had acquired a map of the zoo. It was a fairly extensive zoo although, as the visitors would discover, not as large as some. Not as modern as some, either: many of the animals ranged in fields but there were a fair few still confined to old-fashioned cages. Now she reported: “Unless I’m holding this thing upside-down, the bisons are right at the far side.”

    “Naturally,” agreed Joel.

    “Is it possible to get to them without going past the—er, M,O,N— simians?” said Adam.

    “Not a M,O,N-simian within spitting distance of ’em,” reported Jill cheerfully. “In fact, if we go thataway”—she waved vaguely—“it doesn’t look like there’s anything else within spitting distance, either. Except a lot of trees.”

    “Shade. We’ll go thataway,” decided Joel instantly.

    “It’s not hot!” said Elspeth in amazement.

    Joel sighed. He extracted his new sunglasses from the hip pocket of his royal blue Bermuda shorts—more royal blue flashed in the harsh sunlight than was strictly desirable—and put them on.

    “Ooh!” gasped Elspeth, her jaw dropping.

    “Are you actually gonna wear those round the zoo?” asked Barbara with clinical interest.

    “Certainly.” Joel revolved blandly so that they could all get a good look at his sunglasses. Joel’s new sunglasses had shocking-pink rims. Heart-shaped shocking-pink rims.

    “Those aren’t for men,” said Elspeth with an attempt at scorn that came out rather weak.

    “So the lady at the Emporium assured me,” he agreed pleasedly.

    “Look, if there’s anything else you acquired at that dump, just drag it out and put it on now, while me senses are still numbed,” ordered his cousin.

    “Whetu’s got a pair of sunglasses like that. She bought them with her pocket-money. Her mother won’t let her wear them to town!” Elspeth informed them.

    “Whetu’s mother is evidently a woman of taste,” Adam said to Georgy.

    “Mrs Taylor? Yes, she is. She wears wonderful clothes—she’s very smart, isn’t she, Elspeth?”

    “Yes, she’s very tall,” agreed Elspeth.

    “Mm,” agreed Georgy. They smiled at each other.

    Unexpectedly Adam felt a spurt of jealousy. How ludicrous! Just because Georgy was smiling at a little girl from up the street.

    “Well, shall we go that way, then?” he said.

    “Yeah! Come ON!” yelled Petey, tugging at Barbara’s hand.

    “Might as well, what else are we here for?” agreed Jill, hefting the picnic basket she’d set down in order to consult her map.

    “Let me,” said Joel.

    “Famous last words,” warned Jill, surrendering it. “NO! This way!” she bellowed at Barbara and Petey.

    They all trailed off that way. Not very fast, it was very hot in spite of Elspeth’s assertion to the contrary. Added to which both Joel and Adam were now lugging picnic hampers. Added to which they had to walk at the pace of a four-year-old in rubber flip-flops.

    Oddly, as they went thousands of locals did not cluster round gaping and gasping because that was Adam McIntyre. Possibly this was because of Joel’s, Elspeth’s and the little boys’ outfits. Or possibly it was because the group as a whole looked remarkably like any suburban New Zealand nuclear family with a couple of odd aunties and uncles in tow, out for a nice Sunday visit to the zoo. Indistinguishable from all the other such groups. Adam’s hat might have helped, too. For besides his jeans and a pale blue short-sleeved shirt printed with a pattern of white frangipani which, in the wake of Melinda’s throwing it into the washing-machine with all the other cotton things in the hot wash, was rather limp and washed-out looking, he was wearing an ancient yellowed panama of Christopher’s. Reasonably broad-brimmed but not so’s you’d notice it. It had lost its original ribbon, so Joel had donated one of his trouvailles from the Emporium: a huge fish-hook with a large piece of cork and a few small red, brown and pink feathers attached. The brim was rather droopy and it was unlikely that you would have noticed that under it Adam was wearing an extremely expensive trendy pair of sunglasses. Just slightly ground to his prescription to improve his long-distance vision just slightly. He was wearing the shirt open (and his chest slathered in sunscreen cream) but at least half the male humans of any age, let alone his, visible at the zoo were doing the same, and no-one appeared to notice it was Adam McIntyre’s chest.

    “There!” said Jill proudly.

    “Just as well we brought her, neither thee nor me, Adam o’ mine, could possibly have navigated us here,” said Joel in awe.

    Adam ignored him. He hoisted Denny up. “There! Biffalo-buffalo-bisons!”

    Denny goggled in awe.

    Petey jigged up and down. “Lift me up! I can’t SEE!” he wailed.

    Barbara hoisted him up obligingly. The bison were confined to a huge paddock—there was something else in it too, only no-one was yet venturing a suggestion as to what they were—and most of them were grazing at a considerable distance from the old stone wall that sufficiently blocked the view from the eyes of anything under the age of about ten.

    Petey put his feet on the wall and sagged trustingly with all his weight against Barbara’s solid bosom. “Bisons,” he said.

    “I should have worn me American cowboy hat from Chicago, Illinois,” said Joel with a pout.

    “True, Chicago was once the great meat-packing centre of the Americas, and may still be for all I know or care,” said his cousin thoughtfully. “But cowboy hats?”

    “Someone had to herd the cattle!” gasped Georgy.

    “Aye!” gasped Elspeth.

    “I stand corrected,” conceded Jill.

    “Don’t; it’s a bright purple thing in some sort of artificial felt. With a silver hatband,” explained Adam.

    “That cowboy we saw at the airport in New York was wearing an identical one,” said Joel, pouting.

    “Was he a Midnight Cowboy?” asked his cousin kindly.

    “No, dear, I can spot those at a distance of five hundred yards with me eyes shut,” sighed Joel. “I’m tellin’ ya, he was a cowboy. Boots an’ all. Saddle an’ all.”

    “Was he?” she said simply to Adam.

    “Yes. The hat wasn’t identical: it was the same shape, I grant you that, but it was—well, very new and tidy, not straight off the lone prair-ree, but an acceptable pale fawn. And with it he was wearing boots, true: but also very ordinary fawn slacks and a heavy sheepskin coat.” He realized Jill, Georgy, Barbara and Elspeth were all goggling at him. “It’s midwinter over there!” he said, rather loudly.

    “Yes. Forgot. Been indoctrinated,” said Jill sheepishly.

    “Our International Airport’s very hot,” said Barbara dubiously.

    “Yeah: Mirry makes Dad take his jersey off in there, he hates it!” said Elspeth excitedly.

    They ignored this. Well, sometimes you had to: they’d discovered that by now.

    “So are the American airports. Well, it is the home of central heating. But he couldn’t carry his heavy coat, Jill, because he was carrying his saddle,” said Adam with twitching lips.

    “Now, LOOK!” she began.

    “He was, he was!” squeaked Joel.

    “Yes, he was, I’m afraid,” Adam agreed. “We couldn’t help staring.”

    “Yes, it ruined our disguise as seasoned international travellers,” agreed Joel sadly. “Not that Adam’s woollie hadn’t more or less done that already.”

    “You’ll have to translate that usage,” said his cousin briskly.

    “It’s a big woolly cardigan. He carries it in case the aeroplane’s draughty.”

    “Sometimes they are and you can’t see where the draught’s coming from,” explained Adam simply. “It’s to help prevent all those colds I get,” he added to Georgy.

    “Not listening,” ascertained Jill with a grin

    “What?” said Georgy, jumping. “Um, sorry. I was watching the bison.”

    “That’s all right: much more interesting than our babblings,” said Adam.

    “Yes,” said Georgy in a vague voice. “Look, Denny, there’s a darling little bison! I wish we’d come in spring, he must have been a baby then.”

    “Baby bison!” he said pleasedly, staring at it.

    “Mm. Baby biffalo-buffalo-bison,” agreed Adam, holding the hot, excited little body firmly.

    Jill leaned on the old wall. “Built like tanks, aren’t they? I wish they’d come a bit closer.”

    “Yes.” Adam took off his glasses whilst still grasping Denny firmly in his other arm. He squinted and peered, and then put his glasses back. “Look, what in God’s name are those other things in the field?” he said limply.

    “The brown ones or the dirty-white ones?”

    “Either! Both!”

    Elspeth had found the notice. “It says here they’re gazelles,” she reported dubiously.

    “If that grubby off-white creature’s a gazelle, I’ll eat Dad’s bloody panama!” replied Adam with a grin.

    Elspeth came over to his side. “That’s a goat!” she said with huge scorn.

    Jill and Joel broke into fits of helpless sniggers.

    “Yes—um—not that, Elspeth,” said Adam weakly. “Um—over there.”

    Elspeth goggled at him. “That’s a llama, there’s millions of them at the zoo!”

    “Yes. In almost every paddock: they breed like llamas,” said Barbara kindly.

    “I see,” said Adam limply. “Not worth mentioning, eh?”

    “Invisible. Like the sparrows,” explained Jill kindly.

    “There’s millions of sparrows, too,” added Elspeth helpfully.

    Adam gulped, but fortunately at this point Denny said loudly: “I can see a yama!” so he was able to agree with him and endeavour to correct his pronunciation. To no avail: either the child had an impediment or he was convinced they were yamas. Well, possibly they were, it must be a South American word—or Spanish, and if it was...

    “Where to now?” said Barbara, lowering Petey.

    “This way!” he screeched.

    Joel wrenched the map off his cousin. “No. –NO!” he screeched. “Oy!” he gasped, rushing after the vanishing Petey.

    “How in God’s name do you manage when it’s just you and them?” said Adam limply to Georgy, lowering Denny.

    “One in each hand,” she replied, lips twitching.

    “Self-evident,” agreed Barbara, hefting Joel’s abandoned hamper.

    “Who carries the picnic?” asked Adam limply.

    “Petey, he’s the biggest. But it’s usually only peanut butter sandwiches in a plastic bag,” said Georgy, face all smiles under her large straw sunhat.

    “Of course: method in your madness!” he said delightedly, beaming at her.

    Behind her very neat, un-trendy sunglasses, under the shade of her green-lined bowling hat, Jill observed this interchange of socially sanctioned face-stretching and thought to herself with considerable gloom: Yo, boy. Since Joel had told her exactly where and with whom Adam had been last night she also made a mental note to phone her old mate P. Mitchell Carrano the minute she got home and ask her what the Christ she imagined she was up to, encouraging Georgy to get herself mixed up with some vain pretty-boy from the big Offshore, who was quite evidently on course to break her poor little innocent heart and promptly vanish back into the big Offshore.

    “He’s eating a gray big fish!” squealed Denny, squirming like a fish in Adam’s grasp.

    “Yes!” he gasped, hanging on like grim death. What was the penalty for allowing small New Zealanders to precipitate themselves into the sealions’ pond at New Zealand zoos? Well, in the first place probably their mother tore you limb from limb and in the second—

    “Look!” screeched Elspeth as another sealion leapt after a flashing fish.

    “Ye-ah!” sighed Petey in ecstasy. In ecstasy even though his pose consisted of feet propped against the sturdy outer wire mesh of the sealions’ enclosure, knees bent, and bum jammed into Barbara’s crotch. Thus bringing his eye-level above the sturdy metal rail that would otherwise have abruptly curtailed his six-year-old’s view of the sealions doing whatever it was. At this hour, leaping after fish with even greater excitement than that of their audience.

    They were watching the sealions being fed not by design but by pure accident. Or luck, as Elspeth had put it. Or happenstance, as Jill had put it. Or serendipity, as Joel had put it. They’d got hopelessly lost on their way from the bisons to the birds and had emerged by the sealions’ pool at the crucial moment.

    “Arf! Arf!” barked Denny in huge sympathy—empathy, indeed—with the sealions.

    “This’ll broaden the base of your experience, McIntyre: you’ll give a much more sensitive and meaningful portrayal of Oberon after this little lot,” muttered Jill, not taking her eyes off the sealions.

    “Mm,” agreed Adam vaguely, not taking his eyes off the sealions.

    “What about me?” squeaked Joel, not taking his eyes off the sealions.

    “I’m sure your Puck couldn’t possibly get more sensitive or meaningful, Joel,” said his cousin kindly with her eyes on the sealions.

    Joel smirked. Then he choked. “You could take that two ways, if you wasn’t thick and had a real nasty mind!” he squeaked.

    Jill sniggered, but still without taking her eyes from the sealions.

    … “Aw,” said Elspeth sadly as the man threw the last fish from his bucket and walked off without a second glance. Not neglect-ing, however, as the eighty-odd little eyes watching him noted sadly, to lock the sealions’ enclosure firmly after him.

    “Look at him go!” gasped Petey, shoving his bum even harder into Barbara’s crotch as a sealion shot past them in the water.

    “Streamlined: aren’t they wonderful?” agreed Barbara.

    “Yeah!” he breathed. It wasn’t clear whether he understood the precise expression—he might have done, by six you’d been exposed to all sorts of things, some actually with an informational content, on both small and big screens if you’d been born in the mid-Eighties like Petey Cornwell and had pretty average parents like Petey Cornwell’s—but it was clear to them all that he understood the sentiment.

    Everybody else drifted away but their little group stood dreamily watching the sealions for quite some time.

    Then Petey made Joel look for the hippos on the map. They were quite near, Joel thought. Petey tugged him off determinedly.

    … “Piggy-Whiskers!” gasped Joel ecstatically.

    “Got the figure, too,” noted Jill. She had of course already heard from her cousin all about the dreaded tour with Piggy-Whiskers.

    “Yeah!” gasped Barbara, to whom Georgy had already purveyed the expression.

    The adults fell around laughing. Elspeth and the boys stared solemnly at the hippos.

    Then a very large hippo burst up out of the water with a mighty huffing sound and Denny gave a scream and buried his face in Adam’s shoulder.

    “Darling, it’s all right!” gasped Adam in horror. “He won’t hurt you: it’s all right, Denny, hippos do that, he was just breathing.”

    After a period of gasping, not to say huffing, into Adam’s shoulder while Adam patted his back gently Denny lifted a very red face and said bravely: “Just breathing.”

    “Mm, just breathing,” agreed Adam, straightening his cap. “All right now?”

    “’Es,” said Denny, sniffing a bit.

    Adam attempted gingerly to put him down but Denny clung fiercely to his neck and wailed: “No-o! Carry me, Adam!”

    So Adam carried him.

    Probably of those present only Joel Thring and Jill Davis were cynical enough to reflect that it added considerably to the disguise.

    “Phew,” said Jill, sagging against the outer rail that kept little fingers, not to say many not so little, well away from the keas’ cage. “Thought we’d never make it.”

    “Mm,” agreed Adam. “Sorry about the simians,” he said to Georgy.

    “That’s all right, I mostly kept my eyes shut,” she replied bravely,

    “Don’t you like monkeys?” asked Elspeth incredulously.

    “No,” said Georgy faintly.

    “Shut up, Elspeth. Look—see the beaks on these buggers? Do ya reckon they could tear a lamb apart?” asked Barbara.

    “Ye-ah!” gasped Elspeth delightedly.

    They goggled at the keas.

    Denny and Petey—possibly in the hope of seeing them tear a lamb part—also goggled at the keas. Craning their necks to do so, the keas for inscrutable reasons known only to those closely involved with the psittacine world were right at the top of their very high, airy cage, half—no, more than half—hidden by branches.

    Joel looked at the keas without interest. “Parrots?” he said to his cousin. “Thought parrots were vegetarians?”

    “Only effete, cage-dwelling ones like Aunty Emmy’s Captain Cutlass.”

    “Why bring that mangey stuffed object up in these carefree, sunny, semi-paradisiacal climes?” he sighed, pulling his sticky shirt delicately away from his ribs between thumb and forefinger.

    “It wasn’t mangey,” objected Jill mildly, looking up at the keas.

    “It was bloody mangey. Both before and after it was stuffed.”

    “Ooh, was it?” gasped Elspeth, immediately diverted from the keas.

    “Yes. Properly, by a taxidermist,” said Jill repressively, with a frown at her cousin.

    “I know what that is!” said Elspeth. She must have, for she then added thoughtfully: “There was one in Our Mutual Friend, wasn’t there?”

    Joel immediately said in the very accents of Mr Venus: “‘Get behind the young  alligator in the corner.’ –And judge for yourself!” he added with a laugh.

    “Was that you?” cried Elspeth.

    Joel looked behind him in a startled way.

    “Idiot!” said Adam, laughing. “No, not in the telly version, Elspeth. Er—was that on recently, here?”

    “Not really: they had a series of—of repeats of English serials,” explained Georgy weakly. “All winter. Um—well, most of the year, really. I watched the ones during the winter but in the third term I missed most of them, I had too much marking to do.”

    Adam rubbed his hands—since Denny was standing on his own two feet unaided gawping up at keas he was free to do so. “In-deed!” he said pleasedly. “They showed ’em jintly, sir, did they? Or, in similar words as some that was set to music some time back, sir, Joel and I looked sweet, upon the seat, sir, Of a bicycle built for two.”

    “Shut up, Wegg,” said Jill limply.

    Elspeth gasped.

    “It wasn’t him,” said Barbara quickly.

    “No, but that was good!” she said to Adam.

    “Note the astonishment,” said Jill drily.

    “Yes, some of us had never realized you could do character parts,” said Georgy, biting her lip.

    “Or, indeed, act,” elaborated Joel helpfully.

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

    “Pooh, you said yourself he was going to make a good Oberon and it was a Helluva—relief,” Barbara said to her, starting out loud and scornful and ending up sheepish.

    Shaking helplessly, Adam gasped: “Come on: let’s look at a few more birds and then we’ll think about lunch.”

    “Yeah!” cried Elspeth enthusiastically. “Can I have a Coke, Adam?”

    “Am I in charge?” he said wildly to Jill and Joel.

    “You’re the Daddy,” said a little voice unexpectedly.

    Adam gasped, and went very red. He squatted and put his arm around Denny. “Am I, Denny?” he said in a low, shaking voice.

    Joel rolled his eyes wildly at his cousin. Jill goggled at him incredulously. Joel shrugged.

    “Yes.—Can I have a Coke, too?” replied Denny hopefully.

    “Was—that—deliberate?” gasped Jill. She removed her sunglasses, produced a neat hanky from her pants pocket, and mopped her eyes.

    “No, but it pressed the right button,” said Joel in a hollow voice.

    Adam stood up with Denny. “Right: Coke all round!”

    “YAY!” cried the little boys.

    “Ace,” said Elspeth in satisfaction. “Come on: it’s this way!” She dashed off, with Barbara in close pursuit.

    “Ooh, it’s the Chinese hens down there!” cried Georgy. “Come on, Petey!” She caught her nephew’s hand and they scrambled to Adam’s side. Adam immediately reshuffled Denny on his shoulder and took her free hand, and they hurried off.

    The cousins looked limply at each other.

    Finally Jill said: “Strewth.”

    “Likewise, cor,” agreed Joel .

    There was a short silence.

    “Does she usually—?” he said tentatively.

    “No! Are you blind?” retorted Jill fiercely.

    “No. I just had a wild, mad hope,” he said sadly.

    There was another short. silence.

    “Well, does he?” demanded Jill angrily.

    Joel opened his mouth. Then he shut it again.

    “WELL?”

    “Ssh, you’ll frighten the lamb-killers. No,” he sighed, taking her arm and setting off after the group heading towards putative Chinese hens: “he doesn’t. Never with the innocent and unfledged. Excuse the avian metaphor. But no: never. Very much not Adam’s scene, we are only into hugely sophisticated ladies slathered in make-up, scent and bangles, and preferably guaranteed to improve our public image.”

    Jill’s mouth tightened. After a moment’s heavy breathing she said: “I see. Then can you tell me why the Christ he’s doing it?”

    “I’ve been wondering that,” said Joel affably. “I’ve come up with a three-pronged answer, and believe you me, you don’t want to hear any prong of it.”

    “Spit it out,” said Jill tightly. “If you want to live to see this bloody picnic, that is.”

    “Very well. Number one is lerve.”—Jill’s mouth looked grimmer than ever.—“Quite,” he said. “Number two is, nothing else was offering in midsummer in the Anty-podes.”—Jill took a deep breath.—“And number three is that a change is as good as a rest. And before you blast me, at least have the grace to recognize you immediately thought of all three the minute you clapped eyes on him!”

    “Yes. You’re right. I did.”

    “There you are, then,” said Joel.

    Jill strode towards the Chinese hens in silence.

    “And need I say, whatever happens, do not expect Adam to (a) do anything faintly smacking of good sense, or (b) stand around picking up any pieces.”

    “I know bloody well who’s slated for (b), you needn’t rub it in!”

    “Darling,” sighed Joel, “you mistake: you and me both. Only it isn’t gonna be me: come Hell or high water I’m going to be on tour with Piggy-Whiskers and let me tell you, that’ll be preferable to standing around mopping up Adam after he’s made a bloody fool of himself.”

    Jill strode on. After a while she said grimly: “Does he frequently make a bloody fool of himself over women?”

    “Oh, all the time. Adores the agony, as far as I can see. Which doesn’t mean that there’s any hope, as I think I might have hinted, of his doing anything sensible about your nice Georgy.”

    Jill strode on, mouth tight.

    After a while Joel said timidly: “I think we’ve gone past the Chinese hens. These look more like jagulars to me.”

    “What? Oh—bugger.”

    They retraced their steps.

    At the Chinese hens he said weakly: “What is there in these to rave over?”

    Jill breathed in heavily through flared nostrils.

    “All right, I never spoke,” he said quickly.

    Silence—except for Georgy raving over what might well have been Chinese hens, who knew?—followed by Elspeth raving over a moulting white peacock, followed by Georgy raving over some Guinea fowl and Adam sycophantically agreeing with her.

    “What?” muttered Joel. “In his book,” he noted sourly to his cousin, “Guinea fowl has heretofore been spelled D,I,N,N,E,R.”

    Jill breathed in heavily through flared nostrils.

    “I never spoke,” said Joel weakly.

    Adam lay on his back under a date palm with his hands linked behind his head. Denny, in a half-hearted way, was playing trains with a fallen unripe date in his chest chair—so you knew it really was a date palm. Adam had discarded his panama and his expensive sunglasses. He gazed unseeingly up into the palm.

    On his right Barbara also lay flat on her back in the shade of the palm. She had undone the waist button of her shorts—Adam was wondering idly, though not with much interest, whether they’d fall off her when she stood up—and discarded her very ordinary sunglasses. “Nice day, eh?” she said.

    “Mm,” he murmured.

    Barbara belched. “Hell, that champagne was full of bubbles,” she said by way of apology. “They never get ripe out here, it’s not hot enough.”

    “What?” said Adam sleepily. “Oh—the dates?”

    “Yeah,” said Barbara, yawning.

    “Christ, how hot does it have to be for them to ripen?” he muttered, easing his shirt even further open.

    “Hot as Egypt, I suppose,” said Barbara simply.

    “Uh—yes.”

    From Adam’s other side Georgy said abruptly: “We could go on the T,R,A,I,N in a little while. When everyone’s recovered.”

    “Is there one?” asked Barbara blankly.

    “Yes. Well, just a toy one, for the little children. It just goes right round the duck pond and so on. I think they call it the elephant walk.”

    “I wanna see the elephant!” said Denny immediately, ceasing to torture Adam.

    “Um—yes,” said Georgy unenthusiastically.

    “I like him!” he said earnestly, peering into her face.

    Adam turned his head and smiled. “So do I.”

    “We saw him do a gray big puddle!” said Denny enthusiastically.

    Barbara gave a smothered chuckle.

    “Yes, we did,” said Georgy glumly.

    “And the lion.”

    “Yes.”

    “In the same visit?” asked Adam, trying not to laugh.

    “Yes,” Georgy admitted, and Barbara gave a whoop. “The lion was impressive enough: he sort of lifted his leg,” she said glumly; Barbara choked. “Only the elephant—well, honestly, Adam, words fail me.”

    “He done gallons! Gallons an’ gallons!” said Denny, breathing heavily into Adam’s face.

    Barbara just lay there, laughing helplessly.

    Adam swallowed, looked into Denny’s little earnest face—he’d obviously been terrifically impressed—glanced incautiously at Georgy’s glum face, and just lay there, laughing helplessly.

    … “Three o’clock’s when the lions are slated to be fed,” announced Jill, looking down at them with a grin. “An hour to go!”

    Georgy gave a faint moan.

    “Where’s Elspeth?” said Barbara groggily.

    “Taken Joel off to the kiwi house. I’ve warned him it’ll be dead boring,” she said, sitting down beside them.

    “Well, where’s Petey?” gasped Georgy, struggling to a sitting position.

    “Calm down: he’s gone with them. Elspeth reminded him the kiwi house is next to the big tortoises: this was apparently an inducement.” She investigated Adam’s hamper.

    “He’ll try and ride them,” said Georgy in doomed tones, lying down again.

    “If they’re the tortles I think they is, they’re about the right size,” Jill pointed out mildly.

    “Yes, but last time he fell off,” said Georgy glumly.

    “He fell OFF!” shouted Denny, suddenly sitting up within Adam’s arm.

    “Did he?” he said groggily, blinking. “I thought you were asleep, Denny?”

    “You were, ya mean!” said Barbara immediately.

    Adam opened his mouth but Denny said informatively to Barbara: “Daddies always go asleep.”

    Adam flushed and smiled sheepishly.

    “You’ve been promoted, McIntyre,” noted Jill drily.

    “Well, Ross always does, certainly,” said Georgy weakly.

    “Worn out with two of them in the house,” agreed Barbara.

    “Stonkered on beer, you mean,” said Jill from inside the hamper. “Who drank it?” she demanded aggrievedly, sitting up.

    “I did, of course. Fulfilling me male rôle. And now I’d better reinforce it and have a leak,” said Adam, sitting up and not noticing that Georgy had gone brilliant pink. “Come on, Denny, you can come to the toilet with me.”

    Denny got up and took his hand. “Big men’s tawlet!” he said pleasedly.

    Georgy sat up looking worried and pushing her hair off her face. “Um—I can take him to the Ladies’, Adam—”

    “NO!” shouted Denny. “I wanna go big men’s tawlet!”

    “Um—well, have you ever done it before?” she said anxiously to Adam.

    “Every—day!” choked Barbara, suddenly going into a paroxysm.

    “Unless he’s a male camel,” noted Jill detachedly. “Reminds me, we haven’t seen them; Harris, I am counting on you not to let me go home without seeing a camel,” she added threateningly.

    “Uh—all right. Um—well, can you, Adam?”

    “I think so,” he said, lips twitching. “What exactly does it entail?”

    “Not letting him do it down his leg, you birk!” choked Barbara.

    “I DON’T!” shouted Denny, turning puce. “I’m FOUR!”

    “I’m sorry, Denny, I forgot for a moment how big you are,” said Barbara hurriedly.

    “Um—well, go on, then,” Georgy said weakly to Adam.

    “Yes: on your head be it!” said Jill brightly. “Or foot,” she muttered, sotto voce.

    Barbara collapsed abruptly onto the grass, hiding her face.

    “Bloody women,” grumbled Adam, taking Denny’s hand. “Come on, old mate—cripes, thinking a man doesn’t know how to have a piss!”

    They ambled away. Denny’s voice could be heard on the breeze saying: “They’re silly!” and Adam’s voice could be heard on the breeze saying: “Crikey dick, me old mate, are they what?”

    “He thinks it’s the local dialect,” said Jill in a hollow voice.

    “Never mind, he doesn’t have to do it for Oberon!” gurgled Barbara.

    Georgy sighed. “Just as well. I hope he— Oh, well.”

    “Like I said, on his foot be it!” said Jill brightly.

    Barbara shrieked and collapsed again.

    Jill eyed Georgy thoughtfully. “Bloody physical, with kids and animals all over the show, isn’t it?” she said conversationally.

    “Yes,” said Georgy shortly.

    Jill began to investigate her hamper. “Even Adam McIntyre has to piss; isn’t it wonderful?”

    “Shut up,” said Georgy in a stifled voice.

    “Polly ought to be here,” said Jill detachedly, producing a beer can from her hamper.

    “Why?” said Georgy, gaping at her.

    Barbara sat up, wiping her eyes. “Her kids love the zoo.”

    “That, too,” agreed Jill.

    “Stop it, Jill,” said Georgy in a stifled voice, going red.

    Jill took off her neat sunglasses. She raised her neat fawn eyebrows at her.

    “All right, he’s a physical being, I’ve never denied it!” said Georgy in a shaking voice.

    Jill replaced her sunglasses. She saw that Barbara was starting to look bewildered and rather frightened, so she said mildly: “Either I could drink this last lager, or someone could nip up to the kiosk and buy a lemonade and we could all have shandies out of my plastic cups.”

    “Shandies,” said Barbara, getting up and putting her sunglasses on. “Um…” She felt in her pockets.

    “Here,” said Jill, producing her wallet.

    “Ta.” Barbara wandered up the grassy slope towards the kiosk, slowly fastening her shorts as she went.

    “Why on earth did you have to say that?” said Georgy sulkily. “And especially about Polly, Barbara’s only a student!”

    “A student that didn’t get the drift of me remark,” corrected Jill.

    “Just as well. Anyway, I don’t believe half that stuff, Polly’s devoted to Jake.”

    “In her way: certainly,” agreed Jill. “I was merely citing her as an instance of one who thoroughly appreciates the—er—the physical side of men. Not to say of life.”

    “Don’t be disgusting,” muttered Georgy.

    “Look, Georgy, he’s an attractive and experienced male animal: I don’t know what anaemic little ro-mance you’ve got in mind for this summer, but you can bet your boots he’ll want more than a kiss and cuddle on your mum’s back porch!” said Jill strongly.

    “You’re as bad as HER!” shouted Georgy.

    “Oh, been having a go at you, has she? Well, much as I hate to range meself on the side of the Kiwi matriarch, I entirely agree with any caution she may have given you. Watch—your—step.”

    “You don’t know anything about it,” said Georgy, picking up a fallen leaf and destroying it with shaking fingers.

    “Uh—I didn’t intend to start this, but I might as well finish,” said Jill with a sigh. “It’s bloody clear he’s attracted to you—God knows why, but he is; but don’t go blowing it up into more than a—a physical thing, will you?”

    “I’m not,” said Georgy sulkily.

   Jill sighed again. “And if you do fall off your trolley and go to bed with him—and who could blame you, he’s the blue-eyed boy to end all blue-eyed boys, even I can see that—well, just don’t go all gooey and imagine it’s the end of the bloody world because sex was good with him.”

    There was a short silence. “What do you mean?” said Georgy crossly.

    Jill groaned and tore her hat off. She ran her hands through her neat fawn hair. “Just try and bear in mind that sex is not love and vice versa!”

    “I know that,” said Georgy, pouting.

    “Yeah, but do your hormones know that?” said Jill glumly.

    After a moment Georgy said: “What on earth do you mean?”

    “Never mind. Just repeat to yourself six times every morning before cleaning your teeth: ‘Sex is not love. Even good sex is not love’,” said Jill wearily.

    “You’re being disgusting,” said Georgy sulkily.

    “I’m being practical,” retorted Jill acidly. “Not that I expect you to take a blind bit of notice of me, of course.”

    After a moment Georgy muttered: “Anyway, Adam isn’t like that.”

    “Eh?” she gasped.

    “He ISN’T!” shouted Georgy. “You’ve been talking about him as if he’s a cross between a—a dessert and an animal! He isn’t! He’s a person!”

    There was a short silence.

    “Yes, to those lovely sophisticated scented ladies he sees too much of at home for his own good he probably is a person—or could be,” said Jill. “But to Anglo-Saxon lecturers from a different culture half a world away where he’s just a visiting fireman, he—is—not—a—person. Get it?”

    “I’ve always got that, I’m not stupid!” retorted Georgy angrily.

    “Good,” said Jill with a sigh. “Just keep bearing it firmly in mind.”

    Georgy stared sulkily at the grass.

    “Look: try thinking of him as—as a nice ripe plum that’s dropped unexpectedly into your lap. Or as a particularly sweet dessert, if you like—that’s a damn good image. A delicious blue-eyed angel-cake that you’ll eat and enjoy at the time and never give another thought to.”

    “Very funny,” said Georgy in a tight voice.

    “I mean it, Georgy,” said Jill as gently as she could. She hesitated. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

    “It’s all right. You were just trying to warn me,” said Georgy in a stifled voice.

    “Mm.”

     They both fell silent. When Barbara came up panting with the lemonade they both jumped. Barbara poured the shandies busily into three plastic cups and Jill and Georgy drank theirs politely without meeting each other’s eyes.

    “Here he comes,” noticed Jill in a remarkably neutral voice.

    “Mr Dessert,” said Georgy in a hard voice.

    “Stick with that, Harris,” advised Jill, getting up. She ambled slowly down the slope towards Adam and Denny.

    “What did you mean?” asked Barbara in a puzzled voice.

    “I meant Adam’s far too pretty,” replied Georgy in a hard voice.

    “I think he’s got quite a masculine face,” replied Barbara in surprize. “Very good-looking, but I wouldn’t call it pretty.”

    Georgy was silent.

    “Mum says he’s very insecure,” ventured Barbara.

    “Insecure enough to have the whole Sewing Room going totally silly and eating out of his hand two seconds after he set foot in there: yes,” agreed Georgy.

    “You can’t judge anyone by those silly moos!” gasped Barbara.

    “I’m not. But he plays stupid rôles all the time.”

    “Ye-es... I suppose in a way people expect him to.”

    “I’m sure they do,” said Georgy acidly. She got up. “I just don’t happen to be ‘people’, that’s all!” She began tidying up fiercely.

    “That was exciting,” sighed Joel, as the crowd in front of the lions’ enclosure began to disperse.

    “Ooh, yeah!” gasped Elspeth.

    “Good, eh?” agreed Barbara with a sardonic grin at Joel.

    Denny was being a lion attacking a piece of meat. “Grr-rr!” he said from Adam’s shoulders.

    “It’s the tigers next!” gasped Petey, about to make a dash.

    Jill grabbed him by the washed-out red tee-shirt. “Aw-wuh!” he whinged.

    “Come on, we’ll all go,” said Adam on a resigned note. “Tigers ho.”

    “We still haven’t seen the otters,” murmured Georgy sadly to herself as they went.

    “Where are they, darling?” asked Adam with a laugh in his voice.

    “Yes: pin-point them on the map, Georgy love, and we’ll go straight there!” gurgled Joel.

    “Ah; no: first pin-point where we are now, and then we’ll go straight there!” said Jill.

    “OY!” bellowed Barbara at Petey. “THIS IS A TIGER!”

    Petey returned. “There’s a jagular down there!” he gasped.

    “Have we come round in a circle?” Joel asked Jill in a puzzled voice.

    “Several, I think,” she replied with a grin.

    They watched the tigers being fed. So did five thousand of Rabbit’s friends and relations, but never mind, Denny got a good view from Adam’s shoulders.

    “I could do with an ice cream,” said Barbara wistfully

    “YEE-AH!” bellowed Petey immediately. “Can we have an ice cream, Adam?”

    “I wan’ an ice cream!” piped Denny.

    “Yes—hang on!” gasped Adam, as Denny knocked his hat over his eyes in his excitement. “Um—look,” he said, righting his hat: “we’ll never find our way back to the kiosk from here. We’ll go and find an ice cream shop as soon as we’re back at the car, I promise.”

    “Aw-wuh—” began Elspeth, but Barbara said loudly and cheerfully: “Sounds fair to me! Come on: what’s next?”

    … “CAMELS!” bellowed Denny from his vantage point.

    “YAY!” cried Elspeth and Petey, belting off.

    “Oh, good,” said Jill with a sheepish grin.

    “There’s a baby one, I think!” said Georgy eagerly.

    “Lovely,” replied Adam faintly. He had an antipathy to camels. He’d had to ride one once in a lavish mini-series designed for sale to the Americans, mostly shot in Morocco as far as the actors’ bits went, with the actual scenery bits shot in India. He had only had a small part, in fact his character died the death about a fifth of the way into the thing, so he’d certainly had no say as to whether or not he got on the brute.

    “Come on!” Georgy hurried on eagerly.

    “Come on, Adam!” screamed Denny, kicking his steed’s shoulders in excitement—and quite possibly from some sort of atavism that told him that was the way to make your steed gee up.

    Groaning faintly, Adam came on.

    “Don’t sit down!” screamed Jill.

    Joel had been about to get into the car. He stopped, and goggled at her.

    “The seat’ll be boiling hot,” explained Barbara kindly. Joel goggled at her.

    “Yeah, Mirry sat on one once, she only had her shorts on, she burnt her leg, she was furious, she said it was all Dad’s fault, he was an absent-minded clot, why hadn’t he put the rug on it!” confided Elspeth all in one breath. She panted.

    “Why didn’t you put the rug on it?” said Joel groggily to his cousin. He touched the seat very gingerly with his forefinger. Ouch! Christ! Bloody Hell!

    “Because I put it on the back seat, obviously,” she replied, removing it from the back seat. “All right, you two, hop in,” she said to Elspeth and Barbara. They got in, grinning.

    “Here,” said Jill, folding the rug and adjusting it carefully on Joel’s seat.

    “What about you?”

    “Fake sheepskin seat-covers don’t burn the bum, Joel,” she explained kindly, opening her door and inserting her form onto her fake sheepskin seat-cover.

    “Mirry made Dad get some of those. He said they were hideous and bourgeois and she said he was a snob and an idiot!” confided Elspeth.

    “I bet yours are real sheepskin, though,” murmured Jill.

    “Yeah: they’re nice. Dad said they’d get all dirty in two seconds flat but Mirry said hadn’t he ever heard of soap and water!” confided Elspeth, giggling.

    “They must be hot, though,” said Joel, giving in and merely sounding confused.

    “Yes. Hot and woolly. Hot and woolly is better than a burnt bum,” explained Jill carefully.

    “Or thighs!” added Barbara with a gurgle.

    “Yeah,” agreed Elspeth simply.

    In the other car, Denny whinged miserably.

    “Don’t cry, lovey,” said Adam, feeling his forehead anxiously. “He’s very hot,” he said to Georgy.

    “Well, it’s a hot day,” she replied, not quite meeting his eye. “He’ll be all right, he’s just tired.”

    “I wanna stay at the zoo-oo!” whinged Denny.

    “We can’t stay at the zoo all day, Denny: the animals have to go to bed soon,” lied Adam desperately.

    Denny snuffled.

    “I bet the lions don’t go to bed, I bet the lions stay up all night!” volunteered Petey.

    Actually he probably wasn’t far wrong; after sleeping all day—which was what the lions had observedly been doing until feeding time—they probably—

    “Um—maybe. But the camels and the, um, the bisons all go to sleep,” said Adam firmly.

    “And the llamas,” agreed Georgy.

    “Yes. So the people have to go home,” said Adam anxiously to Denny.

    “I WANNA STAY AT THE ZOO!” he screamed.

    “Just ignore him. He’ll be all right once we get going. The breeze’ll cool him down, too,” said Georgy.

    Denny sobbed.

    “Well—all right,” said Adam, feeling his forehead again.

    “I WANNA STAY AT THE ZOO!” he screamed.

    “Mm. T,I,R,E,D and T,E,M,P,E,R,” diagnosed Adam with a little smile. He withdrew from his extremely uncomfortable position of bent double with his torso in the back of the car, and stood up, stretching. He got into the driver’s seat and Georgy, who was already in the front passenger’s seat, said: “Are you sure you haven’t got half a dozen nephews and nieces back in England?”

    “No. I’ve got friends with kids, though: I’m quite an experienced surrogate uncle,”. said Adam with a little smile. “You didn’t think I was, did you?”

    “No,” said Georgy, not quite meeting his eye. “And hurry up.”

    “I have to follow Jill,” he explained.

    Georgy didn’t reply.

    “What’s up? Headache?”

     “No,” she said, sounding grumpy.

    “We’ll see the otters another time,” he said with a laugh in his voice.

    “Don’t be silly!” gasped Georgy, going red. “I’ve seen the otters loads of times!”

    “We never saw the penguins,” remembered Petey.

    “Um—no. Never mind. –The penguins are next to the otters,” Georgy explained weakly to Adam.

    “Another time, Petey,” he said over his shoulder.

    “Next Saturday!” proposed Petey immediately.

    “Uh—well, I can’t promise, Petey,” said Adam weakly: “your mummy and daddy might want you to do something Georgy and I might have to—um—”

    “Do some work at the big grown-up school,” said Georgy.

    Adam swallowed. “Yes. –Extraordinary euphemism,” he noted.

    “It’s one of Ngaio’s,” said Georgy glumly.

    “Ah,” he replied. “Um—well, next time I promise you can see the penguins.”

    This was apparently acceptable: Petey then declared that the lions were the best!”

    Georgy twisted in the grip of her seatbelt. “They were good, weren’t they?”

    “Yeah! They make faces, eh, Georgy?” Petey screwed his face up horribly.

     “Yes. Does Ginger make faces like that when he eats meat?”

    “Yee-ah... He does if it’s a big bit. Dad calls it growl meat, ’cos he growls!” he revealed happily.

    “They’ve got a pet jaguar,” said Adam faintly.

    “Idiot! He’s a cat!” choked Georgy.

    “Yeah, he’s a cat. He’s my cat,” said Petey firmly.

    “Yes, he was born at the same time as you, wasn’t he, Petey?”

    “Yeah,” he said pleasedly. “His mother’s black, she lives next-door, her name’s Mrs Tibbets,” he said to Adam.

    “I see.”

    “I think Mrs Tibbets is a lovely name for a cat!” said Georgy defensively.

    “Er—yes.”

    “So’s Ginger,” said Petey firmly.

    “Yes. And he is ginger, so it’s just right, isn’t it?” said Georgy with every evidence of simple satisfaction.

    “Yeah!” agreed Petey firmly. “It suits him, eh?”

    “Yes.”

    “You haven’t got a cat, have you?” Adam asked Georgy.

    “Nah! Gramma doesn’t like cats!” said Petey scornfully before Georgy could answer.

    “No, she doesn’t. Well, she doesn’t dislike them but she’s scared a cat would eat Billy—that’s the budgie.”

    “Ginger would eat him all up!” volunteered Petey eagerly. “He catches sparrows!”

    “Yes, he’s quite a hunter,” agreed Georgy.

    “Mrs Tibbets, she caught a big rat once!”

    Georgy winced.

    “Never mind that, Petey, I don’t think Georgy likes to talk about rats.”

    “She’s a sissy!” said Petey scornfully. –Petey was not, of course, the boy who had tripped over his own rubber flip-flops and, even though his jeans had protected him from much harm, bawled for ten minutes on Georgy’s shoulder.

    “Lots of girls are,” agreed Adam, lips twitching.

    “Sexist pig,” muttered Georgy.

    “Mother would like a cat, only unfortunately their fur brings on Dad’s hay fever,” he murmured pacifically.

    “Yes, he told me he had to go to the doctor for it,” she agreed.

    “Mm: some sort of flowering tree set him off, I think. Probably those bloody hibiscus bushes they’ve got all round the house.”

    “I never heard of anyone getting hay fever from them,” said Georgy dubiously.

    “No, well, could have been that stinking yellow thing right outside his bedroom window. What in God’s name is it?”

    “Um—a Queensland... I’ve forgotten,” admitted Georgy.

    Adam chuckled. “Do you like cats?” he then said.

    “Yes, I’ve always wanted one,” admitted Georgy sadly.

    “Me, too. Only it’d be cruel, in a city flat, and I’m away from home a fair bit, the poor little thing’d be lonely.”

    “Yes; and who would you get to feed it?”

    “Oh, my Mrs Mop’d do that—no problems, she’s got cats of her own. –What?” he said, glancing at Georgy’s face.

    “You’re deeply imbued with the British class system, aren’t you?”

    “I— Look, she calls me Adam and I call her Andrée, she’s a very pleasant Londoner of about my own age with a family of hopeful kids,” he said weakly.

    “I see: you only say ‘Mrs Mop’ in a casual sort of way to your social peers, or those you want to impress, is that it?”

    “All right, I’m a bloody snob!” he returned angrily.

    “Yes,” said Georgy simply.

    “Don’t pretend class distinctions don’t exist here!” he said angrily. “Christ, I’ve heard enough from Dad on the subject of Polynesians growing rusting Holdens in their quarter-acre sections to last me several lifetimes!”

    “It isn’t only Polynesians. Rusting cars are endemic to all state-housing areas. Though lots of Maoris and Islanders do live in state houses,” said Georgy calmly.

    “Well, there you are!”

    “Yes, but— Well, I still don’t think we’ve got the same attitudes.”

    “No. No, all right, I’m sorry. I suppose you get into stupid habits of expression that—that betray your unconscious assumptions,” he said sourly.

    “Yes. Only they shouldn’t be unconscious.”

    “Would you rather I was a conscious snob, Georgy?” he asked slyly.

    “Yes. At least it would mean you’d thought about it and—and hadn’t just drifted into because everybody else did it.”

    “Ouch,” said Adam sourly, wincing.

    Georgy was silent.

    Adam found he wanted to—to embark on some sort of self-justificatory, self-exculpatory speech—or—well, to burst into tears on her bosom and tell her what a weak character he was and how he often felt as if he was adrift in the universe with no purpose to his life and— Something like that. This wasn’t possible in the middle of a stream of traffic heading away from the zoo on a hot Sunday afternoon, so he didn’t say anything.

    Except, after a while: “Is every man and his brother on the bloody roads? It’s like Brighton on Bank Holiday!”

    “I bet you were never anywhere near Brighton on Bank Holiday—whatever that is—in your life,” said Georgy on a sour note.

    That seemed to settle that, really.

    “Was the zoo good?” smiled Ngaio, coming out onto her front verandah. The Cornwells lived in Pohutukawa Bay, which was, Adam had been surprized to discover in view of the fact that the Carranos lived there, considerably less up-market than Kowhai Bay. Considerably flatter, too, without the charming little steep side-streets like the one in which Jill and Gretchen lived. Or, indeed, like that Weka Street which linked Ridge Road and Kowhai Bay Road.

    Pohutukawa Bay was also, Adam could see now that it was daylight, a much newer settlement than Kowhai Bay: the gardens were pleasant but featured few well-grown trees of the sort which adorned his parents’ section, and at the back of the settlement—south, he thought—bare fawn fields sloped up to a belt of forest.—“Bush” Adam corrected himself in his head with distaste.—The Cornwells’ little wooden bungalow, to Adam’s unexpressed disappointment, was in Moore Street. He’d been hoping it would be another Maori name so that he could throw Georgy into delicious confusion by asking her what it meant. “Pohutukawa” and “kowhai” were both the names of trees but Georgy didn’t know what they actually meant—delicious confusion; and “weka”, Adam had worked out for himself at a certain point at the zoo, must be the name of a bird. He was working round to asking her what “puriri” meant.

    Petey assured his mother eagerly that the zoo had been ace and that Adam had taken them to see the lions being fed. And the sealions!

    “Ooh, the sealions, too, eh?” said Ross Cornwell, wandering out onto the verandah in nothing but a pair of yellow shorts with a cold glass of beer in his hand. Adam shot him a jaundiced look. He winked and said to him: “Your stock will ’a’ gone up.”

    “More luck than judgement,” replied Adam, grinning.

    “Yeah. We went there deliberately once to see the bl— to see the sealions being fed,” he said with a wary glance at his offspring, “and got there in stacks of time, and then wandered round for hours trying to find the things!”

    “Yeah, Dad couldn’t find them!” Petey confirmed scornfully.

    “That’ll do,” said his mother weakly.

    “Adam had a map!” Petey informed them scornfully.

    “Sound man,” replied his father, winking at Adam again.

    “Didn’t have otters on it, though,” said Adam, grinning again

    “Crikey, you’ll be for it: Georgy always has to see the otters,” said Georgy’s brother-in-law immediately.

    “That’ll do!” said Ngaio crossly, as Adam choked and Georgy glared. “Don’t exaggerate. –I’ll take him, Adam,” she added, as Adam prepared to mount the steps with the sleeping Denny.

    “No, that’s okay: I’ll pop him on his bed, if you like.”

    “Um—all right. Thanks,” said Ngaio, swallowing, and trying to remember if the boys’ room was in the sort of state it usually was.

    It was. Adam McIntyre didn’t seem to notice, however. He laid Denny on his bed and looked down at him with a little smile. Ngaio, respectable married woman of thirty-one or not, watched him with a fluttery feeling round her heart.

    “Isn’t he adorable?” he breathed.

    “Mm. Sometimes!” she hissed, smiling.

    Adam looked round and smiled right into her eyes. Ngaio swallowed convulsively.

    “I’d swap him for anything I’ve got, I can tell you. –Better let him sleep,” he added as Denny stirred and mumbled.

    “Mm. Hang on.” Ngaio drew the curtains and they crept out.

    ... “I feel all weak,” she said weakly to her husband as they stood on the verandah waving as Georgy and Adam departed.

    “You’re supposed to, aren’t you?” he replied drily.

    “Don’t be awful! –I thought you liked him?” she added in amazement. Ross had invited Adam into the sitting-room without being prompted and offered him a cold beer without being prompted.

    “Yeah. Well— Yeah,” he ended weakly.

    “Well, what?” demanded Ngaio in a steely voice.

    “Um—very charming bloke,” he said weakly.

    “Ro-oss!”

    Ross grimaced. He moved uneasily. “Well, it is his profession to—um—to get people to eat out of his hand, love,” he said uncomfortably.

    “Ross Cornwell!” she gasped.

    “Well, it is.”

    “How can you— He’s obviously dotty about little kids; you never saw his face when we were putting Denny down!”

    “No. Well, I grant you he’s not totally unnatural.”

    Ngaio glared.

    “They are cute at that age,” he said uncomfortably.

    Ngaio glared.

    “Look, just don’t...” Ross broke off, looking glum.

    “Don’t what?” she said fiercely.

    Ross hesitated; then he put his hand on her shoulder. “Look, I know you’re worried about Georgy never having any sort of a life of her own stuck at home with your blasted mother, but… Well, just don’t make anything out of it, old girl.”

    “Don’t call me that!” snapped Ngaio. She pulled away from him and marched indoors.

    Ross sighed. He followed her slowly. She was in the kitchen, clashing around with the cutlery. He came up behind her and put both his hands on her shoulders. “He’s a famous film star, Ngaio.”

    “His parents are just ordinary people!” choked Ngaio.

    Ross hesitated. Then he said reluctantly: “No, they’re not, really, love. His father’s a very—a very eminent man, didn’t he win the Nobel prize or something?”

    “No!” snapped Ngaio.

    “Well, something, anyway,” he said weakly. “And his mum’s very clever, too, she’s quite a musician, Georgy said.”

     Ngaio gave a cross sniff.

    “You know I’m right,” he said uneasily.

    “All right, I do! But why can’t she meet someone—someone nice?” she cried.

    Ross released her. He rubbed his nose. “I dunno. Well, I’ve done me best.”

    “Don Chase and that stupid Murray Stuart?” she cried indignantly.

    “Uh—yeah. Well, Murray’s a bit dim, I’ll give ya that—”

    “He’s stupid!” said Ngaio fiercely.

    “Yeah. Okay. But old Don’s okay.”

    “He’s too old for her—and he’s bald!” cried Ngaio.

    “He’s thirty-nine and I’ll eat my hat if bloody Adam McIntyre’s far off that!” he cried.

    “He’s thirty-seven. And don’t say ‘bloody’, you know the boys copy you.”

    Ross scowled.

    Ngaio clashed around with the cutlery. Then she said: “Why on earth did she ever have to meet him?”

    Ross made a face.

    “Or if she had to, why couldn’t he have been bald and fat!” said Ngaio fiercely.

    “If he’da been that,” said Ross somewhat dazedly, “he wouldn’ta been him, would ’e?”

    “You know what I mean!”

    “Yeah.”

    They both sighed.

    Then Ross said—rather injudiciously, perhaps: “I tell ya what, I felt weak when Georgy upped and asked for a shandy!”

    Ngaio swallowed. “Mum doesn’t drink. I mean—not beer,” she said weakly.

    “Well, exactly! Who’d she learn it off? Don’t tell me she’s actually starting to socialize with those types at the varsity!”

    Ngaio swallowed again.

    There was a short silence.

    “Pity he isn’t just… Oh, well,” said Ross glumly. He mooched over to the fridge and got himself another beer. Even though it was his fifth that afternoon Ngaio for once didn’t say anything on the subject. He gulped beer. “Did you get a load of that watch ’e had on?”

    “Um—no. I mean— It was just a watch, wasn’t it?” said Ngaio in confusion.

    Ross himself owned and operated a hardware store in Puriri, but his father in his day had been a manufacturing jeweller. He merely gave a hard laugh, plonked his empty can on the bench and strode out.

    “Blast!” said Ngaio violently to herself, glaring into the sink.

    “Pleasant fellow, your brother-in-law,” said Adam mildly as they drove up Pohutukawa Bay Road to the highway.

    “Yes,” agreed Georgy in a small voice.

    “Would I be wrong in assuming that he has the faults of drinking beer, encouraging your sister to drink beer, not wearing a shirt in his own house on a searingly hot Sunday afternoon, and saying ‘bloody’ in front of your mother’s grandchildren?” he asked mildly.

    “Yes! I mean, No, you’re right!” gasped Georgy, clapping a hand over her mouth. She goggled at him over the hand.

    “I bet he goes to the pub, too,” said Adam mildly.

    “Mm!” said Georgy in a strangled squeak, nodding.

    Adam drew up carefully at the junction with the highway. He had to, millions of Sunday drivers were streaming south and he had to get across the stream if they were going to get back to Puriri. He suppressed the urge to suggest that they didn’t have to, there must be some nice motels further south, and glanced sideways at her.

    Georgy gulped. “His father’s a jeweller. Well, he was, he’s retired now.”

    “I see. So your mother made the mistake of assuming he was a nice, quiet boy?”

    She bit her lip. “Yes! How did you know?” she gasped.

    Adam smiled. “Something to do with the general aura of restraint when they were at her house earlier, plus the general air of great relaxation and, uh, easy-going-ness—in spite of the presence of a giraffe from outer space—when they were in their own house. Both of ’em,” he clarified.

    “Yes. Ngaio keeps saying she doesn’t know how I stand it at home,” she said glumly.

    “Why stay?” he replied lightly.

    “Mum hasn’t got anybody else,” she said in a stifled voice.

    “And you haven’t got anybody. And you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. What’s left of it,” he said drily.

    “I suppose your life’s so wonderful!”

    “No: it isn’t. When I’m not actually working I’m generally damned lonely and unhappy.”—Georgy’s jaw sagged.—“When various friends with kids haven’t taken pity on me and are encouraging me in me surrogate-uncle role, that is,” he added drily.

    Georgy bit her lip. After a moment she said in a strangled voice: “I’ll say this for you, you’re not stupid.”

    “No. I often wish I was.”

    Georgy gulped. After a moment she ventured: “Are you really lonely?”

    “Yes. You don’t have to believe me, of course.”

    “Well—well, there must be lots of things to do London.”

    “Mm. After some years of going to art galleries and concerts by yourself, it palls. And the alternative—and I don’t deny there usually is an alternative—of dragging some sycophantic and incompatible giggling companion to art galleries and concerts palls very quickly.”

    Georgy swallowed.

    Adam glanced at her uncertainly. He gave a tiny sigh and stared back at the road.

    After some time Georgy gasped: “You can go!”

    And Adam jumped and said: “What? Oh—Hell!” and swung out quickly onto the highway.

    After that neither of them said anything all the way to Ridge Road.

    When they drew up, Georgy said abruptly: “Were you awfully bored?” and Adam said: ‘‘No.”

    Then there was a short silence.

    “Your nephews are delightful, young Elspeth is delightful, and Barbara—” He gave a little laugh. “How could anyone help liking her?”

    “Yes. She is nice,” said Georgy in a stifled voice.

    “And Joel’s cousin is—” He paused. “Damned intelligent, and one of the least boring women I’ve ever met.”

    “Oh,” said Georgy in a small voice.

    “At the same time without being in the least physically attractive: isn’t it extraordinary?” he murmured.

    Georgy swallowed.

    He gave her a sly look. “It’s very restful to be with a female of my peer group without feeling I have to watch my every word in case she tries to entrap me into some sort of relationship—romantic, sexual or both—which I’m very far from desiring.”

    “You vain pig!” gasped Georgy.

    Adam undid his seatbelt. He turned towards her and smiled. “No. I’m sorry, Georgy, but that’s the way it is. I thought you’d like to know.”

    “Well, you thought wrong!”

    “I tried to tell you before: I’ve spent the last few years being treated as a—a sex-object,” he said with a distasteful grimace.

     Georgy went very red and glared at the street.

    “A disillusioning experience,” said Adam drily.

    “Oh, I’m sure it must be!”

    “I slept with a good many of ’em, but none of them meant anything to me—not even the marginally intelligent ones,” said Adam in a detached voice.

    “I don’t want to know!” gasped Georgy, clapping her hands over her ears.

    With his left hand Adam pulled her right hand down. “I want you to know. If I seem to—er—to despise women in general, or to treat women who might not ask for it like—well, like mindless, simpering bitches; it’s because I’ve met very little else in the past few years. –No, I was forgetting, there’s also the ruthlessly ambitious type and the gold-digger type. Usually combined with mindlessness, simpering, and bitchiness, of course.”

    Georgy wrenched her hand out of his grasp. “Well, why did you bother with them?” she said fiercely.

    Adam shrugged. “Oh, at first—after me rise to fame,”— he made a face—“I was flattered. Especially since my marriage had failed rather spectacularly at about the same time.”

    “Oh,” said Georgy in a tiny voice.

    “Then there was the point that I’m not a monk.”

    Georgy swallowed. “What?” she said faintly.

    “I’m not a monk and I don’t particularly enjoy celibacy. Though at times I think it’s preferable to waking up to find something mindless and simpering on the pillow next to mine with its make-up smeared all over— Hold on!” he said with a little laugh as Georgy choked, wrenched her seatbelt off, and flung open her door. He reached across her and grabbed the door.

    “Would you rather I gave you a string of absurd lies about the purity of my real life as opposed to my public image?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

    “No!” choked Georgy. “Let me out!”

    “Give me a kiss, first. It can be a consolation prize for the fact that my entire body feels as if it’s been soaking in warm toffee for the last five weeks.”

    Swallowing, Georgy said faintly: “It’s the humidity.”

    “Not to mention the ice cream: quite. –Come on,” he said, twinkling at her and removing his sunglasses.

    “No! Mrs Robinson’s looking at us!” gasped Georgy.

    “Well, let’s give her a treat,” said Adam naughtily.

    “No,” said Georgy through her teeth, shoving viciously at the car door. He let go and it swung open: she gasped.

    “Idiot,” he said mildly, grabbing her arm.

    “Thank you for driving us to the zoo,” said Georgy stiffly, not looking at him. “And—and for paying, and everything.”

    “Idiot,” Adam repeated.

    “Please let me go!” she choked.

    “Are you sure you won’t come to dinner? Ma’s dying to show off her tarragon chicken.”

    “No. Thank you all the same,” said Georgy, glaring at her knees.

    “Very well,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll see you at rehearsal tomorrow, then.”

    “Yes. Two o’clock for you and Joel.”

    “Mm.” Adam knew it was no use offering to drive her in in the morning, he’d already offered and been turned down flat. “Go on, then.”

    Georgy got out without looking at him.

    “Oh—Georgy—” he said, leaning over to her side and looking up at her.

    “What?” she said, bending down and looking at him sulkily.

    Adam’s face broke into a smile. “Thank you for the lovely day!”

    Georgy gulped, turned very red, said hoarsely: “Warm toffee and all!” and dashed away.

    Adam leaned back in his seat and laughed a little. Then, moving slowly in the swaddling humidity, he got out, locked the car and went down the steep drive.

    “Well, how was the zoo?” said Mrs Harris mildly as Georgy came into the kitchen looking very hot and sulky.

    “All right. Just like the zoo,” said Georgy sulkily.

    Her mother shot her a quick glance. “I hope the boys behaved themselves?”

    “Yes, they were fine,” said Georgy tiredly.

    “You didn’t let them eat too much rubbish, I hope?”

    “I just did what Ngaio said,” said Georgy tiredly.

    Inevitably—given that since her marriage Ngaio had gone over almost entirely to Ross’s side—there was a longstanding demarcation dispute centred on this topic. However, Mrs Harris just sniffed slightly.

    “I think I’ll have a shower,” said Georgy dully.

    “Yes. And you’d better put those things straight in the wash.”

    “All right,” said Georgy dully.

    “Did—uh—did Mr McIntyre just drop you off, dear?” asked Mrs Harris very casually.

    “Yes. –Why on earth are you calling him Mr McIntyre?” added Georgy without interest. She went out before her mother could answer.

    Mrs Harris sighed. She went on slicing tomatoes for tonight’s salad, but not in the hope that Georgy would eat much of it.

    After seeing Adam on the right road for the Hibiscus Coast Jill had driven Barbara home to Devonport, ignoring her polite objections. Then she’d driven Joel to the Blacks’, arriving there while Adam and Georgy were still at the Cornwells’, and dropped off Elspeth at her father’s house in Kowhai Bay Road. She finally got home to find a greenish Gretchen in the sitting-room with the Venetians almost closed, looking at a glass of orange juice.

    “Vitamin C. Drink it up, it’ll do you good,” she said briskly.

    “So I tell myself,” said Gretchen dully.

    “Have you been in that state all day?” demanded Jill heartlessly.

    “No. Now I am much better than I vass all day.”

    “Gawd,” she muttered.

    Gretchen eyed her dully. “I would take a shower, if I vass you.”

    “I would take a shower if I was me and in fact I’m about to.” Jill went over to the door. “And please do not mention the words ‘Coke’ or ‘ice cream’ to me for the next fortnight.”

    “These are words I vill not vish to mention to you for the next fortnight, I assure you,” said Gretchen in a hollow voice. “Also ‘food’ and ‘drink’.”

    “I kept telling you vodka’s different from beer, but would you listen?” Jill went out on this note.

    Gretchen moaned faintly and went on staring at the orange juice.

    “Vhat are you doing?” she said faintly about fifteen minutes later as Jill came back in a cotton housecoat looking very fresh and ruthlessly opened the Venetians. She sat down and opened the phone book she’d brought in with her.

    “Dratted Polly,” she replied in a vague voice, turning to the back where the Puriri County exchange was listed.

    “Vhat?” began Gretchen loudly. She clutched her head. “Their number iss not listed, you idiot!” she hissed.

    “No, but me spies tell me they’re up at that bloody bach of theirs today; I’m looking in here in the faint hope that its number— Drat.”

    “See?”

    “Shut up, you Aryan piss-head.” Jill scowled. “Now who...”

    “Hamish Macdonaldt, obviously: he iss her cousin,” said Gretchen. She took a deep breath and downed the orange juice. “Gott!” she gasped, shuddering all over.

    “Don’t be a clot. If I ring him, he’ll think I’m ringing up to complain about Elspeth’s behaviour at the zoo, and before I know what I’m doing he’ll have me getting the kid in the poo.”

    “Ja? Vhat did she do?”

    “Nothing, you Aryan clot,” said Jill heavily. “Well, apart from the odd episode of tipping the best part of a choc-coated ice down Adam McIntyre’s fancy pas-telle semi-tropical shirt, and losing her temper etwas drastically when he said she couldn’t have a third ride on the kiddies’ train, and—uh—well, insisting on swapping sunglasses with him and inadvertently sitting on his after she’d taken ’em off—”

    “Those looked like very expensiff prescription glasses to me!” gasped Gretchen, thus revealing that she had been focussing that morning.

    “Yes. –Very good, ‘to me’ at the end of the clause, quite correct.”—Gretchen glared.—“They didn’t break but one earpiece did get extremely bent.”

    “This iss ‘nothing’,” noted Gretchen.

    “It is for her. Oh, and they had a row over whether she was going to remove those boats she wearing on her feet and gallop round barefoot picking up God knows what from the zoo animals, but he won that quite easily. Mainly because he took one look at Georgy about to burst into tears over it and became as a raging lion. Incidentally, you needn’t mention lions or bisons or llamas to me for a while, either. Or, I may add, Chinese hens. In fact never mention Chinese hens to me as long as I live, thank you.”

    “Vhat are they?” replied Gretchen blankly. “Are they different from usual hens?”

    “I’m not listening,” Jill warned her. “Anyway, as I was trying to say, I won’t ring Hamish, I don’t want to drop Elspeth in it.”

    “Ring Margaret Prior,” ordered Gretchen simply.

    “That was going to be my next move; yes,” said Jill with dignity She went over to the door but Gretchen said: “And if she invites us to dinner and that husband of hers iss home, I am dead.”

    “That is glaringly apparent,” said Jill coldly. She went out, smothering a grin.

    … “Now listen up, Mitchell,” she said grimly: “you sitting comfortably?”

    “Yes,” said Polly in a bewildered voice. “I’m sitting on the bed, we’ve only got the one phone at the bach.”

    “I don’t want to know the details of your interior dee-cor, ta. Just so long as you’re in a fit state to concentrate.”

    “Um—I’ve just had a gin.”

    “Then don’t have another until I tell you.”

    “No. Righto,” said Polly meekly.

    Jill took a deep breath. She let it out again.

    “What?” said Polly meekly.

    “Last night,” said Jill grimly.

    She heard Polly say to someone in the background: “It’s Jill. She sounds really pissed off about last night.”

    Someone replied in an annoyed bass: “That makes two of us. –Gimme that!”

    Jill swallowed.

    “Gidday,” he said.

    “Hullo, Jake,” said Jill feebly.

    “Look, before ya start, the other night wasn’t entirely our fault, see: we invited him, and he asked wee Georgy off ’is own bat.”

    “I see,” said Jill faintly.

    “Only this doesn’t mean,” said Jake grimly, “that a certain amount of aiding and abetting didn’t then ensue.”

    Polly’s voice said loudly in the background: “I only— Um, asked him if he’d like to bring someone,” it ended uncertainly.

    “As far as I can make out,” Jake said heavily, “—this was in the ladies’ bog, ya see—her Ladyship only told the poor wee thing there was no harm in going for it, if she fancied it.”

    Jill gulped. “Anyone but Georgy!”

    “Well, exactly! Not that she isn’t the sweetest wee thing. And bright with it: I told ’im that.”

    “Did you?” said Jill limply.

    “Yeah. Well, thought it might put ’im off.”

    A short silence.

    “Look,” began Jill, “if he was any other chap—”

    “Yeah: this conversation wouldn’t, eh? Only it’s a bit different when one’s an inexperienced wee thing like her, and one’s—”

    “An experienced wee thing like him,” said Jill grimly.

    “Goddit in one. –Pretty, ain’t he?”

    “Yes,” said Jill grimly.

    “Got a good deal of old Maurie Black’s charm, too. None of ’is go, though.” He hesitated. “If he did have—well, you know. Might not feel so uneasy about him and wee Georgy, eh? What I mean is— Well, dammit, Jill, is he the type to find the guts to trot out wee Georgy in front of his blasted jet-set mates from flaming Stratford and Hollywood and all that? Let alone stick up for ’er once he’d done it!”

    “Those points have been noted; I’ve just spent the best part of the bloody day at the zoo with the pair of them,” said Jill grimly.

    “That right? –Here,” he said to his wife: “Jill reckons she spent the day at the zoo with Adam and Georgy!”

    “What?” she cried.

    Some panting ensued. Then Polly’s voice said breathlessly in Jill’s ear: “It’s me!—Stop it, Jake!—Why on earth was Adam at the zoo?”

    “Now that, I never did learn. Possibly because Georgy had announced her intention of taking her nephews there today.”

    “Oh,” said Polly thoughtfully.

    “Now don’t start!” Jill warned her.

    “But— Well, did he enjoy himself?”

    “To be fair, quite possibly—yes. As much as he could in the company of Georgy alternately up in the air and giving him the brush-off, yours truly and newfound cousin alternately bickering and reminiscing about the good old days in Bognor, your cousin’s daughter biffing choc-coated ices all over him, one small boy falling over his own flat feet and howling his eyes out, and the other one getting him in an old-man-of-the-sea stranglehold for the better part of the day. Oh, plus young Barbara Michaels, but she was an asset.”

    Polly went straight to the heart of the matter. “Are you telling me that Adam gave one of Georgy’s little nephews a ride on his shoulders?”

    Jill groaned. “Yes. The little one. –Littler. Oh, he was the man of the people today, all right! Not to say your down-home suburban dad. Even had the little fellow telling him he was the daddy of the party—that one went over like a bouquet of red roses, let me add. Smiles and bonhomie all round after that. Not to mention donating his own silk hanker to the other one when it fell over.”

    “Oh.”

    “Yes, ‘oh’,” said Jill grimly.

    Polly gulped. “Um—we did say, didn’t we, darling...?” she said to her husband.

    “Yeah,” he rumbled.

    “Mitchell! Three-way conversations!” roared Jill.

    “Sorry: are we doing it again?” said Jake’s voice in her ear with a laugh.

    “Yes,” she said grimly.

    “Ya go like that after a few years of marriage. Yeah, well, I dunno, Jill. Like we said: if it was any other joker... Look, last night we got a lot of the sophisticated London thee-ayter bit, and then—um, well, some of us noticed it wasn’t going over too good with Georgy, so we kinda let it get a good deal cosier, if ya see what I mean, and—uh—he joined in. With a will, ya could say. Once ’e got the general drift.”

    “I see. Well, he recited to us over our picnic lunch. A.A. Milne: Biffalo-buffalo-bisons, etcetera. The little boys were thrilled. Not half as thrilled as Georgy was, though.”

   Jake groaned.

    “I’ve issued a dire warning. Otherwise known as opening me great mouth and cramming both feet into it.”

    “Mm. Well, these young people won’t be warned, eh?” he said with a smile in his voice.

    Jill began to wonder—not that she hadn’t off and on anyway, in the last six years—just how much P.M. Mitchell-that-was had told her multi-millionaire husband about the advice received from one, J. Davis, M.A., Ph.D., round about the time Jake had fallen out of his tree and busted up with her. Ugh, Likewise, ug.

    “No,” she agreed glumly. “—What?”

    “It’s me again,” said Polly.

    “I can hear that, “ said Jill heavily. “Go on.”

    “Well, it was Jake that thought it up, but he’s too modest to say so!” said Polly with a gurgle.

    “Eh?”

    “Yes. We were talking it over earlier today and he says that, well, even though it’s pretty obvious that Adam’s very keen at the moment— You did think so too, didn’t you?”

    “YES!” shouted Jill.

    “Yes. Well, Jake says that never mind if he is, when Livia Wentworth arrives and—well, you know: the Press’ll turn up in full force, and Mac mentioned she’s threatening to bring out some director friend or something—um—well, Jake thinks he might, um, change his spots.”

    “Not his SPOTS!” he roared in the background.

    “No,” Polly agreed. “Um—sorry, Jill: what I’m trying to say is, Jake thinks he’s a chameleon!”

    “I get it,” said Jill slowly.

    “Yes. He’s clever about people. It’s good, isn’t it? Very apt.”

    Jill replied grimly: “Very. We can only hope that the chameleon—spotted or not—will have done as little damage as possible by the time the jet-set gets here.”

    “Yes,” said Polly in a small voice.

    “Well, when is she due?”

    “It’s another full two weeks yet. No, a bit more: the 15th.”

    “Christ,” muttered Jill.

    “Well—um…”

    “Don’t tell me he’s not a fast worker, Polly, that chap’s got ‘fast worker’ engraved on his forehead!”

    “Ye-es... Only she doesn’t know the first thing about encouraging him.”

    “She doesn’t need to!” shouted Jill.

    “No. Oh, Hell.”

    There was a short silence.

    “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to stick closer to her than a brother,” Jill said grimly.

    “Good idea. Will you and Joel come to dinner on Thursday?”

    “Why?” asked Jill wildly.

    Polly gulped. “We got all carried away and invited the two of them, together. That was in the first flush of thinking—um—you know.”

    “That he wasn’t a chameleon: yes. All right, then: count us in for Thursday.”

    “Yes. Good.”

    Another short silence.

    “Well, all systems go to throw rocks in the chameleon’s path, then, Jill?”

    “Yes,” said Jill sourly. “Boulders, in fact. In fact if you can find a spare Everest or fourteen, chuck them.”

    She hung up on that note.

    “Jill agrees he’s a chameleon,” said Lady Carrano glumly to her husband.

    “Keep out of it,” he said, pointing a warning finger at her.

    “I can’t: I feel responsible.”

    Jake groaned.

    After a few moments’ brooding she said sadly: “Poor chameleon.”

    “Keep OUT OF IT!” he shouted.

    Polly was silent. She still had “poor chameleon” written all over her face, though.

    “No,” he said, tremendously firm.

    She sighed. “No. Oh, dear. Poor Georgy.”

    Jake sighed, too. But he didn’t say anything more: that was at least more sensible than feeling sorry for Adam McIntyre.